370 Clarence Russell Williams, 



in ilirem gegenseitif,'cn \'crluiltnis. Forschungen vii, i, pp. J07— 1G2) 

 declares (p. 155) : 



Dass "In den Fallen, wo Ss und T \'(jn einander abweichen, der 

 erstgenannte in der Kegel eine Textgestalt aufweist, welche als die 

 urspriinglichere und iiltere erscheint. Ss bezeugt durchweg, dass 

 die Verfasser von Syr. vt . keine textkritische Intentionen hatten, son- 

 dern den einzigen praktischen Zweck verfolgten, das geschriebcne 

 Evangelium in volkstiimlicher, verstandlicher Form ihren Lands- 

 leuten zuganglich zu machen. Daher die harmlose Unbefangenheit 

 und F^reiheit, womit sie ihre Obersetzung ausgefiihrt haben. Anders 

 verhalt cs sich mit Tatian. In ihm sehenwir den theologisch inter- 

 essierten Textkritiker. Er hat die von ihm vorgefundene alt- 

 syiische Evangelieniibersetzung einer durchgehenden Revision auf 

 Grund des ihm bekannten griechischen Textes unterzogen, of fen- 

 bare Fehler und MiBverstandnisse korrigiert, Ausdriicke und ^^'en- 

 dungen, die ihm allzufrei oder ungenau schienen, geandert, andere 

 Lesarten, die er vorzog, aufgenommen usw." 

 And Bewer (The History of the New Testament Canon in the SNTian 

 Church, Chicago, 1900) who concludes that different Greek texts 

 underlay Ss and Sc, says (p. 13) : 



"Both Texts are very old, dating certainly from the second cen- 

 tury ; but Ss is older than that of Sc ; compare for this the first 

 chapter of Matthew relating the birth of Jesus, and the omissions 

 as well as the sometimes curious additions." 



And Burkitt, at the close of his argument for the priority of T to 



the Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, makes the significant admission : 



"It is possible that the date assigned in the foregoing paragraphs 



to the Evangelion da-Mepharreshe is too late and that the version 



may have originated in the epoch of the first mission, the times of 



Addai and Aggai." (Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, Vol. II, p. 210.) 



Mrs. Agnes Smith Lewis, the discoverer of Ss, whose recent edition 



must supersede all others, declares in her introduction that Merx, 



Hjelt, and Blass studied this MS "with the ardor born of a conviction 



that they were dealing with a text of the second century anterior 



to Tatian : in fact, with the earliest translation of the Four Gospels 



into any language." ("The Old Syriac Gospels," Introd. p. v.) 



As for the date of the Peshitto, we need only express our agreement 

 with the theory which Burkitt seems almost to have proved to a 

 demonstration, that it was made by Rabbula, bishop of Edessa in 

 411 A.D, to take the place of the Diatessaron, and that it followed 

 the Greek text current at Antioch at that date. (For Burkitt's argu- 

 ments see "Evangelion da-Mepharreshe," II. pp. 161—165.) 



