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Begin Typing VigilIn a Syriac manuscript, formerly belonging to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, but now deposited in the University Library of Cambridge, I find the following apocryphal Psalms, which, with the exception of the first, have not yet, so far as I know, been printed anywhere. The manuscript contains the ܟܬܒܐ ܕܕܘܪܫܐ or 'Book of Discipline,' a large theological treatise, composed on a very artificial plan, by Elias, bishop of Peroz-Shabhor or al-Anbar (who lived about A.D. 920). At the end of the first section of this work, the scribe has added a few excerpts for the purpose of filling up some blank leaves. These are: (1) the Psalms in question; (2) explanations of some difficult words in 'the Book of the Paradise'; and (3) a disputation between a Jacobite and a Nestorian. The scribe was the well known Homo of Al-Kosh, near Mosul, 'the village of the prophet Nahum.' He has recorded his name in several subscriptions, but as the manuscript is imperfect at the end, the exact date of writing is not given. It must, however, roughly speaking, lie between A.D. 1675 and 1712, and the watermark in the paper—three crescents with a rather small adjunct of this shape in one corner of the page—would seem to belong to the latter part of the 17th century.
These same Psalms, five in number, are also found, with the same adjuncts, in the Vatican manuscript of Elias of al-Anbar's work, Vatican Syriac manuscript no. 183. Professor Guidi has, with his usual kindness, collated this manuscript for me. It is dated A. Gr. 2014 (A.D. 1703), and was written at Al-Kosh by one Khaushabha bar Daniel.
The Psalms are five in number, of which the first is that ordinarily numbered as Ps. 151 in Greek and Syriac Hexaplar manuscripts (see, for example, the Codex Ambrosianus).
These apocryphal writings were preserved in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Ethiopic.