(with Paola Orsatti) ‘Two Syro-Persian hymns for Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday’, in The Persian language in history, ed. Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2011,

Contents

Preface IX

Abbreviations XI

I. HIstorICalanddesCrIptIvegrammarofpersIan 1

Claudia A. Ciancaglini The formation of the periphrastic verbs in Per-sian and neighbouring languages

3

Judith Josephson Definiteness and deixis in Middle Persian 23

Paola Orsatti The deictic suffix yā‑ye ešārat: a hypothesis on the origin of the relative ‑i in Persian

41

Gilbert Lazard Homonymie et polysemie : brève note à propos des deux enclitiques ‑i du persan

89

II. mIddlepersIan 95

Desmond Durkin-Mei-sterernst

The importance of the Middle Persian texts from Turfan

97

Hassan Rezai Baghbidi New light on the Middle Persian-Chinese bilin-gual inscription from Xi’an

105

III.non-standardnewpersIan 117

Elio Provasi New Persian texts in Manichaean script from Turfan

119

Ela Filippone The language of the Qorʾān‑e Qods and its Sistanic dialectal background

179

David N. MacKenzie (†) An index to “An Early Jewish-Persian argument” 237

Mauro Maggi andPaola Orsatti

Two Syro-Persian Hymns for Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday

247

Iv. lIterarynewpersIan 287

Mohammad Hasandust Etymological notes on some Classical New Per-sian words

289

Riccardo Zipoli Obscene vocabulary in Steingass’s dictionary 297

VIII Contents

v. dIaleCtology 307

Gerardo Barbera Minâbi notes 309

Daniele Guizzo Natural phenomena and celestial bodies in Tâleši: some onomasiological remarks

331

twosyro-persIanHymnsforpalmsundayandmaundytHursday

Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti

1.IntroduCtIon

The two Syro-Persian hymns for Palm Sunday (PS) and Maundy Thursday (MT) that are published here with translation and commentary are preserved in mss. Mingana Syr. 184 and 520 of the University of Birmingham. Both copies are late and are part of collections of hymns in various languages, all in Syriac script, included in manuscripts consisting of different codicological units assembled to-gether.1

Ms. Mingana Syr. 520 (= ms. A) consists of “17 leaves of varying sizes (about 220 × 160 mm) containing short treatises and fragments put together by me [i.e. Alphonse Mingana] from different East Syrian and West Syrian MSS.”.2 The codicological unit containing the Palm Sunday hymn is in West Syriac (serṭô) script and occupies ff. 6r-10v of the manuscript; it is dated to about 1800 C.e. and is described as follows by Mingana: “A collection of hymns used mostly for Palm Sunday. They are either in Syriac or in Garshūni [i.e. Arabic in Syriac script] (lgẗ gršwny); or in Armenian, but in Syriac characters (twb blšnʾ ʾrmnyʾ); or in Turkish, but in Syriac characters (twb blšnʾ twrkyʾ); or in Persian, but in Syriac characters (ʾyṣʾ [sic] ʿly qwl ʾlpʾrsy)”.3 The Persian texts are found on ff. 9v1-10r6 (MT) and 10r7-11 (PS).

Ms. Mingana Syr. 184 (= ms. B) measures 153 × 116 mm and consists of 154 leaves. Mingana describes it as follows: “Various leaves and short tracts put together from different MSS. by an eastern binder, probably the deacon ʿAbd al-Wāḥid of Mosul”. The component parts can be approximately dated from about 1400 to about 1860 C.e. according to Mingana.4 One of them, also written in

1 This article profited greatly from the advice of Sebastian P. Brock (Oxford) on Syriac manuscripts, literature, and liturgical usage, Jost Gippert (Frankfurt am Main) on the Ar-menian text in the collection, Domenico Parrello (Rome) on early Persian translations of the Gospels, and Peter Zieme (Berlin) on Turkish matters. Thanks are also due to Angelo Arioli (Rome), Alberto Camplani (Rome), Alessandro Mengozzi (Turin), and Nicholas Sims-Wil-liams (London). For other Syro-Persian materials, see Maggi 2003 (glosses), Orsatti 2003a (Baptism hymn), and Maggi 2005 (Matthew’s Gospel excerpt). The term Syro-Persian refers, on the model of Judaeo-Persian, to New Persian in Syriac script and, thus, differs from Ben-veniste’s “syro-persan” (1938; cf. Sundermann 1974 and Sims-Williams forthcoming), ap-plied to the bilingual Psalter in Syriac and New Persian in Syriac script from Bulayïq.

2 The manuscript is described in Mingana 1933, 956-958, quotation from col. 956.3 See Mingana 1933, 957 (C).4 The manuscript is described in Mingana 1933, 405-408, quotation from col. 405.

248 Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti

West Syriac script and tentatively datable to the late eighteenth or the nineteenth century according to a personal communication by Sebastian Brock, occupies ff. 85v-91v and contains “Various hymns in Syriac, Arabic, Turkish and Persian used for Palm Sunday. All written in Syriac characters”.5 The Persian texts are found on ff. 88r7-89r2 (MT) and 90v13-91r2 (PS).

The fact that MT diverges remarkably in the two manuscripts and the inclu-sion of MT and PS in a multilingual collection (Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Armenian) suggest that these hymns had a wide circulation.

Although a comprehensive study of all the hymns would presumably allow one to determine precisely the nature, use, and possible origin of the collection, we have here to confine ourselves to the Syro-Persian texts. These present many a difficulty in the way of interpretation because of the copying mistakes and vari-ant readings that crept into the text, especially in the case of MT, in the course of their apparently long manuscript tradition. We hope that our interpretation will enable others, more qualified than us on Syriac liturgical literature, to lo-cate possible parallel texts. The only other text about which some information has been published is the Turkish hymn that is described by Wilhelm Heffening as “Voraussage Christi von seiner Gefangennahme und Bezeichnung des Judas als Verräter sowie die Gefangennahme selbst”.6 From a provisional edition and translation made available to us by Peter Zieme, it appears that the Turkish hymn is fairly close in content, though not parallel, to MT and, thus, was intended for a similar liturgical usage (see below).

The following survey of the texts in the collection – all unidentified except for the first one – consists mostly of preliminary information provided by Se-bastian Brock and takes the more complete ms. A as a basis (the sequence of the texts differs in B):

f. 6r (not in B) is a well-known Syrian Orthodox Communion hymn, attrib-uted to Jacob of Serugh (d. 521), beginning “He at whom the fiery beings fear to look ...”;

f. 6v = B 85v1-86r8 is a Syriac sughitho (sûḡîṯô, though not so titled here) for Palm Sunday;

f. 7r1-10 (not in B) is a short Syriac piece, rather artificial in character, with rhymes (a sign of a medieval or later composition);

f. 7r11-v24 = B 89r13-90v12 (with no counterpart of A 7v19-24) is a Garshuni text that would seem to be the same text as the Turkish one, to judge from Peter Zieme’s translation;

f. 8r = B 86r9-v14 is another Garshuni text where the Arabic language is called ṭayyōyô in A’s heading;

5 See Mingana 1933, 406 (I). Though not recorded by Mingana, the same Armenian text as Mingana Syr. 520 8v1-8 is also to be found in Mingana Syr. 184 89r3-12.

6 Heffening 1936, 233.

Two Syro-Persian Hymns for Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday 249

f. 8v1-8 = B 89r3-12 is a short text described as armenōyô ‘Armenian’ in A;ff. 8v9-9r25 = B 86v15-88r6 is a Turkish hymn which would seem to belong

to Maundy Thursday or the Night Office of Good Friday, where the topics cov-ered would normally be covered;

ff. 9v1-10r6 = B 88r7-89r2 is a Persian hymn apparently for Maundy Thurs-day or the Night Office of Good Friday (MT) like the Turkish text and its Gar-shuni equivalent;

f. 10r7-14 = B 90v13-91r5 is a short piece for Palm Sunday, preceded by the title sughitho, that opens in Persian and turns into Syriac at 10r11-14 = B 91r2-5 (PS);

f. 10r15-20 = B 91r6-13 continues with Syriac prose, with sentences begin-ning “David prophesied ...”, “Zechariah prophesied ...”;

f. 10r21-23 = B 91v1-6 is a verse text beginning “How fair and beautiful are your streets, Jerusalem ...”;

f. 10v1-23 (not on B) is a Syriac text for Holy Saturday;f. 10v24-27 (not on B) is an Arabic text in Arabic script.

The Azeri dialect used in the Turkish hymn according to Heffening (“in Azeri (Aderbaiǧanisch-türkisch) abgefaßt”)7 and the presence of an Armenian text suggest that the collection of hymns under consideration hails from a region extending from Syria or Iraq to the Caucasus and points to (north-)western Iran as the place of origin of the Persian text. The presence of Arabic (in both Syriac and Arabic script) in the headings of various sections of the hymn collection and in marginal notes, as well as in some passages of MT, indicates that Arabic was the language currently used by Christians living in the region where the collection originated and was used, Syriac being the traditional language of religion. As for Persian, the annotation “according to Persian speech: it is elegant” that is found in A’s Arabic heading of MT attests, in a multilingual environment, the cliché of Persian seen as the language of refined literary expression and poetry.�

In both manuscripts, the Persian hymns are written on continuous writing lines with dots marking metrical units that mostly overlap with syntactic ones.9 MT (§ 6.1) consists of eight stanzas (B omits 7cd and 8) composed of four lines mostly of 10 to 13 syllables with rhymes and a caesura. The caesura divides each line into two halves with two main accents each. Rhymes are not always accurate, more care being taken over the last vowel than the following consonant. In 5a skṭ sax(a)ṭ for standard saxt ‘bitterly’ and 5b bxẗ bax(a)t for standard baxt ‘fate’,

7 Heffening 1936, 233.8 Concerning the opinions and ideas circulating in the East in the past centuries about

Persian and other eastern languages as referred to by European travellers and scholars, cf. Piemontese 1998, 399-400, Orsatti 2003b, 686-688, and in general Borst 1957-1963, passim.

9 In B, dots appear at times to be used at random (3b B, 4b B).


the only graphically different ṭ and t rhyme together.10 The rhyme schemes of the single stanzas vary as follows (subscript figures signal different consonants after the same rhyme vowel; see § 2 for vowels in parentheses):

1 a a a a ‑ān ‑ān ‑ān ‑ān2 a a₁ a a₁ ‑as ‑(a)t ‑as ‑(a)t3 a a a₁ a₁ ‑as ‑as ‑a ‑a4 a a a₁ a₁ ‑(a)d ‑ad ‑at ‑(a)t5 a a a₁ a₁ ‑(a)ṭ ‑(a)t ‑am ‑am6 a a b b ‑as ‑as ‑ān ‑ān7 ... b a b ... ‑as ‑ā ‑as8 a a b b₁ ‑a ‑a ‑īm ‑īn.

The very short PS (§ 6.2) comprises a beginning in Persian, while the rest is in Syriac. In both manuscripts, the hymn is preceded by what seems to be the title sughitho, a term that denotes Syriac metrical compositions “consisting of short stanzas of four lines with a single metre, usually 7 + 7 7 + 7 syllables”.11 The Persian portion of PS does not fit this pattern, however, since it is clearly a sequence of lines of variable length (4 to 9 syllables), all rhyming in ‑as and in part delimitated by interpunction. The Syriac portion does not seem to fit the sughitho pattern either. This situation suggest that sughitho here is not intended as a title for PS but merely recalls that a sughitho associated with Palm Sunday has to be sung before it.

The verse structure of the hymns, especially that of MT, bears a resemblance to pre-Islamic and early non-Classical Persian versification as outlined by Gil-bert Lazard.12

It is not clear why B omits MT 7bd and 8 and separates PS by inserting Ar-menian (89r3-12) and Garshuni texts (89r13-90v12) in between. One may tenta-tively surmise that this might depend on a wrong order of the folios in the source from which B was copied.

The contents of the two texts display similarities to the service of Palm Sunday and of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday according to the West Syriac liturgy of the Syriac Orthodox Church.13 MT can be divided into three parts. The first one

10 Quotations from the hymns are taken from the critical text, which is referred to by stanza numbers (1-8) and lines within each stanza (a, b, c ...). Reference to mss. A and B is only made when variant readings not accepted in the text display significant divergencies. The much more numerous quotations from MT are left unmarked and only the ones from PS are preceded by its abbreviation. Emendations are marked by an asterisk (*): the manuscript readings will be found in the apparatus. Interpunction is omitted.

11 See Brock 2008, 664-665, quotation from p. 664.12 Cf. the survey in Lazard 2006b with further references.13 Cf. e.g. Fenqitho, vol. 4, 784-820 (Palm Sunday); vol. 5, 140-181 (Maundy Thursday)

and 181-271 (Good Friday).


(sts. 1-2) refers to several moments in the arrest and passion of Jesus but does not coincide with the narrative of any particular Gospel (parallels from the Gospels taken from The holy Bible: new revised standard version are given in footnotes to the text). It rather appears as a compendium of elements taken from the four canonical Gospels. The second part (sts. 3-5) is a monologue in which Jesus, ad-dressing Peter, curses Judas, laments his betrayal, and foresees Peter’s denial. The last part (sts. 6-8) consists of comments about the events narrated, a profession of faith on the part of the believers, and a glorification of Simon Peter.

The Persian text of PS consists of six lines and refers to the signs revealed by Jesus of the end of the age and his future coming, to the image of Christ seated at the right hand of God, and to his power. The final part in Syriac recalls Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and, again, his future coming: “Hosanna in the high(est heaven), hosanna in the depths, hosanna to the son of David! Blessed (is the one) who comes in the name of the Lord and will come again!”.14

2.tHeHymnformaundytHursday,a“songwItHoutmusIC”

It is appropriate to deal here with some peculiar spellings that throw light on the performance praxis of MT, where several instances of an intrusive aleph occur, documented chiefly by B: 1a mḥplʾ maḥfil(ā) ‘council’, 1b ḥʾkmʾ ḥākim(ā) ‘gover-nor’, 1c srpʾ saraf(ā) ‘throwing away’, 1d B dstʾ dast(ā) ‘hand’, 3b šmšyrʾ šamšēr(ā) (twice), and 4d B ṣbʾḥʾ wqty ṣabāḥ(ā)vaqt‑ē ‘this morning’. This ‑(ā) can hardly be explained as an attempt at syricisation through the addition of the ending of status emphaticus,15 because it was added to Arabic words that mostly cannot be traced to Syriac roots and even to Persian dast and in the midst of the compound ṣabāḥ(ā)vaqt‑ē. The correspondence of 1d B dstʾ dast(ā) ‘hand’ to A dsẗ das(a)t (with anaptyctic ‑(a)- marked by means of tā marbūṭa) shows that these are alterna-tive ways of transforming dast into a disyllable and indicates that the extra vowels have no real linguistic value but merely a metrical function. In A, an additional ‑(ā) is found only in 1b ḥʾkmʾ ḥākim(ā) ‘governor’ and 3b šmšyrʾ šamšēr(ā) (twice), but there are numerous instances of ‑(a)t: 1b rpẗ raf(a)t ‘went’, 1d, 2a, 2b (twice), 2d, 3a, 6d dsẗ das(a)t ‘hand’, 2b *mydʾnsẗ *mēdānis(a)t ‘he knew’, 2d nqẗ naq(a)t ‘money’ (for standard naqd, see § 7), 3a ġwpẗ, 4a kwpẗ guf(a)t ‘he said’, 4d wqẗ vaq(a)t ‘time’, and 5b bxẗ bax(a)t ‘fate’. Spellings with ‑(a)t are not found in B, which, besides ‑(ā), resorts to other solutions, so that, corresponding to A guf(a)t, B has 3a, 4a jpwt, that can scarcely represent anything else than the disyllabic scanning

14 Cf. Mt 21.9, 15, Mk 11.9-10, Lk 19.38, and Jn 12.13.15 See Paul 2003, 182 n. 18 on aramaisation through an extra aleph at word end in Judaeo-

Persian texts; and cf. Orsatti 2007, 111-112 for the interpretation of some spellings in the Judaeo-Persian legal document from Ahvaz.


guf(u)t with anaptyctic ‑(u)‑, and, corresponding to A vaq(a)t, B has a mistaken 4d wqty vaqt‑ē with the addition of the suffix ‑ē, that provides the required number of syllables but destroys the rhyme. The fact that 3a, 4a guf(a)t / guf(u)t ‘he said’ occur immediately before direct speech, where one could expect the emphatic form guftā ‘he said’ that is common already in the earliest texts,16 confirms, if necessary at all, that ‑(ā) and -(a)t/-(u)t are alternative ways of prolonging words.

Syriac hymnody is based on the principle of a model melody that is estab-lished for the first stanza of a hymn and is not only retained for the subsequent ones but can also be applied to new hymns, thus producing contrafacta in the strict sense of the word. The incipit of the text originally sung to the model melo-dy is given at the beginning of the new hymns, though the incipits are not always consistent and several titles may refer to a single melody.17 One can safely pos-tulate that MT is a contrafactum whose model melody was originally composed for a Syriac hymn. It is unfortunate that, like most Syriac liturgical manuscripts, the two copies of MT lack musical notation, but a reference to the original hymn providing the name of the model melody is probably to be seen in the Arabic title “O my Father, listen!” in the heading that precedes the hymn in A, because this does not seem to be in line with the contents of MT but recalls Jesus’ prayer to the Father in Gethsemane (Mt 26.36-46, Mk 14.32-42, Lk 22.39-46, Jn 17.1-26) before his arrest and delivery to Pilatus with which MT opens. That the Syriac hymn originally associated with the model melody is referred to by its Arabic title may not be surprising since, as we have seen, Arabic was probably the cur-rent language of Christians in the region where the hymn collection originated and was used.

However, the verse structure of MT outlined above, with its varying number of syllables per line (§ 1), is a changing metrical pattern noticeably different from Syriac hymns, that were characterised by isosyllabism, so that the Persian text had to be prolonged through extra syllables in order to fit at least the model melody though not necessarily the isosyllabic pattern of the Syriac hymn. The same difficulty confronted the Manichaean Iranians in Central Asia, who also adopted the contrafactum technique based on earlier Manichaean hymns in Syriac and eventually represented the model melody by developing a cantillation system that “may have begun earlier with the sporadic writing of aleph at the end of words in hymn texts which were to be prolonged in singing with the syllable /-ā/. Such prolongation was stand-ard in Manichean hymnody, and /-ā/ is frequently added in the ordinary [i.e. non-cantillated] writing of hymn texts. ... Such casual occurrences of /-ā/ are normally [found] with the chief words in a verse and so may indicate points of

16 See Lazard 1963, 453 § 763.17 See Husmann 1980, 478-479.


musical emphasis and elaboration”,18 as is likely to be the case with MT. While prolongation in singing by means of ‑(a)t/‑(u)t in MT, which presumably rests on the lento pronunciation of words with final consonant clusters consisting of a fricative and ‑t, is unparalleled, prolongation by means of ‑(ā) is not only found in Manichaean hymns in Middle Persian, Parthian, and Sogdian,19 but also occurs in Early and Classical New Persian, where the enclitic particle ‑ā is used to underline words expressing address, exclamation, wish, exhorta-tion, and interrogation,20 as well as in guftā introducing direct speech, and is especially common in poetry where it frequently occurs, e.g. in Firdawsī’s Šāhnāma, at the end of hemistichs for recitation purposes after verbs without any of the aforementioned values.21

3.tHelanguageoftHeHymns

The hymns under consideration are at times corrupt and MT is even preserved in two recensions, whereas PS is virtually exempt from variants but not from mistakes, which suggests that the texts have undergone a long transmission. Not-withstanding this, if one judges from the critical text, established chiefly on the basis of the more conservative ms. A, as well as from some peculiar spellings, it is apparent that the two hymns display the same language and that this is charac-terised by non-standard, dialectal, and probably archaic features that throw some light on their area of origin and date of composition.

A confirmation of the probable origin of the hymns, suggested by their inclu-sion in a collection that also contains Armenian and Azeri Turkish texts (§ 1), and of their subsequent transmission by copyists from western or north-western Iran is provided by two linguistic features that are reflected in variant spellings of B and A respectively. A pronunciation peculiarity is revealed by B’s spellings of the verb guftan, whose five occurrences in MT are written with j- instead of g- as against PS 1a, PS 1d gwpts guftas. The spellings with j- are 3a B, 4a B jwpt guf(u)t ‘he said’, 4c B myjwnm for *myjwym *mēgōyam ‘I say’, 6a B jwpts guftas ‘said’, and 7b B myjwnt for *myjwyt *mēgōyat ‘he says’. These attest the palatalised pro-nunciation of g even before back vowels, that is characteristic of Persian varieties influenced by the Turkish adstratum especially in western Iran, while e.g. “in Dari, where the Turkish influence was perhaps lesser, [the] consonants /k/, /g/ are lit-

18 Brunner 1980, 353-354.19 See Gershevitch 1954, 147 § 974 and Brunner 1980, 350-351.20 See Lazard 1963, 451-453 §§ 757-762. The various values of ‑ā are dealt with by Šams-i

Qays 206-209.21 See Lazard 1963, 453-454 § 764 and Lazard 1964, 45.


tle palatalized”.22 Accordingly, the variant 2b A myzʾnsẗ mēzānis(a)t for *mydʾnsẗ *mēdānis(a)t ‘he knew’ with zān‑, instead of the typically South-Western dān‑ of Persian (cf. 3c, 5a, 5c mydʾnm mēdānam and 2b B mydʾns mēdāna ‘he knows’),23 is better explained as an influence of the local North-Western language of the copy-ist of A rather than as an outright misspelling. On the other hand, the devoicing of final ‑d (see § 7 on 2d naq(a)t ba das(a)t) is dialectologically hardly significant.

A striking feature of the hymns is the comparatively high frequency of 3 sg. perf. forms, e.g. 2a krds kardas ‘he did’, often with resultative, i.e. intransitive or passive value. Their frequency may be due to the exigencies of rhyme, but they are of interest because of their form, as they can be regarded (1) as ordinary per-fects with contraction of the full past participle (karda) with the auxiliary as(t), (2) as forms of the so-called perfect of Nishapur, that is indistinguishable from the contracted regular perfect in the 3 sg.,24 or (3) as consisting of the auxiliary added to the old past participle (kard), which seems not unlikely on account of the occurrence of the short past participle 3b ʾmd āmad ‘he who came’ (see be-low).25

Several features can be regarded as characteristic of the spoken language or more generally as non-literary or non-standard:

– loss of final ‑d in the 3 sg. pres. ending ‑ad (see below);– loss of final ‑s in ‑as < ‑ast both as auxiliary in the 3 sg. perf. and as copula

(see below);– loss of final ‑d in the 3 pl. ending ‑and (see § 7 on 2d kušan);– use of “deictic ‑ē” after a substantive preceded by a demonstrative in 6a ʾyn

wʿdy īn va dʿ‑ē ‘this promise’, B ʾyn wʿzy īn vazʿ‑ē ‘this hint’, and in the adver-bial form 4d B ṣbʾḥʾ wqty ṣabāḥ(ā)vaqt‑ē ‘this morning’.26

– omission of the preposition ba (see § 7 on 1b dar‑i ḥākim(ā)).

Concerning the first two features, the reduction of ‑ad and ‑as to ‑a is not directly attested but can be deduced from the manuscript spellings and their use in rhyme. The copula is always spelled -(ʾ)s joined on to the preceding word – with the only exception of 5c B -st ‑ast in a non-original variant passage – and the 3 sg. perf. forms are likewise spelled with -(ʾ)s. However, they each one rhyme once with 3 sg. pres. forms whose ending is also spelled -s (3d mykwns, 8a mkwns), a spelling that is found in non-rhyme position, too, and alternates with the expected spelling -(ʾ)d ‑ad. One cannot but conclude that the 3 sg. of the copula and the perfect (‑as) and of the present (‑ad) all had a colloquial variant ‑a and that the spelling -(ʾ)s,

22 Pisowicz 1985, 115 with n. 26.23 Cf. Cheung 2007, 466-467 s.v. *zanH2.24 See Lazard 1963, 340-341 §§ 480-481.25 See Lazard 1963, 342 § 485.26 On the deictic suffix, see Orsatti in this volume.


historically justified for the copula and the perfect, was unduly applied to the present as well. In the text edition (§ 6), the spellings -(ʾ)s for the copula and the perfect will be transcribed ‑a only when in rhyme with the 3 sg. pres. ending ‑a in 3d, 8a mēkuna (see § 7 on 2a qabūl kardas and 3c karda).

The three last colloquial features listed above are already to be found in early texts and could point to a high though hardly determinable date of composition of the hymns. The hypothesis of an early date of composition is lent support by several phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntatical features that have a decidedly archaic appearance, though some of them may just reflect dialectal peculiarities:

– preservation of the aspiration in *sīḥ ‘thirty’, ḥaz ‘from’, and ḥān ‘that’ for standard sī, az, and ān (see § 7 on 1c *sīḥ *manyā, 2c kujā, and PS 1d ḥān);

– probable preservation of the majhūl vowels ē and ō in what is a western vari-ety of Persian (see § 4);

– occurrence of an old past participle without the suffix ‑a and probable forma-tion of the perfect from short past participles (see § 7 on 3b šamšēr(ā) āmad šamšēr(ā) raftas, 2c kardas, and 3c karda);

– use of the negative nominal prefix nā‑ instead of the verbal prefix na‑ before participles in perfect forms (see § 7 on PS 1e nādādas);

– use of hamgūn as an adverb (see § 7 on PS 1c Pisar hamgūn nišastas);– use of kujā as a declarative conjunction and a modal adverb (see § 7 on 2c

kujā);– agreement of a verb in the singular with a plural subject designating living

beings and preceded by a numeral (see § 7 on 1b raf(a)t);– agreement of a verb in the singular with two singular substantives designat-

ing things (see § 7 on 6a Tawrāt u Zabūr īn va dʿ‑ē guftas).

4.ortHograpHy

The spelling conventions correspond largely to the ones that prevail in the Gar-shuni manuscripts and, among Syro-Persian texts, they agree especially with the orthography of Matthew’s excerpt, but they differ in part from the ones used in the Syro-Persian translation of the Psalms from Bulayïq, the Baptism hymn, and the Persian glosses contained in East Syriac exegetical texts of the eight to tenth centuries.27

In the two manuscripts, the Syriac letters ( ,ʾ b, g, d, h, w, z, ḥ, ț, y, k, l, m, n, s, ,ʿ p, ṣ, q, r, š, t) are fundamentally used with the same phonological reference as the corresponding letters of the Arabo-Persian script.

27 See Aßfalg 1982, 301-302 and Mengozzi 2010 for Garshuni and n. 1 above for refer-ences to Syro-Persian texts.


In the Syriac writing system, the letters <g> <d> and <k> <t> can be used in association with an overdot marking the occlusive pronunciation (qûššōyô) or an underdot marking the fricative pronunciation (rûkkōḵô). The use of such overdots and underdots is not mandatory, however, so that these let-ters without dots are potentially ambiguous. The following are used in the Per-sian hymns: <k> without dots and with overdot or underdot to represent /k/, /x/, and even /g/ in 4a kwpẗ guf(a)t ‘he said’ and 4d *krdʾny (ms. xrdʾny) *gardānī ‘you will turn round’, and <g> without dots or with overdot to represent /g/. The letter <x> (i.e. <k> with underdot) representing /x/ is more frequent in B and is distinguished from <k> only in 2a xwub xūb ‘pleasantly’ (B kwb!), 4a B sxrywṭ Sixaryūṭ ‘Iscariot’, 4b B xsy xāsi ‘shameful’ (from Ar. xāsiʾ with omission of hamza), 5b bxẗ bax(a)t ‘fate’ (B -bxt), 6b xlʾṣ xalāṣ ‘salvation’, and 8b xwdʾy xudāy ‘God’, while there are no occurrences of words containing /γ/, which could have been represented as <g> with an underdot.28 The letter is always written without dots and is commonly used to represent /f/, while /p/ is written once in PS 1c psr pisar ‘son’ and once in 8b byk payk ‘apostle’ on the model of early Arabo-Persian orthography.29 The letter <t> is never used with an underdot as a counterpart of Arabo-Persian <>, so that 5a B sbṫ rptr sābitraftār ‘steadfast’ has <s> to correspond to Ar.-Prs. s (sābit ‘firm’), though this might be an occasional usage due to a misreading for an original saxt ‘bit-terly’.

Only in A, <k> also represents /g/ on the model of early Arabo-Persian or-thography in e.g. 4a kwpẗ guf(a)t ‘he said’.

In addition to the ordinary Syriac letters, a <g> with a stroke in its mid-dle (transliterated j) is used to represent both j and c in e.g. 2b jmhwr jumhūr ‘crowd’ and PS 1b jy ci ‘what’ (twice) (but <g> without diacritic occurs in PS 1e gwʾb javāb ‘answer’ and 5a gšm cašm ‘eye(s)’), and a <h> with two dots above (transliterated ẗ) is a graphic calque of the Arabic tā marbūṭa in e.g. 5c sʾʿẗ sāʿat ‘hour’. It is noteworthy that -ẗ represents the enclitic 2 sg. personal pronoun ‑at in 8a rʾḥẗ mkwns rāḥ‑at mēkuna ‘it makes you contented’. For tā marbūṭa as a means to add a prolongation vowel in e.g. 1b rpẗ raf(a)t ‘went’, see § 2.

When possible, the orthography of the hymns reproduces the Arabo-Persian one. This is especially clear in the spellings of the Arabic loanwords, where the “only Arabic” letters are transliterated by means of <ḥ>, <ṭ>, <ʿ>, and <ṣ> of the

28 In Matthew’s Syro-Persian excerpt (Maggi 2005), /γ/ is represented as <g> with an underdot (3 byġmbrʾn payġambarān ‘prophets’). This would have been better transliterated as γ (i.e. byγmbrʾn payġambarān) in order to keep it distinct from <g> with overdot (i.e. ġ for occlusive /g/) occurring in other Syro-Persian texts, e.g. in the hymns presented here.

29 This usage is common in Matthew’s excerpt, where = /f/ and = /b p/ are found (Maggi 2005, 642).


Syriac alphabet: 1a mḥplʾ maḥfil(ā), 8c mḥpl maḥfil ‘council; Church’, 1a ḥnʾn Ḥannān ‘Annas’, 1b ḥʾkmʾ ḥākim(ā), 2d ḥʾkm ḥākim ‘governor’, 2a, 4a skrywṭh Sixaryūṭa ‘Iskariot’, 3a msyḥy Masīḥā ‘Messiah’, 3d ṭamʿkʾr ṭamaʿkār ‘greedy’, 2a etc. ʿysy Īʿsā ‘Jesus’, 4d ṣʾbʾḥʾ ṣabāḥ(ā) ‘morning’, 6b, 6d klʾṣ xalāṣ ‘salvation’, 6c rḥmʾn raḥmān ‘merciful’, 6d šyṭʾn šayṭān ‘devil’, 7b, 8b ḥq ḥaqq ‘right, truth’, 8a rʾḥ rāḥ ‘contented’, 8d mḥbẗ maḥabbat ‘love’, PS 1f ṣʾḥb ṣāḥib ‘possessed of’. In A, <ḥ> and <ṭ> are even used for Persian words: 2c, 3c, 5a ḥ(a)z ḥaz ‘from’ (misin-terpreted in B as 2c, 3c ḥr ḥar ‘every’ and 5a yr yār ‘friend’), 4c sṭ saṭ ‘hundred’ (for standard ṣad) and 5a skṭ sax(a)ṭ ‘bitterly’.

For <ẓ>, failing a corresponding Syriac letter, Syriac <ṭ> is used in 8c tʿṭym taʿẓīm ‘majesty’ and PS 1f ʿṭym ʿaẓīm ‘great’, a solution that probably rests on the fact that the Arabic letters <ṭ> and <ẓ> are distinguished only by a point.

Besides in the proper name 1a qyʾpʾ Qayāfā ‘Caiaphas’, Syriac <q> is used for Arabic /q/ in e.g. 2a qbuwl qabūl ‘submission’, 5a, 5c qd(i)ym qadīm ‘in advance’, 4d wqẗ vaq(a)t ‘time’, 7b yʾqynʾn yaqīnan ‘surely’, but is also used for k before the back vowel u in the Persian word 2c, 3c q(o)wj(a)ʾ kujā ‘where’.30

No Arabic words with <ẕ> occur unless *mwʾxyd muʾāxiẕ ‘chastiser’ hides behind 5d B mwʾxyr in an obscure variant passage, in which case ẕ would be represented by <d>.31

Arabic orthographic signs used only in A are the tanwīn (transliterated n) in 7b yʾqynʾn yaqīnan ‘surely’ and 8c dwlẗn dawlatan ‘in triumph’, and the tašdīd (transliterated ː) in 7b ʿysayːy Īʿsayyī ‘Christian’. A raised Arabic yā (transliter-ated y) is used in the catchword ʿysyyy on f. 9v of A apparently in order to avoid the possible misreading of <yy> as <ḥ>.

Implosive n is not written in 3a mkw maku ‘do not do!’ for standard makun.The same consonant at the end of a word and the beginning of the following

one is written once and the two words are joined in 5a ḥaz gšmĀy ḥaz cašm mōī ‘you will weep from your eyes’ and 5b rptr raft tar ‘has gone to’ (< raft dar by assimilation, see § 7).

Leaving aside the letters of the Syriac alphabet which have an exact cor-respondence in the Arabo-Persian script, as well as wrong or occasional spell-ings, the correspondences between the Syriac letters and their transliteration and transcription can be summarised as follows as far as consonants are con-cerned:

30 Cf. the occasional usage of <q> for k before back vowels in the Baptism hymn (Orsatti 2003a, 167). In the Syro-Persian glosses, <q> is used for k also in other phonological contexts (Maggi 2003, 118). The spelling of kujā with g‑ in a Manichaean text, which Henning regards as the result of the voicing of k after n, is a different case (v‑īn gujā ‘and this which ...’; Hen-ning 1962, 90).

31 Cf. 12 madbḥ maẕbaḥ in Matthew’s excerpt (Maggi 2005, 642 and 646).


Syriac script Transliteration Transcription b b, p<g> g g, j<g> with overdot ġ g<g> with a stroke in the middle j j, c<h> with two dots above ẗ ‑at<ṭ> ṭ ṭ, ẓ<k> k k, g<k> with underdot x x<k> with overdot (only in B) k k p f, p<q> q q, k

Vowels are written by means of a mixed system which combines Syriac and Arabo-Persian usages. Thus, <ʾ>, <y>,<w> are mostly used as matres lectionis for the long vowels ī, ē, ū, ō, and the diphthongs ay and aw according to Arabo-Persian usage, but occasionally also for the short vowels i and u. Moreover, ei-ther the Arabic vowel signs fatḥa, kasra, ẓamma (transliterated a, i, u) or, much less frequently, the Syriac vowel letter zəqōô (transliterated ο) and vowel points zəqōô, ḥəḇōṣô, ʿəṣōṣô (transliterated Ā, Ī, O) are used as vowel diacritics to mark the otherwise unwritten short vowels a, i, u and, occasionally, in addition to ma‑tres lectionis marking long vowels. Thus, if we leave the Garshuni and Syriac headings and a few doubtful cases out of the picture, the following spellings oc-cur (more frequent spellings are listed first):

initial a ʾ ā ʾ ī ʾy, ʾiy u conj. w (always joined on to the following word)internal a not written, a, ʾ ā ,ʾ a ,ʾ not written, a

i not written, y ī y, iy, Īy, not written ē y, not written ay y u not written, w, οw, Ow ū w, uw ō w, Ā

aw wfinal a h, s (3 sg. pres. ending) ā ,ʾ a ,ʾ y (alif maqṣūra) i not written (ezafe), y (monosyllables)


ī y, Īy, ʾy (2 sg. ending) ē y u w ō w.

The ezafe particle is not written even after vowels, while the conjunction u/va is always written as <w> joined on to the following word, e.g. 1a wḥnʾn u Ḥannān ‘and Annas’, 8c wtʿṭym va taʿẓīm ‘and majesty’. The odd spelling 4d B ʾw u results from a misinterpretation of the passage on the part of the copyist (see § 5).

Differently from B, where internal a and ā are written with or without aleph due to the influence of Syriac that does not mark every internal ā by aleph, A distinguishes the two vowels fairly accurately as in Arabo-Persian orthography with only few exceptions: 1d rmʾd, 4b rʾmd ramad ‘he flees’, 4d ṣʾbʾḥʾ ṣabāḥ(ā) ‘morning’, 7b yʾqynʾn yaqīnan ‘surely’, 8c srsr sarāsar ‘all’, and PS 1d *mʾrd *mard ‘man’. However, the aleph representing short a in the 3 sg. perf. 6b ʾmdʾs āmadas ‘he came’ and PS 1e nοʾddʾs nādādas ‘he did not give’ and in the 3 sg. pres. 1d rmʾd ramad ‘he flees’ and 3d A mykwnʾs mēkuna ‘he does’ is better ex-plained as a separate writing of ‑as and ‑a(d) respectively and can be compared with the similar spelling of the 2 sg. 4b B dydʾy dīdī ‘you saw’ (or dīd‑ī ‘you have seen’).

The existence of the majhūl vowels ē and ō is indicated by the fact that the verbal prefix mē‑ is written either with or without <y> (five and four times re-spectively), while internal ī is always written except once in 3a A msḥy masīḥā, and by the fact that ō – usually written <w> – is written once through Syriac vowel points in 5a ḥaz gšmĀy az cašm mōī ‘you will weep from your eyes’, where the Syriac vowel diacritic zəqōô (Ā), pronounced ā in East Syriac and ō in West Syriac, is used to note Persian ō. The corresponding vowel letter (ο = Ā) occurs as a diacritic for the Prs. back vowel ā in PS 1e nοʾddʾs nādādas ‘he did not give’. Even the final short and presumably lax back vowel ‑u of 3a maku is written with aleph (West Syriac ô) in B mkʾ32 and, on the contrary, ‑ō‑ of Syr. Qeryōnô ‘Scrip-ture’ is rendered by <w> = ō in 2c krywnʾ Kiryōnā (cf. also 3c B ḥr\qw/j[[w]]ʾ ḥarkujā with -w replaced by -ʾ).

On the model of the Arabic alif maqṣūra, <y> at word end is used in 2a, 4a, 6b ʿysy ʿĪsā ‘Jesus’ and 3a msyḥy Masīḥā ‘Messiah’, while <y> with two horizontal underdots (transliterated ÿ) is used in 7b B ʿysʾyÿ ʿĪsayī ‘Christian’ as mater lectionis for /ī/ after another <y> but not after other consonants (cf. 4 αʾrαʾyιÿd ārāyēd ‘you decorate’, 8 nimaʾyiÿd nemāyēd ‘you will punish’ in Mat-thew’s excerpt).

32 It is theoretically possible, but unlikely, that the intended spelling was mk<n>ʾ makun‑ā with the particle -ā (alif‑i duʿā).


While the proper name 1a qyʾpʾ Qayāfā ‘Caiaphas’ (Syr. Qayōô) has final <ʾ> ‑ā in both manuscripts and B adopts spellings with or without <ʾ> ‑ā for 2a B skrywṭʾ Sixaryūṭā, 4a B sxrywṭ Sixaryūṭ ‘Iscariot’, in A the spellings 2a, 4a skrywṭh Sixaryūṭa and 5d *jhwdh *Juhūda ‘Judas’ display final <h> for short ‑a, which, compared with Syr. Səḵaryûṭô and Yīhûḏô and with Ar.-Prs. Yahūdā, seems to reflect a possible actual pronunciation of the names in Persian.

5.texttransmIssIonandrelatIonsHIpbetweentHemanusCrIpts

Many variant readings and misspellings depend on quite trivial mistakes such as wrong division of words (e.g. 5d A jhwd hmw kʾyz for *jhwdh *mwkʾyd *Juhūda‑i *mukāyid ‘the treacherous Judas’), joined spelling of two or more words (e.g. 1a A ʾndwsr ān du sar ‘those two heads’), and confusion of Syriac letters with a similar shape such as and <k> (e.g. 2c A br ywnʾn bar Yūnān ‘in Greece’ for krywnʾ Kiryōnā ‘Scripture’), <d> and <r> (e.g. 3b A dpts for rpts raftas ‘he died’), <h> and <w> (e.g. 2b A jmwd for jmhwr jumhūr ‘crowd’ with haplography of -hw-), <k> and <x> (e.g. 2a B kwb for xuwb xūb ‘pleasantly’), <l> and <ʾ> (e.g. PS 1a mʿmlr for *mʿmʾr *Miʿ mār ‘the (Supreme) Architect’), and <n> and <y> (e.g. 4d B srġnrʾn for *srġyrʾn *sargirān ‘distressed’).

Some misspellings seem to be due to confusion of similarly shaped Arabic letters such as <z> and <r> (e.g. 4d A szxrdʾny for *sr *krdʾny *sar *gardānī ‘you will turn your head round’) and final <n> and <r> (e.g. 2d A bn for *br *bar ‘on’). Such confusion, which is typical of the earliest Persian manuscripts in Ara-bic script,33 does not necessarily mean that the hymns underwent a redaction in Arabic script and might just point to interference between the Syriac and Arabic scripts that were certainly both known to the copyists.

In a few cases, one can even think of a confusion between Arabic and Syriac letters, e.g. 2c A qwk ,ʾ 3c A qwxʾ for qwjʾ kujā ‘lit. where’ with Syriac <k/x> instead of <g/j> because of the similarity of <k> and especially <x> to Ar. <j>.

The transmitted texts of the two hymns differ in that mss. A and B preserve copies of PS that are identical in virtually every detail including a few mis-takes, whereas they are often at variance with regard to MT: despite its many mistakes, A preserves a more original text, while B is a revision and partial recasting of an already seriously incorrect copy. This may have been ms. A itself or a similar manuscript, which the copyist of B tried to correct not only in corrupt passages but also where his later or more standardised Persian lan-guage did not agree with that of his source (cf. e.g. the addition of unnecessary prepositions in 2a B bdst ba dast ‘to the hand(s)’ and 6b B lxlʾṣ li xalāṣ ‘for the

33 Cf. Orsatti 2007, 164 with n. 308.


salvation’: see § 7 on 1b dar‑i ḥākim(ā)). The main changes introduced by the reviser in B are outlined below.

He tried, without much success, to solve the difficulty posed to him by the agreement of the singular verb 1b rpẗ raf(a)t ‘went’ (see § 7) with a plural subject designating living beings by removing the numeral from original 1a ʾyn dw sr mḥplʾ īn du sar‑i maḥfil(ā) ‘these two heads of the council’, i.e. Caiaphas and An-nas who went (raf(a)t) to the door of the governor.

The erroneous reading 1b A mkysq for *mykwns *mēkuna was corrected by the reviser in B mykwny mēkunī 2 sg. imperative (or pl. with loss of final ‑d),34 thus obtaining mēkunī dīvān ‘Judge (him)!’35 as a sentence said by Caiaphas and Annas to Pilate when handing Jesus over to him.

In 1cd, B preserves a line lost in A, but the reviser altered the wording and meaning of the two lines in an anti-Judaic attitude and, instead of Judas’ flight in repentance after Jesus’ conviction (*Juhūda‑i badīmān ... ramad ... dar gumān ‘the unbelieving Judas ... flees ... in doubt’), he describes the crowd that went to Gethsemane to arrest Jesus (jumhūr‑i badīmān ... āmad ... dar Gasimān ‘an un-believing crowd ... came ... to Gethsemane’).

In 2bd it is said that Jesus knew how he was going to be killed (Mēdānis(a)t kujā Kiryōnā ḥaz kujā kardas: kušan *bar dār‑i ḥākim naq(a)t ba das(a)t ‘(Jesus) knew in which way the Scripture was (to be) fulfilled: they will kill (him) on the governor’s cross for money in hand’). The reviser must have found his source unconvincing and in part unclear due to its mistakes, archaisms, dialectalisms, colloquialisms, and non-standard spellings (cf. 2b A myzʾnsẗ, 2c A †br ywnʾn†, 2c †ḥzqwkʾ for ḥz qwjʾ ḥaz kujā ‘in which way’, 2d kwšn kušan ‘they will kill’, 2d A †bn, 2d nqẗ naq(a)t ‘money’: see § 7), so that he restored 2c krywnʾ Kiryōnā ‘Scripture’ but also altered his source in 2b B mydʾns mēdāna ‘knows’ and 2c ḥr qwjʾ ḥarkujā ‘in every detail’ and even deleted line 2d.

The corrupt reading 4b A ky dyrʾr ḥyk rʾmd, to be emended into ky *dyr *dr ḥyk rʾmd ki *dēr *dar ḥikk ramad ‘who flees (too) late in doubt’, was replaced with the new wording 4b B xsy dydʾy ḥyĪlʾtyĪ ʾmd xāsi – dīdī – ḥīlatī āmad ‘the ... coward – you saw – deceitful he came’ with āmad for ramad as in 1d.

In 4d-5a, Jesus foretells Peter that he is going to deny him (*sr *krdʾny tw *sh *bʾr ṣbʾḥʾ wqẗ / qdym mydʾnm tw ḥaz gšmĀy skṭ *Sar *gardānī tu *si *bār ṣabāḥ(ā)vaq(a)t. Qadīm mēdānam tu ḥaz cašm mōī sax(a)ṭ ‘You will turn your head round (from me) three times this morning. I know in advance that you will

34 On imperatives with the durative prefix mē‑, see Lazard 1963, 282-283 § 367; on the ending ‑ī in forms with imperative or exhortative value see Lazard 1963, 339-340 §§ 477-479; on forms and pronunciation of the 2 pl. ending in New Persian, cf. Meier 1981, 116-119. We transcribe verbal endings according to the transcription established by Meier 1981, 113 for Early Western New Persian.

35 Dihxudā, vol. 18, 599 s.v. divān kardan.


weep from your eyes bitterly’). The reviser was disturbed by the erroneous read-ing 4d A †szxrdʾny tw †hr, the Syriacism 5a qadīm mēdānam (see § 7), and the difficult reading 5a tw ḥaz gšmĀy skṭ tu ḥaz cašm mōī sax(a)ṭ, so that he divided the lines differently, thereby sacrificing the rhyme, and changed the text into 4d-5a B *srġyrʾn (ms. srġnrʾn) ʾw hrhr ṣbʾḥʾ wqty qrym / mydʾnm tw yr *kkmysbṫ (ms. ġġmysbṫ) rptr *Sargirān u hurhur ṣabāḥ(ā)vaqt‑ē giryam. Mēdānam, tu yār, *ki *kam‑ī sābitraftār ‘(I am) distressed and weep my heart out (cf. hurhur girīstan ‘to weep lots of tears’) this morning. I know, you friend (= Simon Peter), that you are little steadfast’, but traces of the original persist in the odd spellings 4d B ʾw u ‘and’ instead of tw tu ‘you’, 5a B qrym giryam ‘I weep’ (<q> for g!) instead of qdym qadīm ‘in advance’ (also replaced by 5c B qʾdr qādir ‘the Powerful one’ in another reworded passage), and 5a B †ġġmysbẗ instead of gšmĀy skṭ cašm mōī sax(a)ṭ ‘you will weep from your eyes bitterly’. This recasting is at variance with the Gospels, however, because Jesus was distressed and wept in Gethsemane the night of his arrest, not the morning after it.36

6.textandtranslatIon

The text of the two manuscripts is given here in transliteration, transcription, and translation. In the transliterated critical text and the apparatus, the following conventions are adopted: \ / = interlinear addition, < > = editorial addition, [[ ]] = copyist’s deletion. In the critical text, preference is given to the orthographi-cally more informative manuscript readings. Even minor spelling differences are recorded in the apparatus in order to document the orthographic usage. Editorial emendations that diverge even slightly from both manuscripts are marked by an asterisk (*). Differences in interpunction are not recorded unless interpunction is changed in the critical text.

The transcription conventionally adopts the classical pronunciation of vow-els, while, for consonants, it reflects the Arabo-Persian orthography but also accounts for the peculiar manuscript spellings in certain cases. Because the ezafe is never written, it is conventionally added everywhere in the transcrip-tion according to current usage, although one cannot exclude the possibility that it did not actually occur in some instances, especially after words ending in a vowel. Extra vowels added for prolongation in singing are enclosed in pa-rentheses ( ).

36 “He ... began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them, ‘I am deeply agitated, even to death’” (Mt 26.37-38); “He took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be distressed and agitated. And he said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death’” (Mk 14.33-34); “In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground” (Lk 22.44).


6.1. Hymn for Maundy Thursday

0 [A 9v1, om. B] yʾ ʾby ʾnṣt ʿly qwl ʾlpʾrsy whuw lṭyp

[Garshuni] “yā abī anṣit” ʿalá qawl al‑fārisiyy wa‑huwa laṭīf.

“O my Father, listen!” according to Persian speech: it is elegant.

1 [A 9v2-4, B 88r7-11] ʾyn dw sr mḥplʾ qyʾpʾ wḥnʾn . . dr ḥʾkmʾ rpẗ . *mykwns dywʾn . . srpʾ *syḥ *mnyʾ *jhwdh bd ʾymʾn . sr dsẗ rmʾd . kʾpr drgmʾn . .

1a ʾndwsr A, ʾyn sr B. mḥpl A. qypʾ B. 1b rpt B. mkyws A, mykwny B. 1c Om. A. syr myʾt jmhwr B. 1d dstʾ ʾmd B. kpr B. drgsmʾn B.

Īn du sar‑i maḥfil(ā) Qayāfā u Ḥannān dar‑i ḥākim(ā) raf(a)t. *Mēkuna dīvān. Saraf(ā) *sīḥ *manyā *Juhūda‑i badīmān sar‑i das(a)t ramad kāfir dar gumān.

These two heads [B Īn sar This head] of the council, Caiaphas and An-nas, went to the door of the governor.37 He conducts a trial [B ... “Mēkunī dīvān!” ... (saying): “Judge (him)!”]. Throwing away the thirty coins, the unbelieving Judas flees immediately in doubt, the infidel one38 [B 1cd Saraf(ā) *sīḥ *manyā jumhūr‑i badīmān / sar‑i dast(ā) āmad kāfir dar Gasimān Wasting thirty coins, an unbelieving, infidel crowd / immedi-ately came to Gethsemane].39

37 “When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people conferred to-gether against Jesus in order to bring about his death. They bound him, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate the governor” (Mt 27.1-2); “As soon as it was morning, the chief priests ... bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate” (Mk 15.1); “Then the assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate” (Lk 23.1). Only John’s Gospel men-tions the fact that the chief priests and the elders did not enter Pilate’s palace: “Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate’s headquarters. It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the headquarters, so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passo-ver” (Jn 18.28).

38 “When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver [paid to him for betraying Jesus, cf. Mt 26.14-15] to the chief priests and the elders. He said, ‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.’ But they said, ‘What is that to us? See to it yourself.’ Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself” (Mt 27.3-4).

39 Cf. n. 41.


Fig. 1. Mingana Syr. 520, 9v = ms. A: MT 0-7b. Courtesy of Special Collections, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.


2 [A 9v5-9, B 88r11-15] skrywṭh dsẗ ʿysy . xuwb qbuwl krds . jmhwr dsẗ bdsẗ . ʾmd *mydʾnsẗ . . qοwjaʾ krywnʾ . ḥz qwjʾ krds . kwšn *br dʾr ḥʾkm nqẗ bdsẗ .

2a skrywṭʾ B. bdst B. kwb B. qbwl B. krds A. 2b jmwd A. dst bdst B. myzʾnsẗ A, mydʾns B. 2c qwjʾ B. br ywnʾn A. ḥzqwkʾ A, ḥr qwjʾ B. krds A. 2d Om. B. bn A.

Sixaryūṭa das(a)t‑i Īʿsā xūb qabūl kardas. Jumhūr das(a)t ba das(a)t āmad. *Mēdānis(a)t kujā Kiryōnā ḥaz kujā kardas: kušan *bar dār‑i ḥākim naq(a)t ba das(a)t.

The Iscariot submitted himself pleasantly to [B explicitly adds ba to] Je-sus.40 A crowd came quickly.41 (Jesus) knew [B mēdāna knows] in which way [B ḥarkujā (that) in every detail] the Scripture was (to be) fulfilled:42

they will kill (him) on the governor’s cross for money in hand.43

3 [A 9v9-13, B 88r15-v3] msyḥy ġwpẗ šmʿwn dsẗ mkw ʿybs . šmšyrʾ ʾmd . šmšyrʾ rpts . mydʾnm ʾiyn pand ḥaz qwjʾ krds . zrʾ ṭamʿkʾr . ʾyn ʿyb mykwns .

3a msḥy A. jpwt B. dst mkʾ B. 3b No dot for the caesura in A, dot before rpts in B. šmšydʾ corrected to šmšyrʾ A. dpts A. 3c ʾyn pnd B. ḥaz qwxʾ A, ḥr\qw/j[[w]]ʾ B. krds A. 3d aʾrʾ A. ṭmʿkʾr B. mykwnʾs A.

40 “At once he came up to Jesus and said, ‘Greetings, Rabbi!’” (Mt 26.49); “So when he [i.e. Judas] came, he went up to him at once and said, ‘Rabbi!’ and kissed him” (Mk 14.45); “Judas ... approached Jesus to kiss him” (Lk 22.47).

41 “Immediately, ... Judas ... arrived; and with him there was a crowd” (Mk 14.43); “... suddenly a crowd came” (Lk 22.47).

42 A precise reference to the fact that, at the time of Judas’ betrayal, Jesus knew all that was about to happen is found only in Jn 18.4: “Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them: ‘Whom are you looking for?’”. However, hints to Jesus’ knowledge of what was about to happen to him are also found in the other Gospels: “‘But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way?’ At that hour Jesus said to the crowds: ‘... But all this has taken place, so that the Scriptures of the prophets may be fulfilled’” (Mt 26.54-56); “Then Jesus said to them: ‘... But let the Scriptures be fulfilled’” (Mk 14.48-49); “For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me: ‘And he was counted among the lawless’; and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled” (Lk 22.37).

43 “This was to fulfill what Jesus had said when he indicated the kind of death he was to die” (Jn 18.32).


Fig. 2. Mingana Syr. 520, 10r1-14 = ms. A: MT 7b-8d; PS 0-1af + Syriac. Courtesy of Special Collections, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.

Masīḥā guf(a)t: “Šimʿūn, das(a)t maku, ʿayb‑as! Šamšēr(ā) āmad šamšēr(ā) raftas. Mēdānam īn fand ḥaz kujā karda: zērā ṭamaʿkār, īn ʿayb mēkuna”.

The Messiah said: “Simon,44 do not put your hand (on your sword), it is a fault! He who came with the sword, died by the sword.45 I know in which way [B ḥarkujā in every detail (that)] (Judas) has done this treachery:

44 Again, only John specifies that it was Simon Peter who drew his sword: “Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear” (Jn 18.10). The other canonical Gospels say: “one of those with Jesus” (Mt 26.51), “one of those who stood near” (Mk 14.47), “one of them” (Lk 22.50).

45 “Then Jesus said to him, ‘Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Mt 26.52).


because (he is) greedy, he does this fault”.46

4 [A 9v13-17, B 88v4-8] ʿysy kwpẗ skrywṭh . naʾks wnaʾmard . ky *dyr . *dr ḥyk rʾmd . mkwnm sṭ bʾr . whzʾr *lʿnẗ . . . *sr *krdʾny tw *sh *bʾr ṣbʾḥʾ wqẗ .

4a jpwt B. sxrywṭ B. nʾks wnʾmrd B. 4b xsy B. dyrʾr corrected to dyʾrr or vice versa A, dydʾy B, followed by a dot. ḥĪylʾtĪy ʾmd B. 4c myjwnm B. sṭ bʾr whzʾr nʿlẗ A, dwsṭ . hzʾr br lʿnʾt B. 4d szxrdʾny tw hr ṣʾbʾḥ wwqẗ A, srġnrʾn ʾw hrhr ṣbʾḥʾ wqty B.

Īʿsā guf(a)t: “Sixaryūṭa‑i nākas u nāmar(a)d, ki *dēr *dar ḥikk ramad, mēkunam saṭ bār u hazār *laʿnat. *Sar *gardānī tu *si *bār ṣabāḥ(ā)vaq(a)t.

Jesus said: “The vile and ignoble Iscariot, who flees (too) late in doubt, I curse a hundred and a thousand times.47 You will turn your head round (from me) three times this morning48 [B Īʿsā guf(a)t: “Sixaryūṭa‑i nākas u nāmar(a)d – xāsi dīdī – ḥīlatī āmad. / *Mēgōyam (*myjwym) duvēst hazār bār *laʿnat. / *Sargirān (*srġyrʾn) u hurhur ṣabāḥ(ā)vaqt‑ē (5a) giryam Jesus said: “The vile and ignoble Iscariot – you saw the mean one – deceitful he came. / I curse (him) two hundred thousand times. / (I am) distressed and weep my heart out this morning].

5 [A 9v18-21, B 88v8-13] qdym mydʾnm . tw ḥaz gšmĀy skṭ . rptr jhnm . lʿyn wbd bxẗ . yʾmn sʾʿẗ qdiym mydʾnm . *jhwdh *mwkʾyd wkyz mkwnm .

5a qrym B. tw yr ġġmysbṫ B. 5b dptr A, rptr dr B. ʾyn lʾlyn bʾdbxt B. 5c bʾyn sʾʿẗst . ʾyn qʾdr kwns B. 5d jhwd hmw kʾyz wkyz mkwnm A, jmhwd hʾ mwʾxyr . bsy mykwnm B.

46 In the context of Jesus’ anointment at Bethany, Jn 12.6 says about Judas that “He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief”.

47 Cf. the image of Christ as judge in Mt 25.41: “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire”.

48 “Jesus said to him, ‘Truly I tell you the truth, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times’” (Mt 26.34); “Jesus said to him, ‘Truly I tell you, this day, this very night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times’” (Mk 14.30); “Jesus said, ‘I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you have denied three times that you know me’” (Lk 22.34); “Jesus answered, ‘Will you lay down your life for me? Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times’” (Jn 13.38).


Qadīm mēdānam tu ḥaz cašm mōī sax(a)ṭ. Raft tar jahannam laʿīn u badbax(a)t. Yāmin sāʿat qadīm mēdānam. *Juhūda‑i *mukāyid vaxīz mēkunam”.

I know in advance that you will weep from your eyes bitterly.49 The ac-cursed and ill-fated one has gone to hell. The blessed hour I know in ad-vance.50 I condemn the treacherous Judas to torments” [B 5ad Mēdānam,

49 “Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said ... And he went out and wept bitterly” (Mt 26.75); “And he broke down and wept” (Mk 14.72); “And he went out and wept bitterly” (Lk 22.62).

50 “See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners” (Mt 26.45); “The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone ... Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you” (Jn 16.32, 17.1).

Fig. 3. Mingana Syr. 184, 88r7-16 = ms. B: MT 1a-3b. Courtesy of Special Collections, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.


tu yār, *ki *kam‑ī (*kkmy) sābitraftār. / Dar jahannam īn *laʿīn‑i (*lʾʿyn) badbaxt / ba īn sāʿat‑ast. Īn qādir kuna. / ... I know, you friend (= Simon Peter), that you are little steadfast. / The accursed and ill fated one is in hell / at this time. The Powerful one does this. / ... (?)].

6 [A 9v22-25, B 88v13-89r1] twrʾẗ wzbwr ʾyn wʿdy ġwpts . klʾṣ ʾdm ʿysy ʾmdʾs . ʾyn sʾʿẗ ʾmd . bʾmr ʾlrḥmʾn . klʾṣ ʾdm . mn dsẗ šyṭʾn .

6a twrʾt A. wʿzy jwpts B. 6b lxlʾṣ B. ʾmds A. 6c sʾʿt B. 6d ʾdʾms . br dst ʾlšyṭʾn B.

Tawrāt u Zabūr īn va dʿ‑ē guftas: xalāṣ‑i ādam Īʿsā āmadas. Īn sāʿat āmad bi‑amr ar‑Raḥmān, xalāṣ‑i ādam min das(a)t‑i šayṭān.

The Pentateuch and the Psalms promised this [B īn vaʿz‑ē guftas hinted at this]: for man’s salvation [B explicitly adds li‑ for] did Jesus come. In this hour, by order of the Merciful One, has come the salvation of man from the devil [B 6cd Īn sāʿat āmad: bi‑amr ar‑Raḥmān / xalāṣ‑i ādam‑as bar dast aš‑šayṭān This hour has come: by order of the Merciful One there is the salvation of man with regard to the devil].51

7 [A 9v25-10r2, B 89r1] hr ky <...> <...> kym ʿysayːy yʾqynʾn ḥqs . ʾbwnʾ wmʿlmnʾ mʾr šmʿwn bʾhr ʿʾlmys

7ab ʿysyyy in the catchword in the bottom margin of A 9v. hr kym ʿysʾyÿ . myjwnt ḥqʾs B. 7cd Om. B.

Har ki <...> <...> kym Īʿsayī, yaqīnan ḥaqq‑as. Abū‑nā va muʿallimu‑nā Mār Šimʿūn bāhir‑i āʿlam‑ē‑as.

Whoever <...> ... Christian is surely right [B 7ab Har ki‑m ʿ Īsayī *mēgōyat (*myjwyt) ḥaqq‑as Whoever calls me Christian is right]. Our father and our teacher Saint Simon (Peter) is the foremost one in the whole world.

51 Cf. “Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot” (Lk 22.3); “The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him ... Satan entered into him” (Jn 13.2, 27).


Fig. 4. Mingana Syr. 184, 88v = ms. B: MT 3b-6d. Courtesy of Special Collections, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.


8 [A 10r3-6] bw ymyn qdrẗ rʾḥẗ mkwns bḥq *wqyym byk xwdʾys . wsr sr mḥpl dwlẗn wtʿṭym dydʾr mḥbẗ mkwns ʾmyn . . .

8ad Om. B. 8b wqynm A.

Bō‑i yamīn‑i Qudrat rāḥ‑at mēkuna bi‑ḥaqq *vaqīy‑am payk‑i Xudāy‑a va sarāsar‑i Maḥfil, dawlatan va taʿẓīm, dīdār‑i maḥabbat mēkuna. Āmīn!

The fragrance at the right hand of the Power makes you contented. Truly my protector is the apostle of God and after all (his) Church, in triumph and majesty, he looks with love. Amen!

6.2. Hymn for Palm Sunday

0 [A 10r7, B 90v13] swgytʾ

[Syriac] Sûḡîṯô

Soghitha

1 [A 10r8-11, B 90v14-91r2] *mʿmʾr gwpts jy ʾyʾt wjy qOwdrts psr hmgwn nšsts . ḥan *mʾrd gwpts ksy gwʾb nοʾddʾs ⁝ ṣʾḥb qwdrẗ ʿṭyms . .

1a mʿmlr AB. [[w]]gwpts A? 1b qwdrts A. 1c A suprascript dot over final -s in B nšsts. 1d ḥan apparently with sukūn over -n in AB. mʾdr AB. 1e nʾddʾs A. 1f A dot under the line between r and ẗ in A qwdrẗ. Syriac follows on the same line in AB.

*Miʿ mār guftas ci āyāt u ci qudrat‑as: Pisar hamgūn nišastas. Ḥān *Mard guftas. Kas‑ē javāb nādādas ṣāḥib‑i qudrat‑i ʿaẓīm‑as.


Fig. 5. Mingana Syr. 184, 89r1-2 = ms. B: MT 6d-7b; . Courtesy of Special Collections, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.

Fig. 7. Mingana Syr. 184, 91r1-5 = ms. B: PS 1ef + Syriac. Courtesy of Special Collections, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.

Fig. 6. Mingana Syr. 184, 90v13-16 = ms. B: PS 0-1ad. Courtesy of Special Collections, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.


The (Supreme) Architect said what the signs and what (his) power are:52 the Son is seated in the same way (as the Father). The Man (i.e. Jesus) said that.53 Nobody gave an answer.54 He has a great power.55

7.Commentary

For the interpretation of the Syro-Persian hymns, we had the opportunity to com-pare their vocabulary with the Persian Diatessaron (= D) preserved in ms. Or. 81 of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence,56 as well as with manu-scripts of early Persian translations of the Gospels (henceforth Persian Gospels): ms. Vat. Pers. 4 (only Matthew’s Gospel), dated 712/131257 and Borg. Pers. 19,

52 “When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, say-ing, ‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Beware that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, “I am the Messiah!” and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be fam-ines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs” (Mt 24.3-8); “When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, ‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?’ Then Jesus began to say to them, ‘Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs” (Mk 13.3-8); “They asked him, ‘Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?’ And he said, ‘Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and, “The time is near!” Do not go after them. ‘When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.’ Then he said to them, ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven” (Lk 21.7-11).

53 “Jesus said to him: ‘You have said so. But I tell you: “From now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power”’” (Mt 26.64); “Jesus said, ‘I am; and “you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power”’” (Mk 14.62); “But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God” (Lk 22.69).

54 “They said, ‘If you are the Messiah, tell us.’ He replied, ‘If I tell you, you will not be-lieve; and if I question you, you will not answer. But from now on ...” (Lk 22.67-69).

55 “And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me’” (Mt 28.18).

56 See Piemontese 1989, 104-108 no. 140. This manuscript was edited by Messina 1951 with omission of some parts.

57 See Rossi 1948, 28-29.


dated 738/1337-1338, of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in the Vatican City;58 ms. Pococke 241, dated Caffa (Crimea) 742/1341, of the Bodleian Library in Ox-ford;59 ms. Or. 675, dated Istanbul 869/1465, of the Leiden University Library;60 ms. Casanatense 2322, dated Agra 1605, of the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome;61 Codex 7965 (Y-4-49), dated 1607, and Codex 7964 (Y-4-48), dated 1608, of the Lisbon National Library;62 and ms. Laud Or. 2 of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, not dated.63 Laud Or. 2 probably belongs to the group of Gospels manuscripts that the Jesuits in India ordered to be copied at the beginning of the 17th century, like Casanatense 2322 and the two Lisbon manuscripts. The text of these modern In-dian copies, particularly Casanatense 2322, seems to be very close to the text of Matthew’s Gospel in the early Borg. Pers. 19 (1337-1338). It will be seen that the lexical choices of MT are often at variance with the Persian Gospels, whereas PS is too short to judge.

1a sar‑i maḥfil(ā) (or sar‑maḥfil(ā) without ezafe) ‘heads of the council (= synedrion)’ refers to the chief priests. “Priest” is rendered by kāhin in most Persian Gospels apart from Pococke 241, Vat. Pers. 4, and D, where the “Islamic” term imām is used,64 and “chief priest” is generally translated buzurg‑i kāhinān ‘chief among the priests’ in e.g. Mk 14.53 (Laud Or. 2, 95r3, Casanatense 2322, 93v1-2, Lisbon 7965, and Lisbon 7964, 125v10-11), whereas one finds Pococke 241, 88r15-16 sarvar‑i imāmān in Mk 14.53 and D 106v18-19 Messina 340 buzurg‑i imāmān in the parallel passage Jn 18.24. On the other hand, “council (= synedrion)” is rendered e.g. by jamāʿat ‘assembly’ in Mt 26.59 (Vat. Pers. 4, 9r8, Borg. Pers. 19, 80r12, Pococke 241, 59v16, Leiden Or. 675, 31v1, Casanatense 2322, 54v4, Lisbon 7965, Lisbon 7964, 73v2, Laud Or. 2, 56v2), while in Lk 22.66 it is translated jamāʿat (Leiden Or. 675, 88r5-6, Lisbon 7964, 193v10, Laud Or. 2, 161r3), jamʿīyyat (Pococke 241, 134r10-11), xāna‑i buzurg‑i kāhinān ‘the house of the chief priest’ (Lisbon 7965), jāygah ki hamīša jamʿīyyat‑i īšān ānjā būd ‘the place where their assembly always was’ (D 108r13-14 Messina 344). The word maḥfil ‘assembly, congregation, council, tribunal’ translates Jn 18.28 “praetorium” (D 108r13 Messina 344) and

58 See Rossi 173-174; Piemontese 2000a, 128-129; Piemontese 2000b, 332-334 and 338-339; Piemontese 2001, 317-322. Unfortunately, it was impossible to take into account the whole of Borg. Pers. 19 because its folios are not bound in the right sequence, so that consultation is extremely laborious and time-consuming. Only Matthew’s Gospel from this manuscript has been consulted. The correct folio sequence is as follows: 1-6, 11-13, 7, 14, 8-10, 15-39, 72-77, 40-41, 78-83, 48. After f. 6 there is a lacuna corresponding to Mt 5.35-6.5.

59 See Sachau–Ethé 1889, 1053-1054 no. 1835.60 See De Goeje 1873, 90.61 See Piemontese 1989, 226-229 no. 255.62 See Gulbenkian 1980, 187-192. The folios of Lisbon 7965 are not numbered.63 See Sachau–Ethé 1889, 1054-1055 no. 1837.64 About analogies between D and Pococke 241, cf. Messina 1951, lxxxv-xcii.


Mt 23.34 “synagogue(s)” in Matthew’s Syro-Persian excerpt (where it is vocalised maḥfal).65 Maḥfil is also used in 8c with the meaning ‘Church’ and it is clear that such a generic term could refer to different religious entities both in a concrete meaning (‘synedrion, synagogue’) and in a spiritual one (‘Church’).

1b dar‑i ḥākim(ā) ‘to the door of the governor’. D 108r14 Messina 344 (cf. 345 n. 1) = Jn 18.28 specifies that Jesus was left bar dar‑i sarā‑i Fīlāṭus‑i bāsqāq ‘at the door of the palace of Pilate, the governor’. The clarification concerning the door is not to be found in the other Gospels and reflects John’s narrative according to which those who had arrested Jesus did not enter Pilate’s headquarters. D’s bāsqāq ‘a police officer, a governor or a regent’ is a term of Mongolian origin widespread in Choresmia and north-eastern Iran.66 In the Persian Gospels, Pilate is simply termed ḥākim ‘governor’ in Mt 27.11 (Vat. Pers. 4, 7r5, Borg. Pers. 19, 81v4, Leiden Or. 675, 32r13, Casanatense 2322, 56r4, Lisbon 7965, Lisbon 7964, 75r9, and Laud Or. 2, 58r3), but, when he is first mentioned in Mt 27.2, his function is defined variously: ki vālī‑i ān zamān būd(a) ‘who was the regent of that time’ (Borg. Pers. 19, 81r9, Casanatense 2322, 55v4-5, Lisbon 7965, Lisbon 7964, 74v8, and Laud Or. 2, 57v3-4), amīr‑i šahr ‘lord of the city’ (Vat. Pers. 4, 8v2), Pīlāṭus‑i zūbāšī ‘Pilate the head’ (Pococke 241, 60v7),67 and ki ḥākim būd ‘who was the governor’ (Leiden Or. 675, 32r3).

In dar‑i ḥākim(ā) ‘to the door of the governor [direction]’ and six other pas-sages, one observes the omission of a preposition – in principle the preposition ba in several of its various meanings (< Middle Persian pad and bē (ō)) or other prepositions partly overlapping in meaning – and it is significant that the copyist of B eventually felt the need to insert a preposition in two cases: 1c saraf(ā) ‘(by) throwing away [manner]’, 2a dsẗ das(a)t ‘to the hand(s) [direction]’ (B bdst ba dast), 2d nqẗ naq(a)t ‘for money in hand [reason or purpose]’, 3b šmšyrʾ šamšēr(ā) (twice) ‘with/by the sword [manner and means]’, 6b klʾṣ xalāṣ ‘for the salvation [purpose]’ (B lxlʾṣ li‑xalāṣ), 6c ʾyn sʾʿẗ īn sāʿat ‘in this hour’ [time]. Failure to recognise the omission of ba (or dar) in 6c īn sāʿat even induced the copyist of B to reword the passage by changing the syntax and adding the verb 6d -s ‑as ‘there is’. The omission of prepositions is common in the colloquial language but is already frequently found in early texts. It presumably started with ba in its directional function (no preposition < MPrs. ō as against Prs. ba < MPrs. bē (ō))68 and then affected its other functions after the conflation of the continuations of MPrs. pad and bē (ō) into Prs. ba, as well as other prepositions whose meaning overlapped in part with that of ba.

65 Maggi 2005, 646, 653.66 Cf. Dihxudā, vol. 7, 423 s.v. bāsqāq.67 Cf. Dihxudā, vol. 20, 529 s.v. zūbāšī.68 Cf. Lazard 2006a, 180-181 § 178, Lazard 1986, esp. 252, and also Paul 2003.


1b raf(a)t ‘went’ is an instance of agreement of a verb in the singular with a plural subject designating living beings and preceded by a numeral (‘These two heads of the council’) as is found in early texts.69 It may be added that a singular verb is often found in early prose and poetic texts when the subject is two people, especially if they are mentioned by name as here (Caiaphas and Annas).70

1c Saraf(ā) ‘throwing away’. It is likely that, after the verbal noun saraf(ā) with its prolongation vowel, the ezafe was omitted as sometimes happens after infinitives or words ending in ‑ā possibly by contraction of the two vowels.71

1c *sīḥ *manyā ‘thirty coins’ is an emendation for a syntactically unusual syr myʾt sēr miʾāt ‘hundreds of sērs’, the sēr being a weight of fifteen misqāls72 and miʾāt the plural of the Ar. numeral miʾat. However, the manuscript reading does not make much sense, because sēr is a weight unit, not a coin, even though the submultiple misqāl can be both ‘a weight of a dram and three sevenths’ and ‘a gold coin’ (Steingass 1172). It is true that the odd ‘hundreds of sērs’ might depend on the fact that the corresponding phrase “thirty pieces of silver” in Mt 26.15 proved difficult to translate, so that the Persian translators of the Gospels also resorted to a variety of renderings: sī misqāl‑i nuqra ‘thirty silver misqāl’ (Vat. Pers. 4, 12r4); az māl miqdār‑i sī šumār ‘a quantity of thirty pieces of property’ (Borg. Pers. 19, 41v19-20, Casanatense 2322, 51v13); az māl‑i xwad miqdār‑i sī šumār ‘of their property, a quantity of thirty pieces’ (Lisbon 7965); sī nuqra az māl ‘thirty silver (coins) of property’ (Pococke 241, 58r1); sī nuqra ‘thirty silver (coins)’ (Leiden Or. 675, 30r10); miqdār‑i sī dinār az nuqra ‘a quantity of thirty silver dinars’ (Lisbon 7964, 70v2-3); sī az nuqra ‘trenta argentei’ (D 96r20 Messina 308). But it will be noticed that all these translations mention without exception that the coins are thirty in number (sī), so that it is reasonable to regard ms. syr as a reflex of the numeral *syḥ *sīḥ in its normal position before the substantive. The emendation of the numeral with -ḥ , to be compared with Manichaean MPrs. syẖ sīh,73 is lent support by the spellings PS 1d ḥan ḥān ‘that’ and even 2c, 3c ḥ(a)z ḥaz ‘from’ and rests on the possibility that the three hooks required for writing -yḥ could be easily reduced by haplography to the two hooks of the mistaken -yr. The substantive has been restored as *mnyʾ *manyā ‘minae’, an occasional loan from Syr. manyô ‘mina (a weight and a coin)’ to be compared with Prs. mīnās ‘minae’ in Leiden Or. 675, 82v-83r in the parable of the ten pounds (Lk 19.11-27; reference from Domenico Parrello), on account of its palaeographic similarity

69 See Lazard 1963, 456-457 § 768.70 Cf. Muʿīn 1977, 161.71 Cf. Muʿīn 1984-5, 57-58 § 34 and 70-71 § 37.72 Cf. Dihxudā, vol. 21, 757 s.v. sīr.73 See Durkin-Meisterernst 2004, 312.


with ms. myʾt and because it provides a good match for the “thirty pieces of silver” of Mt 26.15. An alternative emendation *mʿʾ mā āʿ ‘coin’ from Syr. mō ôʿ ‘a weight; a small coin; money’ is palaeographically less likely.74

1d sar‑i das(a)t, which usually means ‘ready, immediate’,75 modifies here the verb ramad ‘he flees’ and thus has the adverbial value ‘immediately’.

1d dar gumān ‘in doubt’ is replaced in B by drgsmʾn dar Gasimān ‘to Gethsemane’. The Persian Gospels display several spellings for ‘Gethsemane’ in Mt 26.36 and elsewhere: <jdsʾmʾn> (Vat. Pers. 4, 12r12, Borg. Pers. 19, 79r1, Laud Or 2, 55r4, Leiden Or. 675, 51v20 corresponding to Mk 14.32); <ksmʾny> (Pococke 241, 58v13, D 104v4 Messina 334 [ed. <gsmʾny>] corresponding to Mk 14.32); <jytsymʾn> (Leiden Or. 675, 30v12); <ch sʾmʾn> or <jh sʾmʾn> (Casanatense 2322, 53r4 and 93r12 corresponding to Mk 14.32).

2a das(a)t‑i Īʿsā ‘to Jesus (lit. in Jesus’ hands)’. Prepositional phrases containing dast are very frequent in the Diatessaron but they are not necessarily calques on Syriac as was suggested by Messina.76 Īʿsā is the Arabic form of Jesus’ name that is also found in D, Pococke 241, and Vat. Pers. 4, while the other Persian Gospels have the Syriac form Īšūʿ except Borg. Pers. 19 (Matthew’s Gospel), which uses both forms.

2a qabūl kardas ‘(he) submitted’. The verb qabūl kardan means here ‘to surrender, submit; to become obedient [taslīm šudan; muṭīʿ gardīdan]’.77 The loss of ‑t in ‑ast, that is observed in both the 3 sg. perf. forms and the copula, is characteristic of the spoken language. The copula is written with ‑t only in 5c B sʾʿẗst sāʿat‑ast, that occurs in a variant passage and is not in rhyme position.

2b das(a)t ba das(a)t ‘very near; in a haste, continuately, without a break’.78

2c Kiryōnā from Syr. Qeryōnô ‘the Scripture’.79 The Diatessaron and the Persian Gospels use the neutral term kitābhā ‘books’ for “Scripture(s)” in Mt 26.54 and 56 with the only exception of xaṭṭhā ‘written lines, written texts, documents’ in Leiden Or. 675, 31r15 and 18. On the other hand, some of the translations have a periphrasis or a substantivised past participle in Lk 22.37: Pococke 241, 133r8-9 īnhā ki nibišta šud ‘that which was written’; Leiden Or. 675, 87r11-12 ān‑ki nibišta‑ast ‘what is written’; Laud Or. 2, 159v1-2 and Lisbon 7964, 192r4 ān‑ci

74 See Payne Smith 1903, 281 and 287, and Sokoloff 2009, 782 and 797-798.75 Cf. Dihxudā, vol. 17, 647 s.v. dast, vol. 21, 447 s.v. sar‑i dast.76 Messina 1951, xxiii. For the phrase (ba) dast‑i cf. Dihxudā, vol. 17, 640 ff. s.v. dast.77 Cf. Dihxudā, vol. 28, 155 s.v. qabūl kardan.78 Cf. Dihxudā, vol. 17, 616 s.v. dast.79 See Sokoloff 2009, 1409.


nivišta šud ‘what was written’; Borg. Pers. 19, 168v5, Casanatense 2322, 161r11, and Lisbon 7965 nivišta ‘(what was) written’.

2c kujā introducing a declarative clause and ḥaz kujā ‘in which way’ can be compared with the well attested use of kujā both in the meaning ‘where’ (with a possible modal nuance ‘how’) and ‘that’ (conjunction) in the Šāhnāma.80 The presumably dialectal preservation of the initial aspiration in ḥaz ‘from’ (for standard az) < Old Persian hacā is noteworthy in that the aspiration is already lost in MPrs. az (Zoroastrian MPrs. hc, but Manichaean MPrs. ʾc, ʾz).

2c kardas ‘is (to be) fulfilled’. The occurrence of the old past participle 3b ʾmd āmad ‘he who came’ without the suffix ‑a (see below) suggests that the numerous instances of 3 sg. perf. in ‑as are formed from the old past participle and the auxiliary ‑as, i.e. kard‑as etc. and can be compared with the perfects of this kind, mostly formed with the auxiliaries bāšad and buvad, that are frequently found in the Kitāb al‑abniya ʿ an ḥaqā iʾq al‑adviya by Abū Manṣūr Muvaffaq b. ʿAlī al-Haravī (tenth century).81 Here kardas ‘is (to be) fulfilled’ has a passive meaning. For “to be fulfilled”, the Persian Gospels have tamām šudan ‘to be over’ in Mk 14.49 (Pococke 241, 88r11-12, Leiden Or. 675, 52r21-52v1, Laud Or. 2, 94v13, Lisbon 7965, Lisbon 7964, 119v8), while D 106r18 Messina 338 has durust šudan ‘to become true’ in Mt 26.56.

2d kušan ‘they will kill’ is a spoken form of kušand with loss of final ‑d that is already found in early texts.82

2d naq(a)t ba das(a)t ‘money in hand’. The spelling nqẗ naq(a)t for standard naqd indicates that final ‑d could be devoiced, as is confirmed by 4c sṭ saṭ ‘hundred’ and 7b B myjwnt for *myjwyt *mēgōyat (not in rhyme position). Many instances of the 2 pl. ‑īt for standard ‑īd occur in Borg. Pers. 19, e.g. 27r1 bar dāštīt ‘you gathered’ (Mt 16.9), 33r11 payravī ... kardīt ‘you have followed’ (Mt 19.28), 37r16,18 nagiravīdīt ... dīdīt ... pašīmān šudīt ‘you did not believe ... you saw ... you changed your mind’ (Mt 21.32).83 The alternative reading nukaṭ ba das(a)t ‘with marks on his hands’ is less likely.

3a das(a)t maku ‘do not put your hand’. For dast kardan in this meaning,84 one can compare the renderings va \īnak/ yak‑ī az īšān ki bā Īšūʿ būdand dast kard va [[Īšūʿ ba]] šamšīr‑i xwad kašīd (Lisbon 7964, 72v10-11), va yak‑ī az īšān ki bā Īšūʿ būdand dast kard va šamšīr kašīd (Borg. Pers. 19, 79v13-15, Casanatense 2322, 54r2-3, Lisbon 7965), and yak‑ī az īšān ki bā Īšūʿ būdand dast kard va tīġ

80 See Wolff 1935, 633.81 For perfect forms based on the old past participle, see Lazard 1963, 342 § 485.82 Cf. Lazard 1963, 162-163 § 79 and 270 § 341; Richard 1981, 241 n. 20.83 Cf. Lazard 1963, 268-269 § 339 (2 pl. ‑ēt instead of ‑ēδ); Richard 1981, 241 (2 pl. ‑īt).84 Cf. Dihxudā, vol. 17, 709 s.v. dast kardan.


bīrūn kašīd (Leiden Or. 675, 56r2-3) for Mt 26.51 “Suddenly, one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it”.

3b šamšēr(ā) āmad šamšēr(ā) raftas ‘He who came with the sword, died by the sword’. The verbs āmadan and raftan also occur, corresponding to Mt 26.52, in D 106r12 Messina 336 īšān ki ba šamšīr āmadand ba šamšīr biravand ‘Those who came with the sword, will die by the sword’ and Vat. Pers. 4, 9v5-6 har‑ci ba šamšīr āyand ham ba šamšīr ravand ‘Whoever comes with the sword likewise will die by the sword’, while the other Persian Gospels use different verbs. Rather than as a 3 sg. past form, āmad is better interpreted as an old past participle without the suffix ‑a which is used with substantive force and corresponds to a relative clause (‘he who came’) like rafta in the proverb Tanhā ba qāżī rafta / rāżī bar mīgarda ‘He who has gone alone to the judge comes back satisfied’.85

3c karda ‘he has made’. The transcription of krds as karda without final ‑s as elsewhere rests on the interpretation of the noteworthy spelling mykwns in the following line with -s for the expected 3 sg. pres. ending ‑ad, which is written -(ʾ)d only in 4b rʾmd, 1d rmdʾ ramad ‘he flees’. The spellings 3d mykwns (A mykwnʾs), 8a, 8d mkwns, and 5c B kwns ‘he does’ cannot be regarded as misspellings, nor can they represent a spirantisation and subsequent devoicing and assibilation of final ‑d (i.e. ‑ad > ‑aδ > ‑aθ > ‑as!), as there is no trace of a fricative pronunciation of postvocalic d in the hymns, although ‑d could probably be devoiced at word end (see above on 2d naq(a)t ba das(a)t). Since 3d mykwns and 8a mkwns rhyme with the 3 sg. perf. and the 3 sg. pres. of the copula, both spelled -s (3c, 8b), it is likely that the present ending ‑ad, the auxiliary ‑as in the perfect (e.g. 2a qbuwl krds qabūl kardas ‘he submitted himself’), and the copula ‑as (e.g. 3a ʿybs ʿayb‑as ‘it is a fault’) all had colloquial variants pronounced -a with loss of the final consonants, so that they could rhyme with each other and the spelling -(ʾ)s, that was historically justified only for the perfect (3c krds karda) and the copula (8b xwdʾys Xudāy‑a), was also used for the homophonous variant ‑a of the 3 sg. pres. ending ‑ad (e.g. 3d mykwns mēkuna). The ‑a in the 3 sg. perf. is due either to the omission of the auxiliary after the past participle with the suffix ‑a, i.e. karda (ast) etc., or, more likely, to the alternative pronunciation ‑a of the auxiliary ‑as after the short past participle without suffix, i.e. kard‑a etc. (see above on 2c kardas and cf. below on 4b B dydʾy).

3d zērā ṭamaʿkār ‘because (he is) greedy’ differs from John’s remark a few days before Judas’ betrayal that he was interested in money “because he was a thief” (Jn 12.6), for which the Persian Gospels unanimously have (az) barāy‑i ān‑ki duzd būd (e.g. Leiden Or. 675, 108r3, Pococke 241, 157v12, Casanatense 2322, 205v3, Lisbon 7965).

85 Cf. Lazard 1963, 355 § 511 for substantivised past participles like kard, nākard ‘l’accompli, l’inaccompli’ and see Dihxudā, vol. 27, 67 s.v. qāżī for the proverb.


4b B dydʾy can be read both as dīdī ‘you saw’ 2 sg. past and as dīd‑ī ‘you have seen’ 2 sg. perf. based on the old past participle dīd.

4c saṭ bār u hazār ‘a hundred and a thousand times’ is a climax with increasing multiples of 10 which could be a survival of an Iranian stylistic usage that is found in e.g. Yt 6.1 hištəṇti mainiiauuāŋhō yazatāŋhō satəmca hazaŋrəmca ‘a hundred, a thousand spiritual gods stand up’86 and ZWY 4.31 pad sad, pad hazār, pad bēwar ēk‑ēw bawēd kē pad ēn dēn wurrōyēd ‘in one hundred, in one thousand, in one myriad, there will be one who will believe in this religion’.87

4d *sar *gardānī ‘you will turn your head round (from me)’. For “deny” of the Gospels, the Persian translations have inkār kardan or munkir šudan.

5a, 5c qadīm mēdānam ‘I know in advance’. This use of qadīm, unusual in New Persian, is most likely a Syriacism, since forms of the Syr. root qdm are used with other verbs in the meaning ‘before, afore, fore-, first, pre-’ (Domenico Parrello).88

5a B Mēdānam, tu yār, *ki *kam‑ī sābitraftār ‘I know, you friend (= Simon Peter), that you are little steadfast’ also admits of the alternative reading Mēdānam, tu yār, *ci *kam‑ī sābitraftār ‘I know, you friend, how little steadfast you are!’.

5b Raft tar ‘has gone to’. The spelling rptr, which joins two words by writing the consonant t once, reflects the devoicing of the dental occlusive in dar by assimilation to the voiceless dental of raft. In clusters consisting of a voiceless fricative followed by an occlusive, the latter is always phonetically voiceless. In literary Contemporary New Persian, the contrasting occlusive series /p t k/ and /b d g/ are distinguished mainly by tenseness, but the contrast is neutralised after voiceless fricatives, where every occlusive is felt as one of the lax phonemes /b d g/, as is shown by such modern spellings as asb for asp ‘horse’, ʿasgarī for ʿaskarī ‘soldier’, and less frequently kafdar for kaftar ‘pigeon’.89 On the other hand, in Classical New Persian, as well as in some contemporary non-literary varieties, the main feature distinguishing the two occlusive series is voicedness, which is neutralised after voiceless fricatives, where every occlusive is not only phonetically voiceless as is the case today, but is also identified with the corresponding voiceless phoneme.90 It is worth noting that the copyist of B was unable to recognise rptr in his source (cf. A †dptr) as a spelling for raft dar and reworded the passage by reading rptr as raftār ‘behaviour’ and by reinserting the preposition dr dar.

86 See Bartholomae 1904, 1796 s.v. hazaŋra‑ for other Avestan examples.87 Another example occurs in ZWY 4.3, cf. Cereti 1995, 136-137, 153, 155.88 Cf. Payne Smith 1903, 490.89 Cf. Pisowicz 1985, 33-39.90 Cf. Pisowicz 1985, 104-107.


6a Tawrāt u Zabūr īn va dʿ‑ē guftas ‘The Pentateuch and the Psalms promised this’. The agreement of two or more singular substantives designating things (Tawrāt u Zabūr) with a singular verb (guftas) is found in early and classical literary, mostly poetic texts.91

6b B li‑xalāṣ ‘for the salvation’, 6c bi‑amr ar‑Raḥmān ‘by order of the Merciful One’, 6d min das(a)t‑i šayṭān ‘from the devil’, and 7c Abū‑nā va muʿ allimu‑nā ‘Our father and our teacher’ give rise to a noteworthy mixture of Persian and Arabic.

7d bāhir‑i āʿlam‑ē‑as ‘he is the foremost one in the whole world’ provides an example of the indefinite article ‑ē with the meaning ‘a/the whole’ when used with substantives that refer to a unicum (e.g. jahān ‘world’, āʿlam ‘id.’).92 One wonders whether bāhir ‘the foremost one’ echoes Syr. bōḥûrô ‘overseer, examiner’,93 that occurs in the fourth of Ephrem’s metrical homilies (mêmrê) “On Holy Week”, “which contains the most esplicit passage on Peter’s primacy in all the corpus of Ephrem’s works:

Thee, Simon, my disciple, have I set as the foundation of holy Church.I called thee Kepha [i.e. ‘rock’, cf. Mt 16.18 and Jn 1.42] from of old, that thou mightest bear all buildings.Thou art the Overseer [bōḥûrô] of those who build for me the Church on earth”.94

8a Bō‑i yamīn‑i qudrat rāḥ‑at mēkuna ‘The fragrance at the right hand of the Power makes you contented’. This line recalls Ephrem’s description of Simon Peter at the miracle of the Transfiguration of Jesus (Mt 17.1-9, Mk 9.2-8, Lk 9.28-36) as enchanted by the fragrance of the kingdom of heaven.95 In Lk 22.69, the Persian Gospels have az dast‑i rāst (Leiden Or. 675, 88r7-9, Lisbon 7964, 194r1-2, Laud Or. 2, 161r4-6) and bar dast‑i rāst (Pococke 241, 134r12-14) ‘at the right hand’ instead of yamīn.

8b payk‑i xudāy ‘the apostle of God’. For ‘apostles’, the Persian Gospels have e.g. Mk 6.30 rasūlān (Laud Or.2, 74r13, Casanatense 2322, 73r11) or such periphrases as Mt 10.2 davāzdahgāna ki firistāda šudand ‘the twelve who were sent’ (Borg. Pers. 19, 9r6), davānzdah [sic] šāgirdān‑rā ki firistāda šudand ‘the twelve disciples who were sent’ (Leiden Or. 675, 12r11), and davāzdah ki

91 See examples in Muʿīn 1977, 170-171, who, however, does not distinguish this usage from singular verbs governed by plural substantives designating things.

92 See Meier 1981, 140-141 for some examples.93 Cf. Payne Smith 1903, 40.94 Quotation from and translation by Murray 2004, 217.95 See Murray 2004, 243 and n. 4 with references.


firistāda šudand ‘the twelve who were sent’ (Casanatense 2322, 17v1-2). In Lk 6.13, where both “disciples” and “apostles” occur, one finds šāgirdān and rasūlān respectively (Pococke 241, 102r15-16, Leiden Or. 675, 63v19-20) or talāmīẕān and rasūlān (Laud Or. 2, 114v6-7, Casanatense 2322, 114v2-3). The term ḥavārīyūn (also ḥavārīyūnān), pl. of ḥavārī ‘one who acts sincerely or faithfully; a friend, assistant, companion’, also used of the ‘companions of Muhammad’ (Steingass 433), appears to be used for both “disciples” (Vat. Pers. 4, 58v6 = Mt 10.1) and “apostles” (Vat. Pers. 4, 58v9 = Mt 10.2, Leiden Or. 675, 41r16= Mk 6.30).

8c maḥfil ‘Church’. Cf. above on 1a sar‑i maḥfil(ā). In Mt 18.17, the Persian Gospels have the following renderings for “Church”: kilīsā (Pococke 241, 45r5-6), kilīsiyā (Leiden Or. 675, 21r11-12), and jamāʿat (Borg. Pers. 19, 30v10-11, Casanatense 2322, 34v11, Laud Or. 2, 36v2).

PS 1a *Miʿ mār ‘the (Supreme) Architect’ is a metaphorical reference to Jesus that is already found in the early Syriac tradition.96 Cf. the imagery of the Church as building in Ephrem’s homily quoted above (7d) and also the term miʿ mār‑i kārxāna‑yi qudrat ‘God (lit. the architect of the building site of power)’ (Steingass 1276).

PS 1c Pisar hamgūn nišastas ‘the Son is seated in the same way (as the Father)’. In the Diatessaron and the Persian Gospels, “the Son of Man” (Lk 22.69) is pisar‑i ādamī (D 107r Messina 340, Leiden Or. 675, 88r8) or as farzand‑i ādamī (Lisbon 7964, 194r2, Pococke 241, 134r13, Laud Or. 2, 161r6, Casanatense 2322, 163r5). The word hamgūn(a) is recorded in the standard dictionaries as an adjective meaning ‘of the same colour; of the same kind, similar’,97 but is attested as the Judaeo-Persian adverb hmgwn ‘likewise’ (cf. MPrs. hamgōnag) in the witnesses’ signatures on one of the Quilon copper plates (ninth century).98

PS 1d ḥān is spelled ḥan in both manuscripts and is noteworthy in that it preserves the initial aspiration which is already lost in Zoroastrian MPrs. ān and is otherwise only attested in Manichaean MPrs. hʾn, ẖʾn hān ‘that’ (cf. Kurdish hān, ān ‘such; that’).99 The spelling 1a A ʾn ān may be due to a late date of the variant reading for 1a ʾyn īn. A reading ḥan with shortening of the vowel before implosive ‑n cannot be excluded, since several early instances of such shortening are known, especially in the case of ān.100

96 See Murray 2004, 218-228, esp. 223-228.97 Cf. Muʿīn, vol. 4, 5192 s.v. hamgūn; Lazard 1990, 462 s.v. hamgūn; Dihxudā, vol. 40,

296 s.v. hamgūna.98 Cf. Henning 1958, 91 and Cereti 2009, 34-37.99 See Durkin-Meisterernst 2004, 175 and Cabolov 2001, 431. On the etymology of the

pronoun, see Josephson in this volume (§ 2.2) with references.100 See Lazard 1963, 182 § 119.


PS 1e nādādas ‘did not give’ has the negative nominal prefix nā‑ instead of the verbal prefix na‑. The nominal prefix nā‑ occurs instead of na‑ in early texts, where it is mostly found before participles in perfect forms.101

PS 1f ṣāḥib‑i qudrat‑i ʿaẓīm‑as ‘He has a great power’ admits of the alternative translation ‘He has the power of the Great One (i.e. God the Father)’, as well as the reading ṣāḥib‑qudrat‑i ʿaẓīm‑as ‘He is almighty and great’.

persIanmanusCrIpts

Borg. Pers. 19 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, ms. Borg. Pers. 19.Casanatense 2322 Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, ms. Casanatense 2322.D Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, ms. Or. 81 (Diatessaron,

ed. Messina 1951).Laud Or. 2 Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms. Laud Or. 2.Leiden Or. 675 Leiden University Library, ms. Or. 675.Lisbon 7964 Lisbon National Library, Codex 7964 (Y-4-48).Lisbon 7965 Lisbon National Library, Codex 7965 (Y-4-49) [folios not numbered].Pococke 241 Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms. Pococke 241.Vat. Pers. 4 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, ms. Vat. Pers. 4.

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Documents

(with Paola Orsatti) ‘Two Syro-Persian hymns for Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday’, in The Persian language in history, ed. Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2011,