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[BIBLE] EPISTLE OF PAUL TO THE ROMANS St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, late 5th - early 6th century. Manuscript fragment on parchment written in Syriac Booklet of 6 ff. (first partial leaf) on parchment; 285 x 215 mm (235 x 172 mm); 24 lines on two columns, carbon ink; lead pencil rules; foliation in the center of the upper margin of the recto of the leaves in a later hand in Syriac; Syriac alphabet in its earliest version, the Estrangelo (see art. by A. Juckel), later marginal annotations; later rubricated running titles and marginal liturgical instructions; corners of leaves reinforced with parchment leaves from earlier manuscripts of the same provenance, old reinforcements with stitching, spotting in upper margins, exteriors of margins with slight missing, tears and blackening from wear; preservation case. These leaves are one of the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament in Syriac, known as the Peshitta Bible. They are part of an important, long-lost biblical codex from the monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai. TEXT The text contained in this six-leaf fragment contains Paul's Epistle to the Romans (6:12-10:7) in the Peshitta Syriac version. It is known by scholars under its former call number Ms. Schøyen 2530 and is part of a set of 107 ff. known as Sinai syr. It was identified by Andreas Juckel in his article in 2009 and the set was most recently listed by Paul Géhin in 2017 in his inventory of the Sinai Syriac Parchment Manuscripts and their membra disjecta (p.30). The Epistles of Paul are also known to have early Syriac versions from the late second century. Eusebius of Caesarea indicates that Hegesippus of Jerusalem (c. 115-c.180) made some quotations from the Gospels with Hebrew and Syriac sources. Mentions of Syriac versions of Paul's Epistles are cited by Aphrahat († c. 345) and Ephrem († 373), however the manuscript witnesses have disappeared or remain unknown to scholars. There are only two known fifth-century witnesses to the ancient Syriac Bible, which precedes the Peshitta version: the famous Curetonian Codex in the British Library (Add. 14451) and the Sinai Palimpsest (Syriac 30); neither contains the epistles of Paul. During the fifth century, the ancient version was gradually replaced by the Peshitta, a simpler translation of the Greek text. Our manuscript, because of its age in the stemma, holds an important place in the textual tradition of the Peshitta. Andreas Juckel demonstrates in his article that the origin of our text is not strictly Greek but also Syriac: "The conclusion is that the textual profile of Ms. Schøyen 2530/Sinai syr. 3 has a good claim for anteriority to those profiles which are closer to the 'majority text'. Even traces of 'Old Syriac' heritage may well be preserved in its 'minority portion'. By kindly introducing his precious manuscript no. 2530 to scholarship Martin Schøyen did not only open his treasure chamber but also an exciting perspective on Peshitta research. This fragment would then be the first known manuscript to bear a trace of the lost Old Syriac version of Paul's Epistles. PROVENANCE The monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai was founded by the emperor Justinian between 527 and 565. Our manuscript did not originally come from the scriptorium of this monastery; it was probably brought, like other volumes, during the seventh century by Christians fleeing the Arab invasions. It may have come from the same source as the famous palimpsest identified by Agnes Lewis and her sister Margaret GibÆson in 1892 (R. Harris et al., The Four Gospels in Syriac: transcribed from the Sinaitic Palimpsest, 1894). The codex was probably lost and dismembered in the nineteenth century and sold to antiquarians in Cairo, Egypt. The manuscript was also kept in the Society for Biblical Research, Boston, MA, MS 17 and sold to Bruce Ferrini in May 1998. It later became part of the Schøyen collection, MS 2530 and was sold by Sotheby's on 10 July 2012. BIBLIOGRAPHY J.T. Clemons, A Checklist of Syriac Manuscripts in the United States, (1966), no.7; J. Oliver, Sacred and Secular, from the collections of the Endowment for Biblical Research and Boston University (1985), p. 8; In Remembrance of Creation; Evolution of Art and Scholarship in the Medieval and Renaissance Bible, exhibition by Brandeis University (1968), no.34, pp. 22-23 and illustration p. 34; A. Juckel, 'MS. Schøyen 2530/ Sinai Syr.3 and the New Testament Peshitta', Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, 6 (2009), pp. 311-36
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