ana translation

xxiv
INTRODUCTION
above referred to, appended to the several divisions of his work,*
is himself the primary authority for all we know of his Version of the
New Testament, expressly and with exact detail of time and place
describes it as being not a fresh translation, but rather a revision
of a previous translation, modified by comparison with one or more
Greek texts. Of that earlier translation likewise he gives a particular
in A.Gr. 819
account : it was made (he tells us) at Mabug (Hierapolis),
(A.D. 508), " in the days
" of the famous Philoxenus (or Xenaias),f his
predecessor by a century as Bishop of that city.
And he distinctly
intimates that our Four Epistles were included in that primary version
as they are in his revision of it for at the close of the second division
;
of his work, the Acts followed by the Catholic Epistles (all seven),
he repeats in somewhat more precise terms the colophon as before
subjoining it in immediate sequence to the Epistle of Jude.
This Philoxenian Version, however, failed to supersede the Peshitta,
and as a whole it has disappeared, itself superseded by the Harklensian
or at most surviving only in its revised form as in the
Harklensian.
SECTION IV. Identification of it as part of the Philoxenian N. T.
These facts have suggested the surmise that the Four Epistles of our
Version may be in fact the Epistles as they stood in the original
and
unrevised Philoxenian retained (while the rest was left to lapse) to
supply the defect of the Peshitta where it falls short of the Greek. :f
A careful examination of the two texts will enable us to determine
(1)
Whether there is between them a relation of interdependence
? (2) If they are so related, which is the original work,
and which the derivate ?
(1) In the first place, it may be accepted
as certain that the two
* See, for this colophon, White, ut supr., vol. i, p. 561 ; ii, p. 274.
t Bishop of Mabug, 485 ;
an active upholder of the Monophysite doctrines ;
banished by Justin in 518, along with the Patriarch Severus of Antioch, and
many other Bishops who refused to accept the decrees of Chalcedon ;
died in
exile (probably by violence) a few years later. See Assemani, Biblioth. Orient.,
t. ii, pp. 19, 20.
J Dr. Davidson seems to have been the first to suggest
this identification
(Biblical Criticism, p. 642). From him it was adopted by Dr. Tregelles (Diet, of
Bible, vol. iii, p. 1636) ;
and afterwards by Dr. I. H. Hall (Syr. Antilegomena, p. 2,
and elsewhere).