STUDIA SINAITICA Nos. IX & X

SELECT NARRATIVES
OF
HOLY WOMEN

FROM

THE SYRO-ANTIOCHENE OR SINAI PALIMPSEST

AS WRITTEN ABOVE THE OLD SYRIAC GOSPELS BY JOHN
THE STYLITE, OF BETH-MARI-QUANUN IN A. D. 778

TRANSLATED BY

AGNES SMITH LEWIS. M. R. A. S.

HON. PHIL. DR. HALLE-WITTENBERG

LONDON

C. J. CLAY AND SONS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE

AVE MARIA LANE

1900

The tales in this volume have been copied from those photographs of the Syro-Antiochene or Sinai Palimpsest which I took in 1892, at the time of my discovery of that important manuscript, with the exception of the last, Cyprian and Justa, which was copied in 1893 from the manuscript itself. Whilst for forty days the three Cambridge scholars, the late lamented Dr Bensly, Dr Rendel Harris, and Mr Burkitt occupied themselves during the hours of daylight in transcribing from it the text of Old Syriac Gospels which forms its under-writing, I made use of our slender stock of tallow candles, to secure the text of the one then unpublished tale, and to fill up in my copy of the others all the blanks which had been necessitated by imperfections in my photographs. My copy had, however, to be laid aside for five years, partly owing to our subsequent journeys to the East, partly to illness, but most of all owing to my share in the discovery and the editing of the Palestinian Syriac Lectionaries.
[…]Although these “Select Narratives” cannot pretend to much value when compared with the ancient Gospel-text which underlies them, and which has been preserved for their sakes alone during eleven centuries, and though it would be a difficult task to sift the few grains of historical truth which they contain from their bushels of imaginative chaff, they are not without some literary beauty. Piously believed in at the time they were written, they exhibit just such a mingling of exciting adventure with godly precepts, as would make them a favourite means of edification to the monks of the Middle Ages.

The siriac text and the english translation in a single volume. Pags. 1-402 contain the first part [Studia Sinaitica IX], 403-638 the second part [Studia Sinaitica X]. Available via Internet Archive.