Syriac Versions of The Bible - The Old Syriac Version

The Old Syriac Version

The Old Syriac version of the four Gospels is preserved today in only two manuscripts, both with a large number of gaps. The Curetonian Gospels consist of fragments of the four Gospels. The text was brought in 1842 from the Nitrian Desert in Egypt, and is now held in the British Library. These fragments were examined by William Cureton and edited by him in 1858. The manuscript is dated paleographically to the 5th century. It is called Curetonian Syriac, and designated by Syrc.

The second manuscript is a palimpsest discovered by Agnes Smith Lewis in the Monastery of St. Catherine in 1892 at Mount Sinai, called Sinaitic Syriac, and designated by Syrs. This version was known and cited by Ephrem the Syrian, thus suggesting a date of composition at the end of the 2nd century. It is a representative of the Western text-type.

These two manuscripts represent only Gospels. The text of Acts and the Pauline Epistles has not survived to the present. It is known only from citations made by Eastern fathers. The text of Acts was reconstructed by F. C. Conybeare, and the text of the Pauline Epistles by J. Molitor. They used Ephrem's commentaries.

In early February 2009, a third book was found in the possession of suspected antiquities smugglers in northern Cyprus. It appears to be a Syriac Bible dating from about 2000 years ago. The manuscript contains Bible excerpts written on vellum in gold lettering. One page has a drawing of a tree, and another eight lines of Syriac script. It was loosely strung together. Experts are divided over this manuscript, and whether it is an original or a fake.