Page:The Apocryphal Acts of Paul, Peter, John, Andrew and Thomas.djvu/55

 treated like the other letters of Paul and in the same order which it has in the Armenian Bible manuscripts. And the same Ephræm in his commentary on Tatian's Diatessaron, quotes the 5th verse in Paul's answer as a genuine word of Paul, and before Ephræm his countryman Aphraates besides the fifth quoted also the tenth. Besides in the Armenian, the third epistle to the Corinthians has also been discovered in two Latin MSS., one probably belonging to the 10th cent, and the other to the 13th. In the former the third Corinthian stands after the epistle to the Hebrews, and has the heading: "incipiunt scripta Corinthiorum ad apostolum Paulum" and "incipit resciptum Pauli apostoli ad Corinthios"; the inscription reads: "explicit epistula ad Corinthios tertia." Then follows the so-called letter to the Laodiceans. In the 13th cent. MS. the Corinthian correspondence stands at the end with the following headings: "Petitio Corinthiorum a Paulo apostolo" and "Epistola tertia ad Corinthios quæ authentica non est." At the end the copyist added: "hanc repperi ego in veteri quodam libro, qu [æ] tertia ad Corinthios inscribitur, quamv [is in ca] none non habeatur." Schmidt thinks that the third epistle existed not only in the Syriac version, but also in Greek Bibles which were in use among Greek-speaking congregations in Syria and Palestine. The Greek no doubt formed the basis of the Latin, and since the correspondence as is now proven, formed a part of the Acts of Paul, we can very well understand the existence of Latin versions of the Acts.

The Coptic version, though fragmentary, is an important witness and is a proof that the original text is preserved the purest in the 13th century Latin MS. of Laon found by E. Bratke. This MS. is unhappily also deficient; but with the help of the other Latin MS. edited by Berger-Carriere, the Armenian of Rink, and Ephraem's commentary (ed. Kanajanz-Hübschmann), a translation is made possible.

In the Coptic the correspondence is thus prefaced: "The Corinthians were in great distress on account of Paul, that