JACOB OF ON GENESIS: HIS QUOTATIONS OF THE AND HIS REVISION OF THE TEXT

Bas ter Haar Romeny*

Revising a Bible translation is an arduous task, but having one’s mod- ernized version accepted by a religious community is perhaps even more difficult. The revision made in the first decade of the eighth century by the West Syrian polymath Jacob of Edessa has never been able to fully replace the Peshitta. The latter version, translated directly from the Hebrew in the second century, is still the standard Bible of the Syriac- speaking churches; Jacob’s work only survives in part in a small number of manuscripts.1 For us, these manuscripts are a precious treasure, not so much because of their value for the constitution of the biblical text, but as a witness to the way one of the finest scholars of the Syrian Orthodox Church, comparable only with Jerome according to some, dealt with the text of the Bible and its different versions. In the 1990s, an edition and a study of Jacob’s revision of Samuel were published.2 These discuss questions such as: what exactly was the base text of his revision, which choices did Jacob make, and what was his purpose? I think that additional material for answering such questions can be gathered if we broaden our view and include the book of Genesis in our study.3 The advantage of Genesis over Samuel is that on this text more exegetical material by Jacob is available to us. Jacob’s works on Genesis differ in genre, but also in the way they use the biblical text

* The research which resulted in the present article was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (nwo). 1 See W. Baars, ‘Ein neugefundenes Bruchst¨uck aus der syrischen Bibelrevision des Jakob von Edessa’, VT 18 (1968), 548–554, esp. 548–549. 2 R.J. Saley, The Samuel Manuscript of Jacob of Edessa. A Study in Its Underlying Textual Traditions (MPIL 9; Leiden 1998); A. Salvesen, The Books of Samuel in the Syriac Version of Jacob of Edessa (MPIL 10; Leiden 1999). See also Saley’s ‘The Textual Vorlagen for Jacob of Edessa’s Revision of the Books of Samuel’, this volume, 113–125, and Salvesen, ‘Jacob of Edessa’s Version of 1–2 Samuel: Its Method and Text-Critical Value’, this volume, 127–144. 3 After I had finished writing this paper, I received the following article: A. Salvesen, ‘The Genesis Texts of Jacob of Edessa: A Study in Variety’, in W.Th. van Peursen and R.B. ter Haar Romeny, Text, Translation, and Tradition: Studies on the Peshitta and Its Use in the Syriac Tradition Presented to Konrad D. Jenner on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (MPIL 14; Leiden 2006). 146 BAS TER HAAR ROMENY and in the actual form of the text which they quote. In this paper, I shall try to sketch Jacob’s development on these points. An additional advantage of the choice of Genesis is that large parts of the Syro-Hexapla survive.4 This translation of Origen’s text of the Septuagint was made some ninety years before Jacob made his revision. In the scholarship of the last century, the most debated issue was the question of whether Jacob used this version while making his text.

1. Sources First, let me briefly introduce the sources. Jacob’s On the Hexaemeron, the Six Days of Creation, is his last work to deal with Genesis.5 This book, which was left unfinished at his death in 708, strives to incor- porate large parts of the scientific and philosophical knowledge of his time. The term ‘commentary’ would therefore not be very apt, but the work does of course contain a number of Genesis quotations. Jacob finished his revision of Samuel in 705 and that of Genesis in 704.6 Three years earlier he had completed his revision of the Greek translation of ’s Homiliae Cathedrales, with numerous biblical quotations.7 Then there are two works which are difficult to date, but were presumably written in an earlier period: the Book of Scholia and the Commentary on the Octateuch or Commentary in Short.8 The Book of Scholia has been known since the publications of the Assemani broth- ers; it seems to have been an important source for the monk Severus,

4 See W. Baars, New Syro-Hexaplaric Texts (Leiden 1968), for a number of texts and full references to earlier editions. In addition, V¨o¨obus’s facsimile edition should be consulted: The Pentateuch in the Version of the Syro-Hexapla. A Facsimile Edition of a Midyat MS discovered in 1964 (CSCO 369, Syr. 45; Leuven 1975). 5 For the text, see J.-B. Chabot, Iacobi Edesseni Hexaemeron seu in opus creationis libri septem (CSCO 92, Syr. 44; Paris 1928); for a Latin translation A. Vaschalde, Iacobi Edesseni Hexaemeron seu in opus creationis libri septem (CSCO 97, Syr. 48; Leuven 1932). 6 The text of Jacob’s revision of Genesis has been handed down to us almost completely, in a single Paris manuscript: BnF syr. 26. For the text of the colophon giving the date of A.Gr. 1015, see below (with note 14). For the revision of Samuel, also preserved in a single manuscript (BL Add. 14429), see Salvesen, The Books of Samuel. The text of the colophon at the end of 1 Samuel gives the date of A.Gr. 1016; ibidem, ix, ed. 90, trans. 67. 7 Jacob’s Syriac revision of Severus’ Homilies has been published in various volumes of the (see the list in D. Kruisheer’s Bibliographical Clavis at the end of this volume, under J). About this work, see now Lucas Van Rompay’s contribution to this volume (with further references). 8 In addition to the literature in the following footnotes, see also the short survey in R.B. ter Haar Romeny, ‘Ephrem and Jacob of Edessa in the Commentary of the Monk Severus’, in G.A. Kiraz (ed.), Malphono w-Rabo d-Malphone: Studies in Honour of Sebastian P. Brock (Piscataway, NJ 2008), 535–557, esp. 543–551.