The following material is excerpted from:
Sebastian P. Brock, The Bible in the Syriac Tradition, (New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2006) 41-48, 135.
for the use of members of the seminar on text criticism of Robert A. Kraft. That is, the basis is fair use. This page will be up for only a limited time. Other access to parts of Brock’s book is provided by Google Books, and the book is available from Gorgias Press, or Amazon.com.In this section we shall look at the ways in which the Syriac Bible is transmitted to us. Needless to say, no autographs of any of the original translators survive; in the case of the Syro-hexapla and Harclean, however, we do have some manuscripts which must have been written less than a century after these translations had been made.
1. Biblical Manuscripts
A very large number of Syriac biblical manuscripts survive. These are always in codex or book format, and the writing material used is either vellum or paper (which was introduced in the Middle Ages). The manuscripts can vary in size, from the enormous “pandects” containing the whole Old Testament or whole New Testament (very rarely both together), to miniature manuscripts written ina tiny script containing a single book or small groups of books. The vast majority of manusccripts, however, are of more practical sizes, and normally they contain just a group of books at a time. Occasionally one may find a bilbical book incorporated into a manuscript which otherwise contains non-biblical texts.
Many manuscripts have a colophon, or note by the scribe, at the end, and this may gove information about the place where the manuscript was written, and the date. Normally the date is given according to the Seleucid era, or “reckoning of the Greeks,” or “of Alexander (the Great),” which began in October, BC 312: thus, for example, the year 771 of the Seleucid era will correspond to October 459 to September 460 in the Christian era.
The oldest dated Syriac biblical manuscript, a fragment of Isaiah in the British Library (Add. 14512), is infact datd to 771 “according to the Greeks,” that is, AD 459/60; another manuscript also in London (Add. 14425), containing Genesis and Exodus, is dated 463/4. For the Peshitta New Testament the earliest dated manuscript is a Gospel manuscript written in Edessa in 510; there are, however, some undated ones which probably belong to the fifth century.
A few manuscripts contain more than one different biblical version at the same time, arranged in parallel columns. Thus there is one fragmentary manuscript containing the Peshitta and Syro-hexapla of Isaiah set side by side. More frequently such manuscripts are genuinely polyglot, and have versions in different languages. One of the earliest polyglot manuscripts is a ninth-century Psalter, now in St. Petersburg; this has the Greek, the Syro-hexapla, and the Arabic texts set out in three columns. More ambitions in scope are a group of fourteenth-century manuscripts evidently written in Egypt, for the most part intended for liturgical use among the multi-lingual groups of monks int he Nitrian Desert. Two of these are Psalters which [[42]] anticipate the earliest European polyglot Psalter of 1516; one of them has the text set out in five columns, containing Ethiopic, Syriac (Peshitta), Coptic, Arabic, and Armenian; the other has the text in four columns, and this time the languages are Arabic, Syriac (Syro-hexapla), Greek, and Hebrew. The inclusion of Hebrew in a Christian biblical manuscript at that time seems to be without parallel, and clearly the monk who compiled the manuscript must have been a remarkable scholar for his time.
As far as each individual Syriac version is concerned, we have the following picture:
Old Testament (1) Peshitta
There are very few manuscripts containing the complete Old Testament; it is significant that the majority of these belong to the seventeenth century, for by that time the invention of printing had accustomed people to the idea of a complete Old Testament, or a complete Bible: these manuscripts were in fact written only shortly before the first printed editionof the whole Syriac Bible (the Paris Polyglot, of 1645; see below, on EDITIONS). The four earliest manuscripts containing (or once containing) the complete Peshitta Bible (Old and New Testaments) are:
- The codex Ambrosianus, in the Ambrosian Library, Milan, Italy (ms B. 21 Inf; 7a1 in the Leiden edition of the Peshitta Old Testament); this is written in a beautiful Estrangelo script which can be dated to the sixth or seventh century.
- Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Syriac ms 34 [or 341, reproduction is unclear] (8a1 in the Leiden edition); this is written in a neat Estrangelo belonging to the eighth century, and it contains some illustrations (portraits of Old Testament figures, and some scenes).
- Florence, Laurentian Library, ms Or. 58 (9a1 in the Leiden edition) this: is written in Serto script which can be dated to the ninth century.
- Cambridge, University Library, ms Oo. I. 1,2 (12a1 in the Leiden edition); this is written in neat Estrangelo script which can be dated to the twelfth century; it also contains some illustrations in the form of small portraits of biblical persons. This manuscript has important connections with India, for it was once in Kerala. Although it was written in northern Mesopotamia, the manuscript was taken to India, perhaps some time in the eighteenth century, for in 1806 the Syrian Orthodox bishop Mar Dionysius I (Mar Thomas VI) presented it to Dr. Claudius Buchanan, Vice-Principal of Fort William College Calcutta. Dr. Buchanan had spoken to him of plans of printing the Syriac Bible in England, and this was the reason for Mar Dionysius’ generous gift. Use was indeed made of “the Buchanan Bible” (as the manuscript came to be called) in preparing the printed edition, and when it was finally published (in 1823) copies were sent to Kerala. (This edition has recently (1979) been re-issued by the United Bible Societies).
If we compare the contents and order of books in these four complete Old Testaments, we will discover that they all differ in several respects both in the books they contain and in the order inwhich they give them. It is thus clear that neither contents nor order of books was regarded as being at all fixed. This is in fact hardly surprising when one remembers that manuscripts containing the complete Bible ar the exception, and that normally a biblical manuscript will only contain a group of books (such as the Pentateuch) at a time.
The order of books in the oldest of these complete Peshitta Bibles, the codex Ambrosianus [7a1], has a number of interesting features which are worth looking at briefly; the order and contents are as follows: Pentateuch, Job, Joshua, Judges, 1-2 Samuel, Psalms, 1-2 Kings, Proverbs, wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Letters of Jeremiah are considered by most Western churches to be outside the Old Testament Canon, and among those are several which are not even to be found in the so-called “Apocrypha” or Deutero-Canonical Books. This applied above all to the Apocalypse of Baruch and IV Ezra, both of which are long apocalyptic works of Jewish origin and dating probably from the late first century AD; the codex Ambrosianus is in fact the only Syriac manuscript to contain these two books in full ( there are some extracts included in a few Lectionaries). Both books were translated into Syriac from greek but the Greek text does not survive (apart from a few fragments for the Apocalypse of baruch); for IV Ezra there is also a Latin and a Georgian translation in existence, but for the Apocalypse of [[44]] Baruch we have no other witness apart from this manuscript and a later Arabic translation.
The order of the books also has a number of surprises: in the first place, we can observe that the scribe has for the most part tried to arrange them in historical order, according to the date of each book’s supposed author. This explains why Psalms (attributed to David) comes between Samuel and Kings; and why the various books attributed to Solomon follow Kings. It also explains why Job follows immediately after the Pentateuch when one realizes Job has been identified with Jobab (Gen 10:29); probably the same tradition was already known by the Essene Community at Qumran, for the only biblical manuscripts from Qumran written in the Old Hebrew scripts are books of the Pentateuch and Job: evidently this particular script was reserved for books originating inthe patriarchal period. This position for Job is in fact quite common in Syriac biblical manuscripts (thus it likewise follows the Pentateuch in both the Paris and the Cambridge complete Peshitta Bibles).
It will be noticed that codex Ambrosianus [[7a1]] groups all the books on women together (Ruth, Susanna, Esther, Judith). This seems to have been quite a widespread practice from the sixth century onwards, and this group of books is often given the title “the Book of the Women.”
It is of interest to have some idea of the number of manuscripts containing parts of the Peshitta Old Testament. In the following list, arranged by century, it is important to remember that (1) the dating of Syriac manuscripts is often rather uncertain (only a few biblical manucripts have dates provided in the colophons); and (2) the great majority of these manuscripts contain only a single group of books at a time (or sometimes only one book). [[ I am omitting Brock's list of centuries by manuscript count ]]
[[45]]For the rather large number of early manuscripts we owe a special debt of gratitude to the abbot Moses of the Syrian Monastery in the Nitrian Desert (between Cairo and Alexandria in Egypt), for in the early tenth century he collected together a fine library of old Syriac manuscripts which he acquired in Mesopotamia. Subsequently most of the manuscripts in the Syrian Monastery’s library came to the Vatican Library (in the eighteenth century) and the British Museum — now Library — (nineteenth century).
The earliest manuscripts are divided up into unnumbered paragraphs. It is intriguing to discover that in some books at least (notably Isaiah), these paragraph breaks very frequently occur at the same place as the paragraph breaks in the two Hebrew manuscripts of Isaiah from Qumran, as well as those in the traditional Hebrew text, reproduced in modern editions of the Hebrew Bible (the two systems are not identical, and the Peshitta represents a slightly different third tradition). Evidently the Syriac translator must have taken over the paragraph divisions from the Hebrew text e was translating. Later manuscripts of the Peshitta often introduce quite different paragraph breaks.
The earliest manuscripts have no chapter divisions. [[further discussion of chapter divisions,
including dual systems in manuscripts, is omitted here.]]Finally, before leaving the Peshitta Old Testament, we should look at the way in which the text itself has been transmitted over the centuries. On the whole one can say that Syriac scribes were generally very careful when they copied the biblical text. As a result, we find remarkably little variation betwen the different manuscripts (the situation is very different with the Greek Septuagint, where great variation occurs); moreover, where variants do occur, they are only rarely of much consequence. Nevertheless the Peshitta text is not entirely univorm over the centuries, and recent studies have suggested that the following is the general pattern of development in the history of the Peshitta text for each book:
Oldest stage. Very few witnesses to this stage survive, and often they are manuscripts which pose particular problems. It seems likely that in this oldest stage the text of the Peshitta was rather closer to the Hebrew original than is the case with the text during the later stages. If we had more manuscripts dating from the fifth century we would probably be in a better position to recover more of this archaic stage.
The next stage is represented by manuscripts of the sixth to eighth centuries (inclusive): since we are rather well provided with manuscripts from this time, this stage represents the earliest stage in the history of the Peshitta text which wee can recover. the differences between this stage and the oldest stage (not fully recoverable) are proably the result of attempts to smoothover the original translations here and there in the interests of good Syriac idiom.
The third stage is provided by manuscripts of the ninth century and later, and is often referred to as the Textus Receptus, or Received Texts. The differenes between the Textus Receptus and the text of stage 2 are very many (there are some 50 in the whole of Isaiah), but are rarely of great significance. It remains unclear how or why this development took place — was it a gradual process, continuing the sort of changes that had already taken place between stages 1 and 2, or was it the product of a conscious revision
by a particular person (and if so, by what criteria did he work)?The following are a few typical examples [[omitted]]
[[47 Brock concludes the section with the follwing words.]]
It so happens that the earliest printed editions of the Syriac Bible employed late manuscripts, and so their text represents the latest stage in the history of the development of the Peshitta text.
Old Testament (2) Syro-Hexapla
Although several different early manuscripts of parts of the Syro-hexapla survive, thses do not cover the entire Old Testament: the two earliest Syro-hexapla manuscripts (Add 14442 with parts of Genesis; Add. 12134 with Exodus) were both written in the seventh century, thus less than eighty or so years away from the date of Paul of Tella’s original translation [from the Greek]. Some Syro-hexapla manuscripts contain single books, while others have groups of books.
The most famous Syro-hexapla manuscript, however, is an enormous manuscript containing the second half of the Old Testament, in the Ambrosian Library, Milan (ms C 313 Inf.): it is usually dated to the late eight or early ninth century, and since the Syro-hexapla is translated from Greek, it is not surprising that the order of the biblical books is the one found in many manuscripts of the Septuagint, namely Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, song of Songs, Wisdom of Solomon, Ben Sira, 12 Minor Prophets, Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentations, Letter of Jeremiah, Daniel, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, Ezekiel, and Isaih. The manuscript is written in a beautiful estrangelo hand, and in the margins are large numbers of notes, usually providing variant readings derived from other columns of Origen’s Hexapla. In the sixteenth century the Syriac scholar Andreas Masius had the use of another huge Syro-hexapla manuscript which contained the first half of the Old Testament, but unfortunately this precious manuscript has subsequently disappeared and must be presumed lost for good.
The Ambrosian manuscript of the Syro-hexapla has a system of chapter numbering which is quite different from the one found in Peshitta manuscripts: it derives from one of the several current greek systems, and the Greek name <i>kephalaion,</i> “chapter” (literally “heading”, is employed. Rather surprisingly a later scribe has introduced this system into the margin of one famous Peshitta manuscript, the complete Bible, 7a1, also now in Milan.
We shall pass over here the two other translations of the Old Testament, made from Greek, the one possibly sponsored by Philoxenus, the other made the Jacob of Edessa in his old age. Both these survive in fragmentary form, in old manuscripts.
by Sebastian P. Brock,The Bible in the Syriac Tradition (New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2006) 41-48
AND, p. 135, recall our discussion of Catherine Burris “The Book of Women” of last week, and her theoretical exploration of “reading” without establishing a reading tradition. Relevant to that discussion, Brock writes:
How Does The Reader Find The Place?
A biblical book is only rarely read in sequence in the course of the liturgical year, and even if it is, there will be manyinterruptions when a more appropriate passage is required for a particular feast or commemoration. This of course means that the person reading the lection could easily have difficulty in finding the place. A number of different solutions to this problem were found of [over] the course of time.
In the small number of fifth-century biblical manuscripts that survive there seem to be no special indications pointing to liturgical reading. This, however, changes in the sixth century, for now the scribes of biblical manuscripts sometimes introduce into the text a rubric stating that this was where the lection for a particular feast or occasion began.
A single example of a list of biblical readings throughout the liturgical year is preserved from the sixth century.19/ For the Gospels the lections are identified by means of the number in the Eusebian canon tables, while for other books there is just the name of the book, followed by theopening and closing words of the lection. The list is remarkable both for the large numberof lections for any one commemoration, and for the length of the lections.
In sixth-century biblical manuscripts the indications for lections are rather haphazard and certainly do not even meet all the most important [of] the requiremens of the liturgical year. A remedy to this unsatisfactory situation is first to be found in manuscripts of the seventh and eighth centuries, where a table of lections may be given at the beginning of a biblical manuscript. . . .
Brock , op. cit. 135.
