Codex Phillipps 1388, Syriac

Syriac language

Syriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared as a script in the 1st century AD after being spoken as an unwritten language for five centuries, Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from...

 manuscript

Manuscript

A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

 of the New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

, on parchment. It contains the text of the four Gospel

Gospel

A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...

s. Palaeographically

Palaeography

Palaeography, also spelt paleography is the study of ancient writing. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of...

 it had been assigned to the 5th/6th centuries. It is one the oldest manuscript of Peshitta

Peshitta

The Peshitta is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition.The Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated into Syriac from the Hebrew, probably in the 2nd century AD...

 with some Old Syriac readings.

According to Gwilliam the Cureton’s Syriac is related to the Peshitto in the same way that the latter is to the Philoxeno-Heraclean revision. It means it represent a stage between that of the Old Syriac and the fully developed Peshitta text. It has no fewer than seventy Old Syriac readings. It is one of very few early manuscripts with Old Syriac readings.

The manuscript was acquired by the Royal Library in Berlin

Berlin State Library

The Berlin State Library is a library in Berlin, Germany and a property of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.-Buildings:The State Library runs several premises, three of which are open for users, namely House 1 in Unter den Linden 8, House 2 in Potsdamer Straße 33 and the newspaper archive...

 in 1865. It was dated by Sachau to the end of the 5th century or the beginning of the 6th century.

The text of the codex was published by G. H. Gwilliam in 1901. A. Allgeier re-examined the colletion of the codex in 1932.

See also

• List of the Syriac New Testament manuscripts
• Syriac versions of the Bible
  Syriac versions of the Bible
  Syria played an important or even predominant role in the beginning of Christianity. Here were written the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Luke, the Didache, Ignatiana, and the Gospel of Thomas. Syria was the country in which the Greek language intersected with the Syriac, which was closely...
  
  
• Biblical manuscript
  Biblical manuscript
  A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. The word Bible comes from the Greek biblia ; manuscript comes from Latin manu and scriptum...
  
  
• British Library, Add. 12140
• British Library, Add. 14455

Further reading

• A. Allgeier, Cod. syr. Phillipps 1388 und seine ältesten Perikopenvermerke, Oriens Christianus 6, 1916, pp. 147-152.

External links

• Andreas Juckel, A Re-examination of Codex Phillipps 1388 at the HUGOYE: Journal of Syriac Studies