GENESIS IN SYRIAC

Jerome A. Lund

Three translations of the Book of Genesis into Syriac exist, namely the ,1 the translation made by Paul of Tella that we call the Syrohexapla,2 and the translation made by Jacob of Edessa.3 The Peshitta renders a Hebrew

1 The Leiden scienti c edition of the Peshitta version of Genesis was prepared by mem- bers of the Peshitta Institute in Leiden based on material collected and studied by Taeke Jansma. The resultant volume (co-edited with Marinus D. Koester), The in Syriac According to the Peshitta Version—Part I, 1. Preface, Genesis – Exodus (Leiden: Brill, 1977), forms the basis of this essay. I will hereafter refer to this as “Leiden Genesis.” The term “Peshitta” (ˆtTy±; “simple,” “straightforward”),  rst attested in the writings of the ninth century theologian Moshe bar Kepha, was introduced to distinguish the earlier translations of the Old and New Testaments from the seventh century translations (Sebastian P. Brock, The Bible in the Syriac Tradition [GH 7; rev. ed.; Piscataway, N.J.; Gorgias, 2006], 23; for other views see Piet B. Dirksen, “The Old Testament Peshitta,” in Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity [ed. Martin Jan Mulder; CRINT 2/1; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1988], 255–256). Further, one should be aware of the fact that the history of the Old Testament Peshitta has nothing to do with the history of the Peshitta which begins some 300 years after that of the Old Testament. 2 Two MSS of the Syrohexapla to Genesis are known: British Library Add 14442, described by William Wright as a document written in a seventh century Estrangela script in his Cat- alogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum, acquired since the year 1838, Part I, entry XLVIII (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1870; repr., Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, 2002) and published by Paul de Lagarde in his Bibliothecae Syriacae (Göttingen: Dietrich Lueder Horstmann, 1892), and a Midyat MS published by Arthur Vööbus in his The Pentateuch in the Version of the Syro-Hexapla: A Facsimile Edition of a Midyat MS Discovered 1964 (CSCO 369, Subsidia 45; Leuven: Peeters, 1975). The British Library MS contains Gen 4:8b–9:24a; 16:2b– 12a; 20:1b–12; 31:53b–32:12; 36:2b–40:17; 43:1b–47:16a; and 50:17a–26. The Midyat MS preserves Gen 32:9–50:26. At the time of the Renaissance in the sixteenth century, the European scholar Andreas Masius had access to the entire text of Genesis in a volume containing the  rst half of the Old Testament, but his text vanished without a trace (Brock, The Bible in the Syriac Tradition, 47; and Brock, An Introduction to Syriac Studies [GH 4; Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, 2006], 36). 3 His text of Genesis has not yet been published, preserved in large part in MS Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Syr. 26. According to Alison Salvesen, Gen 1:16–3:20, 32:13–33:10, and 43:33–44:28 are missing from the MS (Alison Salvesen, “The Genesis Texts of Jacob of Edessa: A Study in Variety,” in 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 [ed. W.Th. van Peusen and R.B. ter Haar Romeny; MPIL 14; Leiden: Brill, 2006], 178). Based on several citations of Genesis found in Philoxenus’ commentary on Matthew and Luke, R.G. Jenkins has suggested that Philoxenus had a fourth translation of Genesis at his 538 jerome a. lund text that stands in the proto-Masoretic tradition. Paul of Tella translated the Greek text into Syriac to give Syrian church pastors and scholars access to the Greek for comparative purposes.4 He incorporated hexaplaric anno- tations in the text and notes in the margins, so that this text constitutes a valuable witness not only to the Old Greek translation, but also to those of Aquila, Symmachos, and Theodotion. Jacob of Edessa used the Peshitta as his base text, while utilizing the Greek Bible, apparently directly, rather than utilizing the Syrohexapla.5 His purpose was to update the language, produc- ing a contemporary translation.6 Jews translated the Book of Genesis from Hebrew into Syriac about ce150 in the environs of Edessa,7 though Christians preserved the text as their translation. Michael Weitzman has suggested that the same community that translated the text preserved the text, moving from being adherents to a form of Judaism to being Christians.8 Since Tatian cites the Peshitta Old Testament in his Diatessaron, the text had been in use by ce170.9 Paul of Tella did his work in Alexandria, Egypt, in 615–617.10 One could guess that he translated Genesis  rst. He rendered the Old Greek trans- lation of into Syriac, preserving references to Aquila, Symmachos, and Theodotion in the margins using signs utilized by Origen. Paul of Tella represented as much of the Greek as possible in his translation. Thus, he rendered “your name” by two words, l™ˋ Am¼, as in Greek in contrast

disposal from ce508, possibly produced under his auspices (R.G. Jenkins, The Old Testament Quotations of [CSCO 514; Subsidia 84; Louvain: Peeters, 1989], 130–156, 203–204). So far, this meagre evidence drawn from a commentary on the New Testament has failed to convince anyone else of such a revised version of Genesis termed “Philoxenian.” 4 Vööbus, Pentateuch, 18. See also Jerome A. Lund, “Syntactic Features of the Syrohexapla of Ezekiel,” AS 4 (2006): 67–81, at 81. 5 R.B. ter Haar Romeny, “Jacob of Edessa on Genesis: His Quotations of the Peshitta and his Revision of the Text,” in Jacob of Edessa and the Syriac Culture of His Day (ed. R.B. ter Haar Romeny; MPIL 18; Leiden: Brill, 2008) 149–150. See also Salvesen, “Genesis Texts of Jacob of Edessa,” 177–188. 6 Ter Haar Romeny, “Jacob of Edessa,” 145. 7 Michael P. Weitzman, The Syriac Version of the Old Testament: An Introduction (UCOP 56; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 258. 8 Weitzman, The Syriac Version, 259, states: “The reason why a Jewish translation came to be transmitted by the eastern churches is simple: a Jewish community converted to Christianity, bringing with it a version of the Hebrew Bible.” 9 Jan Joosten, The Syriac Language of the Peshitta and Old Syriac Versions of Matthew: Syntactic Structure, Inner-Syriac Developments and Translation Technique (SSL 22; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 25–27; and Joosten, “The Old Testament Quotations in the Old Syriac and Peshitta Gospels,” Textus 15 (1990): 55–76, esp. 75–76. 10 Brock, The Bible in the Syriac Tradition, 28.