Sebastian Brock: The Bible in the Syriac Tradition (first edition)Seeri Correspondence Course, Kottayam, 100pA. Old TestamentThe 2 main translations into classical Syriac (Eastern Aramaic) are the Peshitta, made from Hebrew, and theSyro-Hexapla, made from Greek. Fragments of 2 further translations, both from Greek, also survive. Thetranslation into Christian Palestinian Aramaic (sometimes called Palestinian Syriac, a Western Aramaic dialect)was made from the LXX and is only partially preserved.I. Peshitta (abbreviation P)It is the standard version of the Syriac Churches (Syrian Orthodox, Maronite, Church of the East). The name,meaning 'simple', is not found until the 9th C. when it was first used to distinguish this version from the Syro-Hexapla (OT) and the Harklean (NT). The origins of the P. OT lie in obscurity: both date and place remainmatters of conjecture. Most, if not all, the work must have been completed by the 3d C. AD for the Old SyriacGospels adapt some OT quotations to the P. OT text. Perhaps most books date from 1st-2d C. AD. As with theLXX, the OT was not translated as a whole, but book by book; it is possible that some books were translated byJews and others by Christians. Certain books (notably the Pentateuch) have a loose connection with the Targumtradition, perhaps by way of some lost ancestor of the extant Palestinian and Babylonian Targum traditions; inthe case of one book (Proverbs) the extant Targum derives from the P. (which was thus presumably of Jewishorigin for this book). Suggestions have been made that there once existed an 'Old Syriac' form of the Syriac OT(an analogy with the situation in the NT), but the evidence adduced for this is unconvincing.All books of the P. OT were basically translated from Hebrew, though in some books there are the linksmentioned above with the targum traditions, and in others the translations may have made occasional use ofLXX. With the exception of Ecclesiasticus, also translated from Hebrew, the apocrypha...