syP1 Images © British Library

NT.VMR Doc ID 710001

Add. 14456

8th century CE

Classical Syriac

David Taylor

Elisa Nury

metadata

metadata

Abstract
The manuscript syP1 (London, British Library Add. 14456, Wright codex LXXX, Pusey and Gwilliam 35) is a 8th-century parchment codex (156 folios) of the four Gospels, and its text belongs to the Peshitta translation. (The manuscript may originally have included the Apostolos, since the reverse of the final folio once contained the start of Romans in a contemporary hand, but the text was later erased.) It is one of the manuscripts bought in the 19th century from the Dayr al-Surian, in the Wadi Natrun in Egypt, and it was probably rebound during its time there since its quires are numbered with Coptic arithmetical figures. The text is supplied with Ammonian section numbers in the margins and Eusebian canon tables at the foot of each column, but these follow the Greek system adopted by the Harklean translation, rather than the revised Peshitta system of sections and canons. (In the text itself, points are included which indicate the sections of the revised Peshitta system, but the numbering is not included). The margins include numerous textual notes, discussing variant readings, taken over from a Harklean manuscript, including the conclusio brevior in the margin of f. 72r. The margins also include kephalaia numbers and titles, again taken over from the Harklean, and an index of these was prefixed to the volume, although only 2 folios now survive. A later hand has also added in the margins the 8th-century (?) Syriac division of the biblical text into ṣḥāhē, (abbreviated as ṣ), which in the Gospels are indicated by a number specific to the individual Gospel, and a second number that is accumulative throughout the four Gospels. A later hand (described by Wright as ‘Nestorian’) has also added numerous vowel signs, revised the text at various points, and noted abbreviated comments on accents and orthography in the margins. The text of this manuscript was only collated in one short passage (Mt 20.17-21.32) in the standard edition of the Peshitta Gospels: Pusey, P.E., and Gwilliam, G.H., Tetraeuangelium Sanctum juxta simplicem Syrorum versionem ad fidem codicum, Massorae, editionum denuo recognitum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901). David G. K. Taylor, SNSF MARK16 project; © CC-BY 4.0