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.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 338
ISBN: 9781463244064
Pub Date: 06 Jan 2022
Description:
Why are Jews so attracted to India, to Hinduism, and to Buddhism in the United States as well as Israel? They travel there by the thousands, attracted by the exoticism of course, but, Adelman believes, also drawn by an atavistic connection, dating back to the great Persian empires that extended from the land of Israel to the Indian subcontinent, linking the religions, myths, legends, literature, customs, even languages over the centuries. Influenced by her own profoundly mystical experiences, Adelman provides the history, explains the religions, shows the common origins, and gives astonishing examples of parallel symbolism.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 285
ISBN: 9781463243487
Pub Date: 06 Jan 2022
Description:
This book explores the myth of the Cyclops across western history, and how its changing form from ancient Greece until the modern day reveals fundamental changes in each era’s elite understandings and depictions of cultural values. From Homer’s Odyssey to Hellenistic poetry, from Roman epic to early medieval manuscript glosses, and from early modern opera to current pop culture, the myth of the Cyclops persists in changing forms. This myth’s distinct forms in each historical era reflect and distil wider changes occurring in the spheres of politics, philosophy, aesthetics, and social values, and as a story that persists continually across three millennia it provides a unique lens for cross-historical comparison across western thought.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 426
ISBN: 9781463243821
Pub Date: 29 Dec 2021
Description:
The Futūḥ al-Shām (The Conquests of Greater Syria), usually attributed to Abū Ismāʿīl Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Azdī al-Baṣrī, is one of the primary sources used for historians studying the early Muslim expansion into Greater Syria. This study revaluates the Futūḥ al-Shām narrative and the question of its compiler-author, investigating the history of the narrative as text through an analysis of a new manuscript and important parallel texts, and revisiting the evidence and hypotheses previous scholars have put forward on both al-Azdī’s life and the Futūḥ al-Shām narrative’s text.
It thus offers an overview of the history of Oriental and Islamic Studies on the basis of one work.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 283
ISBN: 9781463242435
Pub Date: 28 Dec 2021
Series: Perspectives on Hebrew Scriptures and its Contexts
Description:
The biblical apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation are, for better or worse, polarizing. Interpreters have long read and searched these books for clues about how their worlds will "end," which each new interpreter promising to have "unlocked" how Daniel and Revelation work together to uncover a divine plan for prophetic fulfillment. Redding uses the Vision of the Fourth Beast from Daniel 7 as a case study to consider how interpretations of texts take on lives of their own, eventually wedding interpretation with text and prompting the question: what even is a text?
Is it what is on the page, something interpreters put there, or a combination of both? Starting with the literature of the Levant, this work traces the use of motifs, images, and themes through Daniel, Revelation, and into pre-Enlightenment Christian thinkers to consider hermeneutical trajectories that shaped (and continue to shape) how modern readers engage biblical apocalyptic literature.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 225
ISBN: 9781463242671
Pub Date: 28 Dec 2021
Series: Texts and Studies
Description:
The present study represents the first attempt to expand the methodological and practical framework of textual scholarship on the Greek New Testament from an Orthodox perspective. Its focus is on the Antoniades edition of 1904, commonly known as the Patriarchal Edition. The examination of the creation and reception of this edition shows that its textual principles are often misrepresented.
In particular, it is shown to be more closely related to the Textus Receptus than to lectionary manuscripts. This is confirmed by an analysis of lectionary manuscripts using the Text und Textwert methodology and a detailed comparison of the Antoniades edition with the recent Editio Critica Maior of the Catholic Epistles. A textual commentary is provided on key verses in order to formulate guidelines for preparing an edition of the Greek New Testament that would satisfy the needs of Orthodox users in different contexts. This study offers a foundation for the further development of New Testament textual scholarship from an Orthodox perspective, informed both by modern critical scholarship and Orthodox tradition. It also provides a fresh translation of Antoniades’ introduction in an Appendix.
Pages: 452
ISBN: 9781463244132
Pub Date: 30 Nov 2021
Pages: 452
ISBN: 9781463243869
Pub Date: 28 Apr 2022
Description:
The long memra translated here in this volume presents the seven parts of the homily on Creation in a single volume.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 464
ISBN: 9781463206031
Pub Date: 31 Oct 2021
Series: Texts and Studies
Description:
This work represents the first time that a major part of the masorah of the great Leningrad Codex, that of the Former Prophets, is being published with an English translation and commentary. The translation and commentary is preceded by an Introduction which deals with topics such as description of the importance of the Leningrad Codex, the Masorah and its development, the Masorah of the Leningrad Codex, and the relation of the Leningrad’s Masorah to the accepted text of the Hebrew Bible. Every masoretic note in the Leningrad Codex that accompanies the text of the six books of the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel,1 Kings, and 2 Kings) is transcribed, translated and annotated Every occurrence of each lemma is provided with its biblical references, and an indication is given as to where else in the ms.
a note for any particular lemma may be found. Furthermore, and most originally, an attempt is made to suggest a reason for each note. The presentation employed in this work is user friendly so, for example, catchwords that occur in the Masoretic notes are arranged horizontally to correspond to their biblical references. This arrangement not only enables readers to immediately see the contexts where lemmas occur, but also to see where the lemmas are distributed in various sections of the Bible. Another aid for students is that all Hebrew references, other than in the ms., are given in a fully vocalized form.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 159
ISBN: 9781463243654
Pub Date: 30 Oct 2021
Description:
The chapters in Emerging Horizons: 21st Century Approaches to the Study of Midrash pertain to an intriguing midrash that appears in a Masoretic context, the Qur’anic narrative of the red cow, midrashic narratives that rabbinise enemies of Israel, the death of Moses, emotions in rabbinic literature, and yelammedenu units in midrashic works.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781463243722
Pub Date: 29 Oct 2021
Description:
The boat journey is central to the narrative of Mediterranean migration of the undocumented. The boat itself is flimsy, fragile, unstable, and easily breakable. It is trifling and insubstantial.
But it has captured the attention of the world - after all, the boat and its aftermath have produced recurring images of migrants washing up along southern Europe's picturesque beaches in the visual archive of undocumented migration. But the boat has also sharply put into relief the divides of the Mediterranean. After all, the few miles of the Mediterranean separating Africa's northern shore and Europe's southern shore is a common observation in migrant narratives. At the same time, they also reflect on how the Mediterranean has been imagined as starkly divided into two incommensurable spaces and civilizational models - North and South (in actuality, by colonial powers in the modern period). Much Mediterranean migrant literature indeed captures the Mediterranean's fossilized binaries, North and South. But, The Two-Edged Sea also reveals that one inheres within the other. While the book explores two Mediterraneans, with asymmetrical power relations that reflect the sea's northern and southern shores, it also delves into how they are and have been in dialogue with each other, effectively deconstructing the binary.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 163
ISBN: 9781463243982
Pub Date: 14 Oct 2021
Series: Journal of Language Relationship
Description:
The Journal of Language Relationship is an international periodical publication devoted to the issues of comparative linguistics and the history of the human language. The Journal contains articles written in English and Russian, as well as scientific reviews, discussions and reports from international linguistic conferences and seminars.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 119
ISBN: 9781463243968
Pub Date: 14 Oct 2021
Series: Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies
Description:
A refereed journal published annually by the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 291
ISBN: 9781463243593
Pub Date: 13 Oct 2021
Description:
Life is full of absurdities, and human misperception of such absurdities leads to a state of unrest and fear that require meaning and direction for a happy life. F. Pasqualino addresses here samples of existential absurdities, and discusses solutions offered: Taoism offers in its paradoxes a natural self-help resource.
Buddhism offers a natural wisdom that is informed by a supernatural impersonal Absolute. Hinduism offers a plethora of personal gods who embody the impersonal Absolute. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic wisdom teaches a personal Absolute God whose being is distinct from, but involved with human and non-human beings. The unifying feature of these wisdoms is: Obedience to, and love of, the Absolute can rectify human misperception of life’s absurdities, dissipate fear, and provide meaning, value and a serene life. Jesus Christ, the incarnate Absolute in Christian theology, chose to become an exemplar innocent victim for love, thus giving the most absurd but victoriously redeeming love that provides a new and sublime perspective on life’s absurdities. G. Lahood’s translation and commentary make the Italian masterpiece available to an English-speaking audience.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 161
ISBN: 9781463243555
Pub Date: 05 Oct 2021
Description:
Different parts of the Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary are known from the second century onwards. Translations and adaptations into Syriac and other languages also became available from very early centuries. The compilation in the Syriac language was translated into Malayalam in 1925, but an English translation containing the full text did not exist at all.
This gap has been filled now by this work. Sebastian Brock’s Foreword gives important information on the background and authenticity of the different sources that form the basis of the text. This biography is unique in that it brings together some very early accounts of the birth of Mary, the birth of Jesus, the flight into Egypt, and most importantly, the very rare account of the ‘Dormition’ or ‘falling asleep’ of the Blessed Mother.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 253
ISBN: 9781463242800
Pub Date: 01 Oct 2021
Description:
The present volume describes the rich and complex world in which Ausonius (c. 310-395) lived and worked, from his humble beginnings as a schoolteacher in Bordeaux, to the heights of his influence as quaestor to the Emperor Gratian, at a time of unsettling social and religious change. As a teacher and poet Ausonius adhered to the traditions of classical paideia, standing in contrast to the Fathers of the Church, e.
g., Jerome, Augustine, and Paulinus of Nola, who were emboldened by the legalization, then the imposition, of Christianity in the course of the fourth century. For this position he was labeled by the 20th-century scholar Henri-Irénée Marrou a symbol of decadence. Guided by Marrou’s critical insights to both his own time and place and that of Ausonius, this book proposes a hermeneutic for reading Ausonius as both a fourth-century poet and a fascinating mirror for his 20th-century counterparts.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 314
ISBN: 9781463243616
Pub Date: 30 Sep 2021
Series: Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies
Description:
ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī (d.c. 850) was the first Christian to write a systematic theology in Arabic, the language of the Muslim rulers of ʿAmmār’s Middle East.
This study of his two works that were only discovered in the 1970's seeks to analyse the way he defends Christian beliefs from criticism by Muslims over the authenticity of the Gospels, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the Incarnation, the death of Christ by crucifixion, the resurrection of Christ, and the nature of the afterlife. ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī wrote his theology in dialogue with Muslim thinkers of his time and his work offers guidance to Christians in today’s world who live in Islamic contexts in how to relate Christian convictions to a Muslim audience.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781463242602
Pub Date: 15 Aug 2021
Series: Texts and Studies
Description:
The book is a synoptic catalogue of a large class of Greek manuscripts: it describes all pre-seventeenth century copies of the Greek New Testament in which the biblical text is accompanied by commentary. Manuscripts where this commentary consists of combined excerpts (catena) from the works of various authors are described in particular detail. Those that have similar content are grouped together, so that the potential relatives of any given manuscript can be easily identified.
Several previously unknown types of catenae are distinguished and a number of previously unstudied codices are brought to light for the first time. To ensure its longer shelf-life, the volume systematically references on-line electronic databases (which are regularly updated). It will be of use to anyone interested in Byzantine book culture and in biblical exegesis.
