During a
recent stay at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Nils H. Korsvoll did
me the favor of checking Supplément turc 983, fols. 113/126. The item identified by
this somewhat obscure shelfmark hides a highly interesting little thing for
those of us who are interested in the transmission history of 4 Ezra. It includes a single
parchment folio containing Syriac 4 Ezra 8:33-41a on the one side and 8:41c-47
on the other. This folio thus complements our knowledge about the circulation of 4
Ezra, and as far as I know this is only the second attestation of 4 Ezra 8 in
Syriac (some other passages are attested in lectionary manuscripts).
The
existence of the fragment was made known to (the French reading) public by
Bernard Outtier back in 1993 in the article “Un fragment syriaque inédit de IV
Esdras” (Apocrypha 4 (1993):19-23). The fragment is also described,
but not identified, on page 185 of Françoise Briquel Chatonnet’s catalogue of Syriac manuscripts in the BnF (1997). I came across a reference to it in Les
Apocryphes Syriaques, vol 2 (pp. 114-115) where it is mentioned and mistakenly
attributed to 2 Baruch. Although published by Outtier some 20 years ago, the fragment is in my experience not generally known among scholars of 4 Ezra. Hence this post.
The folio
containing the passages from 4 Ezra illustrates a quite common, and yet
fascinating, manuscript practice: folios from manuscripts that were
no longer in use were recycled. Together with other parchment folios containing
Arabic, Hebrew and Latin texts, the folio containing Syriac 4
Ezra served the purpose of stiffening and reinforcing the quires of an Arabic paper codex. In other words, the folio was recycled and
reused, not due to the literary qualities of the text it contained, but due to
the material qualities of the parchment. The size of the folio (170 (165) x 128 mm) was adjusted in order to fit this new purpose, the result being that the
upper margin and probably four lines of (precious!) text have quite simply been
cut off.
The folio
contains 20-21 lines per page, the text is in Estrangelo. Each
page has one column of text and narrow margins. The letters are quite large. On
the one side of the folio the ink is relatively strong, while on the other side it
is rather faint. The margins, particularly the lower
margins, contain Arabic notes, some long and some short, written by several
hands.
It is not
clear whether the codex the folio was once excerpted from contained a “complete
version” of 4 Ezra, or whether the codex was an compilation of some sort. Outtier
suggests that it might have been part of a liturgical manuscript (p. 19), but he
does not provide more information than that. The folio itself does not give
away its former function (the first lines of the text have been cut off – there
might have been a rubric there but this remains speculation).
The Syriac
text of 4 Ezra on the folios are generally quite similar to the Ambrosianus version. There is
variance – there always is – but non that changes the content of the text as we know it. I
have counted 18 variant readings: some are alternative spellings (e.g. kl
instead of kwl), there are differences in punctuation, the relative
pronoun is added in a few places, occasional words are added or left out, etc. In addition, three words in verse 40 is
left out.
So how
about the date of the folio? The Syriac script has been dated paleographically
to the 6th century (Outtier) as well as to the 8th-9th
century (Briquel Chatonnet). If Outtier is correct, this fragment is among the oldest witnesses we have to any passage of
4 Ezra, possibly as old as, or older than, the version of 4 Ezra in the Codex Ambrosianus. And
even if Briquel Chatonnet is right, this 4 Ezra fragment is still pretty early,
compared to the Latin, Georgian and Armenian versions. I am however not a
paleographer and will not do anything else than to repeat Outtier and Briquel
Chatonnet’s points of view on this issue.
Thanks
are due to Nils H. Korsvoll!
*This blogpost has been edited*
