The History of the First Printed Gospels in Arabic in the Rum Orthodox Church (Early Eighteenth Century): Unanswered Questions.
Symposium Arabicum
Rome, 22-24 August 2016.

Literature dealing with Arabic printed Gospels in Aleppo in the first decade of the eighteenth century is not voluminous. Yet studies of the previous and later editions of the Arabic printed Gospels by catholic and protestant churches were generated, the Rum Orthodox editions known as the Dabbas editions (in reference to the patriarch Athanasius Dabbas who imported the first Arabic printer from Romania to Aleppo and printed the first religious Arabic books in the Rum Orthodox patriarchate of Antioch in the XVIIIth century) and their relationship with the manuscript traditions and the other printed gospels are rare.
The number of these “orthodox” versions, their types (continuous text, lectionary...) and their textual value remain understudied.
This paper aims to open up the subject by examining the copies of these editions on different levels. It will connect them with the textual traditions of the Gospels and will highlight their relationship with the 1865 Van Dyck edition.