Bil. With English. Selections 1849 THE APOSTOLICAL ACTS AND EPISTLES, FROM THE PESCHITO, OR ANCIENT SYRIAC: TO WHICH ARE ADDED, THE REMAINING EPISTLES, AND THE BOOK OF REVELATION, AFTER A LATER SYRIAN TEXT: TRANSLATED, WITH PROLEGOMENA AND INDICES, BY J. W. ETHERIDGE, M.A., DOCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG, LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. MDCCCXLIX. PREFACE. THE work here submitted completes the translation of the Syriac New Testament, begun in a former volume.* We may now compare the sacred text, as read in the Eastern churches for sixteen or seventeen centuries, with that which, during the same lapse of time, has been received in the West. The comparison of these independent witnesses will demonstrate the essential integrity and incorrupt. preservation of the inspired documents of the Christian dispensation. For the seeming delay which has attended the publication of the volume, an apology is due to those friends who have inquired, from time to time, for its advertised appearance. But the minute attention required by the nature of the work itself, and the circumstance, that the only time in general which could be spared for the prosecution of it has been that of uncertain intervals in the course of regular professional duties, will sufficiently account for the slowness of its progress. The former volume, on the Gospels, was prepared during a residence on the Continent, when the greater part of his time was at the translator's own disposal; but nearly all the present work has been accomplished amid the daily toils of the Christian ministry in London, and in hours which might, in some respects, have been *The Syrian Churches; their early History, Liturgies, and Literature. With a literal Translation of the Four Gospels, from the Peschito, or Canon of holy Scripture in use among the oriental Christians from the earliest Times. London. Longmans. 1846. |