After the first school in the Franciscans in Aleppo, he joined at the age of twelve years to the Aleppininan Basilians, where he took his monastic vows in 1936 and was named Neophytos.
In the following years 1950-1953 Edelby worked as a professor at St. Anne, from 1953-1959 for the Aleppinian Basilians in Lebanon, and from 1959 as the personal assistant of the Patriarch Maximos IV Sayegh.
On March 6, 1968 Neophytos Edelby was appointed Archbishop of Aleppo and served in that office until his death on June 10, 1995.
During his tenure, he assisted as co-consecrator at: Pope John Paul II appointed Archbishop Edelby in 1986 member of the Catechism of the Catholic Church Commission.
Edelby also edited the works of the Christian Arab poet Sulayman al-Ghazzi whose biography he reconstructed out of his verses.