Commentary on John of Ephesus’s Ecclesiastical History

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Hartmut Leppin
• Subject Area: Ancient History ; Protestant Theology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 461840240

John of Ephesus’s Ecclesiastical History (= EH) forms one of the most extensive historiographical sources for the Eastern Roman Empire and the Middle East on the eve of the long-lasting political and cultural changes that began in the seventh century. The EH offers a distinct vantage point on the understudied late sixth century: it was written in a dialect of Aramaic called Syriac, and it comes from the pen of a bishop belonging to an ecclesiastical body that competed with the imperial church. Only the third part of this work survives intact, and John of Ephesus wrote it while living—and indeed while intermittently imprisoned—in the imperial capital of Constantinople. Although historians and theologians have both made extensive use of the EH, these perspectives have rarely been brought together. The Frankfurt-Leuven long-term project bridges this divide by integrating historical and theological research on the EH in a new critical edition, translation, and comprehensive commentary on the third part of this work. Open access digital and print versions of the edition, translation, and commentary are under way, and these preliminary digital publications in several repositories will invite feedback from the scholarly community during the course of the project. Ongoing and planned collaboration with several digital humanities projects will also result in a suite of didactic aids to support students and scholars learning Syriac. Finally, this project will draw attention to one of the literary achievements of a community in antiquity which many immigrants to Germany and the European Union in general count as their heritage. This proposal is for the second funding period. The principal objective is to continue work on the edition and commentary of Books 3 to 5.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Belgium
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Philip Michael Forness