Subject: Septuagint apparatus & Syriac Grammar

From: [email-masked] (William L. Petersen)
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 17:19:24 -0500

Re the question posed by Mark and Beth LaRocca-Pitts on 2-21-96:

>2) Could someone please recommend a good reference &/or grammer for the
>Peshitta version of the Syriac OT, esp. using the Estangela script (Is
>that redundant?). I am using the version published by Brill (1987).
>

Depending on what you are after, (1) the standard is Carl Brockelmann,
*Syrische Grammatik* (originally eprinted by VEB Verlag, Leipzig, 1981);
(2) there also exists a grammar which presumes a knowledge of Hebrew:
Takamitsu Muraoka's *Classical Syriac for Hebraists* (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1987);  (3) there is an abbreviated grammar:  Theodore
Robinson, *Paradigms and Exercises in Syriac Grammar* (Oxford: Clarendon,
1962);  (4) W.M. Thackston, Jr., has a grammar/exercises which I understand
are used at Harvard, but it is not officially published.

Of these, Lambdin, Robinson, and Brockelmann use Serta script totally or
partly (sometimes the lexicon or some reading text is in Estrangela);  only
Muraoka uses a (sometimes skinny) Estrangela consistently.

Incidentally, Brockelmann, p. 5, Robinson, p. 4, and Muraoka, p. 4, have
"conversion tables" which show the various Serta forms, the Estrangela, the
Nestorian, as well as the transliteration of the letters...  Rather helpful
when one is learning the different scripts.

Good luck.  --Petersen, Penn State Univ.

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From: Mark and Beth LaRocca-Pitts <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 96 20:28:45 EST

Thanks to Gene Ulrich and William Petersen for their thorough and speedy
answers to my questions.

Mark.