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      Syriac  Recent acquisitions
       

      Hoskier, H.C., [Herman Charles] [1864-1938 ], Codex B and its Allies.
      A Study and an Indictment"  two volumes:
      Part 1: and Part 2, sub-titled:  Chiefly concerning A [Aleph], but covering three thousand differences between A and
      B in the Four Gospels, with the evidence supporting each side, including the new manuscript evidence collected by von Soden, [ Soden, Hermann 1852-1914 ] and the collateral readings of other important authorities / arranged and digested
      by H. C. Hoskier. London, Quaritch, 1914), [IV] XVI, 497; [IV} 412pp., size 25 x 17 cm., English text, with numerous citations from Greek, Latin, Coptic and Syriac sources, analysing at great length the numerous discrepancies between
      several of the early manuscripts favoured by New Testament textual critics, and arriving at conclusions unfavourable
      to the revised Greek N.T. text of Westcott and Hort. Half-calf leather binding, mid brown with matching cloth boards
      with calf corners; a few signs of  wear, but generally robust; the elegant spines have five raised bands, with the titles in
      gilt on red polished leather labels, the author's name in gilt on dark green leather labels, with double-ruled gilt lines
      along the upper and lower edges of these labels remnant of former library shelf mark affixed to central and lower parts
      of the spines ("19" and "28" on vol. 1, and "19" and "29" on vol. 2); head and tail bands; top-edge of pages edged in a dull
      reddish-brown; endpapers orange-brown; front endpapers with the bookplates of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, overprinted by a cancellation stamp; in vol. 1, the front flyleaf has been  removed, with no loss of text; title pages
      with inked former shelfmark ("A.19.28." and "A.19.29." in vols. 1 and 2 respectively); in vol. 2, six pages have
      protruding and slightly curled paper tabs printed with titles of individual gospels (an original feature of the published
      edition); text clean and unmarked throughout. [Codex Vaticanus  (CODEX B), is a Greek manuscript, the most
      important of all the manuscripts of Holy Scripture. It is so called because it belongs to the Vatican Library (Codex
      Vaticanus, 1209). The original home of the Vatican Codex is uncertain. Hort thinks it was written at Rome; Rendel
      Harris, Armitage Robinson, and others attribute it to Asia Minor. A more common opinion maintains that it was
      written in Egypt. Armitage Robinson believes that both the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus were originally together in
      some ancient library. The Vatican Codex, in spite of the views of Tischendorf, who held for the priority of the Codex Sinaiticus, discovered by him, is rightly considered to be the oldest extant copy of the Bible.
      £95.00

      Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, Saint, Martyr, c.35-c.107. W. Cureton : Corpus Ignatianum: A Complete Collection of the  Ignatian Epistles genuine, interpolated, and spurious; together with numerous extracts from them, as quoted by ecclesiastical writers down  to the tenth century; in Syriac, Greek, and Latin : an English translation  of the Syriac text, copious notes, and introduction, by William  Cureton.London, Francis and John Rivington, 1849, [4], xvii, lxxxvii,  [2], 365, [2] pp.; double-page pl. of Syriac mss. drawn by Harrietta  Cureton, lithographed in red & black;   size 26 x 17 cm., text in Syriac,  Greek, Latin and English. Robust and elegant full dark brown calf leather binding,  with some  mottled  lighter patches and a few scuff marks; front and rear covers  each  blind-ruled with double lines to form one main central panel,  narrower  panels along all four sides, and four corner panels, each  corner with  blind stamped floral ornament; spine with title in gilt on red  leather title label ,  four raised bands with blind stamped floral  ornaments between  them; the top 5 cm. of the spine has at some time  been neatly repaired  and strengthened, though the repair material now  covers the place  where a fifth raised band was originally positioned;  lower part of spine  has a former library shelfmark in small white  numerals on black  background ("2.81.3"); head and tail bands; lower  rear hinge has a small split, pages edged in red;  marbled end papers;  pasted on to the front endpapers are bookplates of  Thomas Hodgkin  (1831-1913, a prominent Quaker and historian) and  the Woodbrooke  Library (a Quaker institution in Birmingham), with a  label indicating that  the Woodbrooke Library received the volume from  the library of Dr.  Hodgkin on 12 November 1913; apart from foxing of  a few pages at  the beginning and end of the book, and neat pencilled  notes in the  margins of about ten pages, the text is clean and unmarked. Very  scarce. ?450.00 An important date in the Ignatian controversy was the year 1845, when  Canon Cureton published a Syriac version of the epistles to St.  Polycarp, the Ephesians, and the Romans. The three epistles contained  in this version appear in a much shorter form than is found in the Greek  text and Latin version. A fragment of the epistle to the Trallians is  incorporated in the epistle to the Romans, but none of the other epistles  appear in the collection. The text of Cureton's edition was based upon  two MSS. in the British Museum. The former of these two MSS. dates  from the sixth century. It was purchased by Archdeacon Tattam from  the convent of St. Mary Deipara in the Nitrian desert in 1839. The  second MS. dates from the seventh or eighth century, and was brought  from Egypt by Archdeacon Tattam in 1842. Cureton maintained that  these three epistles alone represented the genuine Ignatius, that the  Vossian collection contained these three in an interpolated form, and  that the remaining four letters of the Vossian collection were forgeries.  This rekindled the controversy. Dr. Christopher Wordsworth,  afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, declared the newly-discovered version to  be an epitome of the genuine letters made by an Eutychian heretic. This  led Cureton to a fuller treatment of the question. He had meanwhile  discovered an additional MS. of the three epistles, brought, like the  first-named, from the convent of St. Mary Deipara, and dating from at  least the ninth century. He now published his great work Corpus  Ignatianum (London, 1849), which contains a full treatment of the whole  question. Cureton's view was supported by Bunsen and several eminent  scholars. But it has failed to hold its ground. Apart from the fact that the  seven letters of the Vossian collection were plainly known to Eusebius  and Theodoret, they exhibit a perfect unity of authorship and style  throughout. Cureton's theory requires us to suppose that the interpolator  was able to reproduce in his additions to the letters the most subtle  characteristics of language and grammar. A similar difficulty occurs  when we examine the relation of Cureton's Syriac version to the Syriac  version of the seven letters. The one is plainly derived from the other,  and it is far more probable that the Curetonian Syriac version is an  abridged form of the Syriac version of the seven letters, than that the  latter is an expansion of the former. Epistle to Polycarp, to the Ephesians and to the Romans: on the left  opening Cureton's restored Greek text at the head with the shorter and  longer recensions in parallel, on the right the Syriac from his ms a at the  head with the longer and shorter Latin versions. For the epistle to the  Magnesians, Trallians, Philadelphians and Smyrnians: the shorter and  longer Greek recensions on the left, the longer and shorter Latin on the  right. Fragments of `Other Ignatian epistles, not mentioned by Eusebius'  include epistles from and to Maria Cassobolita, to the Tarsians, to the  Antiochians, to Hero the Deacon and to the Philippians, in parallel  Greek and Latin; to John Apostle and Evangelist I-II and to S. Mary  the Virgin, in Latin only. -- Testimonies respecting St. Ignatius, and  extracts from the Ignatian epistles as cited by various authors down to  the tenth century, p. [158]-195 -- Passages from the Ignatian epistles,  and extracts from various writers respecting St. Ignatius, in Syriac, p.  [196]-225 -- English translation from the Syriac, p. [226]-55 --  Excerpta Ignatiana Aethiopice, p. [256]-62, Ethiopic and Latin on  facing pages -- Notes, p. [263]-363, with Syriac text of the Epistle to  the Tarsians, obtained by the British Museum in 1847, p. 363-65.
      £450.00
       

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