Isaac of Nineveh (7th century AD), or Isaac the Syrian, was, among all the Syriac writers, the one to exert the greatest influence outside the Syriac-speaking world, becoming a highly venerated Father of Byzantine Orthodox spirituality and theology. In Isaak von Nineve und seine Kephalaia Gnostika, Nestor Kavvadas first draws out the frictions between East Syrian episcopacy and the anchorite mystical movement as represented by Isaac, in search of the historical context of Isaac's teaching on the working of the Holy Spirit on the monk. Then, he draws out of Isaac's writings, and...

The East Syriac mystic Joseph Hazzaya (8th century AD) wrote On Providence in an attempt to derive universal salvation (apokatastasis) from Theodore of Mopsuestia, the highest theological authority in the East Syriac Church, and thus to defend himself from heresy accusations coming from that Church's Primate, Catholicos Timothy I, as Nestor Kavvadas draws out in the introduction to this first edition and translation of the treatise. At the same time, in On Providence Joseph Hazzaya reacts, by way of a remodelled Elijah-Apocalypse, to a rising wave of conversions to Islam...