ana translation

xii
INTRODUCTION
three Books which were missing from the Masian volume Genesis,
Exodus, and Numbers (the first lamentably mutilated). It is to be
added that the Book known as " 1st [or Third] Esdras" (now reckoned
Apocryphal), as it appears in some (though not the earliest)
MSS of the
Peshitta Old Testament, and in Walton's Polyglot, is borrowed from
this later Version.*
Summing up these facts, then, it appears that of
as translated by Paul, all the Books (of the Hebrew Canon)
the Old Testament
are now
forthcoming except Leviticus, Deuteronomy, First and Second Kings
[1 and 2 Samuel], Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther ;
of which Leviticus
alone is not on the list of those known to Masius.
These MSS are mostly of the eighth century, one at least, the
Exodus of the British Museum, is dated so early
(A.D. 697), only eighty years after the Version was made ;
is
probably
as A.Gr. 1008
the Genesis
still earlier. None of them is later than the ninth
century ; f all (including the Ambrosian) are written on vellum, in a
good estrange! a script, nearly all profusely
marginal apparatus, and marked with the Origenian
furnished with elaborate
asterisk and
obelus throughout the text; all come from the Nitrian Convent,
though probably written in Mesopotamia ;
and of the single copies,
* Of the deuterocanonical Books (besides 1 Esdras as above) the Syriac Tobit of
many MSS and of the printed editions is in part Hexaplar (see below). Wisdom and
Sirach are in the Ambrosian Syro-Hexaplar MS, as also the LXX additions to
Jeremiah and to Daniel. Judith is on the Masian list, but is not now to be found.
Whether any Books of Maccabees were translated by Paul does not appear.
The earliest Syriac O.T. which includes 1 [3] Esdras, seems to be the Buchanan
Bible (Cambridge Univ. Library, Oo. 1., t. 2, circ. 1200 A.D.). The recent MSS
Poc. and Uss. (BodL, Poc. 391, Or. 141, both of cent, xvii), also exhibit it, and
from them it was first edited, for Walton's Polyglot. All these MSS describe it
as "according to the Seventy"; Buch. and Uss. note also that it is "not in the
Peshitta."
The Book of Tobit likewise (or at least the earlier chapters (i.-vi.) of it), as
printed in Walton's and other editions, is recognized by Poc. and Uss. as Septuagintal.
The references of Masius in his Syrorum Peculium (see p. xv, infr.)
preserve some small traces of it. See Dr. Ceriani, Le Edizioni e i Manoscritti
delle Versione Siriache (1869), p. 22, for the identification of this Book as Syro-
Hexaplar.
t For these Nitrian MSS see Wright's Catalogue of Syr. MSS, Brit. Mus.,
pp. 28-37 (nos. XLVIII-L.IX). Among them are also copies of the Psalms and of
some of the Prophets, which are found (as above) in the Ambrosian MS.
For the Paris MS, see Zotenburg's Catalogue des MSS. Syriaques, Biblioth.
Nat., no. 27, p. 10. See also Bruns, Curae Hexaplares, in Eichhorn's Bepertorium,
vols. viii-x (1780-82).