ana translation

INTRODUCTION
xxxi
the Psalter, which (it is implied)
he rendered from the Greek. Of
this Version no fragment
is known to have been preserved as a
citation, nor is
any trace of it identifiable now. Yet it is probable
that the text of the Psalms as they appear in the existing Peshitta,
may have been (in parts at least) modified somewhat into approximation
to the Philoxenian text. The large use made of this Book, far
beyond all other Old Testament writings, in the offices of the Church,
would naturally dispose the Syriac-speaking "Faithful" to favour
a Psalter based (as the Philoxenian was) on the Greek, as a means
of assimilating their psalmody to that of the Greek-speaking fellowmembers
of their communion. If this be so, it seems to account for
the fact that
in very many places the Psalter, unlike the other Books
of the Peshitta Old Testament, represents the text of
than that of the Hebrew.
the LXX rather
Moses, as above cited, mentions no other Old Testament Book as
translated by Polycarpus. But we have direct evidence that his work
comprised at least one great Book of the Prophets that of Isaiah.
The great Milanese MS of the latter half of the Syro-Hexaplar Old
Testament (Cod. Ambros. C. 313, infr.),
which bears on its
margin a
wonderfully complete apparatus of the readings and renderings of the
later Greek translators, exhibits also in one place (Esai. ix. 6) an
alternative rendering which it definitely
cites as from "the version
that was translated by the care of holy Philoxenus." Being thus
assured that this Version extended to Isaiah, we are justified in
following the judgment of Dr. Ceriani who accepts as Philoxenian a
series (preserved in a seventh-century MS) of large fragments of
Isaiah* in Syriac in a translation made from the LXX; distinct,
therefore, from the Peshitta, but agreeing neither textually nor in
diction with the Syro-Hexaplar. f
* These fragments (B.M., Add. 17106) have been printed in Monumenta S. et P.,
t. v, fasc. i, by Dr. Ceriani (Milan, 1868). They are, Esai. xxviii. 3-17, xlii. 17
xlix. 18, Ixvi. 11-23.
t The Syriac translation of the Glaphyra of Cyril of Alexandria, made by this
Moses of Agel, has been mentioned above (note * to p. xxviii). To it the Syriac
fragment of that treatise extant in MS. Add. 14555 presumably belongs. It is
reasonable therefore to infer that the passages of Isaiah which occur in it belong
likewise to the Philoxenian ;
for inasmuch as Moses commends that Version to
his Syrian readers, he would no doubt himself borrow its renderings to represent
the Prophet's words where cited by Cyril in the Glaphyra. See my article
Polycarpus Chorepiscopus in Diet, of Christian Biography, vol. iv, p. 433.