Heb 2.9 in Syriac Tradition

7/31/2019 Heb 2.9 in Syriac Tradition

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Novum Testamcntum XXVII, 3 (1983)

HEBREWS 2:9 IN SYRIAC TRADITION

by

S. P. BROCKOxford

In the recently published Commentary on the Prologue of John theSyrian Orthodox theologian^ Philoxenus (died 523) has an important passage where, while charging the authors of the Peshittatranslation of the New Testament with wilfulness in certain of theirrenderings, he explains how biblical translators should go abouttheir work; it was because the Peshitta translators had failed in thisrespect that Philoxenus felt obliged to sponsor a new translation (orrather, revision)a task undertaken, as we know from othersources, by his chorepiskopos Polycarp, and completed in 508/9.Although we shall be concerned in this article with only one of thebiblical verses that Philoxenus adduces, the passage is neverthelessworth giving at some length; in the following translation wordsadded for the sake of the sense, and other explanatory material, aregiven in brackets. 1

(p. 51) The Apostle (Paul) too did well to say here (i.e. Rom. 1:1) "he became"( - Greek), and not "he was born in the flesh" ( - Peshitta) as those ancients whotranslated (appeq(w)) from Greek (into Syriac) were pleased to interpret (la-

mpalfq), thus providing strength to the heretics, (enabling them) to understandone (i.e. the Son of God) as having been born in another (i.e. the son of Mary).Whereas (Paul) too concurs here as well with the Evangelists and the angel, eachof whom spoke first of all of "becoming" and (only) then of "birth**.

If the people who translated (paIeq(w)) imagined that it was not proper that

(p. 52) the "becoming** of Christ, or of God, or of the Son, should be put (literally) into Syriac, then they should have realized that, for someone who is concernedto translate (npafleq) the truth, it is not right to choose phrases that are appropriateto each individual language, but rather to seek out what are the very words thathave been uttered by God or by the Spirit through the prophets and the apostles.For what has been set down in the Holy Scriptures is not the product of humanthoughts so that it is susceptible to correction or rearrangement through humanknowledge.

1 Pkiloxne de Mabbog. Commentaire du prologue johanniqite (ed. A. de Halleux;C.S.C.O. 380, Scr. Syri 165, 1977), pp. 51 24-53 17. For the importance of this textfor its witness to the Philoxenian version of the Syriac New Testament see my

"The resolution of the Philoxenian/Harclean problem", in New Testament Textual Criticism: Essays in Honour o/B t M. Metzger (ed. E. J. Epp and G. D. Fee; Oxford,1981), pp. 325-43.


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HEBREWS 2 : 9 B IN SYRIAC TRADITION 237

With the Greeks each one of these phrases and words that we have mentionedas having been spoken by the Evangelists and Apostles is to be found exactly aswe have given it, namely: "H e became from the seed of David in the flesh" (Rom.1:3, - Greek), and not "He was born in the flesh** ( - Peshitta); and again, "Thebook of the becoming of Jesus Christ" (Matt. 1:1) and "The becoming of JesusChrist is as follows" (Matt. 1:18).

Seeing that the books of the New Testament were spoken in their language (i.e.Greek), it is all the more proper to defer to the wording that is to be found withthem, rather than to what has been translated (etpaSSaq) by whoever it might befor that is just a matter of someone's opinion, and is not teaching that stems fromthe Spirit. Consequently, anyone who alters, or translates (mpaiSeq) in a differentway phrases and words that have been uttered by the Spirit, such a person not onlyis reprehensible and blameworthy, but he is also a wicked blasphemer, and anassociate of the Marcionites and Manichaeans who removed from the Scripturesthings uttered by God, and at the same time altered things, replacing them byothers that they supposed to be better. It was into this sort of iniquity thatTheodore and Nestoriusthe leaders of the heresy of the man-worshippersalsofell, when they too attempted to alter some phrases of the Scriptures and to interpret (mpaflq) others in the opposite sense. For when the Apostle said "God senthis Son who became (flesh) from a woman, who became under the Law" (Gal.4:4), indicating the distinction between the one Son by (lit of) nature, and themany (other sons), these men interpreted (paSSeq(w)) (p. 53) and blasphemouslyread as follows: "God sent his Son, him who became (flesh) from a woman, himwho was under the Law", so as to show that the Son who became (flesh) from awoman and was sent, is different from the one who did not "become" and wasnot sent. 2

The same applies to the passage in the Letter to the Hebrews: "Jesus the Sonby the grace of God"that is, of the Father"tasted death on behalf of everyone" (Heb. 2:9, Greek). This they altered and wrote "apart from God",taking care to transmit (l-maSlmu) that this Jesus, who accepted death on behalf of us, is not God.

And instead of what the Evangelist wrote, "The Word became flesh and dweltin us" (John>l:14), Nestorius understood it (otherwise), reading it as follows:"Flesh came into being and the World dwelt in it" . 3

Having deferred to such (opinions) those who of old translated the Scripturesmissed the mark (or sinned) in many respects, whether out of their own wilfulnessor out of ignorance; this was not just in passages which teach concerning theEconomy in the flesh, but also in other matters, in passages on other topics. It was

for this reason that we too have taken provision to have the Holy Scriptures of theNew Testament translated anew (men d-rut netpaJiqn) from Greek into Syriac.

Although numerous points in this excerpt call for comment, herewe must confine ourselves to a single passage, that concerning Heb.2:9b. As is well known, the vast majority of Greek manuscripts pro-vides the following text in the second half of Heb. 2:9:

.. . ,

2

Cp. Liber Heraclidis (ed. P. Bedjan), p. 141.3 Cp. Liber Heraclidis (ed. P. Bedjan), p. 86.


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238 S. P. BROCK

while the variant , in place of , is found only in 0121 b, 424 c, 1739*, in the margin of one Vulgate manuscriptand in some Peshitta manuscripts (the other Peshitta manuscriptsimply a Greek text reading ). The reading isdefinitely older than the Nestorian controversy, seeing that it isalready known to several third and fourth-century writers; 4 anumber of modern scholars have argued that it actually representsthe original text of the Letter. 5 Whatever the original reading may have been (and this is not of concern here), it is clear that the poorattestation of in the extant manuscript tradition is theresult of its adoption by writers of the strict Antiochenechristological tradition and consequent rejection by all whopreferred the Alexandrine christology of Cyriland in the sixthcentury this would have meant the vast majority of the Greek-speaking church. We can even see something of the process by

which attitudes became polarized: whereas Diodore is still happy toaccept either reading, 6 Theodore regards as a deliberatealteration which he ridicules. 7 By Philoxenus' time, nearly a century later, the reading has come to be seen as acharacteristic feature of theologians in the Antiochene christologicaltradition, having been dropped by all others: since the reading is

by then only found among 'Nestorians', it is an easy step to go onto accuse them of inventing it. Nor is Philoxenus the only person

4 Origen, Ambrose, Jerome and others (conveniently listed by A. Harnack,"Zwei alte dogmatische Korrekturen im Hebrerbrief ', Sb. preuss. Ak. Wiss.,phil.-hist. Klasse 1929, pp. 63-5). To these can now be added Diodore, Comm. in

Ps. 8 (ed. J. M. Olivier; Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca 6, 1980), p. 49,.. . , , ,

, , , %p6fot\kov .

5 E.g. Harnack, op. cit., pp. 62-73; G. Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles (London,1953), pp. 34-5; J. C. O'Neil, "Hebrews 2:9", J.T.S. ns 17 (1966), pp. 79-82;

J. K. Elliott, "When Jesus was apart from God: an examination of Hebrews 2:9",Expository Times 83 (1971/2), pp. 339-41; O. Michel, Der Brujan die Hebrer (Gttingen, 1975), pp. 139-42.

6 Quoted in note 4.7 Apud J. A. Cramer, Catenae Graecorum Patrum in N.T. VII (Oxford, 1844),

p. 147, , " " " *", , . Theodore's

quotation of Heb. 2:9 in his Catechetical Homilies was one of the passages singledout at Actio IV of the Fifth Council (13th May, 553): see J. Straub, Acta Cone.Oec. IV. 1, p. 59 (with references).


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HEBREWS 2:9B IN SYRIAC TRADITION 239

to make this accusation, for the later Greek Chalcedonian writersOikumenios 8 and Theophylact 9 do exactly the same.

Syriac writers from the mid fifth-century onwards were sharply divided in the positions they took on Christology, and it will comeas no surprise that writers belonging to the Church of the Eastregularly quote Heb . 2:9 with the reading "apart from G od" , 1 0

while Syrian Orthodox authors equally regularly provide either "inhis grace, God" (the other reading found in Peshitta manuscripts)or "by the grace of God", an exact translation of the Greek which

would be known to them from the Philoxenian and Harklean versions and from Syriac translations of Greek writers. n It is

accordingly a matter of some interest to see what is the situation atHeb. 2:9b in actual manuscripts of the Peshitta. That the witnessof Peshitta manuscripts at this point is divided has not escaped thenotice of scholars, among whom Wescott has so far probably provided the most detailed information; 12 Wescott, however, only made use of a small proportion of the readily accessible early manuscripts of the Peshitta, and so a more extensive enquiry may not be out of place here.

For the present purpose 31 Peshitta Ne w Testam ent manuscripts

dating between the fifth and thirteenth centuries (inclusive) have been sampled; this represents a high proportion of the extantPeshitta manuscripts in western libraries belonging to this timescale that preserve the passage. 13 With the manuscripts belongingto the later part of this period it is possible to tell their ecclesiastical

8 K. Staab, Pauluskommentare aus der griechischen Kirche (N.T. Abh. 15, 1933),p. 462.

9 P.G. 125, col. 209B-D.10

E.g. Babai, Liber de Unione (ed. A. Vaschalde; C.S.C.O. 78, Scr. Syri 34),pp. 60, 62, 64, 179. The eighth-century writer Shahdost claims that the wording'he, God, in his goodness' ( - reading b t below) is a deliberate falsification of theoriginal text which he supposes to be "apart from God': L. Abramowski and A.E. Goodman, A Nestorian Collection of Christological Tests (Cambridge, 1972), I, p. 7- , p. 7.

11 E.g. Severus, L'apologie du Philalthe(e. R. Hespel; C.S.C.O., 318, Scr. Syri136), p. 17; La PhilaUthe (C.S.C.O. 133, Scr. Syri 68), pp. 12,36, 186, 191,265,287 (at p. 36 a marginal gloss gives a free form of the Peshitta reading, d-alh b-

taybt fem mawt hlp kulnS).12 . F. Westcott, The Epistle to the Hebrews (2nd ed. London, 1892), pp. 60-62.13 See the list given by J. T. Clemons, An Index of Syriac Manuscripts Containing

the Epistles and the Apocalypse (Studies and Documents 33, 1968). Several of themanuscripts which he lists for Hebrews are in fact incomplete and do not containthe passage in question.


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allegiance on grounds of script, but for the earlier centuries this isnot normally possible.

Besides the two basic Peshitta readings, "in his grace, God"(-, below), and *'apart from God" (=rf), there also occur twosmall variants of the former reading, "God in his grace" ( * b), and"in grace, God " ( = c). Thus in Peshitta manuscripts we have thefollowing four possible readings:

h gr b-faybteh alh hlp kulns fem mawt = a'for he in his grace God for the sake of everyone tasted death'h gr alh b-taybteh ... b

'for he, God, in his grace . . / h gr b-faybt alh .. . - c'for he in grace God ... 'h gr sfar men alh ... = d 'for he apart from God ...'

All these of course conflict with the more exact translation of theGreek that is found in the Philoxenian (as quoted by Philoxenus inthe passage translated above), in the Harklean and in quotations of the passage found in Syriac translations of Greek writers, all of which have "by the grace o/*God".

It will be convenient first of all to set out the evidence of thePeshitta manuscripts consulted in tabular form. The witnesses aregiven in chronological order, by century, 14 and where theecclesiastical allegiance of the manuscript is evident the symbol W(Western, i.e. Syrian Orthedox or Maronite) or E (Eastern, i.e.Church of the East) is prefixed to the manuscript number. In thefirst column the reading can be assumed to be a unless otherwisestated. An asterisk denotes the reading of the first hand, before cor-rection. Unless otherwise specified all Add. ( Additional) and Or.( = Oriental) manuscripts cited belong to the British Library.

From this table it will be apparent that from at least the eleventhcentury onwards it can be safely predicted that East Syrianmanuscripts will contain the reading d ('apart from God'), whileWest Syrian ones will have readings a, b or c. It is no surprise tofind this state of affairs reflected in the printed editions: those in

14

For dating I have relied on the catalogues except in the case of Mingana syr.103, which cannot be as old as Mingana claimed ("c. 790'*).


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TABLE

Date

Fifth/Sixth century

Seventh century

Eighth century

Ninth centuryTenth century

Eleventh century

Twelfth century

Thirteenth century

Reading a (b, c) Reading d

Add. 14470 (b over erasure)Add. 14475Add. 14476Add. 14479 (a over erasure)

Add. 14480 (a over erasure)Add. 17122Add. 14448 (a over erasure;

699-700)Add. 14477W Add. 14478 (a over erasure

- c; Serugh, 621/2)Add. 14481 (b)

Add. 14479* (Edessa,533/4)

?Add. 14480*

E Add. 14448*

W Add. 14474W Add. 17115W Add. 17123 (a over erasure)

W Cambridge Oo. 1.2

W Oxford syr. d. 7 (b)

W Add. 7160 (b) (1203)W Add. 17124(1233/4)

W Add. 17227(1254)W Add. 14680 (a, corrected

to bW Add. 14681

E Add. 7157 (d overerasure; Adiabene,767/8)

W Add. 17123*E Mingana syr. 103E Add. 7158 (1026/7)E Vat. syr. 510E Oxford Dep. Or. d. 2E Harvard syr. 4

(1199/1200)E Or. 2289E Add. 7159E Or. 2695 (1202/3)E British and Foreign

Bible Society ms 446(1215/6)

E Or. 4051

East Syrian script, based on East Syrian manuscripts have , 15

while those in serto script, based on West Syrian manuscripts, havea, or . 16

15 E.g. Urmiah 1846 (both Classical and Modern Syriac; the latter has amarginal note giving the reading of the Greek, "by the grace of God": this gotinto the text of later editions of the Modern Syriac New Testament); Mosul1883/92; New York 1901 etc.

16 Reading a is found, for example, in Lee's edition (1823) and the standard

British and Foreign Bible Society edition; b occurs in Widmanstadt, Gutbir,Schaaf, the Triglot of 1890 and others. The estrangelo edition published by The Way International (New Knoxville, 1983) has a.


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The situation in the earlier manuscripts is less clear cut, and of particular interest are those manuscripts where the reading has

been altered: Add. 14470, f. 136a. 1 : a second estrangelo hand has written the

words h gr alh b-faybteh hlp (-b) over an erasure. Unfortunately it is not possible to discern what was the originalreading. The manuscript was in West Syrian hands in the ninthcentury; its original ecclesiastical provenance is not clear.

Add. 14480, f. 114b.2: a much later hand has erased a line andsubstituted b-faybteh alh ( = a). The original reading cannot bediscerned, but was probably star men alh ( = d).

Add. 14479, f. 90b: an untidy medieval serto hand has written b-faybteh ( = a) over an erasure; the original text almost certainly had sfar men ( = d).

Add. 14448, f. 202a: a serto hand has written b-fayb(t)eh over anerasure; the original East Syrian estrangelo hand almost certainly had sfar men ( = d).

Add. 14478, f. 123b: b-faybt ( = c) has been corrected to thestandard b-faybuteh ( = a).

Add. 7157, f. 186b.2: a second hand has written sfar men overan erasure. The original reading is illegible; Wescott indeedstates that it was b-faybteh, but this, although a priori likely andperhaps correct, is problematic since sfar is written on one lineand men on the next: if b-faybteh is the original reading, then theword has been broken over the line, a practice very unusual ina manuscript of this date (later East Syrian examples, however,are not uncommon). It should be noted that the manuscriptcontains Euthalian material (which is definitely of West Syrianprovenance), 17 and so it is possible that the Biblical text too wascopied from a West Syrian model.

Add. 17123, f. 70b: the text has sfar men, but a slighdy laterhand has corrected this in the margin to b-faybteh. It isremarkable that this manuscript, written in a serto hand withestrangelo admixture (and hence probably West Syrian) shouldattest sfar men.

' Add. 14680, f. 178a: a second hand has placed three dotsarranged in a triangle above the two words b-faybteh alh, thusaltering reading a to reading b.

17 See my "The Syriac Euthalian Material and the Philoxenian version of theNew Testament", Z.NW. 70 (1979), pp. 120-30.


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What was the original Peshitta reading? At first sight the fact thatwe have at least four manuscripts altered from dto a, and only one

doubtful one from a to d, might lead one to suggest that d is theoriginal and that the reading a, already in several fifth to seventh-century manuscripts, is due to anti-Nestorian bias, once d hadbecome established (already by Theodore of Mopsuestia's time) asa key text for the Antiochene christological tradition.

This is certainly a possible hypothesis, but I am inclined to thinkthat the situation was more complex and that the evidence wouldbe better interpreted somewhat differently.

Up to its closure in 489 the Persian School at Edessa served as

the channel by which Antiochene theology (especially that of Theodore) reached the Syriac world. If, as must have been the case,the teachers at the School were aware of Theodore's views on thecorrect reading at Heb. 2:9, they would hardly have tolerated aPeshitta reading which explicidy went against his opinion; 18 and atthis date no objection would have been felt to 'correcting* thePeshitta (supposing it originally had reading a) to concur with theGreek text advocated by the 'Exegete' par excellence, seeing thatthe Peshitta (at least as far as the Gospels were concerned) was

already the outcome of a revision which aimed at a closer correspondence to the Greek.

On this second hypothesis, then, that the original reading of thePeshitta was b-faybteh alh, and not star men aloha, we would have

two series of changes: (1) The first stage would take place at the Persian School of Edessa, from the 430's onwards, propagatingTheodore's reading (i.e. our d) in Peshitta manuscripts. Since theSchool was extremely influential (even on West Syrian writers likePhiloxenus and Jacob of Serugh in matters of exegesis), it wouldnot be surprising if manuscripts copied there, with reading d,reached circles which disliked the School's christological teaching.We thus have the background set for the second set of changes: (2)From the late fifth century onwards manuscripts which weredescended from Peshitta texts 'corrected' to Theodore's reading atthe Persian School were now 'corrected' back to reading a. This isthe stage which we actually witness in Add. 14480 and 14479 (thelatter indeed written in Edessa in 533/4).

18 All the more so in that the Peshitta reading a was suspiciously Theopaschitein language.


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The choice between these two hypotheses could be settled oncefor all if we had a quotation of Heb. 2:9 in a Syriac author writingbefore the 430's. Unfortunately, however, neither Aphrahat northe Liber Graduum obliges, but we do have Ephrem's Commentaryon the Pauline Episdes, preserved only in Armenian. Molitoreretroversion into Greek of Ephrem's quotations of Paul suggeststhat Ephrem tantalizingly omitted the key words of interest to uswhen he commented on the passage; 19 reference to the Armenian, 20

however, suggests that this is in fact not quite the case:

ayl p c arawk c ew patuov zor asac c Dawif et c psakeac c vasn zi astuac

vasn amenayn mardkan zmah aiekeac c

.But (he) whom David said that 'He crowned with glory andhonour': (this is) because 'God, for the sake of all mankind,tasted death'. 21

Both the Latin translation of the Commentary and Molitor failedto observe that 'God' was part of the quotation; this waspresumably because they had the Greek reading *by the grace of God' in mind, rather than the Peshitta 'in his grace, God'. Buteven if 'God' is not stricy part of the quotation, Ephrem could notpossibly have written this sentence if his Syriac New Testament texthad sfar men alh (reading d); on the other hand his words reflectvery closely reading a, with God as subject of the verb 'tasted': allhe has done is to abbreviate the text slighdy by omitting 'in hisgrace'.

We may accordingly safely conclude that the second hypothesisis to be preferred, and that the original Peshitta version of Heb.2:9b read h gr b-faybteh alh hlp kulnsfem mawt, 'for he in hisgrace, God, tasted death on behalf of everyone'.

19 J. Molitor, Der Paulustext des HL Ephrm (Monumenta Biblica et Ecclesiastica4, 1938), p. 124.

20 Srboyn Ep^remi matcnagrutHuntf III (Venice, 1836), p. 200; Latin translationin S. Ephraem Syri Commentarii in Epstolas D, Pauli (Venice, 1893), p. 206. Thereseems to be no question of any contamination from the text of the Armenian NewTestament here.

21 The syntax is awkward, and it is not clear exactly how it should be taken;possibly the Armenian translator read sm (b-rtieh) in place of the Peshitta's sim.The passage continues: 'For it was not possible for the Immortal by nature to diein the body in which he died: as though he died while he did not die. Now because

he did not die in (his immortal) nature, he put on death in name, out of love forus: since by nature he was above death, death could not touch him.'


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Heb 2.9 in Syriac Tradition

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