Abdul-Massih Saadi, ed. and tr., Moshe Bar
Kepha’s Commentary on the Gospel of Luke
J. F.
Coakley
Alexandria, Virginia
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
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Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
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https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv24n2prcoakley
J. F. Coakley
Abdul-Massih Saadi, ed. and tr., Moshe Bar
Kepha’s Commentary on the Gospel of Luke
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol24/HV24N2PRCoakley.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2021
vol 24
issue 2
pp 548-553
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
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Abdul-Massih Saadi, ed. and tr., Moshe Bar
Kepha’s Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies
59 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2020). Pp. xiv + 482; $156.00.
In 1971 Arthur Vööbus announced the discovery of the
commentary of Mushe bar Kepha on Luke, in ms. 102 of the collection of the Church of
the Forty Martyrs in Mardin. “Die Entdeckung des Lukaskommentars von Mōšē bar
Kēphā,” ZNW 62 (1971), 132–134.
(Unmentioned by him, the manuscript had previously been recorded by Patriarch
Barsoum in his Scattered Pearls, although it was then in the
library of Deir es-Zafaran.) In 1980 I visited Prof. Vööbus at his home and saw the
desk at which he said he was at work on an edition of this text. He must, however,
have abandoned the project, possibly if for no other reason because he found his
photographs were incomplete. Abdul-Massih Saadi tells us (in a preface in which some
more details would have been welcome) that that is what he found when he was later
in charge of the Vööbus collection of microfilms at the Lutheran School of Theology.
Nor, evidently, did any of Vööbus’s working papers come down to him. At all events,
Saadi sought out the manuscript afresh in Mardin, and started over. That was more
than twenty years ago, and whatever we might miss by not having Vööbus’s work, we
have here the evident and satisfying product of that many years’ labor on the part
of the present accomplished editor.
Ms. Mardin 102 has 99 leaves of neat but closely-written text,
and in the first half of the codex the leaves are more or less water-damaged. (This
much may be seen from the images of the manuscript now on the HMML website. At vhmml.org; project
no. CFMM00102. The manuscript is here foliated including the blank leaves
that a binder has inserted in various places, and keeping the wrong order of
leaves at the beginning. Saadi has ignored the blanks and re-numbered the
folios to recover their original order. The resulting different foliations
will be an inconvenience to a few; but we keep Saadi’s foliation here, since
it is after all a rational scheme and is now captured in print.)
Saadi has had to read the faded text, and he has been able to do this mostly very
well, often but not always with the help of Dionysius bar Ṣalibi’s commentary, which
copies Mushe extensively. Only sometimes does he have to indicate illegible gaps in
the text. Further gaps are caused by missing leaves, with which Saadi does not deal
quite so adequately. Using the quire-signatures that show in the HMML images, we can
be more specific about these gaps, some of which can be filled in, or partly so,
from Dionysius bar Ṣalibi: The page numbers are those of his Syriac text in Dionysii bar Salibi Commentarii in evangelia, II
(1–2), ed. A. Vaschalde, CSCO 95, 113 / Syr. 47, 60 (Paris, 1931,
1939).
before fol. 1. This is the sixth leaf in the
original quire 2; thus 15 leaves originally preceded it. On this leaf we have the
end of the 13th and last chapter of Mushe’s introduction to the commentary; so all
of chapters 1–12 are lost. In Dionysius’s commentary (pp. 219–225) there are 8
chapters, said to be an abridgement (ܒܦܣܝ̈ܩܬܐ), the last of
which overlaps Mushe’s no. 13 on the birthday of Jesus. These chapters anyhow can be
credited in substance to Mushe.
after fol. 5: 2 leaves, the first and second of
quire 3, covering Luke 1:21–30 (Saadi, p. 48). Cf. Dionysius, 234–242.
after fol. 13: 1 leaf, the first of quire 4,
covering 1:36–51 (p. 74). Cf. a longer treatment in Dionysius, 251–258.
after fol. 21: 2 leaves, the last of quire 4 and
first of quire 5, covering 2:2–6 (p. 91).
after fol. 31: 9 leaves, all but the first leaf
of quire 6 (p. 112), as implied by the signature ܘ on fol. 31 and ܙ on fol. 32. This is
somewhat surprising, since the gap takes in only Luke 2:22–33 (only 6 pages in
Dionysius: 281–286); but Mushe must have had a very lengthy treatment of the
identity of the old man Simeon and his Nunc dimittis in Luke
2:25–35.
after fol. 52: 8 leaves, the inner leaves of
quire 9, covering 3:23–4:25 (p. 155).
after fol. 62: 1 leaf, the last of quire 10 (p.
185), describing how the story of the Good Samaritan really happened in history,
linking the narrative to that in 2 Kings 17. This gap may be filled up from
Dionysius, 334–335.
And also from Mushe’s “homily” on this text (for the 5th Sunday of Lent) in
ms. Cambridge Add. 2918, fols. 108b–115a. This is actually called a ܦܘܫܩܐ and is
extracted from the commentary.
Comparing Saadi’s text with the HMML images, I found his
transcription to be generally very accurate, although slightly less agreeable at the
level of punctuation. He has chosen to omit much of the very full pointing of words
in the manuscript, but sometimes the omission has gone too far. The upper dots on
participles, at least when they are homographs, should always be transcribed for
comfort and accuracy in reading.
Mushe bar Kepha wrote his commentary on Luke after that on
Matthew, and for material in common between the two gospels he repeatedly refers to
his earlier work.
Unfortunately for us, only very partially surviving in BL Add. 17274. This
also includes one leaf from the commentary on Luke, which would have been
worth bringing into the present edition. This means that the
commentary on Luke is weighted toward chs. 1–2 which are special to Luke (79 pp. of
Saadi’s text, out of 188). The details of the annunciation to Zechariah (Luke
1:5–23), the reasons why he was rendered deaf and dumb (v. 20), and the naming of
John the Baptist in writing (vv. 59–63) are explained at immense length. Here and
throughout, Mushe’s commentary might be described as plodding. It is easy to follow,
and hardly ever becomes enigmatic by reason of extreme brevity as does the work of
his contemporary Ishoʿdad of Merv. He comments on the details of every narrative. An
example outside the infancy stories is Jesus’s rebuke to Martha in Luke 10:41 which
is explained in four different ways to do with simple and fancy foods; and he
remarks that Jesus had to say “Martha, Martha,” that is twice, because she was out
of the room. Probably the same need to comment on details has been a factor in the
allegorizing treatment of parables. As a rule, Mushe is not an allegorist:
“spiritual” exegesis, when it appears, is usually an appendix to a commentary
already given at the level of plain language. When it takes over, as in the parable
of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–31), it is because there are circumstantial details
which he evidently cannot leave unexplained, for example the “best robe” (v. 22)
which must mean baptism and the “fatted ox” (v. 23) who is Christ himself.
Saadi’s English translation is confident and reads smoothly
(although there are small lapses in grammar and the omission of words which a
proof-reader might have eliminated). That is not to say that everything is clear.
The parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1–9) is an inherently difficult text
which has been subjected to a contrived exegesis by Mushe. This has itself then
suffered some textual corruption, so as to make any meaningful translation
impossible. Mushe understands the steward to be a rich man who has cheated his
debtors, and who it seems deserves some sort of praise from his master (God; v. 8a)
because he has remitted part of their debt. But the explanation is garbled: “For one
he repaid two” and “I repaid one and a half for each one” (Saadi, pp. 228–229).
Dionysius bar Ṣalibi (p. 367) follows Mushe up to a point here but evidently does
not know what this means, and omits it.
Saadi devotes a section of his Introduction (pp. 11–16) to
Mushe bar Kepha’s sources. He considers that Ephrem’s commentary on the Diatessaron
was Mushe’s “primary source” (p. 12), although it is quoted without attribution, and
it may be that Ephrem’s text came to him through an intermediate channel. The poetry
of Ephrem and of Jacob of Serug will also have been familiar to Mushe, and Saadi’s
footnotes thoroughly record the likely dependence on these works. Philoxenus is
certainly quoted once explicitly and at length (on Luke 1:35). But for sources
beyond these, the search becomes rather unrewarding. Saadi remarks on the number of
authors, including Greek fathers, who are cited here and there; but in this
commentary we do not identify substantial passages taken over from earlier writers.
This is the case in particular if one looks for East Syriac sources that might be
detectable behind the commentary of Ishoʿdad of Merv: it is remarkable how
infrequently the comments of Mushe and Ishoʿdad agree or even expand on the same
exegetical points. J.
R. Harris recognized long ago that the commentaries of Mushe and Ishoʿdad
are independent and practically disjunct, and that Dionysius bar Ṣalibi has
in his own commentary done not much more than combine them (The commentaries of Ishoʿdad of
Merv, ed. M. D. Gibson, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1911), pp.
xxx–xxxi). Or again, it is possible, when as often Mushe writes
“Some say . . . others say,” that written sources are being alluded to (p. 12); but
this can be simply a commentator’s device. One might therefore be tempted to revise
the usual judgment on Mushe that he is a derivative author, and to allow that in
this commentary at least we have much that is original. But it may be instead that,
as Vööbus said in 1971, “Auch mit der Heranziehung unbekannter exegetischer Quellen
muß man rechnen.”
The case of Mushe’s commentary on Matthew is instructive. The not so
original character of this work emerges from a comparison with the
commentary by George of Beʿeltan, but it might not be suspected if the
latter had not fortunately survived in a single manuscript.
That Mushe had contact with some unknown sources is shown by
his discussion of Luke 1:32, “The Lord will give him the seat of David, his father.”
He insists, against some “heretics,” that the seat, i.e. the kingdom, did not belong
to David as the words might suggest but that Christ first lent it to David who then
returned it to him. His argument is based on Genesis 49:10 and the important words
there from the Peshitta, “until he comes whose the kingdom is.” Apparently the
argument is against “Nestorians” (p. 56); but who in particular? Conceivably, it is
Theodore of Mopsuestia, whose commentary on this verse in Genesis is lost; but East
Syriac writers do not transmit this comment in his name. In fact the exegesis of
Genesis 49:10 was generally shared by Syriac writers of all confessions and was not
controversial. This is a puzzle which Mushe leaves us. But until such sources as
this one turn up, we have in this commentary and Saadi’s edition an irreplaceable
record of exegesis and link in the chain of Syriac Orthodox tradition.
I have spelled “Mushe” in this review, differently from Saadi’s
(and others’) “Moshe.” Ought we not to keep the u vowel, as
the West Syriac vocalization ܡܘܽܫܐ specifies? Sometimes an o vowel can be
justified by an appeal to East Syriac phonology, but there the name is written
notܡܘܿܫܐ
but ܡܘܼܫܐ. Or to keep clear of
disagreement, if the Hebrew o vowel is preferred, the best
solution may be to westernize his name and write “Moses.”