Tag: Manuscripts

What is Bombycin?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I mentioned that one of the manuscripts of Photius’ Lexicon was written on ‘bombycin’, and a commenter has asked what this is.   It’s Arabic paper, used widely in Byzantium from the 9th century onwards until superceded by western methods of paper manufacture.

One of the key references is J. Irigoin, Les premiers manuscrits grecs écrits sur papiers et le problème du bombycin, Scriptorium 4 (1950), 194-202; and this was reprinted in Dieter Harlfinger’s Griechische Kodikologie, p. 132.  And I happen to own a copy of Harlfinger.  Here is a quick translation of the opening portion of his article:

Ever since Bernard de Montfaucon, textbooks on Greek paleography have distinguished two types of paper used in manuscripts; bombycin paper, of oriental origin, and western paper.

Until the end of the 19th century, it was believed that bombycin paper was made with cotton, which neatly distinguished it from western paper which was made from old rags (hence the name, rag paper) made of linen.  Around 1885, the work of Briquet, at Geneva, and of Wiesner and Karabacek at Vienna has shown that “cotton paper” is a myth; oriental paper was made with linen fibres, and bombycin is a linen paper just like western paper.  The only difference between the two papers is the choice of product used to hold it together; starch in the east, and gelatine in the west.

Paleographers have all the same continued to use the adjective bombycinus to designate manuscripts written on paper of oriental origin, in opposition to chartacei, written on paper made in the west.  All the same, the distinction between the two papers is far from simple and recent catalogues of Greek mss. label as chartaceus all manuscripts on paper, without giving any indication of the origin of the material.

As a general rule, paleographers state that bombycin is of a more or less obvious brown colour.  It is thick and opaque, often fluffy at the edges of the leaves; it is this which gives it sometimes the appearance of blotting paper, and it happens sometimes that the bombycin disintegrates at the surface, which is very unfortunate for the text written on it.  Western paper is less obviously coloured, thinner and better glued together, and on holding up to the light the marks left by the manufacturing process, the mesh, and eventually the watermark.  The latter appears sporadically in the last 20 years of the 13th century, and generally from the 14th century on.

This rule appears clear and certain.  In fact it is not so clear, and it often  happens that one hesitates as to whether thick paper does or does not show the marks of the process, and in cases of doubt it tends to be called bombycin.

My work has made it possible for me to study a certain number of Greek mss.  I have examined with care those which are said to be written on bombycin, and this has led me to the following conclusion: many of the manuscripts listed as bombycins in the most recent publications show watermarks and are thus written on western paper.  I shall limit myself to three series of examples.

Irigoin then goes on to detail his work, and to draw up more precise guidelines for identifying bombycin.  After studying more than 200 Greek paper manuscripts written before 1300, he felt able to state with confidence which was which.  The blotting paper effect was unusual rather than characteristic, for instance.  He also looked at Arabic manuscripts, which used paper from the 9th century onwards.  There he found that most used the same kind of paper, suggesting that they were written in the Near East, in the region from where the Byzantine empire imported its paper at that period.

He also points out that paper sizes were different in the orient and in the west.  The oldest manuscript he could find written on western paper was from 1255 A.D.    He also mentions the first known Greek ms. written on paper — Ms. Vatican. gr. 2200, written at Damascus ca. 800 A.D., in an archaising cursive, and suggests that it was a one-off.  The next known ms. is Vatican gr. 504, from 1105, written partly on paper and partly on parchment.  But literary references indicate that paper was being used by the middle of the 11th century.  Western paper, imported from Italy, starts to appear in Byzantium in the middle of the 13th century.  In the 14th century, and especially after 1340, paper replaces parchment almost entirely.  Oriental paper declined in quality during the first years of the 14th century, and disappears.  It is used rarely after 1350, and hardly ever after 1380.  Political and economic factors prevented the Byzantines from trading to the east, and the Turkish threat forced them to look west.  Irigoin adds:

In conclusion, a manuscript written on oriental paper must be placed between the middle of the 11th century and 1380.

and finishes by listing technical details.

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The manuscripts of Caesar’s works

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email reached me this evening, asking what are the earliest manuscripts of the works of Julius Caesar.  I thought my reply might be of general interest. I obtained the following details from L.D.Reynolds, Texts and Transmissions, pp.35-6, written by Michael Winterbottom.

The extant mss fall into two families.  The alpha family contains only the Bellum Gallicum, and is notable for allusions in colophons to late antique ‘correctores’.  The beta family contains the whole collection of works.  Where the two overlap, the readings are often rather different.

Alpha family

There are 6 early witnesses to the alpha family.  Two derive from a common lost ancestor: these are:

  • Amsterdam 73, 2nd quarter of the 9th century, written at Fleury (=A)
  • Paris lat. 5056, 11-12th century, written at Moissac (=Q)

The remaining four derive from another now lost ms: 

  • Paris lat. 5763, 1st quarter of the 9th century, French, later at Fleury (=B)
  • Vatican lat. 3864, 3rd quarter of the 9th century, written at Corbie (=M)
  • Florence, Laur. Ashb. 33, 10th century, possibly French (=S)
  • British Library Additional 10084, 11-12th century, probably from Gembloux (=L)

Some 75 mss later than the 9th century have been listed by Virginia Brown, who has classified them into groupings tentatively.

Beta family

The Klotz edition of 1950 used 8 mss, although at least 3 of these are now considered to be non-primary.  The five are:

  • Florence, Laur. 68.8, basically 10-11th century, probably Italian, once the property of Niccolo Niccoli (=W)
  • Vatican latinus 3324, 11-12th century, possibly French (=U)
  • Paris lat. 5764, 3rd quarter of the 11th century, French (=T)
  • Vienna 95, 1st quarter of the 12th century, probably from Trier (=V)

and apparently S above is also a member of this family (not sure how that works).  There is no agreement about how all these are related or to be classified.  Virginia Brown classified and eliminated 162 later mss of this family.  (I would imagine, myself, that the majority of these are 15th century, the sort of books being made in quantity in Italy on the eve of the invention of printing).

How the text travelled from the ‘correctores’ of late antiquity to the earliest manuscripts is not clear.  Brown argues that all our manuscripts derive from a single copy in a minuscule book hand.  One factor that must be considered is that the medieval authors who refer to Caesar (mostly French and German) refer only to the Bellum Gallicum.

It would be interesting to know what the “testimonia” are — the quotations of the text in antique authors.  But for that, I’d have to look further!

UPDATE: A search in Google Books on testimonia caesar brought up an edition here with quotations from Caesar’s lost works in Cicero, etc.  It’s an 1813 edition of Caesar’s works, with English notes, by a certain Thomas Clark.

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Syriac manuscript dated 1992 AD

Posted on by Roger Pearse

On Facebook, Adam McCollum of the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library posted an extraordinary snippet which I think deserves wider attention:

Yesterday I came across a Syriac manuscript written in 1992—yes, just 18 years ago—that was copied from an 1184/5 manuscript, i.e. a leap of eight centuries!

It’s a hagiographic ms containing the stories of Jacob of Nisibis, Ephrem, and Awgen. In addition to the 12th c. ms, it was compared (according to the colophon) with a ms. “apparently of the 15th generation of the Lord”.

It was copied at Dayr Al-Za’faran, where it remains, and the older copies were there, it seems, in 1992, but are so no longer.

Finally, believe it or not, the manuscript is written on the empty lines of a Turkish-English-German calendar book!

The ms date is given in the colophon in AD (and the calendar book itself is for 1992), and the date of the early exemplar is also given there as 1496 AG (= 1184/5 AD).

We must never disregard a manuscript simply on account of its age.  Who knows what it may be a copy of?

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All the classical MSS in Florence now online!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Two posts at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog here and here — neither makes it quite clear — have made me aware that the Laurentian library in Florence has put online a mass of manuscripts! ETC only refer to Greek New Testament mss, but I discover that in fact it is all the Plutei collection.

This is the core collection of classical manuscripts at the library.  The Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, to give it its formal title, is the library of Lorenzo the Magnificent.  Florence was the home of the renaissance, the base of the rediscovery of the classics, and the great library of Nicolo Nicoli ended up in this collection.  There are treasures to be found there!

The opening words of manuscript M1 of Tacitus

Here are the two main Tacitus manuscripts.  M1 contains Annals 1-6, M2 contains Annals 11-16 plus the Histories.

Tertullian is also here, although the Conventi Soppressi collection is not included, which contains the most important manuscripts.

But a two volume copy of the Cluny Collection of his works is online:

Eusebius on the Psalms, in Greek?  Here.  Cicero, Seneca… they’re here.  In fact if you look at my digest of manuscripts of the Greek classics here, you will find that this collection contains Aelian and half a hundred others.

The search page is here:

http://teca.bmlonline.it/TecaRicerca/index.jsp

Just search for Tacitus, Tertullianus, Eusebius, and see what you get!

This is wonderful, wonderful news.  Suddenly it becomes possible for us all to consult these manuscripts.  Better still, you can download individual pages and do digital enhancement on them, if you need to.

Magic!  Well done the BML!

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The Babylonica of Iamblichus the Syrian

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The 1853 Manual of Greek literature by Charles Anthon may be antiquated, and its opening portions discursive to the point of madness, but it still has use.  Indeed I don’t quite know where else one might go for a survey of Greek literature in the Roman period and after.

I picked it up casually last night, to see if he had anything to say about astrological texts — not much — and found myself reading a section on Greek novels.  On p.488 I found the following:

V. Subsequently Iamblichus, the Syrian, who lived in the time of the Emperor Trajan, wrote his Babylonica (Babulwni/ka). It contained the story of two lovers, Sinonis and Rhodanes, and was in thirty-nine books, according to Suidas; but Photius, who gives an epitome of the work, mentions only seventeen. A perfect copy of the work in MS. existed down to the year 1671, when it was destroyed by fire. A few fragments only are still extant, and a new one of some length has recently been discovered by Mai (Nov. Collect. Script. Vet., vol. ii., p. 349, seqq.) The epitome of Photius and the fragments are given in Passow’s Corpus Eroticorum, vol. i.

I confess that I had never heard of this text before, and it is a shame that it should make it all the way to 1671 only to perish then.

The Corpus scriptorum eroticorum graecorum is a series new to me.  Volume 1, from 1824, is here.  On p.iii we learn that the sole manuscript was in the library of the Escorial in Spain, and destroyed in the fire of 1671.  But the edition is of no great value, I suspect.

Photius’ summary can be found here, in the Bibliotheca codex 94. 

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The manuscript of the Chronicle of Zuqnin (Ps.Dionysius of Tel-Mahre)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Amir Harrak, who published an English translation of parts 3 and 4 of this world chronicle, introduces the manuscript in the following, very interesting way.

The Chronicle of Zuqnin is a universal chronicle which begins with the creation of the world and ends with the time of writing, A.D. 775-776. The Chronicle is known from a single manuscript of 179 folios, 173 of which are now housed in the Vatican Library (Codex Zuqninensis, Vat. Syr. 162), and an additional six are currently in the possession of the British Library (formerly British Museum), labelled Add. 14.665 folios 2 to 7. Each folio is circa 235 to 255 mm high and 150 to 165 mm wide. The Vatican folios have been bound in 1881 into a single volume, protected by a hard red cover, whereas the six folios in the British Library have been included with fragments belonging to other manuscripts. According to Tisserant’s reconstruction of the Codex, it originally comprised at least 190 folios.

Of the folios of our manuscript 129 are palimpsest—one a double palimpsest (BM fol. 3), the originally inscribed text representing a number of books of the Old Testament in Greek (the Scptuagint). In fact, the folios once belonged to six distinct manuscripts with text from five biblical books (Judg, 1 Kgs, Ps, Ezek, Dan), which have been assigned dates ranging from the fifth to the eighth centuries.

In 1715 the famous Maronite bishop and scholar J. S. Assemani found the Vatican portion of the manuscript in the Syrian Monastery of Saint Mary in the Egyptian desert of Natrun, and purchased it for the Vatican Library. The other six folios were acquired by the British Museum between 1839 and 1842. That both were part of one and the same manuscript was confirmed on the basis of the Septuagint texts by Cardinal Eugene Tisserant. Tisserant, however, dated the manuscript to the 9th century in light of the Syriac script.

According to J. S. Assemani the manuscript was written in Egypt by a monk of the Desert of Scete (Wadi al-Natrun) at the beginning of the 10th century. By the time he wrote his Catalogue with his nephew S. E Assemani, however, he had changed his mind and believed that the manuscript had been brought, along with others, from Mesopotamia to Egypt, by the abbot Moses of Nisibis (died in 944) in 932. Although this statement is only an assumption, it makes sense, since the manuscript was the product of the monastery of Zuqnin, located near Amida now in south-east Turkey, judging from a note inserted by a monk of the same monastery. This monk, Elisha by name, was a contemporary of Moses of Nisibis (see below for more details). Tisserant further observed that since the sub-script was Greek and not Coptic, as Assemani had first asserted, Syria rather than Egypt must have been the place of origin, seeing that most of the manuscripts in the possession of the monastery of Saint Mary of the Syrians in Scete (of which Moses of Nisibis was the abbot) came from Syria.

As is often the case, the first and last folios of the manuscript of Zuqnin have been lost. The preface of the work, however, has survived, albeit in a very damaged condition. It was written in S(eleucid) 1087 (A.D. 775-776) “in which (year) Mahdi son of `Abd-Allah is ruling over Syria, Egypt. Armenia, Azarbayjan, all of Persia, Sind, Kho[rasan], as well as over the Arabs, and over the Greeks Leo son of Constantine, and over the Romans Pepin”. The addressees in the preface are the “spiritual fathers (of the writer), George, chorepiscopus of Amida. the abbot Euthalius, Lazarus the Visitor, the honourable Anastasius, and the rest of the monastic community (of Zuqnin)”. Unfortunately, the Chronicler’s name, and perhaps indications of his status and origin have not survived. Moreover, the manuscript per se is scarcely in a perfect state of preservation, since several folios—especially of its first half—have either suffered erasure or are damaged in varying degrees. For some reason, the second half of the manuscript, which contains Parts III and IV, fared better, even though here, too, many folios have suffered erasure and/or are fragmentary. Furthermore, the folios housed in the British Library are worm eaten, a fact which explains why the last account of the Chronicle—the martyrdom of Cyrus of Harran—is very fragmentary and comes to an abrupt end.

As I have remarked before, manuscripts are not static things.  In fact they lead a full and interesting life, and move around like bumble-bees.

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More on the paragraphos mark

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m ridiculously busy, but came across — drat, I was interrupted by the phone even as I typed that! — … but I came across a very nice article online about the ancient paragraphos in — drat, interrupted AGAIN! — … about the ancient paragraphos in French here, complete with a very nice photograph of a papyrus. 

The papyrus was found in the South-West of the Fayum in Egypt in 1901-2 by a French archaeologist, reused in cartonage, and contained portions of a lost work by Menander.  The article links to the announcement of the discovery here, identified by three words in the colophon — Sikuw/nioj Mena/ndrou a)riqmo\j… — which was followed by a numeral indicating 1,000. 

Detail of the papyrus of the Sicyonians of Menander (3rd c. B.C.). Institut de papyrologie (Sorbonne). The paragraphos is placed between the replies of the speakers in the drama

 

The article is not quite correct — the paragraphos, the line in between the lines, indicates that somewhere on that line is a division marker — often a colon, or perhaps a space.  In a modern text each speaker would be on his own line.  Not so in antiquity. 

I always wonder, faced with such comments, how we actually know that this is so.  The article tells us that Aristotle mentions the paragraphos in his Rhetoric, and that it is the only punctuation mark he mentions.  I was unable to locate the passage in Aristotle, tho, as no reference was given. 

UPDATE: I have found that the reference is to Aristotle, Rhetoric, book 3, chapter 8, verse 6 (238-9), rendered here: 

A sentence should break off with the long syllable: the fact that it is over should be indicated not by the scribe, or by his period-mark in the margin, but by the rhythm itself.

At Perseus we get this:

 

ἀλλὰ δεῖ τῇ μακρᾷ ἀποκόπτεσθαι, καὶ δήλην εἶναι τὴν τελευτὴν μὴ διὰ τὸν γραφέα, μηδὲ διὰ τὴν παραγραφήν, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸν ῥυθμόν.  

But the period should be broken off by a long syllable and the end should be clearly marked, not by the scribe nor by a punctuation mark, but by the rhythm itself.

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Paragraphos and Coronis – the joy of the chase

Posted on by Roger Pearse

After my last post, I was wondering what the paragraphos and coronis marks in a papyrus looked like.  A search on “paragraphos coronis” in Google quickly revealed that each had a Wikipedia article, albeit a pretty empty one: paragraphos and coronis.

Looking in Google books revealed much more. This page seems to be a French discussion by Catharine Barry, Zostrien (NH VIII, 1), 2000.  This seems to be one of the Nag Hammadi codices, codex VIII, text 1 (“Zostrien” — which seems to be the “Zostrianos” familiar to all those interested in these gnostic texts).  P.663:

The point of this note is to inventory the paratextual elements that are found throughout the text of Zostrien, and to specify their function.  Placed in the right margin, and lightly continued into the text, between the lines, these elements appear in two variants.  As we shall see, they correspond exactly in form and function to what the ancients called paragraphe or paragraphos (gramme), i.e. the marks of a paragraph or a unit of the sense.  In fact the paragraphos consists essentially of a horizontal line which begins in the right margin and is continued between the lines, and which can be reinforced by an oblique bit, giving what is called an “non-linear crochet”.  Furthermore the paragraphos serves most often mainly to draw attention to an indicator of division placed in the line.  This is very often a colon ( : ) followed by more or less white space.[3]

…

3.  The paragraphos is therefore similar in function to the coronis (korw/nij), except that this, as its names indicates, appears “in the form of a semi-circle open towards the right”, like an “anti-sigma” (D. Muzerelle, Vocabulaire codicologique, Paris, 1985, p.127, § 422.12; cf. V. Gardthausen, Griechische Paleographie, zweiter Band, Die Schrift, …, Leipzig, 1913, p.403-4).  On the difficulty of distinguishing the  two terms, see H.-M. Schenke, Matthaus-Evangelium im mittelagyptischen Dialekt des Koptischen (Codex Schiede),  TU 127, Berlin, 1981, p.20, n.33.

The article is of great interest on these papyrological terms.  Yet the signs appear in the 6th century Pliny manuscript M.

More tomorrow — those search terms seem to give such interesting books in Google books!

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How to find a lost manuscript of Eusebius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The lost manuscript of the full text of Eusebius’ Gospel problems and solutions was last seen in Sicily five centuries ago.  But it could quite possibly still be there.

It might be nice to search for Sicilian mss.  I was thinking about it last night.  We have a couple of clues.  Latino Latini writes that Sirleto had seen the ms. in Sicily.
 
1.  We need to work out what Cardinal Sirleto was doing in Sicily, and where he was doing it.  A study of his life should provide clues, and possibly his correspondence is extant (published would be nice, but improbable).  This might tell us where he found the ms.
 
2.  We need to work out what collections of Greek mss exist in Sicily, and also which were taken elsewhere (to Naples? to Spain?)  An enquiry of specialists like N.G.Wilson should provide clues.  Are there Greek abbeys there?
 
3.  We know (how) that Aurispa sent a shipment of Greek patristic mss from Constantinople to Sicily a century earlier.  Why to Sicily?  Where to?  Where might they have ended up?  Is this one?
 
Once we know the answers to these, and have a list of search sites, then it becomes a question of looking in catalogues, and visiting collections.
 
Might be an interesting project!
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Timothy I and the Dead Sea Scrolls found in the 9th century AD

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The letters in Syriac of the East Syriac patriarch Timothy I are of considerable interest, and it is a great pity that no translation of them exists.  They are, admittedly, of great length.

But few people realise that the caves around the Dead Sea have been producing manuscripts for rather longer than the last 50 years.  A discovery of apocryphal psalms by Bedouin in the 9th century is described in Timothy I, Letter 47.   A translation was made by Sebastian Brock but published only in India in Moran Etho 9, a brief outline of Syriac literature,.  My own copy was obtained with some difficulty from India, and it arrived in a little packet with the end open and tied up with cloth tape, so that customs could open and inspect it! It is, in short nearly inaccessible to everyone.  So I thought I would give it here.

Brock introduces the letter as follows:

Letter 47; this letter, written towards the end of Timothy’s life (he died in 828) is of particular interest; it deals with two main topics, the Syriac translation of Origen’s Hexapla (known today as the Syrohexapla), made by the Syrian Orthodox scholar Paul of Telia c. 615; and the discovery, ten years earlier, of ancient Hebrew manuscripts in the region of Jericho a discovery anticipating that of the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ at Qumran by over a thousand years! Timothy’s Letter is the earliest evidence of knowledge of the Syrohexapla among scholars of the Church of the East, and it also provides many important insights into how manuscripts were copied and circulated. The information about the finds of Hebrew manuscripts explains (among other things) the appearance in Syriac of the so-called ‘Apocryphal Psalms’, 152-5 – some of which have now turned up in their Hebrew original in the Psalms Scroll from Qumran Cave 11. Right at the end of the letter Timothy turns to the matter of ecclesiastical appointments, giving a glimpse of the wide extent covered by the Church of the East in the early ninth century.

And then the translation:

To the revered bishop Mar Sergius, metropolitan of Elam, the sinner Timothy does obeisance to your reverence and asks for your prayer.

We have read the letters which your reverence sent to us on the subject of the Hexapla, and we have learnt from all that you wrote therein. We give thanks to God for your good health and the fair course of your episcopal governance, and we, who are sinners, ask God’s mercy that your affairs may have a successful and glorious outcome.

On the subject of the book of the Hexapla about which your reverence wrote, we have already written and informed you last year that a copy of the Hexapla, written on sheets using the Nisibene format, was sent to us through the diligence of our brother Gabriel, synkellos of the resplendent caliph (lit. king). We hired six scribes and two people to dictate, who dictated to the scribes from the text of the exemplar. We wrote out the entire Old Testament, with Chronicles, Ezra, Susanna, Esther and Judith, producing three manuscripts, one for us and two for the resplendent Gabriel; of those two, one was for Gabriel himself, and the other for Beth Lapat, for this is what Gabriel had instructed in writing. The manuscripts have now been written out with much diligence and care, at the expense of great trouble and much labour, over six months more or less; for no text is so difficult to copy out or to read as this, seeing that there are so many things in the margin, I mean readings of Aquila, Theodotion, Symmachus and others, taking up almost as much space as the text of the Septuagint in the body of the manuscript. There are also a large number of different signs above them – how many, it is not possible for anyone to say. But we had bad and greedy scribes, eight men for just under six months. The copying was done as far as possible using correction, seeing that it had been made from dictation; the copies were gone over a second time and read out. As a result of the excessive labour and work of correction my eyes were harmed and I nearly lost my sight – you can get an idea of the weakness of our vision from these shapeless letters that we are writing now.

Even the exemplar from which we were copying, however, contained errors, and most of the Greek names were written in reverse: the person who wrote them must have had a knowledge of Greek as weak as our own, apart only from the fact that he was not aware of the reversal of the characters he was writing, whereas we were at least aware of that! For he had not noticed the replacement and interchange of the characters, sometimes writing the letter chi in place of kappa, and zeta in place of chi, as well as putting all sorts of other things. We, however, recognized the situation.

At the end of every biblical book the following was written: “This was written, collated and compared with the exemplar of Eusebius, Pamphilus and Origen”.

This, then, is the way the Hexapla had been copied. It has endless differences from the text which we employ [sc. the Peshitta]. I am of the opinion that the person who translated this exemplar in our possession was working from the versions of Theodotion, Aquila and Symmachus, since for the most part there is a greater resemblance to them than to the Septuagint. I had imagined that a copy of the Hexapla had already been sent to your reverence, so when you wrote we immediately wrote off to the noble Gabriel, telling him to fulfil his promise to you; but if he does not want to send it to you, let him write to us, for we will copy it out again and send it to you. So much for that topic.

We have learnt from certain Jews who are worthy of credence, who have recently been converted to Christianity, that ten years ago some books were discovered in the vicinity of Jericho, in a cave-dwelling in the mountain. They say that the dog of an Arab who was hunting game went into a cleft after an animal and did not come out; his owner then went in after him and found a chamber inside the mountain containing many books. The huntsman went to Jerusalem and reported this to some Jews. A lot of people set off and arrived there; they found books of the Old Testament, and, apart from that, other books in Hebrew script. Because the person who told me this knows the script and is skilled in reading it, I asked him about certain verses adduced in our New Testament as being from the Old Testament, but of which there is no mention at all in the Old Testament, neither among us Christians, nor among the Jews. He told me that they were to be found in the books that had been discovered there.

When I heard this from that catechumen, I asked other people as well, besides him, and I discovered the same story without any difference. I wrote about the matter to the resplendent Gabriel, and also to Shubhalmaran, metropolitan of Damascus, in order that they might make investigation into these books and see if there is to be found in the prophets that ‘seal’, ”He will be called Nazarene” [Matt. 2:23], or “That which eye has not seen and ear has not heard” [1 Cor. 2:9], or “Cursed is everyone who is hung on the wood” [Gal. 3:13], or “He turned back the boundary to Israel, in accordance with the word of the Lord which he spoke through Jonah the prophet from Gad Hfar”, and other passages like them which were adduced by the New Testament and the Old Testament but which are not to be found at all in the Bible we possess. I further asked him, if they found these phrases in those books, by all means to translate them. For it is written in the Psalm beginning “Have mercy, O God, according to your grace” [Ps.51], “Sprinkle upon me with the hyssop of the blood of your cross and cleanse me”. This phrase is not in the Septuagint, nor in the other versions, nor in the Hebrew. Now that Hebrew man told me, “We found a David [i.e. a Psalter] among those books, containing more than two hundred psalms”. I wrote concerning all this to them.

I suppose that these books may have been deposited either by Jeremiah the prophet, or by Baruch, or by someone else from those who heard the word and trembled at it; for when the prophets learnt through divine revelations of the captivity, plunder and burning that was going to come upon the people as a result of their sins, being men who were firmly assured that not one of God’s words would fall to the earth, they hid the books in the mountains and caves to prevent their being burnt by fire or taken as plunder by captors. Then those who had hidden them died after a period of seventy or fewer years, and when the people returned from Babylon there was no one surviving of those who had deposited the books. This was why Ezra and others had to make investigations, thus discovering what books the Hebrews possessed. The Bible among the Hebrews consists of three volumes, one [sc. the Pentateuch] being the volume which the Seventy Interpreters subsequently translated for king Ptolemy -who is worthy of a wreath of accolades; another was the volume from which others translated at a later time, while the third is preserved amongst them.

If any of these phrases are to be found in the aforementioned books it will be evident that they are more reliable than the texts in currency among the Hebrews and among us. Although I wrote, I have received no answer from them on this matter. I have not got anyone sufficiently capable with me whom I can send. The matter has been like a burning fire in my heart and it has set my bones alight.

Pray for me: my frame is very weak, my hands are not very good at writing, and my eyes are feeble. Such things are indications and messengers of death. Pray for me that I may not be condemned at our Lord’s judgement.

The Holy Spirit recently anointed a metropolitan for Turkestan, and we are making preparations to anoint another for Beth Tuptaye [Tibet]. We have sent another to Shiarzur and another for Radan, since Nestorius the metropolitan of Radan has died. We are also making preparations for another at Ray [Tehran region], since Theodorus has died; another for Gurgan, another for Balad-Cyriacus of Beth `Abe; another for Dasen since Jacob has sunk into the pit from which there is no resurrection; another for Beth Nuhadra, which has no bishop. So pray with us to the Lord of the harvest that he may send out labourers for his harvest.

Shubhalisho’ of Beth Daylamaye has plaited a crown of martyrdom. We have sent in his place ten monks from Beth ‘Abe. Pray for me, reverend father in God my Lord.

Send me the Apologia for Origen by Eusebius of Caesarea, so that I may read it and then send it back. Make a search for the Discourses on the Soul by the great patriarch Mar Aba: there are three of them, but only one is available here. And copy out and send the Homilies of Mar Narsai, since we have not got them; for Mar Ephrem, of holy memory, wrote to us to say that there is a great deal there with you which is not available here. Write to ‘the Tyrant of Fars’ and inform him that every metropolitan who is appointed by a bishop with his co-ordainers is subject to the canon of the Church of God, the Synod of the 318 Fathers [sc. the Council of Nicaea], and the canons of Mar Aba.

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