Q. Cod. Mus. Brit. Add. 17,124. Saec. xiii (No. 65 Wright's Catalogue).
R. Cod. Bibl. Coll. Nov. Oxon. 334.
S. Cod. Bibl. Bodl. Oxon. Orient. 361. Saec. xiv.
T. Cod. Bibl. Bodl. Oxon. Poc. 316.
U. Cod. Mus. Brit. Rich 7167. Saec. xv. xvi. Fragments on St. Matthew only.
V. Cod. Mohl. Cambridge University Library. Saec. xii.
The last of these would probably be the text from which any new edition would be printed. It is a most remarkable MS., executed with great care, and by a good Syrian scholar. Students should observe especially the curious diacritic point by which he designates the Nom. pendens. “I have not seen,” Mr. Deane adds, “that elsewhere, though doubtless it exists[36].”
4. The Palestinian or Jerusalem Syriac.
There are extant several scattered fragments of the Old and New Testaments, in a form of Syriac entirely distinct from the versions already described. These fragments are all in one dialect, and are apparently parts of a single version. The most considerable portion is an Evangelistarium which was discovered virtually by Adler, who collated, described, and copied a portion of it (Matt. xxvii. 3-32) for that great work in a small compass, his “N. T. Versiones Syriacae” (1789): S. E. Assemani the nephew had merely inserted it in his Vatican Catalogue (1756). It is a partial Lectionary of the Gospels in the Vatican (MS. Syr. 19), on 196 quarto thick vellum leaves, written in two columns in a rude hand, the rubric notes of Church Lessons in Carshunic, i.e. Arabic in Syriac letters, with many mistakes. From a subscription, we learn that the scribe was Elias, a presbyter of Abydos, who wrote it in the Monastery of the Abbat Moses at Antioch, in the year of Alexander 1341, or a.d. 1030. Adler gives a poor facsimile (Matt. xxvii. 12-22): the character is peculiar, and all diacritic points (even that distinguishing dolath from rish), as well as many other changes, are thought to be by a later hand. Tregelles confirms Assemani's statement, which Adler had disputed, that the first six leaves, showing traces of Greek writing buried beneath the Syriac, proceeded from another scribe. The remarkable point, however, about this version (which seems to be made from the Greek, and is quite independent of the Peshitto) is the peculiar dialect it exhibits, and which has suggested its name. Its grammatical forms are far less Syriac than Chaldee, which latter it resembles even in that characteristic particular, the prefixing of yud, not nun, to the third person masculine of the future of verbs[37]; and many of the words it employs can be illustrated only from the Chaldee portions of the Old Testament, or from the Jerusalem, or Palestinian, Targum and Talmud[38]. Adler's [pg 031] account of the translation and its copyist is not very flattering, “satis constat dialectum esse incultam et inconcinnam ... orthographiam autem vagam, inconstantem, arbitrariam, et ab imperito librario rescribendo et corrigendo denuo impeditam” (Vers. Syr., p. 149). As it is mentioned by no Syriac writer, it was probably used but in a few remote churches of Lebanon or Galilee: but though (to employ the words of Porter) “in elegance far surpassed by the Peshitto; in closeness of adherence to the original by the Philoxenian” (Principles of Textual Criticism, Belfast, 1848, p. 356); it has its value, and that not inconsiderable, as a witness to the state of the text at the time it was turned into Syriac; whether, with Adler, we regard it as derived from a complete version of the Gospels made not later than the sixth century, or with Tischendorf refer it to the fifth[39]. Tregelles (who examined the codex at Rome) wrongly judged it a mere translation of some Greek Evangelistarium of a more recent date. Of all the Syriac books, this copy and Barsalibi's recension of the Harkleian alone contain John vii. 53-viii. 11; the Lectionary giving it as the Proper Lesson for Oct. 8, St. Pelagia's day. In general its readings much resemble those of Codd. BD, siding with B eighty-five times, with D seventy-nine, in the portions published by Adler; but with D alone eleven times, with B alone but three.
The information afforded by Adler respecting this remarkable document gave rise to a natural wish that the whole manuscript should be carefully edited by some respectable scholar. This has now been done by Count Francis Miniscalchi Erizzo, who in 1861-4 published at Verona in two quarto volumes “Evangeliarium Hierosolymitanum ex Codice Vaticano Palaestino deprompsit, edidit, Latinè vertit, Prolegomenis ac Glossario adornavit Comes F. M. E.” This elaborate work, for such it is, although its execution fails on the whole to satisfy critics of the calibre of Land and the Abbé Martin, ends with a list of those chapters and verses of the Gospels (according to the notation of the Latin Vulgate), which the manuscript contains [pg 032] in full. Tischendorf, in the eighth edition of his Greek Testament, enriched his notes with the various readings these Church Lessons exhibit; their critical character being much the same as Adler's slight specimen had given us reason to expect[40]. The Lectionary closely resembles that of the Greek Church, the slight differences in the beginnings and endings of the Lessons scarcely exceeding those subsisting between different Greek copies, as noticed in our Synaxarion. It contains the Sunday and week-day Gospels for the first eight weeks beginning at Easter (with a few verses lost in two places of Week viii); the Saturday and Sunday Gospels only for the rest of the year; the Lessons for the Holy Week, complete as detailed in Vol. I. 85, with two or three slight exceptions; and the eleven Gospels of the Resurrection. In the Menology or Calendar of Immoveable Feasts, there is a greater amount of variation in regard to the Saints' Days kept, as indeed we might have looked for beforehand. We subjoin a list of those whose Gospels are given at length in the manuscript, together with the portions of Scripture appointed for each day, in order that this curious Syriac service-book may be compared with that of the Greeks.