ana translation

1'viii
INTRODUCTION
(a) Of Etzel and his Latin translation^ and the publication of it,
a
sufficient account has been briefly given above (p. xx.
Here it is only necessary to repeat that the exemplar (not
see also p. 4 infr.).
now forthcoming)
whose text it represents was Maronite, and to add that it
agrees in the main with the B-text, though with some exceptions, of
which the most considerable are, O for > before (Zoj/UlO (KOI a/oer^,
for KCU apery?, 2 Pet. i. 3), I'^O* (rt/xia, for rivets, ib. 4), 1K\S (Aai'Aa-
77-09, for avwOev, 2 Pet. ii. 17), and JOCTLLJ (UTTO/XV^CTO), for vTro/xv^o^Ti,
3 Joh. 10). It thus avoids in all these places the errors of Cod. 8, in
which (except the last) Codd. 7, 10, and P share ;
and is to be classed
perhaps (with 3) as intermediate, rather than with the B-group.
(6) Of the Arabic, there will be occasion to treat further in another
Section (xvm, p. Ixvi) here a few facts only need be stated. The MS*
:
no. 154 of the Library of St. Catharine's Convent on Mt. Sinai (see p. 4
infr.) contains the only known copy of this Version.
This MS includes
(with other documents) the Acts and Catholic Epistles in Arabic, all
seven in their Greek order. I have no knowledge of Arabic, and make
no claim to judge of the Version as a whole. But it is pronounced by
Professor Burkitt (to
whom I owe my first knowledge of its evidence)
and by other competent Arabic scholars to be translated from the
Syriac as above stated. As regards our Four Epistles, the fact (of which
I am assured) that it represents (2 Pet. ii.
13) the reading, on all hands
admitted to be a blunder, tOOLjAni 1 **>
for tOOlA*JuLl2
( = i/uum'ois),
( = dya7rcus) a blunder impossible in Greek but easy in Syriac suffices
to prove the Arabic translator to have worked on the Syriac as his
basis, not on the Greek. The Acts (mutilated in the early parts) and
the Three Epistles follow the Peshitta ;
the Four, our Version, f The
text of these latter, as represented by it, is largely but not uniformly
of the B-type. Thus, while it follows the B-readings which represent
KOO-/XU.', avooflev, /caXrJi/ (2 Pet. i. 3, 4 ; ii. 1, 17; iii. 1),
the doubled KCU
\a.ipew (2 Joh. 10), VTTO TTVP (Jud. 7),
on the other hand it avoids
many others, such as o-TrovSoVare, yeXotov, ov\ (before cv/oe&jo-eTai)
(2 Pet. i. 15, ii. 18, iii. 10), and the significant omission of /cat before
* See Mrs. Gibson's Catalogue of Arabic MSS in Convent of St. Catharine
(Studia Sinaitica, no. in).
t See Mrs. Gibson's Introduction, p. viii, to her edition, as above (p. Ivii) ;
also her Appendix, pp. 52 et sqq.