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The Curetonian Gospels, designated by the ''siglum'' syr
cur, are contained in a manuscript of the four
gospels of the New Testament in
Old Syriac. Together with the
Sinaiticus Palimpsest the Curetonian Gospels form the Old Syriac Version, and are known as the Evangelion Dampharshe ("Separated Gospels") in the
Syriac Orthodox Church.
The Gospels are commonly named after
William Cureton
William Cureton (180817 June 1864) was an English Orientalist.
Life
He was born in Westbury, Shropshire. After being educated at the Adams' Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire and at Christ Church, Oxford, he took orders in 1832, became chapl ...
who maintained that they represented an Aramaic Gospel and had not been translated from Greek (1858) and differed considerably from the canonical Greek texts, with which they had been collated and "corrected". Henry Harman (1885) concluded, however, that their originals had been Greek from the outset. The order of the gospels is Matthew, Mark, John, Luke. The text is one of only two
Syriac Syriac may refer to:
*Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic
*Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region
* Syriac alphabet
** Syriac (Unicode block)
** Syriac Supplement
* Neo-Aramaic languages a ...
manuscripts of the separate gospels that possibly predate the standard Syriac version, the
Peshitta
The Peshitta ( syc, ܦܫܺܝܛܬܳܐ ''or'' ') is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition, including the Maronite Church, the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, ...
; the other is the
Sinaitic Palimpsest. A fourth Syriac text is the harmonized ''
Diatessaron''. The Curetonian Gospels and the Sinaitic Palimpsest appear to have been translated from independent Greek originals.
Text
The Syriac text of the codex is a representative of the
Western text. Significant variant readings include:
* In Matthew 4:23 the variant "in whole Galilee" together with
Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209,
Codex Bobiensis,
ℓ ''20'' and
copsa. Matthew 12:47 is omitted.
* In Matthew 16:12 the variant ''leaven of bread of the Pharisees and Sadducees'' supported only by
Codex Sinaiticus
The Codex Sinaiticus ( Shelfmark: London, British Library, Add MS 43725), designated by siglum [Aleph] or 01 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts), δ 2 (in the von Soden numbering of New Testament manuscript ...
and
Codex Corbeiensis I.
* In Luke 23:43 the variant ''I say today to you, you will be with me in paradise'' supported only by unspaced dot in
Codex Vaticanus
The Codex Vaticanus ( The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209), designated by siglum B or 03 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), δ 1 ( von Soden), is a fourth-century Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old ...
and lack of punctuation in earlier Greek MSS.
History
The manuscript gets its curious name from being edited and published by
William Cureton
William Cureton (180817 June 1864) was an English Orientalist.
Life
He was born in Westbury, Shropshire. After being educated at the Adams' Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire and at Christ Church, Oxford, he took orders in 1832, became chapl ...
in 1858. The manuscript was among a mass of manuscripts brought in 1842 from the
Syrian monastery of Saint Mary Deipara in the
Wadi Natroun
Wadi El Natrun (Arabic: "Valley of Natron"; Coptic: , "measure of the hearts") is a depression in northern Egypt that is located below sea level and below the Nile River level. The valley contains several alkaline lakes, natron-rich salt d ...
,
Lower Egypt, as the result of a series of negotiations that had been under way for some time; it is conserved in the
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
. Cureton recognized that the Old Syriac text of the gospels was significantly different from any known at the time. He dated the manuscript fragments to the fifth century; the text, which may be as early as the second century, is written in the oldest and classical form of the
Syriac alphabet, called ''Esṭrangelā'', without vowel points.
In 1872
William Wright, of the University of Cambridge, privately printed about a hundred copies of further fragments, ''Fragments of the Curetonian Gospels,'' (London, 1872), without translation or critical apparatus. The fragments, bound as flyleaves in a Syriac
codex in Berlin, once formed part of the Curetonian manuscript, and fill some of its
lacuna
Lacuna (plural lacunas or lacunae) may refer to:
Related to the meaning "gap"
* Lacuna (manuscripts), a gap in a manuscript, inscription, text, painting, or musical work
** Great Lacuna, a lacuna of eight leaves where there was heroic Old Norse p ...
e.
The publication of the Curetonian Gospels and the Sinaitic Palimpsest enabled scholars for the first time to examine how the gospel text in Syriac changed between the earliest period (represented by the text of the Sinai and Curetonian manuscripts) and the later period. The Syriac versions of the New Testament remain less thoroughly studied than the Greek.
The standard text is that of
Francis Crawford Burkitt
Francis Crawford Burkitt (3 September 1864 – 11 May 1935) was an English theologian. As Norris Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge from 1905 until shortly before his death, Burkitt was a sturdy critic of the notion of a dist ...
, 1904; it was used in the comparative edition of the Syriac gospels that was edited by
George Anton Kiraz, 1996.
[Kiraz,
''Comparative Edition of the Syriac Gospels, Aligning the ]Sinaiticus
The Codex Sinaiticus (Shelfmark: London, British Library, Add MS 43725), designated by siglum [Aleph] or 01 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts), δ 2 (in the von Soden numbering of New Testament manuscripts) ...
, Curetonianus, Peshîttâ and Harklean Versions'' 4 vols. (Leiden: Brill) 1996.
See also
*
Syriac versions of the Bible
Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. Portions of the Old Testament were written in Aramaic and there are Aramaic phrases in the New Testament. Syriac translations of the New Testament were among the first and date from the 2nd century. The whole Bible w ...
Notes
References
*Harman, Henry M. "Cureton's Fragments of Syriac Gospels" ''Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis'' 5.1/2 (June-December 1885), pp. 28-48.
*Burkitt, F.C. ''Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe: The Curetonian Version of the Four Gospels, with the readings of the Sinai Palimpsest and the early Syriac Patristic evidence'' (Gorgias Press 2003) . This is the standard edition of the Curetonian manuscript, with the Sinai text in the footnotes. Volume I contains the Syriac text with facing English translation; volume II discusses the Old Syriac version.
*Kiraz, George Anton. ''Comparative Edition of the Syriac Gospels: Aligning the Sinaiticus, Curetonianus, Peshitta and Harklean Versions.'' Vol. 1: Matthew; vol. 2: Mark; vol.3: Luke; vol. 4: John. (Leiden: Brill), 1996. {{ISBN, 90-04-10419-4.
External links
Thomas Nicol, "Syriac Versions of the Bible"A simplified on-line introduction.
Remains of a very antient recension of the four Gospels in Syriacby Cureton, William, 1808-1864
4th-century biblical manuscripts
Syriac manuscripts
Bible translations into Aramaic