The publication is devoted to a Maronite theologian ʿAbdallah Bin Buṭrus Bin Isḥāq At-Tūlāwī and his treatise «Mirrors of Souls» on the mental prayer. A brief biography and works of the author are provided. A detailed description of the surviving manuscripts of the «Mirror of Souls» is being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time: the Arabic and Garshuni texts of the introduction and prologue and its translation is offered. 

In Letter 47, written by the Catholicos of the Church of the East Mār Timothy I, important information was preserved about the rewriting of the Syro-Hexapla manuscript, carried out under his leadership, which foregrounded this monument for his Church (as it is well known, Syro-Hexapla arose and was originally used in Western Syrian Church). Thanks to the difficult process of rewriting the Syro-Hexapla manuscript, which forced Mār Timothy to directly correct the work of scribes for a long time, he himself saw that the number of biblical books, as well as the content of biblical texts, mainly focused on the Septuagint and other translations of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek in version of Origen’s Hexapla (meaning the translations of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion) differs in many ways from the Peshiṭta version of the Old Testament, which is mainly oriented towards the Masoretic text. Moreover, Psalms 151–155 have been preserved in the Church of the East. As a result, Mār Timothy saw that the 151st psalm existed in the Syro-Hexapla (which is not found in the Peshiṭta manuscripts), but at the same time he did not find biblical textual evidence for other psalms. All this influenced the emergence of criticism of the text in the mind of Timothy I and, obviously, the opinion that there should have been an older version of the Old Testament. Thanks to this, a story appeared (it is doubtful that this was a real story) that during the life of Timothy, biblical manuscripts from the time of the prophet Jeremiah were discovered in a cave near Jericho. So, in this article, the key topics of the Letter 47 were analyzed (I mean such as Syro-Hexapla, found biblical manuscripts, biblical quotations). The main attention is paid to textual criticism and other problems of the Old Testament. After the research part of the article, I bring to the attention of readers my own translation of the Letter 47 from Syriac into Russian. 

The article deals with Ambrosiaster’s solution of the problem of the correlation of God’s foresight and the freedom of the human will. In the course of his reflections, the Interpreter suggests a theological formula that becomes «winged» for the subsequent Latin tradition. It is known that at the time of Ambrosiaster (late 4th — early 5th century), this issue was quite acute. The study of Ambrosiaster’s ideas on this topic is also interesting because he wrote somewhat earlier than St. Augustine and influenced him. The article presents the reflections of Ambrosiaster on the question of the calling of God and the falling away of some persons from among the «chosen». The interpreter not only offers abstract reflections on this subject, but additionally illustrates them with examples from the Holy Scriptures. 

This article touches upon one of the main and problematic topics, which is connected with the fall of man, his responsibility for the choice made, the knowledge of good and evil and his mortality. The author, using selected Jewish interpretations as an example, examines their interpretation of the plot of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the subsequent fall of people from the Orthodox point of view. Based on the studied Jewish literature, the author of the article concluded that a number of interpretations are consistent with the patristic understanding and the text of Holy Scripture. Other thoughts of the Jewish commentators can be considered interesting and sometimes not contradictory to the Orthodox interpretation, but not reflected in the Bible and the Holy Fathers, which, however, can be taken into account. There are also provisions that contradict the Orthodox exegetical tradition. 

The article for the first time considers the development of the Arabic-speaking Samaritan eschatology, which crystallized in the form of comments on Samaritan Pentateuch in the 11^th — 19^th centuries. The author points out the quantitative and qualitative growth of textual evidence attracted by three authoritative Samaritan authors (ʾAbū al-Ḥasan al-Ṣūrī, Ibrāhīm al-ʿAyyah and Izḥāq ibn ʿAmram). An assumption is made about the gradual nature of the legalization of the doctrine of the soul immortality and posthumous retribution in Samaritan theological discourse, which developed completely at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The analysis of manuscript sources is preceded by a brief review of Rabbinical and early Christian treatises, which allow us to conclude about the «eschatological nihilism» of the Hellenistic era Samaritans and to designate the terminus post quem of their descendants’ theology about the afterlife. 

This paper provides an overview of research for 2021–2023 dedicated to Michael Psellos as a theologian, philosopher, historian and historical character. In particular, a special issue of the Romanian journal «Theologia Orthodoxa», the monograph by G. Diamantopoulos «Hermeneutics in the “Theologica” and “Allegorica” by Michael Psellos», as well as a number of other articles published in recent years, are analyzed.