Die Zitate aus dem Matthäus-Evangelium in der syrischen Übersetzung der Theophanie des Eusebius

The task of mining biblical citations from the works of patristic authors is replete with difficulties, even when the text under consideration is in the same language as the biblical text. When dealing with texts in translation, however, these problems are magnified because one is dealing not only with translation technique, but also with the tradition of the biblical text in that language. In the present article, Curt Peters demonstrates these complexities in his survey of citations from the Gospel of Matthew found in the Syriac translation of Eusebius’s “Theophany.” Peters compares the text of the citations from Eusebius with the Greek text as well as the translations of the old Syriac and Peshitta versions, and concludes that the citations are not just a translation of the Greek text of Eusebius. Instead, they represent an attempt to bring the citations more closely in line with the developing Syriac translation tradition.