One thing is certain, the earliest New Testament of the Syriac church lacked not only the Antilegomena – 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and the Apocalypse – but the whole of the Catholic Epistles. If we could accept the somewhat obscure statement of Eusebius that Hegesippus "made some quotations from the Gospel according to the Hebrews and from the Syriac Gospel," we should have a reference to a Syriac New Testament as early as 160–180 AD, the time of that Hebrew Christian writer. The tendency of recent research, however, goes to show that Edessa, the literary capital, was more likely the place. It was at Antioch, the capital of Syria, that the disciples of Christ were first called Christians, and it seemed natural that the first translation of the Christian Scriptures should have been made there. Of the New Testament, attempts at translation must have been made very early, and among the ancient versions of New Testament scripture, the Syriac in all likelihood is the earliest. Most of the Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament are found in the Syriac, and the Wisdom of Sirach is held to have been translated from the Hebrew and not from the Septuagint. ![]() First, there was the Pentateuch, then Job, Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, the Song of Songs, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, Isaiah followed by the Twelve Minor Prophets, Jeremiah and Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel. It contained the same number of books, but it arranged them in a different order. The Old Testament known to the early Syrian church was substantially that of the Palestinian Jews. The older view was that the translators were Christians, and that the work was done late in the 1st century or early in the 2nd. ![]() Crawford Burkitt concluded that the translation of the Old Testament was probably the work of Jews, of whom there was a colony in Edessa about the commencement of the Christian era. What Theodore of Mopsuestia says of the Old Testament is true of both: "These Scriptures were translated into the tongue of the Syriacs by someone indeed at some time, but who on earth this was has not been made known down to our day". Mark has even been credited in ancient Syriac tradition with translating his own gospel (written in Latin, according to this account) and the other books of the New Testament into Syriac. That the translation of the Old Testament and New Testament was made in connection with the visit of Thaddaeus to Abgar at Edessa belongs also to unreliable tradition. That a translation was made by a priest named Assa, or Ezra, whom the king of Assyria sent to Samaria, to instruct the Assyrian colonists mentioned in 2 Kings 17:27-28, is equally legendary. The tradition, however, that part of it was translated from Hebrew into Syriac for the benefit of Hiram in the days of Solomon is surely a myth. However, the term as a designation of the version has not been found in any Syriac author earlier than the 9th or 10th century.Īs regards the Old Testament, the antiquity of the version is admitted on all hands. It seems to have been used to distinguish the version from others which are encumbered with marks and signs in the nature of a critical apparatus. ![]() The word itself is a feminine form, meaning "simple", as in "easy to be understood". It has been applied to the Syriac as the version in common use, and regarded as equivalent to the Greek "koiné"(κοινἠ) and the Latin "Vulgate" ( Vulgata). The very designation, "Peshito," has given rise to dispute. As far as the New Testament writings are concerned, there is evidence, aided and increased by recent discoveries, for the view that the Peshitta represents a revision, and fresh investigation in the field of Syriac scholarship has raised it to a high degree of probability. This, indeed, has been strenuously denied, but since Hort maintained this view in his Introduction to New Testament in the Original Greek, following Griesbach and Hug at the beginning of the 19th century, it has gained many adherents. The chief ground of analogy between the Vulgate and the Peshitta is that both came into existence as the result of a revision. Whereas the authorship of the Latin Vulgate has never been in dispute, almost every assertion regarding the authorship of the Peshitta and its time and place of its origin, is subject to question. ![]() There is no full and clear knowledge of the circumstances under which the Peshitta was produced and came into circulation. Peshitta text of Exodus 13:14–16 produced in Amida in the year 464.
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