The Numbering of the Ten Commandments in Some Peshitta Manuscripts
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THE NUMBERING OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN SOME PESHITTA MANUSCRIPTS by M. D. KOSTER Hengelo In the Leiden Peshitta, the critical edition of The Old Testament in Syriac to which Professor de Boer has devoted so much of his time and energy since 1959, not all the details in the text of the various mss. concerning qeo'änë, rubrics, etc. could be reproduced. Only the heading and subscription of each separate book are printed and their variant readings from the mss. up to the twelfth century are men- tioned in the apparatus 1). As some of the inter-textual indications left out from the edition could be of some interest, I should like to draw attention in this note to a special kind of rubric in the book of Exodus, viz. the use of the Syriac letters 'alaph to yodh as numbers to indicate the separate commandments of the Decalogue which appear in a number of mss. One would expect that numbering the ten commandments should not present too many difficulties to the Syrian scribes who do their utmost in their colophons to express their humble submission to the Most High. This suggests that they had some basic knowledge of such catechetical matters as the right division of the Decalogue. But-easy as it is to "use one's ten commandments" for memo- . rizing purposes- the Syrian scribes had difficulties with the actual assignment of the numbers one to ten to each single commandment; and in this they were not alone. Even the order of the commandments seems to have been liable to change, especially that of the sixth, seventh and eighth (concerning manslaughter, adultery and stealing). This can be seen by comparing their order in Hos. iv 2 (6-8-7) and Jer. vii 9 (8-6-7),2) and in Codex Vaticanus of the Septuagint in Ex. xx (7-8-6) and Deut. v (7-6-8; cf. Luke xviii 20 and Rom. xiii 9). Moreover, given their normal order, there are several possibilities 1) See The Old Testamentin Syriac accordingto the Peshi�a Version, Part I, fasc. 1 (Preface, Genesis-Exodus) (Leiden, 1977), Preface, p. IX. 2) LXX B has the order of the MT; see H. B. Swete's edition. 469 of numbering the commandments outside the Syriac church too 3). Two main types of division can be distinguished. In one of them, which is supported by Augustine and the other Latin Fathers, the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans, the whole of vv. 2-6 of Ex. xx is taken as the first commandment, including not only the prohibi- tion against serving other gods (v. 3) and that against making idols and bowing down to them (v. 4-6), but in most cases also the intro- ductory sentence (v. 2). By taking so many items together in the be- ginning the last sentence, concerning coveting (v. 17), had to be split into two so as to make up for the ninth and tenth command- ments 4). In the other type of division-which is the better one-v. 7 "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain" is already considered the third commandment, v. 16 is the ninth, and the whole of v. 17 the tenth commandment. Furthermore, in this second type a few sub-types can be discerned in connection with the different ways of deriving the first and second commandments from vv. 2-6. In Jewish tradition v. 2, the introduction, is considered the first, and the whole of vv. 3-6 the second commandment 5), but Philo and Josephus took only vv. 4-6 as the second commandment, in which they were followed by the Eastern and the Prostestant Churches, Calvinists and Socinians alike. There then remain vv. 2-3 for the first (so Josephus and Philo), but it is still better to take v. 2 "I am the Lord your God ..." as a general introductory remark to the com- mandments proper and only v. 3 as the first commandment. In the Syriac mss. I have not discovered any variation in the order of the commandments. But nearly all types of division mentioned above can be found in the fourteen mss. 6)-out of the forty-nine "complete" mss. I have collated in preparing the edition of the text 3) See the commentaries, e.g. B. Baentsch, HKAT (Göttingen, 1903), p. 179, "Die Zählung der Gebote"; G. Beer, HAT (Tübingen, 1939), p. 99: "Die Gewinnung der Zehnzahl ist umstritten" ; J. P. Hyatt, the New Century Bible (London, 1971), p. 210; G. te Stroete, BOT (Roermond and Maaseik, 1966), p. 147. Other interesting questions touched upon in the commentaries, such as the dating and authorship of the Decalogue, the composition of Ex. xix-xxiv, the character of the commandments and extra-biblical parallels, had to be left out of consideration in this note. 4) According to Baentsch, p. 179, this division was also intended by the MT, 5) See Baentsch, Beer and te Stroete; otherwise Hyatt. 6) Not counting 7a1 and 13b2, which each have a number only once: 7a1 an ¸alaph before Ex. xx 1 (see below) and 13b2 (possibly) a beth (in marginead v. 7). .