ana translation

INTRODUCTION
xxv
versions are not independent.
Here again
it is necessary to set aside
the judgment of White, who has laid it down as a self-evident fact
that the Harklensian Version of 2 Peter [and, by implication, of all
the four] "has nothing whatever in common with the Version published
by Pococke."* He gives no reasons for this decision, he alleges neither
differences of diction nor divergences of substance, such as undeniably
present themselves : he treats the question as one to be disposed of
without argument. In opposition to his dictum, it is to be emphatically
affirmed that the relation between the two is so close as to compel
the conclusion that one of them is founded on the other. Farther on
in this Introduction it will be shown in detail (Sectt. x, xi) that, underneath
differences and divergences which lie on the surface, there is a
solid and extensive substratum of agreement, amounting to affinity
both in the language and in the matter represented by
it an affinity
which can be adequately expressed only by stating that one of them is
a revision of the other, rewritten throughout as regards diction and
style, and altered in substance here and there into accordance with a
fresh Greek text. They are not two translations made each of them
direct from a different Greek text, each by a scholar independently
rendering the Greek before his eyes in his own words and way. Thus
the problem remaining to be solved is, whether (a) our Version is the
Harklensian rewritten into purer Syriac
after a freer method of translation
?
or (6) the Harklensian is our Version corrected by a scholarly
(not to say pedantic) hand so as to attain a servile fidelity of reproduction
? in either case with some readjustment of text after a second
Greek exemplar. Or in other words, and more briefly, the question
is :
Of these two Versions of
the Four Epistles, ours and the Harklensian,
which is the primary, and which the derivate ?
f
* White, ut supr., p. 43. It is to be noted that in this matter Pococke, with
less material to judge on, judged more sagaciously than White. In the Commentary
of Bar-Salibi (see note f on p. xxiii supr.} he had found many citations from
these Epistles in a version by a translator unnamed, whom he designates Syrus
alter [" S.A."]. This version he discerned to be, though distinct from that which
he edited, yet so obviously akin to it that be cites its renderings all through his
notes. They are now identified as belonging to the Harklensian, which in
Pococke's time was unknown : but it is strange that White, its editor 150 years
later, should have failed to recognize the kinship which the earlier scholar had
the acuteness to detect in the short and scattered fragments he had lighted on.
t A third alternative might be :
supposed that the two Versions are related not
as primary and derivate, but as two derivates from a lost primary, their common
d