An English translation of Mar Zay‘a: The Saint of Jilu, out soon from Gorgias Press

An email from David Wilmshurst, who has continued his work on texts relating to the Church of the East. He’s got another book coming out, around the end of October, through Gorgias Press. This contains an English translation of the hagiographical Life of Mar Zay‘a, a legendary saint of Palestine who supposedly belonged to the 4th century AD. The book is titled “Mar Zay‘a: The Saint of Jilu”. He writes: Mar Zay‘a was a legendary saint of Palestine who supposedly flourished in the 4th century. The Syriac text of his Life, probably written by a bishop or priest of Jilu in the 18th century, was published by Bedjan in 1890 in Volume 1 of his Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum. Although it is one of the more readable saints’ lives in Bedjan’s collection, it has remained for more than a century without an English translation. I have now produced the first English translation of this intriguing text. It was obviously written to extol the church of Mar Zay‘a in the large village of Matha d’Mar Zay‘a…