5

The Arabic mss.--Unfortunately, the present writer has not had an opportunity of examining these two mss.; but they have been described at some length by Ciasca; Codex XIV. in Pitra's Analecta Sacra, iv., 465 ff., and the other codex in the volume with which we are dealing, p. vi. ff. I. The former, which we shall call the Vatican ms. (in Ciasca's footnotes it is called A), was brought to the Vatican from the East by Joseph S. Assemani ¹ about a.d. 1719. It was described by Stephen E. Assemani, ² Rosenmüller, and Akerblad, ³ and then at length by Ciasca, to whose account the reader must be referred for the details. It consists of 123 folios, of which the first seven are somewhat spoiled, and of which two are missing, ⁴ and is supposed by Ciasca, from the character of the writing, and from the presence of certain Coptic letters ⁵ by the first hand, to have been written in Egypt. S. Assemani assigned it to the twelfth century, and Ciasca accepts his verdict, while Akerblad says the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The text of the ms. is pretty fully vocalised, but there are few diacritical points. There are marginal notes, some of them by a later hand, ⁶ which Ciasca classifies as (1) emendations, (2) restorations, (3) explanations. II. The second ms., which we shall call the Borgian (in Ciasca's footnotes it is called B), was brought to the Borgian Museum from Egypt in August, 1886. It has at the end the following inscription in Arabic: "A present from Halim Dos Ghali, the Copt, the Catholic, to the Apostolic See, in the year of Christ 1886." ⁷ Antonius Morcos, Visitor Apostolic of the Catholic Copts, when, in the beginning of 1886, he was shown and informed about the Vatican ms., told of this other one and was the means of its being sent to Rome. The Borgian ms., which Ciasca refers to the fourteenth century, consists of 355 folios. Folios 1-85 ⁸ contain an anonymous preface on the gospels, briefly described by Ciasca, who, however, does not say whether it appears to have been originally written in Arabic or to have been translated into that language. With folios 96b, 97a, which are reproduced in phototype in Ciasca's edition, begins the Introductory Note given in full at the beginning of the present translation. The text of the Diatessaron ends on folio 353a, but is followed by certain appendices, for which see below, §55, 17, note. This ms. is complete, and has, as we shall see, ⁹ in some respects a better text, though it is worse in its orthography than the Vatican ms.