It is well known within both Syriac and Biblical Studies that there are two primary manuscript witnesses for the Old Syriac version of the Gospels in Syriac, each discovered in the nineteenth century: Codex Sinaiticus (Sin. Syr. 30), discovered by Agnes S. Lewis and her sister Margaret D. Gibson, and Codex Curetonianus (Brit. Lib. Add. 14451), first published by William Cureton. Moreover, it is well known that the texts of these manuscripts, despite the fact that they both represent the “Old Syriac” version, contain significant variation from each other and even more significant variation from the text of the Peshitta. The texts of these two manuscripts were published soon after their discovery, but comparison between the two Old Syriac versions and the Peshitta was cumbersome because the texts were not collated. Thus, the present work by Alberto Bonus was a welcome publication because he provides, in three columns, the texts of the variants found in Codex Sinaiticus (which he calls Lewisani after A. Lewis), Codex Curetoniani, and the Peshitta. While this edition does not contain the complete text of any of the three versions, this publication format makes it far easier to compare the variants among the texts.
AlbertoBonus