More Readings from 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch in the Konat Collection

Neitmann, Florian; Lied, Liv Ingeborg

Zusammenfassung

This article presents three liturgical manuscripts containing passages from 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch which have thus far been overlooked in the scholarship on these two books. The study begins with a summary of the previous history of scholarship on Syriac lectionaries containing readings from 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. This is followed by a description of the three manuscripts, all three of which are preserved in the Konat Collection in Pampakuda, Kerala (India). One of them, Ms. 208, is a lectionary, while the two others, Mss. 91 and 354, are lectionary indices. They were produced in the years 1892–94, which shows that the reception of readings from 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch in Syriac liturgical manuscripts continued for much longer than previously thought. This continued reception was enabled by the faithful preservation of—and engagement with—the lectionary Ms. 77 in the Konat Collection, which, as argued in this article, is the source of the three nineteenth-century manuscripts preserved in the same collection.