Peshitta and the other Syriac versions

[Paul Younan]

Excellent analysis Akhan Keefa,

I concur that the Philoxenian and Harklean versions were attempts to conform the Peshitta to the official version of the Byzantine empire. We know this because the authors themselves, and their biographers, stated as much.

Now the real mystery is the so-called "Old-Syriac", which we of course refer to as "Old Scratch."

My personal opinion?

I was the result of a student at the monastery in Egypt. He was practicing copying or perhaps more likely he was conforming the Peshitta to the current Alexandrian family of Greek texts.

Otherwise, why would someone have scratched off the text (of Holy Scripture!) only to write the story of the life of a saint over it? What? They ran out of paper? The story of the saint was THAT important?

Does that make sense to anybody? Why would someone do that to the Holy Bible?

Have you ever seen anyone erase the text of the Torah or the Quran and write the life stories of Alan Greenspan or Osama bin Laden over the top of the scratched-off text? <!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: -->

Yeah, Old Scratch.