One more Syriac palimpsest

I missed this piece of Syriana: David Taylor, "New developments in the textual study of the Old Syriac Gospels" (2020). This introduces a publication provisionally-titled A New Fragmentary Manuscript of the Old Syriac Gospels: Sinai Syriac New Finds 37 and 39 ...

...for Gorgias. Which means we won't be able to afford it. But we can all appreciate the introduction.

Taylor teaches about new texttype "F". We learn that the manuscripts "C" and "S" are to be aligned with this "F", which like Lewis' "S" is also a Sinaitic MS. We also learn that certain Peshitta MSS lean toward Old Syriac whilst still being Peshitta. The current project to deliver a Peshitta for Anglophones is called "Antioch Bible" by (sigh) Gorgias.

Taylor less-happily reports that "S" itself, being a rescript / palimpsest, was poorly published in its first phases - for which Taylor is swift to absolve Lewis at least, on account the technology of 1900-era Sinai was primitive. Taylor notes the "annoyance" that "S" itself had messed up its exemplar, as all copies do; whereupon Lewis had often intuited the original reading against the pages before her(!). Of the new "S" readings which Taylor relates here, I most appreciate that for Luke 19:29-30, which names the two disciples: Mattai (=Matthew) and Philip. Taylor promises to publish a better "S" as well, after Gorgias gets "F" out there.

"F" was probably composed around the time that some upper-Euphratian translated Eusebius; they share similar archaisms. "F" proper was copied not long after composition, since it did not fix the archaisms (although I do see the malkhutha d-shmaya where classical Aramaic should prefer the construct-state). It overlaps text also in "S" so is not a simple outtake from those fragments. It agrees with "S" often but not always, so is its own Old Syriac and not a copy nor exemplar of "S" as is VI4 of "C". As to Joosten's supposed Palaestinian jargon, Taylor doesn't say.

"F", at last, offers an Old Syriac for the first part of Mark - made notorious by Bart Ehrman, who noted readings in which Jesus was "irate" in the presence of a leper, particularly the Bezae D/05. (We Catholics would suggest that our Lord was angered at the leprosy.) "F" may have dared its own harmony among Mark MSS, like the Byzantine tradition in Greek. Taylor instead notes, "F" agrees with Ephrem: Now he, Jesus, had compassion on him and, being angered. Ephrem, Taylor had also noted, was commenting not upon Mark but upon a Syriac Diatesseron, which was a harmony across Gospels, not MSS. So, "F" could be less bold: early enough that it couldn't buck the Diatesseron yet, which Diatesseron mingled Mark's true reading with that shared between Luke and Matthew (and others?). Ehrman might note that either way, he wins.

More drastically, "F" asserts this from Matthew 16:18: upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Sheol shall not overpower you. I never liked the textus-receptus, that the church - a structure - owns some means against the gates of Hades also a structure. The "F" reading makes more sense. It is also a lectio difficilis, being particularly Problematic given Shim'on's rocky legacy in early Christendom. 2 Clement and the Johannine Gospel (chs 1-20) agreed that Peter was a coward and a fool, who acted more the foil to Jesus in life than as the executor of his Church in post-life. "F" by the way has much John from 1:39f, but lacks John 21. The Diatesseron - apud Ephrem - tamps John's anti-Petrine sentiment by its nature, and agrees with "F" here too.

Then, there's "C", the Curetonian - famed for its pre-Bezae sequence Matthew, Mark, John, Luke (then Acts, in Bezae only). "C" is herein verified as a later update from its own exemplar. Reminds me of that orthodox Mashhad Quran in Ibn Mas'ud's order (which MS itself would get reordered).