Didascalia: Text and some background (not a discussion topic)

[Clark]

Texts to read.

I have found one free online text at the Early Christian Writings site. I didn't find one on CCEL. There is a Kindle edition for 1.5 USD. Please tell me if I have missed a text someplace.

Both the above texts are of the translation by R. Hugh Connolly. The one at the Early Christian Writings was prepared by Peter Kirby and has this note: "This was a time-consuming scanning and proofing job, of course. One pleasure was access to Connolly's proofs, with his own handwritten notes throughout, kindly loaned to me by Mike Aquilina. Thanks Mike!" Kerstin, a Mike Aquinlina sighting! :-) Consider this a plug to buy Kirby's CD at that web site. I did buy it, years ago.

A slightly earlier translation of the Didascalia into English, by Margaret Dunlop Gibson, LL.D. (St. Andrews) (1903) is available on Google Books. It contains the Syriac text (more on that in a bit). Hence it is (to our provincial Western eyes) backwards. (Syriac is written right to left, and the first page of the book is at the opposite end of the book from what we're used to. (A physical book would have the open side on the left not the right.)

I downloaded that book from Google as a PDF. At some time in the past from someplace I downloaded only the translation from the Gibson volume. Both PDFs are available here.

[Clark]

Interesting background

This is some fun background about the scholar who first translated the Syriac Didascalia into English. She and her sister traveled through the Middle East and found several important manuscripts and did other important on-site research. The book The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels describes some of their work.

[Clark]

Relevant background

This post lists ancient Christian works associated with the Didache and the Didascalia. The work quoted in that note is from the early 20th century. It says the Didascalia is from the 3rd century.

Syriac is a dialect/descendant of Aramaic, which was sort of a sister language to Hebrew. Much important ancient Christian writing, both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian, was done in Syriac.

Not relevant background: The St. Thomas Christians used Syriac as their church language. It is still used by them liturgically.

I read a while ago but have not verified anew that two sites claim to have St. Thomas's relics: Edessa (in modern-day Turkey) and Chennai (formerly Madras, in far southeast India). Edessa was a major intellectual center for Syriac-speaking Christianity, and the Christians in south India used Syriac, so the connection is not so odd as it might sound at first.

[Nemo]

Clark wrote: "Texts to read.

I have found one free online text at the Early Christian Writings site. I didn't find one on CCEL. There is a Kindle edition for 1.5 USD..."

I created ePub and PDF versions of the text and uploaded them to Google Drive. If you use an eReader, you can click on the following link to download the ebook for free.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folder...