Syriac Patrology, Volume 3: The Book of Steps

of the body, placed among the works of Evagrius. See Wright, CBM No. DCCCXIII, 2. d. p. 824.

Add. 17,180 11th century. Fol. 7ᵇ exhibits Sermon II On those who wish to be made perfect. See Wright, CBM No. DCCCXXVI, 2, p. 852ᵃ.

Rich. 7,190 12th–13th century. Fol. 80ᵇ exhibits Sermon XIV On the just and the perfect, likewise placed among the works of Evagrius. See Forshall, Cat. Br. M. p. 77.

Add. 17,728 13th century. Fol. 28ᵇ exhibits Sermon II On those who wish to be made perfect. See Wright, CBM No. DCCCXLII, 4, p. 882.

N

Syriac manuscript of the distinguished Professor Wilhelm Neumann of the University of Vienna, parchment, consisting of 189 folios of 19 gatherings, 8th–9th century, in 8vo. It contains ascetic writings of Isaiah the Solitary, Isaac the Syrian, Palladius, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Macarius. Fol. 115ᵃ exhibits Sermon XX On the arduous steps on the way to the city of the Lord, nn. 1-11 to the words symʾ dḥyʾ the deposit of life. The text of the manuscript seems to have been emended by an orthodox person, as is gathered from n. 6. An orthodox emendation is found also in n. 10. The readings of the manuscript differ greatly from the others. The scribe sometimes follows a peculiar orthography; he writes dyws for dywʾ (cols. 532, 537.20), bnyʾ for bnyʾʾ (556.12), dhw for dhwʾ (557.11), lmškḥw for lmškḥwth (537.16), nbʿywhy for nbʿywhy (541.2). Cf. what I wrote in the journal Oriens Christianus, Vol. II, p. 91.

Z

Manuscript CXXXIII of the Vatican Library, Syriac, formerly Nitrian XIX, 8th–9th century. It contains:
— Fol. 193ᵃ Sermon II On those who wish to be made perfect.
— 196ᵇ — XIV On the just and the perfect.
— 185ᵃ — XX On the arduous steps on the way to the city of the Lord, nn. 1-14 to the words br nšʾ son of man; nn. 14-15 with another excerpt prefixed to the words lhw šbylʾ to that path. The manuscript once fell into the Nile and therefore the writing is obliterated and can only be read with the greatest difficulty. In the collation, we have marked the lacunae with dots (....).

R

Beyond the copies of the Work that could be found in the libraries of our continent, the Patriarch of the Syrian Catholics, Ignatius Ephraemus II Rahmani, indicated to me in a letter that he had discovered another very ancient manuscript of the book in Asia. The Most Blessed Prelate very kindly shared with me Sermon XXX, which was transcribed from this manuscript; I have noted its variant readings with the siglum R. According to the witness of the most blessed man in the subscription of the manuscript, the author of the Work is established as a certain Philo the Hermit, concerning whose person I confess I have found nothing.

The table below displays the distribution of the various "Sermones" (I-XXX) across the different Syriac manuscripts (labeled A through N). The entries refer to the specific foliation numbers (e.g., 87b, 193a) where these sermons can be located in each manuscript. * An asterisk indicates an incomplete excerpt; the remaining sermons, of which no mention is made here, are contained only in the Paris manuscript.

2. The number of manuscripts that could be found for the use of this edition is by no means small, yet from them the history of the text of the Book can be more accurately elicited.