simplicity, and perspicuity are admirable. To the student of divinity it has a peculiar interest, as the text used in no small part of European theology, both ancient and modern; and while it assists him to understand more easily the fathers of the western church, it opens a grand repertory of the Latin language itself. The very homeliness of its style is only an argument of its value in this last point of view; for, as Michaëlis says, "It is certain no man can know more than the half of a language, nor have an adequate notion of its etymology, who is acquainted only with the small portion that is preserved in elegantly written books. Those phrases of common life which are used by men of liberal education at furthest in epistolary correspondence, and even the expressions of the illiterate, are not unworthy the notice of philology. I have frequently," adds Michaëlis, "conversed on this subject with the celebrated Gesner, who used to say that the Vulgate was to him an auctor classicus, not because he could learn to write from it elegant Latin, but because it enabled him to survey the Latin language in its whole extent." ""*

IV. THE SYRIAC VERSIONS.

I. 1. CONTEMPORANEOUS with the earliest of the Latin translations just noticed, was the version in the Syrian language, which has been ever since regarded by the Eastern churches as an authentic and inestimable text of the holy scriptures. This version has been distinguished, from time immemorial, by the name of PESCHITO, that is, "the simple, clear, or uncorrupted."

[A translation of sacred scripture among the rabbin

* Latin translations of the scriptures have been made in more modern times by Arias Montanus, Beza, Junius and Tremellius, Castellio and Houbigant. But these do not come within the design of the present sketches, which are devoted solely to the ancient versions.

ists has been called, as already observed, a TARGUM, that is, "a representation of words in another tongue," or, the meaning of words in one language delivered in another. If an abstruse or allegorical import be given to the words translated, it is termed MIDRASH; on the other hand, the simple rendering of the record, ad verbum, or literally, they call PESCHUT.

[In the Chaldee Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan ben Uzziel, the terms of the Hebrew original are closely adhered to, and even retained, in passages where it could be done by reducing them to the Chaldee forms. In the Syriac translation, the same principle obtains in the OldTestament portion, so far as the wider divergence of the languages would admit; while, in the New Testament, a remarkable ability has been manifested in exhibiting a faithful representation of the Greek text in that idiomatic Aramean, which was natural to the inspired writers themselves, and into which their Greek compositions so easily reverted. Now, this faithfully simple character of the work, in the estimation of the oriental theologians of the olden time, brought it under the denomination of Peschut, and was evidently the reason of the Syriacized title by which it is always known, PESCHITO, versio simplex.]

2. The Syriac version of the Old Testament contains the whole of the canonical books. The apocryphal treatises are rejected: we have indeed translations of them into the language, which may be found in the Polyglots; but they were made at a later day from the Septuagint. But in the Syrian New Testament the canon is less extensive than ours. The Second Epistle of Peter, and that of Jude, the Second and Third Epistles of John, and the Book of Revelation, are wanting: they are supplied in the printed editions; but the text, whether considered as to style or the mode of conception, is plainly a different production. But though these holy

books are not found in any manuscripts of the Peschito, nor in the Lectionaries of the Syrian churches; there has been no disposition, I believe, on the part of those churches to reject them as spurious: they have contented themselves with the alleged fact, that at the very remote time when their version was made, the Christian church had not universally agreed upon the limits of the canon. The books themselves, however, appear to have had an early place in the Syrian language. They are cited by Ephrem in the fourth century;* but it has been satisfactorily shown by Hug, and others, that Ephrem was not acquainted with Greek,† and must therefore have quoted them from a Syrian translation.

3. The Peschito is an immediate version from the Hebrew, in the Old Testament, and from the Greek, in the New. The tradition may be correct which assigns the task of the Old Testament to the labours of several translators. Whether they adverted to the Septuagint in their work, may not be affirmed; but it is evident, that in subsequent revisions of it the Greek was often consulted, or that the Peschito has been interpolated from it in succeeding times. The same remark will apply in relation to the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the corresponding portion of the Syriac. The translators were probably Jews by nation, but Christians in creed. Hence, while there is the same tendency to the rabbinical exegesis,

* Thus, Jude, tom. i. Opp. Syr. p. 136; 2 Peter, tom. ii. p. 2 John, tom. i. Opp. Gr. p. 76; and the Apocalypse often.

342;

+ For example: on his visit to Basil of Cæsarea, they conversed by means of an interpreter. (COTELERII Monum. Eccles. Gr. tom. iii. p. 58. BASILII Vita, in Opp. tom. iii. EPHREM Encom. Basilii, tom. iii. Opp. ed. Vossii, p. 712.) So, in a Syrian biography of him, it is said, when he went into Egypt he took one of his disciples with him as a Greek interpreter.-ASSEM. Bib. Orient. tom. i.

EPHREM on Josh. xv. 28.

which appears in the Septuagint, it is modified by Christian principle. Indeed, the titles prefixed to the Psalms, unless they are of later date, are decisively affirmative of the evangelical views of the translators. *

This is evident from the

In Matthew xxvii., for
Several of the verbal

In the New Testament, the work, as we have said, directly follows the Greek text. numerous words retained from it. example, there are eleven such.† errors, too, could only have been committed by a misapprehension of the Greek text; for example, "Wisdom is justified by her servants," (Matt. xi. 19,) where the translator read τέχνων for τέκνων.

With respect to the class, or family, to which the Greek manuscripts belonged that the translators followed in the work, it seems most accordant with truth to hold, that they were anterior to any of the recensions which form the basis of the classifications that have been made of them in modern times. The Peschito, in fact, does not evince a uniform agreement with either class, Byzantine, Alexandrine, or Western; being, in the judgment of Griesbach, "not like any of them, and yet not totally dissimilar from any: for in many of its readings it agrees with the Alexandrine, in more with the Western, and in some also with the Constantinopolitan." But the perplexity created by this circumstance, is obviated by referring the translation to a time prior to the labours of the first recensionists, and considering the text as belonging to the xov xdoσis, or unrevised editions of the apostolic age:

4. Because the DATE of this version can only be reasonably assigned to that venerable period. The opinion that the Peschito was executed so late as the fourth or even fifth century, is now universally rejected. The Syriac

*Hora Aramaicæ, p. 23.

+ See verses 6, 7, 11, 12, 19, 27, 28, 30, 38, 48.

Hora Aram, p. 59.

translation is quoted by Ephrem, in the fourth century, in a manner which betokens that it was, in his time, the current medium of scripture knowledge among the Syrian nation; he speaks of it as we habitually do of the English Bible, as 66 our version." The quotations of Origen from the Syriac Old Testament lead us still higher, and imply a co-existent version of the New Testament, about A.D. 230, in the same tongue; and though less distinct, yet the statement of Eusebius* may be taken as collateral testimony of existence a hundred years earlier. For, speaking of the works of Hegesippus, ("a church teacher, of strong Jewish colouring and Jewish origin, who lived. under the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, and from whom proceeded the first attempt to compose a church history,"†) he says, they contained "several passages out of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, out of the Syriac, and particularly out of the Hebrew tongue, whereby he plainly intimates himself to have been a Jew converted to the faith of Christ." The "Syriac" quotations referred to here were, no doubt, scripture ones. Besides, it is known that sacred literature had begun to be extensively cultivated among the Syrians in the latter end of the second century; and there is no reason to deny the probability, that even then they possessed the inspired writings in their own tongue, or to regard as unfounded the tradition, that the Peschito was made under the auspices of Abgar, the first Christian king of Edessa.‡

5. The text of the Peschito has not come down to us, through this long lapse of ages, without undergoing some modifications; but the divisions to which the

* Eccl. Hist. lib. iv. cap. 22.

+ NEANDER.

In a passage of Jacob of Edessa, quoted by Abulfaraj, he mentions "those translators who were sent to Palestine by the apostle Thaddeus, and by Abgar the king.”