06-01-2025, 02:52 AM
Question: "the question at issue is what right we have to reject the oldest Syriac and the oldest Latin when they agree"
F.C. Burkitt, Introduction to
P. Mordaunt Barnard, _The Biblical Text of Clement of Alexandria in the Four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles_ (1899), on xviii-xix
https://www.amazon.com/Biblical-Text-Cle...59244833X/
https://archive.org/details/biblicaltext...t+right%22
The African Latin was unknown, except so far as it was covered by chance quotations from S. Cyprian, and the very existence of a Syriac Version older than the official Peshitta was a conjecture.
How different is the case now!
By the publication of Cod. Bobiensis (_k_) enough of the version used by S. Cyprian is before us in a continuous text to enable us to judge of its critical affinities, while with regard to early Syriac evidence the difference is that between darkness and daylight.
Not to speak of the fragments of Tatian’s _Diatessaron_ preserved in S. Ephraim or the quotations of Aphraates, we have an excellent text of the four Gospels nearly complete in the Sinai Palimpsest, while Cureton’s MS (a far inferior text, but the only form of the version known to Dr Hort) serves to tell us something of the limits of variation in Syriac-speaking communities.
These authorities are all ‘Western,’ i.e. they do not attest certain well-defined Alexandrian readings, such as ... in Mc vi 20 and the well-known interpolation in Mt xxvii 49.
But in many other instances they actually form the bulk of the attestation for Dr Hort’s own text.
That text is sometimes in agreement with the oldest Syriac, sometimes with the oldest Latin:
the question at issue is what right we have to reject the oldest Syriac and the oldest Latin when they agree.
The strain of text represented in Greek MSS by א and B can be traced in Egypt as far back as the middle of the 3rd century, but Clement shews that even in Egypt the earliest evidence gives it little support.
hat tip
William Petersen, _Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship_ (1994), 555pp., on 21
https://www.amazon.com/Tatians-Diatessar...004094695/
=================
Alexander Souter, "Progress in the Textual Criticism of the Gospels Since Westcott and Hort," in
_Mansfield College Essays: Presented to the Reverend Andrew Martin Fairbairn on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, November 4, 1908 by Mansfield College_ (1909), on 363
https://www.amazon.com/Mansfield-College...172597308/
https://archive.org/details/mansfieldcol...lost+it%22
Page 363
The combination of Syr^sin and _k_ would now generally be regarded as sufficient to upset the combination B א or, in other words, the versions may sometimes have retained the correct text, where all known Greek MSS. have lost it.
This is a principle of the highest importance, and likely to be increasingly fruitful.
It is especially useful, where the problem of the relation between the Synoptists is thus helped (cf. Burkitt, "The Gospel History and its Transmission" [Edinburgh, 1906], chap. ii. ; Harnack, "Sayings of Jesus" [London, 1908].)
=========================
Eberhard Nestle, _Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament_ (1901), on 223
https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Text...036515753/
https://archive.org/details/introduction...?q=arrayed
https://books.google.com/books?id=Yc9HAQ...22&f=false
§ 241. These exceptional instances of the preservation of the original text in exclusively Western readings are likely to have had an exceptional origin.
In the edition of 1896, the surviving editor (Westcott) appends an Additional Note which contains a further exceedingly valuable admission in the same direction.
It is as follows :—
_Note to p_. 121; § 170 (p. 328):
"The Essays of Dr. Chase on _The Syriac Element in Codex Bezae_, Cambridge, 1893, and _The Syro-Latin Text of the Gospels_, Cambridge, 1895, are a most important contribution to the solution of a fundamental problem in the history of the text of the N.T.
The discovery of the Sinaitic MS, of the Old Syriac raises the question whether the combination of the oldest types of the Syriac and Latin texts can outweigh the combination of the primary Greek texts.
A careful examination of the passages in which Syr._sin_ and _k_ are arrayed against א B, would point to the conclusion."
F.C. Burkitt, Introduction to
P. Mordaunt Barnard, _The Biblical Text of Clement of Alexandria in the Four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles_ (1899), on xviii-xix
https://www.amazon.com/Biblical-Text-Cle...59244833X/
https://archive.org/details/biblicaltext...t+right%22
The African Latin was unknown, except so far as it was covered by chance quotations from S. Cyprian, and the very existence of a Syriac Version older than the official Peshitta was a conjecture.
How different is the case now!
By the publication of Cod. Bobiensis (_k_) enough of the version used by S. Cyprian is before us in a continuous text to enable us to judge of its critical affinities, while with regard to early Syriac evidence the difference is that between darkness and daylight.
Not to speak of the fragments of Tatian’s _Diatessaron_ preserved in S. Ephraim or the quotations of Aphraates, we have an excellent text of the four Gospels nearly complete in the Sinai Palimpsest, while Cureton’s MS (a far inferior text, but the only form of the version known to Dr Hort) serves to tell us something of the limits of variation in Syriac-speaking communities.
These authorities are all ‘Western,’ i.e. they do not attest certain well-defined Alexandrian readings, such as ... in Mc vi 20 and the well-known interpolation in Mt xxvii 49.
But in many other instances they actually form the bulk of the attestation for Dr Hort’s own text.
That text is sometimes in agreement with the oldest Syriac, sometimes with the oldest Latin:
the question at issue is what right we have to reject the oldest Syriac and the oldest Latin when they agree.
The strain of text represented in Greek MSS by א and B can be traced in Egypt as far back as the middle of the 3rd century, but Clement shews that even in Egypt the earliest evidence gives it little support.
hat tip
William Petersen, _Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship_ (1994), 555pp., on 21
https://www.amazon.com/Tatians-Diatessar...004094695/
=================
Alexander Souter, "Progress in the Textual Criticism of the Gospels Since Westcott and Hort," in
_Mansfield College Essays: Presented to the Reverend Andrew Martin Fairbairn on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, November 4, 1908 by Mansfield College_ (1909), on 363
https://www.amazon.com/Mansfield-College...172597308/
https://archive.org/details/mansfieldcol...lost+it%22
Page 363
The combination of Syr^sin and _k_ would now generally be regarded as sufficient to upset the combination B א or, in other words, the versions may sometimes have retained the correct text, where all known Greek MSS. have lost it.
This is a principle of the highest importance, and likely to be increasingly fruitful.
It is especially useful, where the problem of the relation between the Synoptists is thus helped (cf. Burkitt, "The Gospel History and its Transmission" [Edinburgh, 1906], chap. ii. ; Harnack, "Sayings of Jesus" [London, 1908].)
=========================
Eberhard Nestle, _Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament_ (1901), on 223
https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Text...036515753/
https://archive.org/details/introduction...?q=arrayed
https://books.google.com/books?id=Yc9HAQ...22&f=false
§ 241. These exceptional instances of the preservation of the original text in exclusively Western readings are likely to have had an exceptional origin.
In the edition of 1896, the surviving editor (Westcott) appends an Additional Note which contains a further exceedingly valuable admission in the same direction.
It is as follows :—
_Note to p_. 121; § 170 (p. 328):
"The Essays of Dr. Chase on _The Syriac Element in Codex Bezae_, Cambridge, 1893, and _The Syro-Latin Text of the Gospels_, Cambridge, 1895, are a most important contribution to the solution of a fundamental problem in the history of the text of the N.T.
The discovery of the Sinaitic MS, of the Old Syriac raises the question whether the combination of the oldest types of the Syriac and Latin texts can outweigh the combination of the primary Greek texts.
A careful examination of the passages in which Syr._sin_ and _k_ are arrayed against א B, would point to the conclusion."