The Chapters on Knowledge of Rabban Aphnīmāran: The Syriac and Arabic Manuscript Traditions. Part III / A Critical Edition of Syriac and Arabic Texts, Translation, and Notes

Abstract

This article presents a critical edition of the Chapters on Knowledge by Rabban Aphnīmāran, a 7th-century East Syriac mystic, along with an Anonymous commentary on them. In the third part, the authors publish chapters 42–61 and their annotated translation. One of the aims of the genre of chapters, written in a deliberately enigmatic style, is gather­ ing the mind (hawnā) and the practice of hergā. The authors examine the anthropological premises behind it, analyze how the term hergā was used in both scholastic (5th–6th cen­ turies) and mystical­ascetic circles (7th–8th centuries), and propose a reconstruction of the hergā method as applied to the chapters of Rabban Aphnīmāran.