These two hefty volumes contain editions, translations and brief commentaries on the major synods of the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Church of the East. The majority of the these texts were preserved in two manuscripts, ms Damascus Patriarchate 8/11 and ms Alqosh 169 (later Baghdad ms 509). These had already been edited with translations into English by A. Vööbus (in the first case) and into French and German by J.-B. Chabot and O. Braun (in the second). But this substantial work goes beyond its twentieth-century predecessors. It employed new digital photographs of the key manuscripts to check the editions. It records variations in the manuscript tradition where synods are attested in multiple versions. It offers new translations into English (in the case of the Church of the East councils many of these are based on Michael Birnie’s previously unpublished translation of Chabot’s edition). The work also records other synodical material that was not included in the earlier collections, especially a selection of the twentieth-century synods that were held in both confessions after a hiatus of many centuries.

The canonical material is concentrated in the fifth and sixth centuries in the case of the Church of the East and the eighth and ninth centuries in the case of the Syrian Orthodox. It is a wealth of material. The preambles to the synods offer plentiful information for how the patriarchs conceived of their authority and offer an insight into changing ecclesiology. In the canons, one can trace the changing dogmatic concerns of the Churches, such as the insistence of the Church of the East on the centrality of Theodore of Mopsuestia for orthodox theology or the adoption of the canons of Nicaea as part of its dogmatic inheritance. One can also find much material for the history of liturgy, as well as the socio-economic history of the Church. We see, for instance, the concern of the Syrian Orthodox patriarch Cyriacus for proper accounting for donations to the Church or the need for the patriarch Yohannan to prevent exiled bishops from exercising their office when they were resident in another’s see. We find recurrent anxieties about maintaining social boundaries, whether in restrictions upon the use of magic and amulets, in the regulation of marriage to outsiders such as Muslims and Jews, or in the proscription of Christians who sought justice from non-Christians. The signatory lists of the councils in the Church of the East synods are fascinating evidence in themselves, both for their testimony of the range of sees present at a given time, the patriarch’s ability to get them to attend synods and for the onomastic palette of high-ranking Christians at a given time. These lists also often offer important prosopographic context for the ecclesiastical chronicles that cover the period.

The twentieth-century synodical material allows insight into the transformation of both confessions in the wake of the Seyfo, the genocide of Christians of all backgrounds in the Ottoman empire in 1917. At one level, this was an exercise in ressourcement, where the rulings of the ancient synods were adapted to new circumstances, but we also find provision for cross-confessional marriage, the education of women and their involvement in church services. It provides evidence for the expansion of church structures into the diaspora, both in Europe and North America and in India, and the arrival of Indian bishops at synods in the Middle East is a marked feature of this material. And it shows great concern for the cultivation of the Syriac language, both through publications and teaching. The inclusion of this more recent material underscores the fact that these are living confessions, which continue to engage with the inheritance of the earlier synods. However, I did wish that the introductory comments had been longer, both to contextualise events in the Churches into the political milieux of mid-twentieth century Arab nationalism, and to set out the various splits within the Churches in greater detail.

Texts are set out very clearly in Syriac, Arabic and Garshuni with facing translations. End-matter includes indexes for scriptural and patristic citations and references to the great councils of the Roman world. The editors aim to provide an instrument for study, and in this regard they are very successful: especially for the Church of the East volume, the work will bring significant material to the attention of an Anglophone audience and make it much easier to use in the classroom.

However, I did note a number of errors in spelling, referencing and bibliography, as well as erratic English phrasing, all of which should have been caught during editing in a volume this expensive. And I did wish that a general index had been provided, which would have made it possible to look up issues that cropped up in multiple synods at a glance. These problems point to a lack of editorial oversight that was also manifested in introductory comments to each synod. This meant that there was both repetition and inconsistency between these introductions.

Some of the best commentaries placed the synods into detailed historical contexts that drew on a range of primary and secondary literature. For instance, it was fascinating to learn of the use of Aristotelian logic in the synod of Henanisho ii (p. 1395), of the reconstruction of the dossier of documents from the reign of Aba i (pp. 760–5), or the ninth-century interpolations in the synod of Dadisho in 424 (p. 645). But other commentaries recycled debateable assertions about the figures mentioned in the text or simply summarised the content of the synods without really adding very much to the texts themselves. Of course, it is to be expected that different commentators would find different things worthy of emphasis, but the commentators did not seem to have had the opportunity to read one another’s work in order to learn from best practice or at least be aware of relevant literature. Below I highlight commentaries where users of the volumes should be aware of scholarly reassessment of some of the figures mentioned in the synodicon.

The commentary on Ishoyahb i is wrong to place his fall from favour under Hormizd iv (996). Rather, the context for this is the civil war between Hormizd’s son Khusrau ii and the pretender Vahram Chobin. The chronicle tradition describes Khusrau’s suspicion of Ishoyahb after he failed to back his candidature, and we might be sceptical of its claims that Ishoyahb was ever rehabilitated. This fall from grace was central to the justification of Khusrau’s intervention in the election of Ishoyahb’s successor, in favour of the poorly-known ascetic Sabrisho.

The treatment of Henana of Adiabene, exegete of the school of Nisibis, also needs to be rectified (pp. 997, 1208). We are told that a series of objections about heresy in the Church refer to Henana and his criticism of Theodore of Mopsuestia, but Henana himself is never mentioned by name in the synods. It may be that the patriarchs sought to criticise Henana obliquely, and Christelle Jullien’s commentary makes this case for Sabrisho’s synod in 596 (p. 1165). But the other commentaries rather take this for granted, and only substantiate the claim with a reference to Wright’s Short history of Syriac literature, published in 1888. Sources like the Chronicle of Seert or Babai’s Life of George do complain about Henana and his heretical tendencies, but these narratives were likely composed after Henana’s death. They are often highly polemical and must be read against the grain. Henana had been an opponent of Gregory of Kashkar, the bishop of Nisibis, whose disciples included the future patriarchs Ishoyahb ii and Ishoyahb iii, and narratives composed in the mid-seventh century may project a negative image of Henana that did not hold true in his own lifetime. For instance, the Chronicle of Seert reports that Sabrisho did not respond to calls by Gregory’s supporters to depose Henana and remained neutral on the dispute at Nisibis. We should remember that much of our information on Henana derives from the pen of his opponent Babai the Great, and almost all of Henana’s output is lost. At any rate, if we do imagine that Henana was repeatedly condemned in synods held in 585, 596 and 605, but still managed to retain his position, this would give us a very circumscribed image of patriarchal authority.

The treatment of the synod of 612, a discussion between Miaphysites and Dyophysites, places Babai the Great at centre stage. Though he was abbot of the great monastery of Izla from 604, Babai is not actually mentioned in the acts of the synod, and the sources, many written by Babai himself, may exaggerate his importance. At the time of the synod of 612, other figures like Henanisho, a member of the aristocracy of Hira, and Giwargis, a high-ranking Zoroastrian convert, may have been more significant. In addition, the claim in commentary that a two-qnome Christology was traditional to the Church of the East is not correct: Babai’s contemporary Shubhalmaran, bishop of Karka de Beth Slouq (Kirkuk), makes no mention of the two qnome in Christ. Babai’s works seem defensive about his innovation in applying the term qnome to the human and divine nature of Christ, rather than just to the persons of the Trinity, and that it was necessary to do so because of misconceptions introduced by others. Nor is it correct to label Khusrau’s queen Shirin straightforwardly as a Miaphysite: she played a significant role in the selection of Sabrisho as patriarch, if the Chronicle of Seert is to be believed. It seems likely that, among laypeople, confessional boundaries were more blurred than we often admit. The works of Geert Reinink on these controversies are important omissions.

Among the Syrian Orthodox synods in volume ii, we are told that for Dionysius’ synod of 818 ‘the canons portray the religious, social and political dysfunction of an indigenous religious community which exists as alien to the dominant political and religious structure’ (p. 165). It is certainly true to say that the Syrian Orthodox community required a patriarch who could advocate for its needs (or at least that is what Dionysius tells us in his historical writings). But ‘dysfunction’ is rather strong for a community that had adapted to the changing conditions of Muslim rule and lasted until the present day.