Maksim Kalinin | National Research University “Higher School of Economics” (HSE), Moscow, Russia (original) (raw)
Books by Maksim Kalinin
Part I. The Text
This book is the edition of two newly discovered fragments of the Book of the Chapters on Knowled... more This book is the edition of two newly discovered fragments of the Book of the Chapters on Knowledge, an important work of the East Syriac mystical writer mār Joseph Ḥazzāyā (8th c.). The full text of this work was contained in a 16th c. codex unicus Seert 78 described and catalogued by the archbishop of Seert Addai Scher. The fate of the manuscript collection of the Seert diocese after 1915 remains obscure. Extant fragments of the Book of the Chapters on Knowledge have thus far been believed to be limited to six mēmrē preserved in the West Syriac tradition and ~300 chapters cited by Ephrem of Qirqesion in his Commentary on the Difficult Chapters on Knowledge.
The first fragment is found in the manuscript BnF syr. 434; it has the title
Useful Chapters and no attribution. The authorship was established based on strong textual evidence. The initial and final chapters of this fragment belong to Joseph Ḥazzāyā’s mēmrē known in the West Syriac tradition; the remainder comprises at least four chapters coinciding with those cited by Ephrem of Qirqesion in his commentary.
The second fragment, found in two manuscripts (Harvard syr. 42 and
Pampakuda, Konat syr. 303), was attributed to Joseph Ḥazzāyā based on numerous stylistic and thematic coincidences with his authentic texts. In addition, two chapters of the second fragment have exact correspondence in the first fragment.
The present volume contains the Syriac text of the newly discovered fragments with a text-critical inroduction. The next volume (OMS 2, now in preparation) will contain a transltaion, references to biblical and patristic sorces, and a commentary.
Papers by Maksim Kalinin
JSS, 2022
In Proto-Aramaic, the passive of transitive verbs belonging to all three principal stems-G, D and... more In Proto-Aramaic, the passive of transitive verbs belonging to all three principal stems-G, D and C-was formed internally. Some verbs of the G-and D-stems also possessed detransitive derivatives. Transitive verbs of the G-, D-and C-stems lost their internal passives early on, and the passives of G-and D-verbs were encoded by their respective t-stems. Against this general Aramaic picture, in Imperial Aramaic the passive forms of the G-stem were in complementary distribution: the passive Past was encoded by the internal passive of the Suffix Conjugation (Gp SC), while the passive non-Past was rendered by the Gt participle and the Gt Prefix Conjugation. Gp SC stopped being used with Imperial Aramaic once it was replaced, as a written language, by vernacular-based literary varieties. The Ct-stem, non-existent in Imperial Aramaic, must have first emerged among spoken varieties of Aramaic in the first half of the first millennium BCE, and only within I-w and II-w/y roots. Within the Imperial Aramaic corpus, both the rare Gt SC passive forms and Ct-stem forms reflect the influence of spoken Aramaic varieties in the diglossic situation. In Syriac, the Ct-stem of sound roots is unattested during its golden age. The Ct-forms of sound roots appeared in original Syriac texts only after the Arab conquest, and these also come from spoken Aramaic varieties.
Aula orientalis: revista de estudios del Próximo Oriente Antiguo, 2018
[The paper provides a list of morphological innovations exclusively shared by Mlaḥsô and Ṭuroyo. ... more [The paper provides a list of morphological innovations exclusively shared by Mlaḥsô and Ṭuroyo. These point to the existence of a proto-Ṭuroyo/Mlaḥsô, which was not an ancestor of any other modern Aramaic language known to us. A study of the basic lexicon of Mlaḥsô, in comparison with that of Ṭuroyo and NENA, supplies a lexical dimension to the proto-Ṭuroyo/Mlaḥsô hypothesis. A second goal of the paper is to trace innovations and retentions of Mlaḥsô as compared with proto-Ṭuroyo/Mlaḥsô.]
Journal of Semitic Studies, 2023
This paper offers an interpretation of an insufficiently understood verb form in the Neo-Babyloni... more This paper offers an interpretation of an insufficiently understood verb form in the Neo-Babylonian letter OIP 114, 17:8, 29, thereby clarifying its contents. The word in question is shown to be an Aramaic verb form. This interpretation is supported by observations on the orthography and phonology of early Neo-Babylonian. It follows from the study that in eighth-century Neo-Babylonian two glottalized (‘emphatic’) consonants in the same word still underwent dissimilation, as in the second millennium bce (Geers’ law). The paper also demonstrates that, against communis opinio, erstwhile Aramaic fricative interdentals had shifted to stops by the eighth century bce, while the orthography of contemporaneous Aramaic alphabetic texts reflected an earlier stage of language evolution. This conclusion has been reached by means of comparing cuneiform renderings of proto-Semitic interdentals in West Semitic personal names in eighteenth-century bce Old Babylonian texts and in Neo-Babylonian texts...
Journal of Semitic Studies
In Proto-Aramaic, the passive of transitive verbs belonging to all three principal stems—G, D and... more In Proto-Aramaic, the passive of transitive verbs belonging to all three principal stems—G, D and C—was formed internally. Some verbs of the G- and D-stems also possessed detransitive derivatives. Transitive verbs of the G-, D- and C-stems lost their internal passives early on, and the passives of G- and D-verbs were encoded by their respective t-stems. Against this general Aramaic picture, in Imperial Aramaic the passive forms of the G-stem were in complementary distribution: the passive Past was encoded by the internal passive of the Suffix Conjugation (Gp SC), while the passive non-Past was rendered by the Gt participle and the Gt Prefix Conjugation. Gp SC stopped being used with Imperial Aramaic once it was replaced, as a written language, by vernacular-based literary varieties. The Ct-stem, non-existent in Imperial Aramaic, must have first emerged among spoken varieties of Aramaic in the first half of the first millennium bce, and only within I-w and II-w/y roots. Within the Im...
The present paper is divided into two parts. The first part contains a description of the manuscr... more The present paper is divided into two parts. The first part contains a description of the manuscript tradition of the Chapters on Knowledge of Rabban Aphnīmāran, an East Syriac mystical writer of the 7th c. For the first time a description of the West Syriac manuscript tradition of Rabban Aphnīmāran’s Chapters, as well as a description of the Arabic version of this text is provided (the Arabic version was identified in 2019 by the authors of the present paper). The second part contains an edition of the first thirteen chapters of Aphnīmāran’s work, as well as of the anonymous commentary on them, and a Russian translation of the Syriac and Arabic texts.
Bēl Lišāni: papers in Akkadian Linguistics presented to John Huehnergard on the occasion of his retirement (Eisenbrauns Press)
The paper studies the expression of tense and voice in an Akkadian variety, Neo-Assyrian. The gra... more The paper studies the expression of tense and voice in an Akkadian variety, Neo-Assyrian. The grammatical reading of a given verb form results from the interaction of the lexical meaning of the verb in question with the grammatical semantics of the morphological form used. Starting from this observation, the authors single out five verbal classes of Neo-Assyrian, related to the values of dynamicity and transitivity.
The aim of the present paper is to introduce new data concerning the polemic that took place in t... more The aim of the present paper is to introduce new data concerning the polemic that took place in the VIII century C.E. and was related to the mystical movement in the Church of the East. This data are provided by an anonymous commentary on Chapters on the Knowledge which belong to rabban Aphnīmāran, an 7th century mystical writer. Among the problems the aforementioned polemic was related to, was the question on whether the humanity of Christ can see His divinity. For the positive answer on this question, John of Dalyāthā, a prominent mystical writer of the 8th century, was condemned by Catholicos Timatheos. In the commentary on the 90th chapter of rabban Aphnīmāran, an anonymous interpreter claims that the vision of God is the knowledge of God. As rabban Aphnīmāran calls the human nature of Christ “knowing” (yaddūʕtānā), the humanity of Christ inevitably contemplates His divinity, the author of the commentary concludes. In the present article, the text of this commentary is published and analyzed. One may see that the thesis on Jesus’ ability to contemplate the divine nature was not a particular opinion of John of Dalyāthā. This opinion was representative of East Syriac mystical movement (or at least of one of monastic traditions within this movement).
Aula Orientalis, 2018
[The paper provides a list of morphological innovations exclusively shared by Mlaḥsô and Ṭuroyo. ... more [The paper provides a list of morphological innovations exclusively shared by Mlaḥsô and Ṭuroyo. These point to the existence of a proto-Ṭuroyo/Mlaḥsô, which was not an ancestor of any other modern Aramaic language known to us. A study of the basic lexicon of Mlaḥsô, in comparison with that of Ṭuroyo and NENA, supplies a lexical dimension to the proto-Ṭuroyo/Mlaḥsô hypothesis. A second goal of the paper is to trace innovations and retentions of Mlaḥsô as compared with proto-Ṭuroyo/Mlaḥsô.]
This study addresses the words unique to the extant Neo-Assyrian corpus. All of them are listed i... more This study addresses the words unique to the extant Neo-Assyrian corpus. All of them are listed in the paper, with etymological and philological notes wherever feasible or appropriate. Two foci of the inquiry are innovations in the basic lexicon of Neo-Assyrian and productive rules of word-formation in this language.
The article deals with a collection of the 30 mystical chapters, which are known in two West-Syri... more The article deals with a collection of the 30 mystical chapters, which are known in two West-Syriac manuscripts, Harvard Syr. 42 and Pampakuda, Konat Syr. 303. This collection has been preserved within the corpus of the mystical works of John the Elder (John of Dalyāthā), an East-Syrian mystical writer of the 8th c. The authors provide a critical edition of the 30 chapters and suppose that initially they were extracted from the Capita scientiae of Joseph Hazzāyā, a contemporary of John the Elder. This attribution is confirmed by numerous parallels, both in style and mystical teaching, between the 30 chapters and the genuine works of Joseph.
![Research paper thumbnail of [Russian translation from Syriac] Joseph Ḥazzāyā. On the Prayer in the Place of Serenity (ܐܬܪܐ ܕܫܦܝܘܬܐ). (Иосиф Хаззāйā. О молитве в месте ясности)](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/55950099/thumbnails/1.jpg)
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Глава III из готовящегося к изданию русского перевода книги Beulay R. La Lumière sans forme. Intr... more Глава III из готовящегося к изданию русского перевода книги Beulay R. La Lumière sans forme. Introduction à l’étude de la mystique chrétienne syro-orientale. Chevetogne, 1987. Здесь публикуется без добавления новейшей библиографии
![Research paper thumbnail of Joseph Hazzaya. On the various effects of grace [, which] ascetics achieve (Translated in Russian from Syriac by M. G. Kalinin, notes by A. M. Preobrazhensky)](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/53229536/thumbnails/1.jpg)
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While working on the critical edition of the "Gnostic chapters" of Joseph Ḥazzāyā, we have found ... more While working on the critical edition of the "Gnostic chapters" of Joseph Ḥazzāyā, we have found two previously unknown mēmrē of this mystical work in an East Syriac manuscript. The new-found gnostic chapters include the interpretation of the vision of Ezekiel (Ez. 1) which may be identical with puššāq hezwā d-Ḥezqī'ēl mentioned by 'Aḇdīšo' of Nisibis among Joseph Ḥazzāyā's writings. The both mēmrē now are being prepared for publication.
Part I. The Text
This book is the edition of two newly discovered fragments of the Book of the Chapters on Knowled... more This book is the edition of two newly discovered fragments of the Book of the Chapters on Knowledge, an important work of the East Syriac mystical writer mār Joseph Ḥazzāyā (8th c.). The full text of this work was contained in a 16th c. codex unicus Seert 78 described and catalogued by the archbishop of Seert Addai Scher. The fate of the manuscript collection of the Seert diocese after 1915 remains obscure. Extant fragments of the Book of the Chapters on Knowledge have thus far been believed to be limited to six mēmrē preserved in the West Syriac tradition and ~300 chapters cited by Ephrem of Qirqesion in his Commentary on the Difficult Chapters on Knowledge.
The first fragment is found in the manuscript BnF syr. 434; it has the title
Useful Chapters and no attribution. The authorship was established based on strong textual evidence. The initial and final chapters of this fragment belong to Joseph Ḥazzāyā’s mēmrē known in the West Syriac tradition; the remainder comprises at least four chapters coinciding with those cited by Ephrem of Qirqesion in his commentary.
The second fragment, found in two manuscripts (Harvard syr. 42 and
Pampakuda, Konat syr. 303), was attributed to Joseph Ḥazzāyā based on numerous stylistic and thematic coincidences with his authentic texts. In addition, two chapters of the second fragment have exact correspondence in the first fragment.
The present volume contains the Syriac text of the newly discovered fragments with a text-critical inroduction. The next volume (OMS 2, now in preparation) will contain a transltaion, references to biblical and patristic sorces, and a commentary.
JSS, 2022
In Proto-Aramaic, the passive of transitive verbs belonging to all three principal stems-G, D and... more In Proto-Aramaic, the passive of transitive verbs belonging to all three principal stems-G, D and C-was formed internally. Some verbs of the G-and D-stems also possessed detransitive derivatives. Transitive verbs of the G-, D-and C-stems lost their internal passives early on, and the passives of G-and D-verbs were encoded by their respective t-stems. Against this general Aramaic picture, in Imperial Aramaic the passive forms of the G-stem were in complementary distribution: the passive Past was encoded by the internal passive of the Suffix Conjugation (Gp SC), while the passive non-Past was rendered by the Gt participle and the Gt Prefix Conjugation. Gp SC stopped being used with Imperial Aramaic once it was replaced, as a written language, by vernacular-based literary varieties. The Ct-stem, non-existent in Imperial Aramaic, must have first emerged among spoken varieties of Aramaic in the first half of the first millennium BCE, and only within I-w and II-w/y roots. Within the Imperial Aramaic corpus, both the rare Gt SC passive forms and Ct-stem forms reflect the influence of spoken Aramaic varieties in the diglossic situation. In Syriac, the Ct-stem of sound roots is unattested during its golden age. The Ct-forms of sound roots appeared in original Syriac texts only after the Arab conquest, and these also come from spoken Aramaic varieties.
Aula orientalis: revista de estudios del Próximo Oriente Antiguo, 2018
[The paper provides a list of morphological innovations exclusively shared by Mlaḥsô and Ṭuroyo. ... more [The paper provides a list of morphological innovations exclusively shared by Mlaḥsô and Ṭuroyo. These point to the existence of a proto-Ṭuroyo/Mlaḥsô, which was not an ancestor of any other modern Aramaic language known to us. A study of the basic lexicon of Mlaḥsô, in comparison with that of Ṭuroyo and NENA, supplies a lexical dimension to the proto-Ṭuroyo/Mlaḥsô hypothesis. A second goal of the paper is to trace innovations and retentions of Mlaḥsô as compared with proto-Ṭuroyo/Mlaḥsô.]
Journal of Semitic Studies, 2023
This paper offers an interpretation of an insufficiently understood verb form in the Neo-Babyloni... more This paper offers an interpretation of an insufficiently understood verb form in the Neo-Babylonian letter OIP 114, 17:8, 29, thereby clarifying its contents. The word in question is shown to be an Aramaic verb form. This interpretation is supported by observations on the orthography and phonology of early Neo-Babylonian. It follows from the study that in eighth-century Neo-Babylonian two glottalized (‘emphatic’) consonants in the same word still underwent dissimilation, as in the second millennium bce (Geers’ law). The paper also demonstrates that, against communis opinio, erstwhile Aramaic fricative interdentals had shifted to stops by the eighth century bce, while the orthography of contemporaneous Aramaic alphabetic texts reflected an earlier stage of language evolution. This conclusion has been reached by means of comparing cuneiform renderings of proto-Semitic interdentals in West Semitic personal names in eighteenth-century bce Old Babylonian texts and in Neo-Babylonian texts...
Journal of Semitic Studies
In Proto-Aramaic, the passive of transitive verbs belonging to all three principal stems—G, D and... more In Proto-Aramaic, the passive of transitive verbs belonging to all three principal stems—G, D and C—was formed internally. Some verbs of the G- and D-stems also possessed detransitive derivatives. Transitive verbs of the G-, D- and C-stems lost their internal passives early on, and the passives of G- and D-verbs were encoded by their respective t-stems. Against this general Aramaic picture, in Imperial Aramaic the passive forms of the G-stem were in complementary distribution: the passive Past was encoded by the internal passive of the Suffix Conjugation (Gp SC), while the passive non-Past was rendered by the Gt participle and the Gt Prefix Conjugation. Gp SC stopped being used with Imperial Aramaic once it was replaced, as a written language, by vernacular-based literary varieties. The Ct-stem, non-existent in Imperial Aramaic, must have first emerged among spoken varieties of Aramaic in the first half of the first millennium bce, and only within I-w and II-w/y roots. Within the Im...
The present paper is divided into two parts. The first part contains a description of the manuscr... more The present paper is divided into two parts. The first part contains a description of the manuscript tradition of the Chapters on Knowledge of Rabban Aphnīmāran, an East Syriac mystical writer of the 7th c. For the first time a description of the West Syriac manuscript tradition of Rabban Aphnīmāran’s Chapters, as well as a description of the Arabic version of this text is provided (the Arabic version was identified in 2019 by the authors of the present paper). The second part contains an edition of the first thirteen chapters of Aphnīmāran’s work, as well as of the anonymous commentary on them, and a Russian translation of the Syriac and Arabic texts.
Bēl Lišāni: papers in Akkadian Linguistics presented to John Huehnergard on the occasion of his retirement (Eisenbrauns Press)
The paper studies the expression of tense and voice in an Akkadian variety, Neo-Assyrian. The gra... more The paper studies the expression of tense and voice in an Akkadian variety, Neo-Assyrian. The grammatical reading of a given verb form results from the interaction of the lexical meaning of the verb in question with the grammatical semantics of the morphological form used. Starting from this observation, the authors single out five verbal classes of Neo-Assyrian, related to the values of dynamicity and transitivity.
The aim of the present paper is to introduce new data concerning the polemic that took place in t... more The aim of the present paper is to introduce new data concerning the polemic that took place in the VIII century C.E. and was related to the mystical movement in the Church of the East. This data are provided by an anonymous commentary on Chapters on the Knowledge which belong to rabban Aphnīmāran, an 7th century mystical writer. Among the problems the aforementioned polemic was related to, was the question on whether the humanity of Christ can see His divinity. For the positive answer on this question, John of Dalyāthā, a prominent mystical writer of the 8th century, was condemned by Catholicos Timatheos. In the commentary on the 90th chapter of rabban Aphnīmāran, an anonymous interpreter claims that the vision of God is the knowledge of God. As rabban Aphnīmāran calls the human nature of Christ “knowing” (yaddūʕtānā), the humanity of Christ inevitably contemplates His divinity, the author of the commentary concludes. In the present article, the text of this commentary is published and analyzed. One may see that the thesis on Jesus’ ability to contemplate the divine nature was not a particular opinion of John of Dalyāthā. This opinion was representative of East Syriac mystical movement (or at least of one of monastic traditions within this movement).
Aula Orientalis, 2018
[The paper provides a list of morphological innovations exclusively shared by Mlaḥsô and Ṭuroyo. ... more [The paper provides a list of morphological innovations exclusively shared by Mlaḥsô and Ṭuroyo. These point to the existence of a proto-Ṭuroyo/Mlaḥsô, which was not an ancestor of any other modern Aramaic language known to us. A study of the basic lexicon of Mlaḥsô, in comparison with that of Ṭuroyo and NENA, supplies a lexical dimension to the proto-Ṭuroyo/Mlaḥsô hypothesis. A second goal of the paper is to trace innovations and retentions of Mlaḥsô as compared with proto-Ṭuroyo/Mlaḥsô.]
This study addresses the words unique to the extant Neo-Assyrian corpus. All of them are listed i... more This study addresses the words unique to the extant Neo-Assyrian corpus. All of them are listed in the paper, with etymological and philological notes wherever feasible or appropriate. Two foci of the inquiry are innovations in the basic lexicon of Neo-Assyrian and productive rules of word-formation in this language.
The article deals with a collection of the 30 mystical chapters, which are known in two West-Syri... more The article deals with a collection of the 30 mystical chapters, which are known in two West-Syriac manuscripts, Harvard Syr. 42 and Pampakuda, Konat Syr. 303. This collection has been preserved within the corpus of the mystical works of John the Elder (John of Dalyāthā), an East-Syrian mystical writer of the 8th c. The authors provide a critical edition of the 30 chapters and suppose that initially they were extracted from the Capita scientiae of Joseph Hazzāyā, a contemporary of John the Elder. This attribution is confirmed by numerous parallels, both in style and mystical teaching, between the 30 chapters and the genuine works of Joseph.
Глава III из готовящегося к изданию русского перевода книги Beulay R. La Lumière sans forme. Intr... more Глава III из готовящегося к изданию русского перевода книги Beulay R. La Lumière sans forme. Introduction à l’étude de la mystique chrétienne syro-orientale. Chevetogne, 1987. Здесь публикуется без добавления новейшей библиографии
While working on the critical edition of the "Gnostic chapters" of Joseph Ḥazzāyā, we have found ... more While working on the critical edition of the "Gnostic chapters" of Joseph Ḥazzāyā, we have found two previously unknown mēmrē of this mystical work in an East Syriac manuscript. The new-found gnostic chapters include the interpretation of the vision of Ezekiel (Ez. 1) which may be identical with puššāq hezwā d-Ḥezqī'ēl mentioned by 'Aḇdīšo' of Nisibis among Joseph Ḥazzāyā's writings. The both mēmrē now are being prepared for publication.
![Research paper thumbnail of [Russian translation from Syriac] ISAAC OF NINEVEH. Three Mystic Treatises Not Included in Greek Translation of The First Part of His Ascetical Works ([Перевод с сирийского] ПРП. ИСААК СИРИН. Три мистических трактата, не вошедшие в греческий перевод Первого собрания)](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/39590546/thumbnails/1.jpg)
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Тезисы об авторстве Второго тома мар Исхака 1. Из аргументов, приводимых в пользу авторства мар И... more Тезисы об авторстве Второго тома мар Исхака 1. Из аргументов, приводимых в пользу авторства мар Исхака, убедительны только два: рукописная традиция (Брок называет 9 рукописей, полностью или частично содержащие текст второго тома, + см. статью Г. М. Кесселя) и устойчивые сочетания терминов, не встречающиеся у других сирийских мистиков, но представленные в первом и втором томах мар Исхака (при этом систематической работы по их выявлению и анализу проделано не было). Иером. Никон совершенно прав, говоря, что вопрос об авторстве второго тома закрыли преждевременно. Остается совершенно неизученным стиль обоих томов; при их сравнении очень слабо учитываются сочинения других сирийских мистиков.