An Overlooked Printed Peshitta New Testament from Germany after the Thirty Years War: Christian Knorr von Rosenroth’s Sulzbach Edition of 1684

Abstract

This article discusses the provenance and purpose of an overlooked, and superficially rather uninteresting, edition of the Peshitta New Testament published by the Christian Kabbalist Christian Knorr von Rosenroth in Sulzbach in 1684. The text printed in square unvocalised Hebrew letters is most probably that of Plantin’s Antwerp Polyglot Bible, but its purpose is more obscure. By placing the edition in the context of precisely contemporaneous publications and tracing their use (in Latin) of the Syriac version, a picture is built up of Knorr’s development of a pedagogical programme facilitating the reading of the Syriac New Testament as expressing Zoharic doctrines in Zoharic language. An examination Knorr’s newlyrecovered last work, Messias Puer, displays the exegetical consequences of this in a close reading of the canonical New Testament text: a unique rapprochement of Christian and JewishKabbalistic doctrines.