Mar Isḥaq Ninevita and Possible Medical Context of Eastern Syriac Asceticism

Parole de L'Orient, Liban. 2015. Vol. 40. P. 1–15.

Alexey Muraviev

The emergence of asceticism as a religious and social phenomenon of the Early Christianity has long been a matter exclusively for religious historians . Its origin has been traced back to the Essenes fasting or rig-orist approach of some apocryphal texts. Syriac asceticism is a special case but it was subjected to the same analysis. It has developed from practice of certain hermits into a highly theoretical discipline based on biblical and antique anthropology and evolved in close relation to dif-ferent models, theological as well as social and behavioral. Scholarly and religious interpretations of asceticism – although different in posi-tioning and purpose – were until very recently from a theological or his-torical viewpoint. Culturology and sociology provided important dimen-sions for the analysis. The article proposes to analyse approaches of Syriac medicine in comparison with the ascetic expressions od one of the most famous Eastern Syrac Ascetic writers Ishaq of Nineveh.

Keywords: история религии, Syriac, history of medicine, история медицины, арабская культура, медицина, сирийский язык, сирийская литература, Syriac litterature, Arabic medicine