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Syriacists
Syriac studies is the study of the Syriac language and Syriac Christianity. A specialist in Syriac studies is known as a Syriacist. Specifically, British, French, and German scholars of the 18th and 19th centuries who were involved in the study of Syriac/Aramaic language and literature were commonly known by this designation, at a time when the Syriac language was little understood outside Assyrian and Maronite Christian communities, as well as larger communities adhering to Syriac Christianity. In Germany the field of study is distinguished between ''Aramaistik'' (Aramaic studies) and ''Neuaramaistik'' (Neo-Aramaic (Syriac) studies). At universities, Syriac studies are mostly incorporated into a more 'general' field of studies, such as Eastern Christianity at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Aramaic studies at the University of Oxford and University of Leiden, Eastern Christianity at Duke University, or Semitic studies at the Freie Universität B ...
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Aramaic Studies
Aramaic studies are scientific studies of the Aramaic languages and literature. As a specific field within Semitic studies, Aramaic studies are closely related to similar disciplines, like Hebraic studies and Arabic studies. As a distinctive academic discipline, Aramaic studies started to develop during the Early Modern period, and they were initially focused on the study of the Christianity, Christian Aramaic heritage, embodied in Syriac language and cultural traditions of Syriac Christianity. The field was gradually widened, and by the 19th century expanded towards studies of ancient Aramaic heritage, that included all of the oldest (pre-Christian) variety (linguistics), varieties of Aramaic languages, and ancient Aramaic alphabet. On the other side, the field was also expanded towards modern periods, focused on the study of the remaining Neo-Aramaic languages, and modern cultural heritage of Neo-Aramaic communities. During the 19th century, Aramaic studies were constituted as ...
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François Nau
François Nau (13 May 1864 at Thil – 2 September 1931 at Paris) was a French Catholic priest, mathematician, Syriacist, and specialist in oriental languages. He published a great number of eastern Christian texts and translations for the first and often only time. Life François-Nicolas Nau was the last of five children of François-Nicolas Nau and Marguerite Longueville. He attended primary school at Longwy until 1878, then the "petit séminaire" of Notre-Dame des Champs at Paris, then the "Grand Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice" in 1882. In 1887 he gained his baccalaureate in theology and canon law. On 17 December 1887 he was ordained priest in the diocese of Paris. Nau then studied mathematics and natural science. After this, from 1889 he studied the Syriac language. In 1895 he gained the diploma of the École pratique des hautes études in Paris by publishing the Syriac text and a French translation of a treatise on astronomy by Bar Hebraeus. In 1897 he received a doct ...
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Giuseppe Simone Assemani
Giuseppe Simone Assemani ( Classical Syriac : ܝܵܘܣܸܦ ܒܲܪ ܫܸܡܥܘܿܢ , ( ''Yusuf ibn Siman as-Simani'', , ; July 27, 1687 – January 13, 1768) was a librarian, Lebanese Maronite orientalist, and Catholic bishop. For his efforts, and his encyclopedic knowledge, he earned the nickname "The Great Assemani". Life Giuseppe Simone Assemani was born on 27 July 1687 in Hasroun, Mount Lebanon into the Assemani family. His surname is related to several distinguished Orientalists and clergy. " Assemani" is an Arabic patronymic which means son of Simeon, but this did not prevent him from being called Simon. When very young, in 1703, he was sent to the Maronite College in Rome, and was transferred thence to the Vatican library. Assemani graduated in 1709. A talented graduate (at that time he had written three essays on the Syrian grammar and theology), he was spotted by Pope Clement XI, who kept him in Rome and ordered him to catalogue early Christian manuscripts that were bro ...
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Ernest Walter Brooks
Ernest Walter Brooks, FBA (30 August 1863 – 26 March 1955) was an English ancient historian and scholar of Syriac. The son of a priest, he was educated at Eton College (as a King's Scholar) and then at King's College, Cambridge, where he read classics and graduated in 1887. He then lived in London and Geneva (the latter from the late 1920s) as an independent scholar, before retiring to Hampshire in 1941. He became an expert in translating Syriac historical texts into English, gaining a leading reputation. His prolific output in this area was supplemented by research on Byzantine history and contributions to '' The Cambridge Medieval History'' (1911–23). Having received an honorary doctorate from the University of Louvain in 1927, he was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1938 (though he resigned in 1941). His wife, Ellen, was a daughter of Major-General G. B. Mellersh.
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John Gwynn (Syriacist)
John Gwynn (28 August 1827 – 3 April 1917) was an Irish Syriacist. He was Regius Professor of Divinity at Trinity College Dublin from 1888 to 1907.''Burke’s Irish Family Records'', Burke’s Peerage Ltd., 1976. Biography John Gwynn (1827–1917) was born in Larne, the eldest son of the Reverend Stephen Gwynne (1792–1873). The Gwynne family had been settled in Ulster since the 17th century. The spelling of the family surname had varied throughout the earlier years; it was John Gwynn, the subject of this article, who settled on "Gwynn" with no "e". John's grandfather John Gwynne (1761–1852) had studied at Trinity College Dublin. after taking a degree in Divinity he was ordained and became Rector of Kilroot near Carrickfergus, County Antrim. His elder son Stephen (1792–1873), John Gwynn's father, followed a similar career route, graduating from Trinity College Dublin and becoming Rector of Larne, County Antrim, and then Rector of Portstewart, County Londonderry. When ...
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William Cureton
William Cureton (180817 June 1864) was an English Orientalist. Life He was born in Westbury, Shropshire. After being educated at the Adams' Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire and at Christ Church, Oxford, he took orders in 1832, became chaplain of Christ Church, sublibrarian of the Bodleian, and, in 1837, assistant keeper of manuscripts in the British Museum. He was afterwards appointed select preacher to the University of Oxford, chaplain in ordinary to the queen, rector of St Margaret's, Westminster, and canon of Westminster Abbey. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society and a trustee of the British Museum, and was also honored by several continental societies. For a time Cureton also served as curate of St Andrew's, Oddington, Oxfordshire. Works Cureton's most remarkable work was the edition with notes and an English translation of the Epistles of Ignatius to Polycarp, the Ephesians and the Romans, from a Syriac manuscript that had been found in the monastery of S ...
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William Wright (orientalist)
William Wright (17 January 1830 – 22 May 1889) was a famous English Orientalist, and Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge. Many of his works on Syriac literature are still in print and of considerable scholarly value, especially the catalogues of the holdings of the British Library and Cambridge University Library. ''A Grammar of The Arabic Language'', often simply known as ''Wright's Grammar'', continues to be a popular book with students of Arabic. Wright is also remembered for the ''Short history of Syriac literature''. Life Wright was born in Bengal to Alexander Wright and Johanna Leonora Christina Overbeek, daughter of the last resident of Dutch Bengal, Daniel Anthony Overbeek. He was educated at St Andrew's University, University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle and Leiden University, Leiden. He was Professor of Arabic at University College London from 1855 to 1856, and Professor of Arabic at Trinity College, Dublin from 1856 to 1861. From 1861 to 1869 he was a ...
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Jessie Payne Margoliouth
Jessie Payne Margoliouth ( Smith; 23 February 1856 – 18 August 1933) was a British Syriac scholar and campaigner for women's suffrage. Biography Margoliouth was born Jessie Payne Smith on 23 February 1856 in Kensington, London, England. Her father was Robert Payne Smith (1818–1895), a theologian and Anglican priest. She was brought up in Oxford and Canterbury. Her father taught her Syriac and lexicography. She assisted her father with the ''Thesaurus Syriacus'' (a Syriac to Latin dictionary), and, following his death, she saw it through to completion in 1901. She also abridged and translated the ''Thesaurus Syriacus'' into English in 1903 as ''A compendious Syriac Dictionary'' (Syriac to English). She later published a ''Supplement to the Thesaurus Syriacus of R. Payne Smith'' in 1927, adding 345 pages of new entries. On 25 April 1896, she married David Samuel Margoliouth, Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford. They had a happy marriage but did not have an ...
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Robert Payne Smith
Robert Payne Smith (7 November 1818 – 31 March 1895) was Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford and Canon of Christ Church from 1865 until 1870, when he was appointed Dean of Canterbury by Queen Victoria on the advice of William Ewart Gladstone. Early life and education Payne Smith was born in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, on 7 November 1818, the only son and second of four children of Robert Smith, a land agent, and his wife, Esther Argles Payne, of Leggsheath, Surrey. He attended Chipping Campden Grammar School and was taught Hebrew by his eldest sister, Esther. In 1837 he obtained an exhibition at Pembroke College, Oxford to study classics. In 1841 he graduated with second-class honours. Payne Smith won the Boden Sanskrit scholarship in 1840 and the Pusey and Ellerton Hebrew scholarship in 1843. Career In 1843, he became a fellow of Pembroke College and was ordained a deacon, and became a priest a year later. He gave the 1869 Bampton Lectures a ...
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Stefano Evodio Assemani
Stefano Evodio Assemani (15 April 171124 November 1782), Ottoman-born orientalist, nephew of Giuseppe Simone Assemani and cousin of Giuseppe Luigi Assemani, was the chief assistant of his uncle Giuseppe Simone in his work in the Vatican library. Career He was titular archbishop of Apamea in Syria, and held several rich prebends in Italy. His literary labours were very extensive. His two most important works were a description of certain valuable manuscripts in his ''Bibliothecae Mediceo-Laurentianae et Palatinae codd. manuscr. Orientalium Catalogus'' (Flor. 1742), fol., and his ''Acta SS. Martyrum Orientalium''. He made several translations from the Syriac, and in conjunction with his uncle he began the ''Bibliothecae Apostol. Vatic. codd. manusc. Catal., in tres partes distributus''. Only three volumes were published, and the fire in the Vatican library in 1768 consumed the manuscript collections which had been prepared for the continuation of the work. Works * Notes Re ...
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Robert Murray (priest)
Robert Patrick Ruthven Murray (1925-2018) was an English Jesuit priest, scripture and patristics scholar and university professor who wrote extensively on Syriac. Early life Murray was born to parents who were Congregationalist missionaries in China. His grandfather was James Murray, the noted lexicographer and founding editor of the ''Oxford English Dictionary''. His uncles included H. J. R. Murray and Oswyn Murray. He had his entire education in England. After going to school at Eltham College and Taunton School, he went to study Classics at the University of Oxford. In Oxford, where he met and became friends with J. R. R. Tolkien. While there, he converted to Catholicism. After graduating, he taught at Beaumont College, for one year. It was a school run by the Jesuits. After that year, he decided to join the Jesuits and was ordained at Heythrop College, in Oxfordshire, on 31 July 1959. The next day, at his first Mass, Tolkien was one of the altar servers. Academic career ...
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Semitic Studies
Semitic studies, or Semitology, is the academic field dedicated to the studies of Semitic languages and literatures and the history of the Semitic-speaking peoples. A person may be called a ''Semiticist'' or a ''Semitist'', both terms being equivalent. It includes Assyriology, Arabic, Hebraist, Syriacist, Mandaean, and Ethiopian studies, as well as comparative studies of Semitic languages aiming at the reconstruction of Proto-Semitic. See also *Asian studies *African studies * Middle Eastern studies *Philology * Study of the Hebrew language Sources * Gotthelf Bergsträsser: ''Einführung in die semitischen Sprachen: Sprachproben und grammatische Skizzen'', Nachdruck, Darmstadt 1993. *Carl Brockelmann Carl Brockelmann (17 September 1868 – 6 May 1956) German Semitic studies, Semiticist, was the foremost Orientalism, orientalist of his generation. He was a professor at the universities in University of Wrocław, Breslau, Berlin and, from 1903, ...: ''Grundriss der vergleic ...
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