John W. Watt – författare

This volume presents a panorama of Syriac engagement with Aristotelian philosophy primarily situated in the 6th to the 9th centuries, but also ranging to the 13th. It offers a wide range of articles, opening with surveys on the most important philosophical writers of the period before providing detailed studies of two Syriac prolegomena to Aristotle’s Categories and examining the works of Hunayn, the most famous Arabic translator of the 9th century. Watt also examines the relationships between philosophy, rhetoric and political thought in the period, and explores the connection between earlier Syriac tradition and later Arabic philosophy in the thought of the 13th century Syriac polymath Bar Hebraeus.Collected together for the first time, these articles present an engaging and thorough history of Aristotelian philosophy during this period in the Near East, in Syriac and Arabic.

This book brings together sixteen studies by internationally renowned scholars on the origins and early development of the Latin and Syriac biblical and philosophical commentary traditions. It casts light on the work of the founder of philosophical biblical commentary, Origen of Alexandria, and traces the developments of fourth- and fifth-century Latin commentary techniques in writers such as Marius Victorinus, Jerome and Boethius. The focus then moves east, to the beginnings of Syriac philosophical commentary and its relationship to theology in the works of Sergius of Reshaina, Probus and Paul the Persian, and the influence of this continuing tradition in the East up to the Arabic writings of al-Farabi. There are also chapters on the practice of teaching Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy in fifth-century Alexandria, on contemporaneous developments among Byzantine thinkers, and on the connections in Latin and Syriac traditions between translation (from Greek) and commentary. With its enormous breadth and the groundbreaking originality of its contributions, this volume is an indispensable resource not only for specialists, but also for all students and scholars interested in late-antique intellectual history, especially the practice of teaching and studying philosophy, the philosophical exegesis of the Bible, and the role of commentary in the post-Hellenistic world as far as the classical renaissance in Islam.

This volume presents a panorama of Syriac engagement with Aristotelian philosophy primarily situated in the 6th to the 9th centuries, but also ranging to the 13th. It offers a wide range of articles, opening with surveys on the most important philosophical writers of the period before providing detailed studies of two Syriac prolegomena to Aristotle’s Categories and examining the works of Hunayn, the most famous Arabic translator of the 9th century. Watt also examines the relationships between philosophy, rhetoric and political thought in the period, and explores the connection between earlier Syriac tradition and later Arabic philosophy in the thought of the 13th century Syriac polymath Bar Hebraeus.Collected together for the first time, these articles present an engaging and thorough history of Aristotelian philosophy during this period in the Near East, in Syriac and Arabic.

Shortly after 500 CE, the Syriac-speaking priest and physician Sergius of Resh'aina, who had studied in Alexandria, wrote the first known exposition of Aristotle in a Semitic language. About four centuries later, Abu Bishr Matta, an alumnus of the monastic school of Dayr Qunna in Iraq, completed in Baghdad the Arabic version of the Aristotelian Organon with translations from the Syriac, and in a famous disputation argued the case for Greek logic as a theory of knowledge against rival claims of Arabic grammarians. The articles collected in this volume are concerned with the transmission and development of the Greek achievement among Syriac scholars of the Fertile Crescent during these four centuries, particularly in the fields of rhetoric and philosophy. Some range broadly over general areas, such as the Syriac appropriation of Greek liberal education or the educational curriculum in Syriac monastic schools, while others focus on themes of particular interest, including the influence of Aristotle's Rhetoric or the concept of the philosopher-king. Cumulatively they show how many aspects of Greek culture were received and elaborated in Syriac, and contribute to understanding the ways in which that culture exercised a powerful influence on the medieval Near East and the burgeoning Islamic civilisation.