Page:Commentaries of Ishodad of Merv, volume 1.djvu/20

xii gladly acceded: it is my form of appreciation of Mrs Gibson's devoted labours, as well as a slight token of a valued and abiding friendship.

Of Ishoʿdad, the compiler of the present commentary, we know but little: ten lines only are devoted to him in Wright's Syriac Literature, for which the chief authority is Assemani in his Bibliotheca Orientalis. Dr Wright refers to two MSS. of the commentaries upon the New Testament, one of which it is possible that he may have examined; but there is nothing to indicate that he attached any importance to the writer or his works.

We are still insufficiently equipped for a study of Syriac literature on the Nestorian side.

To introduce the matter, we will first transcribe Dr Wright's paragraph:

To this last piece of information from Mai, Wright adds the note:

Taking this entry of Wright's as our starting-point, we see that Ishoʿdad was a native of Merv, that he became bishop of Ḥedatha, and that he flourished in the middle of the ninth century. His name is a peculiar one, but not unknown elsewhere. It is especially interesting to notice that it occurs on the famous inscription which the Nestorian Christians set up in Western China to commemorate their successful missionary work in that country. It is well known that this splendid Chinese monument is bordered by a contemporary Syriac inscription, containing the names of the leaders of the Syrian Church in China. It was set up in 781 in honour of the original mission in 635  Amongst the Syriac names inscribed on the sides of the monument is that of Ishoʿdad. As far as I know, this is the earliest occurrence of the name in Syriac. The Hsian-Fu inscription is seventy years older than