Perhaps it is possible to obtain some light on the origin of the Lat. Bible from a different direction. What other texts are usually found in its company? The answer is not far to seek. A glance at the apparatus criticus of any of the larger edd. of NT shows us an almost constant grouping of the OL MSS with Ὁ (Cod. Bezie), some other Gr.-Lat. MSS, and the Syr. VSS. That is to say, the OL MSS form an important branch of the authorities for the so-called ‘ Western’ text of NT.7
Now Hort, whose authority is unrivalled on a question of this kind, in speaking of the term * Western,’ says:** ‘It has become evident that readings of this class were current in ancient times in the East as well as the West, and probably to a great extent originated there. On a aaa we are disposed to suspect that the ‘“‘ Western” text took its rise in North-Western Syria or Asia
* See a concise of evidence for the prevalence of Greek at Rome in Sanday and Headlam’s Romana, pp. lii-liv. A masterly and convincing discussion of this subject in Caspari, Quellen zur Gesch. des Taufsymbols, Bd. iii. See esp. pp. 236-288, 303 ff.
t See Sanday, Academy, May 11, 1889, who quotes Maunde Thompson in favour of Italy. Corssen, GGA, 1839, i. p. 813, thinks it derives its origin from the ‘ hohen Norden.’
: ed piper, oa ose 2, p. 202. Thielmann, ἐδ. viii. ᾿ς Ῥ. . (import. parallels with youn, Seneca and Colum- ella, both of Spanish origin). Ae!
§ See Sittl, Bursian-Muller’s Jahresbericht, Ixviil. p. 246. Of. Note by Mommsen, Provinces of Rom. Emp. (Eng. tr.) ii. 843 ff.
" See Sittl, Die lokalen Verschiedenheiten der lat.
. 146 fF. OL Bibl. Texts, ii. Addenda, p. 189. Kroll, Rhein,
‘us. lii. 569-590.
J See art. NT Text.
** Introduction, p. 108.
LATIN VERSIONS, THE OLD Minor, and that it was soon carried to Rome, and thence spread in different directions to N. Africa and most of the countries of Europe.’ Already E. Ranke (Par Palimpsestorum Wirceburgens. p. 432), in discussing the origin of the Wtrzburg Palimpsest of OT, had concluded from the use of the word ‘legati’ for ἡγεμόνες (Gn 36% et al.) that its birthplace was to be sought in one of the Imperial provinces which were governed by ‘legati.’* Now Syria is virtually the only one of those which could well satisfy the requirements of the case. But this assumption has some valid reasons in its favour. It is an undoubted fact that here and there throughout OT the OL agrees in a remark- able way with the Luc. recension of the LXX, a recension intimately connected with Antioch in Syria.t Of course this recension was much later than the origin of the OL, but one of the marked elements in Lucian’s text is also present here and there in the OL. Kaulent also had pointed out that the trs. of the OL seemed to have an accurate knowledge of Heb. or Aramaic. This would most easily be accounted for by assuming them to be situated either in or near or in intimate connexion with the Rom. province of Syria, which included Palestine. But, further, there is the extraordinary agreement, even in rare and isolated readings, of the early Syr. VSS with the OL.§ Accordingly, putting those various threads of evidence together, we had been led to the hypothesis that in Syria, and probably at Antioch, a most important re- ligious and theological centre, we must look for the home of the original Lat. Version as well as of the ‘Western’ text. Since coming to this con- clusion, we find that the same theory is supported by most powerful arguments in a brilliant review ot Rendel Harris’s Study of Cod. Beze in the Guardian of May 18 and 25, 1892, by Sanday.|| Let us give the briefest summary of his main conclusions.
In order to explain the relations of the OL MSS among themselves and to the Syriac VSS, he believes that the starting-point must have been not a single MS bilingual ** or other but a workshop of MSS—that at the very threshold of the Lat. VSS there must have been several MSS copied in near proximity to each other, and affected by allied, but yet different, Gr. texts. He then asks in what class the version was likely to arise, and finds the answer in the ‘notarii,’ pablic copyists who had not only to do with copying but with translating. ‘And where could this class of copy- ists congregate most thickly but in the suite of
the governor of one of the most important pro-
* This fact is also noted in an article in the Guardian, May 25, 1892, by Prof. Sanday.
t See Ceriani, Le recensiont dei LXX 6 la versione latina detta Itala (Nota .. . letta al R. Istituto Lombardo .« . . 18th Feb. 1886), esp. pp. 4-6.
t Gesch. der Vulg. p. 140 ff.
§ Surely this cannot be accounted for on the supposition of Zahn (Gesch. des Canons, i. p. 422), that NT was a gift brought by Tatian to his fellow-countrymen from Rome. It is difficult to imagine that the Christians of Syria, so long the very centre of diffusion for the Faith, had to depend ona chance occurrence for their version of the Scriptures, although, at the same time, the intimate connexion of Tatian with the earliest stages of the Syrian Bible cannot be doubted.