[The text of the Vulgate may be studied in Wordsworth and White, Novum Testamentum Latine; Corssen, Epistula ad Galatas. Its history is best given in S. Berger’s Histoire de la Vulgate (Paris, 1893), in which a good bibliography is given on pp. xxxii.-xxxiv. The section in Kenyon’s handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament is particularly clear and full.]
Syriac Versions.—1. The Old Syriac. This is only known to us at present through two MSS. of the gospels, containing the Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, or separated gospel, probably so called in distinction to Tatian’s Diatessaron. These Old Syriac. MSS. are known as the Curetonian and Sinaitic. The Curetonian is a MS. of the 5th century. The fragments of it which we possess are MS. Brit. Mus. addit. 14.451, which was brought in 1842 from the monastery of St. Mary in the Nitrian desert, and was edited by Cureton in 1858; and three leaves in Berlin (MS. Orient. Quart. 528) which were bought in Egypt by H. Brugsch and published by A. Roediger in 1872. It was given to the monastery of St. Mary in the 10th century, but its earlier history is unknown. It contained originally the four gospels in the order Mt., Mk., Jo., Lc. It is generally quoted as Syrcur or Syr C. The Sinaitic was discovered in 1892 by Mrs Lewis and Mrs Gibson in the library of St. Catherine’s monastery on Mt. Sinai, where it still remains, and was published in 1894 by R.L. Bensly, J. Rendel Harris and F.C. Burkitt, with an introduction by Mrs Lewis. It is a palimpsest MS., and the upper writing (lives of saints), dated A.D. 778, is the work of “John, the anchorite of Beth Mari Qanon, a monastery of Ma’arrath Mesren city in the district of Antioch.” This town is between Antioch and Aleppo; though the monastery is otherwise unknown, it seems probable that it was the source of many of the MSS. now at Sinai. The under writing seems to be a little earlier than that of the Curetonian; it contains the gospels in the order Mt., Mc., Lc., Jo. with a few lacunae. There is no evidence that this version was ever used in the Church services: the Diatessaron was always the normal Syriac text of the gospels until the introduction of the Peshito. But the quotations and references in Aphraates, Ephraem and the Acts of Judas Thomas show that it was known, even if not often used. It seems certain that the Old Syriac version also contained the Acts and Pauline epistles, as Aphraates and Ephraem agree in quoting a text which differs from the Peshito, but no MSS. containing this text are at present known to exist.
[The text of this version is best given, with a literal English translation, in F.C. Burkitt’s Evangelion da Mepharreshe (Cambridge, 1904).]
2. The Peshito (Simple) Version. This is represented by many MSS. dating from the 5th century. It has been proved almost to demonstration by F.C. Burkitt that the portion containing the gospels was made by Rabbula, bishop of Edessa Peshito. (411), to take the place of the Diatessaron, and was based on the Greek text which was at that time in current use at Antioch. The Old Testament Peshito is a much older and quite separate version. The exact limits of Rabbula’s work are difficult to define. It seems probable that the Old Syriac version did not contain the Catholic epistles, and as these are found in the Peshito they were presumably added by Rabbula. But he never added 2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John, or the Apocalypse, and the text of these books, which is sometimes bound up with the Peshito, really is that of the Philoxenian or of the Harklean version. A comparison of the Peshito with quotations in Aphraates and Ephraem shows that Rabbula revised the text of the Acts and Pauline epistles, but in the absence of MSS. of the Old Syriac for these books, it is difficult to define the extent or character of his work. The Peshito is quoted as Syr P, Pesh., and Syrsch (because Tischendorf followed the edition of Schaaf).
[The best text of the Peshito is by G.H. Gwilliam, Tetraevangelium Sanctum (Oxford, 1901); its relations to Rabbula’s revision are shown by F.C. Burkitt, “S. Ephraim’s quotations from the Gospel” (Texts and Studies, vii. 2, Cambridge, 1901), which renders out of date F.H. Woods’s article on the same subject in Studia Biblica, iii. pp. 105-138.]
3. The Philoxenian Version. This is known, from a note extant in MSS. of the Harklean version, to have been made in A.D. 508 for Philoxenus, bishop of Hierapolis, by Polycarpus, a chorepiscopus. No MSS. of it have survived except in Philoxenian. 2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John and the Apocalypse. The four former are found in some MSS. of the Peshito, as the Philoxenian was used to supply these epistles which were not in the older version, and the Apocalypse was published in 1892 by Dr Gwynn from a MS. belonging to Lord Crawford.
[This version may be studied in Isaac H. Hall’s Williams MS. (Baltimore, 1886); in the European editions of the Syriac Bible so far as the minor Catholic epistles are concerned; in Hermathena, vol. vii. (1890), pp. 281-314 (article by Gwynn); in Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, xii. and xiii. (series of articles by Merx); in Gwynn’s The Apocalypse of St John in a Syriac Version (Dublin, 1897).]
4. The Harklean Version. This is a revision of the Philoxenian made in 616 by Thomas of Harkel (Heraclea), bishop of Hierapolis. It was apparently an attempt to replace the literary freedom of the Philoxenian by an extreme literalness. It Harklean. represents in the main the text of the later Greek MSS., but it has important textual notes, and has adopted a system of asterisks and obeli from the Hexaplar LXX. The source of these notes seems to have been old MSS. from the library of the Enaton near Alexandria. The marginal readings are therefore valuable evidence for the Old Alexandrian text. This version is quoted as Syr H (and when necessary Syr Hc* or Syr Hmg) and by Tischendorf as Syrp (= Syra posterior). It should be noted that when Tischendorf speaks of Syrutr he means the Peshito and the Harklean.
[There is no satisfactory critical edition of this version, nor have the Philoxenian and the Harklean been disentangled from each other. The printed text is that published in 1778-1803 by J. White at Oxford under the title Versio Philoxenia; for the marginal notes see esp. Westcott and Hort, Introduction, and for Acts, Pott’s Abendländische Text der Apostelgesch. (Leipzig, 1900).]
5. The Palestinian or Jerusalem Version. This is a lectionary which was once thought to have come from the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, but has been shown by Burkitt to come from Palestinian. that of Antioch. It was probably made in the 6th century in connexion with the attempts of Justinian to abolish Judaism. Usually quoted as SyrPa and by Tischendorf as Syrhier.