The Four Gospels.— <i. ) Trs.from the Syr.— The, oldest representative of this class, perhaps the oldest monument of Arab. Christianity, is the tr. of the Gospels in a MS formerly belonging to the Convent of Mar Saba near Jerus., now Cod. Vati- ranus Arab. 13, called by Tischendorf ar™' (Greg. cod. 101), and generally assigned to the 8th cent.t From some Gr. Iambics at the end of the MS we learn that it originally belonged to a certain Daniel of Emesa, and contained the Psalter, the Gospels, the Acts, and all the Epp. ; of these only fragments of the Gospels J and the Pauline Epp. now remain. The style is somewhat paraphrastic, but internal evidence conclusively shows that the Gospels have been tr. not directly from the Gr., but from the Syriac Vulgate (Peshitta).§
This free tr. from the Syr. Vulg. was probably made in some locality where Syr. had been the ecclesiastical language, and seems to have been
• Ibn lahic about the middle of the 8th cent. a.d. (Wiisten- feld'8 Jbn HUhdm, p. \hO) quotes Jn I62)-16i as a prophecy con- cerning Mohammed ; but the words are only a rout,'h rendering from tne * Palestinian * Syr. version, not a quotation from an already existing Arab. tr. See Ouidi, Ew. p. 6.
t The only accurate description of Vat. Arab. IS Ib In Ouidi, Etw. p. 8. Considerable extracts from the MS are given in Soholz, Krit. ReiKp, pp. llS-12-1.
t Mt 10»?-middle of 26, Mk 51!>-I68a, Lk TH-bepnning of 10.
i E.g. in the account of the Temptation (Lk 4' ii), Syr. Vulg. and ar. rot exat^tly agree in the names of the Evil One. In w.l. »• « and 'a a i.iL$akK is rendered by Syr. Vulg. 'the
Accuser • J »r. mil has J lay*!' 'the Slanderer," and In t.i
— »)'^l ^v,3y*j' 'the calumniating Slanderer' (for the
rendering of jjva^^' see 8 Ti 83 In all Arab. VSS). But
In T.» Syr. Vulg. has 'Satan,' soar. vat. has \\-' t* )' n;» Arab. VSS not derived from the Syr. have in aU these passages j^^^u-u-' ( = 3.«^«A«t), but In v.8 they insert
.U2J— * w to render the Gr. rmrmii^ a word here omitted
by both Syr. Vulg. and ar. vat.
it is worth noticing in this connexion that Syr. Vulg. and ar. vat alone among critical authorities agree in inserting the name ' Jesus' in Lk 4^'.
Ar. vat has been wrongly cited {e.g. by Tischendort) as omittitw the 'last twelve verses' of Mk. It is owing to aw.i- dental loss of leaves that the MS breaks off jiut be/are tht end
of Mk 168, thus: — Ujl^ U^^ \j.J^ S^t jJLi Jj
u Prof. Giiidi has been kind enough to ascertain for this article.
soon discarded at Mar Saba for a mors literal version made directly from the Greek. In other words, the Gospel text of ar. vat was already obsolete by the 9th cent. A.D. No other Arabic version can claim such a high antiquity.*
Another tr. from the Syr. Vulg. is found in cod. Tisch. 12 at Leipzig (Greg. cod. 75), a bilingual Syr. -Arab. MS of the 10th cent., brought to Europe by Tischendorf from the Syrian Convent of St. Mary Deipara in the Nitrian desert. A few leaves are at the British Museum (addl. 14467). This MS has been fully described by Gildemeister. The tr. keeps closely to Syr. Vulg., but some renderings recall the phraseology of ar. vat, e.g.
s.
Jjib ^ fj^ in Mt lO'"'- for 'ia not worthy
of me.' This idiomatic phrase is not used in the later Arab. VSS.
Here may be noticed the Arab. VS of Tatian'a Diatessaron, which has been edited in full from two MSS at Rome by Ciasca (Eng. tr. by Hamlyn HUl). This VS was made, in the early part of the 11th cent., by the well-known scholar Abu'l P'araj ibn et-Tayyib from a form of the Syriac Diatessaron in which the text had been almost wholly assimilated to Syr. Vulg. It is therefore nearly worthless as an authority for the text, though most valuable for recovering the arrange- ment of Tatian's Harmony.
(ii. ) Trs.from the Gr. — An Arab. tr. made directly from the Gr. appears in some MSS of the 9th cent., such as cod. K. ii. 31, in the Propaganda at Rome, and the fragments of Tischendorf 's 'Lec- tionary ' now at Leipzig (Greg. cod. 76). Both MSS come from Mar Saba.f Very similar to these is the Sinai MS Arab. 75.t These MSS have the Gr. rlrXoi and liturgical notes. They are perhaps ultimately derived from a bilingual Gr.-Arab. uncial MS generally quoted as O*", of which only four leaves remain, one in its original home at the Convent of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai, and three in the collection of Bp. Porphyry. §
(iii. ) Trs.from the Coptic. — Most MSSof the Copt. (Bohairic) NT are accompanied by an Arab. VS. Amon" these cod. Vat. Copt. 9, ^v^itten in 1202 A.D. (Greg. cod. Copt. 30) seems to have been used as a kind of standard text.ll We shall see later on that the text of this MS is the ultimate source of all the printed edd. of the Gospels in Arabic.
(iv.) The two Eclectic Bevisions. — None of the Arab, texts hitherto considered have been in any sense an official VS, and they present all the con- fusing variety natural in such independent pro- ductions. The need of a more fixed type, and one which took account of all three great national Vulgates of the E., — the Gr., the Syr., and the Copt.,^was felt by the 13tb cent., especially in Egypt, where Arabic had quite supplanted the native dialect.