THE EARLY SYRIAC VERSIONS.

CHRISTIANITY must have, at a very early period, penetrated into the countries bordering on Palestine inhabited by those who used the Syriac language, even although no credence is given to the account of the preaching of the gospel in Edessa by the Apostle Thaddeus. Antioch, the capital of Syria, was one of the first Gentile cities where the gospel was preached, and occupies a prominent place in the history of the Apostles. Here the disciples first received the name of Christians, and from it, as from a centre, Paul set out on his missionary journeys. And although Antioch itself was a Greek city, Syriac was the language, if not of the proximate neighbourhood, yet of the adjoining countries. We are accordingly led to believe that at an early period a Syriac version of the canonical Scriptures was made to supply the wants of the Syriac Christians, even as a Latin version was early made to supply the wants of the Latin Christians. Although the date assigned by Michaelis, toward the close of the first century, is too early, yet there are reasons, which will appear in the course of this article, for fixing the Syriac version as early as the middle of the second century. From a passage in Eusebius, it would appear that Hegesippus (A.D. 170) made use of a Syriac version of the Gospels. "He," we are informed, "states some particulars from the Gospel of the Hebrews and from the Syriac" (Eus. Hist. Eccl. iv. 22). The language is not very definite, but the natural meaning appears to be that Hegesippus quoted from a Syriac Gospel as well as from the Gospel of the Hebrews. Ephraem, the Syrian (A.D. 170), it is true, is the first who expressly mentions the Syriac version, but he does so in such a manner as to indicate its antiquity. He calls it our version, implying that it had already received the

sanction of the Syrian churches; and he explains several words and phrases which from lapse of time had become obsolete or obscure. But the important discoveries which have in our days been made in manuscripts connected with the Syrian churches, place the early age of the Syriac version beyond dispute.

Until recently the Peshito was regarded as the oldest extant Syriac version. Recent discoveries have, however, induced many of our most learned critics to modify, if not to alter, this view. Accordingly the object of this paper is to inquire into these two points: whether the Peshito is not a revised edition of a more ancient version; and whether, admitting this to be the case, the original version did not contain those books of the New Testament which are omitted in the Peshito as it has come down to us.

I. In 1842, a Syriac manuscript containing fragments of the Gospels was brought by Archdeacon Tattam from the Syrian monastery dedicated to St. Mary Deipara, or the mother of God, in the valley of the Natron lakes, and was deposited in the British Museum. This manuscript was examined by the late Dr. Cureton, the most distinguished Syriac scholar then in England. He found to his surprise that it contained a different version from either the Peshito or the Philoxenian, and that it exhibited marks of great antiquity. In 1848, he printed the manuscript in Syriac; and in 1858 he published, along with the Syriac, an English translation, with various important notes, and an introduction containing an account of the manuscript, the probable age of the version, and its relation to the Peshito. The work is entitled, "Remains of a very ancient recension of the Four Gospels in Syriac, hitherto unknown in Europe." Dr. Cureton considered the age of the manuscript to be about the middle of the fifth century, an opinion which has been generally acquiesced in; and affirmed that it contained readings of high antiquity, and was one of the earliest testimonies extant. It contained only fragments

of the Gospels in loose leaves or pages. The Gospels were arranged in the following order: Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke. Of Matthew there remained i.-viii. 22, x. 32-xxiii. 25; of Mark only four verses at the close, xvi. 17-20; of John, i. 1-42, iii. 6-vii. 37, xiv. 10-12, 16-18, 19-23, 26-29; and of Luke, ii. 48-iii. 16, vii. 33-xv. 21, xvii. 24-xxiv. 44. This manuscript has received the name of the Curetonian Syriac to distinguish it from the Peshito and the other Syriac versions. It is exceedingly important for critical purposes; it casts light upon many disputed readings in the Gospels, as for example the doxology at the end of the Lord's Prayer and the last verses of Mark's Gospel; but especially it has modified our views of the Peshito by proving, or at least rendering it highly probable, that this venerable and justly-prized version is a revised edition of a much older Syriac version. Dean Alford hardly exaggerates, when he says of the Curetonian Syriac: "Perhaps the earliest and most important of all the versions."

Dr. Cureton asserts that this manuscript of the Gospels, or rather fragments of the Gospels, bears internal marks of great antiquity, and claims for it a priority to the Peshito. "The facts," he observes, "which the comparison of the text of these Syriac remains of Gospels with that of the Greek has established, all tend to show that these fragments belong to an edition or recension of the Gospels which must be assigned to those very early times of the Christian religion, when the spirit was felt to be of far greater importance than the letter, and when the substance of what the Evangelists had written was more heeded than the very words themselves in which it was expressed. At a period so near to the days when the wonders recorded in the Gospels were performed, and the lessons and doctrines which they contained were preached-while the immediate successors of those to whom Christ Himself, or His apostles, had given commission to teach and to baptize were personally engaged in spreading the glad tidings of salvationthe necessity for verbal critical accuracy was not so keenly

felt, nor its importance held to be so great as it afterwards became in times more remote, when those who had drawn the waters of life near to their source were passed away, and their personal authority and oral instruction could no longer be referred to." The version is uncritical: passages from the different Gospels are mixed up together; and this, Dr. Cureton asserts, is a mark of its antiquity, showing that it was made at a time when, by reason of nearness to the source of the events narrated, criticism was not attended to or valued. Dr. Scrivener takes an opposite view: he supposes that the Curetonian manuscript is a careless transcript of the Peshito. As the matter stands," he observes, "it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the careless transcriber of the Curetonian mistook or corrupted the Peshito, rather than that the Peshito amended the defects, real or supposed, of the other." No one who has carefully examined the manuscript will arrive at this opinion; there could be no possible reason for the corruption of the Peshito, and in the text the Gospels are so mixed that it cannot be accounted for on the ground of mistaken transcription. Accordingly, all our learned critics, with hardly an exception, have agreed in assigning the priority of age to the Curetonian; and this opinion has been almost converted into a certainty by a fresh discovery made among the manuscripts of the East.

In the year 1836, a manuscript written in the Armenian language was printed at Venice, with a Latin translation purporting to be an exposition of Ephraem the Syrian on the four Gospels. For a long time, probably owing to ignorance of the Armenian language, no notice was taken of this work, until 1876, when it was examined by Dr. Moesinger, a distinguished German scholar, and published with a Latin translation. It was found to be an Armenian translation of Ephraem's commentary on the Diatesseron of Tatian. It was well known that Ephraem wrote such a commentary: reference is made to it in Lardner's works. Dionysius Bar Salibi

(1207) had observed: "Tatian, the disciple of Justin, the philosopher and martyr, selected and patched together from the four Gospels, and constructed a Gospel which he called Diatesseron, that is, the Miscellanies. On this work Ephraem wrote an exposition; and its commencement was, In the beginning was the Word." In this commentary of Ephraem, much of the text of Tatian has been preserved. In 1881, an elaborate investigation of this work was made by Professor Zahn of Erlangen, and most valuable results were derived from it. To this investigation and these results Dr. Wace has directed the attention of English scholars in two important articles in the Expositor for 1882. Professor Zahn has come to the two following conclusions which may be considered as proved: first, that Tatian was a Syrian Christian and wrote his Diatesseron in Syriac; and secondly, that his quotations from the Gospels agree not with the Peshito, but with the Curetonian Syriac. Tatian, however, was well acquainted with Greek, and in several places he corrected the mistakes occurring in the Curetonian. "He employed," observes Dr. Wace, stating the conclusions at which Professor Zahn had arrived, "as the basis of his work, the existing Syriac version of the Gospels, namely the Curetonian, but compared that version throughout with a copy of the Greek Gospels, the text of which in cases of divergency he preferred, and from which he translated directly." Now this proves two things, the priority of the Curetonian to the Peshito, and the antiquity of the Syrian version. Tatian was the disciple of Justin Martyr, and therefore must have flourished about A.D. 160; and consequently we cannot assign a later date to the earliest Syriac version than the middle of the second century.

But there is still another important fact deduced from the examination of the Curetonian manuscript. Not only is it proved that the Curetonian Syriac is prior to the Peshito, but that the Peshito and the Curetonian are not independent versions; in short, that the Curetonian is just the Peshito in