Pawlos the Persian Lucas Van Rompay Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute Syriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portal Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Vanderbilt University The International Balzan Prize Foundation George A. Kiraz Sebastian P. Brock Aaron M. Butts Lucas Van Rompay Ute Possekel Daniel L. Schwartz David A. Michelson Data cleaning, editorial proofreading, and TEI editing by Ute S. Posssekel Data cleaning and initial valid TEI encoding by David Michelson XSLT transformations by Winona Salesky Data cleaning, editorial proofreading, TEI schema, and TEI encoding and editing by Daniel L. Schwartz Conversion to semantic XML by George A. Kiraz Electronic Edition Version 1.5 Published by Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA www.gorgiaspress.com for Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute Published with the collaboration of Syriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portal Published and hosted with the collaboration of the Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Vanderbilt University

Copyright ©2011 by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute

Distributed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.

2016-09-22-16:00
Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage: Electronic Edition George A. Kiraz Sebastian P. Brock Aaron M. Butts Lucas Van Rompay Ute Possekel Daniel L. Schwartz David A. Michelson Data cleaning, editorial proofreading, and TEI editing by Ute S. Posssekel Data cleaning and initial valid TEI encoding by David Michelson XSLT transformations by Winona Salesky Data cleaning, editorial proofreading, TEI schema, and TEI encoding and editing by Daniel L. Schwartz Conversion to semantic XML by George A. Kiraz Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage Sebastian P. Brock Aaron M. Butts George A. Kiraz Lucas Van Rompay Piscataway, N.J. Gorgias Press for Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute 2011 Copyright ©2011 by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute ISBN: 978-1-59333-714-8
Article record broken out form original electronic edition
Pawlos the Persian https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Pawlos-the-Persian http://syriaca.org/bibl/428 419 http://syriaca.org/person/674 person Itinerant E-Syr. scholar educated at the School of Nisibis. (first half of 6th cent.) [Ch. of E.]

Itinerant E.-Syr. scholar. Pawlos is primarily known through a mid-6th-cent. Latin manual of biblical interpretation, authored by Junillus Africanus. Junillus names as his main authority ‘a certain man called Pawlos, a Persian by origin, who was educated at the Syrian School in the city of Nisibis ’ (Preface). This Pawlos is said to have written a biblical manual in Greek, which Junillus claims to have used extensively. Scholars had noticed that Junillus’s handbook did indeed reflect many of the themes and approaches known from the School of Nisibis and often traceable to Theodore of Mopsuestia . Junillus’s handbook was, therefore, seen as a more or less faithful translation of Pawlos’s work. The most recent analysis of the work, however, by Maas and Mathews, depicts Junillus as a more independent author (‘neither a passive translator of Pawlos the Persian nor a mouthpiece for the School of Nisibis’, 11), who relied only loosely on Pawlos’s work.

It may have been the same Pawlos who had a debate with a Manichaean in Constantinople in 527. The text of this is preserved in Greek, along with the refutation of a pamphlet written by (probably) the same Manichaean. Scholars in the past also tried to fuse Pawlos’s identity with that of Pawlos of Nisibis or Pawlos the Philosopher . For reasons of chronology and content it seems wiser to distinguish between the three persons named Pawlos, even though all three illustrate the vivid interest E.-Syr. intellectuals were showing in Greek culture during the age of Justinian.

Sources H.-G.  Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich (Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft 12.2.1; 1959), 386. A. H.  Becker, ‘The dynamic reception of Theodore of Mopsuestia in the sixth century: Greek, Syriac and Latin’, in Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism and Classicism, Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism and Classicism, ed. S. F. Johnson (2006), 29–47. M. Maas and E. G. Mathews, Jr., Exegesis and Empire in the early Byzantine Mediterranean. Junillus Africanus and the Instituta Regularia Divinae Legis (Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity 17; 2003). M.  Richard, Iohannis Caesariensis presbyteri et grammatici opera quae supersunt (CCSG 1; 1977), xxxix–xli.
Lucas Van Rompay