Tlie following are points of comparison with the noted earh- MSS. :
It often agrees with B, 0, D, and the old Latin version before it was corrected by Jerome, especially its MSS. a, b, c ; with D most of all. Very seldom does it coincide with A alone. Thus in Matt, xix, 9 the words kui 6 uTroAeXK- fif 11)1' 7a/ii'i(Ta9, /xoixuTai are omitted, as in D, a, b, e, ff ; and to ver. 2S a long passage is added which is only in D, a, b, c, d. It omits xvi, 2, 3, with B and two other uncial MSS. ; though the old Italic has them, as well as D. In xiii, 55, it has Jmeph with B, C, the old Italic, Vulgate, and other authorities.
3. Hebrew Original of Matthew. — It is not needful for very great attention to be paid to the phraseology of the Curetonian Syriac in order to see that the Gospel of Matthew differs in mode of expression and various other particulars from what we find in the rest. This may lead us again to look at the testimony of Bar-Sa- lilii ; he tells us. when speaking of this version of Mat- thew, " there is found occasionally a Syriac copy viade out of the Hebrew;" we thus know that the opinion of the Syrians themselves in the I2th centurj' was that this translation of Matthew was not made from the Greek, but from the Hebrew original of the evangelist : such, too, is the judgment of Dr. Cureton : " this Gospel of JMatthew appears at least to be built upon the original Aramaic text, which was the work of the apostle him- self" {Preface to Syriac Gospels, p. vi).
We know from Jerome that the Hebrew Matthew had "^WCt where the Greek has iwiovrjiov. We do not find that word here, but we read for both iTriovniov and tTi)j.tepov at the end of the verse, "constant of the day." This might have sprung from the interpreta- tion, " morrow by morrow," given to "ini2 ; and it may be illustrated by Old- Test, passages, e. g. Numb, iv, 7. Those who think that if this Syriac version had been made from Matthew's Hebrew we ought to find ^ITD here forget that a translation is not a verbal trans- fusion.
We know from Eusebius that Hegesippus cited from the gospel according to the Hebrews, and from the Syriac. Now in a fragment of Hegesippus (Kouth, i, 219) there is the quotation, /ia/ca|Otoi oi 6(pBa\fioi vi^iwv o'l /SXettoitec Kai to. ihra vfiutv to. ciKovovTa, words which might be a Greek rendering from Matt, xiii, 16, as it stands in this Sv'riac gospel as we have it, or prob- ably also in the Hebrew work of the apostle himself.
From these and other particulars, Dr. Cureton con- cludes that in this version Matthew's gospel was trans- lated from the apostle's Hebrew (Syro-Chaldaic) origi-
nal, although injured since by copyists or revisers. The same view is maintained by the abbe Lehir {Etude, etc. [Par. 185UJ); but it is vigorously rejected by Ewald {Jahrb. d. bibl. Wissenschaft, vol. ix) and man\' later critics.
C. The Philoxenian Siji'iac Vey-sion, and its Revision by Thomas of JIarkel. — I'liiloxenus, or Xenaias, bishop of Hierapolis or Mabug at the beginning of the 6th century (who was one of those Monophysites that sub- scribed the Hcnoticon of the emperor Zeno), caused Poly- carp, his chorepiscopus, to make a new translation of the New Test, into Syriac. Tliis was executed in A.D. 508, and it is generally termed Philoxenian from its promoter. In one passage Bar-Hebraeus says that it was made in the time of Philoxenus; in his Chronicon that it was done by his desire ; and in another place of the same work that it was his own production. Moses Agheteus (Assemani, Biblioth. Oriental, ii, 83) states that its author was Polycarp, rural bishop of Philoxenus. In an Arabic MS., quoted by Assemani {ibid, ii, 23), Philoxenus is said by a Jacobite author to have trans- lated the four Gospels into Syriac.
1, History. — This version has not been transmitted to us in the form in which it was first made; we only possess a revision of it, executed by Thomas of Harkel in the following century {The Gospels, A.D. 616). Po- cocke, in 1630, gives an extract from Bar-Salibi, in which the version of Thomas of Harkel is mentioned; and though Pococke did not know irhat version Thomas had made, he speaks of a Syriac translation of the Gos- pels communicated to liim by some learned man whom he does not name, which, from its servile adherence to the Greek, was no doubt the Harklean text. In the Bibliotheca Orientalis of Assemani there were further notices of the work of Thomas; and in 1730 Samuel Palmer sent from the ancient Amida (now Diarbekir) Syriac MSS. to Dr. Gloucester Kidley, in which the version is contained. Thus he had two copies of the Gospels, and one of all the rest of the New Test., except the end of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apoca- lypse. No other MSS. appear to have yet come to light which contain any of this version beyond the Gospels. From the subscriptions we learn that the text was re- vised by Thomas with three (some copies say tico) Greek MSS. One Greek copy is similarly mentioned at the close of the Catholic epistles.