• There U no cround for the statement which U sonietimea made (for instance by Jiilicher, EirUeitimg, S S,) thai he 'burned' the copies.
mentary is again preserved only in translation (in Armenian) ; it was used by Aphraates, and few direct quotations have been preserved by Synao le\ico"-raphersand commentators: these have been collected by Hall, Harris, Goussen. Some help to- wards answering the question was given when, in addition to the Syriac NT, known since older tinies, there came in 1858 the version of the Gospels dia- covered by Cureton, and in 1892 that found on Mt. Sinai by Mrs. A. S. Lewis, and edited in 1894 by Bensly, liurkitt, and Harris. But, on the other hand, the question became the more complicated.
(c) The history of these discoveries cannot he told here ; suffice it to say, that of the fragments published by Cureton (Remains of a very antient recension of the Four Gospels in Synac, hitlierto ■unknown in Europe, London, 1858),* the Gospel of Matthew has the very title used above liy Itabliula, 'Gospel of the Separate, and that in the Sinai Gospels the same expression is used in the subscription. _ m ■.- v n-
[In what follows we designate latian by tt., Cureton's Gospels by 5% the Sinai Gospels by «-• the common Syr. VS called Feshitta (Kija-.??) by'Sf],
(1) KIJDTS, to Which supply K1?P33, means 'the eimple,' i.t. the simple version. It is first used, so far as known at present, in Ma™oretic IISS of the 9th and 10th ';':"%"}^^"^,f'^: tinction to the Uarolensis ; and in Moses bar Cephas (t913) m op,«rion t^ the Syro-llexaplaris. The latter ^'ys i ' One must know that there are in Syriac two translations of the OT . the one this N.-lD'fS in which we read, was made from Hebrew int<; S^ riac ; the other, that of the Seventy-two, from Greek ■ (see U'rl p 229 f.). On the pronunciation, spelluig, and min- ing of 111^ name (PAMUd, simplified to Peskito), see the Lit.
''TaHts'ori^in'and the spread ot its <«^ f %?™% °'«™"; Till 1S42 the Peshito was the only known older feyr. \ S of the Rihli ■ it iq still held bv O. H. Owilliam to be the oldest (see I 'rfii B^iS i^ 151 1 ['.A Syriac biblical MS n,ui. 47 9 [•The materials for the criticism of the Pesluto NT 1 . ;f ^"J- Times Jan. 1895, 157 tl. C The new Syriac Gospels ) ■ Cnt. h-v ian 18% 14-22 ('Communication on the Lewis Palimpsest, the'Curetonian Pragmients, and the Peshitta'); Tht O^ord M,a7eoTafte=a^cri,icis,n 0/ the NT held atXew Collet onilav fi, 1SH7, Lond. 1897). His view is shared by A. Bonus, who th iiks SP 'scarcely later than the latter half of the second century • With this contrast the statement of Burkitt (JTh^t Tmy-l confess that I am uncon%-inced that what we call the NT Peshitta was in existence in S. Ephraem 8 day, and I bdieve that we owe both its production and its vi<=^."°"» reception to the organizing energy of the great Rabbula. bishop of Erlcssa from 411-435 A.D.).' t
The following answers to the above question have been given : — „ . . . « n .,
(1) Abb6 P. Martin: S" 'is a revision of the Peshito made with the help of a MS closely re- sembling Codex Bezir. The Curetonian recension dates from the end of the 7th or the beginning of the 8th cent., probably from this last period. It never had much vogue. Its author was probably Jacob of Edessa [t 703]' {Introduction a la cnti'iue textuelle du NT, Paris, 1883). The latter hypo- thesis may be dismissed at once.
(2) Gwilliam (Bonus): S° and S' were not the ori"in of S" ; 5° is more modern than S" {trit. Eel 1S96, p. 19); Rabbula intemled that copies of ''I' should be substituted for C (p. 21); but it mi"ht be, probably was, difficult to procure copies of "the Peshitta, in obedience t^ Rabbula s order The terra Mephnrreshg used by Rabbula would easilv become a title for copies subsequently made. ' Are S" and 5° relics of copies made by order ot
Rabbula?' . . i, „..
The position of S" is of great importance, because
it is, as Sanday styled it, ' the sheet-anchor of the
• The edition Is out of print ; a new edition by F. O. B"';'''"' •The Curetonia? Svriac Gospels, re-edited together with th.
readings of the Siniitic CodeJ, S"'^ V'7"'t"r Ken*? IS'' 894 advertTsed by the Camh. Univ. Press (.lcar(.-»«!/ Sept. 29, 1894, D 233b • JT-ASt, i. 569), is approaching completion. ,„„«,
•^'t Coi^ip w-ith thU the statement of the present wnter/P/JB' XV. tlSws) on the work of Rabbula that »e might b. Inclined to see it8 result in S« reep. S 1 - S^J-
SYRIAC VERSIO^'S
SYRLVC VERSIONS
647
theory of Burgon-Mi.ler on the textual criticism of the NT. See, further, p. 740''.
(3) S' — S° — S' are three recensions of one and the same version, and this is their liistorical order (adopted by many, for instance Allen at the Oxford Debate). S' — »' — S" is imimssible, equally impos-
aible is the genealogy S'"'^ -,.
(4) S' — S° — C Conyheare : ' I believe scholars are bejrinning to reco^iize that Tatian . . . used tlie Ciiretonian version of tlie Gospels, whicli in turn rested on the new Syriac ' [Academy, Jan. 1-2, 1895]. S" also older than iC (Burkitt, Holzhey, Bewer).