Very Good Persian Paperback. Cr. 8vo. (20 x 14 cm). Text in Persian with facsimile of the original text in Syriac. 200 p., ills. and map. A Syriac church history of Adiabene, written in the 6th century by Mêsîhâ-Zêkâ under the title Kêta?â ?-êqlisyastîqî dâ-Mêsîhâ-Zêkâ, chosen in conscious imitation of the Ekklêsiastikê historia by Eusebius of Caesarea. It takes the form of a liber pontificalis of the metropolis Arbela (modern Erbîl), northeast of Mosul. For the Parthian period Mêsîhâ-Zêkâ drew primarily on the only Syriac writer to have an exact knowledge of Parthian history, Habel the Teacher, whose reports reveal that Christianity had spread east of the Tigris, in Adiabene, before 100, earlier than had previously been believed (Kawerau, tr. pp. 19, 22, 25). The Chronicle ends during the term of the patriarch Mâr Âbâ of Seleucia-Ctesiphon (540-52). It was first edited in 1907-08 by Alphonse Mingana, who must have based his edition, not on the one manuscript now known (Or. fol. 3126, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin), but on another that has since disappeared. This account in the Chronicle of Arbela is the most important ancient source on early opposition to the primacy of the Roman pope over the whole of Christianity. Some Roman Catholic theologians have maintained that the Chronicle is not genuine. Its authenticity is, however, confirmed both by the bilingual inscription at Bisapur and by the mention in the text of a solar eclipse that occurred on 10 July 218. (Source: Encyclopædia Iranica).
