ana translation

INTRODUCTION
xxxiii
ing leaves the reader in any doubt what the Greek words were which
he meant to represent. And this merit of faithfulness he has attained
without sacrificing as Thomas throughout and of set purpose has
sacrificed the propriety of the Syriac tongue. His translation is as
idiomatic as the Peshitta, while it
keeps closer to the Greek. Two
of the Four Epistles (2 and 3 John) are simple in style and pass
readily into Syriac but the other
;
two, often obscure in their wording,
and full of unusual forms of speech, present difficulties that tax a
translator's resources seriously.
The Philoxenian translator has proved
himself equal to the task : he has, with admirable effect, in instance
after instance, conveyed by brief periphrasis
expression
the full sense of an
especially in the case of compound words, for which Syriac
neither supplies, nor can be made to supply, an equivalent. To his
success in these trials of skill and resource his Harklensian reviser
has paid emphatic though silent
such case of difficulty the rendering of
tribute by retaining in nearly every
his predecessor.
The merit of the later worker is of a different order from that
of the earlier ; it is critical, not literary. His work, as a witness to
the text of the Greek, is more nearly equivalent to a Greek manuscript
than any other existing Version can claim to be. But at what a
sacrifice of propriety of Syriac idiom, and by what a strain on the
resources of Syriac vocabulary and syntax,
he has secured this exactness
of
rendering we have already seen, and the fact is well known to
all who have even cursorily examined his Version. To describe in
detail his methods of translation would be out of place here ;* it may
suffice to say that in his rendering of the Greek of the New Testament
he has systematically done just such violence to the Syriac as
Aquila before him did to the Greek in forcing it into verbal conformity
with the Hebrew of the Old Testament.
Yet it would be unfair to ignore the fact that now and then his
alterations of the Philoxenian are neither petty nor pedantic
: in some
cases he has improved on it. Thus, he does well to give ]lH*LD for
cr/oii/w/xa (2 Pet. i. 13) instead of ]+) (= vupa), loi^O!
*^DO3 for
o-
more adequately expresses TrpoTre/xi^as (3 Joh. 6) than >OlSo (=e