(9) Persic Versions (Pers.).
Persic versions of the Gospels only, in print, are two: (1) one in Walton's Polyglott (pers.p) with a Latin version by Samuel Clarke (which C. A. Bode thought it worth his while to reconstruct, Helmstedt, 1750-51, with a learned Preface), obviously made from the Peshitto Syriac, which the Persians had long used (“yet often so paraphrastic as to claim a character of its own,” Malan, ubi supra, p. xi), “interprete Symone F. Joseph Taurinensi,” and taken from a single manuscript belonging to E. Pocock[134], probably dated a.d. 1341. This version may prove of some use in restoring the text of the Peshitto. (2) The second, though apparently modern [xiv?] was made from the Greek (pers.w). Its publication was commenced in 1652 by Abraham Wheelocke, Professor of Arabic and Anglo-Saxon and University Librarian at Cambridge, at the expense of Sir Th. Adams, the generous and loyal alderman [pg 166] of London. The basis (as appears from the volume itself) was an Oxford codex (probably Laud. A. 96 of the old notation), which Wheelocke, in his elaborate notes at the end of each chapter, compared with Pocock's and with a third manuscript at Cambridge (Gg. v. 26), dated 1014 of the Hegira (a.d. 1607). On Wheelocke's death in 1653 only 108 pages (to Matt, xviii. 6) were printed, but his whole text and Latin version being found ready for the press, the book was published with a second title-page, dated London, 1657, and a short Preface by an anonymous editor (said to be one Pierson), who in lieu of Wheelocke's notes, which break off after Matt. xvii., appended a simple collation of the Pocock manuscript from that place. The Persians have older versions, parts of both Testaments, still unpublished. There is another copy of the Persian Gospels at Cambridge, which once belonged to Archbishop Bancroft, and was brought from Lambeth in 1646, but was not restored in 1662 with the other books belonging to the Lambeth Library.