Joseph and Aseneth

Historical English source page 24

XX INTRODUCTION four versions the Latin in the earlier part closely follows the Greek, but becomes shorter as it pro- ceeds, until at the end it is a mere epitome ; and the Slavonic is also much shortened. Of the other two the Armenian is the longer ^ and the nearer to the Greek, though it contains many passages found in other versions, but absent in our Greek text. Of the Greek MSS. B D contain a shorter text than the others, and often agree with the versions in their omissions, but in Ch. xvi. they have a long insertion which is found in different forms in the versions and is almost certainly original.^ The Present Translation I have translated from Batiffol's text except in a few places where it is obviously wrong. To give all the variants would occupy much too much space and make the notes almost unintelligible (perhaps at some future time we may be given a complete critical edition of the book in which all the versions will be included in full), and for the purpose of this series I have thought it enough to record the variants in passages in which the Greek text is unsupported and a few others which there is special reason for recording, and the passages covered by the variants are marked in the text by a half-bracket at the beginning and the reference- number at the end. Longer insertions contained in the versions are given in an Appendix, • Chs. xxv.-xxviii. are, however, almost wholly omitted ; see note to Ch. xxv. ^ See p. 8i, n. 4.