This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... LECTURE VI THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS AND THE HYMN OF THE SOUL The art of telling a tale is perhaps the most wonderful of all human inventions, and the East has ever been famous for story-telling. We shall therefore not be surprised to find that the most striking and original piece of Syriac Literature ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... LECTURE VI THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS AND THE HYMN OF THE SOUL The art of telling a tale is perhaps the most wonderful of all human inventions, and the East has ever been famous for story-telling. We shall therefore not be surprised to find that the most striking and original piece of Syriac Literature is a Novel. By a curious chance, which I suspect would prove to be, if we knew more, less a chance than an intimate literary connexion, this Novel contains within it an independent Poem which itself is the most beautiful production not of Syriac Literature only, but I venture to assert of all the literary activity of the early Church. The Novel is the Acts of Judas Thomas, the Apostle of India: the Poem is known to modern scholars as the Hymn of the Soul. The work called the Acts of Thomas in one form or another has long been familiar to hagiographers and ecclesiologists. When you see. a stained glass window with S. Thomas depicted N 198 in it, he will probably be represented with a spear in his hand. That is because according to these Acts the apostle was martyred with spears. In a sense, therefore, the story of S. Thomas is no new discovery. But it is only lately that it has been recovered in approximately its original form, and it is only lately that it has been recognised as a story which is Syriac in origin. Even now the work is familiar only to professed scholars: Wright's English translation is out of print, and the outside world knows very little of a tale that can challenge comparison with the Pilgrims Progress. It will be convenient, before entering more into detail about the various problems suggested by the Acts of Thomas, to give a short abstract of the story which forms the framework of the book.1 I. At the beginning we are...
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