SMMJ 68, pastedown at end
Pages don’t always turn up where we expect them to. The image above is of a pastedown at the end of a Syriac liturigical manuscript (SMMJ 68), a Beth Gazo missing its beginning and end, dated 1580; according to a note on f. 186v, it was repaired in October, 1910 as part of Saint Mark’s collection, and it was probably at that time bound in the cover of an English Bible published much later by the British and Foreign Bible Society (see below)! (Incidentally, the original binder of the Bible was Watkins, as can be seen from the emblem at the top left of the photo above, on the inside of the original front cover; a search reveals other known copies of English Bibles bound by Watkins in the 19th century.) The page above is from an older (and prettier) manuscript, a Gospel lectionary containing Jn 5:29 and Mt 24:36-39 (Peshitta) in a clear Estrangela hand, including some diacritical marks and vowels. It is an iffy business attempting to date a single manuscript page, but this one might be from the 13th century.
The current cover of the book, originally a Bible from the British and Foreign Bible Society.
hmmlorientalia 
Reblogged this on baragesingh.
Reblogged this on baragesingh.
To look at the binding and flyleaves, this is the first thing Arthur Voobus taught me when investigating a codex.
This is a lectionary text for a morning reading from Matthew 24:36-39. It appears to be from the Peshitto. It is missing “dyn” at the beginning and one word omits a “yod” (lkwyla, see line 14) in the word “ ark”. According to Payne-Smith this is a common variant of the spelling.
Most significantly the text omits the phrase “nor the son of man.” While this iis a feature of the Peshitto text, Adam Messer has looked at the patristic evidence of “nor the Son” in Matthew 24:36 in a quest to determine whether the excision of these words to investigate if this reading was influenced by orthodox Fathers.
This could be considered one of the most dangerous passages in the Gospels. Dangerous to what? It is dangerous to the Christology of Christ. If Christ did not know the day of hour of the coming of the son of man, this compromises the deity of the son of God. Is this the reason the page was torn out of a 13th century manuscript and used as part of the cover for the codex?
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