ana translation

xxxii
INTRODUCTION
SECTION VII.
The Harklensian New Testament.
Compared with the Philoxenian New Testament, the Harklensian
has not fared amiss. Many copies of the Gospels in this Version
exist : two (a, ft) of the whole New Testament except the Apocalypse.*
Portions of the Epistles are to be found in some manuscript lectionaries.
In one MS (y) these Four Epistles alone, though of the Harklensian
Version, are in a subscription! wrongly described as Philoxenian.
This mistake suggests the suspicion that the two Versions, the primary
and the derived, had in course of time become confused in ordinary
usage, regarded perhaps as merely
first and second editions of the text
sanctioned by Philoxenus. Some such confusion has prevailed even
among modern Biblical scholars, J and to it in fact the wording
of Thomas's colophon naturally leads. Possibly this usage may
account for the apparent misstatement of Bar-Salibi above noticed,
which seems to ignore our Version, and which has so far misled White
in his estimate of its age and its relation to the Harklensian.
SECTION VIII. Comparative Value of the two Versions.
We claim then that our Version, though
it has reached us without
a name, is properly to be designated
as The Philoxenian. And we
claim also that it is
worthy of the care bestowed on it by the scribes
to whom its preservation is due, and by the editors of later times who
have included it in every edition of the Syriac New Testament, from
the Paris Polyglot of 1645 to the present day. Its evidential value
ranks high; it is that of a witness to the text of these Epistles
as read in Greek by a scholar belonging to the Church of Edessa in
the first decade of the sixth century. That text he has reproduced
with such careful exactness that the textual witness borne by his work
is equivalent in most respects to that of a Greek copy certainly not
later in date than the fifth century, inferior, therefore, in age to none
of the Greek manuscripts available for the text of this part of the
New Testament, save only the four great uncial Bibles. The points
are few, scarcely one of them other than trivial, at which his render-
* See Appendix II, p. 146, infr. f Ib. See for this subscription, p. 152 infr.
J So White : see title of his edition, given in note * to p. xxiii supr.