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Ancient and Rare Readings in the Syriac Harklean Version of the Gospel of John and their Significance for its Interpretation

Summary

The paper challenges the long-standing view that the Syriac Harklean version, an early seventh-century translation by Thomas of Harkel, is only a secondary witness because it is broadly Byzantine. Jutkiewicz prepared a forthcoming critical edition of Harklean John (CSCO 709). He argues that the "Byzantine" label is too coarse: many individual Harklean readings fall outside that text-type.

He examines four rare variants in John, at 2:1 (2:3), 2:9, 3:36 and 4:24. They are otherwise found mostly in very old Greek or Vetus Latina witnesses, such as Sinaiticus (א) and VL 2, 3, 4 and 14. He reads them through "narrative textual criticism." This approach does not ask only which text is original. It also asks what secondary readings show about how early communities read the Gospel.

The main finding is that these readings must have circulated in Greek sources that are now lost. This means late witnesses can preserve ancient material. It also means editors should not treat such readings as mere errors.

Key points

  • The two key editions are Yohanna's Harklean Mark (2015) and Jutkiewicz's Harklean John (CSCO 709, Peeters, forthcoming 2025).
  • Family 2138 (MSS 1611, 1505, 2138, 2495) is close to the Harklean text in the epistles. However, a survey found no link to Harklean John, and only two of these manuscripts contain the gospels.
  • At John 4:24, some Harklean manuscripts and Sinaiticus read a genitive, "in the spirit of truth," instead of "in spirit and truth." In the oldest manuscript (V) this reading sits in the margin; some later copies moved it into the main text.
  • In the preliminary collation of John made toward the Editio Critica Maior, this reading was split into two separate changes (dropping καί and the genitive form), and the genitive was flagged for regularisation, i.e. as an error. The author argues the Harklean attestation shows it is a genuine variant.
  • No Greek witness survives from the period between the earliest attestations and the Harklean version, except for 3:36. This suggests that much of the transmission history has been lost.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. An unusual form that a second, independent witness also attests should count as a real variant, not as noise to normalise away. — For Mova (learn): When building silver data from several witness parsers, a minority analysis that an independent parser reproduces should be kept as a candidate instead of being overwritten by the majority.
  • I2. Edits that clearly belong together (dropping a conjunction and changing a case) should be recorded as one unit; splitting them hides their connection and breaks alignment across sources. — For Mova (tree): In UD dialect conversion and treebank diffing, group linked token-level changes into a single edit, so that error analysis does not count one phenomenon as several unrelated ones.
  • I3. To judge whether a reworded phrase was meant to change meaning, the author checks whether the same phrase in the neighbouring verse was also altered. Since 4:23 was left untouched, the 4:24 change reads as a synonym rather than a new claim. — For Mova (frames): When two nearby mentions differ in wording, check whether parallel occurrences changed too before deciding whether they are distinct frames or paraphrases of the same one.
  • I4. A broad label on a source ("Byzantine") should not decide the value of each of its readings; judge readings one at a time. — For Mova (learn): Do not trust or discount LLM-teacher tiers or corpora wholesale by their reputation; score individual outputs, so that a lower-tier source can still contribute correct rare cases.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

Fields: Linguistics & languages

Cite

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.31743/ba.17703

@article{jutkiewicz2025ancient,
  title = {{Ancient and Rare Readings in the Syriac Harklean Version of the Gospel of John and their Significance for its Interpretation}},
  author = {Jutkiewicz, Piotr},
  journal = {The Biblical Annals 15},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.31743/ba.17703},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.31743/ba.17703}
}

References

3 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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  3. Andrews; St. Andrews 1973). Wachtel, K., “Early Variants in the Byzantine Text of the Gospels,” Transmission and Reception. New Testament Text-Critical and Exegetical Studies (ed. J.W. Childers – D.C. Parker) (Texts and Studies, Contributions to Biblical and Patristic Literature 3.4; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press 2006) 28–47. Wachtel, K., “Notes on the Text of the Acts of the Apostles,” Novum Testamentum Graecum. Editio Critica Maior. III. Acts of the Apostles (eds. Holger Strutwolf et al.) (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft 2017) [part 1.1] 28–33. Wechsler, M.G., Evangelium Johannis Aethiopicum (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 617 – Scriptores Aethiopici 109; Louvain: Peeters 2005). Westcott, B.F. – Hort, F.J.A., The New Testament in the Original Greek. Introduction and Appendix (New York: Harper 1882). Yohanna, S.S., The Gospel of Mark in the Syriac Harklean Version. An Edition Based upon the Earliest Witnesses (Biblica et Orientalia 52; Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press 2015). Zahn, T., Introduction to the New Testament (Edinburgh: Clark 1909) III. find

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