Page:Commentaries of Ishodad of Merv, volume 1.djvu/17

Rh extracts of Commenmentaries.' Of these 18 are from Ishoʿdad, and I have been able to locate 16 of them. The remaining two are probably from some other commentary.

I have to apologize for the irregularity of 'G. H.' for 'Gannat Busamé' appearing for a short time on the margin. Dr Rendel Harris wished me to give references to this work, of which he possesses a MS., but my attempt to do so proved troublesome, and caused so much delay in the printing, that I soon abandoned it.

There are three of Mar Ishoʿdad's many knots which I think modern research has at least loosened. The first is in the Preface, pages 8—9 (f. 5 b), about the dropping of three names, Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah, from the genealogy of our Lord: Dr J. M. Heer, in Biblische Studien, vol. . parts 1, 2, suggests, on the authority of Hilary and Jerome, that these names had not been entered in the Temple records, because of the curse pronounced on the idolatrous house of Ahab in I Kings xxi. 21 and II Kings iv. 8, which, like the curse attached to the second commandment, extended to the fourth generation. Jehoram king of Judah did not himself come under it, but his wife Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab, and the three kings in question were included in it.

The second is in f. 148 b (p. 276 of the Translation). 'John says that [it was in] the house of Annas that Peter denied; … but the other Evangelists said the house of Caipha.' In the Sinai Palimpsest this apparent discrepancy is removed; as in John xviii. verse 24, 'Now Annas had sent Him bound unto Caiaphas the High Priest,' comes after verse 13; and thus makes the trial take place in the house of Caiaphas as the Synoptists say. This is confirmed by the Vatican Codex of the Palestinian Syriac, which has verse 24 in both positions, as if the scribes had been in doubt as to its rightful place.

The third is about the day on which the Passover was observed. The Synoptists undoubtedly represent that it was the evening of Thursday, when our Lord ate it with his Disciples; whereas John distinctly implies that it was not to be observed till Friday evening after the Crucifixion was over. I came on what appears to me to be a satisfactory solution of this problem, and that in the most unlikely of all places, when I was looking for something quite different. It was in the Jewish Cyclopaedia (New York and London, 1904), under the article 'Jesus of Nazareth,' signed by Dr Samuel Krauss, of Buda-Pest.

ʿChwolson (Das letzte Passahmahl Christi, St Petersburg, 1893) has ingeniously suggested that the priests were guided by the older Halakah,