a date was to be found in it. I am not sorry however to find, that I had greatly underrated its age, as this must be a good evidence to my readers, that I had no disposition to exaggerate.

:

It may be suggested however, that this very early date might be that of the MS. from which it, or some other prior to it, was copied it being no uncommon thing with copyists to transcribe, with MSS. which they copy, their dates also; so that a MS. of very modern date, may, in its epigraphe, carry with it one of the highest antiquity. To this I would answer: If we are to ascribe any credit to the Note given above, this MS. must have been considered an ancient one 757 years ago: and to such a MS. we cannot, perhaps, ascribe an age less than 600 or 700 years: if we take the least of these, the age of our Codes will be 1357 years: if the greatest, 1457: while the date, actually ascribed to it by the Note, makes it 1432 years old, just twenty-five years less than this last computation would make.

There are however some considerations, which would at first sight seem to prove the contrary, and which indeed operated forcibly on my mind in this way, when the very early date given to our MS. first occurred to me: they are these: First, Eusebius died about A.D. 340. If then our MS. was written A. D. 411, this must have happened 71 years only after the death of the author of the original Greek work. We shall now have therefore 71, or a few more years, for the period within which our Syriac translation was made, and, as it appears to me, must have been copied1 out several times

1

My reason for this opinion is grounded on the fact, that many of the proper names found in this MS. are so deformed by the mistakes of the Copyists, as to make it extremely probable that many Copies had been made from the Translator's Autograph, before our Copy was written: e. g. p. 71, we have 2o. Malkuthrudun, for Mexíkapoos es¡, for cop, Omadius : p.121, o▲▲ asm, for A, Sanchoniatho: p.123,

or Meλкáðaρov. p. 120,

before our MS. could have been written; which might seem too little. I see no reason however, why this Work of Eusebius, which must have been a popular one, could not have been translated into Syriac very soon after it was published and if so, the Syriac version might have been copied out times innumerable, before the date of our MS.

When the school of Edessa was first founded, I have not been able to discover. It is certain however that it was, and had been, a considerable time in vigorous operation before A.D. 411, the date assigned to our MS2. Our Work might therefore have been translated into the Syriac at Edessa, even during the lifetime of its author, or at least early enough to have allowed of our MS. being copied there in A.D. 411, after innumerable copies had been taken from the autograph of the translator, and from one another.

But there are, I think, better reasons for supposing that our translation was not made at Edessa at this early period, but rather in Palestine. We are told by Asseman (1. c. p. CMXXV.), that there were, both at Cæsarea and at Scytho

ܒܐܦܝܪܣ for ,ܒܒܪܩܒܝܪܣ ,181 .or the like: p .ܠܠܘܩܐܝܘܣ for

probably; a corruption so great as to bid utter defiance to critical conjecture, had we indeed had nothing else to rely upon: p. 148, Moooia, Herododus, for Herostratus: to which many others might be added. There are also some other errors, such as A, for PASO; Lies, for a. see pp. 187, 223, 302, 276, &c.,—all of which, as far as they have occurred to me, I have corrected in the notes.

2

According to Asseman (Bibl. Orient. Tom. I. p. ii. p. LXIX.) it had been established from time immemorial: his words are, "In urbe Edessa Scholam fuisse Persicæ gentis, ab immemorabili conditam, in qua sacras literas Christiani Juvenes......docebantur." And ib. p. CMXXIV-v. we are told, that Eusebius of Emesa studied during his infancy at Edessa, but finished his education under our author in Cæsarea of Palestine. His words are (after Socrates, Lib. II. cap. 6), “Eusebium Emessenum Episcopum testatur ab infantia imbutum fuisse literis in schola Edessen urbis, quæ illi patria erat, humaniores deinde hausisse literas, sed tandem reversum esse ad scripturas sacras sub magisterio Eusebii Cæsareæ Episcopi, et Patrophili Episcopi Scythopolitani."

polis, (the Bethshan of the Old Testament) in Palestine, schools of sacred literature; and that at Scythopolis the business of interpreting from the Greek into the Syriac language, was vigorously carried on; and, that to this fact our author himself has given his testimony': as also have both Socrates and Sozomen the historians.

If this may be relied on, it is not improbable that our translation was made during the lifetime of Eusebius, and it might be under his inspection, and that of Patrophilus who was then Bishop of Scythopolis. And I think there are certain peculiarities of language in it, tending to shew that it was not made at Edessa, which are these: We never find the form of the feminine plural in verbs2, as we constantly do in the works of Ephrem, Jacob of Edessa, and other writers of that school. The pronoun of the first per

1 L. c. quoted by Asseman. His words are, "Scholæ sacrarum literarum in utraque urbe erant. Cæsareæ nimirum, ubi Pamphilus martyr bibliothecam, ut supra dixi, instituerat et Scythopoli, ubi officium Interpretis de Græca in Syriacum linguam vigebat, ut in Actis Martyrum Palæstinæ ab Eusebio Cæsareensi collectis de S. Procopio martyre legitur," &c. "Socrati suffragatur Sozomenus," &c. Lib. 1. cap. v. The martyrdom alluded to, occurred in the first year of the persecution of Dioclesian, and it is the first in our author's work on the Martyrs of Palestine. The passage is, as found in our MS., in these words:—

.000

so so His family was of Baishan (Bethshan), and he ministered in the appointment of the Church in (three) different particulars. First he was a Reader: in another appointment, he interpreted the Greek Language in the Aramaïc (Syriac.) And (in) the last, which was superior to the former ones, he was opposed to the powers of wickedness, and the Demons trembled before him.— Asseman gives, "Hic genere quidem Hierosolymitanus erat; in Basan autem urbe....morabatur": differing considerably from our MS.

son plural is rather of the Hebrew, than the Syriac, form3. The pronominal forms, yoσ, do', never occur in the language of Edessa; nor does the adverbial sim3, nor the impersonal looo, nor the combination o? So, in the sense of immediately, nor the occasional redundancy, and even defect, of the relative pronoun, as far as my knowledge goes all of which will be found marked in the Notes. I am therefore inclined to believe, that our translation was not made at Edessa, but in Palestine.

The language of this translation, allowing for the instances just mentioned,-appears to me to be the purest Syriac, and such as might be well expected in a work of so ancient a date. I have already remarked, that its order is very greatly inverted, and its collocation involved, from its having been made servilely to follow the Greek original. Of this any one will satisfy himself, by comparing any of its sections with the places pointed out, as found in Greek, in some of the still existing works of Eusebius: which,although it has had the effect of giving me a great deal of trouble, as it will any reader of the Syriac text, is nevertheless a circumstance of infinite value in other respects; and particularly, as it has preserved to our times a most exact copy of an original Greek work of our author, which has, no doubt, been long ago lost.

There is another advantage arising from the circumstance of so much of this work's being still found in the

3

אנחנא

, not as in the Syriac of Edessa. Heb. 1. Chald.

For, qesor, Jo.

5 Usually Solio.

7

For ooc.).

It partakes in no respect of the corrupt dialect, termed by Adler "Hierosolymitana," as noticed in his work on the Syriac Versions of the Scriptures, and as found in a MS. discovered by him in the Library of the Vatican.

Greek of its author, which is this; we are hence enabled to judge of the extent of Greek learning possessed by the translator. And this, I am induced to believe, was very considerable. I have pointed out in my notes, some instances in which I think he has erred; I am nevertheless bound to say, that I believe his translation to be, upon the whole, quite as accurate as are the best translations hitherto published of the Greek works of Eusebius.

It has been stated above, that our MS. is written neatly and correctly for the most part, and in the ancient character termed Estranghelo. I have now to say that it is entirely without vowel marks, and that the interpunctuation is frequently such, as to supply nothing whatever towards a just conception of the construction of the text. That the Syrians had a system of interpunctuation answering, in some respects, to that afforded by the accents of the Hebrew Bible, I have no doubt; yet I must say, that hitherto this has not been satisfactorily developed. Mr. Ewald has indeed endeavoured to do this, in a work published at Göttingen in 1832, entitled "Abhandlungen zur Orientalischen und Biblischen Literatur;" in which, at p. 103 and following, he has treated on the "accentuationssystem" of the Syrians according to some MSS. found in the Royal Library at Paris; and this, I have no doubt, he has done with all good fidelity. Yet I must say, the system made out by him, receives but very little countenance from any ancient MS. hitherto seen by me. The older writers seem to have adopted a system much more simple, and less encumbered with marks; the more modern ones, particularly the Maronites,—to whom we owe the interpunctuation of the greater Polyglotts,-appear to me to be the real authors of his sysHowever this may be, all I have done in printing our Syriac text has been, to follow the MS. as closely as I possibly could; I say this, because cases occur in which it is scarcely possible to say, whether the Copyist intended the

tem.