The reader will see that we need not linger upon these arguments. When interpreted most favourably they carry us only a very short way towards the dethronement of the great Peshitto, and the instalment of the little Curetonian upon the seat of judgement. But there is more in what other scholars have advanced. There are resemblances between the Curetonian, some of the Old-Latin texts, the Codex Bezae, and perhaps Tatian's Diatessaron, which lead us to assign an early origin to many of the peculiar readings in this manuscript. Yet there is no reason, but all the reverse, for supposing that the Peshitto and the Curetonian were related to one another in line-descent. The age of one need have nothing to do with the age of the other. The theory of the Peshitto being derived from the Curetonian through a process of revision like that of Jerome constituting a Vulgate rests upon a false parallel(151). There are, or were, multitudes of Old-Latin Texts, which in their confusion called for some recension: we only know of two in Syriac which could possibly have come into consideration. Of these, the Curetonian is but a fragment: and the Codex Lewisianus, though it includes the greater part of the Four Gospels, yet reckons so many omissions in important parts, has been so determinedly mutilated, and above all is so utterly heretical(152), that it must be altogether rejected from the circle of purer texts of the Gospels. The disappointment caused to the adherents of the Curetonian, by the failure of the fresh MS. which had been looked for with ardent hopes to satisfy expectation, may be imagined. _Noscitur a sociis_: the Curetonian is admitted by all to be closely allied to it, and must share in the ignominy of its companion, at least to such an extent as to be excluded from the progenitors of a Text so near to the Traditional Text as the Peshitto must ever have been(153).
But what is the position which the Peshitto has occupied till the middle of the present century? What is the evidence of facts on which we must adjudicate its claim?
Till the time of Cureton, it has been regarded as _the_ Syriac Version, adopted at the time when the translation of the New Testament was made into that language, which must have been either the early part of the second century, or the end of the first,--adopted too in the Unchangeable East, and never deposed from its proud position. It can be traced by facts of history or by actual documents to the beginning of the golden period of Syriac Literature in the fifth century, when it is found to be firm in its sway, and it is far from being deserted by testimony sufficient to track it into the earlier ages of the Church.