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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.
Ishoʿdad of Merw’s commentaries on the New Testament gospels were edited and translated into English by Margaret D. Gibson and published in three volumes in a generous format by Cambridge University Press in 1911. This work is well known and respected, and one’s first question on seeing the present new edition of the commentary on John is why it should be needed. The editor Johan D. Hofstra explains this in his introduction (text vol., pp. xiii–xv) under three heads. First, new Syriac texts have been published since 1911, in particular some that are possible sources for Ishoʿdad’s work. Secondly, the text of the commentaries is known from more manuscripts now than in 1911, while Mrs. Gibson (for all her “enormous achievement”) made mistakes in collating the manuscripts she did have. Thirdly, her translation is not always “accessible”; that is, it does not always make clear the meaning of the Syriac. We can consider these points in reverse order here.
Mrs. Gibson’s translation of Ishoʿdad is on the whole correct word by word, and Hofstra has done well to follow, as he most often does, her choice of English equivalents. Frequently enough, however, Ishoʿdad’s meaning eluded her, and Hofstra has found it, or at least come closer to it. To take one example, on John 1.14, Ishoʿdad comments on the phrase “glory as of the Only-begotten”:
This addition and position ofdolath(“of”) is suitable … for from what he says on the one hand without addition; He has taught us one nature and person, ofthe Wordand of Hisflesh…(Gibson).
And he (the evangelist) said it (very) well with the addition, that “dalat”… If now, instead of it, he had spoken without addition, he would be teaching us one nature and hypostasis of “the Word” and of his “flesh” (Hofstra).
Hofstra’s translation rightly captures the commentator’s
christological aversion, typical of East Syrian authors, to “one nature” or
“one hypostasis (qnoma)” in Christ.
Occasionally, the reader may wonder if Ishoʿdad’s compressed comments have still been elusive. On the enigmatic 153 fish in John 21.11, Hofstra translates:
Origen (says) it symbolizes the Holy Trinity. By the fifties and the three it symbolizes also the Psalms of David, a hundred and fifty in number; and by the three (it symbolizes) the three praises which they add to the Psalms from the Law and the Prophets.
This does not quite catch the Syriac. “By the fifties and the
three” is part of Origen’s alleged Trinitarian explanation: 153 = 3 x 50 + 3. And the
Psalms are 153 including the 3 odes (
Hofstra lists and describes fifteen manuscripts,
including the three which Mrs. Gibson had used. His detailed descriptions
leave nothing to be desired, recording scribal characteristics, and counting
and listing variant readings large and small. Most readers will probably
take the details as read and skip to the But she used them in her later volumes, on
Acts and the catholic epistles (1913) and the Pauline epistles
(1916). Photographs of the Petersburg ms. (borrowed and photographed
in Cambridge!) is now Cambridge University Library ms. Or. 1750.
Photographs of the Berlin ms. are likewise in the archives of
Westminster College, Cambridge, WGL2/2.stemma
codicum (p. lxix) which, although not a strict stemma, organizes
the manuscripts into families. Following this classification, the editor
chooses five as his “base manuscripts” (p. lxxxv). The choice is not clearly
explained, but seems to rest on the others, in particular those that derive
from Alqosh, reflecting a revised text. In any case, the base manuscripts
include the two oldest codices, Berlin 81 (1490) and Saint Petersburg Syr.
33 (16th cent. in its older part), neither of which was accessible to Mrs.
Gibson in 1911.
It may be in place to comment here in passing on the
sentence-punctuation and diacritical pointing of Hofstra’s Syriac text. He
says (p. lxxxv), “The edition generally follows the punctuation of the base
manuscripts.” But this rule, even if strictly applied, does not prescribe
the punctuation where these six manuscripts differ. Editors are generally
allowed some freedom here; The received wisdom of R. Draguet is that for
any text, even one edited from a single manuscript, the editor may
impose “une ponctuation normalisé.” See his “Une méthode d’édition
des textes syriaques” in Reading is
also not helped by the punctuation in Peeters’s Syriac font, which
has become curiously tiny. The single and double points ought to be,
as they were in past publications, of the same boldness as the
letters. A Tribute to Arthur
Vööbus, ed. R. H. Fischer (Chicago 1977), 13–18, specif.
15–16.
It is in the investigation of the sources that Ishoʿdad
used for his commentary on John that Hofstra makes his most valuable
contribution. His discussion occupies most (pp. xx–lxxii) of his
introduction to the translation volume. Mrs. Gibson’s translation had
pointed out only occasional contacts with Ephrem on the Diatessaron. J. R.
Harris in his introduction remarked on the much more important contribution
of Theodore of Mopsuestia, whose commentary on John is available to us, as
it was to Ishoʿdad, in Syriac; but it seems this came as an afterthought to
her. She
gives a table, without comment, on 221 “coincidences” between
Ishoʿdad and Theodore.
Hofstra also considers Ishoʿdad‘s dependence on writers in his own East Syriac tradition. He joins a long-running discussion on this subject, and concludes, carefully, that Ishoʿdad used the works of both Ishoʿ bar Nun and Theodore bar Koni directly; and among other occasional sources, also the letters of Catholicos Timothy. Only notably missing in his list of sources is Henana, whose commentaries were certainly known to Ishoʿdad but who is not cited by him on John at all. It is possible that some comments by this ambiguous figure may be concealed under the name of the “Theophoroi” or the “Tradition of the School” of Nisibis; but since Henana is repeatedly cited by Ishoʿdad on Matthew, it may be either that his commentary on John was lost early on, or simply that his exegetical work never extended to this gospel.
Hofstra’s detailed and painstaking volumes will supersede Mrs. Gibson’s as the edition of choice for anyone using the work of Ishoʿdad on John. This is particularly so with respect to the text, although the reader may need to be alive to the apparatus for the sake of variant readings not signalled in the translation. For the translation itself, it may still be helpful sometimes to compare Mrs. Gibson. But for the identification and analysis of Ishoʿdad’s sources, readers have now been well served as never before.