Not less interesting are the Midrashic comments upon Old Testament passages, some of which are taken from Ephrem and some, apparently, from an independent source. For example, there is the story of an idol with four faces made by Manasseh, King of Israel. This is taken from Ephrem (Mös. p. 122): it occurs again, apparently from an independent source in Bar-Hebraeus' Hist. Dyn.[1] in the form
'Idolum quatuor habens facies conficiens coli jussit: … quum primum ergo reversus esset Hierosolymani, idolo isto quatuor facierum e templo sublato ipsum purgavit.'
Here we are in touch with a line of Jewish traditions corresponding to what supplies the writers of Midrash. The Syrian Church was from its origin (if we may accept the tradition that the apostle Addai began work in the Jewish quarter of Edessa) in close contact with the Jews: and in this way their writings often conserve peculiar interpretations that they have borrowed from local Rabbis or from their Jewish neighbours generally, with whom they seem to have been in a friendly relation not known in the West.
We come now to the most important part of the work of Ishoʿdad, his value namely for critical purposes, and, in particular, for textual criticism.
In this respect, Ishoʿdad is a mine of information. He supplies us with (i) acute criticisms as to the causes of various readings, including Synoptic variations; (2) he brings us evidence for the existence of Syriac variants, in the case of readings whose attestation has been hitherto limited to Greek, or to Greek and Latin; (3) he recovers for us a number of actual quotations from the lost Syriac of Tatian's Diatessaron, which are reinforced by the secondary evidence of a number of passages in which Ephrem comments upon the Diatessaron; (4) he supplies us with a mass of readings from the Old Syriac Gospels, which are anterior to the Diatessaron, or, if we follow Dr Burkitt's criticism, somewhat later than that Harmony. In all these respects the commentary before us demands a careful study. First of all, then, with regard to the acuteness of Ishoʿdad's general criticisms. Some of the cases that might be brought forward may be referred to his use of Theodore of Mopsuestia; but that this is not a sufficient explanation may be seen from cases in which Ishoʿdad's criticisms turn upon the knowledge of the Syriac language.
Let us take as an example the way in which Ishoʿdad discusses the variation between the two passages Matt. x. 10 and Mark vi. 8 in reference
- ↑ Ed. Pocock, p. 43.
