History of Scholarship

The manuscript of the Syriac Julian Romance was part of the Nitrian manuscripts which came into the possession of the British Museum in the 1830s. The Julian Romance received broader attention in 1874 in an important publication by the German orientalist Theodor Nöldeke. Six years later, J. G. E. Hoffmann published the complete Syriac work under the title Syrische Erzählungen; it is the only (non-critical) edition available of the Romance. In 1928 Hermann Gollancz published an English rendering. In 2016 a much better and reliable English translation of the Romance was published by Michael Sokoloff; besides a translation, it also includes the Syriac text of Hoffmann’s edition from 1880. This chapter offers a discussion of the scholarship of the Romance and deals with issues such as the place and date of origin of the text, the original language, the possible authorship, function, and genre of the text, as well as its place within Syriac literature. The Romance as we have it is generally accepted as having been composed in Edessa. The northern Mesopotamian city has a special place and a prominent role in the Julian Romance, in particular in the Jovian Narrative. One of the purposes of the text seems to have been to emphasize Edessa as the city of Christ par excellence, for which reason it deserves a special place in the world of Christendom, as well as to present Edessa as the model of Christian government for the whole empire.