Over the course of the programme’s eight years, our three project teams will work together in order to produce critical editions of the four versions of the Life of Theodore of Edessa, along with English translations, and detailed commentary, with an emphasis on the narratological aspects of the texts as well as the transformations of the story from one version to another.
The Arabic text is as yet unpublished; the Greek version was edited but with limited evidence and no apparatus of sources, more than a hundred years ago; similarly old and outdated are the editions of the Slavonic versions; finally, renewed work is necessary for that part of the text which originates in Georgian. The new editions, translations and commentaries will make explicit how the Byzantine and Byzantinizing storytellers remade the legend to resonate with their audiences by responding to shifts in communal and personal anxieties, some of which remain broadly relevant to us today.