V. Besides the Peshito, Gregory Bar Hebrwus, in the preface to his Horreum Mysteriorzinz, men tions another version of the N. T., the Phlloxenian or Harclean.
This second version was made from the Greek into Syriac in the city of Mabug ; and is so called from Philoxenus or Xenayas bishop of Mabug, in Syria. There is some doubt about the part which that ecclesiastic had in the translation ; and the testimony of Bar Hebrmus is not uniform. In one passage he says that it was made in the time of Philoxenus ; in his Chronicon, that it was done by his desire; and in another place of the same work, that it was his own production. Moses Aghelus CAssemani, Biblioth. Oriental. ii. p. 83) states that its author was Polycarp, niral bishop of Philoxenus. In an Arabic MS., quoted by Assemani (ii. p. 23), Philoxenus is said by a Jacobite author to have translated the four gospels into Syriac. The truth seems to be that Polycarp, acting under his auspices, made the version ; Philoxenus hoping to advance the Monophysite tenets by a new trans. lation. One thing is certain, that it was made between the years 485 and 518 of the Christian era, most probably in 5o8 A.D. No MS. of this version as it came from the bands of Polycarp has been yet discovered, unless the Codex Angelicus at Rome, containing the four gospels, be such, as Bernstein supposes. It is described by Adler (p. 59, etc.) ; and by Bernstein (in the Kritische An nzerkungen prefixed to his edition of John's Gospel) ; the latter of whom gives a collation of its readings in John i.-v. The MS. itself is attributed to the t 1th century ; but the subscription is by another hand, and seems to have been taken from a Har clean MS. A few fragments, constituting the mar ginal annotations of a very ancient Vatican codex, examined by Wiseman, and numbered 153, belong to the unrevised version also. The passages are printed in his Hone Syriacee, p. '78, et seq. Moses Aghelmus says that Polycarp rendered the Psalter also into Syriac. If so, his version of it must have soon disappeared.
In A.D. 616 Thomas of Harkel or Harclea, in
Palestine, afterwards a monk in the monastery of Taril, and subsequently bishop of Mabug, revised it in the monastery of Anaton at Alexandria ; from which recension nearly all our knowledge of it is derived.
A postscript to the gospels which most MSS. have, states that Thomas corrected the gospels after two (some MSS. have three) Greek codices. A like subscription relates that the Acts and catholic epistles were revised after one Greek MS. This work of emendation was completed in 616. The basis was the Peshito.
The text of the Philoxenian as revised by Thomas, is furnished with obeli and asterisks. Most of the MSS., too, have critical remarks and readings in the margin, which Wetstein and White have as cribed for the most part to Thomas himself. In this conclusion Hug and Bertholdt agree. But others infer, from the fact of a codex being found in the Medicean library at Florence without Thomas's subscription, and yet with these signs (the codex representing, in Adler's opinion, the Philoxenian before revision—N. T. Versiones Syria cce, etc. p. 55), that the obeli and asterisks were as early as the time of Polycarp himself. We agree with White that the obeli and asterisks were meant to show the difference between the old text and the Greek MSS. with which it was collated, though Wetstein and Storr suppose them to relate to the comparison of the new with the old Syriac version. It is matter of regret that they have been so often changed, confused, and removed from their places byignorant transcribers (Adler, Novi Test. Versiones Syriacce, etc. p. 51) ; so that it is impossible to tell the exact state in which they were at first ; or to assign them to their probable author. The similar procedure of Origen offers an analogy which Thomas might be supposed to imitate, were it not for the fact that an asterisk for the most part indi cates a word or words which were wanting in the Greek; and an obelus that the Syriac requires some thing to be added which the Greek is without.