Page:Commentaries of Ishodad of Merv, volume 1.djvu/18

x according to which the law of the Passover was regarded as superior to that of the Sabbath, so that the lamb could be sacrificed even on Friday night; whereas Jesus and his disciples would seem to have adopted the more rigorous view of the Pharisees, by which the paschal lamb ought to be sacrificed on the eve of the 14th of Nisan, when the 15th coincided with the Sabbath (see Bacher in J. Q. R. . 683—686).' As Dr Rendel Harris has found out that Ishoʿdad borrows largely from Theodore of Mopsuestia, I have made a List of Coincidences, which will, I hope, be found instructive. I have used the fine edition of Theodore's Commentary lately published by Dr Chabot (Leroux, Paris), in which a little more care would have detected several misprints, I have also made a list of passages quoted by Ishoʿdad which agree with the Old Syriac instead of with the Peshiṭta.

In conclusion, I have to express my warm thanks to Dr Eberhard Nestle, of Maulbronn, for his careful and able revision of my Translation; and to Dr Rendel Harris for many very acute suggestions. For the Syriac text I am alone responsible, and here I have had the kind help of my dear twin-sister, Mrs Agnes S. Lewis. Ishoʿdad's sentences are often very much involved; and the uncertainties of Syriac punctuation make it sometimes doubtful to which sentence a particular expression belongs.

I have also to thank the readers and printers of the University Press for the skilful and patient manner in which they have executed a long and sometimes troublesome task.

MARGARET D. GIBSON.