LOOTERS have been caught with what seems to be an ancient Syriac Bible. The report is muddled:

Nine arrested over 2,000 year-old Syrian bible
By Simon Bahceli (Cyprus Mail)

A TWO THOUSAND year-old Syrian Orthodox bible, believed to have been smuggled into the island from southeastern Turkey, has become the subject of major police operation in the north that has so far led to the arrest of nine suspects.

The bible, estimated to be worth around €2 million, was seized during a raid at the Famagusta bus terminal last Friday where smugglers were seeking to sell it to buyers in the north. It is thought Turkish Cypriot police had been tipped off about the impending sale.

Although the north’s ‘antiquities department’ refused yesterday to comment on the bible, because it was “the subject of an ongoing inquiry”, a statement from police said it was bound in deerskin, written in gold letters in the Syriac language, and believed to be around 2000 years old. The bible may have come from the heartland of the Syrian Orthodox community in southeastern Turkey, where a small community remains, despite often being caught in the crossfire between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish military.

“It is very likely to come from the Tur-Abdin area of Turkey, where there is still a Syriac speaking community,” Dr Chalotte Roueche, professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King College, London told Reuters yesterday.

In 1994, the British historian William Dalrymple wrote that the community “could die out within one generation”. However, conditions are reported to have improved in recent years with the Turkish government making efforts to protect religious minorities in the country.

Roueche added, however, that it was impossible to say for sure whether the bible was either from that area, or whether it was as old as the Turkish Cypriot police thought.

“The problem about this description is that a Syriac gospel-book could be from the 4th century, but it could date from several centuries after that, well into the middle ages. Indeed, I think that gospel books may still have been being written in Syriac then. Obviously the smugglers will have wanted to date it as ancient as possible,” Dr Roueche added.

[...]

Dr. Roueche has it right. I think the chances of this being a two thousand year old complete biblical codex in Aramaic are minimal. The Syriac language is the Aramaic dialect of Edessa and is first recorded, I believe, in the second century C.E. The codex (bound book) rather than the scroll, is also characteristic of the period well after the second century C.E. Still, if this is an ancient or even Medieval Syriac Bible codex or codex of the Gospels or some such, it is still of great interest and it's very fortunate that the authorities recovered it.

The oldest surviving complete Syriac Bible (Old and New Testament plus some Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha) is Codex Ambrosianus B.21, Milan, from the sixth or seventh century C.E. I have commented on it here. Unfortunately, the photographs seem to have been purged in our recent website upgrade. I'll try to get them back up soon.

UPDATE (7 February): More here.