Add MS 26116

This volume contains fragments from the Book of Job 1:8-5:18; 6:26-28:21. At least one first bifolio is missing but the continuation of the manuscript is found in Sinai Ar. 1, which besides Job contains Daniel, Bel and the Dragon, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel.

For extracts, see Cureton and Rieu, Catalogus, p. 675.

The fragments contain the earliest attested translation of Job into Arabic among Christians. The continuation of the manuscripts is found in Ms Sinai Ar. 1. This ninth-century translation is primarily based on the Septuagint, perhaps via the Syrohexapla. It includes the speech by Job’s wife in chapter 2 and the addition in the end of the book, where Job’s hometown is located ‘on the borders of Idumea and Arabia’. In the Arabic translation, these nouns are rendered into ‘Damascus and Ḥawr[ā]n’. Such freedom in translation techniques are rather common in Arabic translations and serve as witnesses to their exegetical principles and attempts to make the biblical narratives relevant for a contemporary audiance. Before the codex was taken from St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai desert, it also contained some of the Prophets, including Daniel. Beside books frequently used in liturgy (New Testament and Psalms), Job and Daniel constitute two of the most frequently copied books in the early Islamic era. It appears thus that the apocalypses of Daniel and the sufferings of the righteous Job both played important functions as Christians tried to cope with the new social and religious settings brought by the Muslim conquests.

The manuscript does not contain a colophon and was likely copied in the 9th century CE.