Introduction to the textual criticism of the Greek New TestamentNestle, Eberhard
Religion
Introduction to the textual criticism of the Greek New Testament
Nestle, Eberhard
Bible. New Testament -- Criticism, Textual
The Apocalypse was first edited in 1627 by de Dieu at Leyden, from a
manuscript that had been in the possession of Scaliger. It is found in a
few other manuscripts, in one, _e.g._, that was transcribed about this
same time for Archbishop Ussher from a Maronite manuscript at Kenobin on
Mount Lebanon. It is not found in the Syriac New Testament, but the
later editions insert it from de Dieu. In Apoc. viii. 13, instead of “an
eagle in the midst of heaven” (ἐν μεσουρανήματι), the Syriac translator
took it as “in the midst with a bloody tail” (μεσος, ουρα, αιμα).
Another Syriac version, in which this error is avoided, was discovered
in 1892 by J. Gwynn in a Codex belonging to Lord Crawford, and published
by him as the first book printed in Syriac at the Dublin University
Press. Still more interesting is it to know that in a manuscript, once
the property of Julius Mohl, and now in Cambridge, both the so-called
Epistles of Clement are found after the Catholic Epistles. This
manuscript, part of which was published by Bensly in 1889 (see above, p.
79), contains a note at the end to the effect that it was derived, so
far as the Pauline Epistles are concerned, from the copy of
Pamphilus.[90]
About the same time and in the same region, Paul of Tella translated one
of the best Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament into Syriac almost as
literally as Thomas of Harkel, thereby doing immense service in the
construction of the Syriac Hexapla, a work of inestimable value for the
textual criticism of the Old Testament.
[Sidenote: Evangeliarium Hierosolymitanum.]
Mention may be made here of another Syriac version of the New Testament,
the so-called _Jerusalem_ or _Palestinian Syriac_ (Syr^{hr} or
Syr^{hier}). This version, hitherto known almost solely from an
Evangeliarium in the Vatican of the year 1030, was edited by Count
Miniscalchi Erizzo at Verona in 1861-4, and an excellent edition was
published in 1892 in _Bibliothecae Syriacae a Paulo de Lagarde collectae
quae ad philologiam sacram pertinent_. And now not only have two fresh
manuscripts of this Evangeliarium been discovered on Mount Sinai by J.
R. Harris and Mrs. Lewis, and edited by Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson, but
fragments of the Acts and Pauline Epistles have also been found and
published, as well as portions of the Old Testament and other Church
literature.[91] The dialect in which these fragments are written is
quite different from ordinary Syriac, and may, perhaps, bear a close
resemblance to that in which Jesus spoke to His disciples. At what time
and in what region this entire literature took its rise is not yet
determined with certainty. The Greek text on which the Evangeliarium is
based has many peculiarities. In Matthew xxvii. 17, _e.g._, the robber
is called Jesus Barabbas, or, rather, Jesus Barrabbas, a fact known to
Origen, but now recorded only in a few Greek minuscules by the first or
second hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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