Homilies of Aphrahat the Persian Sage and Their Georgian Translations

Abstract

During my research on the writings of Theodoret of Cyrus, I encountered the homilies of Aphrahat the Persian Sage, since their authorship in the Armenian translation was ascribed to the first Syrian ascetic, Jacob of Nisibis, hero of the first chapter of Theodoret’s Historia Philothea. It incited me to discover the Georgian translations of the Demonstrations and analyze their reliability. This article represents a preliminary study of both homilies of Aphrahat rendered into Georgian: the 10th-century Georgian translation of Homily VI, rendered by an anonymous translator from an Armenian source, and the modern rendition of Homily VIII translated by Lasha Bezhanishvili from English.