ana translation

xx
INTRODUCTION
Biblica (1612), informs us that a copy of these Epistles in Syriac had
been brought to Rome by some Maronites, and thence to Mainz * ;
where
it was translated into Latin by Balthasar Etzel, Professor of Hebrew
in the Jesuit College of that city. This translation Serarius prints
at the end of his Commentary on the New Testament (1612).t
What
became of this copy is unknown ;
but his Latin, which is very literal,
is still reckoned among the authorities for the Syriac text of these
Epistles, and agrees in the main, though not without variations, with
other copies which have since become accessible, especially late
copies of Maronite origin.
3. The publication of the actual Syriac text followed after no long
interval. A copy of the Acts and all seven Catholic Epistles in Syriac,
presented to the Bodleian Library in 1611, by Paul Pindar, British
Consul at Aleppo, attracted the notice of Edward Pococke, of Corpus
Christi College, Oxford, from his early youth an eager student of the
Semitic tongues.
From it he derived the text of his edition, the Editio
Princeps of our Four Epistles, which he published at Leiden in 16304
To this work he was stimulated by the example and in it he was aided
by the services of Louis De Dieu, of Leiden, who in 1627 had published
there a Syriac text of the Apocalypse. The two volumes, De Dieu's
and Pococke's, issued from the same press, are exactly uniform in shape
and arrangement ;
taken together they supply the Books of the New
Testament Canon which are not in the Peshitta, so as to enable the
student to read the whole of it in Syriac.
4. It only remained to put the parts together in due order, and exhibit
the Syriac New Testament as a whole. This was done by Gabriel
Sionita, a Maronite, who edited the Syriac text of the great Paris
Polyglot published by Le Jay in 1645, in which our Four Epistles and
the Revelation appear each in its place as in the Bibles of Western
Christendom : and so likewise in the better known and more con-
* Serarius, writing at Mainz, says of the parts of the N.T. that were lacking
in Widmanstad's edition, "mine aMaronitis Romam et inde hue perlata habentur,
scil., 2 Petr., 2 et 3 Joann., Jud., et Apocalypsis." (Prolegg. BibL, p. 80.)
t See below, Sect, xiv, " Versions"; also p. 4.
J For the Bodleian MS (our Cod. 8),
and the Editio Princeps, see below
(Sect, xn, "Manuscripts"; xni, "Editions," and pp. 1, 4).
For Edward
Pococke (16041691), see his Life by Dr. T. Wells, prefixed to his collected
Works (1740).
He was Lecturer in Arabic (1640), and afterwards Professor of
Hebrew (1649), in the University of Oxford.