In 1869 Monoseigneur David then rural bishop of Mosul, came to Europe and brought along with him, among others, an inteesting manuscript which had been copiedon his initiative from an old exemplar in the Monastery of Rabban Hormizd at Alqosh near Mosul. First this manuscript was placed in the Museo Bortiano di Propaganda at Rome, where it was catalogued as K VI 4.1 Renowned orientalists such as I. Guide, O. Braun and J.-B. Chabot publised many parts of it an Syriac or in translation.2 In 1899 the Syriac manuscripts of Museo Borgiano were tranferred to the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, where students had easier access to it. Our manuscript was listed as Borgia Syriaca 82.3

We may begin our analysis of the synoptic tradition peculiar to Luke with a study of one of its most important component parts, namely that preserved in the fifteenth chapter. The whole of this chapter constitutes a single literary unit, whose beginning and end are well defined and whose internal structure, while not uniform, is perfectly self-consistent. The introduction to this literary unit points to the ‘grumbling’ of the Pharisees and Scribes in response to Jesus' behaviour of receiving and eating with those tax collectors and sinners who had come to hear him. This response of the Pharisees and Scribes occasions a threefold response from Jesus, namely a threefold insistence upon the single point that it is right to accept the repentance of sinners and to rejoice with them, since their repentance is accepted by God who himself in heaven rejoices over their return.

In recent years an old problem has been reconsidered in four studies, apparently written independently of one another, which with similar arguments arrive at virtually the same conclusion:1 The Epistle to the Philippians is actually a composition of three Pauline Epistles or fragments thereof.2 According to this conclusion, Phil. iv. 10−20 was the first letter written by Paul to Philippi, i. 1−ii. 30 (or iii. 1) the second, and iii. 1 (or 2)−iv. 1 the third, while the distribution of iv. 2−9 and 21−3 remains uncertain.3

In a recent article in New Testament Studies (vol. IV, Jan. 1958, PP. 115–19) ProfessorJ. Jeremias maintained that when Luke deviates from Mark's order in the succession of narratives, it is a clear sign that he is following his special source. In the course of his argument he examines the narratives of the Crucifixion in Mark xv. 20b–41 and Luke xxiii. 26–49 and maintains that, if Luke had followed Mark, he would have thrown the material into complete confusion. He supports this claim by numbering the fourteen separate details in Mark's account and the seventeen in Luke and by setting against the Lukan series the corresponding numbers of the Markan series. Thus arranged the Markan series of the details in question is I, 6, 2, 6, 4, 8, 10, 7, 5, 9, 12, II, 13, 14. He is clearly justified in saying that in this rearrangement the Markan narrative would be completely ‘muddled up’ (voliständig durcheinandergewirbelt). It is reasonable to conclude that Luke is not using Mark, but his special source.