Friday Veneration among Syriac Christians: The Witness of theStory of the Holy Friday

Abstract

This article contains the original unpublished Syriac text of the Story of the Holy Friday, an anonymous hagiographic composition that promotes an idiosyncratic form of Friday veneration, which demands that Christians refrain from work on that day completely. The text of the Story, published on the basis of manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, syr. 234, is accompanied with an English translation and discussion of its unusual message, possibly related to the early period of Muslim-Christian relations in the Near East.