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concludes that the Old Testament Peshitta is of non-rabbinic
Jewish origin, the work of translators in Edessa, somewhat
estranged from the larger Jewish community. The gradual
absorption of the Jewish community of Edessa into Christianity
could have facilitated the adoption of the Peshitta by
Syriac-speaking Christians as their Bible. The Peshitta itself
was probably complete by the third century.
The literary relation among the Peshitta and the Jewish
Targums has been debated by scholars for 150 years. In his
dissertation of 1859 published as Meletamata Peschitthonia,
J. Perles collected cases in which Peshitta’s translation could
only be understood as reflective of Jewish legal and non-legal
exegesis, an indication of Jewish origins (e.g., Ex. 22:30 and
Ḥul. 102b; Lev. 16:7 and Ḥul. 11a; Lev. 18:21 and Meg. 25a; Lev.
24:8 and Men. 97a). Perles goes as far as to say that the text
was used in the synagogue since it was divided into weekly
lessons for the Palestinian triennial cycle; the portions read in
the synagogue on the festival are indicated (Lev. 23:1; cf. Meg.
30b); and the superscriptions to Exodus 20:1 ןימגתפ ארסע (“Ten
Commandments”) and Leviticus 17 אחבדדו אנברוקד אסומנ (“The
Law of Offerings and Sacrifices”) are in the rabbinical spirit
(cf. Meg. 30b). According to Perles, the shared Aramaic Jewish
exegetical tradition was available orally. Others (Baumstark,
Kahle) accounted for these relations by positing a written
west Aramaic Jewish Targum that was brought east and
rewritten in Syriac. Vööbus accepted the western origin but
saw the transformation as gradual. Still others (Sperber) posited
an originally Jewish targum geographically and dialectally
closer to Syriac. More recently, in his studies of the Peshitta
to the Pentateuch, Maori agreed with Perles that Peshitta did
not depend on any particular targum but made use of stylized
written literary material as well as oral traditions that had already
been stylized.
Recent research into the history of the Peshitta text indicates
that it was the accepted Bible of the Syrian Church from
the end of the third century C.E. Ephraem Syrus, who died
in 373, speaks of it as an old translation. In the fifth century
theological differences divided the Syrian Christians into two
distinct groups, the Nestorians and the Jacobites. Differences
were exacerbated by the use of different Syriac scripts. Each
group then proceeded to formulate its own Peshitta text based
upon previous versions, with the result that there are two different
text forms of the Peshitta: Western Syriac and Eastern
Syriac. In the fifth and sixth centuries the Melchites (Palestinian
Syrians) attempted to make the Eastern Syriac version
conform with the Septuagint, the official text of the region,
thus creating a text which was a mixture of the Peshitta and
the Septuagint.
Knowledge of these versions, recently augmented by
finds of textual fragment, is important for an understanding
of the evolution of the Peshitta and subsequently in the
assessment of the masoretic text. The oldest manuscript
dates back to 464. It was first published in the Paris Polyglot
Bible of 1645. This edition did not contain the Apocrypha,
which were later added in the London Walton Polyglot of
1657. In 1823, the Peshitta was printed separately by the British
Foreign Bible Society in London and known as the Lee Edition.
This edition, in Jacobite characters, practically reproduces
the London Polyglot which itself was based on the
Paris Polyglot. Two editions were prepared by American
missionaries: The Urmia edition of 1852, and the Mosul edition
of 1887–91 (19512), both in Nestorian characters: the first
work was proved to be influenced by the Lee edition, while
the second is dependent on the Lee and Urmia editions and
corrected according to the Vulgate. Attempts to publish the
Peshitta in Hebrew characters include Hirsch’s edition of the
Five Scrolls (1866), Eisenstein’s edition of the first two chapters
of Genesis (1895), and Heller’s Genesis (1928). A new
era in Peshitta studies began in the late 20th century with the
production of reliable texts. The Peshitta Institute in Leiden,
Netherlands, is well on the way to the publication of a critical
edition of the Peshitta, Vetus Testamentum Syriace (1972ff.)
as well as monographs on specific books. The text is based
in the main on the Ambrosian manuscript 7a1 accompanied
by an apparatus of variants from manuscripts through the
12th century. The project is under the general editorship of
K. Jenner and A.v.d. Kooij.
THE CHRISTIAN-PALESTINIAN VERSION. Around the fifth
century the Melchite Christian in Palestine published a Bible
translation in the local western Aramaic dialect, referred to
in earlier Anglophone scholarship as Syro-Palestinian but
now more accurately referred to as Christian Palestinian Aramaic
(CPA). (To refer to this dialect as “Syriac,” or “Palestinian
Syriac,” is erroneous.) The script of CPA is a development
from Syriac Estrangelo, which distinguishes it from the closely
related western Aramaic dialects of Samaritan and Palestinian
Jewish Aramaic. The distinction served to set boundaries
among the speakers of these dialects. It is generally admitted
that this translation was made from the Greek, rather than
the Hebrew, but Jewish Aramaic targums were influential, and
perhaps, secondarily, the Peshitta. On the estimate of Mueller-Kessler
and Sokoloff only about ten percent of the CPA text
of the Old Testament has survived. The apocrypha are represented
by fragments of Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus,
and the Epistle of Jeremiah.
[S. David Sperling (2nd ed.)]
THE PHILOXENIAN VERSION. In an attempt to displace the
Peshitta, Philoxenus, the Jacobite bishop of Mabbugh, ordered
a translation of the Septuagint (Lucian’s version) and the Greek
New Testament. Polycarp, his coadjutor, finished the work in
508. Of this translation only fragments from the Old Testament
(Isaiah) were preserved, while five books from the New
Testament entered into the printed edition of the Peshitta. A
century later a version with marginal notes, taking into account
various Greek manuscripts, was published by Thomas
of Heraclea. It is not known whether in this work Thomas re-
600 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3