Syriac Anaphoras - Edition According to the Manuscripts

The present proposal deals with a central research topic of the Christian traditions: anaphoras. Anaphoras are Eucharistic prayers, which in many cases emerged from antiquity. They may be considered as key texts shaping cultural, theological, and confessional identity. Actually, it was the West-Syrian tradition to bring forth an unparalleled variety of such anaphoras. There is evidence of about 70 different Syriac anaphoras. More than forty of them are not yet scholarly published, among them the anaphora, which is attributed to St. Basil (d. 379) a very prominent text having been turned into various languages in early Christian time. The Syriac anaphoras-project is devoted to a corpus of more than 300 relevant manuscripts, in order to elaborate the scholarly edition of six anaphoras within two years. The Syriac texts as well as the translations will be made accessible online. All Syriac words are to be lemmatized in order to make them searchable independently from the operating system used on the PC. This project is somehow the continuation of the distinguished Anaphorae syriacae-series (Rome), which has not been editing any new text since thirty years. Of course, this project does not any longer refer to Latin as language of translation, but produces versions in modern languages (esp. English) instead. Additionally, the project applies and develops some features of modern IT to make the texts accessible (open access) and to open a perspective of long term storage. Moreover, the Syriac anaphora-project is a contribution to help preserving a most ancient Christian cultural heritage, which is more than ever menaced in its existence especially on the Syrian territory.

The projects central aim was to prepare editions of liturgical texts transmitted so far only by manuscripts, core texts of the ancient Syriac speaking communities in the Middle East. >>Anaphoras<< are the prayer texts used for the Eucharistic service. Emphasis was put on the West Syrian tradition which generated an unparalleled variety of such liturgical forms. From about seventy anaphoras which have been identified only one third is accessible through scientific editions.The project was focused on the venerable Anaphora attributed to St Basil (4th c) which actually is transmitted in all ancient languages, and the presumably latest anaphora authored by Abd al-Ghani (late 16th c).Within the project the texts were prepared for the edition. The two of these anaphoras are to be published in conventional book-form (print-version) and in an online-version.In view of the print-version all settings, elements and formats had to be fixed as well as the software to be used. This is not that simple as it might appear, since simultaneous bi-directional writing had to be considered for every document, and there were different apparatuses to be considered (textual variants, textcritical and other annotations, references).With regard to the online-version various programs had to be written or adapted. With the help of them a direct entry of Syriac texts into the anaphoral data base is made possible as is the searchability of every single word. Thus, the project put a milestone for further research on anaphoral texts, since this facilitates the identification of quotes and passages borrowed from other anaphoras.Processing the anaphoras selected proved to be more difficult than expected: the anaphora of St Basil is represented in a good number of manuscripts, and the textual transmission appeared to be surprisingly complex; though for the anaphora of Abd al-Ghani there is a rather modest number of handwritten sources extant, it is extraordinary voluminous, the post classical Syriac is contaminated by various influences from the surrounding languages. However, the two editions are widely prepared for publication. After another (independent) controlling we hope to hand over the manuscripts for the print run by the end of this yearBeyond the scientific output this project contributed to increase the awareness for the menace the cultural Syrian heritage is exposed in these days. This was registered especially by the Syrian Orthodox Church. There is an ongoing cultural genocide in the region having thus far destroyed many historical libraries.