apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

THE CURETONIAN LETTERS. 32
cence of Ephes. i8 in the Syriac Version (see
ii. p. 74) ;
but the
connexion is far from certain. The resemblance between the two
passages is not decisive as to any obhgation on either side ;
and even
if it were otherwise, the translator might have adopted his rendering
from a well-remembered passage of this famous Syrian father rather than
conversely. Again, John — the Monk, whose date I have placed approximately
at A.D. 380 390 (see above, p. 151 sq), seems to have
used this Syriac Version. But the identity of the person bearing the
name John is not made out beyond dispute and even if
; my identification
be correct, the time of his literary activity might be placed a
few years later. Provisionally therefore we may perhaps place the
date of the Syriac Version about a.d. 400, or possibly as much as
two decades earlier. A century before this time a.d. (c. 300) we find
members of the literary society, which gathered about Pamphilus,
busied in translating from Greek into Syriac (Euseb. Mart. Palest.
p. 4, ed. Cureton). Again,
several works of Eusebius were translated
into this language soon after they were written, and probably during
his own life-time (see Smith's Did. of Christ. Biogr. s.v. 'Eusebius
of Caesarea' 11.
pp. 320, 326, 332). The Festal Letters of Athanasius
also would necessarily have been translated into Syriac, as soon as
they were issued, for the use of the Syrian monks. From that time
onward Syriac translations of Greek patristic writings become common,
and not unfrequently they were made shortly after the publication
of the original works, and sometimes during the life-time of the authors.
This we know to have been the case, for instance, with Cyril of Alexandria,
with Timotheus ^lurus (see above, p. 176), and with Severus
of Antioch (see pp. 25, 182, 189). There is therefore no difficulty
in supposing that the version of Ignatius was made at the time suggested.
But no satisfactory conclusion can be arrived at, until the
text and the diction of this version have been more narrowly scrutinized.
No long time need have elapsed after this date before the abridgment
was made, but in the absence of prior testimony to its existence we are
tempted to place it more than a century later.