Syriac Biography

This chapter studies Syriac biographical writing. Biography is a Greek word and concept for which there is no Syriac equivalent. Yet authors wrote Lives in Syriac as in any other Christian tradition and were aware of the specific features of the genre. The chapter assesses if that makes a difference to the matter of understanding and construing biographical literature, that is, if there is a Syriac specificity in writing Lives compared to other Christian literature. Syriac, moreover, is a language in which Lives were both translated and composed, and circulated widely from one language to another, crossing cultural and ecclesiastical boundaries. Indeed, life-writing is an exceptionally rich field of Syriac literature, attested in an extraordinarily broad geographical scope, well beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire. Beyond translations, the issue is one of adaptation and reception of these texts in different cultural and religious milieus.