RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Bible Versions
The Armenian version (see VI) is again of great importance, also the so-called Syro-Hexaplar version made in the year 616-617 by Paul, bishop of Telia (Constantine in Mesopotamia), in a cloister near Alexandria with the utmost fidelity from manuscripts which went back by few intervening links to the very copies of the Hexapla and Tetrapla of Origen. The greater is the pity, therefore, that only fragments have been preserved, and that especially the codex which Andre du Maes (Masius, d. 1573) had in his hands, containing the historical books (including part of Deuteronomy and Tobit) , has been lost, and that only a part of this Bible (poetical and prophetic books) is still preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, hence called Codex Syro-hexaplaris Ambrosianus (published in a photolithographic facsimile edition by A. Ceriani as vol. vii of the Monumenta sacra et profana, Milan, 1874). The fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, and I and II Kings have been most carefully edited in the last work of Paul de Lagarde, Bibliotheca Syriacce a Paulo de Lagarde collectce quae ad philologiam sacram pertinent (Gottingen, 1892). For earlier works on this version cf. E. Nestle, Litteratura Syriaca (reprinted from his Syrische Grammatik, Berlin, 1888), 29-30; cf. also T. S. Rordam, Libri Judicum et Ruth (Copenhagen, 1859-61), and F. Field, Otium Norvicense, i (Oxford, 1864), and his edition of the Hexapla (Oxford, 1875). There are also fragments in the special dialect called Syro-Palestinian, on which cf. Swete, Introduction, 114, and F. C. Burkitt, in JTS, ii, 174 sqq.
Up to the present day in several Churches these versions based on the Septuagint have been retained and even in those where they have been replaced by translations from the original, as in the Latin West through Jerome or in modern Europe through the Reformation, the influence of the Septuagint is still very marked; note, for instance, the names of the Biblical books in the latest of these revisions, the English Revised Version.
The versions just mentioned are one of the three
sources which exist for the recovery of the true
text of the Septuagint, the first class being, of
7. Manu- course> tne Greek manuscripts still
scripts. 'n existence, the third the quotations of ancient writers. A list of the more ancient manuscripts of the Septuagint was given in the eighteenth century by Stroth in Eichhorn's Repertorium (Leipsic, 1777 sqq.), vols, v sqq.; the most complete list was formerly that in the prefaces of Holmes-Parsons; then in the prolegomena of Tischendorf and in Lagarde 's Genesis Grace ; but reference may now be made to Swete, Introduction, pp. 122-170. A few remarks on some of them may be offered.
Thefour great uncials, N or S, A, B, and C, are the chief manuscripts also for the New Testament (see Bible Text, II, 1, § 9). For N there is needed a photographic reproduction or a complete new collation. The notations from A in awete's Septuagint need revision, at all events in the first volume. Of B a new photographic reproduction is in preparation; on the suggestion of Rahlfs that B is dependent on Athanasius, cf.
E. Nestle, Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament (London, 1901), 62, 181, where (note 1) read Constantius instead of Constans! Concerning the famous illuminated Codex Cottonianus (D), which was badly injured by fire in 1731, nothing new has come to light since Swete wrote; it is well to mention the name of Martin Folkes as editor, by whom were issued the facsimiles in the Vetusta monumenta of 1747. On the purple illuminated Genesis of Vienna (L), there is a dissertation by W Liidtke (Greifswald, 1897), who is inclined to ascribe this oldest Biblical history with illuminations to the second part of the fifth century. To the eighteen uncial manuscripts enumerated by Swete (Introduction, pp. 146-148) as not yet used for any edition of the Septuagint and remaining without a symbolical letter or number, may be added: fragments of Genesis at Vienna (cf. Philologischer Anzeiger, xiv, 1884, 415); a Hebrew-Greek palimpsest containing fragments of Ps. cxliii, cxliv; and parts of four leaves from a papyrus codex of Genesis, of the late second or early third century (Oxyrhynchus papyri no. 656) . On the minuscules scarcely anything has been done lately, except that some will be used in the Cambridge edition mentioned above (§2). For facsimiles, cf. F. G. Kenyon, Facsimiles of Biblical Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1901).
The question, in which set of manuscripts the purest text is to be found, is not yet settled. It is the more complicated since the Old Testament is a collection of books which in one and the same manuscript may have had a very different pedigree; for whole Bibles (pandectes, such as manuscripts X, A, and B) do not seem to have been produced much before the time of Eusebius or Origen.
2. Later Greek Translations : The rupture between Church and Synagogue led to new translations. The authors of at least three of them are known by name, Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion.
Of the Fathers of the Church, Irenseus is the first who mentions Aquila of Pontus as a translator of the Bible. Epiphanius calls him a "Greek" and a relation of Hadrian, and tells that 1. Aquila. he was placed by Trajan in charge of the rebuilding of Jerusalem, that he became a Christian but returned to the Jewish faith. Epiphanius places his translation in the twelfth year of Hadrian, 430 years, four months, less nine days after the Septuagint. Jewish sources mention a proselyte Aquila, a contemporary of Rabbis Eliezer, Joshua, and Akiba, who met Hadrian and is called his nephew, and is praised as translator of the Bible in the words of Ps. xlv, "thou art fairer than the children of men"; some passages of his translation are quoted.
It is not clear as yet, whether or how the dates of Epiphanius and the statements of the Pseudo- Clementine writings about Aquila, the disciple of Simon Magus, are to be combined. That Aquila the translator of the Bible is the well-known husband of Priscilla in the New Testament is a fancy of Hausdorff . His translation, the use of which was
Bible Versions