Language and Textual History of the Syriac Bible: Collected Studies. By Jan Joosten.

Abstract

This volume usefully brings together in one place 20 previously published articles by the current Regius Professor of Hebrew in Oxford. Most of the essays are in English, the rest in French, and the majority focus on the Old Testament in its Syriac form known as the Peshitta. In line with proposals made by Michael Weitzman in the 1990s, Joosten believes that most of the books of the Hebrew Bible were individually translated from Hebrew into Syriac by the mid-second century ce, by Jews in the region of Osrhoene (northern Mesopotamia) where the Eastern dialect of Aramaic known to us as Syriac was used. Influence on the Peshitta from the Targum is shown to be negligible to non-existent, though some similarities of exegesis may be due to a shared interpretative background. Influence from the Septuagint is hardly found in the earliest strata of the translation, but from time to time it may be seen in books rendered later, notably Proverbs, a book in which Joosten is a specialist.