The more extensive East-Syrian Cause of the Foundation of the Schools offers a history of learning from God's creation of the world to the time of the text's composition at the School of Nisibis in the late sixth century CE, recasting patriarchal, Israelite, 'pagan' and Christian history as a long series of schools.
The School of Nisibis was the most influential and prominent of the Aramaic-speaking Christian schools of late antique and early Mesopotamia. This volume provides for the first time an annotated translation of the major sources for the School of Nisibis--offering a close historical, linguistic, and thematic analysis. Aside from a general introduction and commentary on each translation, "Sources for the Study of the School of Nisibis" includes the "Cause for the Foundation of the Schools," which provides a history of learning from God's creation of the world to the time of the text's composition at the end of the sixth century; the last two chapters of an East-Syrian "Ecclesiastical History"; and, among other texts, a document composed by Simeon of Bet Arsham, a theological enemy of the School and its history.
