ana translation

INTRODUCTION
xxi
veniently arranged London Polyglot, commonly called Walton's, which
followed twelve years later.*
It is not to
be assumed that (as
some have supposed) Sionita merely
inserted into his text, in their places, the Epistles and Apocalypse as
edited by Pococke and De Dieu. A careful comparison
of his texts
with theirs leads to a contrary conclusion. Of the Apocalypse this is
not the place to treat :
f as regards the Epistles, the Apparatus attached
to the text of the present edition shows clearly that Sionita has given
them from an independent manuscript, better (on the whole) than
Pococke's. It appears, moreover, that Thorndike, who edited the Syriac
for Walton, was content to reproduce Sionita's text of them, with
very few (apparently casual) deviations. The only addition made to
the Syriac New Testament in Walton's volume, is that of the Historia
Adulterae,^
which the Peshitta omits, and no edition before Walton's
supplies.
The whole of the supplementary matter then introduced into these
great Polyglot Bibles has ever since held its ground, and is included in
every edition of the Syriac New Testament since issued. Yet its two
main components the Four Epistles and the Apocalypse differ
widely in point of congruity with the main text to which they have
thus been attached. No one could possibly mistake the Apocalypse
of De Dieu's text for a part of the Peshitta its differences of diction
and method lie on the surface, and in point of fact it has never been
found in any manuscript associated with any Book of the Peshitta.
But it
may well be doubted whether these Four Epistles, if they had
been first published as they appear in the Polyglots, arranged as in the
Greek New Testament in their places as four of the series of Seven
Catholic Epistles, would have been challenged by
critics as the work of
a later age.
If the manuscript whence Widmanstad printed his Editio
Princeps had been one of those which (as our Codd. 11 and 12) exhibit
them so placed, it is not improbable that they would have passed for a
long time, perhaps to the present day, as an integral part of the
Peshitta New Testament. The translator's idiom is
pure he has
;
shown himself a skilful continuator by successfully maintaining the
* See below, Sect, xui, " Editions ;
" also p. 4.
f See for it
Appendix III, infr., p. 154.
+ See note f to p. xvii, supr. ;
also Postscript, p. Ixxi, infr.