A Palestinian Syriac Lectionary: Containing Lessons from the Pentateuch, Job, Proverbs, Prophets, Acts, and Epistles

A Palestinian Syriac Lectionary
containing Lessons from the Pentateuch, Job, Proverbs, Prophets, Acts, and Epistles
By Agnes Smith Lewis

The manuscript from which this text has been copied was acquired by me in the spring of 1895 whilst I was passing through Cairo on my way to Mount Sinai. I first saw it in the hands of a dealer, who had been sent, I cannot say recommended, to Mrs. Gibson and myself by a learned Syrian gentleman, resident in Egypt. I had then been working for two years at the two Palestinian Syriac Lectionaries of the Gospels on Mount Sinai, one of which had been discovered by myself in 1892, the other by my friend, Dr J. Rendel Harris, in 1893. There is an old Book which says, "to him that hath shall be given," and thus when my eye fell on the names of Paul the Apostle and of Amos the prophet in the rubrics I was seized with an irresistible longing, and ten minutes later the volume had become my own property.

I was unable to guess, even approximately, the date of my newly found treasure, for the last ten leaves, one of which doubtless contains the colophon, had been given away, one by one, by the dealer to various people who regarded them only in the light of curiosities. This is borne out by the fresh appearance of the rents.

My first care was to write out a summary of its contents, and these revealed the fact that I had become possessed of many interesting portions of the Old Testament text not hitherto known in Palestinian Syriac, as well as some from the Acts and from St Paul's Epistles, so that the little manuscript would surely prove to be unique of its kind. I had some misgivings as to whether or no it had been honestly come by, whether in fact it did not form part of a theft of MSS. which had recently taken place from the Convent of St Catherine. I therefore took care to describe it exactly to several of the Sinai monks, including Father Euthymius, who was sub-librarian for many years under the late lamented Father Galaktion, and who knows the Library better than any of his brethren. They all assured me, independently of each other, that nothing resembling it had ever been seen in the Convent. Nevertheless, I do not accept implicitly the story told by the dealer, and embodied in the receipt he gave me, that it had been an heirloom in a Syrian family, who had emigrated to America from the village of Rashif in the Lebanon, and who had parted with it for the sake of their passage-money. I have made every endeavour to discover the missing leaves, but hitherto without success. My justification for putting the Lectionary into Studia Sinaitica is that I picked it up, like a pebble, on the rugged path which leads to the Convent.

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Agnes Lewis (1843-1926) was a biblical scholar credited with the discovery of a number of significant ancient manuscripts. This text is a collection of scriptural lessons from a Syriac manuscript acquired in Cairo in 1895. First published in 1897, it also features critical notes by distinguished theologian Eberhard Nestle.