396 Clarence Russell Williams, 



from the Greek, for after the appearance of the Arabic language in 

 Egypt translations were made from that tongue. 



Others date the version in the fifth o: sixth century (Guidi, Burkitt, 

 Charles, Kenyon) and Guildenicister })uts it in the sixth or seventh 

 century. 



Now whether Christianity teached Abyssinia through Egypt, its 

 northern neighbor, or directly from Palestine by teachers voyaging 

 down the Red Sea, we are not told, but there are traces of an older 

 Ethiopic Version of the Gospels made from the Syriac, as was the 

 Aramaic (cf . notes by Guildemeister pointing out the Aramaic coloring 

 of the Ethiopic N.T. in Tischendorf 's N.T. Ill, p. 895 note) . The text 

 of the Ethiopic now and then does agree with the Old Syriac against 

 almost all other authorities. Hackspill would assign the version to 

 the fifth century, and holds it was made from a Syrian Occidental text. 



Later, perhaps in the fourteenth century, the text was revised from 

 the medieval Arabic text current at that time in Alexandria, as was 

 proved by Guidi (La Traduzione degli Evangelii in Arabo in Ethio- 

 pico, Rome, 1888). Hackspill declares (Zeit. fiir Assyrologie, xi, 117, 

 1897) that only the oldest MS furnishes us with a comparatively pure 

 text, all others representing the later revised text. The unrevised 

 text is represented by Co. Paris Aeth. 32 while most MSS and all 

 printed editions present us with a text which is influenced by the 

 Alexandrian vulgate and shows traces of the Arabic. Most of the 

 MSS, of which at least one hundred are contained in European libra- 

 ries, belong to the XVII, XVIII, and XIX centuries. 



As to the text represented by the version, Charles (H.D.B. I. p. 792) 

 says that it is related to the older type as represented by SB but 

 shows Western, Alexandrian, and Syriac elements. As yet no critical 

 edition of the Ethiopic has been published, and our knowledge of the 

 version is too slight to use to any considerable extent. It is therefore 

 impossible to give a full presentation of the testimony of the Ethiopic 

 as regards the last verses of Mark but it seems to present most of the 

 forms we have hitherto discussed. 



Sanday (Appendices ad Novum Testamentum) speaking of twelve 

 MSS found in the British Museum declares that three omit the ending, 

 viz. Or. 509 (xviii) ; Or. 513 (xvii) and Cod. Add. 16,190 (undated by 

 Sanday anfd Gregory). 



Seven MSS (Cod. Or. 510 (1664-5), 511 (xvii), 512 (xvii), 514 (xvii), 

 516 (xvii), 517 (xvii), 518 (1655) close the Gospel with the Shorter 

 Ending which he thus translates : 



" et omne quod imperavit Petro et iis qui ejus erant perfecte narravit . 



et posthac apparuit iis dominus Jesus ab ortu solis ad occasum et 



