C. E. Hammond's Antient Liturgies provided a valuable resource at an early stage in comparative liturgical studies. Free of extensive critical apparatus, Antient Liturgies presents a collection of historic forms of worship from the Western, Eastern, and Oriental Churches. This extract from the book focuses on the Ethiopic liturgy, here the liturgy is presented in Latin. As an analytical introduction this early study continues to provide a broad overview of early Christian worship made available in an accessible and convenient format for students and scholars.

Separated by schism from Greek and Latin Christians and surviving under Islamic suzerainty, the Church of Egypt produced insightful saints and heroic martyrs in a chapter in church history now opened to readers of English for the first time.

C. E. Hammond's Antient Liturgies provided a valuable resource at an early stage in comparative liturgical studies. Free of extensive critical apparatus, Antient Liturgies presents a collection of historic forms of worship from the Western, Eastern, and Oriental Churches. This extract from the book focuses on the Liturgy of Constantinople. As Hammond explains, this liturgy contains elements of the St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, and Presanctified liturgies presented in Greek. As an analytical introduction this early study continues to provide a broad overview of early Christian worship made available in an accessible and convenient format for students and scholars.

Eyewitness accounts of the lives and teachings of the fourth-century Desert Fathers from the Historia monachorum in Aegypto.

The living link through whom the ascetic principles of hellenistic philosophers passed into monasticism, Evagrius molded Christian asceticism through his own works and through his influcence on John Cassian, Climacus, Pseudo–Denis, and Saint Benedict.

Extracted from Arthur Penrhyn Stanley’s Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church, this introduction to ecclesiastical history is a tribute to the insight of a former professor of ecclesiastical history at Oxford. Stanley’s introduction covers three main areas: the province of ecclesiastical history, the study of ecclesiastical history, and the advantages of such study.

As the introductory lecture to his collection of observations on ancient religion, Sayce begins this extract with a consideration of the difficulties of knowing what can be deduced from ancient Mesopotamian religion. Extracted from Sayce’s Origin and Growth of Religion, this booklet will be of interest to those who research the early period of the field of Assyriology in order to learn where various concepts about Mesopotamian religious life have their genesis.

Extracted from Arthur Penrhyn Stanley’s Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church, this set of lectures covers the Russian Church. Stanley begins with the conversion of Russia and moves through the Middle Ages and concentrates on Patriarch Nicon and the reformations in the church under Peter the Great.

This fifth extract from Sayce’s Origin and Growth of Religion, the topic turns to the “sacred books” of the Babylonians. Beginning with the “Chaldean Rig-Veda,” collections of hymns identified from the earliest days of Assyriology, Sayce also considers the earlier, less developed magical texts. Future considerations – sin, the status of heaven and Hades, and cosmology finish out the essay.

C. E. Hammond's Antient Liturgies provided a valuable resource at an early stage in comparative liturgical studies. Free of extensive critical apparatus, Antient Liturgies presents a collection of historic forms of worship from the Western, Eastern, and Oriental Churches. This extract from the book focuses on the St. James Liturgy, both the Greek and Syriac renditions. Representing the liturgy of the Patriarchate of Antioch, this liturgy is rendered in Greek and Latin. As an analytical introduction this early study continues to provide a broad overview of early Christian worship made available in an accessible and convenient format for students and scholars.

Scrinium: Revue de Patrologie, d’Hagiographie Critique et d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, established in 2005, is an international multilingual scholarly periodical devoted to patristics, critical hagiography, and Church history. This volume is dedicated to Jewish Second Temple and early Christian mysticism.

Iraq has been a centre of Syriac Christianity for almost two thousand years. This volume of collected papers from the Christianity in Iraq I-V Seminar Days (2004-2008) explores the Christian heritage of Iraq, highlighting the churches’ innate ability to transcend barriers of language, culture, ethnicity and religion.

Far from the Christian metropolis of Alexandria, removed from the well-known and much–visited monastic settlements of the Thebaid, and infintely remote from Rome, lay the garrison towns of Aswan and Philae. There Christians and pagans coexisted. Integral to the christian community on this desert frontier of Empire were the local monks–ascetics, intercessors, and miracle workers.

Were issues like economic and political oppression, holy wars, resistance literature, hate-speech, xenophobia and other 21st-century realities already present among the civilizations of the ancient Near East? Prophetic literature and specifically the Book of Nahum in the Old Testament provide a unique perspective on these issues. Through Nahum’s moving poetry and disturbing imagery, oppression is verbalised, deep emotion is uncovered and we are given a glimpse of liberation and new hope in times of darkness. This book will sensitize the reader to a better understanding of the identity and dynamics of oppressed groups, both ancient and modern.

Originally delivered as one of the St. Margaret’s Lectures for 1904, the contents of this booklet are focused on aspects of the Syriac-speaking Church. Extracted from Burkitt’s book Early Eastern Christianity, the third lecture concerns the theology of Eastern Christianity. Burkitt provides a brief survey of the work of Aphraates, Philoxenus of Mabbug, Ephraim the Syrian, and Rabbula.

Originally delivered as one of the St. Margaret’s Lectures for 1904, the contents of this booklet are focused on aspects of the Syriac-speaking Church. Extracted from Burkitt’s book Early Eastern Christianity, the fourth lecture concerns the development of marriage and the role of sacraments in the early Syriac Church. Burkitt finds that marriage was not early regarded as a sacrament and the married faithful were not permitted the sacraments of baptism or communion in the early tradition represented by Aphraates.