Entry on the Syriac Translation Movement from the Springer Encyclopedia of Philosophy

[ Translator: In considering the importance of studying the Syriac translations, one can say that the nature and extent of the evolution of Greek concepts in the process of their reading by Semitic peoples can be seen in light of these very translations. For example, prior to the Arabic translations, we see in the Syriac translations that the ancient Greek verb for “being,” “εἶναι,” which is both a complete and incomplete verb, is rendered as “ܐܝܬ” in Syriac, which lacks the ontological meaning of the Greek verb and is used to mean both “is” and “has,” rather than “exists.” This, perhaps, is one example of the metamorphosis, or better said, the transformation of Greek philosophy in the hands of Semitic thinkers; of course, examples are abundant and space is limited!]

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Translation from Greek into Syriac[1]

Emiliano Fiori

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Leiden

Netherlands

Translated by: Pejman Ranjbar

Abstract

Since [in this article] our focus is on philosophical and scientific writings, three periods of Greek-to-Syriac translation activity can be examined: the first period (2nd–5th centuries CE) is characterized by a tendency toward a popular philosophy with ethical content and a gnomic form; in the second period (6th century CE), translation is focused on Aristotelian logic and physics; the third period (7th–9th centuries CE) also revolves around the works of Aristotle but is distinguished from the previous period by a shift in translation method from phrase-based to literal translation[2]. Brief information is also given about the main figures (Sergius of Reshaina, Athanasius of Balad, Jacob of Edessa, George the Arab, and Hunayn ibn Ishaq).

Since providing a complete survey of the Syriac translation movement over the aforementioned centuries is an impossible task, we will only deal with philosophical texts and some scientific writings related to the Bible and the Church Fathers, or narrative texts.

First Period: So-Called Popular Philosophy

Greek philosophy first made its presence felt in Syriac culture in the second century CE, in the form of brief texts, often in a gnomic form with ethical content, which were mostly collected in small anthologies. (See: Bettiolo 2003, Brock 2003). It is generally believed that these collections were compiled for a general audience, not necessarily for the Christian community; that is, for urban audiences—principally in the city of Edessa—who inhabited Mesopotamia from the second to the fifth century CE. However, obtaining further information about the nature of these earliest translations seems a difficult task. The translations belonging to this period include a translation of some Pythagorean sayings, a collection of sentences by the author known as Menander, as well as spurious sentences attributed to Plato, from a Socratic dialogue, two sections from Plutarch’s Moralia, one of the orations of Isocrates. Works by Lucian of Samosata and a writing by the fourth-century teacher of rhetoric, Themistius, also survive. (The edition of all the above texts can be found in de Lagarde 1858 and Sachau 1870)

Second Period

The genuine entry of philosophy into the Syriac-speaking world definitively occurred at the beginning of the sixth century with the first translations of Aristotle's logical and physical works and the commentaries written upon them (for a general survey, see Brock 1993). Plato was never translated into Syriac. The Categories was probably translated by an anonymous translator in the first half of this same century, and its margins contain the annotations of Sergius of Reshʿaina, who, however, was not acquainted with the translator of the text. Porphyry's Isagoge was likewise translated by an anonymous translator in the first half of the sixth century (Freimann 1897; Brock 1988). This same Sergius wrote a short introduction to all of Aristotle's logical writings (an incomplete translation of it is in Hugonnard-Roche 2004). He also translated two other works from the Aristotelian tradition: a spurious treatise of Aristotle entitled On the Universe (de Lagarde 1858; Ryssel 1880–1881) and also perhaps On the Parts of the Universe by Alexander of Aphrodisias. Sergius's fame is largely due to his translation of the collection of writings by an author known as Dionysius into Syriac and his introduction of Galen to the Syriac-speaking world: the ninth-century physician and translator Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq informs us that he translated 30 of Galen's works. Four fragmentary writings, three of which Sachau (1970) attributes to him, have come down to us: part of the Ars medica, part of De alimentorum temperamentis, and part of De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis et facultatibus. A short treatise on the influence of the moon, based on the treatise De diebus decretoriis, was edited by Merx (1885).

Two other logical texts from the Organon survive in anonymous translations: De interpretatione (for this text, see Hoffmann 1869) and Prior Analytics up to the first part of chapter 7. Scholars cannot assign a precise date to these works, so it is currently impossible to determine their background. We also possess a copy of Theophrastus's Meteorology (Daiber 1992; Wagner and Steinmetz 1964).

Third Period

Between the seventh and eighth centuries CE, after the rise of Islam, the monastic community of the West Syrian tradition in the city of Qenneshre, located on the western bank of the Euphrates, produced a vast range of philosophical and scientific works in the form of translations and commentaries. It is precisely in these works that we witness a shift in translation method; as Professor Brock has analyzed (1979, 1983, 2004): from a phrase-oriented method to a more literal one, with a visible shadowing of the borrowings from Greek in this new group of translations (for Greek loanwords in Syriac, see Brock 1975, 1996; Schall 1960).

   The initiator of the flourishing period of the city of Qenneshre was Severus Sebokht (d. 666/7). He is famous not for translation, but for his extensive scientific productions. His main successors were Athanasius of Balad (687), Jacob of Edessa (708), and George of the Arabs. In 645 Athanasius revised the first anonymous translation of the Isagoge, which had been corrected by Phocas; the rest of his translations of Aristotelian texts are lost, but we know that he translated the Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics, the Topics, and the Sophistical Refutations. It is worth noting that, as far as we know, he was the first Syriac-speaking scholar of the first millennium AD to translate the entire Organon in full as the heritage of the Alexandrian commentary tradition, whereas previously this book had not been translated and annotated beyond the Prior Analytics. For example, Jacob of Edessa did not go beyond the Prior Analytics; he revised the anonymous sixth-century translation of the Categories (Schüler 1897) and translated De Interpretatione (even if this version is attributed in the manuscript he transmits to the sixth-century Syriac philosopher Probus) and the Prior Analytics. George of the Arabs translated these same three works in a more literal manner (Furlani 1925). At the same Monastery of Phocas, the Dionysian corpus, in the version of Sergius which he had translated together with John of Scythopolis's scholia, was fundamentally examined and revised (Van Esbroeck 1925). After George, hardly anything remains of Syriac translations. The most important translator into Syriac and Arabic during the Abbasid era is Hunayn ibn Ishaq (ninth century), but it is difficult to identify some of his translations. We know of these works through a letter Hunayn wrote in 856, in which he provides a list of his Syriac translations of Galen's works. Based on a critique he leveled at many of Sergius's translations, he retranslated a large portion of Galen's works into Syriac (Brock 2004). We know that he also produced new versions of the Categories and De Interpretatione, but they have not survived.

   In the catalog of works of the third period, one might also include the version of Nemesius of Emesa's book De natura hominis, which is known only through quotations by authors of the eighth and ninth centuries and, for linguistic reasons, cannot date earlier than the seventh century.

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[1] . This text is a translation of the entry from:

Henrik Lagerlund (eds.)-Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy, Springer Netherlands (2011)

[2] . Phrase-based translation refers to a type of translation in which the unit of translation is taken to be a phrase; and word-by-word translation refers to the type of translation that renders the words of the source text into the target language in a sequential, word-for-word manner.

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