Wednesday, May 28, 2014

That catalogue of Syriac manuscripts again

LIV INGEBORG LIED: The Epistle of Baruch, Josephus' Jewish War 6, the Book of Thecla and Psalm 151: some observations on Brock/van Rompay's catalogue of Syriac manuscripts in the Dayr al-Suryan. More on this manuscript catalogue and on the Monastery at Deir al-Surian is here and links.

If memory serves, that Syriac copy of Josephus' Jewish War, book 6, in Codex Ambrosianus B.21 is rather unhelpfully titled 5 Maccabees. (My list of books of the Maccabees is now up to 8 Maccabees and counting.) And there is apparently another book of 5 Maccabees preserved in Garshuni and Arabic which has overlapping content with that 5 Maccabees as well as an unclear relationship to the medieval compendium Josippon. I don't blame that scribe of Ms. Deir al-Surian, Syr 9 for being confused about the identities of those books of the Maccabees.