Moses of Ingila (fl. mid-6th century) was a
Syriac Christian
Syriac Christianity ( syr, ܡܫܝܚܝܘܬܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܬܐ / ''Mšiḥoyuṯo Suryoyto'' or ''Mšiḥāyūṯā Suryāytā'') is a distinctive branch of Eastern Christianity, whose formative theological writings and traditional liturgies are expr ...
author who translated a number of texts from
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
into the
Syriac language.
One surviving letter, preserved in British Library MS no. 17,202, prefaces the writing we call ''
Joseph and Aseneth
Joseph and Aseneth is a narrative that dates from between 200 BCE and 200 CE. The first part of the story (chapters 1-21), an expansion of Genesis 41:45, describes the diffident relationship between Aseneth, the daughter of an Egyptian priest of ...
''. Around 550 an anonymous individual, probably a monk, found a very old book in Resh'aina, in the library belonging to the line of bishops who had come from Aleppo. This ancient writing (''Joseph and Aseneth'') was in Greek, a language with which this individual was less familiar than his native Syriac. Suspecting that it contained a "hidden meaning," he wrote to his friend, Moses of Ingila, asking him to provide a Syriac translation along with an explanation as to its hidden meaning. Moses of Ingila obliges with a Syriac translation which he prefaces with a letter. According to
Angela Standhartinger, he explains the story "as an allegory of Christ's marriage to the soul".
An English translation of this letter can be found in
Simcha Jacobovici
Simcha Jacobovici (; born April 4, 1953) is an Israeli-Canadian journalist and documentary film maker.
Biography
Simcha Jacobovici's parents were Holocaust survivors from Iași, Romania. He was born April 4, 1953, in Petah Tikva, Israel. In 19 ...
and
Barrie Wilson,
The Lost Gospel[Simcha Jacobovici, Barrie Wilson. The Lost Gospel. New York: Pegasus, 2014.] along with an English translation of the Syriac text of ''Joseph and Aseneth''.
References
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6th-century Christians
6th-century Byzantine writers
Greek–Syriac translators