The Age of the Peshitta

[Stephen Silver]

Still chipping away when I have the odd hour to spare. :-)

On the top of that, Khabouris Manuscript is a copy of manuscript which can date as early as 2nd century AD.

The interpretation of the colophon from the Khabouris codex is suspect. It is worn and severely damaged damaged and difficult to make out. No one has actually produced a transcription of it to date due to this difficulty, but seem to intrinsically trust the interpretation of Norman Yonan. Where Yonan (a teller of fantastical tales who was trying to hype and sell the codex to the tune of $1.5 million in 1955) insisted it read 165 AD, after his death this was questioned thoroughly. Most conventional scholars reject this interpretation completely.

"The Society of Biblical Literature at its annual meeting in New York City on December 28?30, 1955, wishes to go on record as opposing some of the publicity attending the efforts currently being made to raise by popular subscription $1,500,000 for the purchase of the so-called Yonan Codex. This codex is a manuscript of the Syriac New Testament which is reported to be ?the oldest surviving complete New Testament written in Syriac-Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus? (Washington Evening Star, March 25, 1955).

According to members of our Society who have examined the manuscript, the Yonan Codex is a copy of the Syriac Peshitta, a version which was made from the Greek New Testament at about the beginning of the fifth century and which contains twenty-two of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. Edessene Syriac, the language of this version, differs considerably from the Palestine Aramaic used by Jesus more than four centuries earlier. About three hundred manuscripts of the Peshitta version are known to exist in the libraries of this country and Europe. Several of these are older than the Yonan Codex, which some of our members who are expert in Syriac palaeography date to the seventh or eighth century. According to certain members of the Society who have frequently arranged for the purchase of biblical manuscripts, a fair estimate of the value of a manuscript like the Yonan Codex is about $5,000."

What was instrumental to this declaration was that Yonan was using Dr. Bruce Metzger (of Princeton)'s name (and other scholars' names) in promotion of the codex to gain approval (from the then Governor of Virginia to Library of Congress officials) and Metzger was not aware of it. When he was made aware, he told Yonan to stop and he turned on him and Yonan sent lawyers after him to shut him up. He wanted his $1.5 million dollars, truth be damned.

Will respond to more when I have another hour to spare.

Shlama Steve:
As I have said, The Yonan Codex is not the Kaboris Codex. Nevertheless they are in close agreement (virtually verbatim) at least in the areas that I have transcribed. It's true that the Colophon of the Kaboris Codex is somewhat illegible. Also another error is still to be resolved and publically announced, and that is the date given internally that it was written during the time of the persecution. Specifically, was it Roman persecution or Persian. If so the date would be different. Rome was technically at war with Persia, during the so-called "conversion" of Constantine and this was a major factor in the persecution of Assyrian Christians by Shappur II in 341, a few years after Constantine ascended the throne. The Khaburis Codex as well as the Yonan Codex appear to be copied from an extant 4th century Peshitta manuscript, which I believe was transcribed into Estrangelo from K'tav Assuri, also called "Herodian Script". This script was common in the Dead Sea Scrolls from sometime before the First Century. K'tav Assuri seems to me to be a consistent Jewish scribal media, used from before the First Century, and is the fore-runner of all Hebrew Scrolls of the TaNakh, as it is this day. Estrangelo appears to have been perfected into its beautiful calligraphy, in Edessa during the second half of the First Century and widely used in the Second Century. The 6 A.D. inscription at the citadel was a pre-curser of Estrangelo. Yes it was rounded, as opposed to the square script (K'tav Assuri), but it's my understanding that Estrangelo had a makeover some 30-50 years after the 6A.D inscription. Hence we have the testimony of the Assyrian Church of the East receiving at least the Gospel accounts of the Peshitta around 52-53 A.D., sometime before the first Greek New Testament fragments were found. The devil is in the details and I will stand corrected if shown to be wrong on any point.

Quote from Wikipedia (Persecution of Christians)
In 341, the Zoroastrian Shapur II ordered the massacre of all Christians in the Persian Sassanid Empire. During the persecution, about 1,150 Assyrian Christians were martyred under Shapur II in Assuristan (Sassanid ruled Assyria).[17] In the 4th century, the Terving king Athanaric in ca. 375 ordered a persecution of Christians.[18]

Quote from Wikipedea (Khaboris):
"The Khaboris Codex was obtained by Mr. Norman Malek Yonan, who had previously tried to sell the Yonan Codex in the United States with the claim that it was the earliest New Testament manuscript, from the Assyrian Church of the East in Iraq in 1966. When Yonan died in 1970, the manuscript was purchased by Dan MacDougald for use in his holistic healing programme, which had previously sold transliterations of the Yonan Codex's text of the Beatitudes (Matthew 5.3?12, and identical to the standard Peshitta text) to be recited to improve mental health."

This statement is simply not true.

As I said, it's time to set the record straight.

P.S. please read "the Saga of the Yonan Codex" by Bruce Metzger at dukhrana. There is no mention of the term Khaboris. Khaboris refers to the Kabor River, a tributory of the Euphrates River in modern Syria.

I hope you find this helpful, Steve.

Shlama,
Stephen Silver
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this post has been edited, corrected and added to for clarification.