occur are usually such as to be considered mere slips of the pen, and not mistakes of the understanding. The writing is carefully and neatly done; but yet the manner of crowding letters and words here. and there to make a line come out even, as well as the expansions for the same purpose, show the hand of one who was more than a mere copyist; of one who was writing with the freedom of familiarity with the text, and not mechanically copying an unfamiliar tongue or unfamiliar matter. (Just here it may be mentioned that among the Nestorians formerly an ecclesiastic was not ordained till he had copied the necessary service-books with his own hand. Whether that remains the case since the introduction of printing, I am unable to say.) Abbreviations are rather rare in the text, but common in the lessonnotes or captions, next to be mentioned.

The writing is continuous, without a break from the beginning of a book to its end; but the titles and subscriptions to each book begin and follow it, and the captions or notes of the church-lessons are inserted in proper place, done in vermilion with the points in black. Rather oftener than not, the punctuation is wanting both before and after the lesson-note. The number of the lesson is given in red in the margin, and signifies only its number in the order in which it occurs in the text; the other necessary information being contained in the note or caption just mentioned.

At the end of each book, after its subscription, about four lines, or three in the case of the Pauline Epistles, are devoted to ornament. This is of the same sort as that perpetuated in the modern MSS.; which, again, are regularly copied with scrupulous care from the most ancient exemplars to be had. At the beginning of Luke the ornamentation runs across the top and for some distance down the sides; and in its little squares are the words: "John who is a sinner, the monk, wrote it." In the little squares in the ornament at the beginning of Mark is the word "John," which probably refers to the same scribe (and not to John Mark). In addition to these ornaments, others of more or less elaboration surround the quinio numbers, besides occurring occasionally at the right hand upper and outer corner of the verso of a leaf. In this last position a small diamond of black dots (sometimes a pair of them) is almost always present; but it does not seem to have any connection with the symbol of the unity and trinity of God, which regularly holds the like place in Nestorian sacred MSS. Still further, the numbers of the lessonnotes, and those of the larger sections, or chapters, presently to be mentioned, have an unpretentious ornament composed of dots.

Besides the numbers of the lesson-notes, the numbers of the titλot, or zsgálata, of the Gospels are given in the margin in red. These correspond almost exactly with those of the Greek as given in Küster's Mill. Certain differences will be noted in another connection.

The only other divisions noted in the margin are the larger sections, the numbers being written in black.

or

This word is identical with the Arabic word employed to denote the modern chapters; but in Syriac it means a different division. It is also used indefinitely, in the sense of pericope, or passage of Scripture; and in the plural for the whole Bible, or the whole New Testament, or for a version. In the Gospels these sections are numbered consecutively through the four Gospels as one series, and also separately for each of the four. There is consequently a double set of numbers for them in all the Gospels except Matthew. The Acts and the Catholic Epistles, that is, here, James, 1 Peter, and 1 John, are likewise divided into and numbered in the margin as one book. Through these books, also, the church-lessons are numbered consecutively, as if one book. In the same way, also, the Epistles of Paul are divided and numbered as one book, both as to Luiz

and as to church-lessons.

The L are evidently the same as those in use among the Nestorians, as can be seen both from the Nestorian MS. (12th century) of the Peshitto New Testament at Boston, and from that excellent and very useful edition of the Bible in Ancient and Modern Syriac, the work of Dr. Justin Perkins, printed at Urmî (Oroomiah) in 1846. Indeed, the testimony given by this Perkins Bible is of a rather unusual sort. As printed, the order of books in the New Testament is the same as that of our English Bible, yet the numbering of the series of which begins in Acts, and is interrupted by Paul's Epistles, is resumed again at James, and carried through 1 Peter and 1 John, without any regard to the interposed book, 2 Peter. The latter, as well as 2 and 3 John, Jude, and the Apocalypse are not divided into ; but, on the contrary, each of these books has a note at the beginning, stating that it "is not included in the Jay! that is commonly called the Peshitto, but nevertheless is written in other ancient J." All this goes to show that this division, or capitulation, is very ancient, and antedates the separation of the Nestorians and Jacobites from the general Syrian church. It shows also

a like antiquity for this order of books in the New Testament, which coincides with that now received among the critical editors of the Greek N. T., except only that it places the Epistle to the Hebrews at the end of the Pauline Epistles numbering it, however, as one book with them.

As these are peculiar to the Syriac versions, and neither very well known nor very accessible, a list of them is here given for that division of the New Testament which comprises the Acts and the Catholic Epistles:

The Acts alone had 25;
The Pauline Epistles,

Of these sections, Matthew had 22; Mark, 13; Luke, 23; John, 20; and the Four Gospels together, 78. the Acts and Catholic Epistles together, 32. including Hebrews, had 55, (but the last one visible in the MS. is at 2 Timothy iv. 1, number 47). For the whole Peshitto, therefore, the number was 165; and as to the Philoxenian or Harklensian, this MS. shows the division to have coincided with that of the Peshitto through the four Gospels.*

Besides these numbers in the margin, other matters are noted in the subscriptions to the Gospels, which are not marked in either margin or text; unless perhaps in respect to one matter shortly to be

* Further testimony to the antiquity and wide use of this capitulation may be seen in a British Museum MS. of the Syriac N. T., (No. 7157), written at Beth-kuko, A. D. 768. See Dr. W. Wright's article Verse in the 2-vol. ed. of Kitto's Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature (New York, 1855), vol. ii. p. 914. Also, Wright's Cat. of the Syriac MSS. in the Brit. Mus. vol. i. (London, 1870); No. 161 (Br. Mus. Add. 12,138), pp. 101-107; a MS. dated A. D. 899; in which the subscription to the notes on the Epistle to the Hebrews gives the numbers of these sections. Wright states that they are "regularly marked on the margin throughout the whole manuscript." Gregory Bar-hebræus uses the same sections in his Commentary.

mentioned. These will best appear by translating one of the subscriptions. The following is the subscription to Matthew: "Ends the Gospel of Matthew the apostle, which he spake in Hebrew in Palestine. His prayer for us, Amen. There are in it kephalaia 70; and the number of canones 360. And signs 25, and parables 25, and testimonies 32. And lessons 74. and sections 22. Pray, for our Lord's sake, for the sinner that wrote [this]."

Arranged in tabular form, the numbers given in the subscriptions to the Gospels are as follows:

(I have been the more careful to insert these numbers here, because as originally given in the Proceedings A. Or. Soc. mentioned. above, they contain a few mistakes; though these are corrected in a subsequent number.)

The canones are the Eusebian canons, or their Syriac substitute. Unless these are marked by the largest punctuation mentioned above, viz., the vermilion diamond with a black centre, they are not marked in the text. In a number of places this punctuation does exactly mark off the Greek canons; but that it is anything more than a coincidence, I should not venture to say. For, as might be supposed, the same punctuation occurs regularly at the beginning (or end) of the zeçakata and the Lu, except when they coincide with the beginning of a lesson; and then punctuation of every sort is usually omitted; as if the rubricated note was warning enough, and supplied the place of punctuation.

For the testimonies," etc., so far as the items are liturgical, we must look to the service-books for information. So far as I can discover, they are not marked in any way in the text. A hint of the use of the "testimonies" may be seen in the captions to the Psalms in some editions of the Syriac Bible; especially in the Psalter which was the "first labor" of the American press at Urmî, in 1841.

Farther than as above stated, the margin contains nothing except here and there a word or more that had been omitted by mistake, and is thus supplied a prima manu by writing between the lines or in the margin, and marking the place in the text by a small +, +, >, or.., after the fashion of our etc., to show where the correction

belongs. (The second-hand corrections, a few in number, are so late that I do not notice them here.) There is no Greek margin, nor anything to correspond with what is commonly known as the Harklensian (some still call it the Philoxenian) margin. Only in two or three cases is there a real marginal note; and those are explanatory, and all in the Peshitto Portion. One is at Acts x. 6, where the transliterated Pope has a marginal note, duly marked by a +, and reading, "that is, a tanner"; this marginal word for "tanner," by the way, being the one still in use with that meaning in the colloquial Arabic, but having a different meaning in the literary language and the lexicons. A note is also given to explain Paul's appealing to Cæsar (Acts xxv. 11), which it does by calling it "swearing by Cæsar.”

It is also to be stated that the codex contains nothing which answers to the obeli or asterisks of certain Harklensian MSS. and of White's edition.

Before leaving these accessories of the text, it is proper to speak of their relation to those of other codices which bear some resemblance to this one. In the absence of the Harklensian margins, this MS. agrees with the Codex Mediceo-Florentinus (anno 757), described by Adler (N. T. Versiones Syr., pp. 52, ff.), and by him thought to be the true Philoxenian; though thought not so by Bernstein (Ev. d. Joh. pp. 1, 2). It likewise agrees with the same codex in the numbers above given from the subscriptions to the Gospels; except only in the zsgálata, and in the fact that the lessons and sections are wanting in the Cod. Flor. The differences in the zsgálata are shown in the following comparison of the two codices with the Greek numbers as given in Küster's Mill:

In the Beirût MS., the difference in John is made by dividing zeç. 18 into three zeçálata, so as to add two; and the case is similar in Matthew and Mark. However, the last number in John (20) and the last in Matthew (70) either never were written or have become obliterated. So it is barely possible that the unnumbered beginning of the Gospel was counted in making up the numbers given in the subscription; but the cases of Mark and Luke seem to forbid such a supposition.