The Textual Tradition of Bar ʿEbroyo’s Chronicle: A Preliminary Study

Bar ‘Ebroyo’s Chronicle is preserved in a remarkably high number of manuscripts in comparison to the other historiographical works in Syriac, which all survive in just one copy. The textual tradition of the Chronicle therefore allows a unique insight into its reception and its study contributes fundamentally to the philological and literary evaluation of the work. This article addresses the textual tradition of the Chronicle by focusing on three aspects: the identification of the manuscripts eligible for a critical edition of the text, the separated transmission of the two parts of the Chronicle (Chronography and Ecclesiastical History) and the continuations of the Chronicle. This preliminary study aims at providing a sounder philological base for a future critical edition (which is among the desiderata). In fact, there are fewer manuscripts eligible for a critical edition than the catalogue lists suggest. In addition, the independent transmission of the Chronography and the Ecclesiastical History is limited to very few cases and it is explained by a later development of the tradition. Finally, the study of the continuations will be integrated into the data emerging from the collatio of the manuscripts to show that the textual tradition can be divided in two branches (Redaction I and Redaction II).