Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage: Electronic Edition
Pawla of Edessa (early 7th cent.) [Syr. Orth.]
Metropolitan of Edessa and translator. His careful revision of an earlier translation of Gregory of Nazianzus’s Discourses survives complete; this was done while he was in Cyprus in 623/4, during the Persian invasion and occupation of Mesopotamia. Another large undertaking while he was in Cyprus was the translation of a collection of hymns (maʿnyoto) by Severus ‘according to the tradition of Qenneshre’, that was later to be revised by Yaʿqub of Edessa (ed. E. W. Brooks, in PO 6.1, 7.5; 1910–11). He is probably also the ‘Abbas Pawla’ who translated the pericope John 7:50–8:12, absent from the Peshitta and Ḥarqlean. He is commemorated in one liturgical calendar (PO 10, 124) on 23 Aug. (‘Pawla, bp. of Edessa, who translated the books’).
Sources
- S. P. Brock, The Syriac version of the Pseudo-Nonnos mythological scholia (1971), 29–30.
Sebastian P. Brock