Subject: oldest Arabic version: Sin arb 74 and 72 and their allies

From: "Jean Valentin" <[email-masked]>
Date: 4 May 97 00:00:36 +0200

Dear TC-ers,

This time I'll present to you what is probably the OLDEST Arabic
version. In Mt Sinai, it is present in 4 manuscripts :
Sinai Arabic 74, IXth century.
Sinai Arabic 54, Xth century.
Two other mss have a colophon that allow us to have their precise
date:
Sinai Arabic 72, dated 897 AD, is the oldest _dated_ Arabic Gospel ms
known to us.
Sinai Arabic 97, dated 1125 AD.

Several other mss have been found around the world:
Vatican Borgia Arabic 95, IXth century.
Berlin or. oct. 1108, dated 1046 AD.

As a comparison, our earliest complete mss of the georgian version are
also from the IXth century.

Some bibliography about this version:

B. Levin, Die griechisch-arabische Evangelien-Ubersetzung, Vat. Borg.
ar. 95 und Ber. orient. ar. 1108 - thesis, Uppsala, 1938

J. Blau, Uber einige Christlich-Arabische manuskripte aus dem 9. und
10. jahrhundert, Le Museon 75 (1962) p. 101-108

A. Gally Garland, An Arabic Translation of the Gospel according to
Mark - thesis, Catholic University of America (Washington 1979)

S. Griffith, The Gospel in Arabic: an Inquiry into its Appearance in
the First Abbassid Century, OC 69 (1985), p. 126-167

There are also mentions of it in Metzger, EVNT (mentions Guidi's
fundamental article on the Arabic versions, in which the first
excerpts were published) and Voobus EVNT ad. loc.

It has been proposed that the place of origin of this version was
southern Palestine, and more precisely the Monastery of St-Sabas in
the Judean desert, which was an important centre of translations from
the greek language.
An interesting point is the relation between Sin Arb 72 and the other
mss. It is generally believed that Sin arb 72 presents a revised form
of the version contained in the other mss, trying to bring it closer
to a greek text and to ameliorate its Arabic (which can sometimes be
contradictory). Here under, I give the translation of the oldest ms of
the group, Sin arb. 74, together with the variants of Sin Arb 72 when
they are significative.

TEXT

1 And in the evening of the sabbath, morning ot the first of the week,
came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to look at the sepulchre.

2 And, behold, a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended
from heaven, and approached and rolled the stone from the door of the
sepulchre, and sat upon it.
[2 in ms72:] And, behold, an earthquake was, great: for the angel of
the Lord descended from heaven, and approached and rolled the stone
from the sepulchre, and sat upon it.

3 And his appearance was like the lightning, and his raiment white as
the snow.

4 And of his fear the watch trembled, and became like the dead.
[ms 72: "the keepers" instead of "the watch"]

5 The angel answered and said to the women: Fear not, you. I have
known that you are searching for Jesus who was crucified.

6 He is not here. He is risen, like he said. Come in, look at the
place where he was laid down.

7 And go in haste, and say to his disciples that he is risen from the
dead. And he, he preceeds you to Galilee. There you will see him.
Behold, I have said to you.
[ms 72 omits the "and" at the beginning of the verse, and omits also
"in haste"]

8 And they went out, hasting themselves, from the sepulchre with fear
and big joy, and announced the news to the disciples.
[ms 72 substitutes a synonymous for "big". And instead of "and
announced the news to the disciples", it reads "and run to announce to
the disciples"]

9 And behold, Jesus met them, saying: Rejoice! And they approached and
took his feet, and worshipped him.
[ms 72: And as they were going to announce to his disciples, behold,
Jesus met them, saying: Peace to you! And they approached and took his
feet, and worshipped him.]

10 Then, Jesus said to them: Fear not, go and announce my brothers
that they go to Galilee, and there they shall see me.

11 And as they were going, behold, some of the watch entered in the
city, and announced to the chiefs of the priests all that had been.
[ms 72: "the keepers" instead of "the watch", a more correct
preposition (ila instead of fi) after "entered", and "was" instead of
"had been"]

12 And the elders assembled, and took counsel, and gave the soldiers
much money,
[ms 72: And they assembled with the elders, and took deliberation, and
gave the soldiers much money]

13 and said : Say that his disciples came in the night, and
stole him, and we (were) asleep.
[ms 72 substitutes an adverb for "in the night" - I find no english
word, in French we have "nuitamment", something like "night-ly"?]

14 And if this is heard at the Commander's, we will persuade him and
make you without trouble.
[ms 72: And if it has been heard of this at the Commander's, etc...]

15 And they, when they took the money, they did as they were taught:
and this saying was published among the Jews to this day.
[ms 72: several synonym substitutions]

16 And the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where
Jesus had ordered them.
[both mss have this ambiguous verb meaning both "to order" and "to
constitute"]

17 And when they saw him, they worshipped. And [some] of them
stumbled.
[ms 72 adds "him" after "worshipped]

18 And Jesus approached and spoke to them, saying: I was given all the
power in the heaven and upon the earth.
[ms 72 ends instead with : "in the heaven and the earth", only one
preposition]

19 Go now, and teach all the nations, and baptize them in the name of
the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit of holiness.

20 Teach them (that) they keep all that I have ordered you: and
behold, I am with you all the days, to the end of the century.
[ms 72 adds the famous "and" before "to the end of the century. None
of the two mss has "Amen" at the end.]

NOTES

1. MS 72: A REVISION
There are many things to analyze in these mss! First, a few words
about the relations between 74 and 72.
Generally speaking, 72 has a more correct Arabic grammar. Of course,
you can't generally see it it my translations, but here are a few
examples of what 72 does:

(1) Mt 28 is interesting because there are many feminine forms of
verbs and pronouns. Classical Arabic makes the distinction - just like
biblical hebrew, that most of you probably know - between masculine
and feminine in the pronouns, as well as in the endings of verbs. I
have noted six occurrences where 74 has a masculine pronoun, and where
72 puts a feminine instead. In the same way, there are five
occurrences of verbs where 72 substitutes the feminine form instead of
the masculine of 74. In what direction goes the passage? I believe it
is most likely that a revisor would attempt to "classicize" the
grammar, than the contrary. The reason is that we know that Islam
considers as a proof of divine inspiration the fact that the Qoran is
in such an elegant language. Christian books were often denigrated by
muslim polemics because their Arabic was awkward. It is possible that,
under the influence of such accusations on the part of the muslims, a
christian wishing for his sacred books to be taken more seriously
would have tried to make them more acceptable grammatically.

(2) Some translations are less literal in 72 than in 74, and more
conform to the means of expression in Arabic. The most striking
example is in v.9, where "rejoice" (which is a good form of greeting
in NT Greek, but means nothing like that in Arabic) is replaced by the
much more Arabic "Peace to you". The same can probably be said of the
suppression of the second preposition in v.18.

(3) On the other hand, 72 adds "was" in v.2, at a place which is
awkward in Arabic (between the noun and its adjective, an impossible
place in Arabic), but which is exaclty the place it has in greek
(seismos egeneto megas). This by the way, is evidence that it uses
greek mss (or syropalestinian, which have also this construction,
inacceptable also in Aramaic). The syriac versions have a more semitic
word order and 72 could not have restituted the greek word order using
syriac mss.

(4) Another modification is the addition of "with" in v.12, where the
text comes also closer to the Greek.

What kind of Greek text was used by the revisor of 72? Here's a few
evidence:

(1) You have noticed the big addition in the beginning of v.9. We
spoke about it when we noticed that it was absent from the version of
Sin arb 71. This addition is typical of A fam1 and the Byzantine text.

(2) In verse 17, 72 adds "him" to "worshipped". This is also a Greek
variant: 74 omits "him" with Aleph-B, D, 33, while 72 adds it with A W
Theta fam1 fam13 Byz.

(3) The suppression of "the door" in v.2 is more problematic, as you
will see:
- "apo ths quras tou mnhmeiou" is found in Theta fam1 fam13 sypal mae
bo geo-Tbeth-Opiza. We can call this the cesarean reading, it is also
in 74.
- "apo ths quras" is found in the Byz text and the peshitto.
- "from the sepulchre", the reading of 72, is found only in Armenian
patristic writings (see Leloir, Citations du Nouveau testament... p.
351 n°1093)
- (nothing) in Aleph-B, D, sy.s.
So here, we can say either that 72 follows a text that was also known
to Armenian writers or, maybe more likely, that it is an accidental
omission (though I see no graphical reason for it).

We cannot say at this stage that 72 revises 74 using the Byzantine
text, as the two other instances (v.9 and v.17) show that other
witnesses are associated with Byz for the reading (in both cases, we
find fam1 !). And there's also the "and" in v.20 that corresponds to
no known Greek witness, but we noticed already (in ms 71) that it was
present in many Arabic versions, as well as in georgian mss.
If 72 uses the Byzantine text, then he does it in a superficial way,
emending only the places where the variants are the most visible.

2. MODEL (VORLAGE) OF MS 74
Now, let's come to the model used by the translator of ms 74.
In v.2, we said already that 72 was probably using a greek model,
because of the awkward place of the verb "was". In ms 74, verse 5
helps us already in that it helps us to exclude a Syriac model: "Fear
not, you" is the order of the greek and syropalestinian mss. Sy.c and
sy.p have "You, fear not". It is unlikely that the translator would
have restituted the Greek order if he was using exclusively Syriac
mss. Also, "Rejoice" at v.9 is found only in Greek, the syriac and
syropalestinian having substituted for it the semitic greeting "Peace
to you" that we find also in ms 72.
Syriac and syropalestinian may be eliminated on such grounds, and
also, of course, on the ground of many variants which I won't list
here (though if somebody wishes to have more evidence, I can do
it...).
A good example where the translation of ms 74 is not possible from
syropalestinian is at verse 15: "was published" is the correct
translation of greek "(di)efemisqh". In syropalestinian, the word used
has a much more vague meaning in comparison to the specialized one we
find in greek and arabic: sypal uses the verb "nfq", "to go out". It
is unlikely that, working from a syropalestinian exemplar, the
tranlsator would have been able to restitute the very exact and
narrower meaning of the greek text.

We already noticed the variants at verses 9 (no big addition in the
beginning of the verse) and 17 (worshipped, without "him"). Both lead
us to a non-byzantine text.

In v.14, 74 has the addition of "him" after "persuade". This addition
is found in Byz and fam1 fam13, with syp geo-Adysh. The omission, on
the contrary, is in Aleph-B, Theta, sypal, geo-Tbeth-Opiza. If we
combine all three variants (v. 9, 14 and 17) we find that fam1 has the
good profile (of course, we need to study much more text before we can
affirm that a text of the kind of fam1 was used!).

Other interesting readings are:
- v.6 omission of GAR with sy.s and several other Arabic versions.
- v.6 omission of O KYRIOS. The omission was also in the version of
Sin arb 71, with Aleph-B, Theta, 33, sy.s, old latin e,
geo-Tbeth-Opiza, armenian-vulgate.
- v.7 omission of KAI before IDOU PROAGEI... with two other Arabic
versions. What's interesting is that KAI IDOU is found in all greek
witnesses, IDOU in those Arabic versions, and KAI only is found in
codex bezae and old latin witnesses. Is KAI IDOU a conflation of the
two shorter readings? I don't dare saying "yes" in front of the
absence of any greek evidence for "idou" alone.
- v.8 TOIS MAQHTAIS (om. AUTOU): this omission is found in two old
latin witnesses (f and q) and in several Arabic versions (among which
the malkite version of the XIth century, about which I will post
something later if God grants me life to do it).
- v.20 POREUQENTES OUN: ms 74 omits translates OUN by "now" (al-aan).
This might get us into thinking that it follows D and the old latin
witnesses (a aur b d h n): D reads "NUN" in this place. But there is
not really a good correspondant for "OUN" in Arabic, and this might
just be a way to translate it. By the way, there are other Arabic
versions that use the same word, among which the one in Sin arb 71.
- Finally, omission of AMHN at the end of v.20. Again, with Aleph-B D
W 33, we find fam1 in favor of this omission.

CONCLUSIONS
What kind of text does the earliest stage of this version reflect? It
is quite difficult to ascertain, though we have found some evidence
pointing to fam1 as being the most influential greek text-type.
If the version of Sinai arb 71 was quite close to that of Theta, this
arabic version presents a different picture. 
And, it has a complex history: in my introduction, I said that there
are more mss than only 74 and 72. In fact, those are both extremities
of the revising process. If we consider the text of mss 54 and 97, the
picture becomes even more interesting, as in those two mss we find
most of the "grammatical" corrections already present (though not in
such a consistent way as in ms 72), but not the "textual" corrections
of ms 72. The history of the earliest Arabic version of the Gospels
seems to be that of a gradual process of arabization and, maybe, as to
its text, of byzantinization.

---------------------------------------------------------
Jean Valentin - Brussels - Belgium
---------------------------------------------------------
email : [email-masked] /// netmail : 2:291/780.103
---------------------------------------------------------
"Ce qui est trop simple est faux, ce qui est trop complique est
inutilisable"
"What's too simple is wrong, what's too complicated is unusable"
---------------------------------------------------------