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The School of Nisibis

OK, so you know everything there is to know about Antioch and Alexandria. Now, go east, young nerd. Learn about the schools of the Syriac Fathers, starting with Nisibis and Edessa. I just learned of a book by Adam H. Becker, called Fear of God And the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis And the Development of Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia … It’s reviewed here: “This rich and fine book (a revision of the author’s doctoral dissertation) provides an intellectual and institutional history of the scholastic culture of the Church of the East—above all of the School of Nisibis—in the late antique and early Islamic periods. The work sheds light on the development of Christian paideia in Late Antiquity and the rise of the Babylonian Jewish academies, and exposes the importance of the East-Syrian school movement as the background to the intellectual culture to come, a point that has not yet been fully appreciated.”