7
Origin of the Arabic Text.--If some of the uncouthness of the Arabic text is due to corruption in the course of transmission, much is also due to its being not an original work, but a translation. That it is, in the main, a translation from Syriac is too obvious to need proof. 1 The Introductory Notice and Subscription to the Borgian ms., moreover, expressly state that the work was translated by one Abu'l Faraj Abdulla ibn-at-Tayyib, 2 an "excellent and learned priest," and the inferiority of parts of the translation, 3 and entire absence of any confirmatory evidence, 4 hardly suffice to refute this assertion. Still, the Borgian ms. is a late witness, and although it most probably preserves a genuine tradition as to the author of our work, its statement need not therefore necessarily be correct in every point.
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cf.the foot-notes passim, e.g., § 13, 14, § 14, 24. ↩
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See below, note to Subscription. ↩
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See a glaring case in § 52, 11. ↩
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The references to the readings of the Diatessaron in Ibn-at-Tayyib's own commentary on the gospels (see next note) are remarkably impersonal for one who had made or was to make a translation of it. ↩
