Ebook The Sibyl and the Dream of One Hundred Suns

Dr. J. Schleifer1 has now published for the first time these Oriental texts of the Sibylline apocryphon in Arabic and Ethiopian. One of them is a Karshuni text, of course Arabic, but written in Syriac characters. The editor confines himself primarily to a critical edition of these various texts, none of them very old, and yet each one interesting in its own way. The Karshuni text, the Ethiopian, and then three Arabic texts, are printed in five parallel columns, and so arranged that the relation between these texts should be seen at a glance. In the foot-notes various readings are carefully noted. A minute description of the mss. Used is given, and a German translation in three columns. In this trans lation Dr. Schleifer has combined the three Arabic versions into one, and given the result of the critical emendation of these texts. In the foot-notes to the translation reference is made to the Latin Tiburtan Sibyl (beda), and the book concludes with an examination of the relation in which these versions stand to one another. They all go back to one ancient original, to which the Karshuni text is most closely related, and almost of equal value as the Arabic, though differing from the latter sufficiently not to be its immediate source. The latest is the Ethiopian, which rests on a text closely akin, though not identical with, Arabic iii.