PREFACE

readings of other manuscripts. I do not understand the critical art to mean that a new text should be forged from two or more manuscripts—a text that never existed before, and which the original author would frequently vehemently refuse to acknowledge as his own work. I am so far from having replaced the text with conjectures that I regard one who secretly inserts his own words into the text of a manuscript as either a man of bad faith, one boasting of the sharpness of his own limited wit, or one who despairs of understanding his author.

The conspicuous place that Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa, occupied in history—he who was joined in intimate friendship with Cyril of Alexandria—and the parts he played in the Nestorian controversy are known to everyone. It is the more surprising that this is our first collection of his writings. I have presented the hymns of Rabbula just as they exist in the manuscripts, that is, with the sections inscribed "from the Greek." It is probable that these sections are nothing more than translations from Greek Hymnaries (the Octoëchos a book of liturgical hymns arranged in eight modes), but perhaps Rabbula was their translator, since it is established that Rabbula was skilled in the Greek language. For he not only preached "in the church of Constantinople before the entire populace" (pp. 239-244), but he also translated the book of Cyril of Alexandria, "On the Human Nature of our Lord," from the Greek language into Syriac. This version still exists in the British Museum (Add. Mss. No. 14557, fols. 94-123)*.

*