Sinaitic Palimpsest

The Sinaitic Palimpsest of Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai is a late 4th century manuscript of 358 pages, containing a translation of the four canonical gospels of the New Testament into Syriac, which have been overwritten by a "vita" of female saints and martyrs with a date corresponding to AD 778. This palimpsest is the oldest copy of the gospels in Syriac, one of two surviving manuscripts that predate the "Peshitta", the standard Syriac translation of the Bible. The other Syriac manuscript of the pre-Peshitta Syriac Bible, found in Egypt in 1842, is called the "Cureton Manuscript" after the orientalist William Cureton, who first identified and edited it in 1858.

Both manuscripts contain similar version of the Syriac gospels, which have been "conformed" to the four Greek gospels. In this sense of the word, the text has been corrected and re-edited to be made to conform to the Greek New Testament. Even so, the "Sinaitic Palimpsest" retains some readings from even earlier lost Syriac gospels and from the 2nd century Greek manuscripts, which brought the four gospels into harmony with one another through selective readings and emendations.

The importance of such early, least conforming texts is emphasized by the revision of the "Peshitta" that was made about 508, ordered by bishop Philoxenus of Mabbog. His revision, it is said, skillfully moved the "Peshitta" nearer to the Greek text; "it is very remarkable that his own frequent gospel quotations preserved in his writings show that he used an Old Syriac set of the four gospels" [http://www.srr.axbridge.org.uk/syriac_versions.html] .

The palimpsest was identified in the library at St. Catherine's in February 1892 by the intrepid Dr. Agnes Smith Lewis and her sister Margaret Dunlop Gibson, who returned with a team of scholars that included J. Rendel Harris, to photograph and transcribe the work in its entirety [http://www.metamind.net/sisterbio.html] .

The German theologian Adalbert Merx devoted much of his later research to the elucidation of the "Sinaitic Palimpsest", the results being embodied in "Die vier kanonischen Evangelien nach dem ältesten bekannten Texte" (1897-1905).

The "Sinaitic Palimpsest" immediately became a central document in tracing the history of the New Testament. The palimpsest's importance lies especially in making the Greek New Testament manuscripts understandable to Aramaic speaking communities during that period. (see "Aramaic primacy").

External links

* [http://www.srr.axbridge.org.uk/syriac_versions.html "Ancient Syriac New Testament Versions"] : summary of how these ancient Syriac versions of the gospel are related and the context of their creation
* [http://www.mtmind.net/burkittbio.html Dr Francis Crawford Burkitt and the Sinaitic Palimpsest]