Reconstructed Colophon in the Text of the Syriac Julian Romance as a Clue to the Mystery of its Author

Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies. 2015. Vol. 18.2. P. 399–407.

Alexey Muraviev

The so-called Syriac Julian Romance is preserved in two manuscripts from the British Library, BL Add 14641 (6th c.) and BL Rich Rich 7192 (9th c.). T. Nöldeke was first to propose the idea that the mss. constitute one literary piece. However it consists of three different stories which were copied from different protographa. The story of Eusebius was written by a certain deacon Epainetos of whom only a rubric survived in the text. However the story of the Persian expedition of Julian the Apostate is a different case. It is possible that it has preserved parts of the original colophon from the protograph at the beginning and at the end of the Expedition narrative. The first part of this ‘circum-colophon’ introduces the abbot ‘Abdel and his addressee certain Apolinarius. At the end we see what has remained from the colophon and that is written by Apolinarius himself. This circular structure could be called circum-colophon in the sense that it frames the single literary piece, which once formed a manuscript. In this article the structure of the colophon is exposed and the explanation for the person of Apolinarius is proposed. In addition the colophon of the Sinai Arabic version of the same text is analyzed.

Ключевые слова: арабский язык, Syriac, Arabic manuscripts, сирийский язык, сирийская литература, Syriac litterature, сирийские рукописи, Julian