XVIII. Two Persic, from the Peshitto (xiii), and from the Greek (xiv).
The last four, being secondary, are worth but little as critical helps.
It may be added, that from the literary activity of the last ten years in the closer examination of ancient records, and through discoveries in Egypt and elsewhere, a great deal has been added to the knowledge previously existing upon this part of the subject of this book. Therefore in the succeeding chapters much alteration has been found necessary both in the way of correction, because some theories have been exploded under the increased light of wider information, and by the insertion of additions from the results of investigation and of study. The editor has been readily and generously assisted by several accomplished scholars who are experts in their respective departments; and the names of the various writers who have contributed to the four succeeding chapters will form a sufficient guarantee for the soundness and completeness of the information therein supplied.
Chapter II. Syriac Versions.
In the following account of the earlier Syriac versions, the Editor has received the most valuable help from the Rev. G. H. Gwilliam, B.D., Fellow of Hertford College, who is editing the Peshitto Gospels for the University of Oxford. And upon the Harkleian version, he is indebted for important assistance to the Rev. H. Deane, late Fellow of St. John's College, whose labours have been unfortunately stopped by failure in eyesight.
1. The Peshitto.
The Aramaean or Syriac (preserved to this day as their sacred tongue by several Eastern Churches) is an important branch of the great Semitic family of languages, and as early as Jacob's age existed distinct from the Hebrew (Gen. xxxi. 47). As we now find it in books, it was spoken in the north of Syria and in Upper Mesopotamia about Edessa, and survives to this day in the vernacular of the plateau to the north of Mardin and Nisibis[3]. It is a more copious, flexible, and elegant language than the old Hebrew (which ceased to be vernacular at the Babylonish captivity) had ever the means of becoming, and is so intimately akin to the Chaldee as spoken at Babylon, and throughout Syria, that the latter was popularly known by its name (2 Kings xviii. 26; Isa. xxxvi. 11; Dan. ii. 4)[4]. As the Gospel took firm root at Antioch within a few years after the Lord's Ascension (Acts xi. 19-27; xiii. 1, &c.), we might deem it probable that its tidings soon spread from the Greek capital into the native interior, even though we utterly rejected the venerable [pg 007] tradition of Thaddaeus' mission to Abgarus, toparch of Edessa, as well as the fable of that monarch's intercourse with Christ while yet on earth (Eusebius, Eccl. Hist., i. 13; ii. 1). At all events we are sure that Christianity flourished in these regions at a very early period; it is even possible that the Syriac Scriptures were seen by Hegesippus in the second century (Euseb., Eccl. Hist., iv. 22); they were familiarly used and claimed as his national version by the eminent Ephraem of Edessa in the fourth. Thus the universal belief of later ages, and the very nature of the case, seem to render it unquestionable that the Syrian Church was possessed of a translation, both of the Old and New Testament, which it used habitually, and for public worship exclusively, from the second century of our era downwards: as early as a.d. 170 ὁ Σύρος is cited by Melito on Gen. xxii. 13 (Mill, Proleg. § 1239)[5]. And the sad history of that distracted Church can leave no room to doubt what that version was. In the middle of the fifth century, the third and fourth general Councils at Ephesus and Chalcedon proved the immediate occasions of dividing the Syrian Christians into three, and eventually into yet more, hostile communions. These grievous divisions have now subsisted for fourteen hundred years, and though the bitterness of controversy has abated, the estrangement of the rival Churches is as complete and hopeless as ever[6]. Yet the same translation of Holy Scripture is read alike in the public assemblies of the Nestorians among the fastnesses of Koordistan, of the Monophysites who are scattered over the plains of Syria, of the Christians of St. Thomas along the coast of Malabar, and of the [pg 008] Maronites on the mountain-terraces of Lebanon. Even though these last acknowledged the supremacy of Rome in the twelfth century, and certain Nestorians of Chaldaea in the eighteenth, both societies claimed at the time, and enjoy to this day, the free use of their Syriac translation of Holy Scripture. Manuscripts too, obtained from each of these rival communions, have flowed from time to time into the libraries of the West, yet they all exhibit a text in every important respect the same; all are without the Apocalypse and four of the Catholic Epistles, which latter we know to have been wanting in the Syriac in the sixth century (Cosmas Indicopleustes apud Montfaucon, “Collectio Nova Patrum et Script. Graec.,” Tom. ii. p. 292), a defect, we may observe in passing, which alone is no slight proof of the high antiquity of the version that omits them; all correspond with whatever we know from other sources of that translation which, in contrast with one more recent, was termed “old” (ܩܕܡܑ or ܑܡܕܩ) by Thomas of Harkel a.d. 616, and “Peshitto” (ܦܫܝܬܬܐ or ܐܬܬܝܫܦ) the “Simple,” by the great Monophysite doctor, Gregory Bar-Hebraeus [1226-86]. Literary history can hardly afford a more powerful case than has been established for the identity of the version of the Syriac now called the Peshitto with that used by the Eastern Church, long before the great schism had its beginning in the native land of the blessed Gospel.
The first printed edition of this most venerable monument of the Christian faith was published in quarto at Vienna in the year 1555 (some copies are re-dated 1562), at the expense of the Emperor Ferdinand I, on the recommendation and with the active aid of his Chancellor, Albert Widmanstadt, an accomplished person, whose travelling name in Italy was John Lucretius. It was undertaken at the instance of Moses of Mardin, legate from the Monophysite Patriarch Ignatius to Pope Julius III (1550-55), who seems to have brought with him a manuscript, the text whereof was of the Jacobite family, although written at Mosul, for publication in the West. Widmanstadt contributed a second manuscript of his own, though it does not appear whether either or both contained the whole New Testament. This beautiful book, the different portions of which have separate dedications, was edited by Widmanstadt, by Moses, and by W. Postell jointly, in an elegant type of the modern Syriac character, the vowel and diacritic points, especially the linea occultans, being [pg 009] frequently dropped, with subscriptions and titles indicating the Jacobite Church Lessons in the older, or Estrangelo, letter. It omits, as was natural and right, those books which the Peshitto does not contain: viz. the second Epistle of Peter, the second and third of John, that of Jude and the Apocalypse, together with the disputed passage John vii. 53-viii. 11, and the doubtful, or more than doubtful, clauses in Matt. xxvii. 35; Acts viii. 37; xv. 34; xxviii. 29; 1 John v. 7, 8. It omits Luke xxii. 17, 18, see Chap. [XII] on the passage. This editio princeps of the Peshitto New Testament, though now become very scarce (one half of its thousand copies having been sent into Syria), is held in high and deserved repute, as its text is apparently based on manuscript authority alone.