[3][2] According to the Chronicle of Siirt and the historian Mari ibn Sulayman, the Persian king Kavad I ordered all the religious communities in Persia to submit written descriptions of their beliefs.
[6] Elishaʿ was the author of several apologetic, didactic and expository works in Syriac, but only two short excerpts from his commentary on Job survive, quoted by Ishoʿdad of Merv.
[2][8] This last comment may mean either that he added an ending to an unfinished work by Theodore or merely that he finished its translation into Syriac.
ʿAbdishoʿ and the Chronicle both record that he wrote an ʿelltā (cause, explanation) of the mawtbā (Arabic: al-mawtib), probably meaning the academic session of the school.
[11] ʿAbdishoʿ also attributes to him an ʿelltā of the martyrs, a "book of thanksgivings", a poem celebrating Shemʿon of Germakh and a commentary on the Chronicon of Eusebius of Caesarea.
[15] Elishaʿ's work for Kavad is described by the Chronicle of Siirt as covering the divine essence, the Trinity, the Hexameron, the creation of angels, the fall of Satan and the Parousia.