The “Egyptian Vulgate” in Europe: An Investigation into the Version that Shaped European Scholarship on the Arabic Bible

: This paper explores part of the history of those Arabic Bible manuscripts that traveled to Europe in the early modern period, focusing on Arabic manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles. These manuscripts played an important role in European scholarship about the Arabic Bible, Arabic teaching and learning in Europe, and textual criticism. When one looks at early European scholarship on the Pauline Epistles in Arabic in the 16 th and 17 th centuries, it is very noticeable that, by and large, it restricted itself to an examination of a single version. In this paper, I reconstruct the history of the three earliest manuscripts of this version to be studied in European scholarship: MS


Introduction
In the years from 1818 to 1821, August Scholz (1792-1852), a Catholic orientalist and biblical scholar, made many journeys to libraries across Europe seeking New Testament (NT) manuscripts.He wrote an account of his travels in his book Biblisch-kritische Reise, and in this book, Scholz wrote about all the NT manuscripts he encountered in each library he visited, whether they were in Greek, Latin, Syriac, or Arabic. 1 What attracts the attention when it comes to the Arabic NT manuscripts is that he always compared their texts to the text of the printed edition of Erpenius. 2 This edition of the Arabic NT was prepared in 1616 by Thomas Erpenius (1584-1624), the professor of Arabic studies at Leiden University-that is, two centuries before the time of Scholz.It was the first full Arabic NT to be printed in Europe, and its text was taken from Near Eastern manuscripts that will be discussed below.Those manuscripts which received particular attention from Scholz were those, such as MS Vatican, BAV, Ar. 13, whose text was rather different from that of Erpenius's edition. 3cholz was not the only one who undertook a comparison with this specific text.The NT scholar Franz Delitzsch (1813-1890), in his commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, also used Erpenius's text to compare with the text in MS St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, ANS 327. 4 That manuscript represents a different version from the one in the Erpenius edition, 5 however Delitzsch considered it to be the source text of the Erpenius edition because of the similarities he saw between them.NT manuscripts are even compared to Erpenius's edition in some manuscript catalogs of the oriental collections of European libraries: for example, in the catalog of the Bodleian Library's oriental manuscripts collection published in 1821, Alexander Nicoll (1793-1828) noted that the text of the Gospels in MS Oxford, Bodl., Or. 265 was identical to the Erpenius edition.At the same time, since the text of the Gospels in MS Oxford, Bodl., Or. 299 does not match Erpenius's edition, Nicoll offered the reader two pericopes from Matthew for comparison.He also commented that the text of MS Oxford, Bodl., Canon.Or. 129, which contains the Pauline and Catholic Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles, matches the Erpenius edition. 6hese examples and others imply that the Erpenius edition was used as a reference point for (at least some) European scholars whenever they encountered a manuscript of the Arabic NT. 7 Thus, Arabic Bible manuscripts were categorized as being either a manuscript whose text is identical to or similar to the text of Erpenius, or one of that small number of manuscripts whose text differs from it.This simple classification was performed for different units of the Arabic NT such as the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Pauline Epistles. 8he Erpenius edition was one single episode in a whole chain of European printed material of the Arabic Bible during the Early Modern period.Slowly, however, it became clear that, in the case of the Gospels, there was only a single version that had been used in all printed material before and after Erpenius, such as the 1590 Gospels, the Biblia sacra arabica (1671), the Paris and London Polyglots (1645 and 1657), and Lagarde's edition 4 Franz Delitzsch, Commentar zum Briefe an die Hebräer: mit Archäologischen und Dogmatischen Excursen über das Opfer und die Versöhnung (Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1857), pp.764-769.

5
A ‚version‛ in this context means a text that results from an independent translation process or a reworking of an existing Arabic translation through collation to another translation or source text.Several other scholars also compared the text of Erpenius to the texts they studied or edited.For example, Paul de Lagarde compared the variants in his edition of the Gospels to those of Erpenius in a table, see Paul de Lagarde, ed.Die Vier Evangelien Arabisch aus der Wiener Handschrift Herausgegeben (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1864).Another case of comparison with the Erpenius edition can be seen in Guidi's study of the Arabic Gospels, see Ignazio Guidi, Le Traduzioni degli Evangelii in Arabo e in Etiopico (Rome: Tipografia della r. accademia dei Lincei, 1888), pp.23-24.(1864). 9In the case of the Pauline Epistles, all of these printed copies similarly present a single version, except for the Polyglots, which include a different version. 10The version that had appeared in Erpenius's text seemed to be an ‚Arabic Vulgate‛, corresponding to the Syriac Vulgate-that is, the Peshitta version-or the Latin Vulgate. 11owever, in the 19 th century and particularly with the publication of Le traduzioni degli Evangelii by Ignazio Guidi in 1888, European scholarship started to realize quite how wide the range of Arabic Bible versions was; in his case, the range of versions of the Gospels.Guidi attempted to classify Arabic manuscripts of the Gospels into five versions. 12He recognized among these versions a text which was celebrated in the Egyptian Coptic Church, and which he found in around forty manuscripts as well as in the printed material mentioned above; he named this the ‚Alexandrian Vulgate‛. 13ifty-six years after Guidi, in his magisterial work Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur (GCAL), Georg Graf recognized several versions of each unit of the Arabic Bible.He connected each version to what he considered was its specific Vorlage-Greek, Syriac, or Coptic-classifying those versions whose origin he could not identify and those which he had no access to in an additional category of unknown source. 14Graf identified yet more manuscripts of the version that Guidi studied.It is not clear whether he is the one who took the lead in calling this version the ‚Egyptian Vulgate‛ or not, but he was the one who extended the label to other celebrated versions of different units of the Arabic Bible. 15So, for example, the version of the Pauline Epistles that is widespread in manuscripts and printed copies he named the ‚Egyptian Vulgate‛ version of the Pauline Epistles.
What we can see, then, is that it took European scholarship a long time, until the 19 th century, to grasp the diversity of versions that are exhibited by Arabic NT manuscripts and attempt to deal with it.In fact, scholars generally abandoned the study of the Arabic Bible altogether at around this time, because of its secondary nature and what they felt was its lack of usefulness for textual criticism. 16However, substantial research had already taken place in Europe on the Arabic Bible in the 16 th and 17 th centuries, and most of this work was based on this ‚Egyptian Vulgate‛.This paper follows the trail of the earliest manuscripts of this version of the Pauline Epistles to arrive at Europe, and the scholarship which was based on them.The paths of these manuscripts crossed in the late 16 th and early 17 th centuries in Western Europe, and they were a fertile source of scholarly activity, as will be examined below.
The history of Arabic Bible manuscripts, in general, has been examined as part of the broader history of Arabic learning and teaching in Europe, of Arabic book printing, or of missionary activity.In this scholarship, the focus has always been on the Pentateuch and the Gospels, and how those units participated in these processes.Vollandt, for instance, has examined the identity and history of manuscripts of the Pentateuch in the Polyglots and in the Biblia sacra arabica. 17Dennis Halft has recently considered the manuscript used in the 1590 Gospels in his study of the transmission of this version to the Safavid Iran. 18any manuscripts have been briefly mentioned in the extensive work of Hamilton on Arabic learning and teaching, 19 and he has devoted more space to them in discussing the relationship between Semitic languages and biblical studies in the Early Modern period. 20ones has also mentioned some of these manuscripts in his dissertation on the learning of Arabic in Europe, 21 but the manuscripts of the Arabic Bible are not his main focus, and they are mentioned purely as a means of learning and teaching Arabic. 22None of this research has looked in a coherent way at manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles in Arabic, and their history of transmission before and after arriving in the hands of European scholars has been over looked.
I will give, first, a general overview on manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles in Arabic in the Near East.Following that, some background is provided on the formation of Arabic collections in Europe, and in particular how this has affected manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles.Then a detailed description is given of the three manuscripts that form the focus-MS Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ar. 23; MS Leiden, Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden, Or. 217; and MS Leiden, Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden, Acad.2-before studying what is known about their history of acquisition.Finally, the ways in which these manuscripts have been used in the European scholarly realm, and how they have contributed to it, are explored.

Overview of Arabic Versions of the Pauline Epistles
Over three hundred manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles in Arabic are extant, with the manuscripts now located in many different places.In manuscripts dating to the 15 th century or before, fourteen versions of the epistles can be detected.These versions did not all take shape at once, nor even over a relatively short period; rather they appeared in different historical moments.
The first set of versions of the Pauline Epistles in Arabic that we know about appeared in the 9 th century.The four versions that have been found that date to this century all originate from Greek or Peshitta Syriac source texts.An example of a dated manuscript of one of these versions is MS Sinai, Ar. 151, which represents a translation made in Damascus by Bishr ibn al-Sirrī in 867; its text is based on the Syriac Peshitta. 23Another example, this time from a Greek Vorlage, is MS Sinai, Ar. 155 and its membrum disjectum MS London, British Library, Or. 8612; originally a single manuscript, this is dated to the 9 th century based on its paleographical features. 24In general, the surviving manuscripts from these early centuries are fewer in number than later manuscripts, but nevertheless, the manuscript evidence suggests that these versions continued to be copied from the 9 th century through to the 13 th century but disappeared after that.
By the late 12 th century and especially during the 13 th century, the rest of the versions arrived on the scene and some of them started to dominate, although the older versions were still in use, and two new versions in particular predominate.The first is a Peshittabased version, the version that has been called the Egyptian Vulgate, as mentioned above; in this paper we will refer to it as Arab Syr .The second version was translated from a Greek source text, and was very common in the Melkite Greek Orthodox tradition, particularly in liturgy.Later, it was also printed in the Paris and London Polyglots.These two versions eclipsed the older ones and were widely copied and distributed starting from the 13 th century on.
The earliest manuscript of Arab Syr which we know of is MS Sinai, Ar. 161, which dates to the late 12 th century, more precisely to 1192 CE. 25 It would appear to have been used in a Melkite denomination, since its liturgical rubrics bear signs of Byzantine liturgy.However, based on the manuscript evidence, it seems that this version was not accepted in this denomination following this, as no other manuscripts of this version are detected in it.In fact, Arab Syr prospered in the Coptic Church-of the 127 extant manuscripts of this version, fifty-three are found in Coptic churches or monasteries.The majority of the sixtyfour Arab Syr manuscripts currently in European repositories also bear witness to their Coptic provenance in their colophons, in their waqf or 'endowment' statements, in readers' notes, or by being Coptic-Arabic manuscripts.Similarly, a manuscript of this version that is now found in the Chaldean cathedral of Mardin, in modern Turkey, under the shelf mark Mardin, CCM 56, contains a colophon to the effect that it was written in the monastery of St. Macarius (Mercūriyūs), in Wādī al-Naṭrūn in Egypt. 26t certainly appears that Egypt was the main center of production of manuscripts containing the Arab Syr version of the Pauline Epistles.Interestingly, the Copts not only adopted Arab Syr , but they also adapted its text, using it as a base for new Arabic versions.These later versions were made by famous 13 th -century Coptic scholars such as Yūḥannā al-Qalyūbī, Ibn Kātib Qayṣar, and the priest Gabriel (Ġubryāl) who later became the Coptic pope (1268-70).It seems justified, then, that this version, while from Syriac origins, is called the Egyptian Vulgate.

Arabic Manuscripts in Europe
The history of Arabic manuscript collections in Europe is, rather oddly, closely connected to the long history of the separation between churches in the East and the West.Following the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE, Christological conflicts led to a clearer distinction between these churches.In the East, most of the churches were non-Chalcedonian.The Coptic and West Syriac churches, doctrinally 'Jacobite' or miaphysite, were distinguished from the East Syriac Church, which was doctrinally 'Nestorian' or dyophysite.While the former churches stressed the unity of the human and divine natures of Christ, the latter church stressed the individuality of these natures after their union, and was consequently considered heretical by other churches. 27Another Eastern church, the Melkite, 'Rūm' or Greek Orthodox Church, kept the Chalcedonian doctrine along with the Western Catholic Church.However, these gradually embarked on divergent paths.The doctrinal gap between the two churches was exacerbated in particular by their differing views on the procession of the Holy Spirit: from 'the Father and the Son' versus from 'the Father' alone.This conflict became known as 'Filioque', a Latin term meaning 'and from the Son'. 28n addition to these divisions within Christianity, the rise of Islam in the 7 th century represented a major challenge to all the Christian communities within the new formed Islamic territories, whether they were Chalcedonian or non-Chalcedonian.They became more involved in dealing with this new context, and in turn their isolation from Rome escalated.Not the least of the challenges were the various waves of conversion to Islam among these communities, which led to them becoming a minority. 29Another major challenge was the switch from their original languages (Coptic, Greek, and Syriac) to Arabic, which required adjustments to daily life, in the works they authored, and in translating their written heritage and scripture.In sum, both doctrinal differences and internal challenges widened the gap between the churches in the Islamicate world and the Western churches and strengthened their estrangement.
Many attempts at a union between the two sides took place across the centuries on the part of Rome.This may have been influenced by the end of the Crusades and the search for some cultural element with which to unite Eastern and Western Christians. 30One of the most important attempts at unity-and here the discussion begins to relate once more to the formation of Arabic manuscript collections-was the Council of Florence (1438-45).It was called by Pope Eugene IV and primarily aimed at uniting the Eastern and Western churches, an endeavor that was never truly achieved. 31However, this council proved to be a watershed moment in the formation of the oriental manuscripts collection of the Vatican Library.Arabic manuscripts presented to the pope on this occasion, mainly by the delegates of the Coptic Church, were the seeds of the huge oriental collection which has been growing ever since. 32Slowly, many such collections were formed in other European libraries and museums.The golden age for the acquisition of Arabic manuscripts, including biblical manuscripts, commenced at the close of the 16 th century and stretched into the 17 th century.For example, the Bodleian Library at Oxford had a single Arabic manuscript at the beginning of the 17 th century, yet by the end of that century it had amassed a collection of more than 1500 manuscripts. 33ttempts at unification took strengthen again at the end of the 16 th century, with the reign of two Coptic popes who showed a certain flexibility and willingness to unify with the Catholic Church: John XIV (pope 1571-85) and Gabriel VIII (pope 1587-1603). 34As a result, the learning of Arabic and the acquisition of manuscripts became crucial and heated topics during that era. 35Arabic studies departments were inaugurated in many universities, and missionary work was an element in the scholarly learning and teaching of Arabic.Arabic scholars were biblically oriented and used the text of the Arabic Bible in their learning and teaching and in producing grammar books. 36In Rome, the initiative was taken by Pope Gregory XIII (pope 1572-85) through the establishment of the Maronite College in 1584 for both Eastern Christians and other converts to Christianity from the Near East.Moreover, he was influential in establishing the Medici Press in Rome to print books in oriental languages.In 1622, Gregory XV founded the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, which systematically continued what Gregory XIII had initiated by promoting oriental languages. 37ollowing the Reformation, the Protestants saw in the Eastern Christians a rejection of the basic beliefs of the Catholics such as papal supremacy, despite their similar practices.This increased Protestant interest in Eastern Christians, with a desire to learn more about them. 38However, the learning and teaching of Arabic were less organized among the Protestants, and this need was felt by individuals who strove to learn Arabic in the absence of sufficient materials.In Rome, neophytes and converts were mainly responsible for transcribing Arabic manuscripts; however in Protestant areas (by which I mean primarily England, Germany, and the Netherlands), European scholars undertook this task themselves, and consequently there was a greater lack of manuscripts among Protestant scholars. 39Some of the most influential European scholars in these countries, William Bedwell (1563-1632) in England and Thomas Erpenius (1584-1624) in the Netherlands, for instance, never travelled to the Near East.In turn, they either had to transcribe Arabic manuscripts themselves, or depend on agents to buy Arabic manuscripts from.It is no surprise, then, that those manuscripts that were available were borrowed back and forth and shared by several scholars, each utilizing them for different purposes.Even if this were not the case for all Arabic manuscripts, it is very evident when it comes to manuscripts of involved delegates being dispatched back and forth, with little concrete result except for more Arabic manuscripts being brought to Rome; see Hamilton, ‚Eastern Churches and Western Scholarship‛, p. 225. 35For the learning of Arabic in Europe in the Middle Ages, see G. J. the Pauline Epistles-to the best of my knowledge, in these Protestant circles, only three manuscripts existed, to which we will now turn. 40e Pauline Epistles in Arabic in Europe Currently, eighty-five manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles in Arabic are known to be extant in European repositories. 41These manuscripts arrived in Europe over a long period, from the 15 th century to the 20 th century.It is not always possible to trace the whole acquisition history of a manuscript, however, we know of only three manuscripts that had reached the Protestant parts of Europe by the late 16 th century.In this section we draw a full profile of their backgrounds in the East before they were transmitted to Europe.

MS Vatican, BAV, Ar. 23 (Vatican, Ar. 23)
Vatican, Ar. 23 falls in two volumes with a total of 323 paper folios, mostly in five bifolia quires.The volumes are small (14 x 18.5 cm), and the average number of lines per page is 13. 42The manuscript is the work of an anonymous monk in the monastery of St Mercurius, in Egypt, and it was completed in AM 990/1274 CE. 43 The manuscript contains the Pauline Epistles, the Catholic Epistles, and then the Acts of the Apostles.The Pauline Epistles in this manuscript are divided into smaller chapters, following the Coptic system.The scribe had neat, large Naskh handwriting, with full diacritics, and there are regular margins containing some Coptic letters, probably to mark another division or readings in the church calendar.Old Testament quotations are marked in the margins by recording the name of the Old Testament book in Arabic.Although the scribe frequently wrote prayer requests at the end of the epistles, he never signed with his name. 40Although the version of the Pauline Epistles included in the Biblia Sacra Arabica is also Arab Syr , the discussion in this paper is limited to the three manuscripts in the Protestant side.For details on the history of the Biblia Sacra Arabica see, Vollandt, ‚Che portono al ritorno quì una Bibbia Arabica‛. 41In fact, there are 104 manuscripts in Europe containing the Pauline Epistles in Arabic, however nineteen of these are scholarly manuscripts transcribed in Europe, so are left out of the count for our purposes. 42 'the completion of [the transcription] of this book was on the twenty-second of Bābih in the year AM 990, in the monastery of the great Saint Mercurius, known as the Monastery of (Shahrāt), and the glory be to God for ever and ever.' MS Leiden, UBL, Or. 217 (Leiden, Or. 217)   Leiden, Or. 217 is a full NT manuscript in 262 paper folios, transcribed in the monastery of St. John the Little (Abū Yaḥnas al-Qaṣīr), Wādī al-Naṭrūn, Egypt, in AM 1059/1343 CE. 44 Its text is written in fully dotted, partially vocalized Naskh, in 21-23 lines per page, with no chapter divisions.Its contents are in the following order: The Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, the Catholic Epistles, the Acts of the Apostles, and Revelation.It measures 23 x 30.5 cm, and its quires consist of ten bifolia each.The bifolia of each book are individually numbered in Latin letters probably by a European scholar, so Romans consists of sixteen bifolia and 2 Corinthians has thirteen bifolia.The anonymous scribe frequently asks for prayers at the end of the individual books, and the only colophon follows the Gospels (f.127r); that is, it is nearly in the middle of the manuscript. 45he text of Leiden, Or. 217 is characterized by many mistakes and slips that the scribe has made, at least in the case of the Pauline Epistles.For example, Romans 3:5 should read 'I pronounce (anṭiq) this as a man', yet the scribe mistakenly added a letter, thus making it 'I go (anṭaliq) like a man'.Similarly, in verse 13 of the same chapter, the scribe missed the word taḥt 'below' in 'the venom of the vipers is below their lips'.These many slips have had an impact on the scholarly usage of this manuscript, as will be seen below.'And the completion of its transcription [the Gospels] was in the month of Bashans in the year AM 1059, in the monastery of Abū Yaḥnas (of the Ighūmans) in the Holy Desert, and the praise be to God for ever and ever.' a calendar. 46In fact, a careful reading of these notes (on ff.1v and 16r) demonstrates that they are birth notes made by an owner of the manuscript.He recorded the birth of his two sons as taking place in 1072 and 1079 according to the Coptic calendar, which correspond respectively to 1356 and 1362 in the Common Era; the first note was written in a Palestinian city, and the second was written in Cyprus.This dating implies that the manuscript was in use by 1356 CE, and therefore was produced at around this time or earlier.Paleographically, it is written in a fully vocalized style using diacritics, and would seem to have been produced in the 14 th century. 47The margins are full of Coptic letters, marking the liturgical readings and also in some cases giving the names of Old Testament books beside quotations from them.The scribe did not write a colophon in this manuscript; nevertheless, some prayers requests are scattered at the end of some books.

MS Leiden
Although Arabic manuscripts arriving in Europe during the Middle Ages came from different regions of the Near East, all three of these manuscripts show evidence of being associated with the Coptic Church.In the cases of Vatican, Ar. 23 and Leiden, Or. 217, this is clear from the colophons.The third manuscript, Leiden, Acad.2, does not have a colophon, but there are several hints that imply a Coptic provenance.The use of the Coptic calendar is one hint.The order of the Pauline Epistles in all three manuscripts is the order that was common in monasteries in Wādī al-Naṭrūn, with Hebrews as the fourteenth epistle. 48Further, the order of units of the NT which is found in manuscripts of Coptic provenance-that is, the Pauline Epistles, the Catholic Epistles, and then the Acts of the Apostles-is present in all three of these manuscripts.Leiden, Acad. 2 also shares with Leiden, Or. 217 one of the common Coptic introductions that usually preceded the Pauline Epistles.The manuscripts were all copied in the 13 th or 14 th century, and above all they reveal the same version (Arab Syr ), with little variation.Despite the similarities, there are some differences in layout, paratextual features, and paleographical features.For example, only Vatican, Ar. 23 is divided into chapters according to the Coptic divisions; the texts of the other two manuscripts lack any divisions.

The Three Manuscripts in European Scholarship
MSS Vatican, Ar. 23, Leiden, Or. 217, and Leiden, Acad. 2 made their separate journeys to Europe, and eventually reached the same circle of European scholars.Since the first 46 Voorhoeve, Handlist of Arabic Manuscripts, p. 50.Witkam has written that there is a note dated to 1079 without specification of the calendar as well, see Jan Just Witkam, Inventories of the Oriental Manuscripts of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam (Leiden: Ter Lugt Press, 2006), p. 9. 47 P. de Jonge, Catalogus Codicum Orientalium Bibliothecae Academiae Regiae Scientiarum (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1862), pp.180-183. 48Coptic-Arabic bilingual manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles have the Epistle to the Hebrews in the tenth position (between 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy), positioning it as the final epistle to the churches and before the Pastoral Epistles.
registered European owners of these manuscripts all lived in the late 16 th century, it is probable that all three arrived in Europe at around the same time.
The first known owner of Vatican, Ar. 23 in Europe was Guillaume Postel (1510-1581), who wrote an early work giving a basic outline of the Arabic language (among another twelve Eastern languages) and then the first comprehensive Arabic grammar. 49Postel made two voyages to the East.Although the first journey (1534-37) included a visit to Egypt as well as to Istanbul and Tunis, it seems that he obtained Vatican, Ar. 23 on his second trip (1549-50), to the Levant.At least, this is the conviction of Jones; 50 and it would not be surprising if it were true since the Coptic Church exported manuscripts containing this version of the Pauline Epistles to many places in the Near East.The manuscript did not remain in Postel's possession for long; five years later, he had to pawn his manuscripts to the Elector Palatine in Heidelberg.They remained there until 1622, when the library was sacked and its manuscripts were moved to the Vatican Library. 51All known scholarly activities related to Vatican, Ar. 23 took place during its presence in the Palatine library, especially during the 1580s and 1590s.After it arrived in the Vatican Library, it was kept in good condition; however, it was not further studied by scholars.
Vatican, Ar. 23 was involved in three types of scholarly works: copying, printing, and translation.Although it contains the Catholic Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles in addition to the Pauline Epistles, most of the work which used it involved part or all the Pauline Epistles.
The lack of materials available for learning and teaching Arabic provided strong motivation for scholars to copy those Arabic manuscripts to which they had access.These copies are usually called scholarly manuscripts, and nineteen such copies of the Pauline Epistles in Arabic are still extant. 52One of the most active scholars in this regard was Jacob Christmann (1554-1613), a professor of Hebrew and professor extraordinarius of Arabic at Heidelberg University. 53Christmann practiced his Arabic through copying Vatican, Ar. 23 several times.He copied a treatise of John Chrysostom from another source in addition to Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians from Vatican, Ar. 23 in what is now MS Groningen, UBG, 460. 54In 1608, he copied a few chapters from Romans in MS Leiden, UBL, Or. 2083. 55For the grammar book he authored, he used the Lord's Prayer from unknown source and a passage from Philippians from our manuscript as chrestomathy. 56he first printed book in Arabic in Germany was an edition of the Epistle to the Galatians that was printed in Heidelberg in 1583.Ruthger Spey, a pastor and Arabist, printed this epistle using woodcuts, and the text was taken from Vatican, Ar. 23. 57 Spey made no changes to the text, as he wanted to represent and teach the text as it was read by Arabic-speaking Christians. 58This Palatine printed book was very humble, especially in comparison to the Gospels that were luxuriously printed by the Medici Press in Rome a few years later (1590/1591). 59The book was intended to be a grammar, with an appendix containing Galatians to be used as a reading exercise.Nevertheless, Spey, as a biblical scholar, gave more attention to the epistle, which made the grammar section look superfluous. 60ranciscus Junius (1545-1602) was a theology professor at Leiden University, known for translating the Old Testament from Hebrew into Latin. 61He translated into Latin the Acts of the Apostles and the two Epistles to the Corinthians from Vatican, Ar. 23, to accompany a discussion of the value of Arabic in textual criticism. 62This translation was later used by John Mill (1645-1707) in his Greek NT edition, along with translations of other versions in languages that he did not speak, to assist him in his aim of restoring the original text. 63o evidence survives of scholarly copies of Leiden, Or. 217, unlike with Vatican, Ar. 23; nonetheless, two important printed books based on it do survive. 69The first is Erpenius's 1616 edition of the whole manuscript that was discussed in the introduction to this paper.It was the first complete Arabic NT to be printed in Europe, and as mentioned, it gained great fame among scholars.The second printed material was actually printed earlier than the edition of the whole manuscript, since it was a specimen in which Erpenius chose to offer the epistles to Romans and Galatians. 70Erpenius does not mention why he selected these two epistles for printing.Together they have roughly the same length as one of the Gospels, and this could be relevant.However, it might be that the selection was more theological in nature: Romans and Galatians are theologically difficult but important for the many Christian doctrines they discuss, and perhaps Erpenius was testing his ability to print these not-so-easy theological texts.
That part of Leiden, Or. 217 that contains the Pauline Epistles bears clear signs of European scholarly activity. 71Between the lines or in the margins, there are many variant readings, corrections of scribal errors, and completions of missing phrases or sentences, as well as a few Latin comments.These were added in a neat, small, Arabic script that is clearly written by a non-native hand.According to the preface of Erpenius in his edition of the NT, the person responsible for these marginalia was Raphelengius. 72The manuscript source that he used in making these comments and corrections was not described, but the evidence suggests that it was Leiden, Acad.2, to which we now turn.
The last of these three manuscripts, Leiden, Acad.2, was what we might call a 'phantom' manuscript, moving in the same scholarly circles as Vatican, Ar. 23 and Leiden, Or. 217, but never explicitly identified-often in this period, scholars will mention a manuscript of the epistles without specifying its owner, source, or shelf mark.For instance, Raphelengius himself mentioned in a letter to a friend, Abraham Ortelius, that his son Frans had obtained for him a manuscript of the NT from England, and that he intended to use this for his dictionary. 73It is easy to conclude that this manuscript is the one that Raphelengius used as the source in making his comments on Leiden, Or. 217.Yet, the identity of this manuscript is obscure.
One way to identify this manuscript is to compare the textual additions which Raphelengius wrote in Leiden, Or. 217 with the Arabic manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles that we know would have been available at the time.The difficulty remains, of course, about how to decide among the huge number of manuscripts that currently exist in Europe or ones that might have been lost.As a starting point, I will consider only manuscripts in the Netherlands.There is one manuscript in the University of Groningen, however it contains only a part of the Pauline Epistles, and thus could not have been the relevant one. 74Leiden University now has four manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles in Arabic.Two of them can be excluded for chronological reasons, and also because they do not contain the appropriate material;75 and the third is Leiden, Or. 217, which obviously was not the source of the variant readings.Thus, the only remaining manuscript for the purpose of this comparison is Leiden, Acad. 2.
At the end of Galatians 3:18, while Leiden, Acad. 2 reads 'the promise that He had promised (waʿadahu)', Leiden, Or. 217 reads 'the promise that was (kāna)'.Over the verb kāna in Leiden, Or. 217, Raphelengius has written waʿadahu, seen in Leiden, Acad. 2. One verse earlier, he has added the particle ann 'that', which was absent from the verse, so that it matches Leiden, Acad. 2 and reads 'I say this [statement], that (ann) the covenant'.Another interesting case is that of Galatians 3:21-22.Two words based on the same Arabic root were usually used to denote 'promise', mawʿid and mawʿūd.Leiden, Or. 217 has mawʿid in verse 21 and mawʿūd in verse 22, while Leiden, Acad. 2 has the opposite ordering of the terms.What Raphelengius has done is to add a wāw above the first term in Leiden, Or. 217, and omitted the wāw in the second by using a slash; that is, he has matched them exactly with Leiden, Acad. 2. This change seems pointless, since the two terms are synonyms, but it shows us how meticulous Raphelengius was in his work, and perhaps shows his desire to record all the variant readings between the two manuscripts.
Of course, it could be suggested that, since we are discussing a single version of the Pauline Epistles-the version known as the ‚Egyptian Vulgate‛ or here called Arab Syrmany other manuscripts would have exactly the same text as Leiden, Acad. 2 and Leiden, Or. 217.So how can it be asserted, for example, that Raphelengius did not use Vatican, Ar. 23, which we know was circulating among the same scholars, as mentioned above?In fact, Arab Syr is a very flexible text, and it is impossible to find exactly the same text in any two manuscripts of this version.We can illustrate this by comparing the relevant passages in Vatican, Ar. 23.For the first example above, Vatican, Ar. 23 reads exactly like Leiden, Acad.2, with waʿadahu.However, in the second case, it adds an adjective to 'the covenant', so that it reads al-mīthāq al-qadīm 'the old covenant'; this adjective is not found in Leiden, Or. 217, nor was it added by Raphelengius as one of the variant readings, and it is certainly not found in Leiden, Acad. 2. When it comes to the third example, Vatican, Ar. 23 uses the same term, mawʿid, for 'promise' in both Galatians 3:21 and 3:22. 76hus, it can be concluded that Leiden, Acad. 2 probably belonged to Raphelengius, who died in 1597. 77In that same year it was in the hands of Joannis Boreel (1577-1629), according to a Latin note on the manuscript: ‚Liber Joannis Boreel Middelburgensis 1597‛. 78Boreel was a known jurist and collector of manuscripts, though he himself is not known to have studied the manuscripts.While the timing is appropriate, it is not known how Boreel obtained Leiden, Acad.2, whether from Raphelengius directly or from his sons after his death.However, entering Boreel's collection did not mark the end of the activity around Leiden, Acad.2; it appears that this activity continued, although once again with the precise identification of the relevant manuscript obscure.
Another 'phantom' manuscript was used by the English Arabist Bedwell, who transcribed the Arabic Pauline Epistles in six manuscripts.Only in one of these did Bedwell transcribe the entirety of the Pauline Epistles together with the Catholic Epistles (MS Oxford, Bodl., Laud Or. 135); his other transcriptions contain only one or two epistles. 79He transcribed the Epistle to Philemon three times: once with a Latin translation (MS Oxford, Bodl., Selden Supra 50), which he dedicated to Francis Burley, another orientalist and a vicar; the second time with a Judeo-Arabic transliteration (MS Hamburg, Bible 19); 80 and the final time jointly with the Epistle to Titus along with a Latin translation (MS London, BL, Sloane 1796), which he dedicated to Andrews Lancelot, a scholar and bishop. 81Bedwell had intended to print this last transcription, but did not do so since some of his colleagues had just published the same epistle. 82Bedwell also separately transcribed Colossians (MS Cambridge, CUL, Dd.15.4) and 1 Thessalonians (Oxford, Bodl, Laud Or.How Bedwell accessed Leiden, Acad. 2 is obscure, but I can offer a hypothesis.Bedwell met Boreel during his visit to Leiden in 1612.At that time, though, he had already transcribed the manuscript several times, and was preparing to publish part of it.Thus, he must have had an earlier opportunity to copy it.We know that Boreel used to lend his manuscripts to other scholars, such as Scaliger and Erpenius-for example, Scaliger borrowed the Syriac-Arabic dictionary of Jesus bar ʿAli (MS Leiden, UBL, Or. 213), and Erpenius relied on a manuscript from Boreel's collection in preparing his Syriac edition of the Psalms (1625). 86Due to the lack of Arabic materials, it was not uncommon that persons and even libraries would lend their precious manuscripts. 87It is plausible, then, to believe that Boreel could have lent Leiden, Acad. 2 to someone who took it to England where it remained for a while.
The unpublished manuscript of Bedwell's Arabic-Latin dictionary (Paris, BNF, Ar. 4337) demonstrates that he had access to Leiden Acad. 2 during the making of the dictionary in 1599. 88Along its folios, he gives references to many verses of the Pauline Epistles in particular, and the Catholic Epistles and Acts of the Apostles occasionally.This means that during preparing this dictionary he had Leiden Acad. 2 itself, since his transcription does not contain Acts.Bedwell, however, offered the classical scholar Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614), in his letter to the latter in 1606 to provide him with all the epistles of the NT in one manuscript for publishing along with Casaubon commentaries. 89It is plausible to think then that by this time he had already transcribed MS Oxford, Bodl., Laud Or. 135, and that Leiden, Acad. 2 was not anymore at his disposal.It might be the case that Bedwell seized the opportunity to copy the entire epistles from the manuscript at some point; he would then have used his own transcription to make other copies later.Thus, the mysterious Oxford manuscript that later scholarship mentions as the source of Bedwell's transcriptions would in fact be MS Oxford, Bodl., Laud Or. 135, his own transcription of Leiden, Acad. 2.
The acquisition history of Leiden, Acad. 2 continues on, through continuous movement and obscurity.We do not know how and by whom it went back to the Netherlands (presumably before 1606), and who owned it following Boreel; however it is used explicitly in 1654 in another printed edition of some of the Catholic Epistles with corresponding and Cairo, COP, Bible 177 are copies of printed editions of Arab Syr . 95In addition, these two manuscripts both include the entire text of the NT, a trend that became more popular in Near Eastern manuscripts as a reflection of the printed editions of the NT.Prior to this, manuscripts generally contained only a single biblical unit, such as the Gospels or the Pauline Epistles, or sometimes two or three units together, such as the epistles together with the Acts of the Apostles.Manuscripts like Leiden, Or. 217, which contained the complete NT, were rare.
A whole scholarly circle in Europe worked on the basis of three manuscripts that contained the Pauline Epistles, using them as a tool for learning, teaching, copying, printing, and so on, and these three manuscripts consequently had a number of impacts on European scholarship.First, despite the existence of some variant readings, the text of these manuscripts represents the same version.Since some of these scholars collated these manuscripts, they became aware of this, and it contributed to the idea that this version is ‚the‛ Arabic Bible, the ‚Egyptian Vulgate‛.Second, scholarly study of the three manuscripts paid more attention to the Pauline Epistles, which were ideal for these purposes.Pragmatically speaking, they are shorter than the other NT books.As a result, several scholars transcribed individual epistles as a chrestomathy or even as a gift to their sponsors.Even Bedwell only switched to printing the Johannine Epistles after his plans to print one of the Pauline Epistles were ruined.This meant that the Pauline Epistles were printed in a chain of printed editions through the late 16 th and early 17 th centuries.They were printed as a unit within the full Arabic text of the NT, some of the epistles were printed on their own, or at other times two epistles were printed together in a volume.With the intense focus on these three manuscripts, it is not a surprise that all early printed editions of the epistles in Arabic (except for the ones in the Polyglots) are of the same version.
What remains to be answered is the question of why most European scholars in the 19 th century-even the Catholics among them, such as Scholz-used the edition of the Protestant Erpenius, and not the Catholic Biblia sacra arabica of 1671.In my opinion, the reason is the reputation that the text of the Biblia sacra arabica had as being an adaptation of the Latin Vulgate.Thus, it was known that its text was not the ‚pure‛ version, prepared and used by Near Eastern Christian communities, unlike the Erpenius edition.
It was not until 1844 that Petermann published his edition of Philemon in which he compared five different versions of the Arabic text of that epistle. 96This was, to the best of 95 See Jan Just Witkam, Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts in the Library of the University of Leiden
Angelo Maio, Scriptorum veterum nova collectio, e Vaticanis codicibus.vol.IV (Rome: Typis Vaticanis, 1831), p. 75; Graf, GCAL, vol.I, p. 175.43The colophon (ff.323 v -324 r ) reads:‫العظيم‬ ‫القديس‬ ‫بدير‬ ‫وذلك‬ ‫الأبرار‬ ‫للشهداء‬ ‫مائة‬ ‫وتسع‬ ‫تسعين‬ ‫سنة‬ ‫بابه‬ ‫من‬ ‫والعشرين‬ ‫الثاني‬ ‫في‬ ‫الكتاب‬ ‫هذا‬ ‫من‬ ‫الفراغ‬ ‫وكان‬ , UBL, Acad. 2 (Leiden, Acad.2) MS Leiden, Acad. 2 survives in 360 folios and each page has 17 lines.It contains the Pauline Epistles, Catholic Epistles, and Acts of the Apostles.For a while, it was misdated, having been dated as 1079 CE based on one of two notes in its margins.This probably happened because in Voorhoeve's catalog the date is given as 1079 with no specification of 44 Jan Just Witkam, Inventory of the Oriental Manuscripts of the Library of the University of Leiden, vol.I (Leiden: Ter Lugt Press, 2007), p. 96; Petrus Voorhoeve, Handlist of Arabic Manuscripts in the Library of the University of and Other Collections in the Netherlands.vol.V (Leiden: Brill, 1989), p. 532; and William F. Macomber, Final Inventory of the Microfilmed Manuscripts of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate, al-Azbakīya, Cairo.vol.II (Provo, Utah: Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, 1997), pp.43-46.Arabic manuscripts being prepared from printed copies is a known phenomenon for other units of the Arabic Bible as well; see, for example, the Pentateuch manuscripts in Vollandt, Arabic Versions of the Pentateuch, pp.272-276. 96Jul.Henr Petermann, ed.Pauli epistola ad Philemonem speciminis loco ad fidem versionum orientalium veterum una cum earum textu originali graece (Berlin: Sumptibus C.G. Lůderitz, 1844).my knowledge, the first critical interaction of the European scholarship with many versions of the Arabic Pauline Epistles in a single work.The five versions used by Petermann included, of course, the edition of Erpenius; however, his work also made visible the variety of the versions of the Pauline Epistles in Arabic, variety that had been hidden for a long time.This paper explores part of the history of those Arabic Bible manuscripts that traveled to Europe in the early modern period, focusing on Arabic manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles.These manuscripts played an important role in European scholarship about the Arabic Bible, Arabic teaching and learning in Europe, and textual criticism.When one looks at early European scholarship on the Pauline Epistles in Arabic in the 16 th and 17 th centuries, it is very noticeable that, by and large, it restricted itself to an examination of a single version.In this paper, I reconstruct the history of the three earliest manuscripts of this version to be studied in European scholarship: MS Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ar. 23; MS Leiden, Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden, Or. 217; and MS Leiden, Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden, Acad. 2. By tracing their history, I analyze the impact of this version, and it transpires that this version became, for a while, the standard one, what we might call the ‚Vulgate‛ of the Arabic Bible in Europe.Este trabajo explora parte de la historia de los manuscritos árabes bíblicos que viajaron a Europa a principios de la Edad Moderna, centrándose en los manuscritos árabes de las epístolas paulinas.Estos manuscritos jugaron un papel importante entre los estudiosos de la Biblia en árabe en Europa, la enseñanza del árabe y su aprendizaje en Europa y la crítica textual.Cuando uno observa los primeros estudios europeos sobre las epístolas paulinas en árabe de los siglos XVI y XVII, es muy apreciable que se dedica a la exanimación una única versión.En este trabajo, reconstruyo la historia de los tres manuscritos más tempranos de la versión estudiada por la academia europea: MS Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ar. 23; MS Leiden, Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden, Or. 217; y MS Leiden, Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden, Acad. 2. Para trazar su historia, analizo el impacto de esta versión resultando ser, por un tiempo, la versión estándar, que podríamos llamar 'Vulgata', de la Biblia árabe en Europa.Arabic Bible manuscripts, Arabic learning in the Early Modern period, Arabic manuscript acquisition history, the Egyptian Vulgate, the Erpenius edition.Manuscritos bíblicos en árabe, Aprendizaje del árabe en la Edad Moderna, Historia de la adquisición de manuscritos árabes, la Vulgata egipcia, la edición de Van Erpe. Abstract:Resumen: