A Sureth Version of the East-Syriac Dialogue Poem of Mary and the Gardener

Alessandro Mengozzi

doi:10.13135/1825-263X/3617

Alessandro Mengozzi University of Turin

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/3617

Keywords: Sureth, Mary and the Gardener, Hymnography

Abstract

In the present paper, a Sureth version is published of the dialogue poem of
Mary and the Gardener. As a first attempt to reconstruct the history of this text, the poetic version in the vernacular is compared with five manuscript witnesses of the Classical Syriac original. The poem is presented as part of an intertextual web of Classical Syriac hymns for Easter and Pentecost that are preserved in late liturgical collections and appear to be narrative and rhetorical expansions of John 20:11-17. Formal and thematic parallels to the poem are then found in the broader framework of Christian and Jewish hymnography written in varieties of Late Aramaic.

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Author Biography

Alessandro Mengozzi, University of Turin

Alessandro Mengozzi is Professor of Semitics at the University of Turin, where he teaches Semitic Philology and Classical Syriac. His main research interests are Modern Aramaic languages and literatures and late East-Syriac poetry. He can be reached at: alessandro.mengozzi@unito.it.

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