The Bible in the Syriac Tradition

162 Pages·2006·0.713 MB·English

by  Sebastian P. Brock

GORGIAS HANDBOOKS

Volume 7
The Bible
In The Syriac Tradition
The Bible
In The Syriac Tradition

SEBASTIAN BROCK

Second Revised Edition

GORGIAS PRESS
2006
First Gorgias Press Edition, 2006.
Copyright © 2006 by Gorgias Press LLC.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Gorgias
Press LLC, New Jersey.

ISBN 1-59333-300-5

GORGIAS PRESS
46 Orris Ave., Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA
www.gorgiaspress.com

Printed and bound in the United States of America.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents..................................................................................................vii
Preface.......................................................................................................................1
Part I: The Bible In The Syriac Tradition...........................................................3
Chapter I................................................................................................................5
1. How Does The Bible Reach Us?................................................................7
2. Biblical Translation, Some General Problems........................................11
3. A Bird’s Eye View Of The Syriac Bible...................................................17
Chapter II The Syriac Bible - A Closer Look................................................21
1. Old Testament.............................................................................................23
Translated From Hebrew: “Peshitta”........................................................23
Translated From Greek: Syro-Hexapla.....................................................27
2. New Testament...........................................................................................31
Diatessaron....................................................................................................31
Old Syriac......................................................................................................33
Peshitta...........................................................................................................34
Philoxenian....................................................................................................35
Harclean.........................................................................................................37
Chapter III How Does The Syriac Bible Reach Us?....................................39
1. Biblical Manuscripts....................................................................................41
Old Testament (1) Peshitta.........................................................................42
Old Testament (2) Syro-Hexapla...............................................................47
New Testament (1) Diatessaron................................................................48
New Testament (2) Old Syriac...................................................................48
New Testament (3) Peshitta.......................................................................49
New Testament (4) Philoxenian.................................................................49
New Testament (5) Harclean......................................................................50
2. Lectionaries..................................................................................................50

vii
viii THE BIBLE IN THE SYRIAC TRADITION
3. Printed Editions..........................................................................................51
(a) Old Testament (Peshitta).......................................................................54
(b) New Testament (Peshitta).....................................................................55
(c) Main Syriac Versions Other Than The Peshitta................................57
(d) Tools.........................................................................................................58
4. Translations..................................................................................................58
Chapter IV...........................................................................................................61
Biblical Interpretation In The Syriac Tradition..........................................63
Chapter V.............................................................................................................71
Biblical Commentaries....................................................................................73
Chapter VI...........................................................................................................79
The Use Of The Syriac Bible In Preaching.................................................81
Chapter VII.........................................................................................................89
The Use Of The Syriac Bible In The Liturgy.............................................91
Chapter VIII........................................................................................................97
The Peshitta As The Basis For Syriac Spirituality......................................99
Part II: The Syriac Bible.....................................................................................103
The Bible In Syriac...........................................................................................105
A Bird’s Eye View of the Syriac Translations of the Bible........................105
The Old Testament....................................................................................105
The New Testament..................................................................................106
Why Is The Syriac Bible Important?.......................................................108
The Origins Of The Peshitta Old Testament........................................109
The Peshitta New Testament...................................................................110
Why Revise Biblical Translations?...........................................................111
A Developing Biblical Text.......................................................................113
Behind The Printed Syriac Bible..............................................................114
Which Books Are Canonical?...................................................................114
How Is The Biblical Text Divided Up?..................................................118
Some Famous Manuscripts.......................................................................122
The Two Old Syriac Gospel Manuscripts..............................................124
The First Printed Edition Of The Syriac New Testament (1555)......126
Subsequent Early Editions Of The Syriac Bible....................................127
Nineteenth- And Twentieth-Century Editions......................................130
The Main Editions Of Other Syriac Translations.................................132
Lectionaries.................................................................................................134
How Does The Reader Find The Place?................................................135
The Psalter...................................................................................................138
HOW DOES THE BIBLE REACH US? ix
The Fate Of An Additional Psalm...........................................................142
Yet Further Psalms.....................................................................................143
A Revised Peshitta Psalter.........................................................................143
Polyglot Bibles............................................................................................144
Translations Of The Syriac Bible into Other Languages...........................146
Early Translations.......................................................................................146
Modern Syriac.............................................................................................149
English..........................................................................................................151
Malayalam....................................................................................................152
Select Bibliography..............................................................................................155
I. Editions..........................................................................................................155
(1) Entire Bible (Peshitta).............................................................................155
(2) Old Testament.........................................................................................155
(3) New Testament........................................................................................157
II. Tools.............................................................................................................158
(1) Lists of Manuscripts................................................................................158
(2) Concordances...........................................................................................159
III. Translations................................................................................................160
IV. Studies.........................................................................................................161
(1) General Surveys: Old Testament And New Testament In Syriac...161
(2) Old Testament: General Studies...........................................................161
(3) Old Testament: Particular Books/Topics...........................................162
(4) New Testament: General Studies..........................................................163
(5) New Testament: Particular Books/Topics..........................................163
V. Lectionaries..................................................................................................164
(1) General Studies........................................................................................164
(2) Particular Manuscripts............................................................................165
(3) Lists of Lections......................................................................................165
VI. Exegesis (see Part I, Ch. 4–5)..................................................................166
(1) Editions And Translations of the Main Commentaries....................166
(2) Studies.......................................................................................................168
VII. Aspects of Reception History (see Part I, Ch. 6–8)...........................172
(1) Narrative Poems......................................................................................172
(2) Verse Homilies.........................................................................................173
(3) Dialogue Poems.......................................................................................175
(4) Studies.......................................................................................................176
PREFACE
This volume brings together two rather different introductions to the Bible in the
Syriac tradition. Part I originated as a correspondence course written for use at the
St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute (SEERI), in Kottayam (Kerala, India),
and it was published by SEERI as a booklet under the title The Bible in the Syriac
Tradition in 1988. This has now been updated where necessary and a completely
new (and expanded) ‘Select Bibliography’ has been provided; this covers not only
the Syriac Bible itself, but also provides some basic bibliography to go with
chapters IV–VIII, which concern different aspects of its reception history.1
Part II started out as the last chapter in the third (and final) volume of The
Hidden Pearl: The Syrian Orthodox Church and its Ancient Aramaic Heritage, which had
been written to accompany three documentaries, published by TransWorld Film
(Rome) in 2001. Since these volumes are essentially a work of haute vulgarisation
footnotes were deliberately avoided; some basic annotation, however, was provided
separately, for the benefit of more academic readers, in the Internet Journal of Syriac
Studies entitled Hugoye 5:1 (2002) [syrcom.cua.edu/Hugoye; pp. 63–112 in the
printed version of this number]. In the present book, however, text and annotation
have been brought together, and the latter has been brought up to date where
necessary. The title of the chapter in The Hidden Pearl had been ‘The Bible in Syriac’,
but since this was so similar to the title of Part I, it has here been altered to ‘The
Syriac Bible’.
Inevitably there is a certain amount of overlap between Part I and Part II,
especially towards the beginning, but since the basic material is presented in two
rather different ways, it seemed preferable to leave both Parts as they originally
stood, and to recommend that readers simply skip whatever might prove to be
redundant to their particular requirements.
Sebastian Brock
Oxford, England

1 I take the opportunity to thank the Revd. Dr Jacob Thekeparampil, Director of
SEERI, for permission to reprint this work. It might be mentioned that an earlier
updated edition was translated into Syriac by Dayroyo Awgen Aydin, and was
published by the Gorgias Press (Piscataway, NJ) in 2002.
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CHAPTER I
5
1. HOW DOES THE BIBLE REACH US?
When we read the Bible today we normally read it in a modern printed
edition and in a modern translation, whether it be in English, or Malayalam,
or some other language. It is worth reflecting how these printed editions
and translations came into being: what lies behind them, and how do they
influence our understanding of what the “Bible” contains and says?
Printed Bibles only go back to the sixteenth century. Previous to that
Bibles had to be copied by hand, a laborious and slow process. The
invention of printing had two important consequences for the Bible: in the
first place, printing has made it possible for Bibles to be circulated much
more widely and much more cheaply; and secondly, printing has helped to
standardize the arrangement and contents of the Bible. We shall be looking
at some of the consequences of this revolutionary invention below.
The manuscript Bible was rarely a complete Bible, for normally a
biblical manuscript would only contain part of the Bible, such as the
Gospels, or maybe the whole New Testament. Each book would be divided
into chapters, but several different systems of chapter divisions were
current; thus, for example, the chapter division in Syriac and in Greek
manuscripts differs from that in our printed Bibles. The chapter division
familiar to us today in printed Bibles in fact belongs to the Latin translation
by Jerome, known as the Vulgate; though the system was only devised in
the Middle Ages, it was adopted in the printed text of the Bible in all
languages in the sixteenth century, and so this particular system has now
become universal. Manuscript Bibles in languages other than Hebrew also
lacked any form of verse division; our present verse divisions in the Old
Testament derive from the Hebrew Bible, and these too were introduced
into printed Bibles in all languages in the course of the sixteenth century. In
the New Testament the verse divisions and numberings were first
introduced in some of the first printed editions of the Greek text.
Manuscript Bibles in all languages except Hebrew were in book, or
“codex,” form. For purposes of study the Jews would also write out the
Hebrew Bible in codex form, but for liturgical use in Synagogue they always
wrote out the text on scrolls (a practice which still exists today). The scroll
is in fact a much older invention than the codex. The codex only came to
be widely used for literary texts in the early centuries of the Christian era,
7