GREGENTIOS OF HIMYARITIA (St Gregory of Taphar).

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General Introduction to the Book of Gregory of Himyaritia; A rare Church Slavonic manuscript of the Dialexis by St Gregentios, Archbishop of Himyaritia, the ancient region spanning parts of modern Yemen, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. No manuscript copies have been traced in commerce, and only four examples of the printed Greek editions (1586; 1603) have appeared in the past 50 years.Originally composed in Greek and completed in Constantinople in the 10th century, the Dialexis (Disputation with the Jew Ervan) was translated into Slavonic in the 14th century. Gregentios (d. 552; later known as Gregory of Taphar or Dhofar), appointed bishop at Alexandria, travelled to Najran to aid local Christians persecuted by the Jewish king Dhu Nuwas. The Dialexis depicts Gregentios as triumphing in a theological disputation with Rabbi Ervan. Dhu Nuwas appears in Ibn Ishaq's Sirah of the Prophet Muhammad, in the section on the beginning of Christianity in Najran, with Dhu Nuwas dying 40 years before the "year of the elephant".Three passages (fols. 79r, 134v, 223v) allude to the rise of Islam, likely incorporated into the Greek text from seventh- and eighth-century Caliphate-era sources by the tenth-century compiler. One interprets Isaiah 60:5-6 - "the herds of camels going to Jerusalem" - as foretelling Ishmael's descendants who would believe in the future; another links the "hated Agarenes" to early Christian-Muslim conflict in Arabia; a third implies, through Rabbi Ervan's position, an Arab rath

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