Syriac versions of the Bible
Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. Portions of the Old Testament were written in Aramaic and there are Aramaic phrases in the New Testament. Syriac translations of the New Testament were among the first and date from the 2nd century. The whole Bible was translated by the 5th century. Besides Syriac, there are Bible translations into other Aramaic dialects.
Scholars have distinguished five or six different Syriac versions of all or part of the New Testament. It is possible that some translations have been lost. Other than Syria, the manuscripts also originate in countries like
Diatessaron
This is the earliest translation of the gospels into Syriac. The earliest translation of any New Testament text from Greek seems to have been the Diatessaron, a harmony of the four canonical gospels (perhaps with a now lost fifth text) prepared about AD 170 by Tatian in Rome. Although no original text of the Diatessaron survives, its foremost witness is a prose commentary on it by Ephrem the Syrian. Although there are many so-called manuscript witnesses to the Diatessaron, they all differ, and, ultimately only witness to the enduring popularity of such harmonies. Rescensions appeared in later centuries as translation of originals. Many medieval European harmonies draw on the Codex Fuldensis.[3]
Old Syriac version
The Old Syriac version translation of the four gospels or Vetus Syra[4] is preserved today in only four manuscripts, both with a large number of gaps. The Curetonian Gospels consist of fragments of the four Gospels. The text was brought in 1842 from the Nitrian Desert in Egypt, and is now held in the British Library. These fragments were examined by William Cureton and edited by him in 1858. The manuscript is dated paleographically to the 5th century. It is called Curetonian Syriac, and is designated by Syrc.[5]
The second manuscript is a
These four manuscripts represent only the Gospels. The text of Acts and the Pauline Epistles has not survived to the present. It is known only from citations made by Eastern fathers. The text of Acts was reconstructed by Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare, and the text of the Pauline Epistles by J. Molitor. They used Ephrem's commentaries.[9]
Peshitta
The term Peshitta was used by Moses bar Kepha in 903 and means "simple" (in analogy to the Latin Vulgate). It is the oldest Syriac version which has survived to the present day in its entirety. It contains the entire Old Testament, most (?) of the deuterocanonical books, as well as 22 books of the New Testament, lacking the shorter
More than 350 manuscripts survived, several of which date from the 5th and 6th centuries. In the Gospels it is closer to the Byzantine text-type, but in Acts to the Western text-type. It is designated by Syrp.
The earliest manuscript of the Peshitta is a Pentateuch dated AD 464. There are two New Testament manuscripts of the 5th century (Codex Phillipps 1388).
- Some manuscripts
- British Library, Add. 14479— the earliest dated Peshitta Apostolos.
- British Library, Add. 14459— the oldest dated Syriac manuscript of the two Gospels
- British Library, Add. 14470— the whole Peshitta text from the fifth/sixth century
- British Library, Add. 14448— the major part of Peshitta from the 699/700
Syro-Hexaplar version
The
Later Syriac versions
The Philoxenian was probably produced in 508 for
According to some scholars the
See also
- List of the Syriac New Testament manuscripts
- Other early Eastern translations
- Coptic versions of the Bible
- Bible translations into Sogdian
- Bible translations into Nubian
- Bible translations into Persian
References
- Clarendon Press. pp. 4–5.
- Clarendon Press. p. 3.
- Clarendon Press. pp. 10–36.
- ^ Juckel, Andreas. "Old Syriac Version". Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage: Electronic Edition.
- Clarendon Press. pp. 36–37.
- Clarendon Press. pp. 37–39.
- ISSN 1012-2311.
- S2CID 257379178.
- ^ Bruce M. Metzger, Bart D. Ehrman (2005). The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. New York — Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 97–98.
- ISBN 9781931956048. p.313.
- ISBN 9781107669949. p.43.
- ^ Philoxenian - Syriac Orthodox Resources George Kiraz, 2001
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-0-8028-4098-1.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - M. Black, K. Aland (1972). Die alten Übersetzungen des Neuen Testaments, die Kirchenväterzitate und Lektionare: der gegenwärtige Stand ihrer Erforschung und ihre Bedeutung für die griechische Textgeschichte. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
- Brock, Sebastian P. (1967). "Greek Words in the Syriac Gospels (Vet. and Pe.)". Le Muséon. 80: 389–426.
- Brock, Sebastian P. (2008). "The Use of the New Testament in the Writings of Mor Ephrem". Bringing Light to the World: Syriac Tradition Re-visited. Tiruvalla: Christava Sahitya Samithy. pp. 103–118.
- Bruce M. Metzger (1977). The Early Versions of the New Testament. Oxford: ISBN 0-19-826170-5.
- W. Wright, Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum, Gorgias Press LLC 2002.
- "The Syriac Version". Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica. Oxford: 195–208. 1891.