The first complete concordance to the Syriac New Testament was published in six volumes in 1993. This was a major resource for the scholarly community, filling a need long-noted by Bruce Metzger. Prior to its publication, the only similar resource had been a simple word list compiled in the 18th century. In order to create the concordance, George A. Kiraz worked for three years on an electronic database of Syriac words, which later developed into Beth Mardutho’s online dictionary, SEDRA 3.0. The concordance was the first major work to result from Syriac digital computing and was the first publication to grow from SyrCOM.

The Institute’s website goes live on the University of Cambridge server under George A. Kiraz’s personal account. At the time of its launch, it was the first and only academic website dedicated to Syriac studies. he website was rewritten in 1996 by Thomas Joseph using pure HTML, 2002 by Emily Solomon using PHP, 2010 by Jamey Walters user Joomla, and 2018 by Sunil Persad using WordPress.

The interlinear Comparative Edition of the Syriac Gospels presents an essential comparison of the Syriac Gospels—aligning the Sinaiticus, Curetonianus, Peshiṭta, and Ḥarklean versions into one collection. The Ḥarklean text was prepared by Andreas Juckel and the interlinear edition by George A. Kiraz. The edition was published in a Brill series edited by Bruce Metzger. Sometime after publication it went out of print, yet in 2005, Gorgias Press received the publication rights, and it has been in print and circulation ever since.

One of Beth Mardutho’s unique resources, Beth Gazo offers a reference of Syriac church melodies for congregations around the world. Patriarch Jacob III recorded the traditional melodies for the first time in 1960, and in 1997, Beth Mardutho digitized the tunes as audio files. In 2018, our team developed a mobile app to readily assist priests, deacons, and choirs in learning the many complex melodies of the Syriac tradition. This project meets Beth Mardutho’s goals of preserving Syriac history and culture, and of bridging academics and the Syriac communities. The app is available on Androidand iOS.  

First published in 1998, Hugoye is a leading peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to Syriac studies. The first journal dedicated to Syriac studies, it was envisioned from the beginning to be a fully-electronic, open-source, and peer-reviewed journal. Its content spans 2,000 years and a wide variety of disciplines (from history to computer science and everything in between). Beth Mardutho publishes individual issues online twice per year and the full volume in print annually.

At the turn of the millennium, Beth Mardutho conceived of a groundbreaking idea: creating a digital library for Syriac studies by collecting resources from multiple universities. Princeton Theological Seminary, The Catholic University of America, and Duke University quickly joined the project, and 600 books were scanned. Unfortunately, they could not be disseminated online due to lack of funds. The Syriac studies community had to wait nearly 20 years for a grant from Internet Archive and Princeton Theological Seminary to fully realize the dream of making these books and many others universally accessible online at archive.org.

In 2005, Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent organized a special travel course to Tur Abdin through Beth Mardutho. Fourteen students and professors went on a two-week tour of Turkey that included locations such as Tur Abdin, Harran, Edessa, Kharput, Mardin & Diyarbakır. Every day, experts would give lectures on aspects of Syriac scholarship, and students experienced in situ learning.

Until 2009, Beth Mardutho had been a virtual institute with no formal campus location. George A. Kiraz began dreaming of a physical location that would serve as a hub for Syriac studies; it would merge academic studies with community life. In 2009, the Institute settled in Piscataway and rebranded as Beth Mardutho. The field of Digital Humanities had also emerged as an academic field and would be adopted and developed within the context of Syriac studies.

The Beth Mardutho Research Library was established in 2010 with the intention of creating a large collection of Syriac studies materials. The library consists of collections that belong to various scholars. During this time, the first Hugoye conference was held on campus as an opening celebration on the topic of Libraries in the Syriac Tradition.

Beth Mardutho, in collaboration with numerous contributors and scholars, published the landmark Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage. It was the first of its kind, collecting entries on various topics pertaining to Syriac studies past and present. It details a vast historical record, and it also reflects a contemporary understanding of where the field stands. It is now available online.

In another major landmark, Beth Mardutho is established as a Field Education site for students of Princeton Theological Seminary. With the yearly assistance of graduate interns, projects move forward with greater speed and efficiency, allowing for the Institute to diversify its developments while investing in the academic careers of students.

The Rutgers University Libraries established a partnership with the Institute in 2012, recognizing that access to the resources of Beth Mardutho would significantly enhance the scholarly study of ancient history, the Middle East, languages, and religion all around the world.  

Beth Mardutho expanded its operations in 2014 by holding its first Syriac language summer courses. Fourteen students registered for the first class. Since then, nearly 80 students have successfully completed courses in Beginning and Intermediate Syriac and Christian Arabic to assist in their academic pursuits.

In conjunction with SwiftKey, Beth Mardutho created keyboards for Classical Syriac, Surayt (Turoyo), and Sureth for the app. The Classical Syriac keyboard also includes language prediction using artificial intelligence.