Gorgias Press

Founded in 2001 Gorgias Press is an independent academic publisher of books and journals related to history, languages, and religious studies, with specific areas of expertise in the Ancient Near East, Arabic and Islamic Studies, Archaeology, Biblical Studies, Classics, Early Christianity, Jewish Studies, Linguistics, and Syriac.

Gorgias [GOR-gee-us] Press was originally created by George and Christine Kiraz as a specialty press that could keep up with their research interests. With a background in computational linguistics, George Kiraz envisioned combining cutting-edge technology with humanities research. The new company would be completely online, with no physical storefront, and it would use automation and digital printing technology rather than traditional print runs. With these tools, the press could afford to publish rare and understudied topics that were previously considered unprofitable, and Gorgias soon became known for its pioneering work in language and linguistics, religion, and especially Syriac and Eastern Christianity.
Gorgias’ philosophy of “Publishing for the Sake of Knowledge” rather than profit, attracted a number of new authors, and the press’ areas of interest rapidly began to expand. Today, Gorgias Press publishes 50-60 new titles a year, including monographs, edited volumes, translations, and more, and Gorgias books can be found in academic collections all over the world.

Investigating the Text-Hierarchical Structures and Composition of Numbers Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 242
ISBN: 9781463244835
Pub Date: 31 May 2024
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Description:
The structure of the Book of Numbers and its division into textual units has long been of interest to scholars, and various theories have been put forward based on criteria such as time, location or theme. The present volume offers a syntactic-hierarchical analysis of the Book of Numbers, giving priority to syntax and secondary priority to participants and their roles.
Circumcision and Jewish Identity Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 284
ISBN: 9781463245795
Pub Date: 31 May 2024
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Description:
Male circumcision is one of the oldest and most widespread rituals, it has been practiced for millennia across many parts of the world. Yet this prevalence and long history do not make circumcision self-evident: it has also long been a topic of reflection, discussion, and controversy and continues to be so today. As the cases in this volume show, already in Antiquity, Greeks, Romans, Jews and Christians clashed over male circumcision.

Key Word in Context Concordance to the Syriac New Testament

Volume 1 (Olaph-Dolath)
Format: Hardback
Pages: 699
ISBN: 9781463245917
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2024
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Series: Surath Kthob
Description:
The first comprehensive keyword-in-context concordance to the Syriac New Testament in six large volumes. It unlocks the treasure trove of the Syriac New Testament Peshitta readings and helps the reader to dive into the heart of this ancient Christian text, exploring its linguistic nuances, contextual meanings, and spiritual depths.
1800 Years of Encounters With Mandaeans Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 146
ISBN: 9781463241322
Pub Date: 31 Aug 2023
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Series: Gorgias Mandaean Studies
Description:
Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley’s new book is both an updated academic study and an autobiographical account of her decades-long Mandaean encounters. The book includes the author’s intellectual timeline in Mandaean studies from the late 1960s until today, a study of Mandaean scribal lineages, accounts of private and public meetings with Mandeans around the world with 26 anecdotes / vignettes, as well as selections from a privately printed book on her international human rights work for Mandaeans. The book is dedicated to a treasured Mandaean friend, the yalufa (learned layman) Sh.
Coherence of the Incoherence Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 391
ISBN: 9781463244972
Pub Date: 31 Aug 2023
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Description:
Coherence of the Incoherence: Between Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd on Nature and the Cosmos is the first of a two-part critical examination of the seminal debate carried out in the pages of Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers and Ibn Rushd’s Incoherence of the Incoherence. While an upcoming second volume focuses on the elements in that debate related to the God and the soul, this volume focuses on questions related to nature and the cosmos, including the controversies over the eternity of the universe and necessity of natural causation. The debate, I argue, is not simply a polemic between ‘faith and reason,’ but a penetrating philosophical discussion with enduring potential to inform work in philosophy and analytic theology.
A New Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Reader Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 400
ISBN: 9781463245665
Pub Date: 29 Aug 2023
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Series: Harvard Oriental Series - Opera Minora
Description:
Buddhist Hybrid Sanskri is not a deteriorated Sanskrit (as many believed at the discovery of Buddhist texts in Sanskrit), but, following the theoretical foundations underlying the pioneering work of Franklin Edgerton, a language with its grammar and vocabulary sui generis implemented rather consequently, which for a long period of time was used to spread the teaching of Buddha. The Reader is meant as a textbook for advanced students with an interest in non-standard Sanskrit and Middle Indo-Aryan. A substantial novelty of the Reader is that it includes extracts from representative texts either recently critically re-edited on the basis of new manuscripts or from the texts unknown at the time of Edgerton’s publications.
Let God Be True Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 467
ISBN: 9781463244996
Pub Date: 01 Aug 2023
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Description:
Romans 3 is a treasure trove of theological riches, a thematic junction where nearly every major theme in this complex epistle emerges. Yet for this same reason, exegetically it is one of the most notoriously difficult passages in the New Testament. The focused and interdisciplinary approach to this one particular chapter in Romans allows for greater depth of research than is generally possible in commentaries, and the variety of methodological approaches employed shines light from different angles to bring out the numerous facets of these verses.
The Origin of Language Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 319
ISBN: 9781463244958
Pub Date: 31 Jul 2023
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Series: Harvard Oriental Series - Opera Minora
Description:
What can the classification of languages tell us about human origins and human prehistory? This book presents a popular account of the origin of language. It is intended for an audience with no prior knowledge of comparative linguistics, genetics or archaeology.
The Martyrdom of Mar Grigor Piran-Gušnasp and The Martyrdom of Mar Yazd-panah Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 174
ISBN: 9781463244873
Pub Date: 31 Jul 2023
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Series: Persian Martyr Acts in Syriac: Text and Translation
Description:
In the mid-6th century, Grigor, the general of the Sasanian king’s armies and a converted from Zoroastrianism to Christianity, was put to death. This event brings about the conversion of several Zoroastrian notables such as Yazd-panāh, a judge who also died as a martyr three years later, and the courtier ʿAwira. The reign of King Khusrō I (531–579) was a key-chapter in the history of the Persian Empire, but also for the Church of the East, some members of which were involved in the Sasanian administration.
Hugoye - Journal of Syriac Studies (volume 24) Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 579
ISBN: 9781463245818
Pub Date: 21 Jul 2023
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Series: Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Description:
Widely regarded as a premier journal dedicated to the study of Syriac, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies was established in 1998 as a venue devoted exclusively to the discipline. An organ of Beth Mardutho, the Syriac Institute, the journal appears semi-annually and will be printed in annual editions. A peer-reviewed journal, Hugoye is a respected academic source for up-to-date information about the state of Syriac studies and for discovering what is going on in the field.
Sacred Space in Syriac Orthodox Liturgy Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 396
ISBN: 9781463245559
Pub Date: 21 Jul 2023
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Series: Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies
Description:
A study of how the Sedrō of Entrance has been practiced in earlier periods and architectural contexts and to investigate what role the entrance rite may have had in constructing the sanctuary as sacred space and the worshipping community as church.
Identity and Witness Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 188
ISBN: 9781463245702
Pub Date: 05 Jul 2023
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Series: Pro Oriente Studies in the Syriac Tradition
Description:
Identity has become a central theme in a globalised world, both in politics and in the humanities, and the Syrian churches cannot escape it either. Christianity also exists as an identity that can in some ways compete with or even contradict theological understandings as a witness. But how should religious leaders deal with the fact that their churches are as much faith communities as identity markers?
A History of the Study of Grammar among the Syrians Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 504
ISBN: 9781463241971
Pub Date: 30 Jun 2023
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Description:
An English translation of a Latin work on the Syriac grammatical tradition ('Historia artis grammaticae apud Syros') by the 19th-century German theologian and linguist, Adalbert Merx.
Critical Edition of Kitāb alsawād al-a‘ẓam by al-Ḥakīm al-Samarqandī (d. 342/953) Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 289
ISBN: 9781463240776
Pub Date: 30 Jun 2023
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Description:
The important text of Kitāb al-sawād al-a‘ẓam by al-Ḥakīm Muḥammad b. Ismā‘īl al-Samarqandī (d. 342/953) is an early Ḥanafī creed from Transoxania that found consensus among Ḥanafī scholars within the region, and was translated into Persian sometime between 366/976 and 387/997.
The Gospel of Mark and Other Haunted Places Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 280
ISBN: 9781463242718
Pub Date: 30 Jun 2023
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Traces of Sufism in British Romanticism Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 310
ISBN: 9781463245528
Pub Date: 30 Jun 2023
Imprint: Gorgias Press
Description:
This work argues that there are traces of Sufism to be found in British Romanticism. Most scholars of Romanticism have overlooked the impact of Sufism on Romanticism in favour of Christian and neo-Platonic Mysticism, but this work fills in this gap by showing the magnitude of the influence of Sufism on the Romantics without negating the influence of other -isms. What elements of Sufism attracted the attention of the Romantics?