Friday Veneration in Sixth- and Seventh-Century Christianity and Christian Legends about the Conversion of Nağrān

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

“…86 A comprehensive analysis of this rich material might reveal some common patterns as well as regional differences in the evolution of Christian attitudes and practices related to Friday. 87…”

“…77 In the Taktikon, one of his two major compositions which deals, among other things, with various canonical issues, Nikon addresses the issue of abstention from work on Friday on two occasions: in Logos 14. [87][88][89] In the former passage, after reasserting the canonical prohibition against rest on Saturday aimed against "Judaising" Christians, he mentions some unspecified "others" (ἕτεροι) who "rest on the day of Friday" (ἀργοῦσιν τὴν ἡμέραν τῆς παρασκευῆς) "from the works that we were instructed to do by the Lord" (ἀπὸ ἔργων τῶν ὑποδειχθέντων ἡμῖν παρὰ κυρίου πρὸς ἐργασίαν). To demonstrate erroneousness of their position, Nikon quotes an unidentified "divine scripture" (θείᾳ γραφῇ) that explicitly prohibits this practice.…”

The Syriac Aḥiqar, Its Slavonic Version, and the Relics of the Three Youths in Babylon

“…The same manuscript of the Savina monastery contains as well The Twelve Dreams of Shahaisha and the Eleutherius recension of the Twelve Fridays. I argued elsewhere that these works are also of Syro-Iranian origin and are translated into Slavonic from Syriac directly (for the Eleutherius recension of the Twelve Fridays, I consider the direct translation as the most likely option; anyway, this is a work written in Syriac and unknown in Greek) [LOURIÉ 2012;LOURIÉ 2013]. Such a literary convoy of the Ah< iqar in its earliest Slavonic manuscript is a powerful argument for the Bulgarian and not Russian origin of the Slavonic translation.…”