376 Clarence Russell Williams, 



Armenians in their own tongue, it was translated not from the originai 

 Greek but from a Syriac MS. 



A. Third Corinthians was considered canonical in the Armenian 

 Bible up to the seventh century. But the only other canon which 

 contained it, so far as we know, was the Syriac, where it had a place 

 in the first half of the fourth century. 



5. Theodore, an Armenian writer of the seventh century declares 

 that the ancient Armenian version contained Luke 22 : 43, 44 and 

 3 Corinthians and that Gregory the Illuminator, the apostle of the 

 Armenians, quoted the latter at the beginning of the fourth century. 



If this statement is correct, it would imply that nearly a century 

 before the translation of Mesrop and Sahik there was a translation of 

 the Gospels and the Epistles in Armenian and that the source of this 

 translation was Syriac. 



The above is confirmed by the researches of Robinson, who shows 

 that traces of these primitive readings from the Syriac are still to be 

 found in the Armenian vulgate. (Euthaliana, pp. 76— 98.) Conybeare, 

 Burkitt, and Kenyon accept these results of Robinson, who has 

 shown that the above is true not only of the Gospels, but of the 

 epistles, the latter showing a resemblance to the Syriac text used 

 by Ephraim. 



6. The colophons usually found at the end or beginning of each 

 Gospel in the Armenian declare that Matthew wrote in the Hebrew 

 language, Mark in the Egyptian tongue, Luke in the Syrian language, 

 and John in the Greek tongue. These colophons which give but one 

 Gospel a Greek original seem to imply, as Conybeare suggests, a 

 rivalry between the Syrians and the Greeks in which the Armenians 

 sided with the Syrians. 



We infei therefore that the Armenian version had certainly, though 

 possibly not exclusively, a Syrian origin. 



From what Syriac text was this version made ? 



Such coincidences as have been discovered between the Armenian 

 and Syrian versions point not to the Peshitto but to the Old Syriac. 

 From this we must infer that at the time when the Armenian version 

 was made the Peshitto was not established as the authorized version 

 of the Syrian Church, and also that the Old Syriac held a more im- 

 portant place in the early Syrian Church than was at first recognized, 

 since it was made the basis for a missionar3' version. This also gives 

 to the Armenian version far greater importance and weight than was 

 formerly conceded to it, since it thus becomes a very important wit- 

 ness to the Old Syriac readings in places where at present we do not 

 possess the testimony of Old Syriac MSS. (So Robinson.) 



