Sargis the Stylite (8th cent.) [Syr. Orth.]
A ‘Letter’ attributed to ‘Sargis the Stylite of Gusit’ (near Ḥimṣ) ‘against a Jew who argued that God has no son, and that God has not begotten’ is preserved in a single ms. of the 8th/9th cent. According to its editor the work must belong to the 8th cent. (and not the late 6th, as had earlier been suggested). It is a literary work based on several sources, among them a collection of testimonia; there is also a section on images (of interest in view of the date). In part the work may also be based on an actual discussion with a Jew.
Sources
- A. P. Hayman, The Disputation of Sergius the Stylite against a Jew (CSCO 338–9; 1973).
- A. P. Hayman ‘The Biblical text in the Disputation of Sergius the Stylite against a Jew’, in The Peshitta, its use in Literature and Liturgy, ed. B. ter Haar Romeny (2006), 77–86.