The Syriac Sinaiticus or Codex Sinaiticus Syriacus (syrs), known also as the Sinaitic Palimpsest, of Saint Catherine's Monastery (Sinai, Syr. 30), or Old Syriac Gospels is a late-4th- or early-5th-century manuscript of 179 folios, containing a nearly complete translation of the four canonical Gospels of the New Testament into Syriac,[1] which have been overwritten by a vita (biography) of female saints and martyrs with a date corresponding to AD 697.[2] This palimpsest is the oldest copy of the Gospels in Syriac, one of two surviving manuscripts (the other being the Curetonian Gospels) that are conventionally dated to before the Peshitta, the standard Syriac translation.[3]
- ^ Bruce M. Metzger (1977), III. The Old Syriac Version, in Bruce M. Metzger (ed.), The Early Versions of the New Testament (Clarendon Press; Oxford), pp. 36–48.
- ^ Agnes S. Lewis, Select Narratives of Holy Women from the Syro-Antiochene or Sinai Palimpsest as Written Above the Old Syriac Gospels by John the Stylite, or Beth Mari-Qanu in ADD 778 (Studia Sinaitica IX–X; C. J. Clay; London, 1900).
- ^ Bruce M. Metzger (1977), IV. The Peshitta Syriac Version, in Bruce M. Metzger (ed.), The Early Versions of the New Testament (Clarendon Press; Oxford), pp. 48–63.