At One Remove: The Text of the New Testament in Early Translations and Quotations 9781463241094, 1463241097

Citation preview

At One Remove: The Text of the New Testament in Early Translations and Quotations

Texts and Studies (Third Series)

24 Series Editor H. A. G. Houghton

Editorial Board Jeff W. Childers Alba Fedeli Viktor Golinets Christina M. Kreinecker Gregory S. Paulson Peter J. Williams

Texts and Studies is a series of monographs devoted to the study of Biblical and Patristic texts. Maintaining the highest scholarly standards, the series includes critical editions, studies of primary sources, and analyses of textual traditions.  

At One Remove: The Text of the New Testament in Early Translations and Quotations

Papers from the Eleventh Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament

Edited by

H. A. G. Houghton Peter Montoro

gp 2020

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com 2020 Copyright © by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. ‫ܝܒ‬

1

2020

ISBN 978-1-4632-4109-4

ISSN 1935-6927

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is available at the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Contributors........................................................................ vii Abbreviations .................................................................................. xi Introduction ................................................................................... xv 1. New Developments in the Textual Study of the Old Syriac Gospels DAVID G. K. TAYLOR .............................................................. 1 2. The Old Syriac Gospels as a Witness to Tatian’s Diatessaron ? The Text-Critical Use of a Rival Tradition IAN N. MILLS ......................................................................... 43 3. The Sahidic Version of the Gospel of John: Translating an Understandable Text into Coptic HANS FÖRSTER ...................................................................... 65 4. The Textual Character of Codex Sinaiticus Arabicus and its Family ROBERT TURNBULL .............................................................. 87 5. The Gothic Version within the New Testament Tradition CARLA FALLUOMINI ........................................................... 107 6. Latin Codex 563 of the Austrian National Library and its Biblical Texts ANNE-CATHERINE BAUDOIN ............................................. 125 7. The Latin Text of John in the Saint Gall Bilingual Gospels (Codex Sangallensis 48) H. A. G. HOUGHTON .......................................................... 149 v

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

8. An Examination of Six Objections to the Theory of Latin Influence on the Greek Text of Codex Bezae PETER E. LORENZ ................................................................ 173 9. To Be or Not To Be: Presence and Absence of Copulative Verbs in Greek and Latin New Testament Manuscripts W. ANDREW SMITH ............................................................. 189 10. On the Earliest Printed Editions of the Vulgate with a TextCritical Apparatus TEUNIS VAN LOPIK .............................................................. 211 11. The Textual Stability of Patristic Citations: Romans 8:33–35 in John Chrysostom’s Homilies on Romans as a Test Case PETER MONTORO ............................................................... 239 12. The Text of the Pericope Adulterae in Early Latin Writers TOMMY WASSERMAN .......................................................... 263 13. The Affiliation of the Quotations from the New Testament Epistles in the Liber de Fide ANNA PERSIG....................................................................... 287 14. Did Tertullian Know a Twenty-Chapter Gospel of John? BENJAMIN D. HAUPT........................................................... 311 Indices........................................................................................... 323 Index of Biblical Passages ...................................................... 323 Index of Manuscripts............................................................ 326 Index of Subjects................................................................... 333

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Anne-Catherine Baudoin is Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Geneva. Her research focuses on various aspects of the reception of the Bible, starting with textual criticism. She is currently part of an international research group preparing the multilingual edition and commentary of the Acts of Pilate/Gospel of Nicodemus. Carla Falluomini is Associate Professor of Germanic Philology at the University of Perugia. She is a specialist in Gothic philology with particular interests in Gothic palaeography and textual criticism. Besides several articles on these topics, she has published The Gothic Version of the Gospels and Pauline Epistles: Cultural Background, Transmission and Character (2015). Hans Förster is currently conducting his research at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Culture of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He is Principal Investigator of a research grant funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF Project P29315) focusing on the Coptic version of the Gospel of John. He is also preparing a critical edition of the Sahidic version of the Gospel of John. Benjamin D. Haupt is the Associate Provost and an Associate Professor at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. He was awarded his doctorate in 2019 at ITSEE in the University of Birmingham for a thesis on Tertullian’s text of the New Testament outside the Gospels. He is also interested in how Christians remain open to society and is

vii

viii

AT ONE REMOVE

currently editing a volume of essays by the German theologian Hans Joachim Iwand. H. A. G. Houghton is Professor of New Testament Textual Scholarship and Director of ITSEE at the University of Birmingham. He has co-organised the Birmingham Colloquia on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament since 2007. In addition to his publications on the Latin New Testament, he has recently edited two books on Codex Zacynthius. Teunis van Lopik is a retired staff member of the National Library of the Netherlands, where he was working in the fields of bibliography and book history. His research focusses on the history of New Testament textual criticism and biblical paratexts. Peter E. Lorenz recently defended his doctoral dissertation at the University of Münster in Germany, entitled A History of Codex Bezae’s Text in the Gospel of Mark. He has published and presented on a range of topics related to Codex Bezae and the so-called ‘Western’ Text, with a focus on digital humanities and late-antique Christianity. Ian N. Mills is a doctoral candidate at Duke University. His research focuses on the production and reception of gospel literature in the New Testament and beyond. Ian’s current project situates the conservative compositional procedure evinced by the synoptic gospels and the work of several second-century evangelists in Hellenistic and Roman literary culture. Peter Montoro is a doctoral candidate at ITSEE in the University of Birmingham, working on the textual transmission of Chrysostom’s Homilies on Romans. He has provided research assistance on a number of projects, including the Tyndale House Greek New Testament, jointly published by Crossway and Cambridge University Press (2017). He serves as the preaching pastor of Westside Baptist Church in Bremerton, Washington. Anna Persig is a doctoral candidate at ITSEE in the University of Birmingham, where she holds an AHRC Midlands4Cities doctoral

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

ix

scholarship. Her thesis focuses on the linguistic features of the Vulgate Catholic Epistles and addresses the question of their authorship. Her publications include an analysis of the renderings of Greek participles in the Vulgate and Old Latin Catholic Epistles. W. Andrew Smith is Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Shepherds Theological Seminary and the director of the Center for Research of Biblical Manuscripts and Inscriptions. He is on the editorial board for the Society of Biblical Literature’s Text-Critical Studies series and is currently directing work towards the Editio Critica Maior of the Pastoral Epistles. His publications include a monograph on the codicology and palaeography of the Gospels in Codex Alexandrinus and the editio princeps of P136. David G. K. Taylor is Associate Professor of Aramaic and Syriac at the University of Oxford. He is currently working on a trilogy of projects related to the Syriac Gospels: an edition of the palimpsest Old Syriac gospel manuscript recently identified at St. Catherine’s Monastery; a re-edition of the Sinaiticus Syriacus palimpsest; and a synopsis of the four Gospels in the early Syriac versions. He co-founded the Birmingham Colloquia with David Parker in 1997. Robert Turnbull is a Research Data Specialist at the Melbourne Data Analytics Platform at the University of Melbourne. While undertaking an MDiv degree, he spent several years working in Jordan where he learned Arabic and developed a love of Arabic manuscripts. He is completing his PhD thesis on the topic of Arabic Gospel Manuscripts at Ridley College through the Australian College of Theology. Tommy Wasserman is Professor of Biblical Studies at Ansgar Høyskole in Kristiansand, Norway. He has published extensively in New Testament textual criticism. His most recent books include A New Approach to Textual Criticism: An Introduction to the CoherenceBased Genealogical Method (co-authored with Peter Gurry, 2017) and To Cast the First Stone: The Transmission of a Gospel Story (coauthored with Jennifer Knust, 2019).

ABBREVIATIONS AGLB ANRW ANTF BAV BL BnF BZNW CANT CBM CCCM CCSA CCSL CGH CSCO CSEL CUP ECM ExpT FC GA GNB HTR IGNTP INTF

Aus der Geschichte der lateinischen Bibel Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt Arbeiten zur neutestamentlichen Textforschung Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana British Library Bibliothèque nationale de France Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft Clavis Apocryphorum Novi Testamenti Chester Beatty Monographs Corpus Christianorum continuatio medievalis Corpus Christianorum series apocryphorum Corpus Christianorum series Latina Commentary on the Gospel Harmony Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Cambridge University Press Editio Critica Maior Expository Times Fathers of the Church Gregory–Aland (see also Liste) Good News Bible Harvard Theological Review International Greek New Testament Project Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung xi

xii ITSEE JBL JSSSup JTS KJV Liste

MT LXX MS(S) NA28

NovT NovTSup NPNF NRSV ns NTAbh NTS NTTS NTTSD NTVMR os OUP PG

PL

AT ONE REMOVE Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement Series Journal of Theological Studies King James Version Kurt Aland, Kurzgefasste Liste der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments. Zweite neubearbeitete and ergänzte Auflage, ANTF 1 (Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 1994). The most up-to-date version is found at http://ntvmr.uni-muenster.de/liste. Majority Text Septuagint manuscript(s) E. Nestle, Kurt Aland et al., Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th edition. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012). Novum Testamentum Supplement to Novum Testamentum Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers New Revised Standard Version New Series Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen New Testament Studies New Testament Tools and Studies New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room, hosted online at http://ntvmr.uni-muenster.de/ Old Series Oxford University Press Patrologia Graeca [= Patrologiae cursus completus: Series graeca]. Ed. J.-P. Migne. 161 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1857–1866). Patrologia Latina [= Patrologiae cursus completus: Series latina]. Edited by J.-P. Migne. 217 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1841–1855).

ABBREVIATIONS RP2005

sa SC SBL SPCK T&S TU TuT UBS5 VC VL

WUNT ZNW

xiii

Maurice A. Robinson and William G. Pierpont, The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform (Southborough, MA: Chilton Book Publishing, 2005). Sahidic (for manuscript sigla, see SMR Database of Coptic NT Manuscripts, http://intf.uni-muenster.de/smr/) Sources chrétiennes Society for Biblical Literature Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge Texts and Studies Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur Text und Textwert United Bible Societies, Greek New Testament, 5th edition (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2014). Vigiliae Christianae Vetus Latina (for manuscript sigla, see Roger Gryson, Altlateinische Handschriften/Manuscrits Vieux Latins Vol. 1 [Freiburg: Herder, 1999]). Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft

INTRODUCTION Indirect evidence, in the form of early translations (‘versions’) and biblical quotations in ancient writers (‘patristic citations’), offers important testimony to the history and transmission of the New Testament. The process of translating the Greek text into Latin, Syriac and Coptic appears to have begun around the end of the second century, predating all but the earliest surviving papyrus fragments of these writings. These versions were made—and revised—on the basis of Greek manuscripts which no longer exist. They open a window into a period of textual history which is otherwise very poorly attested, bearing witness not just to the state of the text in these initial centuries, but also to the way in which it was understood and received in other language communities. Quotations of the New Testament in early Christian writings also have the potential to provide evidence for the form of the biblical text used by their authors. What is more, the location and date at which many of these works were composed is known with a far higher degree of confidence than the place and time of copying for most Greek manuscripts. Nevertheless, in the words of Robert M. Grant, ‘Patristic citations are not citations unless they have been adequately analyzed’. 1 The point of this somewhat cryptic statement is to underline the necessity of a thorough examination of the nature and context of an apparent biblical quotation in order to determine its validity as evidence Robert M. Grant, ‘The Citation of Patristic Evidence in an Apparatus Criticus’, in New Testament Manuscript Studies: The Materials and the Making of a Critical Apparatus, ed. M. M. Parvis and A. P. Wikgren (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1950), 117–24, here 124. 1

xv

xvi

AT ONE REMOVE

for the New Testament text known to the author. It is insufficient simply to take the form of words in a modern edition at face value. Instead, the writer’s citation habits must be investigated so as to establish the way in which they use and reproduce biblical material; the transmission history of the work should be reviewed, to eliminate the possibility of later adjustment of the scriptural quotations; the text of the reference itself may be examined in the context of the wider textual tradition to assess the likelihood that this form was current at the point at which the author was writing. Similarly, full account must be taken of translation technique and the grammatical possibilities and idioms of the languages of the early versions in assessing whether or not they can properly be adduced in support of a particular Greek reading at a place of variation. When a translation is not obviously a scrupulously literal rendering, creating a retroversion into Greek (or any other language) is beset with hazards and leads at best to a hypothesis which further advances may invalidate. Agreement between different versions in a reading unattested in Greek is a striking phenomenon, although it may often be due to a similar approach to translation. In addition to their value as early evidence for the Greek New Testament, versions have a textual tradition of their own which is often of considerable historical, theological and ecclesial significance. Christian thought in the West for over a millennium took as its starting point the Latin Vulgate, itself a revision of an Old Latin translation (Vetus Latina): indeed, it is regularly observed that Latin biblical manuscripts outnumber surviving Greek codices by at least two to one.2 Early Syriac tradition is closely associated with Tatian’s Diatessaron, which in its turn may or may not be associated with other gospel harmonies in a variety of languages. Other versions, such as Gothic or Old Church Slavonic, lie at the heart of the linguistic and cultural identity of particular churches or groups. Notwithstanding the remarkable achievements of earlier scholarship, the last century has seen considerable developments in the collection and presentation of material which stands at one remove from the direct evidence for the text of the Greek New Testament. Work E.g. D. C. Parker, An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and their Texts (Cambridge: CUP, 2008), 57. 2

INTRODUCTION

xvii

on the early versions has followed the paradigm established for Greek tradition, with the establishment of the monumental Vetus Latina edition, comprehensive catalogues of Coptic biblical material, and the rediscovery of important Syriac manuscripts. Studies of other, subsequent versions, including Gothic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Old Church Slavonic and Arabic, have established that these too were created as direct translations from Greek, with the potential to transmit or support important readings. In recent years, the development of electronic tools and approaches has also made a significant contribution, from making manuscripts more easily accessible to gathering and analysing ever larger quantities of textual data. The latter also applies to the mass of patristic citations, with full-text corpora assisting in the identification and contextualisation of biblical references. The establishment of series of modern critical editions, such as Corpus Christianorum, Sources chrétiennes, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller and the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, has enabled the study of early Christian writings to move beyond Migne’s Patrologia Graeca and Patrologia Latina, with greater attention to variation in the manuscript tradition. There are a number of resources introducing the study of indirect evidence for the Greek New Testament. The second edition of The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis, edited by Bart D. Ehrman and Michael W. Holmes (2012) includes chapters on seven versions and patristic evidence in Greek, Latin and Syriac. 3 Several monographs provide more detailed information about individual language traditions, including their relation to Greek.4 These have been accompanied by a renewed There is still much of value in Kurt Aland, ed., Die alten Übersetzungen des Neuen Testaments, die Kirchenväterzitate und Lektionare, ANTF 5 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1972). One should also mention Arthur Α. Vööbus, The Early Versions of the New Testament: Manuscript Studies (Stockholm: Estonian Theological Society in Exile; Louvain: Durbecq, 1954) and Bruce M. Metzger, The Early Versions of the New Testament. Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations (Oxford: OUP, 1977), although the latter in particular has been superseded by the publications mentioned in the following note. 4 E.g. Philip H. Burton, The Old Latin Gospels: A Study of their Texts and Language (Oxford: OUP, 2000); Peter J. Williams, Early Syriac Translation 3

xviii

AT ONE REMOVE

emphasis on the publication of critical editions, many in conjunction with the Editio Critica Maior.5 The SBL New Testament in the Greek Fathers series offers an assessment of the biblical quotations of selected writers from the point of view of textual criticism.6 A more comprehensive list of early references assembled by the Biblia Patristica project is now online as BiblIndex, while the Vetus Latina Database has an extensive collection of Latin quotations up to the eighth century.7 The task of analysis, however, must be performed afresh for each author and, indeed, for each writing, given the vagaries of textual transmission. There remains much work to be done, therefore, on the indirect evidence for the Greek New Testament, a field of study which combines textual criticism, reception history, exegesis and linguistics.

Technique and the Textual Criticism of the Greek Gospels, T&S 3.2 (Piscataway NJ: Gorgias, 2004); Christian Askeland, John’s Gospel: The Coptic Translations of its Greek Text, ANTF 44 (Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 2012); Carla Falluomini, The Gothic Version of the Gospels and Pauline Epistles: Cultural Background, Transmission and Character, ANTF 46 (Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 2015); H. A. G. Houghton, The Latin New Testament: A Guide to its Early History, Texts, and Manuscripts (Oxford: OUP, 2016); Jean-Claude Haelewyck, ed., Le Nouveau testament en syriaque, Études syriaques 14 (Paris: Geuthner, 2017). 5 E.g. Barbara Aland and Andreas Juckel, Das neue Testament in syrischer Überlieferung, 4 vols. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986–2002); Jean-Claude Haelewyck, Evangelium secundum Marcum, Vetus Latina: Die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel 17 (Freiburg: Herder, 2013–18); Philip H. Burton, H. A. G. Houghton, R. F. MacLachlan and D. C. Parker, ed., Evangelium secundum Iohannem, Vetus Latina: Die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel 19 (Freiburg: Herder, 2011–); Curt Niccum, The Bible in Ethiopia: The Book of Acts (Pickwick: Eugene OR, 2014); Hans Förster, Kerstin Sänger-Böhm and Matthias H. O. Schulz, Die kritische Edition der sahidischen Version des Johannesevangeliums, ANTF 56 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021) 6 For a list of volumes, see Gordon D. Fee and Roderic L. Mullen, ‘The Use of the Greek Fathers for New Testament Textual Criticism’, in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research, 361 and http://igntp.org/patristics.html. 7 http://www.biblindex.mom.fr/; https://about.brepolis.net/vetus-latina-database/.

INTRODUCTION

xix

Contents of the Present Volume Given the introductory resources mentioned already, the present collection does not seek to provide a comprehensive or systematic account of the nature or use of versional and patristic evidence for the Greek New Testament. Rather, it brings together a series of original contributions on this topic, which was the focus of the Eleventh Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. The research described here illustrates not just the ongoing importance and variety of this material, but also the way in which it may shape the theory and practice of text-critical scholarship and lead to new insights about this vast and rich tradition. The first chapter, by David G. K. Taylor, is based on his keynote paper at the colloquium and describes two exciting new developments for the study of the Old Syriac Gospels: the multispectral imaging of the Sinaitic Syriac, enabling the recovery of hitherto illegible text in this document, and the discovery of a third witness to the Old Syriac Gospels in two palimpsest manuscripts among the New Finds of St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai. The latter preserves an ancient version, including three passages from the gospels not preserved in either of the other Old Syriac witnesses, making it of considerable importance for the early history of the New Testament text. Ian N. Mills then considers another aspect of early Syriac tradition. After outlining the recent paradigm shift in Diatessaronic studies, he shows how some appeals to the Old Syriac Gospels as evidence for Tatian’s text are methodologically unjustified. Nevertheless, these witnesses— including the new find—are very important in corroborating readings in Ephrem’s commentary. In advance of his scholarly edition of the Sahidic text of John, Hans Förster examines the strategies of the Coptic translators in rendering their Greek Vorlage. He thereby highlights a number of the problems associated with attempting to use Coptic forms in support of particular Greek readings. Remaining in Eastern tradition, Robert Turnbull offers an analysis of a family of Arabic gospel manuscripts using the comparative data from Text und Textwert. The Greek text underlying this translation is of considerable interest: it is distinct from the Byzantine text, but also stands apart from witnesses to the most ancient form as it contains a high proportion of ‘special readings’ (Sonderlesarten).

xx

AT ONE REMOVE

Carla Falluomini illustrates how the Gothic version relates to the broader picture of New Testament textual history. It is one of the earliest witnesses to the Byzantine text, but also exercised an influence on Latin witnesses. Indeed, the presence of Byzantine readings in some Old Latin manuscripts could be the result of this influence. One of these witnesses is considered in greater detail by Anne-Catherine Baudoin: Latin Codex 563 in the Austrian National Library is unusual in containing two non-canonical texts alongside a portion of the Gospel according to Matthew. Baudoin shows that the biblical quotations in the Latin Acts of Pilate have been translated directly from their Greek exemplar, with little correspondence to existing Latin tradition. The text of Matthew also stands apart, with an unexpectedly high proportion of Byzantine readings which may or may not be due to Gothic influence. H. A. G. Houghton examines another manuscript numbered among the Old Latin witnesses, the Latin text of the St. Gall Bilingual Gospels. Although he is able to identify the translator’s partial reliance on an Insular gospel book similar to the Egerton Gospels, a comparison of the non-Vulgate readings in the interlinear Latin text shows no sustained correspondence with Old Latin tradition. Rather, the unique renderings and in scribendo corrections suggest that much of the translation was created ad hoc during the copying process, at least in the Gospel according to John. The relationship between the Greek and Latin texts in a bilingual manuscript is also the subject of the chapter by Peter E. Lorenz. Although scholars have long dismissed the theory that the unusual readings in the Greek text of Codex Bezae are a result of Latin influence, Lorenz identifies a fourth-century context in which Latin texts were preferred and might therefore have been used to emend Greek witnesses. W. Andrew Smith looks at diachronic linguistic patterns in Greek as revealed by the introduction of the verb ‘to be’ in Byzantine textual traditions. This is even more marked in Latin versions, and potentially may also be of exegetical significance. The final paper on direct Latin tradition is Teunis van Lopik’s account of variant readings printed in early editions of the Vulgate. Some of these derive from the Postilla of Hugh of SaintCher, others from a Latin missal. Such features may be helpful in establishing the genealogy of early printed Latin Bibles.

INTRODUCTION

xxi

On the topic of patristic quotations, Peter Montoro provides a reassessment of the biblical text of John Chrysostom’s Homilies on Romans. Despite the tendency to characterise Chrysostom as an early Byzantine witness, careful attention to the manuscript tradition of his homilies reveals a range of variant readings comparable to that found in direct biblical tradition. Until a proper critical edition of Chrysostom is established, judgment on the affiliation of his biblical text should be suspended and the appearance of Chrysostom in a critical apparatus treated with caution. The importance of early writers for the biblical text is shown by Tommy Wasserman. His examination of Ambrose’s quotations of the Pericope Adulterae demonstrates that this passage was present in Latin tradition independently of Jerome’s Vulgate revision of the Gospels. Anna Persig examines the biblical quotations of the Liber de fide attributed to Rufinus the Syrian, which is often considered as the earliest attestation of the Vulgate version of the Epistles. Once readings common to Old Latin and Vulgate sources are discounted and the textual affiliation is assessed on the basis of a set of readings distinctive to the Vulgate, the connection of this work with the Vulgate can no longer be sustained. The identification of this Rufinus as the possible reviser of the latter part of the Vulgate New Testament should therefore be abandoned. Finally, Benjamin D. Haupt responds to recent suggestions that the version of the Gospel of John used by Tertullian may have lacked the final chapter. A comprehensive investigation of the key term clausula across Tertullian’s writings demonstrates that this is an insufficient basis to conclude that his copy ended at John 20:31; rather, this verse summarised for him the purpose of the gospel. The Eleventh Birmingham Colloquium All except one of these papers was originally delivered at the Eleventh Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament.8 This was held at the Edgbaston Campus of the University of Birmingham from 4–6 March 2019. The number of those attending this biennial conference has once again increased, with a total of The title of the colloquium was the same as that of the present volume. The exception is Houghton’s chapter, which was initially prepared for publication before the digitisation of Codex Sangallensis 48. The present text has been revised in the light of these images and subsequent publications.

8

xxii

AT ONE REMOVE

seventy participants from across the world. One innovation introduced for this meeting was the provision of parallel afternoon sessions to enable all twenty-seven presenters to be accommodated in the schedule. It was a particular pleasure to welcome back David Taylor, who co-founded the Colloquium with David Parker in 1997, to give one of the keynote papers: the other was delivered by Reinhart Ceulemans of KU Leuven, on the topic of ‘Biblical Lexicography in Late Antiquity and Byzantium’.

Participants at the Eleventh Birmingham Colloquium (photograph by Benjamin Haupt)

The beginning of Lent meant that the colloquium dinner was held on the evening of Shrove Tuesday in the University’s Staff House, with a carnival theme. An after-dinner presentation was given by Dr. Nicholas Hardy of the University of Birmingham on the translation of the King James Version, following his recent identification of unpublished letters and notebooks showing that the translators consulted the French scholar Isaac Casaubon. Delegates also enjoyed a social evening in the University’s Brook’s Sports Bar and a guided tour of Birmingham Cathedral, where they were allowed to ring the bell of HMS Birmingham. For their assistance with the organisation of the colloquium, particular thanks are due to Megan Davies, Catherine Smith and the other members of ITSEE. On behalf of those attending the colloquium, we also express our gratitude to Helen Ingram of the School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion, Gina Brooks of Fresh Thinking, Liam Grogan of Brook’s Sports Bar, Louise Burridge and her team at Staff House, the staff of Lucas House Hotel and Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, and April Steadman at Birmingham Cathedral.

INTRODUCTION

xxiii

We would like to thank all contributors to this volume, as well as the peer reviewer for Texts and Studies. Georgi Parpulov kindly volunteered to prepare the indexes. Brice Jones, Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Tuomas Rasimus have once again made it a pleasure to work with Gorgias Press. We hope that this volume will not only be a record of another fruitful conference, but will inform and stimulate research on versional and patristic evidence for the Greek New Testament. H. A. G. Houghton Peter Montoro Birmingham, July 2020

1. NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE TEXTUAL STUDY OF THE OLD SYRIAC GOSPELS DAVID G. K. TAYLOR This paper outlines two major developments in the textual study of the Old Syriac Gospels. The first is the re-edition of the famous palimpsest manuscript of the Old Syriac Gospels, Sinai Syriac 30, often known as Codex Sinaiticus Syriacus, with the aid of multispectral imaging. The second is the discovery and edition of a new fragmentary manuscript (F) of the Old Syriac Gospels, currently divided into two parts, Sinai Syriac New Finds 37 and 39, which is only the third known surviving manuscript of this version.

THE SINAI PALIMPSESTS PROJECT My work on both of these texts was made possible through the Sinai Palimpsests Project (which ran from 2011–2017).1 This was a collaborative project between St. Catherine’s Monastery of the Sinai, Egypt, which is the custodian of the manuscripts, and whose dynamic librarian is Father Justin of Sinai; 2 the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library (EMEL) of California,3 directed by Prof. Michael Phelps, and with Prof. Claudia Rapp as the Project Scholarly Director; and the UCLA

See http://sinaipalimpsests.org See http://www.fatherjustinsblog.info 3 See http://emel-library.org 1 2

1

2

DAVID G. K. TAYLOR

Library. The project was generously financed by grants from the Arcadia Trust. Over the course of the five-year project, EMEL produced multispectral images of seventy-four of the palimpsests of St. Catherine’s Monastery (approximately 6,800 pages), using a specially designed imaging rig commissioned by EMEL. Up to thirty-three images were produced for each side of every folio, using illumination in twelve wavelengths from ultraviolet (365nm) to infrared (940nm), and producing images based on spectral reflectance and fluorescence. Images were also produced through transmission—that is, backlighting each folio so that light passes through thinner places in the parchment, and so reveals the original writing where the iron gall in the ink has eaten into the parchment, especially on the flesh side of the parchment. A smaller group of images was produced with raking light (at fifteen degrees), which provides details of the surface structure and scribal rulings, but is not helpful for reading text. Software was then used to process and in some cases combine these images, in order to improve the legibility of the undertexts. 4 A specialist team of scholars was asked to catalogue the materials produced by this project. The images have now been made available to all scholars through the project website, although there are publication restrictions. I was not part of the original imaging or cataloguing team, but in 2015 I was asked to edit the Old Syriac materials and so was provided with all the necessary images.5 The resulting images are far clearer than any to which previous generations of scholars have had access, and yet the difficulties of My knowledge of the technologies used is entirely dependent upon the following published account: http://sinaipalimpsests.org/technologies. On this page images will be found of Sinai Syriac 30 in the imaging rig. 5 I would like to thank Archbishop Damianos of Sinai and Raithu for his gracious permission to edit these Syriac manuscripts, and Father Justin of Sinai for helping with all the practical arrangements; Michael Phelps for his generosity in making his project’s images available to me before their publication, and for his subsequent help with technical issues; Sebastian Brock for encouraging me in this editing work, and discussing many details of the edition with me; and Maja Kominko of the Arcadia Trust for being so supportive and helpful at every stage. 4

1. NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE OLD SYRIAC GOSPELS

3

editing these texts are still not negligible. The clearest images allow the undertext to be read with great ease, once the eyes adjust, but, in the case of the images of Sinaiticus, these are often precisely the folios which the earlier editors were able to read by natural light, and so in most cases only very few corrections need to be made on these sections of text. At the other extreme, images of some pages produced no legible text at all, or contain sections that remain illegible, often due to damage sustained in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see below). Most images required far more work, and some took several days of study before all readable text was transcribed from a single page. Often the text can only be read by switching between multiple images, as various areas of a page responded to different wavelengths of light or imaging techniques. When the transmissive or backlit imaging was successful, these images were particularly helpful, as they allowed characters and dots hidden under the ink of the upper text to be read, whereas the reflective and fluorescent images leave the overtext (and other stains and marks) superimposed on the undertext. Finally, and perhaps obviously, I soon discovered that it was always a good idea to check readings against the images taken in standard light—otherwise fly spots or other accretions or damage could easily be mistaken for an original scribal mark. On rare occasions, ironically, it was actually easier to read text from the colour images taken in standard light than from the other multispectral images. Originally, I only intended to edit the new fragmentary manuscript of the Old Syriac Gospels, but as I checked its readings against the images of Sinaiticus I discovered again and again that the readings of our editions were not reliable, and so I undertook the re-edition of that text also. My editing work on F is now complete, and the manuscript of the edition will soon be submitted for publication. Sinaiticus (Sinai Syr. 30) has also been re-read throughout, though certain problematic sections that defied initial deciphering still need to be re-examined before publication of the new edition.

OUTLINE HISTORY OF THE SYRIAC GOSPEL VERSIONS Before turning to the textual developments produced by this imaging and editing work, it seems sensible to provide a quick sketch of the history of development of the Syriac Gospel versions. The Syriac New Testament version with which most people are familiar is the

4

DAVID G. K. TAYLOR

Peshitta.6 This twenty-two book New Testament version (which did not include the minor catholic epistles of 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John and Jude, or Revelation) was produced by the early fifth century, when it was in circulation on both sides of the Roman/Iranian frontier, and it was this version that was to become the standard Syriac version until the present day. It was given its name ‘Peshitta’, or ‘simple’ version, in the ninth century by a Syrian Orthodox exegete, Moshe bar Kipho, who wanted to distinguish it (and the completely unrelated Old Testament text) from the complex seventh-century Syriac translations of the Greek Bible produced by Syrian Orthodox refugees in Egypt (the Syro-Hexapla, and the Harklean New Testament). The Gospels were probably revised from the Old Syriac Gospels, with the help of contemporary Greek Gospel texts.7 Unfortunately the standard edition of The standard edition of the Peshitta Gospels, with Latin translation, is by Philip E. Pusey and George H. Gwilliam, Tetraeuangelium Sanctum juxta simplicem Syrorum versionem (Oxford: Clarendon, 1901). The strengths and weaknesses of this edition are detailed in an important introduction by Andreas Juckel which was prefaced to the Gorgias Press reprint of this volume (Piscataway NJ: Gorgias, 2003), i*–xiii*. The Epistles are edited by Barbara Aland and Andreas Juckel, Das neue Testament in syrischer Überlieferung, 4 vols. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986–2002). Reliable English translations of the Peshitta books were produced for the first time in a series of volumes produced for the series The Antioch Bible. The Syriac Peshiṭta Bible with English Translation, ed. George A. Kiraz and Andreas Juckel; (Piscataway NJ: Gorgias, 2012–16), which are about to be reprinted in a single volume. There are up to twenty Syriac NT manuscripts which might be dated to the fifth century, seventy-three of which might be of the sixth century, and some 330 in total before the late thirteenth century. See David G. K. Taylor, ‘Répertoire des manuscrits syriaques du Nouveau Testament’, in Le Nouveau testament en syriaque, ed. Jean-Claude Haelewyck, Études syriaques 14 (Paris: Geuthner, 2017), 291–313. For a helpful listing by Andreas Juckel of major variant readings in all the Peshitta New Testament books, see Paul Féghali and Andreas Juckel, eds., Le Nouveau Testament Syriaque. La Peshitta: Interlinéaire syriaque-arabe, Sources syriaques 3 (Antélias: Centre d’Études et de Recherches Orientales, 2010), 879–914. 7 Useful introductions include Bruce M. Metzger, The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations (Oxford: 6

1. NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE OLD SYRIAC GOSPELS

5

the Peshitta Gospels published in 1901 by George Gwilliam, based on Philip Pusey’s collations, presents a majority text that often relegates the oldest readings to the apparatus and does not include several important manuscripts, such as Codex Phillips 1388 in Berlin, which contain an earlier form of the Peshitta with numerous Old Syriac readings.8 It therefore needs to be used with great caution. There has been much speculation about the earliest form of the Gospel used by the churches in Mesopotamia, often based on minimal evidence, but it seems likely that they made use of Greek manuscripts of the Gospels since that appears to have been the earliest local language of Christian epigraphy in centres such as Edessa and Nisibis, as also, arguably, of liturgy.9 The Gospel harmony fragment (GA 0212) from Dura Europos on the Euphrates, dated between the late second century and the year 254, whatever its precise filiation, is unarguably written in Greek.10 In the early fifth century, Theodoret of Clarendon, 1977); and Peter J. Williams, ‘The Syriac Versions of the New Testament’, in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis, ed. by Bart D. Ehrman and Michael W. Holmes, 2nd ed., NTTSD 42 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 143–66. See also the upto-date survey articles in Jean-Claude Haelewyck, ed., Le Nouveau testament en syriaque, Études syriaques 14 (Paris: Geuthner, 2017). 8 Codex Phillips 1388 was first collated by Arthur Allgeier, ‘Cod. Phillips 1388 in Berlin und seine Bedeutung für die Geschichte der Pešitta’, Oriens Christianus 29/III.7 (1932): 1–15. More reliable is Andreas Juckel, ‘A Reexamination of Codex Phillipps 1388’, Hugoye 6:1 (2003). 9 For an overview, see David G. K. Taylor, ‘The Coming of Christianity to Mesopotamia’, ch. 4 in The Syriac World, ed. Daniel King (London: Routledge, 2018), 68–87. 10 See Carl H. Kraeling, A Greek Fragment of Tatian’s Diatessaron from Dura, Studies and Documents 3 (London: Christophers, 1935); Anton Baumstark, ‘Das griechische “Diatessaron”-Fragment von Dura-Europos’, Oriens Christianus 32 (1935): 244–52; D. C. Parker, David G. K. Taylor, and Mark S. Goodacre, ‘The Dura-Europos Gospel Harmony’, in Studies in the Early Text of the Gospels and Acts, ed. David G. K. Taylor, T&S 3.1 (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1999; repr. Piscataway NJ: Gorgias, 2013), 192–228; Jan Joosten, ‘The Dura Parchment and the Diatessaron’, VC 57:2 (2003): 159–175; Ian N. Mills, ‘The Wrong Harmony: Against the

6

DAVID G. K. TAYLOR

Cyrrhus (bp. 423–457, expelled after 449) famously claims to have removed more than 200 copies of the Diatessaron Gospel harmony in his region of north-west Syria, close to Antioch, and to have replaced them with the separate Gospels.11 Although no indication is given of the language of these harmonies, they are most likely to have been written in Greek. Whether or not Greek Gospel harmonies were also in use in Mesopotamia, it appears that the earliest Syriac version of the Gospels in widespread local use was indeed a Gospel harmony, normally presumed by modern scholars to be that of Tatian, although the entire field of Diatessaron studies is currently in a state of turmoil and so this attribution may change. No manuscript of the Syriac harmony survives, and so we are mostly dependent for our knowledge of its structure and text on the mid-fourth-century Commentary on the Gospel Harmony by Ephrem of Nisibis (d. 373).12 Eighty per cent of this Diatessaronic Character of the Dura Parchment’, in The Gospel of Tatian: Exploring the Nature and Text of the Diatessaron, ed. Matthew R. Crawford and Nicholas J. Zola, (London: T&T Clark, 2019), 145–70. 11 Haereticarum fabularum compendium I.20 (PG 83, 369–72); English translation in Istvan Pásztori-Kupán, Theodoret of Cyrus, The Early Church Fathers (London: Routledge, 2006), 202. 12 The relationship of the Arabic and Persian Gospel Harmonies to the early Syriac harmony remains disputed, and they are more important for what they tell us of the structure of the harmonies from which they were translated, than for the wording of that text. The surviving Syriac was edited by Louis Leloir, ed., S. Éphrem. Commentaire de l’Évangile concordant, texte syriaque, CBM 8 (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co., 1963); Louis Leloir, ed., S. Éphrem. Commentaire de l’Évangile concordant, texte syriaque: Folios Additionnels, CBM 8a (Leuven/Paris: Peeters, 1990); Pedro O. Valdivieso, ‘Un nuevo fragmento siríaco del Comentario de S. Efrén al Diatésaron (PPalau Rib. 2)’, Studia Papyrologica 5 (1966) : 7–17 [reprinted in CBM 8a (1990), 145–57]. The Armenian text was also edited by Louis Leloir, ed., S. Éphrem. Commentaire de l’Évangile concordant, version arménienne, CSCO 137 (Louvain: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1953). Translations drawing upon both the Syriac text and the early Armenian translation were published by Louis Leloir, Éphrem de Nisibe: Commentaire de l’Évangile Concordant ou Diatessaron, SC 121 (Paris: Cerf, 1966); and Carmel McCarthy, Saint Ephrem’s Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron: An English Translation of

1. NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE OLD SYRIAC GOSPELS

7

survives in Syriac, and all of it in Armenian translation, although both the Syriac and Armenian have textual plusses and minuses.13 In this commentary Ephrem also occasionally cites the ‘Greek Gospel’, which has usually been taken to be a reference to the separate Gospels known to him through Syriac, although Matthew Crawford has recently argued that it literally refers to a Greek gospel text, and possibly that of Tatian. 14 There is clearly a close textual relationship between the Syriac Gospel Harmony known to Ephrem and the separate Old Syriac Gospels, and it is usually (but not universally) presumed that the Old Syriac Gospel text derives from the harmony.15 Until recently only two manuscripts of this Old Syriac version were known, the Curetonian manuscript (BL Add. 14451; Berlin Syr. 8; Deir al-Surian Syr. frag. 9), and the Sinai palimpsest (Sinai Syriac 30) known as Sinaiticus Syriacus. The Curetonian manuscript (known by the siglum C) was named for William Cureton, the librarian at the British Museum who, in the 1840s, recognised it as a distinctive Gospel text while accessioning the vast numbers of Syriac manuscripts acquired by the British Museum from the Deir al-Surian, the Monastery of the Syrians, in the Wadi Natrun in Egypt.16 Cureton printed the text in 1848 for private

Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709 with Introduction and Notes, JSSSup 2 (Oxford: OUP for Manchester University, 1993). 13 See Christian Lange, The Portrayal of Christ in the Syriac Commentary on the Diatessaron, CSCO 616, Subs. 118 (Leuven: Peeters, 2005). 14 Matthew R. Crawford, ‘The Fourfold Gospel in the Writings of Ephrem the Syrian’, Hugoye 18.1 (2015): 9–51. 15 For an extremely useful survey of scholarship on the Old Syriac version see Jean-Claude Haelewyck, ‘Les vieilles versions syriaques des Évangiles’, in Le Nouveau testament en syriaque, ed. Jean-Claude Haelewyck, Études syriaques 14 (Paris: Geuthner, 2017), 67–113; an English translation was published as: ‘The Old Syriac Versions of the Gospels: A Status Quaestionis (from 1842 to the Present Day)’, Bulletin de l’Académie Belge pour l’Étude des Langues Anciennes et Orientales 8 (2019): 141–79. 16 For an account of the acquisition of these manuscripts, see William Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum, Acquired since the Year 1838, vol. 3 (London: British Museum, 1872), i–xxv.

8

DAVID G. K. TAYLOR

circulation,17 and published it in 1858 with a translation, and some curious theories about it being the original text of the Gospels.18 The standard (and reliable) critical edition is that of F. C. Burkitt (1904).19 It is a fifth-century manuscript, but it had already become damaged and lost many folios by the medieval period. When it was rebound in the year 1222,20 and reconstituted as a complete Gospel manuscript, only eighty folios of Old Syriac text were still joined together, and so most of the textual gaps were roughly patched by the addition of sixtyone folios taken from damaged Peshitta Gospel manuscripts.21 The remaining gaps were filled by five further folios which were copied from the Peshitta for this new composite manuscript, in the same hand as the record of rebinding.22 Cureton found two and a half additional Old Syriac folios from this manuscript in bindings and other places, and after his initial publication four additional folios were

William Cureton, Quatuor Evangeliorum Syriace, recensionis antiquissimae, atque in Occidente adhuc ignotae quod superest: e codice vetustissimo Nitriensi eruit et vulgavit Guilielmus Cureton (London: The Editor, 1848). 18 William Cureton, Remains of a Very Antient Recension of the Four Gospels in Syriac, hitherto Unknown in Europe (London: John Murray, 1858). 19 F. C. Burkitt, Evangelion da-Mepharreshe: The Curetonian Version of the Four Gospels, with the readings of the Sinai Palimpsest and the early Syriac Patristic evidence edited, collected and arranged, Vol. I Text, Vol. II Introduction and Notes (Cambridge: CUP, 1904). 20 A note recording this is found at the end of the manuscript, fol. 88a. See William Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum, Acquired since the Year 1838, vol. 1 (London: British Museum, 1870), 74; and (with translation) Cureton, Remains, i. 21 See Cureton, Remains, ii–iii. These folios contained Matt 23:28–28:42 (8 fol.), Matt 28:42–Mark 6:49 (10 fol.), Mark 6:49–Luke 2:37 (19 fol.), Luke 2:10–3:13 (1 fol., with the superfluous Luke 2:10–37 crossed through), Luke 3:13–17:28 (23 fol.). 22 Fol. 12–15, containing Matt 8:23–10:31, and fol. 88 containing Luke 24:44–end Luke (itself a palimpsest folio, with the undertext containing the beginning of Peshitta Luke). 17

1. NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE OLD SYRIAC GOSPELS

9

eventually traced (three in Berlin and one in Deir al-Surian).23 Even so, only eighty-six and a half folios survive out of an original 180.24 Notably, the Curetonian manuscript preserves the Gospels in the order Matt, Mark, John, Luke, which appears to be unique among extant Gospel manuscripts, although it is attested in other sources,25 and David Parker has suggested that this was the order of the gospels in the

The Berlin folios were used to bind Berlin Syr. 8 (formerly Ms. Orient. Quart. 528). See Eduard Sachau, Verzeichniss der syrischen Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin, Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin 23 (Berlin: Asher & Co., 1899), 16–18. For online images, see: http://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB00014 35500000000. They were edited by Emil Roediger, ‘Über drei in der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin vorhandene Blätter zur Ergänzung der zu London im J. 1858 von William Cureton herausgegebenen Bruchstücke einer alten von der Peschittha verschiedenen syrischen Übersetzung der Evangelien’, Monatsbericht der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (July 1872): 557–9, 1*–6*; reprinted by William Wright, Fragments of the Curetonian Gospels (London: Gilbert & Rivington, no date [1872]), 8 pp.. For the folio that remained in Deir al-Surian see Daniel L. McConaughy, ‘A recently discovered folio of the Old Syriac (Syc) text of Luke 16,13 – 17,1’, Biblica 68 (1987): 85–88, [2 pl.]. For a formal description and recent photographs, see Sebastian Brock and Lucas van Rompay, Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts and Fragments in the Library of Deir al-Surian, Wadi alNatrun (Egypt), Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 227 (Leuven: Peeters, 2014), 379, 625–6. 24 It preserves the following verses: Matthew: 1:1–8:22; 10:32–23:25a; Mark: 16:17b–20; John: 1:1–42a; 3:5b–8:19a; 14:10b–12a, 15b–19a, 21b–24a, 26b–29a; Luke: 2:48b–3:16a; 7:33b–24:44a. 25 Such as the Latin ‘Cheltenham List’ (‘Canon Mommsenianus’) of biblical books, originating in North Africa, c. 360; see Erwin Preuschen, Analecta: Kürzere texte zur Geschichte der Alten Kirche und des Kanons (Leipzig: Mohr, 1893), 138–40; and the Latin Gospel Commentary of Pseudo-Theophilus of Antioch (Gaul, c. 500), see Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 231, 296, 311. 23

10

DAVID G. K. TAYLOR

exemplar of Codex Bezae (GA 05),26 which itself has the gospels in the ‘Western’ order Matthew, John, Mark, Luke.27 The second manuscript, Codex Sinaiticus Syriacus, Sinai Syriac 30 (known as S), is a late fourth-century palimpsest. In older literature it was occasionally referred to as Codex Lewisianus, a name given in honour of Agnes Smith Lewis, who made the arduous journey to Sinai in 1892 with her sister, Margaret Dunlop Gibson, and photographed numerous Syriac manuscripts, including this one.28 Back in Cambridge the undertext was identified as being a gospel text related to that of the Curetonian manuscript, and this led to further expeditions to transcribe the barely legible undertext. This process will be described further below. The manuscript contains 142 out of an original 166 folios, although a number of folios are effectively illegible. The Gospels are copied in the conventional order: Matthew, Mark,

D. C. Parker, Codex Bezae: An Early Christian Manuscript and its Text (Cambridge: CUP, 1992), 110, 113. See also John Chapman, ‘The Order of the Gospels in the Parent of Codex Bezae’, ZNW 6 (1905): 339–46. 27 This order is also found in the Greek tradition in Codex Monacensis (GA 033), the Freer Gospels (GA 032), possibly P45, 055 and (possibly) 594, VL 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 13, and the Gothic version (see Parker, Codex Bezae, 116–7). 28 For contemporary accounts of these expeditions see: Margaret D. Gibson, How the Codex was Found, a Narrative of two Visits to Sinai from Mrs. Lewis’s Journals, 1892–1893 (Cambridge: Macmillan & Bowes, 1893); Agnes S. Lewis, In the Shadow of Sinai. A Story of Travel and Research from 1895 to 1897 (Cambridge: Macmillan & Bowes, 1898); Agnes D. Bensly, Our Journey to Sinai: A Visit to the Convent of St. Catarina (London: Religious Tract Society, 1896). For more on the remarkable sisters Lewis and Gibson, see A. Whigham Price, The Ladies of Castlebrae: A Story of Nineteenth-Century Travel and Research (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1985); and Janet M. Soskice, Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels (London: Chatto & Windus, 2009), which contains several important corrections to the account of Whigham Price. Also valuable is the recent biography of Rendel Harris which draws on many archival sources relating to Harris and Lewis: Alessandro Falcetta, The Daily Discoveries of a Bible Scholar and Manuscript Hunter: A Biography of James Rendel Harris (1852– 1941) (London: T&T Clark, 2018), ch. 10. 26

1. NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE OLD SYRIAC GOSPELS

11

Luke, John.29 The original Gospel manuscript was broken up and its text erased in the seventh century. 142 folios were recombined with 40 palimpsest folios taken from other manuscripts, and overwritten with a collection of lives of holy women,30 with this upper text dated to the year 698.31 The general consensus is that this manuscript It preserves the following verses: Matthew: 1:1–6:10a; 8:3b–12:4a; (12:4b– 6a); 12:6b–25a; (12:25b–30a); 12:30b–16:15a; 17:11b–20:24; 21:20b– 25:15a; (25:15b–17a); 25:17b–20a; (25:20b–25a); 25:25b–26a; (25:26b–31); 25:32–33a; (25:33b–37); 25:38–28:7a; Mark: 1:12b–44a; 2:21b–4.17a; 4:41b–26a; 6:5b–16:8; [omits 16:9–20]; Luke: 1:1–16a; 1:38b–5:28a; 6:12b– 24:52. John: 1:25b–47a; 2:16–4:37; 5:6b–25a; 5:46b–18:31a; 19:40b–21:25. 30 Agnes S. Lewis, Select Narratives of Holy Women from the Syro-Antiochene or Sinai Palimpsest, as written by John the Stylite, Studia Sinaitica 9–10 (London: C. J. Clay & Sons, 1900). 31 The upper text has usually been dated to AD 779 (often misreported as 778). The colophon on fol. 181v reads: /%‫ ܐ‬$.-+ ,+$* )(‫& ܕ‬%$#‫ܘܐ‬ E$%‫?ܡ ܬ‬:+ .C+ B* .‫?ܙ‬7‫ (;ܚ ܬ‬.‫>?ܣ‬:=:< ;+ ,:9‫ܘ‬487 ‫ܪܘܣ‬4.32%‫[ ܕܐ‬..]1#‫ܘܬ‬ ,7?(‫) ܕ‬:̈G# 1#[$]+ .,F-+ (‘And the book was completed in the year one thousand and nine[..] of Alexander the Macedonian son of Philip, the month of Tammuz (July), [day] 23 in it, on the third day in the week [Tuesday], at the ninth hour of the day.’). There has been much uncertainty, due to damage at this point in the manuscript, about whether the second number of the Seleucid era year date (anno graecorum, AG) should be read as ninety (%$#"‫)ܬ‬, nineteen (('&#"‫)ܬ‬, or nine ()"‫)ܬ‬. The majority has opted for ‘ninety’: see Sebastian Brock, ‘Syriac on Sinai: The Main Connections’, in ΕΥΚΟΣΜΙΑ: Studi miscellanei per il 75° di Vincenzo Poggi S.J., ed. Vincenzo Ruggieri and Luca Pieralli (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), [103–117], 106; followed by Paul Géhin, Les manuscrits syriaques de parchemin du Sinaï et leurs membra disjecta, CSCO 665, Subs. 136 (Louvain: Peeters, 2017), 77. However, earlier discussions have not explored the significance of the scribe giving the date of completion as Tuesday 23 Tammuz / July. Turning to our three possible options, we can determine that in AG 1090 (AD 779) Easter Sunday was on 11 April, and so 23 July was a Friday; in AG 1019 (AD 708) Easter Sunday was on 15 April, and so 23 July was a Monday; whereas in AG 1009 (AD 698) Easter Sunday was on 7 April, and so 23 July was a Tuesday. The upper text of Sinai Syr. 30 was thus completed in 698, and the final number should be read simply as )"‫‘( ܘܬ‬and nine’). For 29

12

DAVID G. K. TAYLOR

represents a generally earlier form of the Old Syriac Gospel text than the Curetonian manuscript, which has clearly been revised using later Greek manuscripts, and it is usually argued that the two manuscripts are descendants of an original unitary translation, produced at some point in the third century. This parallels the Old Latin Gospels, which are thought to derive broadly from a single initial translation despite subsequent revisions.32 There are, however, major differences between the two manuscripts, as can be seen by glancing at the critical apparatus in any Greek New Testament edition.33

THE TEXT OF SINAITICUS SYRIACUS RE-EXAMINED The publishing history of the Sinai Palimpsest is complex and not always very happy; neither, it turns out, is the published text on which we all rely, Agnes Smith Lewis’s 1910 edition.34 This text is the tables of Easter see Venance Grumel, La chronologie, Traité d’Études Byzantines I (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958); see also the powerful CALH calendar program written by Benno van Dalen, the 32-bit version of which can be downloaded from his website, www.bennovandalen.de, and in which the Seleucid era is that labelled ‘Byzantine’. 32 See H. A. G. Houghton, The Latin New Testament: A Guide to its Early History, Texts, and Manuscripts (Oxford: OUP, 2016); Philip H. Burton, The Old Latin Gospels: A Study of their Texts and Language (Oxford: OUP, 2000). 33 Burkitt, Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, provided English translations of all variants then known between the two witnesses. The Syriac texts are most easily compared using the helpful edition of George A. Kiraz and Andreas Juckel, Comparative Edition of the Syriac Gospels: Aligning the Sinaiticus, Curetonianus, Peshitta and Harklean Versions, 4 vols., NTTS 21 (Leiden: Brill, 1996). It should be noted that this edition ignores the reordering of biblical verses found in some passages of the Old Syriac Gospels (as do versions accessible through biblical software programmes such as Accordance), and the text of Sinaiticus will also need revising in light of the new multispectral images. 34 Agnes S. Lewis, The Old Syriac Gospels or Evangelion Da-Mepharreshê; being the text of the Sinai or Syro-Antiochene Palimpsest, including the latest Additions and Emendations, with the Variants of the Curetonian Text,

1. NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE OLD SYRIAC GOSPELS

13

product of accumulated scholarly recensions and textual tinkerings, which provided few opportunities for the readings proposed to be verified by scholars unable to travel to Sinai. An overview of this process may therefore be useful: 1892:

(‘First visit’). The manuscript was photographed in Sinai in February by Lewis and Gibson, and in July the undertext was identified by R. L. Bensly and F. C. Burkitt as coming from a copy of the Old Syriac Gospels.35

Corroborations from many other MSS., and a list of Quotations from Ancient Authors (London: Williams and Norgate, 1910). 35 See Lewis’s introduction to Robert L. Bensly, J. Rendel Harris, and F. C. Burkitt, eds., The Four Gospels in Syriac Transcribed from the Sinaitic Palimpsest (Cambridge: CUP, 1894), v. Many of the folios were stuck together in 1892, and needed separating; six were separated using steam from a kettle (Introduction, vi; How the Codex was Found, 52–53; Lewis, ‘Last gleanings from the Sinai Palimpsest’, Expositor V.6 (1897), 112). Dirt covering the folios was removed by the monks after 1892, ‘probably with a sponge’ (‘Last gleanings’, 112). The sisters’ published accounts of the identification by Bensly and Burkitt are less than flattering: see Lewis, In the Shadow, x-xii; Gibson, How the Codex was Found, 75–77. These were published after the 1893 expedition, when Burkitt and Bensly (and their wives) fell out with Lewis and Harris, who were clearly regarded as meddling amateurs, with the former most valuable for her experience as a traveller and her knowledge of modern Greek and the monks at Sinai. (Although without Lewis there would have been no initial transcription.) See the excellent, if rather onesided, accounts of their various quarrels by Falcetta, The Daily Discoveries, ch. 10; and Soskice, The Sisters of Sinai. For a more hostile version that almost entirely excludes Lewis, see Bensly, Our Journey to Sinai, 12, 114–9, 157–8, 166; and Burkitt, Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, II.17: ‘Mrs. Lewis … was also of the party’.

14 1893:

DAVID G. K. TAYLOR (‘Second visit’.) First transcription of the Gospel text, at Sinai,36 by Bensly, Burkitt, J. R. Harris (but not Lewis).37 Lewis, however, was already applying a chemical reagent, ‘hydrosulphide of ammonia’, (NH4)HS, as ‘recommended to

Lewis distributed her 1892 photographs to the male scholars before their departure for Sinai (see Lewis, In the Shadow, xii–xiii), and so Burkitt was able to transcribe thirty pages even before their departure (Introduction, v). The scholars were not able to work on continuous sections of Gospel texts, since the re-used palimpsest pages had not been rebound in their original order, but instead they had to jump from one folio-long extract to the next, which greatly slowed down the work. During the 40 days in Sinai (8 February–20 March 1893) a total of 223 pages (out of 284) were transcribed; 100 out of the first 104 pages by Harris; 69 by Burkitt, including the earlier thirty, out of his assigned pages, 105–200; twenty-seven by Bensly, plus another twenty-seven together with Burkitt, out of the remaining 80; on their return Burkitt transcribed a further eighteen and half pages from the new photographs: see Gibson, How the Codex was Found, 131; Lewis, In the Shadow, xiii, 95. Transcription from the photographs, rather than the manuscript, is indicated in the edition of 1894 by the transcriber’s initials at the bottom of the page being placed in square brackets; see Lewis’s introduction to Bensly, Harris, and Burkitt, The Four Gospels in Syriac, vi. Bensly died two days after returning from Sinai, and so his pages were revised by Burkitt (see Agnes S. Lewis, Some Pages of the Four Gospels Re-transcribed from the Sinaitic Palimpsest with a Translation of the Whole Text [London: C. J. Clay & Sons, 1896], ix). 37 Lewis had only started to learn Syriac in 1891, in order to read the Apology of Aristides recently published by Harris from a Sinai manuscript: J. Rendel Harris, ed., The Apology of Aristides on Behalf of the Christians from a Syriac MS. Preserved on Mount Sinai, Texts and Studies 1.1 (Cambridge: CUP, 1891). She was taught by the Rev. R. H. Kennett (1864–1932), the University Lecturer in Aramaic, and later (1903–1932) the Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge: see Lewis, In the Shadow of Sinai, iii. It was Harris’s discovery, and talk of other Syriac manuscripts piled in chests, that inspired her to travel to Sinai: see Lewis, In the Shadow, iii. 36

1. NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE OLD SYRIAC GOSPELS

15

me by Mr. Scott, of the British Museum’.38 Lewis took new photographs of the manuscript.39 1894:

Publication of the first edition: Robert L. Bensly, J. Rendel Harris, and F. C. Burkitt, eds., The Four Gospels in Syriac Transcribed from the Sinaitic Palimpsest. With an Introduction by A. S. Lewis (Cambridge: CUP).40 Approximately a fifth of the surviving Gospel palimpsest text remained illegible and so untranscribed.41

Edward John Long Scott (1840–1918), the Keeper of Manuscripts and Egerton Librarian at the British Museum. See Lewis’s introduction to Bensly, Harris, and Burkitt, The Four Gospels in Syriac, xx; Gibson, How the Codex was Found, 134–7. Lewis states that the reagent allowed them to add ‘about a sixth more to the words which they were able to copy out’ (Introduction, xx). This procedure was carried out with the permission of the monastery authorities, and the approval of all the scholars present (although Bensly initially objected). For Lewis’s firm belief that the reagent did no long-term harm, see Lewis, ‘Last gleanings’, 113; Agnes S. Lewis ‘Our Sixth Visit to Mount Sinai’, ExpT 17.9 (June 1906): [392–6], 396. For a study of this reagent and its long-term effects see Felix Albrecht, ‘Between Boon and Bane: The Use of Chemical Reagents in Palimpsest Research in the Nineteenth Century’, in Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Seminar held at the University of Copenhagen 13th-15th April 2011, ed. Matthew J. Driscoll, Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 13 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2012), 147–65. I note that Samuel Tregelles discussed the use of vapour of hydro-sulphate of ammonia more than thirty years earlier; see Samuel P. Tregelles, Codex Zacynthius. Greek Palimpsest Fragments of the Gospel of Saint Luke, obtained in the Island of Zante (London: Samuel Bagster, 1861), xxii. 39 See Burkitt, in the introduction to Bensly, Harris, and Burkitt, The Four Gospels in Syriac, xxxix. 40 Both Lewis (Introduction, xxiv), and Burkitt (Introduction, xxxix) had their Syriac checked and corrected by the Rev. R. H. Kennett see note 37), but it was Harris’s work that needed the most repeated correction by Kennett: see Falcetta, The Daily Discoveries, 127 (based on letters from Lewis to Harris). 41 See Lewis, Some Pages of the Four Gospels Re-transcribed, ix. 38

16

DAVID G. K. TAYLOR

1895:

(‘Third visit’.) Lewis revisited Sinai, and transcribed further passages, again with the aid of ammonium hydrosulphide.42

1896:

Lewis published her 1895 transcriptions of 98 pages that had defied earlier transcription, in a format that could be bound together with the 1894 edition: Agnes S. Lewis, Some Pages of the Four Gospels Re-transcribed from the Sinaitic Palimpsest with a Translation of the Whole Text (London: C. J. Clay & Sons).43

1897:

(‘Fourth visit’.) Lewis revisited Sinai, re-photographed the manuscript,44 and published a small list of corrected readings: Agnes S. Lewis, ‘Last gleanings from the Sinai Palimpsest’, Expositor V.6: 111–9.

1902:

(‘Fifth visit’.) Lewis revisited Sinai, re-photographed the manuscript,45 and rechecked some variants.46

See Lewis, Some Pages of the Four Gospels Re-transcribed, ix; Lewis, In the Shadow, 85. Pencil folio-numbering was also added by Lewis, with permission, in 1895: Lewis, In the Shadow, 85; for the slow pace of transcription, see page 93; for recent minor damage to the folios, see page 94. 43 The Syriac was read and corrected by the Rev. R. H. Kennett, and the Rev. Eberhard Nestle (Lewis, Some Pages of the Four Gospels Re-transcribed, xxiii). 44 Bound copies of these photographs were deposited in Cambridge University Library; Westminster College, Cambridge; University Library, Halle; John Rylands Library, Manchester; University of Birmingham (Rendel Harris’s copy). Lantern slides were also prepared, apparently in late 1903; see Agnes S. Lewis, ‘The Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe’, ExpT 16.6 (March 1905): [249–253], 250. Copies of these were deposited in the university libraries of Heidelberg, St. Andrews, and Oxford: see Agnes S. Lewis, ‘The Text of the Sinai Palimpsest’, Expositor VIII.2 (1911): [1–15], 6. 45 See Agnes S. Lewis, ‘The Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe’, ExpT 16.6 (March 1905): [249–53], 250. These were later added to the photographs already deposited in Cambridge University Library. 46 See Agnes S. Lewis, The Old Syriac Gospels or Evangelion Da-Mepharreshê (London: Williams & Norgate, 1910), iv. 42

1. NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE OLD SYRIAC GOSPELS 1904:

17

Publication of Burkitt’s edition of the Old Syriac Gospels, based on the Curetonian manuscript, 47 which included about 300 passages where he disagreed with the readings in the editions of 1894 and 1896, based on his study of Lewis’s photographs.48 (Fifty of these corrections were in passages read originally by himself at Sinai.) This led to a flurry of critical articles by Lewis, and a further deterioration of their relationship49—although in her 1910 edition she tacitly adopted many of Burkitt’s readings.

Burkitt had taken over Bensly’s long-planned, but unwritten, new edition of the Curetonian Gospels upon the latter’s death in 1893: see Burkitt, Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, I.vii–viii. This planned edition predated the discovery of the Sinai palimpsest, but Burkitt included a full critical apparatus comparing the two texts, and printed the text of the Sinai palimpsest when folios had been lost in the Curetonian manuscript. As he wrote (Evangelion daMepharreshe, I.viii): ‘In many ways it would have been more interesting to have printed S in full, with the variants of C in the notes’, but the broken text of S initially available to him made it unsuitable as the running text of an edition, and so he was advised against it. He must also have been quite aware that Lewis would have been enraged were he to have published the Sinai palimpsest as his main text. 48 See Burkitt, Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, Appendix III, 541–56; F. C. Burkitt, ‘The Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe’, ExpT 16.7 (April 1905): 304. 49 Lewis challenged many of the proposed readings, and stated that she had been able to read the palimpsest in some 70 places where Burkitt had stated that it was illegible. See Agnes S. Lewis, ‘The Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe’, ExpT 16.6 (March 1905): 249–53; F. C. Burkitt, ‘The Evangelion DaMepharreshe’, ExpT 16.7 (April 1905): 304–6; Agnes S. Lewis, ‘The Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe’, ExpT 16.9 (June 1905): 427–8; Agnes S. Lewis, ‘The Evangelium da Mepharreshe’, ExpT 17.8 (May 1906): 382–3 (‘I stated in your issue for March 1905 that the passages where I should dispute Professor Burkitt’s reading would amount to eighty. My recent study of the manuscript has brought up the number to over three hundred.’); Agnes S. Lewis, ‘The Sinai Palimpsest’, ExpT 17.10 (July 1906): 479. 47

18

DAVID G. K. TAYLOR

1906:

(‘Sixth visit’.) Lewis revisited Sinai in February, and rechecked some variants. 50

1910:

Publication of Lewis’s edition of the Old Syriac Gospels: Agnes S. Lewis, The Old Syriac Gospels or Evangelion DaMepharreshê; being the text of the Sinai or Syro-Antiochene Palimpsest, including the latest Additions and Emendations, with the Variants of the Curetonian Text, Corroborations from many other MSS., and a list of Quotations from Ancient Authors (London: Williams & Norgate). Appendix I contains approximately 500 passages where she disagrees with the readings of Burkitt in two lists.51

1911:

Arthur Hjelt examined the manuscript in Sinai, checking some of the readings contested between Lewis and Burkitt. He sent a report to Lewis, which she summarised and published in several articles:52 ‘In 133 passages he finds that I am right as against Dr. Burkitt; and in 21 others he thinks that

Some words were also checked at this time by C. R. Gregory who traced various words at the request of Lewis. See Agnes S. Lewis, ‘The Evangelium da Mepharreshe’, ExpT 17.8 (May 1906): 382–3; Lewis 1910, iv. 51 Lewis, The Old Syriac Gospels, Appendix I, 271–300. Lewis wrote (271) that the list contained ‘more than 300 passages’ where her reading differed, but then she added a further list (294–9), compiled whilst her book was in the press. 52 She sent a detailed letter listing the readings to several journals: Agnes S. Lewis, ‘The Text of the Sinai Palimpsest’, The Expositor VIII.2 (1911): 1–15; Agnes S. Lewis, ‘The Sinaitic Syriac Gospels’, ExpT 22 (July 1911): 477–80; see also Agnes S. Lewis, ‘Old Syriac Gospels’, The Athenaeum 4364 (June 17, 1911): 688. For a clear discussion of Hjelt’s report, and its significance, see: W. D. McHardy, ‘Disputed Readings in the Sinaitic Syriac Palimpsest’, JTS os 45 (1944): 170–4. According to the archivist at Westminster College, Cambridge, the original copy of the report is no longer preserved there. A transcription of the report inserted by Lewis in a copy of her 1910 edition given to A. Mingana is to be found in the University of Birmingham. In 1913 Cambridge University Press issued four quarto leaves entitled: ‘Additions and Emendations collected from the manuscript in 1897, 1902, and 1906’ (see Hardy, 172). I have not seen a copy of these leaves. 50

1. NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE OLD SYRIAC GOSPELS

19

my reading is possible. Those in which he finds Dr. Burkitt right as against me are seven in number; and those where his reading is possible, rather than mine, are 11. Seven of these, however, I dispute’. To the best of my knowledge, these changes were never noticed or used by New Testament textual-critics. 1928:

A Finnish expedition travelled to Sinai, in late September, led by Hjelt, to photograph the manuscript. It was planned to take ultra-violet images, but unfortunately the special apparatus failed to work, and so ordinary photographs were taken.

1930:

Hjelt published a clear photographic reproduction of the Sinai manuscript, although this is rarely helpful for reading the undertext (except where small edge fragments are now lost): Arthur Hjelt, Syrus Syriacus (Helsingfors: Akademische Buchhandlung).

2011:

The Sinai Palimpsests Project began spectral imaging of the palimpsest manuscripts, with images released online in 2017 at http://sinaipalimpsests.org/.

This chronology has a certain interest in showing the stages by which an important ancient text slowly re-emerged, but it also hints at the ways in which the relative inaccessibility of the manuscript, and personal rivalries, affected the reliability of the critical edition. The following examples illustrate this in greater detail. In 1893, Burkitt transcribed folio 107r (90v)53 containing Luke 19:22–31. Like the rest of his colleagues on the expedition, he was overwhelmed by the amount of work he had been assigned, and the poor working conditions. They had to take turns working on the bound manuscript—until the old binding fell apart, and they could distribute the folios54—and they lacked any reading aids to try and decipher the undertext except sunlight. And so he and the other scholars The first reference is to the folio number of the original Gospel manuscript, and the second to the later folio number within the reconstituted and over-written manuscript. 54 See Soskice, Sisters of Sinai, 181. 53

20

DAVID G. K. TAYLOR

usually only transcribed the text that they could read with some confidence. Therefore, when he came to Luke 19:29–30, his transcription, as published in 1894, contained a gap where he could not read the undertext, but he could see that this gap extended to a line and a half (see Fig. 1; each page of the manuscript is divided into two columns, usually of between 26–30 lines, and 2–4 words per line). The passage is the Lukan account of Christ and his disciples arriving at the Mount of Olives, and Jesus sending two of his disciples to go and find a donkey for his entry into Jerusalem. The legible text in Sinaiticus in the 1894 edition reads: ‘He sent two of his disciples [... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...] to them, ‘Go to that village opposite...’ (compare NA28: ἀπέστειλεν δύο τῶν μαθητῶν λέγων· ὑπάγετε εἰς τὴν κατέναντι κώμην). When the 1910 edition was published, a single word ‘and he said’ (;7‫ )ܘܐ‬was inserted after ‘his disciples’, and the following blank line was silently suppressed, no doubt because no known ancient witness had any expansion at this point. )7 )(‫ܪ ܬܪ‬4# .E$(‫ܙ‬ . - . . ‫ܘܗܝ‬4:J%‫ܬ‬ . -. . . . . ‫ ܗܝ‬E$(;8% ?%‫ܘܢ ܙ‬C%

)(‫ܪ ܬܪ‬4# .E$(‫ܙ‬ ̈ %‫ܬ‬ ;7‫ ܘܐ‬30 ‫ܘܗܝ‬4:J ‫ ܗܝ‬E$(;8% ?%‫ܘܢ ܙ‬C%

̈ )7 )(I‫ܪ ܬ‬4# .E$(‫ܙ‬ ‫ܝ‬$7 ‫ܘܗܝ‬4:J̈%‫ܬ‬ 30 ;7‫ܘܐ‬ ‫=>?ܣ‬:?ܣ‬: