OLD TESTAMENT. TRANSLATED FROM HEBREW: “PESHITTA”
OLD TESTAMENT. TRANSLATED FROM HEBREW: “PESHITTA”

Summary/Abstract: The name “Peshitta” means “straightforward, simple”; it was given to the standard Syriac versions of the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) in order to distinguish them from the seventh-century translations, the Syro-hexapla and the Harclean. The name is first encountered in the ninth-century writer Mushe bar Kipho; earlier authors had simply referred to the Peshitta as “the Syriac.”The origins of the Peshitta translation are very obscure and Syriac authors had no clear memory of how and when the work was carried out (a few implausible guesses were nevertheless circulated). A close study of the translation itself can throw a little light; from such a study we can deduce the following: The Peshitta Old Testament is not the work of a single translator, but must have been carried out by many different translators, perhaps working over a considerable period of time.

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