(5) S» older than S* (Resch, Duval ; see Hjelt, p. 95).
(n) C — Si° (Baethgen, Zahn), before the discovery of S'.
(6) C— S'— S'or
(c) ir<^! Z older than 5' (Zahn, Nestle, Hil-
genfeld, Bardenhewer, Gwilliam, Cundber'').
(6) *•— C— 5°— S". So in tlie main Ujelt; S' on the whole a faithful witness of the Old Syr. VS of the 2nd cent., 5° a later recension of it probably from thelirst half of the 2nd cent., formed under the iuHuence of C ; S'' a revision of the old version, which eliminated the influences of C and liecaiiie the Vulgate ; at last S"" in its turn influ- enced (T, which remained in use with the Nes- torians longer than with the Jacobites.
The iiriority of 5* would be certain, if the thesis of Hjelt were proved that S' is not a unity, but that the various Gos]>els were due to diltcrt'iit hands and that nevertheless all were used by C The firet part of his thesis Hjelt seems to have proved. There is a decided diliirence in the vocabulary of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Jolin (.see ji. 9611'.); he may be even ri^,'lit in his sup- position, that the translation of Matthew was the oldest, due to a Jewish Christian (cf. Mt 9'" head <rf tlie synagogue, 23' tephillin and purple xn^jn).' But the second part, that S' was used by C, does not seem to be proved. But in any case S* and C belong to the most important witnesses for the text of the Gosi)p1s.
Arts find Epistles. — Amidst the absorbing interest caused by the discovery of S', little attention has been paid of late to the rest of the Syriac NT, Acts and Epistles. They are known as yet only as parts of S"", but there are indications that for the Acts and the Pauline Epistles also an older version was in existence. And it is of great interest that these two parts, together with the (ioapels, made up the whole of the NT of the Syriac Church ; all the Catholic Epistles, and not only the minor ones, being unknown. This is proved not only by the Doctrine of Addai (ed. rhillips, Lond. 1876, p. 44), where Addai orders: ' But the Law and the Prophets, which you read every day before the people, and the Epistles vf Paul, which Simon Peter sent us from tlie city of Itonie, and the Acts of the Twelve Apostles, which John the son of Zebedee sent us from Ephesus ; these books read ye in the Churches of Christ, and vnth these read not an;/ other, as there is not any other, in which the truth that ye hold is written, except these books which retain vou in the faith to which ye have been called.' 'I'his is corrobor- ated by the quotations of Aphraates, which are restricted to Acts and Paul, to the exclusion of the Catholic Epistles.
• A great old In these studiea would be a Concordance to the Byriac Bible, which waa deuired by I.ftfjarde oa early oa 1S67. A proffitectua of a Concordance of the Pewhitta waa sent out by BenJ. Labareo and Wiil A. Shedd from tlrumia in Oct. 1807, Willi aoiiie 'Specimen pagea'; hut the arrangement waa not ■uch OS to aatiafy the wants of the Htudent, A Syriac Con- cordance in the manner of Hatch. Radpath is one of our needa.
The poasa^res cited by \Vri;.'ht aa references to 1 P 4*9 and 1 Jn 3'24 415 have been shown by Zahn not to refer to these passage! (but the former to Pr ll^i ; the latter to the Gospel of John>
At last there was published in the Studia Sinaitica, No. 1 (p. 11 iV.) from extracts made by J. R. Harris from cod. Syr. R) on Mt. Sinai, a list of the canonical books of the S3'riac Bible, giving for each book and group of books the number of prifuLTa (xtic/ii). ' After the four Gospels (Mat. 2522, Mark 1675, Luke 30S,3, John 1737 [write 1937], total 9218) follows Acts (272U), then 'Paul tlie Apostle ' with a total 5076 for ' the apostle,' immediately followed by the total for 'the holy books, which the holy Church receives.'
There are some errors and confusions in this list ; but aa to the primary importance of it there can be no doubt.
This exclusion of all the Catholic Epistles from the old Sj-riac Canon is further in full agreement with the statement of Leontius on Theodore of Mopsuestia : airrijv re , , . tou fieyoKov 'laKui^ov rrjv ^TricTToXT/i' Kal ray e^iji rdv fiXXw*' diroK'qpuTrcL KaOo- Xi<.ds. He followed in this the older tradition of the Syriac Church. Neither do the Apostolic Constitutions recognize the Catholic Epistles.
See Th. Zahn, Das NT Theodora von Mnpgitestia und der jr.vm'cAf^ Kannn ; Grundrtjiit der Grachichte des iieutest. Kanoni (Leipzig, mill, Sfi): Jiilichcr, Einleitunri in das AT'-'' (Will, § 41) : J. A. liewer, The History of tfte NT Cation in the Syrian Church (Cliicaso, 1901)).
About the middle of the 4th cent., therefore, the Church of Edessa had no Catholic Epistles in its Canon.
But it was not only the contents but the text of its Bible that dillered at that time from &'.
See in Bewer, p. 51, * A comparison of the Acts and Epistles in Aphraates with those of tlie Pesiiitta.' A most significant example is not quoted by Hewer. Matthias in Ac l^a 28 ly cjilled by Apliraates Tubriai ; this is now corroborated by the Syriac version of the Kcclfsi^isticat History of Eiisebius (see Tt/ vii. 2, p. V ; the same version called AgaMu of Ac 11 Addai). In 1 Co 1.5'1 Aphraates teatities for the reading of ti, Bv tor that of B.