2 Baruch

Historical printed page 472

Il BARUCH Original Syriac Translation Ns | Sea Wor Here W and P stand for the Walton and Paris Polyglots. It is of no little interest to have traced the sources of the text in the two great polyglots; for, as their editors have given no information on the subject, scholars had hitherto been in the dark in this respect. $4. DATE OF THE SYRIAC VERSION. Since the MSS. ¢ and ὁ referred to in the preceding section both belong to the sixth century, we find that at that date there existed two distinctly developed types of text, both of which must have been for no brief period in existence owing to the variety of readings already evolved. Further, though 4 belongs to the sixth century, many of its readings are decidedly later than c, or even than ah, In fact a represent the text at an earlier stage than 6. The common parent ad ὦ therefore, i.e. 8, could not be later than the fifth century. Since, therefore, 8 belongs at latest to the fifth century, the common progenitor of ¢ and a (= the parent of 8 and y) can hardly be sought later than the fourth century. It may be as early as the third. § 5. THE SYRIAC—A TRANSLATION FROM THE GREEK.—7he Oxyrhynchus Greek Fragment, xii-xiv. 3. The Syriac Version is a translation from the Greek. The conclusion was already arrived at before the discovery of the Greek fragment of Grenfell and Hunt. 1° For it is so stated in « 2° There are certain corruptions in the text which are only explicable on the hypothesis that the translator misinterpreted the Greek, or found the corruption already existing there. The corrupt readings in iii. 7, xxi. 9, 11, 12; xxiv. 2; Ixii. 7 are to be explained on this principle. 3° There are frequent transliterations of Greek words as in vi. 4; x. 17; xvii. 4, &c. 4° The Rest of the Words of Baruch preserves important fragments of the Greek Version. All the above facts and more (see my edition, p. xlii sq.) were known when Grenfell and Hunt discovered an actual fragment of the Greek Version, which they published in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, iii. 3--7. The papyrus is part of a leaf from a book, and is written in a large slightly sloping uncial hand—possibly as early as the fourth century, and probably not later than the fifth. This fragment embraces xii. 1-5, xiii. 1-2, 11-12, xiv. 1-3. I have printed this fragment and an English translation of it in parallel columns with the Syriac. The text is poor and defective. In xiv. 2 it read μαρτυρήσαντες, but this was by a later hand rightly corrected into ἁμαρτήσαντες as we find in the Syriac. Again in xiv. 1 ‘shall be endured by the Gentiles’ is corrupt for ‘ shall come upon the Gentiles’. Here the papyrus reads ὑπενεχθήσεται which seems corrupt for ἐπενεχθήσεται. At all events the phrase in the Syriac is exactly the same in xiii. 5, ‘ retribution which is coming upon’ and in xiv. 1 ‘the retribution... shall come upon’. In xii. 3 the parallelism which is preserved in the Syriac is wholly lost. ‘Condemn’ cannot be right, if originally there was any parallelism. The fact that the parallelism is preserved in both Greek and Syriac in xii. 2 is in favour that the Syriac has rightly preserved it in xii. 3. § 6. THE GREEK—A TRANSLATION FROM THE HEBREW. Previous to my edition of Baruch in 1896 an unbroken unanimity prevailed among scholars on the question of a Greek original. Since the discovery of the book by Ceriani not a single serious attempt had been made to grapple with this problem, and yet in nearly every instance scholars spoke with an assurance on the subject that only a personal and thorough study of the subject could have justified. To this strong and unanimous tradition of the learned world I bowed without hesitation at the outset of my studies, but with an awakening distrust and an ever-growing reluctance 472