ana translation

xxviii
INTRODUCTION
The earliest copy of them (see above, p. xxiii, and below, p. xlii)
is
included in a volume of Miscellanies, not in a book for ecclesiastical
use; but copies from the twelfth century down (codd. 12, 13, &c.)
bear rubrics marking parts of them for Lessons, not of the ordinary
yearly course, but for special Festivals.
(2) Concerning the previous history of this Philoxenian New Testament,
and especially these Epistles, the sum total of our information is
brief, but definite. It is first mentioned by Moses of Agel,* a writer
of the middle of the sixth century (a Monophysite), who states that one
Polycarpus, whom he designates
" Chorepiscopus,"
" translated the New
Testament and David into Syriac from the Greek, for Xenaias [Philoxenus]
of Mabug." This was written apparently about the year 550,
when the Version spoken of was only about forty years in existence ;
and Moses evidently supposed
it to be probably unknown to his
readers. His evidence thus not merely confirms that of Thomas
(above cited, p. xxiv), who wrote a generation or two later, but throws
light upon it by explaining how the Version came to bear the name of
Philoxenus to whose " days " Thomas assigns it ;
and it further gives us
the name of the actual translator. It is, however, from Thomas, not
merely in
his colophon, but in his Version at large, that we gain our
fullest and most important knowledge of its Philoxenian prototype ;
that he has retained much
for in that Version we may presume
of the general substance and leading features of the work of Polycarpus.
And, moreover, in his asterisks and marginal notes (to be
dealt with presently^) he has apparently preserved traces of it. But
beyond these indirect indications, and a few minute fragments of the
Pauline Epistles that have casually survived, J our Four Epistles are
the only part of the Philoxenian New Testament with the probable
exception of the Revelation that
is now forthcoming.
(3) The earliest evidence of their existence appears (as above stated,
p. xxiii) in the ninth century, in a MS volume dated A.D. 823
* See for Moses of Agel (or Aggil), Assemani, B.O., t. ii, p. 82. His statement (as
above) occurs in an Epistle prefixed to his Syriac translation of the Glaphyra of
Cyril of Alexandria, in which he warns his readers to expect to find that Cyril's
citations from the Greek Bible often differ from the Peshitta, and refers
them to
the more recent and exact version of Polycarpus. This is probably the version of
the Olaphyra that is extant (though mutilated) in MS. Add. 14555 (Br. Mus.).
t In Sectt. x (d) and xi (c), infr., pp. xxxvii, xl.
t See below, Sect, vi (a), p. xxx. Ib.