Bishop Ishoʿyahb wrote one letter, preserved to us, to Babay The Great after a long career fighting for Nestorian Orthodoxy. Luckily we own all of it (Epistle 1 is what we're short on). Scott-Moncrieff did well with "I"; it's barely worth translating further.
As to the purpose of this letter: it reads like an exhortation for Mar Babay to take up the Catholicate or at least not to retire. External enemies are stalking the Earth like ravening lions, as they always are in the Christian mind; now, some Nestorians grumble internally as well. Ishoʿyahb presents himself Babay's loyal son. That Ishoʿyahb hasn't left this to the Metropolitans, and hasn't claimed any backup from his superiors, is a sad habit of this man, always going over their heads. Still, it doesn't seem like the sort of letter one would write if a Catholicos ruled from the Mahoze. Ishoʿyahb of Gdala is bishop still - maybe not even a metro'.
This #2 is about the most firmly-datable letter in the stack: AD 628, under Shiroë.
FIEY 4/16/23: E. II is summarised ch. III, p. 316 in French.
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