An ascetic miscellany: The Christian Sogdian manuscript E28
- Submitting institution
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School of Oriental and African Studies
- Unit of assessment
- 31 - Theology and Religious Studies
- Output identifier
- 24980
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Brepols
- ISBN
- 9782503578781
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- December
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This volume is an edition, with translation, glossary and extensive philological commentary, of the fragmentary remains of what was once a large codex containing a miscellany of Christian texts in the Sogdian language. Only a few pages of this manuscript have been published previously. Most of the texts contained in it were probably translated from Syriac, but in view of its poor state of preservation (the beginnings and ends of most lines are missing), and since the authors and titles of the texts do not survive (with just one exception), it is very difficult to identify their Syriac sources. The research for this volume consisted of: transcribing the manuscript fragments in Berlin; identifying fragments which can be joined together to provide a larger context; translating the surviving phrases and reconstructing the likely content of the missing text by comparing the typical phraseology of East Syrian ascetical literature; searching that literature (including unpublished manuscripts) for the source texts; and ultimately editing a text which is reconstructed to the extent possible. In the commentary and glossary all rare or unknown words and grammatical forms are discussed and as far as possible identified, using as evidence the Syriac parallel texts and the methods of historical linguistics (etymology, etc.). The commentary also uses data from this manuscript to solve linguistic problems in other Sogdian texts.
As a whole, the edition is a major contribution to knowledge of the Sogdian language and its history, as well as to that of the ascetic literature known to the Sogdian-speaking Christians.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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