Peshitta

Polycarp66 at aol.com Polycarp66 at aol.com
Wed Jun 26 21:06:49 EDT 2002


In a message dated 6/26/2002 12:29:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
tmcos at canada.com writes:


 I was interested in some feed back you might have on
the value of the Peshitta. I understand that it is a
late 4th century document and that there are other Old
Syriac versions that antedate the Peshitta. I was
wondering how the Peshitta fares in relation to the 4th
century Greek MSS, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. The Greek
texts are believed to be superior. The Peshitta also
does not include certain books found in the NT such as
2 Peter, 2&3 John, Jude and Revelation. I understand
that this was due to the Syrian Church's rejection of
these books as canonical? Do the Old Syriac versions
have them? I would appreciate your comments on some of
these points. Best regards,
________________

I wouldn't attempt to assess the value of the Peshitta based on the little I 
know concerning it.  Below, however, is what the _Anchor Bible Dictionary_ 
has to say concering it.

gfsomsel__________________________________________________________________

C. Early Biblical Texts

The Syriac versions of the Bible have posed many scholarly problems. These 
concern the relationships between the various translations, their places of 
origin, and their exegesis. The primary efforts at biblical translations 
include the Peshitta of the Old Testament, the Diatessaron, the Old Syriac 
(Vetus Syra), the Peshitta translation of the NT, the Philoxenian and/or 
Harklean version, and the Palestinian version. A discussion of the NT 
versions can be found in Metzger (1977).

1. The Peshitta of the OT. The origin of this translation is unknown. Its 
connections to Jewish targumic literature suggest that it evolved in a Jewish 
milieu. Kahle (1959) argued that it was made in Adiabene as an effort to 
adapt the Palestinian targum for new converts. This theory has been accepted 
by Murray (1975: 10), inter alia. The problem is that there are also readings 
shared with the Targum Onkelos of Babylon. The Adiabene theory is plausible, 
but with no philological or historical evidence. In addition to the problem 
of provenance, there is no possibility of dating the translation with any 
precision. The earliest citations are from 4th-century texts.

The text is remarkably consistent throughout its transmission history as has 
been demonstrated by Koster (1977) and Dirksen (1972). A definitive critical 
edition, Vetus Testamentum Syriace (1972–), is being published by the 
Peshitta Institute of Leiden. Later commentators would indicate variant 
readings with the LXX traditions and occasionally the Hebrew text, but it 
appears that little emmendation was attempted.

2. The Diatessaron. This harmony of the gospel composed by Tatian has been 
mentioned above. The original language (Greek, Syriac, or Latin), theological 
tendencies, and function in the churches has been extensively discussed. For 
a summary of the various points of view, see Metzger (1977). There are 
witnesses to the text in Old Dutch, Old Italian, medieval German, Persian, 
and Arabic. In Greek there is only the fragment found at Dura Europas (see 
above). In Syriac and Armenian, the most extensive witness is the Commentary 
on the Diatessaron attributed to Ephrem of Syria (306–73). Lyonnet (1950) has 
demonstrated that the earliest translations of the Gospels into Armenian owed 
much to the Syriac Diatessaron. Extensive quotations are found in such 
writers as Aphraates, Ephrem, Eznik, Marutha Maipherkatensis, Agathangelos, 
Rabbula, and the author of the Liber Graduum. See also DIATESSARON.

3. The Old Syriac (Vetus Syra). This version is known primarily from two 
manuscripts. Both contain only the four canonical Gospels. No Old Syriac of 
the Pauline or general epistles has been found, although citations of those 
texts in Armenian translations of Syriac literature suggest these may have 
existed. The first is in the British Library (B.L. 14451). Discovered by 
William Cureton, it was definitively edited by F. C. Burkitt (1904) with 
additional pages of the same manuscript found in the Royal Library of Berlin. 
The second manuscript was discovered by Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop 
Gibson at St. Catharine Monastery on Mt. Sinai. The manuscript had been 
reused, as a manuscript for lives of women saints, by imperfectly cleaning 
off the biblical text. After two less than adequate efforts by scholars to 
decipher the manuscript, A. S. Lewis made several trips to Sinai and was able 
to publish what remains the best edition (1910).

The text of the Curetonian and Sinaitic manuscripts do not agree at all 
points, although they clearly stand alone and close together in the larger 
world of Syriac NT translations. Scholars have generally assumed either that 
the two are revisions of a common source or that they are independent 
translations made during the same period. Linguistic peculiarities shared by 
the two manuscripts suggest that they may be the effort of individuals to 
gain access to the Greek tradition which lay behind the Syriac Diatessaron. 
Matthew Black (1972) argues for dating these efforts to the 4th century. For 
a detailed survey of the discussion of scholarly work on the Old Syriac, see 
Black (1972) and Metzger (1977). The effort of Vööbus (1951b; 1951c) to 
marshal evidence from the Letter of Aithallah in support of his theory of 
early 4th-century prominence of the Vetus Syra at Edessa has been 
demonstrated to be incorrect (Bundy 1987).

4. The Syriac Peshitta. The word “peshitta” has generally been understood as 
“simple” or “clear,” not unlike the term “vulgate” applied to the received 
Latin translation. This version of the New Testament is used by both East 
Syrians (Nestorians) and West Syrians (Jacobites) and therefore certainly 
predates the division of the Syriac church along political, geographical, and 
theological lines during the mid-5th century. More precise dating of the 
translation has provoked controversy. Some have dated it as early as the late 
1st or early 2d century. Burkitt (1901) argued that it was from the early 5th 
century and later suggested that it was translated by Rabbula of Edessa 
(Burkitt 1904). This conclusion has been contested by Vööbus (1951b), who 
argued that it was much older although slow to achieve dominance in the 
Syriac-speaking church.

The manuscript tradition is quite uniform. There are remarkably few variants 
in the Peshitta as compared to the Old Syriac or Greek versions. Its textual 
tradition is well documented by the hundreds of manuscripts preserved, the 
earliest manuscript (ca. 460–464) probably being Paris Syriac 296.1 in the 
Bibliotheque Nationale which contains Luke 6:49–21:37. No adequate critical 
edition of the entire NT in the Peshitta version has been published despite 
the fact that the first printed edition was done at Venice as early as 1555. 
The best text available, based on earlier editions which were themselves only 
partial collations of the manuscript evidence, is published by the Bible 
Society as The New Testament in Syriac. This printing has no critical 
apparatus. It also contains the Apocalypse and General Epistles, which were 
not part of the Peshitta translation, but based on the Philoxenian version.

5. Later Syriac Translations. The Philoxenian version was prepared at the 
direction of Philoxenos of Mabbug (Hierapolis) by a certain Polycarp in 507–8 
c.e. An effort to bring the Syriac more in line with the Greek, it also 
provided, probably for the first time in Syriac, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, 
and the Apocalypse. A century later (616 c.e.) the version of Thomas of 
Harkel, assistant to the famous translator of the OT Paul of Tella, was 
produced. The Harklean version has been variously considered either a 
revision of the Philoxenian or a new translation. For a history of this 
debate, see Metzger (1977).

The Palestinian Syriac version is actually a different version of Aramaic. It 
is closer to Jewish Palestinian Aramaic than to the Syriac of Edessa and 
northern Mesopotamia.

6. The Early Versions. Apart from the Diatessaron, the early Syriac biblical 
texts are difficult to date. There is no concrete evidence of their existence 
before the 4th century, although it is probable that at least the OT was 
available in Syriac early in the Christian period. The Diatessaron exerted a 
strong influence on the development of early Syriac theology and praxis. The 
Peshitta displaced the Diatessaron slowly at first because of pressure from 
the Greek church and the problems posed by Manicheans finding readings that 
lent support to their understanding. The major blow came in the late 4th 
century when Theodoret of Cyrus, because of Tatian’s reputation as a heretic 
in the Western church, gathered and destroyed over 200 copies after replacing 
them with copies of the individual Gospels.



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