ana translation

INTRODUCTION
xiii
the 4 Kings of the Paris Library plainly belongs to the same set of
MSS as those of the London Museum. It is not too much to hope
that the volume once studied by Masius may yet be recovered, or that
some yet unexplored monastic library may yield more MSS supplying
the lacking Books of this Version.
SECTION IV.
Printed Editions of Parts of it.
Of the extant Books, no complete collection has yet appeared in
print. Masius never published any entire Book from his MS, and
after his death and its disappearance, learned men whose interest in
it he had roused by his Josuae Historia, vainly sought to obtain similar
MSS from the East.* It was not till after the middle of the
eighteenth century
that the attention of Biblical scholars was first
invited to the MS of the Ambrosian Library by the Librarian Branca,
in 1767.f A few years later (1788) Bugati published from it at
Milan the text of Daniel. He was, however, anticipated by Norberg,
a Swede, who had obtained leave to transcribe the MS, and in 1787
published from it (at Lund)
the Books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
Bugati also edited from it the Psalter, but it was not published
till
1820, after his death. In 1825, the rest of Norberg's transcript
(except the deuterocanonical Books) was published at Berlin by
Middeldorpf, together with Fourth Kings from the Paris MS (see
above, p. xi).
Of this latter he had obtained transcripts from Eichhorn,
who in his Hepertorium (vol. vii, 1780, " Curae Hexaplares")
had published the first account of it, and had been the first to make
known the name of Paul of Telia as the author of the Version of 4
Kings (and of the contents of the Ambrosian MS), citing as evidence
a note appended to " it, The Abbat Mar Paul, Bishop of the Faithful,
translated this Book from the Greek tongue into Syriac from the
Version of the Seventy-two, &c." J
More recently, a fresh impulse was given to the study of this
Version, when the acquisition (1840 1851) by the British Museum
of the great Nitrian collection brought
within the reach of Biblical
* See Ussher's Works, vol. xvi, letter cii, pp. 324, 5.
t See Bruns in Eichhorn's Repertorium, ut supr., vol. iii, 1778.
J See Lagarde, Bibliothecae Syriacae, p. 256, lines 28, 29, for this note, which
(with others) he prints at length.