New Sources for the Investigation of Archaic Biblical Textual Traditions Preserved by Mose bar Kepha: an Introduction

Abstract

Biblical research takes on a new scope in the examination of ancient Syriac texts. Once the Vetus Syra comes into the range of the scholar's vision, a radically new light is shed upon the transmission of the Old Testament and the Gospels in the Aramaic idiom. New avenues have been opened for the tracing archaic biblical traditions in Studies in the History of the Text in Syriac, Volume I (Louvain 1951) and Early Versions of the New Testament (Stockholm 1954) by Arthur Vööbus, through concrete patristic evidence and manuscript sources. The revelation of a Vetus Syra Unterlage behind the periscopes broadens the horizon for the scientific investigation of biblical texts in their archaic stratum (Vööbus 1951).