Two very early manuscripts exist of a Syriac translation of the “Church History” of Eusebius. One of these dates from 462 A.D. It was bought from the monks of the Nitrian desert in Egypt, and destined for the British Library; but the middleman, a certain Pacho, double-crossed his masters and instead sold it, together with three other books, to the Tsar for 2,500 roubles – a significant sum in those days. Today it has the shelfmark, National Library of Russia, New Syriac mss. 1.
The Syriac version was first published in 1897 as Histoire ecclésiastique d’Eusèbe de Césarée; éditée pour la première fois par Paul Bedjan. It is a curious fact that I have been quite unable to locate this book online. A couple of years later another edition was made.
Can anyone point me to the Bedjan edition?
Nina Pingulevskaya, who catalogued the Syriac mss. of the library in St Petersburg, published an article about this ms, thankfully online here.[1] Using Google translate, the sense is fairly obvious.
UPDATE: Adam McCollum points me to a copy online here. If you page down, you will find a download link at the right.
- [1]Published in Vostochniy Sbornik I, Leningrad, 1926, p. 115-122. My thanks to Grigory Kessell for this information.↩
Where was it kept originally? It can’t be the Syrian monastery because that’s in Wadi Natrun.