The Church Fathers · c. 680–708
The Letters and Canons
Jacob of Edessa · c. 640 – 708
What it is
Rulings sent to priests who wrote in with problems: whether a priest may give the eucharist to a Muslim or a Jew who asks, what to do about Christians who consult Muslim diviners, whether an Arab convert must be rebaptised, and how to compute Easter.
Why it lasted
The most detailed evidence anywhere for how Christians and Muslims actually lived alongside each other in the first Islamic century, written as case law rather than polemic. Jacob also revised the Syriac Old Testament and wrote the first Syriac grammar.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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