That Exalted Heaven and This Visible Firmament

Abstract Aḥob of Qatar is a late 6th-century East Syriac biblical commentator whose cosmology has not previously been studied. Aḥob’s cosmology is preserved in two parts in several late 19th-century Denḥa-Grigor Commentary (first half of the 9th century?) manuscripts: one part is a scholion connected to Psalm 104 and the other part is a diagrammatic illustration (in four related witnesses), which portrays five levels of heaven as envisioned by Aḥob. This paper introduces and presents Aḥob’s cosmology in six parts: 1) an exploration of the authorship of the original version of the diagrammatic illustration, 2) an analyzed study of the rare word ܩܢܘܒܘܪܘܢ, which is used in both Aḥob’s Psalm 104:2–3 scholion and the four witnesses of the diagrammatic illustration, 3) an examination of the extant contents of Aḥob’s cosmology, 4) a discussion of the sources and significance of Aḥob’s cosmology, 5) a presentation of the first annotated edition and English translation of Aḥob’s Psalm 104:2–3 scholion and diagrammatic illustration, and 6) a presentation of the images of the diagrammatic illustration’s four witnesses.