Harklean Version

Last updated April 06, 2019

The Harklean version is a Syriac language bible translation by Thomas of Harqel completed in 616 AD in Egypt.

The Peshitta is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition.

Thomas of Harqel was an early 7th century Miaphysite bishop. He was bishop of Mabbug in Syria. He, along with Paul of Tella, lived in a Coptic monastery near Alexandria, Egypt as exiles. At the request of Athanasios I, they worked on a Syriac language translation of the Greek Bible. Translation of the New Testament, known as the Harclensis was completed in 616. At this time, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation were added to the Syriac Bible. Until then they were excluded.

Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, across the Red Sea lies Saudi Arabia, and across the Mediterranean lie Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, although none share a land border with Egypt.

The version is partly based on the earlier Philoxenian version, partly a new and very literal translation from the Greek New Testament.^[1]

The Philoxenian version (508) is a revision of earlier Syriac versions of the Bible. It was commissioned by Philoxenus of Mabbug and completed by his chorepiscopus Polycarp. Philoxenos' revisions were initiated by concerns that some of the Peshitto readings gave support to Nestorian theology. It became the received Bible of the Syrian Miaphysites during the 6th century.

The New Testament was written in a form of Koine Greek, which was the common language of the Eastern Mediterranean from the Conquests of Alexander the Great until the evolution of Byzantine Greek.

Related Research Articles

The New Testament in Aramaic languages exists in a number of versions:

the Vetus Syra, the oldest translation from the original Greek into early Classical Syriac, represented in the Curetonian Gospels and the Sinaitic Palimpsest
the Christian Palestinian Aramaic Lectionary fragments represented in such manuscripts as Codex Climaci Rescriptus and later lectionary codices
the Classical Syriac Peshitta, a translation of the entire Bible from Hebrew and Greek and still the standard in most Syriac churches
the Harklean, a strictly literal translation by Thomas of Harqel into Classical Syriac
the Assyrian Modern Version, a new translation into Assyrian Neo-Aramaic from the Greek published in 1997 and mainly in use among Protestants
and a number of other scattered versions in various dialects

The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts was published by George M. Lamsa in 1933. It was derived, both Old and New Testaments, from the Syriac Peshitta, the Bible used by the Assyrian Church of the East and other Syriac Christian traditions.

A polyglot is a book that contains side-by-side versions of the same text in several different languages. Some editions of the Bible or its parts are polyglots, in which the Hebrew and Greek originals are exhibited along with historical translations. Polyglots are useful for studying the history of the text and its interpretation.

The Curetonian Gospels, designated by the siglum syr^cur, are contained in a manuscript of the four gospels of the New Testament in Old Syriac. Together with the Sinaiticus Palimpsest the Curetonian Gospels form the Old Syriac Version, and are known as the Evangelion Dampharshe in the Syriac Orthodox Church.

Bible translations into Aramaic covers both Jewish translations into Aramaic (Targum) and Christian translations into Aramaic, also called Syriac (Peshitta).

After a number of French Bible translations in the Middle Ages, the first printed translation of the Bible into French was the work of the French theologian Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples in 1530 in Antwerp, Belgium. This was substantially revised and improved in 1535 by Pierre Robert Olivétan. This Bible, in turn, became the basis of the first French Catholic Bible, published at Leuven in 1550, the work of Nicholas de Leuze and François de Larben. Finally, the Bible de Port-Royal, prepared by Antoine Lemaistre and his brother Louis Isaac Lemaistre, finished in 1695, achieved broad acceptance among both Catholics and Protestants. Jean-Frédéric Ostervald's version (1724) also enjoyed widespread popularity.

Syria played an important or even predominant role in the beginning of Christianity. Here is where the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Luke, the Didache, Ignatiana, and the Gospel of Thomas were written. Syria was the country in which the Greek language intersected with the Syriac, which was closely related to the Aramaic dialect used by Jesus and the Apostles. That is why Syriac versions are highly esteemed by textual critics. Scholars have distinguished five or six different Syriac versions of all or part of the New Testament. It is possible that some translations have been lost. The Manuscripts originate in countries like Lebanon, Egypt (Sinai), Mesopotamia, Assyria, Armenia, Georgia, India, and even from China. This is good evidence for the great historical activity of the Syriac church.

Louis-Isaac Lemaistre de Sacy, a priest of Port-Royal, was a theologian and French humanist. He is best known for his translation of the Bible, the most widespread French Bible in the 18th century, also known as the Bible de Port-Royal.

A Christian biblical canon is the set of books that a particular Christian denomination or denominational family regards as being divinely inspired and thus constituting an authorised Christian Bible. Such bibles are always divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Early Church primarily used the Greek Septuagint as its source for the Old Testament. Among Aramaic speakers, the Targum was also widely used. The apostles did not leave a defined set of scriptures; instead the canon of both the Old Testament and the New Testament developed over time.

Minuscule 614, α ³⁶⁴, is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on parchment. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 13th century. The manuscript is lacunose. Tischendorf labelled it by 137^a and 176^p.

Jan Joosten is a Biblical scholar. Since 2014, he has been Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford. He was previously Professor of the Old Testament at the University of Strasbourg. He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Biblical canon List of books believed to form part of the Bible, according to the teachings of a particular Christian denomination

A biblical canon or canon of scripture is a set of texts which a particular religious community regards as authoritative scripture. The English word "canon" comes from the Greek κανών, meaning "rule" or "measuring stick". Christians became the first to use the term in reference to scripture, but Eugene Ulrich regards the idea as Jewish.

Bible translations into Hebrew translations of the Greek New Testament into the Hebrew language.

Bible translations into Hebrew primarily refers to translations of the Greek New Testament into the Hebrew language.

The Bible translations into Latin are the versions used in the Western part of the former Roman Empire until the Reformation and still used, along with translations from Latin into the vernacular, in the Roman Catholic Church.

Translation of the Bible into Malayalam began in 1806, and has influenced development of the modern language.

The Crawford Aramaic New Testament manuscript is a 12th-century Aramaic manuscript containing 27 books of the New Testament. This manuscript is notable because its final book, the Book of Revelation, is the sole surviving manuscript of any Aramaic version of the otherwise missing Book of Revelation from the Peshitta Syriac New Testament. Five books were translated into Syriac later for the Harklean New Testament.

The Bible de Port-Royal is a French translation of the Catholic Bible, which was first published in installments between 1667 and 1696. Though praised for the purity of its classical form, the work attracted the suspicion of the Jesuits, who discovered in it a latent Protestantism, and was criticized by Richard Simon, a former Oratorian, on text-critical grounds. For over three centuries it has been among the most popular of French Bible translations.

References

↑ The Interpretation of the Bible: The International Symposium Jože Krašovec 1998 Page 496 "Ensuite, dans le monastère de l'Enaton à Alexandrie en 6l6, Thomas de Harqel retraduisit le Nouveau Testament en le révisant drastiquement sur un modèle grec. La lecture du colophon ne laisse point de doute que le texte de Philoxène a ..."

External links

The Harklean - Syriac Orthodox Resources. George Kiraz, Ph.D. 2001

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] The Interpretation of the Bible: The International Symposium Jože Krašovec 1998 Page 496 "Ensuite, dans le monastère de l'Enaton à Alexandrie en 6l6, Thomas de Harqel retraduisit le Nouveau Testament en le révisant drastiquement sur un modèle grec. La lecture du colophon ne laisse point de doute que le texte de Philoxène a ..."