The first revised ed. of this kind was made about 1250 A.D. atAIexandriabyHibat Allah ibn el-" Assfll. This work, of which several MSS survive, consists of a revised text of the Gospels with various reail- ings from the Gr., the Syr., and the Copt. IT It was, however, found too cumbrous for a popular VS, and towards the end of the 13th cent, was
• Some of the missing portions of ar. vat In Mt have been supplied in a hand of the 10th cent. From the style and vociiliulary they seem to have been copied from the original MS before the leaves were lost.
t Ouidi, Evv. pp. 9, 10 ; ZDMQ vill. 686. For later develop- ments of this VS, see Ouidi, Ew. pp. 11. 12.
} Mrs. Gibson, Cat. <tf Arab. MSS, frontispiece.
5 The Arab, text of the Sinai leaf is printed by Dr. Rendel Harris in Mrs. Lewis' Cat. of Syr. .MSS, Appx. p. lOS. It seems to be the conjugate of one of Bp. Porphyry's leaves.
|l Ouidi, Ew. pp. 17, '23.
H For details of Ibn el- AssAl's work, see Ouidi, Ew. pp. 18-22, and Prof. .Macdonald in Uartjard Seminary Raord, April 1893.
ARABIC VERSIONS
ARABIC VERSIONS
137
snperseded by tlie modem 'Alex. Vulgate.' Tliis IB little more thiin the te.xt of Vat. Cojit. 9, filled out by inserting: from the Syr. or the Gr. those numerous passages where the ancient Copt. VS did not contain words found in Syr. Vulg. and in the Gr. text of the Middle Ages. In many MSS of this Alex. Vulg. (ar. alex.) these passages are indicated by marginal notes.*
Besides these main types of text there are several later MSS of the Gospels in Arabic in which the language has been corrected or em- bellished. Guidi (Evv. p. 29) also mentions some late MSS from Spain which appear to present a tr. of the Latin Vulgat«.
The printed edd. of the Gospels in Arabic are all forms of the Alex. Vulg. Of these the chief are the Rom. ed. of 1591, the ed. of Erpenius (Leyden, 1616), and Lagarde's ed. of the Vienna MS (Greg. cod. 36). The last is the only ed. containing the marginal notes which belong to ar. alex. Some edd. of SjT. Vulg. for use among the Maronites, of which the most accessible is the Paris reprint of 1824, contain also a Carshflnl VS (ar. cjirsh). This, however, is simply ar. alex. slightly modified to suit the Peshi^ta.
The Pauline Epistles. — (1.) Tr a. from the. Gr. of the fourteen Epp. of St. Paul are found in ar. vat (8th or 9tli cent., see above), and in a Sinai MS (ar. «n.-Paul) of the 9th cent., the text of which was published bj' Mrs. Gibson in 1894. At. vat has the so-called 'Euthalian' sections, etc. + ; ar. sin, which is quite independent of ar. vat, is remarkable for having no ' Euthalian ' matter, but nevertheless it represents the late An- tiochian text mixed with a few good readings.^
(ii. ) A Tr. from the Syr. is found in a MS now at St. Petersburg (Greg. cod. 134), brought by Ti- schendorf ' from the E.' It is dated 892 A.D., and appears to have been rendered from a Nestorian copy of the Veshitt.1,§ but with glosses and addi- tions like the Gospel text in ar. x'rxt. From the VS found in this M^S (ar. pet) is ultimately derived that of the printed edd. of Erpenius, and the Car- shQni ed. of 1S24. The latter agrees very closely with B. M. Hfirl. 5474 (dated 1288 A.D.).
The Acts and Catholic Epistle.s. — No direct Arab. tr. from the Gr. is known for the Acts and major Cath. Epp. The chief edd. (ar. erp and ar. carsh) seem to be, as in the Gospels, an eclectic mixture of the Copt., the Gr., and the Syr. In the disputed Cath. Epp., which had no place in the
• Oiildi, Em. pp. 22-24. He also points out(p. 35 II.) the highly Iraportjinl fact that the lat« text from which most MSS of the Etn. V8 have been corrupted is none other than ar. alex.
t For Bo (Scholz, Krit. Ueise, p. 122) the nuniltera are : 6 sect., 19 capp., 34 («*) quot. from OT, and 920 ttichi. Scholz also tranacrihes the w-Iiole of Phileni and a few other paasagVB. As ar. vat has l)een wrongly quoted In 1 Tim 3^^ for
M(, I erive the whole passage (from Scbolz) : — i ^' Isjk. •
^Si\ ^^^ j.jJii y>
aU\
Th* tact that the two dots of } m never written In this MB
to have prevented Schol from reco^lslng that ^ j.*.^
wj' simply represents luriffum. Scholz's t«xt has ,_5Ji t
(for i^AjV
: See, t.g., Ro 1ft', Oal 61».
I Si-e ^D.V'i viii. .^84 ; Dolltzsch, Bthrafr, pp. 7ft4-7fl8, who quotes the exlraor.tinary retKJerinjr of ar. p^t in He 2* : and so fu vit/ioul Hint, irho hatt utiili-d JJiiiutr(f with him aa a templf. tntilrii drath /or ail mmx. The variant x*""* *'•*»' 's not found In Svr. Vuljf. except in Nestorian copies. In ar. erp this is emi.nd(Kl to exjircss x^fi'^' "***'• *"d in ar. v&nh we have ' Gnd 6lf Uis grace,' as Syr. Vul^. Se** (iildeniciHtcr, p. 1 (n.), who brin^fs forwar<l He .V* as another Instance where ar. erp and ar. carah have a corruption of the text of ar. pet.