Curetonian

Whilst we're on this manuscript-kick, Paleojudaica reports the end of Matthew 11 and a big chunk of Matthew 12 is found in Syriac. Grigory Kessel, Vat. iber. 4.

As the title suggests, the Vatican had this one in "Iberian", that is upland Kartuli now the Georgian language; the latest scribe is surmised to be John Zosimus at Saint Catherine's world-renowned monastery. The Vatican then mislaid it. Now it's found again - and seen to be a palimpsest of a palimpsest. The lowermost text is the Syriac.

The VI4 underundertext is not the Peshitta; also, it is not a Diatesseron. What we have here parallels Cureton's MS (published; UPDATE 6/30 digitised; h/t). So not terribly exciting... except that it bolsters that copies abounded of that Curetonian Gospel text-type, at least for Matthew. We now must take the Curetonian Gospels seriously.

The Curetonian type is still unattested outside the Gospels. Joosten holds that its vorlage is shared with the Sinaiticus, thus far the only other Old Syriac type; each tradition then independently corrected its errors. The underlying Greek of each was "Western". Not Claromontani on account I'd likely have heard, by now; more like Bezae UPDATE 4/12: Um. 08? Anyone?

The Georgian scribe had overwritten an "Apophthegmata patrum" (Greek), which Greek - I assume a monk also of the Sinai - overwrote this Syriac. The Syrian who handed over the MS, in those days still in fine physical form given how many rewrites it came to survive, was likely a bishop lately ordered to use a "better" Bible forthwith.

The Curetonian proper ended up in the Saint Mary Deipara monastery in Scetis, lower Egypt; which monastery was used by the Miaphysites over the AD 8-14th / AG 11-17th centuries. I get the feeling these manuscripts came from Tikrit. Pace the journalists who think "Palestine" just because Zosimus - the eraser of the parchment - used to live there.

The Curetonian's first translation, being from a preByzantine and preAlexandrine type, because that's what "Western" means here, likely predated all that skub over the Godhead's physis. I do however detect that some Miaphysites felt distaste for the Peshitta, associated with the Nestorians, which Bible they kept trying to replace, with the Bible of Philoxenus then with that of Paul of Tella. Other Miaphysites might resist all comers by holding on to pre-Peshitta types - the Scetian monks among the latter. One example who stayed in Syria was Sahdona.