Seth M. Stadel

stadel picture
British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow
seth.stadel@ames.ox.ac.uk

Current Projects:

  • An edition, English translation, and introduction to the earliest version of the Denḥa-Grigor Commentary (possibly early 9th century?)
  • An edition and study of the slave regulations in the early medieval East Syriac legal tradition
  • An English translation and introduction to Peshitta Judges

 

Research Interests:

  • History of Christianity
  • Eastern Christian biblical interpretation
  • Syriac literature, language, and history (from its origins to the present)
  • Intertwined histories of Syriac Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Islam
  • Christian responses to religious, social, and political changes in the medieval Middle East
  • Slavery in the medieval world
  • Pre-Modern legal literature

 

Links:

 

Recent Publications:

  • The Catalogue of Books of ‘Abdisho‘ bar Brikha: Translated with an Introduction and Notes (Eastern Christian Texts; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming 2025).
  • The Heirs of Theodore: Aḥob of Qatar and the Development of the East Syriac Exegetical Tradition (Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity 28; Leiden / Boston: Brill, 2023).
  • with Jamie Wood (eds.), Domestic Slavery in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (special issue of Medieval People 41:1 [forthcoming 2026]).
  • “The Legal Constructions of Christian Slavery in Fars at the End of Late Antiquity,” Journal of Late Antiquity 18:2 (forthcoming 2025).
  • “Whispers from the Sources: Sixth and Seventh-Century East Syriac Exegetical Works according to ‘Abdisho‘ bar Brikha’s Catalogue of Books,” Aramaic Studies 22:2 (forthcoming 2024).
  • “The Lost Greek and Syriac Works in ‘Abdisho‘ bar Brikha’s Catalogue of Books,” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 27:1 (forthcoming 2024).
  • “That Exalted Heaven and This Visible Firmament: Aḥob of Qatar’s Cosmological Mapping of Psalm 104:2-3,” Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 75:1-2 (2023): 1-18.
  • “Literary Polychrome in East Syriac: A Note on Its Use in Aḥob of Qatar’s Cause of the Psalms,” Eastern Christian Art 12 (2020-2022 [2023]): 131-133.
  • “Captured in Prayer from the Benefits of the Psalms: Nathniel of Shirzor’s Cause of the Psalms,” Le Muséon 135:1-2 (2022): 93-110.
  • “Overcoming All Differences for Transcendent Love: Christology and Mystical Union with the Good in The Book of the Holy Hierotheos,” ARAM 32:1&2 (2020): 171-182.
  • “Prayer without Anger and Sadness: The Syriac Adaptation of Evagrius’ Chapters on Prayer,” Parole de l’Orient 45 (2019): 341-362.
  • “Khuzistan Chronicle,” in Carson Bay, Jeremiah Coogan, and Peter Van Nuffelen (eds.), The Bible in Ancient Christian Historiography (Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception; Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming 2025).
  • “The Biblical Sources of the Eschatology of Aphrahat,” in Markus Vinzent (ed.) Studia Patristica CXXV: Papers presented at the Eighteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2019 (Vol. 22; Leuven: Peeters, 2021), 111-122.
  • with Byard Bennett, “Mar Thoma Syrian Church” in George Thomas Kurian, Mark A. Lamport, and Martin E. Marty (eds.), Encyclopedia of Christianity in the United States (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2016), 1407-1410.