The Martyrdom of Arianos and the Four Protectores in an Unpublished Christian Palestinian Aramaic Palimpsest, St Catherine Monastery (Sinai, Arabic NF 66) 

: Among the New Finds in a storage chamber in St Catherine’s Monastery 1975 a number of Christian Palestinian Aramaic palimpsests came to light. Some of them feature martyr stories that have been rarely attested, and for one the Greek text witnesses are missing. Two fragments contain the martyrdom of Arianos and the Four Protectores.


Background
The Martyrdom of Philemon, Apollonios, and Arianos and the Four Protectores has been known in Armenian, Coptic, Christian Palestinian Aramaic 1 (BHO 973), Ethiopic, Syriac, and in the main transmission in Greek and Latin. In the Christian Palestinian Aramaic and in Syriac transmission the texts have not been fully preserved.
The Syriac manuscripts were described by Anton Baumstark in his history of Syriac Literature in his usual short style, 2 but they were omitted in BHO 973. Of all Syriac testimonies only the beginning part of the Martyrdom of Philemon survived in an early Syriac manuscript, London, BL, Add 17.204, fols. 2v-7v, written on vellum in a bold Estrangela, and is dated to ca. 5th century according to Wright's Catalogue. 3 The critical edition with references to the transmission in other languages was published by Sebastian P. Brock in the memorial volume for Father Devos. 4 The other two surviving Syriac manuscripts seem to be of a later date and are catalogued under Vatican, sir. 160, fols. 146r-152v 5 on vellum in Estrangela, and Vatican, sir. 161, fols. 113r-116v on vellum in Estrangela. Both manuscripts are not dated and come from Deir es-Surian. They contain the complete martyrdom story. 6 The Greek can be only consulted in the Acta Sanctorum for March, vol. I (Antwerp, 1668) Apart from the Ethiopic, Greek, Latin, and Syriac a Coptic version (BHO 110) is extant, which diverges quite considerably from all other transmissions, and can be read in the comprehensive article by Francesco Rossi. 8 The first two Christian Palestinian Aramaic versions that came to our attention contained only parts of the Martyrdom of Philemon in a continuous text. They do not derive from the same manuscript, but belong to the early language period. One has been preserved in an original manuscript from St Saba (CSRP g = St. Petersburg Syr. 16, fol. 28, 56-57), 9 which was taken by the Georgian scribe Iovane Zosime from St Saba to St Catherine's Monastery in the 9th century to be reused for a Georgian text. 10 The legible parts of the remaining fragment that were not integrated in Land's edition of 1875, were recently published. 11 The second version derives from the Cairo Genizah and was edited by Agnes S. Lewis with her sister Margaret D. 1900. 12 The new additional readings by me were incorporated into a text file within the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon. 13 It does not come as a surprise that the third and final part of the Martyrdom with Arianos and the Four Protectores has now surfaced on two Christian Palestinian Aramaic folios under the Arabic manuscript Sinai, Arabic NF 66, having the Life of St Stephen the Sabaite as the upper text, and is dated to 901. 14 One Arabic folio consists of two merged previous Christian Palestinian Aramaic folios, i.e. one recto and one verso and vice versa.
This early version in Christian Palestinian Aramaic dates approximately to the 6th century AD and is clearly written by a different scribal hand 15 than that of Cambridge, University Library, T-S 12.750 and T-S 12.749r + T-S NS 329.698r, 16 Analecta Bollandiana 40 (1922), pp. 114-154, esp. 115-116, 128.

The Martyrdom of Arianos and the Four Protectores 120
The manuscript has twenty lines per column. The punctuation is three dots for a full sentence and for a half or sub clause, but only two dots before direct speech. The scribe of the Christian Palestinian Aramaic undertext of Arabic NF 66 often tended to write very densely in some lines, cramming more letters into a line than usual. This causes problems in the reading and discerning the spaces between words. Noteworthy is the intentional spelling of 'r:b't'. in fol. 3(I) r a1 with a supralinear dot on the aleph and in 'r:b'ty fol. 3(II) v b1 with yod instead. There seems to be a kind of method behind this varied spelling 19 . It is worthwhile to point out that in initial position no dot is written on the aleph to denote /e/, /i/, but always in final position. The taw in 't. 'sign, portent' carries a dot on top to distinguish it from the pronoun 't 'you'. No noteworthy surplus plene spellings occur, even in the imperfect prefixes, which points to a very early date of the manuscript. Greek proper names and words including loans from Latin are always transliterated into Christian Palestinian Aramaic in the expected fashion, 'wsy' οὐςία, 'ry'nws Ἀῤῥιανόρ, [dyw]qlṭynws Διοκλησιανόρ, tywṭykws Θεόστφορ, Plṭyn παλάσιον (< Latin). The external Aramaic morpheme endings are employed with the Greek words dlpyn' < δελυίρ 20 , Pr:wṭyqṭwr' < ππψσέκσοπ, Pr:wṭyqṭwry' for πποσέκσοπαρ, qyr:sy' < καιποῦ (Gen.). The scribe used the variant form -nh in the 1 plural independent personal pronoun and in the possessive suffixes. 19 This is for example also the case with every second šw'. and šwy in an unpublished homily fragment of Georgian NF 19,fol. 59. 20 Internal representation of ε in Christian Palestinian Aramaic is rare and seems to be restricted to pronounced Greek ε as in myl'n < μέλαν and in ty'ṭrwn < θέασπον, see Christa Müller-Kessler, Grammatik des Christlich-Palästinisch-Aramäischen, Teil 1 (Hildesheim: Olms, 1991), p. 40.
The sequence of the two merged folios in Christian Palestinian Aramaic is the following: The script of the verso side shines through in the right hand column.