Fragments of the Commentary of Ephrem the Syrian on the Diatessaron

of my identifications have been made. It is a late paper manuscript original: "MS." in the Nestorian character, consisting of 323 leaves; originally there were more, but a number of leaves have disappeared at the beginning of the book, which is a commentary on the Pentateuch, and I think a single leaf has gone at the end. Possibly there may be one or two lacunae. The Gospels begin as follows: Matthew on f. 13 r. (the previous leaves being occupied by the remains of the Commentary on the Pentateuch), Mark on f. 145 v., Luke on f. 169 v., and John on f. 237 r. (ending on f. 323 v.). As might be expected, the Commentary is largely of the nature of Catena a chain of commentaries, and the authors quoted are sometimes (but not often) indicated by a rubricated name and by a rubric punctuation. The interest of the Commentary lies chiefly in the wealth of unknown or imperfectly known authors whom it quotes: of these the principal are Ephrem and Theodore of Mopsuestia (the latter under the name of ‘the Interpreter’); but beyond these, and some of the conventional Greek fathers who were early translated into Syriac, we shall find, Nestorius, Ḥannana (of Ḥedhaiyabh), Babai the Great, Babai the Persian, Ḥonain, and other valuable writers, as well as references to lost books, such as the Diatessaron and the Succinct Exposition of Matthew, which are quoted by title: occasionally he refers to a book of traditions by Hebrew Christians which supplement the Gospel narrative1. So valuable is the work that it deserves to be published in full, for it contains almost all that is important in later writers like Bar-Ṣalibi and Bar-Hebraeus, and in an earlier form. I hope to be able to commit it to the press before long, but as my first interest in the work centres in the extracts from Ephrem and from the Diatessaron, I have collected these as far as they have come under my notice in reading, and the result lies in the following pages, supplemented by such parallels and augmentations as I have been able to draw from the great Monophysite Doctors. It is needless to say that no attempt is made at completeness. Not only must there be many passages of the Ephrem commentary extant in Syriac which we have failed to recognize, but it is reasonable to suppose that the Armenian Commentary by the aid of which we make our identifications has often suffered from contraction, in either the

1 For example we are told that Simeon, who carried our Lord in his arms, was the son of Ḥonia, who was the son of Ḥonia a priest, who was the father of Jesus Bar-Sira.