Articles
Articles and studies
Longer pieces on particular subjects — events, languages, institutions and movements that no single country profile has room for.
Codex Sinaiticus: the earliest complete New Testament
A Greek Bible from the middle of the fourth century, written in four columns on parchment, holding the earliest complete copy of the New Testament. It left St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai and is today divided between four institutions.
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Sayfo: the Syriac genocide of 1915
“Sayfo” means the sword in Syriac, and is the name by which Syriac communities know what befell them in and after 1915, alongside the Armenian genocide.
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From the desert to the world: the beginning of monasticism
In the Egyptian desert of the third century a way of life began that would reshape all of Christianity, spreading from there to Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia, and on into Europe.
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The translators of Baghdad: how philosophy crossed into Arabic
Between the eighth and tenth centuries, Syriac scholars carried Greek medicine and philosophy into Arabic, often by way of Syriac — a decisive role in the flowering of the sciences in the Islamic world.
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