Harklean Syriac New Testament

The Harklean version stands among the most literal ancient translations of the New Testament and, for that reason, remains an important witness to variation in the Greek text. Covering the New Testament, it renders Greek into Syriac, taking as its base an earlier Syriac text against which Greek manuscripts were collated; the result is best classed as a substantial revision or retranslation rather than a fresh work, standing in the Philoxenian and Peshitta tradition from which it derives. Its translation philosophy is one of extremely literal Greek-to-Syriac rendering, mirroring Greek structure closely even where Syriac idiom would suggest otherwise, and it preserves marginal variant readings alongside the text. Because of this fidelity to its exemplars, the version has long been consulted by textual scholars seeking to recover the Greek readings available to its makers, and it remains part of the wider Syriac biblical inheritance.