The O. T. Peshito was first printed in the Paris Polyglott, with a Latin translation by Gabriel Sionita. The MS. or MSS. from which this editor printed were imperfect, having not only, many hiatuses, but being deficient in whole books, such as Esther and the Apocrypha. But the editor can hardly be blamed for defective MSS. ; and the very fact that he left lacunm as he found them, which Walton admits, militates against the truth of the statement that Ile filled up lacun e ex pro prio ingenio' (Walton's Prolegomena, ed. Dathe, p. 609). Walton pronounces a severe judgment on the work of the learned Maronite. The same text was afterwards printed in the London Poly glott, not more correctly, but rather less so, as Roediger rightly affirms. Walton, it is true, sup plied the missing apocryphal books and Esther ; but instead of making the text better from the three MSS. which he had, he contented himself with reproducing that of Sionita, and giving colla tions of the three by Thorndyke in the sixth volume of his Polyglott (see Hallische Literatur Zeitung, 1832, No. 5, p. 38). The edition published by Professor Lee in 1823, 4to, for the use of the British and Foreign Bible Society, is one of the best. According to the account given by the editor himself in the Classical yournal for 1821 (P. 245, etc.), he used two MSS. of Ussher, one of Pococke, one formerly belonging to Ridley, another lent him by Adam Clarke, and the Tra vancore MS. which Buchanan brought from the East, besides consulting the works of Ephrem, which have many quotations, and Bar Ifebneus. The only tolerable lexicon is Michaelis's enlarged reprint of Castel], published at Gottingen in two parts, 1788, 4to ; for Bernstein did not live to publish more than one part of his long-expected lexicon. The Pentateuch was printed separately by Kirsch, 7787, 4to ; and the Psalter at Mount Lebanon 1585, 16to ; at Paris by Gabriel Sionita, 1625 ; at Leyden by Erpenius, 1625 ; and at Halle by Dathe, 1768.
The N. T. Peshito was first made known in Europe by Moses of Mardin, a Syrian priest, who was sent by Ignatius, patriarch of Antioch in 1552, to Pope Julius III. to acknowledge the supremacy of the Roman pontiff, and also to superintend the printing of the Syriac Testament. It was first published at Vienna in 1555 by John Albert Wid manstad, chancellor of Austria under Ferdinand I. Two MSS. were employed in it (duo vetustissima exemplaria ; duo singularis fidei examplaria). It wants of course the last two epistles of St. John, the second of Peter, the epistle of Jude, and the Revelation. It also wants John vii. 53-viii. ; some words in Matthew x. 8 and xxvii. 35 ; two verses in Luke xxii.—viz. 17, 18 ; and John v. 7, all which are absent from Syriac MSS. In 2 Cor. v. 8 it has in the leaven of purity, which is round in Nestorian sources alone ; but it has the usual reading in Hebrews ii. 9, not the Nestorian one xcupls CEO.
The best editions of the N. T. Peshito next to Widmanstad's are Leusden and Schaaf's, Ludg. Bat. 17°8 or 1709, 4to ; that prepared for the Bible Society by Professor Lee, London 1816, 4to, probably to supersede the Gospels and Acts in Syriac, with a Latin translation, 4to, published the preceding year under Buchanan's editorship, Brox bourne ; and that of Greenfield, 12mo, 1828, based on Widmanstad, with a Syriac preface by Lee, and an imperfect collation of readings. The best lexicon, which also serves for a concordance, is Schaaf's, i7o9, 4to. The Peshito has been trans lated into English by Etheridge, 1846, 1849, 12mo, 2 vols. ; and better by Murdock, in vol. 8vo,
New York 185i.
A new critical edition of the Peshito is a de sideratum. Materials are not wanting in the Am brosian Library at Milan, the Vatican, the British Museum, and the Bodleian. Among the treasures collected out of the Nitrian desert, there is a MS. of the Peslaito Pentateuch in the British Museum, 14,425, dated 464 A.D. There is another MS. of the gospels of the 6th or 7th century. We do not believe, however, that the oldest MS. varies much from the text usually printed ; as a collation of various chapters in the 464 A.D. MS. has yielded only a few unimportant variations, chiefly in ortho grapby.
II. L. de Dieu first published the Syriac Apoca lypse from a MS. forrnerly in the library of the younger Scaliger, and afterwards in that of the university at Leyden (Ludguni Batav. 1627, 4t0) ; reprinted with a Latin version and notes in his Critica Sacra, Amsterdam 1693, fol. What ver sion this MS. contains, or to what age it belongs, is very uncertain. The subscription to the MS. says that it was written by Gaspar from the land of the Indians. Another MS. at Florence written by Gaspar states that it was copied in 1582 from an autographic copy of Thomas of Harkel (see White's preface to the Philoxenian edition, p. xv.) It may be part of the Harelean recension of the Philo xenian, as Ridley, Storr, Michaelis, and Bertholdt think. But it is of an inferior type. It has fewer Greek words than the Philoxenian, several com pounds are not expressed, the Syriac orthography is followed in proper names, and the version is on the whole not so literal. The translator has made many blunders. Hence we are not inclined to believe it a part of the Philoxenian. Its critical value is small.
III. The character of the version of the four epistles, first printed by Pococke from a MS. in the Bodleian (Leyden 163o, 4to), betrays a later age than the Peshito. It belongs probably to the Philoxenian before the latter was revised by Thomas of Harkel. These unauthentic portions of the Peshito were put with the authentic books of that version in the Paris Polyglott, whence they were transferred to the London one.
IV. The story of the adulteress in John vii. 53 viii. I was added in the latter work from a MS. belonging to Ussher, which contained the Philo xenian not the Peshito.
After the Syrian church was divided into differ ent sections, various recensions of the Peshito ap peared. The recension of the Negorians is often quoted in the scholia of Gregory Bar Hebrmus, and extended no farther, according to Wiseman, than the points appended to the Syriac letters. The Karkaphension recension is also cited by the same writer, and was long supposed to be a separate version, till the researches of Wiseman at Rome brought its true character to light. From the examination of two codices at Rome he ascer tained that it was a mere revision of the Peshito, distinguished by a peculiar mode of pointing and a peculiar arrangement of the books, but not de parting essentially from the common text. In this recension Job precedes Samuel, and the minor prophets succeed Isaiah immediately. The Pro verbs follow Daniel. The arrangement of the N. T. books is as singular. It begins with the Acts of the Apostles and yids with the four gospels ; while the epistles of James, Peter, and John, come before the fourteen Pauline letters. This is a Monophysite recension. According to Assemani and Wiseman, the name Karkaphension means mountainous ; be cause it was made about Mount Sigara, where there was a monastery of Jacobite Syrians.