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Title: Ignatius of Antioch in a Medieval Syriac Orthodox Treatise
Subtitle: On Divine Providence
Author(s): HILKENS, Andy
Journal: Le Muséon
Volume: 136    Issue: 1-2   Date: 2023   
Pages: 39-58
DOI: 10.2143/MUS.136.1.3291854

Abstract :
This article investigates a late example of the Syriac reception of Ignatius of Antioch and his letters. A medieval Syriac Orthodox treatise on divine providence, which builds upon a letter of Jacob of Edessa on this topic, includes a paraphrase of Ignatius’ Letter to the Smyrnaeans and a short biography, which is a summary of his Martyrdom, enriched with other materials. This article includes a new edition and translation of this Ignatian material, based on the earliest extant manuscript, a fourteenth-century manuscript from Tur Abdin that is now in the library of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate in Damascus, which was unknown to William Wright and Joseph Barber Lightfoot in 1889, when they published it on the basis of a later and corrupted manuscript in the Bodleian. Further, I investigate the value of this witness to the reconstruction of the earliest Syriac version of Smyrnaeans, based on comparisons with Arabic witnesses (translated from Syriac). The results seem to indicate that the biblical citations in the Syriac version were revised, perhaps on the basis of the Old Syriac gospels.

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