The Book of the Bee

Sacred-Texts Christianity 

notes to the hypertext transcription

The Book of the Bee is a Nestorian Christian sacred history. According to Budge it was written ca. A.D. 1222 by a Syrian bishop named Solomon (Shelêmôn). There is very little about the work itself in the Preface to this edition, it being concerned primarily with the manuscript sources. In the Introduction to the Book of the Cave of Treasures, Budge says that Solomon's object in writing the Book of the Bee was to present "a full history of the Christian Dispensation according to the Nestorians." (p. 27).

Transcription standards and notes: This edition was written primarily for philologists, and the printed version contains the entire text in Syriac, as well as extensive selections from Arabic translations. There are also lengthy footnotes in Syriac, many words in Arabic and Hebrew, and references to the pagination of the Syriac text embedded in the English translation. Almost all of this apparatus has been removed and is normally not noted. Where the existence of a Syriac word is crucial to the understanding of a footnote, it has been noted with the symbol ###, as I am incompetent to transcribe Syriac.

Underlines represent breve (short) markings over vowels, and dots under consonants, ` and ´ represent right and left pointing apostrophes in transcriptions of Semitic words.

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