ospels, (called from the
name of its discoverer "THE CURETONIAN SYRIAC,") have come to light:(60)
and in this translation also the verses in question are found.(61) This
fragmentary codex is referred by Cureton to the middle of the vth century.
At what earlier date the Translation may have been executed,--as well as
how much older the original Greek copy may have been which this translator
employed,--can of course only be conjectured. But it is clear that we are
listening to another truly primitive witness to the genuineness of the
text now under consideration;--a witness (like the last) vastly more
ancient than either the Vatican Codex B, or the Sinaitic Codex {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}; more
ancient, therefore, than any Greek copy of the Gospels in existence. We
shall not be thought rash if we claim it for the iiird century.

III. Even this, however, does not fully represent the sum of the testimony
which the Syriac language bears on this subject. Philoxenus, Monophysite
Bishop of Mabug (Hierapolis) in Eastern Syria, caused a revision of the
Peshito Syriac to be executed by his Chorepiscopus Polycarp, A.D. 508; and
by the aid of three(62) approved and accurate Greek manuscripts, this
revised version of Polycarp was again revised by Thomas of Hharkel, in the
monastery of Antonia at Alexandria, A.D. 616. The Hharklensian Revision,
(commonly called the "PHILOXENIAN,") is therefore an extraordinary
monument of ecclesiastical antiquity indeed: for, being the Revision of a
revised Translation of the New Testament known to have been executed from
MSS. which must have been at least as old as the vth century, it exhibits
the result of what may be called a collation of copies made at a time when
only four of our extant uncials were in existence. Here, then, is a
singularly important accumulation of manuscript evidence on the subject of
the verses which of late years it has become the fashion to treat as
spurious. And yet, neither by Polycarp nor by Thomas of Hharkel, are the
last twelve verses of S. Mark's Gospel omitted.(63)

To these, if I do not add the "Jerusalem version,"--(as an independent
Syriac translation of the Ecclesiastical Sections, perhaps of the vth
century, is called,(64))--it is because our fourfold Syriac evidence is
already abundantly sufficient. In itself, it far outweighs in respect of
antiquity anything that can be shewn on the other side. Turn we next to
the Churches of the West.

IV. That Jerome, at the bi