Arabic versions (Hastings' Dictionary)

Arab. VSS of the Bible have been made from various 80urce.«, chiefly Gr., Syr., and Coptic. It is, however, most improbable that any Christian Arab, literature is as old as the time of Mohammed. There were Christians in the Arab, kingdom of Ghassiin, E. of Damascus, and at Nejran in S. Arabia, but, to judge from our very scanty historical information about the progress of the Church in these regions, the ecclesiastical lan- guage was Syriac.

* It was not tUl after the success of the Koran had made Arabic into a literary lan- guage, and the conq^uests of Islam had turned large portions of Christian Syria and Egypt into Arabic-speaking provinces, that the need of trans- lations of Scripture in the Arabic vernacular was really felt. The extant forms of NT in Arabic are best divided according to the languages from which they are derived. Thus we have — (i.) translations from the Syriac; (ii.

) translations directly from the Greek; (iii.) translations from the Coptic; at a later period we have also (iv.) eclectic com- binations of the first three classes. It \vill be con- venient to take the various divisions of NT separ- ately. The Four Gospels.— <i. ) Trs.from the Syr.— The, oldest representative of this class, perhaps the oldest monument of Arab. Christianity, is the tr. of the Gospels in a MS formerly belonging to the Convent of Mar Saba near Jerus., now Cod. Vati- ranus Arab.

13, called by Tischendorf ar™' (Greg. cod. 101), and generally assigned to the 8th cent.t From some Gr. Iambics at the end of the MS we learn that it originally belonged to a certain Daniel of Emesa, and contained the Psalter, the Gospels, the Acts, and all the Epp. ; of these only fragments of the Gospels J and the Pauline Epp. now remain. The style is somewhat paraphrastic, but internal evidence conclusively shows that the Gospels have been tr. not directly from the Gr.

, but from the Syriac Vulgate (Peshitta).§ This free tr. from the Syr. Vulg. was probably made in some locality where Syr. had been the ecclesiastical language, and seems to have been • Ibn lahic about the middle of the 8th cent. a.d. (Wiisten- feld'8 Jbn HUhdm, p. \hO) quotes Jn I62)-16i as a prophecy con- cerning Mohammed ; but the words are only a rout,'h rendering from tne Palestinian Syr. version, not a quotation from an already existing Arab. tr. See Ouidi, Ew. p. 6.

t The only accurate description of Vat. Arab. IS Ib In Ouidi, Etw. p. 8. Considerable extracts from the MS are given in Soholz, Krit. ReiKp, pp. llS-12-1. t Mt 10»?-middle of 26, Mk 51!>-I68a, Lk TH-bepnning of 10. i E.g. in the account of the Temptation (Lk 4' ii), Syr. Vulg. and ar. rot exat^tly agree in the names of the Evil One. In w.l. »• « and 'a a i.iL$akK is rendered by Syr. Vulg. 'the Accuser • J »r. mil has J lay*!' 'the Slanderer," and In t.

i — »)'^l ^v,3yj' 'the calumniating Slanderer' (for the rendering of jjva^^' see 8 Ti 83 In all Arab. VSS). But In T.» Syr. Vulg. has 'Satan,' soar. vat. has \\-' t )' n;» Arab. VSS not derived from the Syr. have in aU these passages j^^^u-u-' ( = 3.«^«A«t), but In v.8 they insert .U2J— * w to render the Gr. rmrmii^ a word here omitted by both Syr. Vulg. and ar. vat. it is worth noticing in this connexion that Syr. Vulg. and ar.

vat alone among critical authorities agree in inserting the name ' Jesus' in Lk 4^'. Ar. vat has been wrongly cited {e.g. by Tischendort) as omittitw the 'last twelve verses' of Mk. It is owing to aw.i- dental loss of leaves that the MS breaks off jiut be/are tht end of Mk 168, thus: — Ujl^ U^^ \j.J^ S^t jJLi Jj u Prof. Giiidi has been kind enough to ascertain for this article. soon discarded at Mar Saba for a mors literal version made directly from the Greek.

In other words, the Gospel text of ar. vat was already obsolete by the 9th cent. A.D. No other Arabic version can claim such a high antiquity.* Another tr. from the Syr. Vulg. is found in cod. Tisch. 12 at Leipzig (Greg. cod. 75), a bilingual Syr. -Arab. MS of the 10th cent., brought to Europe by Tischendorf from the Syrian Convent of St. Mary Deipara in the Nitrian desert. A few leaves are at the British Museum (addl. 14467). This MS has been fully described by Gildemeister. The tr.

keeps closely to Syr. Vulg., but some renderings recall the phraseology of ar. vat, e.g. s. Jjib ^ fj^ in Mt lO'"'- for 'ia not worthy of me.' This idiomatic phrase is not used in the later Arab. VSS. Here may be noticed the Arab. VS of Tatian'a Diatessaron, which has been edited in full from two MSS at Rome by Ciasca (Eng. tr. by Hamlyn HUl). This VS was made, in the early part of the 11th cent.

, by the well-known scholar Abu'l P'araj ibn et-Tayyib from a form of the Syriac Diatessaron in which the text had been almost wholly assimilated to Syr. Vulg. It is therefore nearly worthless as an authority for the text, though most valuable for recovering the arrange- ment of Tatian's Harmony. (ii. ) Trs.from the Gr. — An Arab. tr. made directly from the Gr. appears in some MSS of the 9th cent., such as cod. K. ii.

31, in the Propaganda at Rome, and the fragments of Tischendorf 's 'Lec- tionary ' now at Leipzig (Greg. cod. 76). Both MSS come from Mar Saba.f Very similar to these is the Sinai MS Arab. 75.t These MSS have the Gr. rlrXoi and liturgical notes. They are perhaps ultimately derived from a bilingual Gr.-Arab. uncial MS generally quoted as O*", of which only four leaves remain, one in its original home at the Convent of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai, and three in the collection of Bp. Porphyry.

§ (iii. ) Trs.from the Coptic. — Most MSSof the Copt. (Bohairic) NT are accompanied by an Arab. VS. Amon" these cod. Vat. Copt. 9, ^v^itten in 1202 A.D. (Greg. cod. Copt. 30) seems to have been used as a kind of standard text.ll We shall see later on that the text of this MS is the ultimate source of all the printed edd. of the Gospels in Arabic. (iv.) The two Eclectic Bevisions.

— None of the Arab, texts hitherto considered have been in any sense an official VS, and they present all the con- fusing variety natural in such independent pro- ductions. The need of a more fixed type, and one which took account of all three great national Vulgates of the E., — the Gr., the Syr., and the Copt.,^was felt by the 13tb cent., especially in Egypt, where Arabic had quite supplanted the native dialect. The first revised ed. of this kind was made about 1250 A.D.

atAIexandriabyHibat Allah ibn el-" Assfll. This work, of which several MSS survive, consists of a revised text of the Gospels with various reail- ings from the Gr., the Syr., and the Copt. IT It was, however, found too cumbrous for a popular VS, and towards the end of the 13th cent, was • Some of the missing portions of ar. vat In Mt have been supplied in a hand of the 10th cent. From the style and vociiliulary they seem to have been copied from the original MS before the leaves were lost.

t Ouidi, Evv. pp. 9, 10 ; ZDMQ vill. 686. For later develop- ments of this VS, see Ouidi, Ew. pp. 11. 12. } Mrs. Gibson, Cat. <tf Arab. MSS, frontispiece. 5 The Arab, text of the Sinai leaf is printed by Dr. Rendel Harris in Mrs. Lewis' Cat. of Syr. MSS, Appx. p. lOS. It seems to be the conjugate of one of Bp. Porphyry's leaves. |l Ouidi, Ew. pp. 17, '23. H For details of Ibn el- AssAl's work, see Ouidi, Ew. pp. 18-22, and Prof. Macdonald in Uartjard Seminary Raord, April 1893.

ARABIC VERSIONS ARABIC VERSIONS 137 snperseded by tlie modem 'Alex. Vulgate.' Tliis IB little more thiin the te.xt of Vat. Cojit. 9, filled out by inserting: from the Syr. or the Gr. those numerous passages where the ancient Copt. VS did not contain words found in Syr. Vulg. and in the Gr. text of the Middle Ages. In many MSS of this Alex. Vulg. (ar. alex.) these passages are indicated by marginal notes.

* Besides these main types of text there are several later MSS of the Gospels in Arabic in which the language has been corrected or em- bellished. Guidi (Evv. p. 29) also mentions some late MSS from Spain which appear to present a tr. of the Latin Vulgat«. The printed edd. of the Gospels in Arabic are all forms of the Alex. Vulg. Of these the chief are the Rom. ed. of 1591, the ed. of Erpenius (Leyden, 1616), and Lagarde's ed. of the Vienna MS (Greg. cod. 36). The last is the only ed.

containing the marginal notes which belong to ar. alex. Some edd. of SjT. Vulg. for use among the Maronites, of which the most accessible is the Paris reprint of 1824, contain also a Carshflnl VS (ar. cjirsh). This, however, is simply ar. alex. slightly modified to suit the Peshi^ta. The Pauline Epistles. — (1.) Tr a. from the. Gr. of the fourteen Epp. of St. Paul are found in ar. vat (8th or 9tli cent., see above), and in a Sinai MS (ar. «n.-Paul) of the 9th cent.

, the text of which was published bj' Mrs. Gibson in 1894. At. vat has the so-called 'Euthalian' sections, etc. + ; ar. sin, which is quite independent of ar. vat, is remarkable for having no ' Euthalian ' matter, but nevertheless it represents the late An- tiochian text mixed with a few good readings.^ (ii. ) A Tr. from the Syr. is found in a MS now at St. Petersburg (Greg. cod. 134), brought by Ti- schendorf ' from the E.' It is dated 892 A.D.

, and appears to have been rendered from a Nestorian copy of the Veshitt.1,§ but with glosses and addi- tions like the Gospel text in ar. x'rxt. From the VS found in this M^S (ar. pet) is ultimately derived that of the printed edd. of Erpenius, and the Car- shQni ed. of 1S24. The latter agrees very closely with B. M. Hfirl. 5474 (dated 1288 A.D.) The Acts and Catholic Epistle.s. — No direct Arab. tr. from the Gr. is known for the Acts and major Cath. Epp. The chief edd. (ar. erp and ar.

carsh) seem to be, as in the Gospels, an eclectic mixture of the Copt., the Gr., and the Syr. In the disputed Cath. Epp., which had no place in the • Oiildi, Em. pp. 22-24. He also points out(p. 35 II.) the highly Iraportjinl fact that the lat« text from which most MSS of the Etn. V8 have been corrupted is none other than ar. alex. t For Bo (Scholz, Krit. Ueise, p. 122) the nuniltera are : 6 sect., 19 capp., 34 («*) quot. from OT, and 920 ttichi.

Scholz also tranacrihes the w-Iiole of Phileni and a few other paasagVB. As ar. vat has l)een wrongly quoted In 1 Tim 3^^ for M(, I erive the whole passage (from Scbolz) : — i ^' Isjk. • ^Si\ ^^^ j.jJii y> aU\ Th tact that the two dots of } m never written In this MB to have prevented Schol from reco^lslng that ^ j..^ wj' simply represents luriffum. Scholz's t«xt has ,_5Ji t (for i^AjV : See, t.g., Ro 1ft', Oal 61». I Si-e ^D.V'i viii. ^84 ; Dolltzsch, Bthrafr, pp.

7ft4-7fl8, who quotes the exlraor.tinary retKJerinjr of ar. p^t in He 2 : and so fu vit/ioul Hint, irho hatt utiili-d JJiiiutr(f with him aa a templf. tntilrii drath /or ail mmx. The variant x"" '•»' 's not found In Svr. Vuljf. except in Nestorian copies. In ar. erp this is emi.nd(Kl to exjircss x^fi'^' "*'• "d in ar. v&nh we have ' Gnd 6lf Uis grace,' as Syr. Vul^. Se* (iildeniciHtcr, p. 1 (n.), who brin^fs forwar<l He .V as another Instance where ar. erp and ar.

carah have a corruption of the text of ar. pet. Peshitta (2 P, 2 and 3 Jn, Jude), the tr. appe*ri to have been made directly from the Greek. A tr. from the Syr. of Ac and all seven Cath. Epp. (in the Gr. order) is found in a 9th cent, vellum MS at Sinai (Mrs. Gibson's Cat., No. 154). In this text, while the other parts are from Syr. Vulg., the disputed Cath. Epp. are translated from the Pocockian VS (Syr. bodl.), now generally printed in edd. of Syr. Vulj;.

, and which is prob- ably a fragment of the PhUoxenian VS before its revision by Tliomas of Harkel. This MS is thus perhaps the oldest witness for Syr. bodl., though it does not contain the purest text. The Apocalypse.— The Apoc. was not a canoni- cal book among the E. Churches ; the Arab. VSS, therefore, varj' greatly. Ar. erp is here perhaps a combination of the Gr. and the Copt. Ar. carsh contains some peculiar double renderings (e.g. Rev 1° ■'), but their source is not very clear.

It is not a tr. of the i)rinted Syr. text. The Old Te.stament.— Arab. VSS of OT fall under four heads, tnz. trs. from the Gr., from the Syr., from the Heb., and from the Sam. Of tlie.se the greater bulk still remains in unexamined MSS, only a portion of the various sources having been printed. The great Paris Polyglott contains a complete Arab, text of the whole OT except the Apocr., and this text has been repeated with minor variations in Walton's Polyglott and in the New- castle ed.

of 1811, but it presents a singularly mixed text. The Pent, is the version of Sa'a<lya (see below). Jos is also from the Heb., but it does not directly appear that Sa'adya waa the translator. Jg, S, K, and Ch are all from tlie Peshittfi, as is also the Book of Job. The Propliets, Psalms, and Pro- verbs are from the Greek, the Prophets being a tr. made by a priest of Alexandria from a good uncial MS resembling cod. A. This curious jumble rests upon an Ejryp.

MS of the 16tli cent, used by the editors of thel'olyglott(sceComiirs/ictf/iK:; and Slane's Cat. dcs. MSS arabes de la liibl. Aat. p. 1). Of the trs. from the Peshittft there are several MSS. The Psalter was printed in Carsh(ini by the Maronites in 1610 at a convent in the SVfidy Qflzhayya (' Pnalterium qtUhayyensis'), and re- printed by Lagarde. Some lacun;e in the Paris Polyglott (CorniU enumerates Ezk 11" 13* 24""-" 273a 4217. 16) are supplied in Walton from an Oxford MS of this class.

There are also MSS containing a tr. from the Copt. VS of the LXX. Of this Lagarde has pub- lished Job (Psalteriuin, etc., 1876). An ed. of the Psalter and Cant, with critical notes similar to the work of Ibnel-'Assfil (.see above), is to be found in B. M. Anind. Or. 15. Several MSS present an Arab. tr. made from the Sam. Pent. Specimens (incl. Ex 3, 4) are to be found in a Programm by van Vloten, Leyilen, 1803. The best MS is probably that in the Cambridge University Library (<(</<//. 714).

The Arab. tr. of certain books of OT made direct from the original Heb. have an interest of their own for the history of interpretation, though thiy almost invariably conform strictly to the M'l. Most of these trs. are from the pen of Sa'mlya (.mvo, Ar. Ju^*-:) the Ga'fln, a learned Itabbi, liom in the I'ayyl^m in Upper Eg-\'iit (A. I). 8!)2-<)42). His liiblical trs. have been |iul>lislied as follows : the Pent, at Constantinoide in 1.510, and again in the Polyglot t» (see above) ; Is.

by Paulus, 17!KI-9I -t Cant, by Mcrx, ia.S2; Pr. capp. 1-9, by Hon.li.lSSS ; .lob, by Colin, 1889. In iKiilition to these there is the tr. of Jos in thi' Polyglotts mentioned al>ove. Other VSS from the Heb., such as that in the Owynn, Trant. <t} It. Iriih Arad. xxx. pp. ITS. 1711. t \'iTy faulty. . Solomon Munk made imporlnnt cnntrihu tions Ki a more acciiraU' text in vol. ix. of Cohen's ([real llibia (Paris, 1S3S)* : Cheyne's Jtaiah, vol. li. p. 200. 138 AKAD ARAM, ARAiLEAJN'S 17th cent.

MS of the Pent., Ps and Dn, in B. ^I. Harl. 5505, seem rather to belong to the era of modern trs. LiTEKATiRE. — CRITICAL DisccssiosB. — Guidi, £« Troduzioni degti Kvangelii in Arabo e in Etiopico (Reale Accademia dei Liiicei, anno cclxxxv.)

, Rome, 18SS — the one indispensable work for a general view of Arabic VSS ; OUdemeister, De Eeangeliit in Arabicum e Simplici Syriaca translutis, Bonn, 1865 — contains an account of the Leipzij^ MS, together with much valuable information about the printed edd. of the Arab. Gos- pels ; Cornill, Ez£chiel, Leipzig, l»isO, Introd. pp. 4y-.S7 — con- tains a careful investigation of the texts of the f'olyglottd so far a£ concerns Ezekiel. (De Sacy, M^m. de V Acad'^mif dfs Inscrip- tions, torn.

xlix. anc. 86rie. On Arab. VSS of the Pent.] PoBLlsilKD Texts. — Gregory, Prolegomena to Tisch. N.T., Leip- zig, 1894, contains a useful list of alf the then knou-n Arab. MSS of NT. Care must, however, be taken to look for the bilinguaJ MSS under the other language. Among the various catalogues of public hbraries I have found the British Museum Catalogue (compiled by Cureton, 1S46) especially valuable for the length and number of extracts from the MSS. For the OT.

— Paris Polyglott (see above, p. 137^) ; Walton's Polyglott, London, lt\i>2, the Arab, repeated m the Newcastle ed. of 1811 ; Lagarde, Psalt., lob, Piov., Arabice, Gdttingen, 1876 — contains three VSS of the Ps from the Gr. and the ' Psalterium QQzhayyensis ' from the PeshittA, a VS of Job from the Copt., and Job and Pr from the Paris Polyglott. (For Sa'adya, see the edd. enumerated on p. 137b,) For the NT. — Ed. Princeps, Rome, 1591 (repeated 1619, 1774), with a Lat. tr.

by Antonius {sic) Sionita ; Ed. of Erpeniua, Leyden, 1616 (=ar. erp) ; Ed. qf the Potfijlottt (re- peated in the Newcastle ed. of 1811) ; Ed. Carshunica, Rome, 1703 (repeated in the Paris ed. of 1824 issued under the super- vision of de Sacy=ar. carsh); Lagarde, LHt vier Evantjelien arabisch, Leipzig, 1864 (see p. 137») ; Scholz, Bibtisch-Krttische Jieine, Leipzig. 1823 ; pp. 118-124 contain considerable extracts from ar. vat (see pp.l36»,137*'); Gibson (Mrs.),5f«'/ia Sinaitica, ii.

, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1894, contains the text of ar. w'n.-Paul.; Stud. Sin. i. Appx. p. 105, contains the Sinai leaf of ^l» ; Stud. Sin. iii.. Frontispiece, contains a page of ar. sin. 75 (see p. 137*) ; Delitzsch, Hebrder, Appx. v. (pp. 764-769), contains extracts from ar. pf(..PauJ (see p. 137^). The Diatessaron (see p. 136b). — (^asca, Tatiani Evangeliorum Harmoniae Arabice, Rome, 1888 ; Hill, The Earliest Life qf Christ, Edinburgh, 1894. F. C. BURKITT. (TJi?)

— A Benjamite who helped to put to ! inhabitants of Gath (1 Ch 8"). ARAD flight the ARAD {-rr;). — A city of one of the kings of the Canuanites, assigned to the tribe of Judah (Jos 12"), on the north-west border of the wilderness of Judah, to which place (if the present text be correct) a family of Kenites miCTated from Jericho (Jg I"'). It has been identified with certain ruins on the top of a hill, Tell 'Arad, about 16 miles south of Hebron, on the plateau to the south of the 1 )ead Sea.

Eusebius and Jerome describe Arad as 20 Koraan miles south of Hebron in the wilderness of K;idesh. The king of Arad fought against the Israelites as they were turning awav from the south ot Palestine, but was defeated at^ormah (Nu 21' SS"). In these passages in Nu where the RV, agreeably to the Heb. text, reads ' king of Arad,' the AV less happily renders ' king Arad.' Literati'RK.— Robinson, B«P2 ii. 101, 201 ; SrPiii. 403, 416; Budde, liicht. u. Sam. 9£f.; Moore, Judms, 32ff. J. MACPHER.SON.

ARADUS CApaSot), 1 Mac 15=».— The Greek form of the Ileb. Arvad (wh. see).