Joanna Weinberg, Azariah de' Rossi's Observations on the Syriac New Testament: A Critique of the Vulgate by a Sixteenth-century Jew, Warburg Institute and Nino Aragno Editore, London and Turin, 2005, vi + 109 pages (Warburg Institute Studies and Texts), ISBN 0-85481-133-8
P.J.
Williams
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
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Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2006
Vol. 9, 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/hv9n1prwilliams
P.J. Williams
Joanna Weinberg, Azariah de' Rossi's Observations on the Syriac New Testament: A Critique of the Vulgate by a Sixteenth-century Jew, Warburg Institute and Nino Aragno Editore, London and Turin, 2005, vi + 109 pages (Warburg Institute Studies and Texts), ISBN 0-85481-133-8
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol9/HV9N1PRWilliams.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute,
vol 9
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
Syriac New Testament
Azaria de Rossi
Widmanstadt
Joanna Weinberg
File created by XSLT transformation of original HTML encoded article.
[1] Azariah
de' Rossi of Mantua (1511-1577) is best known for his work
Me'or Enayim 'Light of the Eyes' (1573), which
involved a treatment of the origin of the Septuagint. He also
separately rendered the Letter of Aristeas into
Hebrew. In this book, for the first time, are published his
observations on the Syriac New Testament, written in Ferrara in
1577 shortly before the author's death. This work was unknown
to modern scholarship until 1974, when an autograph was
discovered. Since then another autograph, almost identical to
the first, has come to light. Weinberg offers an introduction
to the text (pp. 1-20) and thereafter the printed editio
princeps giving the Italian text with an English translation on
the facing page. The page with Italian has footnotes pertaining
to the text of the work and variations between the two
manuscripts, while the page with English has footnotes
commenting on the content of the text.
[2] This
work is of interest from a number of points of view. Its period
of composition, the sixteenth century, was of course one of
considerable ecclesiastical debate about the most authoritative
text of the Bible and about the nature of the Vulgate. This
text shows a Jew engaging with this debate between Christians.
That he was writing for a Christian audience also explains the
choice of Italian rather than Hebrew as the language of
composition.
[3] The
immediate context for the work was the publication of the first
edition of the Syriac New Testament by J.A. Widmanstadt in
1555, of the second edition by I. Tremellius in 1569, and of
the reprint of Widmanstadt's text with further manuscript
evidence in the Antwerp Polyglot (1571). Thus the work was
produced at a time when the nature of the Syriac New Testament
text was an important question. De' Rossi offered the work to
Giacomo Boncompagni (Governor General of the Church and son of
future Pope Gregory XIII) and Cardinal Santa Severina (Giulio
Antonio Santoro, 1532-1602).
[4] The
basic argument of the work was that 'certain passages in the
New Testament, particularly the Aramaic expressions, ought to
be emended on the basis of the ancient Syriac rendering' (p.
4). The work considers various texts, including Matthew 3:17;
5:22; 6:24; 16:17; 23:5; 27:6, 33, 46; Mark 3:17; 5:41;
7:11-12; 34-35; 15:34; John 1:42-43; 12:28; 19:13-14, 20-22;
Acts 1:19; 7:14-16; 9:40; 13:17-22; 1 Cor. 16:22. Luke's Gospel
receives no special analysis.