ana translation

INTRODUCTION
li
raneously, in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and within the
narrow region of Mesopotamia where the Jacobite Church at that
time most prevailed, with Mardin as its patriarchal centre, and the
Tur-'Abdin district as its stronghold. Comparing the subdivision thus
formed with that which comprises the three earlier MSS, 9, 12, 14,
we perceive that in that region the tradition of the A-text as we find
it exhibited in these twelfth-century copies survived, though more or
down to the fifteenth. The characteristic
less impaired in purity,
form of the estrangela script, and the vellum, which are noted in the
earlier three, in the latter three disappear ;
in a cursive character,
they are written on paper,
as also is Cod. 3 (paper), a manuscript similar
to them in script and in text, and probably of the same region, and not
much earlier in date.
The affinities above noted between Codd. 12 and 20 are interesting
evidence of the care with which, in the monastery where they were
written, the tradition of the text was preserved.
(c)
Of
Recent Date.
Two other MSS of much later date may be here conveniently
described, as being closely akin in textual character to the four last
described; they are Codd. 18 and 19.
Cod. 18. (Library of the Convent of St. Catharine on Mt. Sinai, no. 5.*)
Of all the MSS used in the text of this edition, this is the only one
which I have not seen, either directly or as reproduced by photography.
I know it only through a collation of it made by the late Professor
Bensly in 1893, for which I am indebted to his kindness. In it the
Four Epistles are a supplement to a late copy (on paper) of the Acts
and Three Catholic Epistles (Peshitta), which is itself a supplement
to a much earlier manuscript (on vellum, probably of sixth century)
of the Pauline Epistles. In the letter which contains his collation,
Prof. Bensly writes, "The above Catholic Epistles [2 Pet., 2 and 3
Joh., and Jud.] have been added in a hand apparently of last [xvmth]
century." The text, however, is farther removed from the B-type
than that of any other of our entire list of twenty, except Cod. 1,
and it is free from the errors above noted (p. xlii) as blemishes in that
* In Catalogue (Mrs. Lewis's), Studio, Sinait., No. i, pp. 2, 125.