CAPÍTULO IV. RESULTADOS Y DISCUSIÓN
4.1. Presentación de Resultados
4.1.11. Propuesta de un plan de CRM para optimizar la fidelización de los
Here, we are interested primarily in the textual contexts of lexemes found in the Peshitta Gospels, being Greek-to-Syriac translations.56
The Peshitta Gospels stand approximately third (some overlap is conceded) in a succession of five Greek-to-Syriac translations made between the second and the seventh centuries. The five, respectively, are: the Diatessaron, the ‘Old Syriac’, the Peshitta, the Philoxenian, and the Harklean.
55 Cf. Anna Wierzbicka, “‘Prototypes Save’: On the Uses and Abuses of the Notion of ‘Prototype’ in Linguistics and
Related Fields,” in Meanings and Prototypes: Studies in Linguistic Categorization, ed. Savis L. Tsohatzidis (London: Routledge, 1990), 169: “lexicographers have grappled with their "practical tasks" without any theoretical
framework…. Given this lack of help from semantic theory, it is the lexicographers’ achievements, not their failures, which are truly remarkable.” Cited in A. Dean Forbes, “How Syntactic Formalisms Can Advance the
Lexicographer’s Art,” in Foundations for Syriac Lexicography III: Colloquia of the International Syriac Language Project, ed. Janet Dyk and Wido van Peursen (Piscataway: Gorgias, 2008), 140.
56 One can find, on the internet, claims for Syriac priority as though the Greek New Testament represents a
translation made from the Peshitta. Thus the book length article by Raphael Lataster, “Was the New Testament Really Written in Greek? A Concise Compendium of the Many Internal and External Evidences of Aramaic,” edition 1c, March 2006, accessed February 22, 2007, http://www.aramaicpeshitta.com/. The only comment I will make here concerns Lataster’s “undeniable evidence” that numerous Greek manuscript variants exist on account of the polysemy of Peshitta ‘source’ words (Peshitta words are alleged to be inherently more polysemous and so responsible for producing variants in Greek manuscripts). However, one cannot assume that Greek words are always less polysemous. To use one of Lataster’s examples, certain Greek manuscripts have πύληwhist others have θύραin Lk 13:24 which, for Lataster, indicates that both are attempts to translate the Syriac noun ܐܳܥܪܬܰ which can
mean either ‘door’ or ‘gate’. But this assumes that in Greek πύληonly means ‘gate’ and θύραonly means ‘door’.
BDAG, however, indicates that θύραmeans either ‘door,’ ‘doorway,’ ‘entrance,’ or ‘gate,’ and that πύληsimilarly can
32
The earliest known version produced, in the second century, was a Syriac version of Tatian’s Gospel ‘harmony’ that combined the four Gospels into a single ‘mixed Gospel’. It was known by its Greek title ‘Diatessaron’ (διὰτεσσάρων) and by its Syriac title
ܐܛܠܵܚܡܕܳܢܘܝܠܓܢܘܐ
(‘Gospel of the Mixed [Ones/Evangelists]’). Soon after came theܐܫܵܪܦܡܕܳܢܘܥܠܓܢܘܐ
(‘Gospel of the Separated [Evangelists/Ones]’) which is likely represented by the two surviving, incomplete ‘Old Syriac’ manuscripts, namely the Sinaitic manuscript (‘S’, late fourth-century) and the Curetonian manuscript (‘C’, fifth-century).57 The titles of these two versions (ܐܛܠܵܚܡܕ
ܳܢܘܝܠܓܢܘܐ
the MixedGospels and
ܐܫܵܪܦܡܕܳܢܘܥܠܓܢܘܐ
the Separated Gospels) indicate that the ‘Separated Gospels’ were so named to distinguish them from the ‘Mixed’ Gospel version (or possibly vice-versa) and at least indicate that both mixed and separate versions were in use at the same time. The Separated Gospels (hereafter ‘Old Syriac’) probably enjoyed an official status given that Ephraem (who died 373 CE) appears to have considered the Old Syriac version to be the normative text at Edessa.58 It is not clear as to how long it had already enjoyed this status.The Peshitta version was probably the end result of revising an Old Syriac text at the turn of the fifth century. Eventually the Peshitta came to dominate at the expense of the earlier two Syriac translations, especially the Diatessaron: “Once the Peshitta New Testament had come into existence, early fifth century, the Diatessaron fell out of favour, and as result no complete manuscript of it in Syriac survives.”59
57 Bruce M. Metzger, Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission and Limitations (Oxford: Clarendon,
1977), 38. Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 193–4. The Alands
hypothesise that the Curetonian text may be a revision of the Sinaitic text.
58 Arthur Vööbus, Studies in the History of the Gospel Text in Syriac (Louvain: Durbecq, 1951), 36–7.
59 Sebastian Brock, The Bible in the Syriac Tradition (2nd ed.; Piscataway: Gorgias, 2006), 18–19; Also Sebastian Brock,
“An Introduction to Syriac Studies,” in Horizons in Semitic Studies: Articles for the Student, ed. J. H. Eaton (Birmingham: Dept. of Theology, University of Birmingham, 1980), 3: “The standard New Testament version, the Peshitta, is a revision of the Old Syriac.” See also Sebastian P. Brock, “Syriac Literature: A Crossroads of Cultures,” Parole de l’Orient 31 (2006): 21, where he dates the earliest Syriac Gospels to the “late second century, but revised on a number of subsequent occasions, notably c.400 when the text of the Peshitta New Testament reached its present form.” For an alternative opinion on the development of the Peshitta version see Jan Joosten, “West Aramaic Elements in the Old Syriac and Peshitta Gospels,” Journal of Biblical Literature 110, no. 2 (1991):271–89. Joosten asserts that the Peshitta depended not on the ‘Old Syriac’ text type but on the Diatessaron.
33
The early twentieth-century scholar F. C. Burkitt had hypothesised that bishop Rabbula of Edessa, in the early-fifth century, was responsible for producing the Peshitta version by revising the Old Syriac (supposedly prepared by bishop Palut in the year 200 under the auspices of Serapion, bishop of Syriac Antioch) and was at the same time suppressing the Diatessaron version.60 The hypothesis that only one translator (bishop Rabbula) was responsible for the
Peshitta version has not proved accurate given the linguistic evidence from the Peshitta itself, which indicates the hand of several different translators.61
The intended readership (and background) of the Peshitta Gospels is not clear. Whilst later educated Syriac readers in the seventh century Umayyad administration were completely bilingual,62 we cannot presume that the majority of earlier readers of the Peshitta Gospels were
completely uneducated or monolingual. Presumably, some were completely uneducated in reading and writing in either Syriac or Greek and so the Greek-Syriac translators in the early fifth century (perhaps even more so than in the later ‘bilingual centuries’) would have had an audience in mind with widely varying degrees of education and bilingualism.
The growth of philhellenism in the sixth century saw a new interest in translating Greek sources, with stricter techniques, including the revision of the Peshitta Gospels.63 The process of
60 F. C. Burkitt, Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe (Piscataway: Gorgias, 2003; orig. pub. London: Cambridge University
Press, 1904), 2:5. For a summary and critique of Burkitt’s views see Vööbus, Studies, 5, 25–26, 46–47.
61 Such differences may be noted by comparing the different Greek-Syriac correspondences in KPG. The different
Greek correspondences with ܢܝܶܕ are summarised by Wido van Peursen and Terry C. Falla, “The Particles ܪܝ ܶܓ and ܢܝܶܕ
in Classical Syriac: Syntactic and Semantic Aspects,” in Foundations for Syriac Lexicography II, ed. Williams and Turner, 92: “The Peshitta Gospel ܢܝܶܕ frequently translates καί. But with only two exceptions, never in John and Matthew,
only in Mark and Luke, which together use ܢܝܶܕ to translate καί in thirty-one to forty-two places. In the Peshitta text
of John, ܢܝܶܕ is the principal equivalent of οὖν.”
62 See Daniel King “Elements of the Syriac Grammatical Tradition,” in The Foundations of Arabic Linguistics: Sībawayhi
and Early Arabic Grammatical Theory, ed. Amal Elesha Marogy (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 191–92.
63 Daniel King, The Syriac Versions of the Writings of Cyril of Alexandria: A Study in Translation Technique (Louvain:
Peeters, 2008), 361, 369. King dates a division of translation technique (of Cyril’s writings) to pre and post 484 CE (namely, relative to the time of Philoxenus’ Dissertationes Decem contra Habbib and based on evidence of an increasing methodical translation technique that aimed to replicate the source Greek more consistently). Cf. Brock, “An Introduction,” 8: “The fifth and sixth centuries witnessed a remarkable hellenization of much Syriac literature, both in style and in thought patterns.”
34
revision/translation thus continued with the Philoxenian version (sixth century, not extant)64 and
finally the Harklean version—both revisions based probably on the Peshitta, both respectively intended, increasingly, to implement a more consistent application of translation aimed at reflecting the underlying Greek text. The Harklean is thus most helpful in exposing its
corresponding seventh-century Greek, often at the expense of meaningful Syriac. The Harklean revision was made by Thomas of Ḥarqel, bishop of Mabbûg in 615 or 616 (of which several manuscripts survive, such as V268 dating from the eighth- or ninth-century).65
The present approach, which relies on Gospel studies on the Greek Gospels, would be less appropriate to apply to the Old Syriac and the Harklean. Even for the Peshitta it would not seem wise to assume that the field of Gospel Studies would offer answers appropriate to all things Syriac (see below §1.3.4). However, the Peshitta Gospels display a relationship to the Greek Gospels at both a formal level (of paragraphs, sentences, words and phrases) as well as a wider semantic level (discourse meaning). This is largely because its predominant method of translation stands in a median position between the earlier ‘freer’ Syriac translations (second century to fourth century) and the later ‘literal’ translations made in the sixth and seventh centuries. Brock actually places the Peshitta within the first of three identifiable periods (namely 4/5th century; 6th
century; 7th century) which he characterises as an ‘expositional’ period of translation even though
the Peshitta itself is much less ‘expositional’ than the Old Syriac. Brock’s three periods roughly correspond to the decreasing size of the Greek units translated (over time the size of the unit of
64 The Philoxenian version of the Gospels has not survived but the Philoxenian version of other NT books is used
to fill out the Peshitta canon (the Peshitta NT originally excluded 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation from its corpus and so these are now included in modern Peshitta editions, taken from so-called Philoxenian
manuscripts). See Massimo Pazzini, “The Syriac New Testament: Text and Method,” in Eastern Crossroads: Essays on Medieval Christian Legacy, ed. Juan Pedro Monferrer Sala (Piscataway: Gorgias, 2007), 349: “The Peshitta of the New Testament Consists of 22 books, not 27; the canon does not include the "minor" catholic epistles (2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude) and the Apocalypse, and the following passages: Jn 7:53–8:11 (the woman taken in adultery), Lk 22:17- 18 (and he took the cup...), Ac 8:37; 15:34; 28:29 and Ap 1:1-8. These missing passages were borrowed from the Philoxenian and Harklean (Ap 1:14).”
65 Thomas in his own preface to the four Gospels “declares his work to be a revision of the Philoxenian version
(sponsored and supervised by Philoxenos of Mabbûg in 508/09) and carried out with the help of two (or three) accurate Greek manuscripts.” Andreas Juckel, “Introduction to the Harklean Text,” in Comparative Edition of the Syriac Gospels: Aligning the Sinaiticus, Curetonianus, Peshîṭṭa and Ḥarklean Versions, ed. George Anton Kiraz (3rd ed.; Piscataway: Gorgias: 2004), 1:xxxiii.
35
translation was reduced) thus: “most sixth-century translators adopt the sentence or phrase as the unit, while seventh-century ones reduced this to the word (and often segment even below word level).”66 Before the period of the Peshitta Gospels, Greek-Syriac translations generally
display no attempt to provide any formal equivalence for Greek particles, and biblical quotations were frequently given in the wording of the Peshitta Old Testament.67 Both elements show a
development in the Peshitta Gospels (in the direction of the more source-oriented approach of the sixth-century; and the seventh-century’s extreme literalism).
The Peshitta translators have produced Syriac that pays attention to the meaning of the source Greek at the level of the phrase, the sentence, and at the level of discourse. For the Peshitta translators, the meaning of both the source Greek and target Syriac apparently remained equally important to balance (this point makes them even more outstanding if undertaken within an era of predominantly free ‘expositional’ translation and may suggest that the translators deliberately avoided an expositional approach).
The Peshitta text presently employed is that of Pusey-Gwilliam’s ‘majority text’68 as published in
CESG which corrects several printing errors (of vowels and of punctuation). There are very few variants to note in this text due to it being a majority text and due to the consistency of Syriac manuscript copying. This text is based on only forty-two manuscripts.69 However, Andreas
Juckel has recently been working on a new critical edition of the Peshitta New Testament.70
66 Sebastian P. Brock “Toward a History of Syriac Translation Technique,” in III Symposium Syriacum, 1980 ed. R.
Lavenant (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1983), 6. King, Syriac Versions, has refined this observation by noting that it is the methodical consistency of finding correspondences that increasingly characterises Greek-Syriac translations after the fifth century.
67 Ibid., 10–11.
68 Philip Edward Pusey and George Henry Gwilliam, Tetraeuangelium Sanctum juxta simplicem Syrorum versionem Syrorum
versionem ad fidem codicum, massorae, editionum denuo recognitum (Oxford: Clarendon, 1901).
69 “The present situation of Peshitta research is unsatisfactorily based on the majority text of the Pusey/Gwilliam
volume (1901), while the true extent of the non-majority part is still unknown.” Andreas Juckel, “Research on the Old Syriac Heritage of the Peshitta Gospels: A Collation of Ms Bibl. Nationale SYR. 30 (Paris),” Hugoye 12, no. 1 (2009): 113, accessed October 5, 2010, www.bethmardutho.org.
70 The Pauline epistles are now complete. See Andreas Juckel, “A Guide to Manuscripts of the Peshitta New
36
The Greek text consulted is that of the Nestle-Aland 28th edition (identical, in the Gospels, to the
27th edition) in conjunction with other critical Greek editions that list the Greek variants.71
An initial list of Syriac New Testament lexemes of very low frequency (occurring 3 times or less) was manually compiled from Kiraz’s concordance,72 excluding all proper nouns and loan words.
From this list, lexemes beginning with letters
ܐ
–ܝ
were excluded as these had already been published in Falla’s KPG. The remaining list generated a total of 104 New Testament lexemes, with the majority occurring in Matthew (23 lexemes). Investigation of Gospel lexemes was postponed whilst reinvestigating the Peal ofܛܒܚ
(Mk 9:18, 20). The focus on this oneambiguous lexeme was hoped to be advantageous for developing a methodology for examining other Gospel lexemes. The 12 lexemes eventually analysed included seven lexemes taken from the beginning of the Matthean list, supplemented by four lexemes from chapter 2 related Mk 9:18–26, and one low-frequency lexeme of interest from Luke.