Acknowledgements
This book began its life as a University of Birmingham PhD thesis supervised by David G.K. Taylor and examined by Alison Salvesen (Oxford) and Charlotte Hempel (Birmingham). David was a generous and supportive supervisor and is a kind and encouraging friend. I treasure the many pleasurable hours we have spent in wide-ranging conversation about Syriac studies broadly conceived.
I am grateful to Bas ter Haar Romeny for reading carefully through the manuscript at the beginning of the submission process, offering sound and valuable advice, and for later accepting this volume into a series devoted to the exploration of the Peshitta and its reception in the Syriac tradition. I am grateful also to the editors and production team at Brill for turning my manuscript into such a splendid book, with special thanks to Dirk Bakker for his expert editorial care.
I feel fortunate to work at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. A series of directors (Noel Reynolds, Andrew Skinner, Jerry Bradford, and Spencer Fluhman) each offered encouragement and provided support for this project, and a group of generous colleagues kindly commented on several portion of the manuscripts presented in Institute seminars. At BYU, I also benefited from the Harold B. Lee Library’s commendable research collection and brilliant and unfailingly ingenious Interlibrary Loan department. Numerous libraries around the world have graciously provided me with access to their Syriac manuscripts, both in person, by microfilm, and in digital form. Thanks to these libraries, and a grant from the Sorenson Legacy Foundation, I was able to inspect (personally or virtually) almost every manuscript cited in this study.
Aaron Butts, David Calabro, Chip Coakley, Susan Harvey, Robert Kitchen, Lance Martin, Alessandro Mengozzi, Sergey Minov, Yifat Monnickendam, Heleen Murre-van den Berg, Paul-Hubert Poirier, David Taylor, and Jeffrey Wickes graciously read parts of the manuscript at various stages in the project and I am grateful for their help, suggestions, corrections, and especially their encouragement. Adam Becker, Abby Ellis, Philip Forness, Emma Franklin, Carl Griffin, Erin Walsh, and Joseph Witztum generously read the entire manuscript near the end of the project and offered wise and valuable advice and corrections which have improved this book considerably.
Aaron Butts, Joseph Witztum, and I are engaged in a collaborative project to publish a critical edition of the Syriac History of Joseph together with its Arabic, Ethiopic and Latin versions in the Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum. I am grateful for their friendship and collegiality as we have worked together on that project, including organizing a memorable workshop together on the figure of Joseph at the Hebrew University in 2014.
Work on Narsai’s memra on Joseph has been enriched by a collaboration with Aaron Butts and Robert Kitchen to publish a complete translation of Narsai in English, and by the splendid papers presented at the conference, ‘Narsai: Rethinking His Work and His World’, held at Brigham Young University in June 2017.
Work on the transmission of the Syriac Joseph literature took shape thanks to a kind invitation from Amir Harrak to lecture in Toronto—I am grateful to the generous hospitality that he and Kyle Smith extended in Toronto, and for the chance to publish that lecture in the Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies.
Muriel Debié, Sergey Minov, Hidemi Takahashi, Jack Tannous, and David Taylor have been splendid co-conspirators in the task of finding out-of-the-way publications or copies of rare items that are often needed in a hurry. I am constantly inspired by their deep expertise and broad curiosity.
My bibliography shows my intellectual debt to Sebastian Brock’s ground-breaking work on Syriac narrative poetry, but it is inadequate as an expression of respect and thanks for his memorable instruction, inspiring scholarship, and the interest he has shown in this project over many years.
Finally, my family have been patient, encouraging, and often bemused in their support of this project. I am especially grateful to my brother Marcus, who helped defray the costs of my PhD and encouraged me in my intellectual ambitions. Vicki-Bronwen and I married when I was an undergraduate, and we have worked, suffered, lived, laughed, and rejoiced together through education, employment, moving countries, raising five wonderful children, and now, finally seeing this book into press. Thank you.