Early translations of the New Testament – translations of the New Testament created in the 1st millennium. Among them, the ancient translations are highly regarded. They play a crucial role in modern textual criticism of the New Testament's text. These translations reached the hands of scholars in copies and also underwent changes, but the subsequent history of their text was independent of the Greek text-type and are therefore helpful in reconstructing it. Three of them – Syriac, Latin, Coptic – date from the late 2nd century and are older than nearly all of the surviving Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. They are cited in all critical editions of the Greek text-type. Translations produced after 300 (Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic) are later but are nevertheless very important and are generally cited in the critical apparatus. The Gothic and Slavic translations are rarely cited in critical editions. Omitted are those of the translations of the first millennium that were not translated directly from the Greek original, but based on another translation (based on the Vulgate, Peshitta and others).
Translations from the second half of the first millennium are less important than ancient translations for reconstructing the original text of the New Testament, because they were written later. Nevertheless, they are taken into account; it may always happen that they convey any of the lessons of Scripture better than the ancient translations. Textual critics are primarily interested in which family of the Greek text-type they support. Therefore, they cannot be ignored when reconstructing the history of the New Testament. Among the translations of the first millennium, the Persian and Caucaso-Albanian translations are completely lost.
In the 27th edition of Nestle–Åland's Greek New Testament (NA27), the critical apparatus cites translations into the following languages: Latin (Old Latin and Vulgate), Syriac, Coptic dialects (Sahidic, Bohairic, Akhmimite, Sub-Ahmimite, Middle Egyptian, Middle Egyptian Faihumic, Protobohairic), Armenian, Georgian, Gothic, Ethiopian, Church Slavonic. Omitted are translations into Arabic, Nubian, Sogdian, Old English, Old Low German, Old High German, Old French.
Syriac translations
Old Syriac translations Syria played a great role in the beginnings of Christianity. In the first century AD, Antioch was an important missionary center, while in the 2nd century it served as a cultural bridge between the Near East and Europe. The disciples of Jesus were first called Christians in Antioch (Acts 11:26). This is likely where the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written, as well as the Didache, the Ignatian in 107 AD, and the Gospel of Thomas in the late 2nd century. In Syria, Greek and Syriac language influences crossed. In Antakya itself, Greek was dominant, but outside of it (Damascus, Edessa) there was much less knowledge of Greek. As time went on, the influence of Greek diminished. In Palestine, a dialect of Syriac was spoken, close to the Aramaic language, i.e. the one spoken by Jesus and the apostles, while the first Syriac translations were produced at a time when the oral tradition about Jesus and the apostles was still alive. The key terminology of apostolic teaching could not yet be forgotten, and to some extent could be preserved in the earliest translations. The Syriac translations provide a better understanding of the New Testament's authors, who wrote in Greek but were thinking in Semitic. This is why textual critics have a special respect for the Syriac translations.
The history of Syriac translations has been the subject of a lot of research and still seems very complicated. The oldest translation of the New Testament into Syriac is probably the Diatessaron (Harmony of the Four Gospels), made by Tatian around 170. Tatian created his own chronological order, in some places radically diverging from the chronology of each of the Gospels. Repetitive texts were discarded, resulting in the Diatessaron accounting for 72% of the total volume of the four Gospels. Tatian made the greatest use of the Gospel of John, the least use of the Gospel of Mark. The 56 canonical verses of the Gospels do not find their counterparts in the Diatessaron. The genealogies of Jesus are omitted, as well as the texts that speak of Christ's humanity, and Joseph is not called Mary's husband. Nor is there a Pericope adulterae (John 7:53-8:11). It represents a Western text-type. Old Testament citations follow the Peshitta text-type. It is preserved in Arabic and Latin translations; only fragments are preserved in Greek.
Another translation – this time of the entire New Testament – was made around 180 (or not much earlier). It is quoted by Ephrem the Syrian. It is called the Old Syriac translation, and was made from an old Greek text-type representing the Western text-type. It is preserved only in two early manuscripts: the Curetonian (4th century) and the Sinaitic (5th century). The former was published by William Cureton in 1858 and is marked syrcur, while the latter was discovered by A.S. Lewis in 1892 in Sinai, is marked syrsin and is a palimpsest. The manuscripts probably transmit a text close to that of about 200. Both manuscripts contain the Gospels themselves, and in them some gaps. The Old Syriac translation of Paul's Epistles has not survived. Science knows it only from the quotations of the Eastern Church Fathers.
Peshitta
At the beginning of the fifth century, all the NT books (with the exception of 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, Revelation) were re-translated, perhaps to blur the differences that existed between the various existing translations. The Peshitta is designated by the symbol syrp.
Until the late 19th century, it was thought that the Peshitta was written in the 2nd century. After Burkitt's publication, most biblical scholars agreed that this work was done by Bishop Rabbula of Edessa (d. 436). Rabbula's authorship is questionable, however, because the quotations that appear in his writings do not always agree with the Peshitta. It was not until the 10th century that the translation was called the Peshitta (pešitto – simple, ordinary), by Moshe bar Kefa, because it was translated into colloquial, ordinary language (to make it accessible to everyone). The Peshitta contained 22 books of the NT (lacking 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, Revelation), and did not include the texts of Luke 22:17-18; John 7:53 – 8:11. The Peshitta became the translation in force in the Syriac Church, both Eastern and Western, and this means that it was written before the schism of 431. The text-type of the Peshitta was published in print in 1555 in Venice. An edition of the critical text of the Peshitta is being compiled in Leiden.
The text-type of the Peshitta is heterogeneous, the Gospels generally represent the Byzantine text-type, and some parts of Acts represent the Western text-type, with numerous infiltrations of the Alexandrian text-type (e.g., Matthew 14:12; 15:4; Mark 1:2; John 1:18) and the Caesarean text-type. G.H. Gwilliam has shown that in Matthew 1-14 the Peshitta agrees with the Textus Receptus only 108 times, with the Codex Vaticanus 65 times, in 137 cases it differs from both and supports either Old Syriac or Old Latin translations, and in 31 cases it has its own variants. In the Gospel of Mark, the text does not follow either the Alexandrian, Western or Caesarean traditions. Hope Broome Dows examined 135 selected variants of the Gospel of Mark. 48.9% of these variants were consistent with the Byzantine text, 29.1% with the Western text. Many of the variants in Mark's Gospel are consistent with the Old Syriac translation. This research refuted the circulating opinion that Peshitta conveys the Byzantine text. In the Acts of the Apostles, it transmits many Western variants.
More than 300 Peshitta manuscripts have survived, almost half of which are in the British Library. The other significant collection of manuscripts is in Cambridge. Most of these manuscripts are written in Syriac alphabet. More important manuscripts:
Paris syr. MS. 296, I°, containing Luke 6:49 – 21:37, dating back to the 5th century and considered the oldest manuscript of the Peshitta. Vatican Cod. Sir. 12, written in Edessa in 548; the oldest dated manuscript containing the four Gospels. Codex Phillipps 1388 contains the four Gospels, dating from the 5th/6th century, kept in Berlin since 1865. The manuscript's text was published by Gwilliam in 1901 and includes around 70 Old Syriac textual variants. British Library Ms. 14470, containing the four Gospels, Paul's Letters, Acts, James, 1 Peter, and 1 John, dating from the 5th/6th century. British Library Ms. 14479, containing Paul's Letters, prepared in Edessa in 534, is the earliest dated manuscript. Written in elegant Syriac alphabet, with vowels added by a later hand. The Rabbula Gospels, an illuminated manuscript prepared in 586 in the Monophysite monastery of Beth-Zagba. It contains the four Gospels and is kept in Florence (Laurentian Library, Plut. I, Cod. 56).
Subsequent Syriac translations One of the still unsolved mysteries in the history of the New Testament is the Philoxenian (syrph) and Harkleian (syrh) translations. According to one version, they are the Peshitta's revisions. First, in 508 Philoxenus, Bishop of Manbij on the Euphrates River, was said to have revised the Peshitta (Philoxenian), while in 616 Thomas of Harkel (Harkelian) revised the Philoxenian translation. According to the second version, these are two separate translations. About 35 manuscripts representing the Harkel translation have survived; they date from the seventh century upward and show some similarity to the Western text-type represented by the Codex Bezae. The Philoxenian translation is known only from the markings of Thomas' "critical apparatus" in the Harkleian manuscripts. It already contained the four small Universal Epistles and the Apocalypse, which Peshitta did not have. The most important Harkleian manuscript is kept at Trinity College in Dublin. Around 500, a translation was made into Syro-Palestinian (the Aramaic-Galilean dialect spoken by Jesus). It contains 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation, and represents the Caesarean text-type and is completely independent of other Syriac translations. It is preserved in the Lectionaries and other fragmentary manuscripts. The three most important manuscripts date from 1030, 1104 and 1118. It is designated by the symbol syrpal.
Limitations of Syriac translations Syriac, as a Semitic language, has no endings and could not afford to take as much liberty in changing the word order as Greek did. The verb is conjugated in a completely different way than in Greek. The Syriac language had the so-called "status emphaticus," the use of which does not always correspond to the Greek genitive.
In transcriptions of proper names, the consonant ξ is rendered with two Syriac consonants ܭܣ. The letter τ was transcribed by ܛ, while θ was transcribed by ܬ (e.g., the name Τιμοθεε, Timothy, ܛܡܬܐܘܣ). In the case of Semitisms, efforts were made to reproduce the original Semitic sound, but not all Semitic names were recognized (e.g., Aretas in 2 Corinthians 11:32). The Greek NT text-type renders the name of the city jirušalaim in two ways: Ιερουσαλημ/Ιεροσολυμα, Syriac translations revert to a unified form: Urišlem. Διαβολος is regularly rendered by satana. Σιμων/Πετρος/Κηφας. Σιμων Πετρος is almost always rendered by šem‛un kepa. Πετρος, however, is sometimes rendered by Ptrws. The differences in verb conjugation are the most difficult.
Latin translations
Old Latin translations