The '''Sinaitic Palimpsest''' of Saint_Catherine's_Monastery,_Mount_Sinai is a late 4th_century Manuscript of the four canonical Gospels of the New_Testament. It is a Syriac Palimpsest of 358 pages that has been erased and overwritten by a ''vita'' of female Saints and Martyrs with a date corresponding to 778 AD. It is the oldest copy of the gospels in Syriac, one of two surviving manuscripts that predate the ''Peshitta'' version, an updated Syriac translation that has been further revised to conform to a Greek text. The Peshitta very slowly superseded the Old Syriac gospels. The other Syriac manuscript, found in Egypt in 1842, is called the ''Cureton_Manuscript'' after the Orientalist William_Cureton, who first identified and edited it in 1858. These manuscripts contain similar version of the Syriac gospels, which have been "conformed" to the four Greek gospels. In this sense of the word, the text has been corrected and re-edited to be made to conform to the Greek New Testament, though it is the older text. Even so, the ''Sinaitic Palimpsest'' retains some readings from even earlier lost Syriac gospels and from the 2nd_century ''Diatessaron'', which brought the four gospels into harmony with one another through selective readings and emendations. The importance of such early, least conforming texts is emphasized by the revision of the ''Peshitta'' that was made about 508 AD, ordered by Philoxenus,_bishop_of_Mabbog. His revision, it is said, skilfully moved the ''Peshitta'' nearer to the Greek text; "it is very remarkable that his own frequent gospel quotations preserved in his writings show that he used an Old Syriac set of the four gospels" http://www.srr.axbridge.org.uk/syriac_versions.html. The Palimpsest was identified in the library at St. Catherine's in February 1892 by the intrepid Dr. Agnes_Smith_Lewis and her sister Margaret_Dunlop_Gibson, who returned with a team of scholars that included J._Rendel_Harris, to photograph and transcribe the work in its entirety http://www.metamind.net/sisterbio.html. The German theologian Adalbert_Merx devoted much of his later research to the elucidation of the ''Sinaitic Palimpsest'', the results being embodied in ''Die vier kanonischen Evangelien nach dem ältesten bekannten Texte'' (1897-1905). The ''Sinaitic Palimpsest'' immediately became a central document in tracing the history of the New Testament. The palimpsest's importance lies especially in its testimony to lost Aramaic gospel narratives, such as the alleged Aramaic ''Matthew'' (see ''Aramaic_primacy''). ==External links== *"Ancient Syriac New Testament Versions": summary of how these ancient Syriac versions of the gospel are related and the context of their creation *Dr Francis Crawford Burkitt and the Sinaitic Palimpsest Category:4th_century_books Category:8th_century_books Category:Biblical_manuscripts