Philoxenian Version

The Philoxenian version is an important sixth-century Syriac revision of the New Testament, traditionally associated with Philoxenus, bishop of Mabbug, in whose name it was undertaken within the Syriac-speaking churches. It sought closer conformity to the Greek and supplied books absent from the early Peshitta New Testament, thereby bringing the Syriac canon into fuller agreement with Greek usage. Its scope is that of a New Testament revision, though a broader biblical project has historically been associated with it. Drawing on both Greek and Syriac, it took the Greek New Testament, compared with the Peshitta, as its base, and its guiding approach was a rendering closer to the Greek than the Peshitta offered; it is best classified as a substantial revision or retranslation, with the Peshitta as its predecessor and base translation. Because little of the version survives, its exact wording and scope must be reconstructed indirectly.