Another Syrian florilegium

Western scholarship has not compiled a critical-text of Ignatius' work in its Syriac form. It may be just as well, given how our best witnesses to this form of the text are not, in fact, copies of a coherent collexion. The epistle to the Romans was translated independently: one version as part of the saint's Vita, and others as parts of whatever other project(s) - like Timothy Aelurus' project Against the Dyophysites. And then there's the florilegium which lacks Romans entire.

That florilegium was already known to Lightfoot as S₁. Other Syriac MSS in Lightfoot's day were 14577 / S₂ (which includes the letter to Hero), 17134 / S₃, and CUL MS Add. 2023 / S₄.

Dan Batovici, with Giorgia Nicosia, has lately published another florilegium - DS 28A. This one quotes Romans from outside the Vita; marked as the seventh. This implies the existence of six earlier letters; of which, the fifth is what we call "Trallians" and what the other florilegium called "Titilians".

As to Pento/Titilia 6:1-2, these overlap. DS 28A is the fuller text against S₁. These excerpts are not in any dedicated MSS so-far found, but they likely descend from the same source - and that source was not itself a florilegium. Batovici-Nicosia accept DS 28A that a Syrian recension of at least seven letters existed.

DS 28A is marked as "Syro-Orthodox" here. If I may clarify, its fathers include protoMaronite Jacob of Serugh and full Miaphysite Severus of Antioch. But we also get John Chrysostom and Theodoret of Cyrrhus; teacher and ally of Nestorius. Maybe that's why we're looking at Estrangela for the recent article's script. Maybe that's why Aelurus the Miaphysite ignored these excerpts, to do his own translation.

But we cannot assume the Syrian recension's identity with the "middle recension" of the Greek. It probably included the letter to Hero. This recension with Hero is what needs in any critical edition of the Syriac. By contrast the version of that to the Romans found in the Vita, and mutually independent ad-hocs like Aelurus', are to be excluded. I should further bypass DS 28A's Smyrnaeans 4.1b inasmuch as this quote is nested (under Theodoret). And I'd advise caution against DS 28A's little glosses except that Batovici-Nicosia are already aware of these.

I am not advising that Hero belongs in the critical edition of the Greek (in the way the Vita and Aelurus really would be useful, as independent checks on Greek Romans). Hero hasn't (yet) figured anywhere in the Syrian florilegia. Hero's content isn't obviously weird, but that may be the problem: it's an uninteresting pastiche, like "Laodiceans" or "3 Corinthians"... or "2 Colossians". Richard Carrier would add "1 Timothy".