Syriac Apocrypha: The Gospel of James and the Passing of Mary

PREFACE.

Since this book was ready for publication, I have spent a month at Mount Sinai, and have copied the eight pages of the Transitus Mariae original: "The Passing of Mary" These eight pages form part of the under-script in the Sinaitic Palimpsest, No. 30. which form part of the under script in the Sinaitic Palimpsest, No. 30. Their text is probably of the fifth century. Two of them, those on f. 151, coincide with the more ancient of the two texts used in this volume; the other six coincide with part of Codex Harris. A comparison of these latter leads to the satisfactory conclusion that Codex Harris is substantially the same narrative, and that its immediate ancestor differed very slightly from the Sinai text.

Mrs Gibson kindly copied for me several portions of the Transitus Mariae from the Syro-Arabic Palimpsest No. 588, and from a newly-discovered Syro-Arabic Palimpsest No. 514, which surprised her by its re-appearance in the Convent Library See Studia Sinaitica, No. III, p. 102.. These portions all coincide with some part of the older texts in this volume, but the variants are too slight to be worth recording. A closer examination has, however, upset one of our theories. Codex Sin. Syr. No. 30, and Cod. Sin. Arab. No. 588 do not contain portions of the same Transitus manuscript The Four Gospels in Syriac, Introd. p. xvii., and the stories of Salome and of Abgar are found on ff. 138, 32, of the one, and on ff. 69, 53 of the other.

I take this opportunity of saying that the word qeryan reading instead of hayyat sema a living sign/mark is the only one of Mr Burkitt's emendations to my transcript of the final colophon in the upper script of the Sinaitic Palimpsest of the Gospels (No. 30) as given in Studia Sinaitica No. IX. Appendix VIII. p. xxiv. which I can now accept. I copied the first nine lines of that colophon on Good Friday 1900, by placing two very dim photographs together. This colophon being much rubbed in the manuscript, had evidently been overlooked by all the transcribing party who visited Mount Sinai in 1893; and it alone contains the remarkable words, "Stylite" a Christian ascetic who lives on top of a pillar and "Antioch." Mr Burkitt, on receiving a presentation copy from me, supplied the important word tamman there from the late Professor Bensly's transcript of the shorter colophon on f. 165^b which I had omitted; having judged, too hastily, that it was only a repetition of the Prologue on f. 2^b. Mr Burkitt's other suggestions were made only from a study of the two photographs of f. 181^a which I had already transcribed; and an examination of the manuscript, both with the reagent and without it, has resulted in the disappearance of his tamman there and of my kthebet I wrote.