What used to be called the Versio Karkaphensis or Montana is not really a version, but merely the Massoretic work of a monastery school intended to preserve the proper spelling and pronunciation of the text of the Bible. No other branch of the Church has taken such pains as the Syrian, faithfully to transmit and to circulate the Gospel. From the mountains of Lebanon and Kurdistan, from the plains of Mesopotamia and the coast of Malabar, and even from distant China there have come into the libraries of Europe Syriac manuscripts of the utmost value for the textual criticism of the New Testament. LITERATURE on the Syriac Versions:— J. G. Christian Adler, _Novi Testamenti Versiones Syriacae, Simplex, Philoxeniana, et Hierosolymitana. Denuo examinatae et ad fidem codicum manu scriptorum ... novis observationibus atque tabulis aere incisis illustratae._ Hafniae, pp. viii. 206. _With eight Plates._ 1789, 4to. For the complete list of editions up to 1888, see my _Litteratura Syriaca_ (Syr. Gr., 2nd edition, pp. 20 ff.). Appendix thereto in _Urt._, 227 ff.; R. Duval, _La Littérature Syriaque_. Paris, 1899, pp. 42-67; _TiGr._, 813-822; Scrivener, fourth edition, ii. 6-40, with the help of Gwilliam and Deane; _The Printed Editions of the Syriac New Testament_, in the _Church Quarterly Review_, 1888, July, 257-297; G. H. Gwilliam, in the _Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica_ (Oxford), ii. 1890, iii. 1891; F. C. Conybeare, _The growth of the Peshitta Version of the New Testament_, in the _American Journal of Theology_, 1897, iv. 883-912; Burkitt, in the _Journal of Theological Studies_, i. (July 1900), 569 ff., referring to his forthcoming edition of the Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, says that he has had to go over the Gospel quotations of St. Ephraem, and closes by saying, “I confess that I am unconvinced that what we call the New Testament Peshitta was in existence in St. Ephraem’s day, and I believe that we owe both its production and victorious reception to the organizing energy of the Great Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa from 411 to 435 A.D.”