PREFACE
ix
the western reader, we have employed it.[1] Few English readers would recognize in "Khizqi'il" the familiar "Ezekiel"; and though most students of Church history have a bowing acquaintance with Ibas of Edessa, how many would understand who was meant by "Yahba"? Greek versions are usually barbarous etymologically; and their historians are not even consistent—who without special study can recognize Cyrus and Chosroes as the same name? But at least they are familiar and are more euphonious than most Syriac names in English letters.
Van,
Turkey in Asia,
1909.
- ↑ With two exceptions, "Ishu" is the same name as "Jesus," but where it appears in compounds like "Sabr-Ishu" ("Hope-in-Jesus") I have kept the Syriac lettering. Also the name "Shimun" is, for reasons known to every friend of the Church, too familiar to be represented by "Simon."
