W.Th. van Peursen and R.B. ter Haar Romeny eds., 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. MPIL 14; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2006. Pp. xiv + 266. ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15300 4; ISBN-10: 90 04 15300 4
Craig E.
Morrison
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
TEI XML encoding by
html2TEI.xsl
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2008
Vol. 11, No. 1
For this publication, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
license has been granted by the author(s), who retain full
copyright.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv11n1prmorrison
Craig E. Morrison
W.Th. van Peursen and R.B. ter Haar Romeny eds., 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. MPIL 14; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2006. Pp. xiv + 266. ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15300 4; ISBN-10: 90 04 15300 4
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol11/HV11N1PRMorrison.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute,
vol 11
issue 1
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal dedicated to the study
of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in January and July) by Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998, Hugoye seeks to offer the
best scholarship available in the field of Syriac studies.
Syriac Studies
Peshitta
File created by XSLT transformation of original HTML encoded article.
[1] During
his long association with the Peshitta Institute, Konrad Jenner
has warmly welcomed Peshitta scholars from around the world and
stimulated their research. This volume celebrates the fruits of
his efforts. It begins with his academic biography and an
abstract of each article. As the title of the volume indicates,
the articles treat textual questions, translation techniques,
and the history of the Peshitta’s reception.
[2] The
volume opens with Pier G. Borbone’s study of a funerary
tile from Chifeng (ca. 350 km north-east of Beijing) that
contains a Syriac inscription of Ps 34:6. This inscription is
compared with that on the Fangshan stone and the Peshitta text.
By way of conclusion, Borbone wonders if “the quotations
of Ps 34:6 in the Chifeng and Fangshan bears witness to the use
of decorated Syriac Mss in the Far East” (p.
10). In another text critical contribution, Sebastian Brock,
returning to his Isaiah edition in the Vetus Testament
Syriace, discusses a text of unknown provenance that was
added to Peshitta ms 17a1 and 17a4. He translates this text and
discusses its curious additions. Janet Dyk and Percy van Keulen
study the Peshitta translation of 2 Kgs 24:14 to illustrate the
relationship “between translation strategy and the
requirements of the language system, both at the level of the
choice of words and at the level of phrase structure” (p.
56). Jan Joosten adduces evidence to show that the Hebrew text
behind the Peshitta in Deut 1:44 (“and chased you as bees
driven out by smoke”) is the more original reading than
the MT (“and chased you as bees do”). Arie van der
Kooij questions the role that Ms 9a1 can play in
establishing the earliest Peshitta text. After discussing
several of its readings he concludes that the value of 9a1
“as a witness of the earliest (attainable) text is
limited indeed” (p. 76). Marinus D. Koster considers the
possibility that the Lectionary Ms 10l1 together with
Ms 5b1 represent
an earlier stage of the Peshitta (closer to the Hebrew). His
results for Genesis are “unequivocal”: “there
is no relationship whatsoever of 10l1 with 5b1 and its
additions 8/5b1 and 10/5b1” (p. 84-85). The situation
does not change for other books of the OT. Michaël N. van
der Meer examines the Peshitta reading in Jos 1:7 and concludes
that the translation of ܢܡܘܣܐ for Hebrew
התורה was influenced
by the context. Lucas Van Rompay focuses on a version of Syriac
Judith discovered in Kerala twenty years ago (the Trivandrum
Ms ). When
compared with the Peshitta, this Ms is longer, closer to the
Greek, and reflects a different state of the language. It turns
out to be a revision of the Peshitta with help from the Greek.
Van Rompay dates the Peshitta text prior to the fifth-century
while the Trivandrum Ms , because of its
similarities to the Syro-Hexapla and the Harklean version of
the Gospels, reflects a sixth- or seventh-century text. A
curious insertion that identifies Nebuchadnezzar with the
Persian king Cambyses is “a response to those critics
who, on the basis of its historical errors, were willing to
dismiss the book of Judith as irrelevant” (p. 228).
[3] On the
question of translation technique, Gillian Greenberg’s
study of lexical choices in Isaiah and Jeremiah reveals that
Peshitta translators “apparently felt free to deviate
occasionally from a word-for-word rendering of their
Vorlagen” (p. 62). Donald M. Walter shows Peshitta
Ms 7a1 and related
Mss of Jeremiah
represent a deliberate revision (as he has already shown in 1
and 2 Kings). Takamitsu Muraoka studies the particle
ܐܝܬ and concludes that its use
as a “pure copula was not totally foreign to the
‘spirit’ of the Syriac language and its development
was reinforced by constant exposure on the part of some Syriac
writers to Greek” (p. 134). Wido van Peursen considers
the discourse structure and clause hierarchy in Sirach 14:20-27
and concludes that his clause hierarchical analysis
“leads to an unequivocal division of this section into
three units” (p. 148). Eep Talstra and Janet Dyk suggest
how computer assisted research can do more than simply imitate
“classical instruments.” Without a doubt, Syriac
readers hope that their expectations for the computer can be
realized in the near future.
[4] On the
question of text reception history, David Lane’s article
reminds us of how much we miss his insights and wit. He studies
the origins of the “Rogation of the Ninevites,” a
popular devotion among Syriac Christians in Kerala, to reveal
the use of scripture in this liturgy. Bas ter Haar Romeny
examines the reception of Peshitta Isaiah among the Syriac
Fathers. His careful discussion of the Syriac commentary
tradition underscores the challenges of identifying Peshitta
citations and the importance of such citations for
understanding the textual history of the Syriac versions within
the cultural history of Syriac Christianity. Harry F. van Rooy
examines the Syriac text of the Psalms in the shorter of the
two Syriac versions of Athanasius’ Greek Commentary on
Psalms. He concludes: “In the case of the text used in
the shorter version of the commentary, traces can be found of
the text used in the longer version, as well as the text of the
Peshitta and the Syro-Hexapla” (p. 174). Alison Salvesen
responds to questions posed by Konrad Jenner in his 1993 paper
at the Peshitta Symposium regarding the nature of Jacob of
Edessa’s version of the OT. She considers three passages
from this version and concludes that Jacob’s notion of
“correction” was “to amplify the Peshitta
text with secondary readings from the Greek, or to replace
difficult sections in it with less ambiguous phrasing from the
Septuagint” (p. 188). Piet Dirksen traces the recent
developments in the reception of the Peshitta through a concise
history of the Peshitta Institute and a review of the research
accomplished through its impetus.
[5] This
volume presents the current state of Peshitta research to a
beloved scholar who has been a vital stimulus through his
graceful presence at the Peshitta Institute in recent decades.
This reviewer would like to add his voice to this chorus of
gratitude to Konrad Jenner for his kind welcome to me in Leiden
over the years. Ad moltos annos!