ABSTRACT
Tracing the multifarious ways in which diverse regional traditions (Jewish, Persian, Armenian, Christian, and more) coalesced into a new formation of indigenous Syriac literature, this chapter follows the emergence of Syriac literature out of the pagan religious establishments of Edessa and Nisbis into the heyday of early Syriac poetry (Ephrem, Aphrahat) as well as discussing the more mysterious incarnations of that early literature in the Odes of Solomon, Acts of Thomas, and the Book of the Laws of the Countries. Through all these works, what we are left with above all is a sense of the numerous networks of mutual influence that were active in the literary forms of Late Antiquity.
