Old Syriac Gospels

The Old Syriac Gospels are among the earliest surviving translations of the Gospels and stand as an important independent witness to the early text of the New Testament. Made into Syriac, the Aramaic dialect that became the literary and liturgical language of Christianity in Edessa and Mesopotamia, the version covers the four Gospels, rendered from Greek and resting on an early Greek Gospel text as its base. It represents a fresh translation rather than a revision, undertaken in the spirit of early vernacular translation work, and it precedes the Peshitta, which in time became the standard Syriac Bible of the Syriac churches. Its principal witnesses are conventionally known as the Curetonian and Sinaitic Syriac, the former named for William Cureton, who published it, and the latter for the manuscript identified at Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai. Both remain of continuing interest to textual critics of the Gospels.