ana translation

liv
INTRODUCTION
whose text of our Four Epistles Pococke reproduced, with some welljudged
emendations, in his Editio "
Princeps (II). It is one of a collection
of Oriental MSS presented to the Library by Paul Pindar in 1611
[the gift is entered in the Benefactors' Book under the year 1612].
Pindar was consul at Aleppo from 1609 to 1611, and was requested
by Bodley to get books there for the new Library It seems
most probable that Pindar had the copy made, and that Fadhl-allah
bar-Jacob " [who signs it as scribe] " was employed on it about 1610.
It cannot be earlier." * Whether the scribe was Jacobite or Maroiiite
does not appear. Either would be easily found at Aleppo ; f but
Dr. Payne Smith's judgment that he was Jacobite (CataL, col.
109) is probably right, as appears from the request
at the end of
the volume for the prayers of the l^xOOA *-i^J'Z
the 6p@6oooi,
as the Jacobites styled themselves. Yet it is not certain that
this title was assumed exclusively (as |lkLOlSD, "the Faithful," was)
by them. Its text unquestionably agrees most closely with that of
MSS known to be Maronite, as Codd. 10, 15 (below), and the copies
used by Etzel and by Gabriel Sionita. It is unfortunate that so
admirable an editor as Pococke did not light upon a better MS its
;
text is,
on the whole, the most corrupt of all that are forthcoming.
of Van in
10. (Ussher's MS, Trinity College Library, Dublin, B. 5. 16, CataL
1509.)
The history of this MS is similar to that of Cod. 8, and its
date is but little later (1625). Thomas Davies, a British merchant
at Aleppo, procured
it for Ussher with other transcripts, all on paper,
most of them in the same hand, from the Lebanon region. The handwriting
identifies the scribe as being the Joseph bar David,
Lebanon, who in 1627 wrote in the Maronite Convent of Kenobin the
greater part of a Syriac Old Testament, formerly in Ussher's collection,
* I quote these words from a memorandum kindly furnished by Mr. Cowley,
Sub-Librarian of Bodley's Library.
t A few years later (1624-27), Thomas Davies, residing at Aleppo, was able to
find scribes to make transcripts for Ussher of many Syriac MSS
; among others,
a Peshitta Old Testament (now in Bodl. Library, Or. 141), the joint work of
" Joseph of Van on Mount Lebanon " (a Maronite therefore) and " Cyriacus,
Jacobite Priest and Monk." It was copied from a MS at the Convent of Kenobin
on Lebanon, where the Maronite Patriarch resided. See below, under Cod. 10.
See also Ussher's Works, vol. xv, pp. 215, 376 ;
and Bodl. CataL, coll. 10, 14.