Recognized as a saint by both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians alike, Jacob of Sarug (d. 521) produced many narrative poems that have rarely been translated into English. Of his reported 760 metrical homilies, only about half survive. In this homily, On the Entrance of Our Lord into Sheol, Jacob tells with great power the invincibility of Sheol and how Christ gave His life to enter into Sheol like any other dead human so that He might conquer it.

The Life of Theodotus of Amida is that rare thing: a securely dated eye-witness account of life under Arab Muslim rule in the first century of Islam, and one of the few extant texts from seventh-century North Mesopotamia. It is imbued with local color and contemporary detail, revealing an intimate knowlredge of the terrain, its inhabitants and officialdom, as well as the precariousness of the lives of those living in the borderlands between the Byzantine and Islamic empires.

The Shbītho d-Dayroye is a thirteenth-century anthology dedicated to the personal prayer of monks and nuns. The collection comprises the writings of great saints in the Syriac Orthodox tradition including Ephrem the Syrian, Abraham Qidun, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, Philoxenos, Basil the Great, and Isaac the Syrian. For each of the seven daily prayer times (morning, third hour, noon, ninth hour, evening, and night), there is a main prayer and a closing prayer. The present edition is the first translation to make the spiritual treasures of the original Syriac text available to readers in English.

Jacob of Sarug's homilies on King Abgar and the Apostle Addai, recounting the famous legend of Abgar of Edessa's conversion to Christianity.

Ishoʿdad of Merv’s (fl. 850 AD) Commentary on Daniel provides an important witness to East Syriac exegetical technique. In it Ishoʿdad typically emphasizes an historical reading of the Old Testament above any kind of allegorical, spiritual, or even Christological interpretation. Most notable is Ishoʿdad’s belief that the Maccabees fulfilled several of the visions described in the book of Daniel, even including the Heavenly Kingdom of Daniel chapters 2, 7, and 8, and the physical resurrection of Daniel 12. These interpretations dramatically depart from most eastern and western commentators who considered Daniel’s visions to portend the rise of the Roman Empire and the advent of Christ. Ishoʿdad’s commentary is translated here into English for the first time.

Jacob of Sarug's homily on the red heifer slaughter ritual in Numbers 19. For Jacob, the narrative is a prefigurement of Christ's death and its ability to restore and permanently purify all who enter the church through baptism.

Jacob of Sarug's homily on the Apostle Paul's advice to those who prioritise worldly matters, leading to an afterlife remote from God.

During the 6th century AD, Īshōʿyahb I, Patriarch of the Church of the East, produced a code of law dealing with questions raised by Bishop Jacob of Darai in the Gulf. Perennial Church issues include priestly conducts, ecclesiastical rankings, and ordinations. Legal matters for the faithful concern wills, marriages, vows, lending at interest, and swearing. Most interesting are names of church architecture that the Code gives, including bema, diaconicon, and qestroma, terms that are still used today.

Jacob of Sarug's homily chronicles the unravelling of God's love in sacred history and the inability of humankind to return God's love and grace.

Although the verse homilies of Jacob of Serugh are well known to lovers of Syriac literature, his stanzaic poetry, in the form of madroshe and sughyotho, have been largely forgotten. This volume contains twenty-five poems preserved in their complete form and attributed to Jacob in old manuscripts of the sixth/seventh to ninth/tenth century preserved today in the British Library, but largely originating from Deir al-Surian in Egypt.

An edition and English translation of 'A Description of the Prayers', one of the few extant works by Ignatius V. Bar Wahib (Patriarch of Antioch from 1293–1333). The text has been taken from a manuscript of the Orthodox Theological Seminary, Kottayam, copied in 1915 from a manuscript of the Konat Library. The treatise offers a description of the external aspects of the canonical prayers, including washing and prostration.

In the 13th century, a debate transpired over the course of several days between a monk named Jurjī and several Muslims jurists in the city of Aleppo. This debate represents a careful and sophisticated example of a literary genre that had been developing among the Christians living under Islamic rule since the seventh century. The immense popularity of this work is demonstrated by the sheer volume of surviving manuscripts, which number around hundred. This volume provides a critical edition and translation of the text.

Jacob of Sarug's homily on Aaron the Priest, focusing on the period leading up to and including the death of Aaron described in Numbers 20:22–29.

The long memra translated here in this volume presents the seven parts of the homily on Creation in a single volume.

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.

Recognized as a saint by both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians alike, Jacob of Sarug (d. 521) produced many narrative poems that have rarely been translated into English. Of his reported 760 metrical homilies, only about half survive. Part of a series of fascicles containing the bilingual Syriac-English editions of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homilies, this volume contains his homily on Edessa and Jerusalem. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume is one of the fascicles of Gorgias Press's Complete Homilies of Saint Jacob of Sarug, which, when complete, will contain all of Jacob’s surviving sermons.