Memory and Identity in the Syriac Cave of Treasures: Rewriting the Bible in Sasanian Iran

Description

In Memory and Identity in the Syriac Cave of Treasures: Rewriting the Bible in Sasanian Iran Sergey Minov examines literary and socio-cultural aspects of the Syriac pseudepigraphic composition known as the Cave of Treasures, which offers a peculiar version of the Christian history of salvation. The book fills a lacuna in the history of Syriac Christian literary creativity by contextualising this unique work within the cultural and religious situation of Sasanian Mesopotamia towards the end of Late Antiquity. The author analyses the Cave’s content and message from the perspective of identity theory and memory studies, while discussing its author’s emphatically polemical stand vis-à-vis Judaism, the ambivalent way in which he deals with Iranian culture, and the promotion in this work of a distinctively Syriac-oriented vision of the biblical past. Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations and Conventions Introduction Chapter 1 Genre, Date, and Provenance of CT 1 Content and Genre 2 The State of the Text 2.1 Direct Textual Witnesses 2.2 Indirect Textual Witnesses 2.3 The “Original” Text of CT 3 Date of CT 3.1 Terminus ante quem 3.2 Terminus post quem 4 Milieu of CT 5 Concluding Observations Chapter 2 Categorizing the Jewish “Other” 1 The Jewish Background of CT 2 Apologetics: The Genealogy of the Virgin Mary 3 Polemic: Anti-Judaism and the Passion Narrative 3.1 Jews as the Killers of Christ 3.2 Demonization of the Jews 3.3 Anti-Jewish Revision of the Canonical Passion Narrative 3.4 The Jews and the Instruments of Jesus’ Execution 3.5 The Sponge-Bearers as Jews 4 Polemic: Supersessionism 4.1 Rhetoric of Supersessionism 4.2 Supersessionist Exegesis of the Old Testament 4.3 Supersessionist Revision of Biblical History 5 Concluding Observations Chapter 3 Categorizing the Iranian “Other” 1 The Customs and Beliefs of the “Persians” 1.1 The Cult of Fire 1.2 The Cult of the Horse 1.3 Close-Kin Marriage 1.4 Astrology 2 Iranian Kingship 2.1 Nimrod 2.2 Cyrus 2.3 The Magi 3 Concluding Observations Chapter 4 Identifying the Syriac Christian “Self” 1 The Ethnonym “Syrians” 1.1 Territorial Aspects of Suryāyā 1.2 Linguistic and Cultural Aspects of Suryāyā 1.3 The Confessional Aspect of Suryāyā 2 Syriac Primacy: The Language 3 Syriac Primacy: The People 4 The Figure of Abgar 5 Attribution to Ephrem 6 Concluding Observations General Conclusion Bibliography Index of Scriptural References Index of Ancient Sources