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The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christianity. The New Testament's background, the first division of the Christian Bible, is called the Old Testament, which is based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible; together they are regarded as sacred scripture by Christians.
Abgar V, called Ukkāmā, was the King of Osroene with his capital at Edessa.
James Rendel Harris was an English biblical scholar and curator of manuscripts, who was instrumental in bringing back to light many Syriac Scriptures and other early documents. His contacts at the Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in Egypt enabled twin sisters Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson to discover there the Sinaitic Palimpsest, the oldest Syriac New Testament document in existence. He subsequently accompanied them on a second trip, with Robert Bensly and Francis Crawford Burkitt, to decipher the palimpsest. He himself discovered there other manuscripts. Harris's Biblical Fragments from Mount Sinai appeared in 1890. He was a Quaker.
The Abgar legend is a set of letters that claim to be a correspondence exchanged between Jesus of Nazareth and King Abgar V of Osroene. The documents first surfaced in the fourth century when Eusebius of Caesarea published the two letters which were allegedly discovered in the archives of Edessa. They claim to be written during the last year of Jesus' life.
According to Eastern Christian tradition, Addai of Edessa or Thaddeus of Edessa was one of the seventy disciples of Jesus. He is possibly identical with Thaddaeus, one of the Twelve Apostles. From an early date his hagiography is filled with legends and fabrications. The saint himself may be entirely fictitious.
The Syriac Sinaiticus or Codex Sinaiticus Syriacus (syrs), known also as the Sinaitic Palimpsest, of Saint Catherine's Monastery, or Old Syriac Gospels is a late-4th- or early-5th-century manuscript of 179 folios, containing a nearly complete translation of the four canonical Gospels of the New Testament into Syriac, which have been overwritten by a vita (biography) of female saints and martyrs with a date corresponding to AD 697. This palimpsest is the oldest copy of the Gospels in Syriac, one of two surviving manuscripts that are conventionally dated to before the Peshitta, the standard Syriac translation.
The Doctrine of Addai is a Syriac Christian text, written in the late 4th or early 5th century CE. It recounts the legend of the Image of Edessa as well as the legendary works of Addai and his disciple Mari in Mesopotamia.
2 Baruch is a Jewish pseudepigraphical text thought to have been written in the late 1st century CE or early 2nd century CE, after the destruction of the Temple in CE 70. It is attributed to the biblical Baruch and so is associated with the Old Testament, but not regarded as scripture by Jews or by most Christian groups. It is included in some editions of the Peshitta, and is part of the Bible in the Syriac Orthodox tradition. It has 87 sections (chapters).
John bar Penkaye was a writer of the late seventh century who was a member of the Church of the East. He lived at the time of the fifth Umayyad caliph, Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan.
Agnes Smith Lewis (1843–1926) and Margaret Dunlop Gibson (1843–1920), nées Agnes and Margaret Smith born on 11 January, were Arabic, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, and Syriac language scholars and travellers. As the twin daughters of John Smith of Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, they learned more than 12 languages between them, and became acclaimed scholars in their academic fields, and benefactors to the Presbyterian Church of England, especially to Westminster College, Cambridge.
Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. Portions of the Old Testament were written in Aramaic and there are Aramaic phrases in the New Testament. Syriac translations of the New Testament were among the first and date from the 2nd century. The whole Bible was translated by the 5th century. Besides Syriac, there are Bible translations into other Aramaic dialects.
Minuscule 69, δ 505, known as the Codex Leicester, or Codex Leicestrensis, is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament on paper and parchment leaves. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the 15th century. Some leaves of the codex are lost. It has been examined and collated by many palaeographers and textual critics. Although it is of a late date, its text is remarkable from the point of view of textual criticism.
Minuscule 713, ε351, is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on parchment. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 12th century. The manuscript is lacunose. Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener labelled it as 561e.
The canon of the New Testament is the set of books many modern Christians regard as divinely inspired and constituting the New Testament of the Christian Bible. For historical Christians, canonization was based on whether the material was from authors socially approximate to the apostles and not based solely on divine inspiration – however, many modern scholars recognize that the New Testament texts were not written by apostles. For most, it is an agreed-upon list of 27 books that includes the canonical Gospels, Acts, letters attributed to various apostles, and Revelation, though there are many textual variations. The books of the canon of the New Testament were written before 120 AD. Although the list of what books constituted the canon differed among the hundreds of churches in antiquity, according to ancient church historian Eusebius there was a consensus that the same 27 books constituting the canon today were the same 27 books generally recognized in the first century. For the Orthodox, the recognition of these writings as authoritative was formalized in the Second Council of Trullan of 692. The Catholic Church provided a conciliar definition of its biblical canon in 382 at the (local) Council of Rome as well as at the Council of Trent of 1545, reaffirming the Canons of Florence of 1442 and North African Councils of 393–419. For the Church of England, it was made dogmatic on the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563; for Calvinism, on the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647.
Saint Peter, also known as Peter the Apostle, Simon Peter, Simeon, Simon, or Cephas, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ and one of the first leaders of the early Christian Church. He appears repeatedly and prominently in all four New Testament gospels as well as the Acts of the Apostles.
The Acts of Thaddeus is a Greek document written between 544 and 944 CE which purports to describe correspondence between King Abgar V of Edessa and Jesus, which results in Jesus' disciple Thaddeus going to Edessa.
The Apocalypse of John the Little is an apocalyptic text supposedly given to John the Apostle by revelation. It is dated to the eighth-century AD and pertains to the rise of Islam. The title includes "the Little" which is in reference to John being the younger brother of James the Great. The text models itself from that of the Book of Revelation and the Book of Daniel and provides some of the cruelest surviving Syriac representations of Islamic dominance. It is also one of the earliest text alluding to Muhammad by Christians and possibly one of the earliest accounts of Christians converting to Islam.
The Apocalypse of Simeon Kepha is an apocalyptic text attributed to Peter the Apostle. The text mainly pertains to polemics against the Church of the East. Its main characteristic is lamentation over the deterioration of Christian faith in general and allusions to bribed judges initiating persecutions and martyrdoms.
The Edessene Apocalypse or Edessene Fragment is an apocalyptic text. The original title has not been preserved due to missing pages; the conventional title was coined by modern scholars because the content heavily focuses on Edessa. The text is a revised and an abridged version of the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius with modified schema. It is a witness to the crisis Syriac Christians were experiencing due to the political success of Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr and the intensified pressure on non-Muslim communities in his reign.
The Gospel of the Twelve Apostles is a gospel text that summarizes the four canonical gospels and the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles followed by three apocalypses. It survives only in a single manuscript and is inspired by the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius. Its eschatological expectations was both simple and updated from previous Syriac apocalyptical texts of the same period and is a witness to the Syrian Christian strategy on coping with Muslim rule in the second half of the seventh century as the Muslim rule was no longer being perceived as a temporary event causing apocalyptic tensions to dissipate. It also advocates disconnection from Judaism and non-Miaphysite and presents the author's advocacy in their own community to not have them convert to Islam but have the community keep the true faith.
References
Citations
- ↑ Penn 2015, p. 149.
- 1 2 3 Harris 1900, p. 18.
- 1 2 Penn 2015, pp. 148 & 149.
- ↑ Harris 1900, p. 7.
- ↑ Harris 1900, p. 9.
Bibliography
- Harris, James Rendel (1900). The Gospel of the Twelve Apostles Together with the Apocalypses of Each One of Them. Cambridge University Press.
- Penn, Michael Philip (2015). When Christians First Met Muslims: A Sourcebook of the Earliest Syriac Writings on Islam. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520960572.