The purpose of my project is to provide insight in Ishodad of Merv’s theological thought by examining his exegesis on the Pentateuch. Ishodad composed his work in around the mid-8th century C.E., and his commentaries are the largest surviving theological text corpus from the early East-Syriac tradition. Despite this fact, publications on Ishodad within the Western academia have remained sporadic to date. My aim with this project is to contribute to filling out this gap with the resulting monography.

Ishodad of Merv’s commentaries provide an especially apt topic within the framework of heteronomous texts research. Ishodad writes namely in the form of both commentaria following the Biblical text and commenting on passages that according to him need further attention, and collectiones where he quotes other authors and Biblical translations to shed light on the passages in question. Further layers of heteronomy are introduced when Ishodad’s access to his sources often seems to depend upon circulating quote collections or paraphrases of his time. In addition, Ishodad’s texts themselves function as pretext for later compositions, thus participating in heteronomy beyond their own immediate scope.

This described heteronomy plays a key part for the questions I ask to my source text. How do these different modi of heteronomy inform Ishodad‘s overall composition? How does Ishodad make use of this heteronomy to prove his own point? What are Ishodad‘s main theological concerns when expounding the first five books of his Bible?