“Life is Short, the Art is Long”: An Interpretation of the First Hippocratic Aphorism by an East Syriac Monk in the 7th Century Iraq (Isaac of Nineveh, Kephalaia gnostica 3,62) (original) (raw)
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This thesis takes up the question of the part played by Syriac sources in the composition of early Arabic translations of the Hippocratic Aphorisms. In it, I compare the four major extant Syriac and Arabic translations of the Aphorisms with continual reference to the content of Syriac lexicons composed by the translator ?unayn ibn Is??q and his students and successors. Through detailed treatments of both the definitions and translations of scores of individual Greek terms found in these sources, as well as through analysis of the translations of the Aphorisms, I weigh the relative importance of Greek and Syriac scholarship for ?unayn's translation praxis. In doing so, I specify the value of the Syriac lexicons for the study of Greek-to-Arabic translation while clarifying several outstanding issues in the broader history of Syriac and Arabic medicine.
The manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds arabe 6734 contains a Syriac translation of the Hippocratic Aphorisms. This text remains one of the few examples of an entire Greek medical work translated into Syriac. The copyist however did not include information about the Syriac translator, which has left his identity open to speculation. Since this bilingual manuscript contains both the Syriac translation of the Aphorisms as well as the lemmata from Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq's Arabic translation of Galen's commentary on the Aphorisms, it is generally accepted that Ḥunayn is also the Syriac translator. Although the Arabic translation is the key to identifying the Syriac translator, no one has yet attempted to situate the Arabic text within the tradition of Ḥunayn's Arabic version of the Aphorisms in order to better understand the work of the copyist. This article will analyse the copyist's editorial process when working with these Arabic lemmata. In doing so, the relationship between the Syriac and the Arabic translations will be explored, providing new insight into the identity of the Syriac translator.
Mar Isḥaq Ninevita and Possible Medical Context of Eastern Syriac Asceticism.
Parole de l’Orient 40 (2015), 2015
The emergence of asceticism as a religious and social phenomenon of the Early Christianity has long been a matter exclusively for religious historians 1. Its origin has been traced back to the Essenes fasting or rigorist approach of some apocryphal texts. Syriac asceticism is a special case but it was subjected to the same analysis. It has developed from practice of certain hermits into a highly theoretical discipline based on biblical and antique anthropology 2 and evolved in close relation to different models, theological as well as social and behavioral. Scholarly and religious interpretations of asceticismalthough different in positioning and purposewere until very recently from a theological or historical viewpoint. Culturology and sociology provided important dimensions for the analysis. One more dimension could also contribute to the understanding of the ascetic phenomenon. This is medicine, more specifically medical science. This area of knowledge has developed a technical language of its own and a special culture connected to it. Syrians inherited Greco-Roman medicine and adapted to it between the 5 th and the 6 th cc. Medical science developed a theoretical base for medical care (ἰατρικὴ) by Hippocrates in Greece and was then systematized mainly by Roman scientific physicians. The core of it was an opposition of health and disease (ὑγιεία / ܚܘܠܡܢܐ-νόσος / .)ܟܘܪܗܢܐ The concept of natural healthor to put it in Platonic terms, the idea of healthbecame fundamental. Hippocrates himself was persuaded that health is a natural state of balance of powers (famous 'four humours') 3 , but his main idea was that of natural (physical) health as the initial state and at the same time the objective of
THE METAPHORICAL USE OF MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY IN THE EARLY MONASTIC TRADITION
It is much easier of course to engage in external activity than to develop the interior life, to face up to the hard realities within us. But our age has perhaps more need for the development of the interior life than it does for more external activity. He who would truly become a peacemaker must first develop his own interior peace. Otherwise, in his efforts to make peace, he is likely to add to the strife by contributing his own internal strife to that around him. For such a development of the interior life Cassian does provide a basis and a program, a program which, to be sure, needs to be updated and augmented. For a wise physician is always seeking to increase his skill and add to his knowledge.
[Prepublication] The Book of Asaf and Shabatai Donnolo's Hebrew Paraphrase of Hippocrates' Aphorisms
Lehmhaus, Lennart (ed.), Defining Jewish Medicine. Transfer of Medical Knowledge in Jewish Cultures and Traditions,, 2019
Sections of Sefer Asaf that are based on Hippocrates' Aphorisms are abridged versions of Shabatai Donnolo's Hebrew paraphrase of the Aphorisms. For this reason, Sefer Asaf in its final form cannot be earlier than the tenth century, and it is very likely that some sections of it were composed in Byzantine Italy. Publishing date: 2019 November https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/title\_1365.ahtml