Vast Lessons: Jacob of Edessa’s The Six Days and the Tools of Knowledge

Vast Lessons: Jacob of Edessa’s The Six Days and the Tools of KnowledgeHugoye: Journal of Syriac StudiesSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/YTG4729H/tei

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2024-08-15-04:00

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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.EllenMuehlbergerVast Lessons: Jacob of Edessa’s The Six Days and the Tools of Knowledgehttp://syriaca.org/cbss/YTG4729Hhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/YTG4729Hhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/YTG4729HHugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies25:120229-42Jacob of Edessa’s early eighth-century work The Six Days bursts with information about the cosmos and its inhabitants, the earth’s geography, its species, and other details of nature. Scholars have long classified it in the genre of hexameral literature; in the first part of this essay I explore the limits of that identification. In the second part of the essay, I consider another ancient genre by which The Six Days might be described—compendiary literature—but demonstrate that the features of the text do not square with the generic conventions scholars have identified as central to that literature. The Six Days thus bears a lesson for us: it cautions us to rethink our systems of classification for ancient literature. Muehlberger, Ellen. “Vast Lessons: Jacob of Edessa’s The Six Days and the Tools of Knowledge.” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 25:1 (2022): 9–42. Ellen Muehlberger, Vast Lessons: Jacob of Edessa’s The Six Days and the Tools of Knowledge,” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 25:1 (2022): 9–42.Gen 1GenesisHexaemeronJacob of EdessaJacobitesOld TestamentVII CEVII-XVIII CEcosmogonycosmologyexegesis