Customer Reviews

St. Isaac the Syrian: Mystical Writings

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After reading through about 20 pages of this book I am confused. The old-fashioned language suggests that this is a reprint from somewhere, but this is not acknowledged, which is uncomforting, as with this sort of text you like to know your source. I don't know how good St Isaac's original Syriac was, but the translation is not up to modern-day standards (I speak as a professional translator) and at times you have to be a pretty professional linguist and theologian to make head or tail of it. Once you hack through the undergrowth, there are some nuggets, as St Isaac is recognised as a great spiritual writer. It is certainly and thankfully outside of the "spiritual consumerism" category, and by the same token, perhaps not a book to be read without some feeling for the spiritual context in which St Isaac wrote.

This 1977 reprint represents excerpts of AJ Wensinck's 1923 edition of "Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh" -- although this is unacknowledged.

The "Six Treatises on the Behavior of Excellence" are also available in a more modern translation published by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, called "St. Isaac of Nineveh on Ascetical Life."

This Eastern Orthodox Books publication of "Mystical Writings" also includes chapters 9, 45, 46, 50, 60, and 61 of Wensinck's edition, which is out of print and hard to find.