Beh Isho' Kamulaya's Syriac discourses on the monastic way of life: Edition, English translation, and introduction

The Catholic University of America's Institute of Christian Oriental Research (ICOR) owns a small Syriac manuscript which has not previously been studied. Incomplete at beginning and end, it contains six discourses (memre) on the monastic way of life, part of a collection of "Chapters of Knowledge" (rise d'ida'ta), and the first lines of a poem (madrasa), all of which are attributed to an East Syrian monk, one Beh Isho` Kamulaya, who may have flourished in the late eighth century. Beh Isho` and his book on monastic life are mentioned in the late thirteenth century Syriac catalog of the library of `Abdisho` bar Berika (d. 1318), also a member of the Syriac-speaking Assyrian Church of the East.;Catholic University ICOR Syriac MS 18 preserves the only copy of Beh Isho`s works known to exist in an ancient Syriac manuscript. In 1996, at the Uppsala Symposium Syriacum, Johannes Sanders announced the discovery of the works of Beh Isho` Kamulaya under the name of Mar Bishoi, in Trichur MS 16, a modern codex in the library of the Metropolitan see of the Church of the East, in Trichur, Kerala, India. The Trichur manuscript, as described by Sanders, shows close parallels with the contents of the CUA manuscript. The Trichur codex also contains a lengthy biography of Bishoi, which turns out to be a reworking of the Syriac Life of one of the legendary founders of the monasteries of the Egyptian Wadi Natrun, none other than Abba Bishoi as he is known in his Syriac guise, or in Coptic, Apa Pshoi or Pishoi.;A date no later than the twelfth century and perhaps as early as the ninth or tenth century has been suggested for the CUA manuscript on paleographical grounds.;The immediate contribution of this study is to make available to researchers an edition and English translation of the CUA Syriac manuscript. It provides access for the first time to the works of an eighth-century East Syrian monastic writer, previously known to modern scholars only as a name in a thirteenth-century Syriac library catalog. It will serve as the foundation for a critical edition of the works of Beh Isho` Kamulaya.