Today I have some real news for those of you who are fans of 2 Baruch
and 4 Ezra: Lections from 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra have been identified in yet
another, hitherto unpublished, Syriac lectionary manuscript.
Manuscripts containing (parts of) 2 Baruch, in particular, do not come
to light very often. This is the first time since the late 1970s/early 1980s
that a manuscript containing any part of 2 Baruch surfaces. The last manuscript
to appear was the Arabic Mount Sinai manuscript, nr. 589 of the Atiya handlist.
The last time a lectionary manuscript containing a lection from 2 Baruch
was identified was back in the early 1970s (Ms 77 of the A Konath collection). That
is forty years ago.
Sebastian Brock and Lucas Van Rompay's Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts and Fragments in the Library of the Deir al-Surian, Wadi Al-Natrun(Egypt) has just been published by Peeters Press. Congratulations
to the editors! This is a great accomplishment and very helpful for many of us.
One of the manuscripts described in the new catalogue is Dayr al-Suryan
Ms 33 (DS Syr 33), formerly MK 10bis. Unlike so many other codices, this lectionary
manuscript was apparently not brought to Europe in the 19th century but
remained in the Syrian Monastery. Although the existence of the manuscript was
already known, the content (i.e., the identity and order of the lections) of
this lectionary manuscript has as far as I know not been published before, and it
has definitely not been known among scholars of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra. I have not
had the chance to examine DS Syr 33 myself, but Brock generously shared his entry
on the manuscript with me some time ago and I have had the opportunity to work
on it for a while.
According to Brock, DS Syr 33 probably dates from the 13th century. The
manuscript unfortunately lacks the last folios and hence the colophon (which
was assumedly there), but the hand resembles the hand responsible for DS Syr 42,
which was copied in Tripoli, Lebanon, in 1221. It is unknown whether DS Syr 33
was copied in the Syrian Monastery, or whether the manuscript was brought there
later on. In any case, the list of readings of the manuscript is very similar, partly
identical, with the order of lections in Add 14686 of the British Library, which
according to the colophon was copied in the monastery in 1255. Add 14686 is a
manuscript I have worked on for a while now. (More on this manuscript on this
blog later.)
The lection from 2 Baruch in Ds Syr 33 is 2 Bar 44:9-15, identified in
the rubric as “From Baruch the Prophet”. It is found on folios 74v-75r and was
read on the Sunday of the Departed. There are two lections from 4 Ezra in the
lectionary manuscript. The first, 4 Ezra 7:26-42 identified as “From the
Prophecy of Ezra”, is found on folios 72v-74v and was read immediately before
the lection from 2 Baruch on the Sunday of the Departed. The second lection, 4 Ezra 6:18-28 (“From
Ezra the Prophet”) is one of the readings for the Feast of Mount Tabor (ff.
222r-223r).
As could be suspected due to the similarities between the two
manuscripts, the lections from 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra and the occasions of reading
in Ds Syr 33 are the same as in Add 14686. In Add 14686, 4 Ezra
12:31-38 is also read at the event of the Revelation of Joseph (ff. 16r-v). It
is possible that this event and the reading were originally there in DS Syr 33
as well, but the relevant folios are unfortunately missing from the codex. We
don’t know what the relationship between the two manuscripts is in terms of
production and copying, but it is at least likely that DS Syr 33 is somewhat older than Add
14686. In effect, DS Syr 33 is probably the oldest known lectionary manuscript attesting
to the explicit liturgical use of a passage from 2 Baruch.
So, what’s new and why is this important?
The fact that lections from 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra were read during
worship by groups of medieval Syriac Christians have been known for a while (W.
Baars, 1963; L.I.Lied, 2013). However, what DS Syr 33 shows us is that there probably was a “chain
of transmission” (I hesitate using “tradition”) of reading lections from 2
Baruch and 4 Ezra in West Syriac worship practice – at least in some monastic
milieus in the Middle Ages. I neither suggest that these lections and the texts
they were excerpted from were read by everyone, nor that they were the most
important texts in the world. I am saying that they were in use in a liturgical
tradition that is known for its lack of uniformity (or in other words: its
ability to adjust and to use texts and traditions creatively). DS Syr 33 is so
far the fifth known Syriac manuscript from this period that contains lections
from both or one of these texts. It shows us that passages once excerpted from
2 Baruch and 4 Ezra were read as "scripture"/biblical books/parts of the
“biblical story”/associated with the figures Baruch and Ezra, and that they
continued to be copied as such.
It is a big day! Go celebrate!
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