Peshitta (Old Testament)

Anonymous / Syriac-speaking translators · c. AD 100-200 (Old Testament, cautiously dated) · Edessa (traditional) (Turkey) · scripture

composition: range-uncertainauthorship: traditional

witness: the earliest substantially complete biblical manuscripts postdate the presumed translation by centuries; the translation's origin and date are inferred from internal linguistic evidence rather than a contemporary record

The Old Testament Peshitta, a translation into Syriac made directly from a Hebrew text rather than through the Greek Septuagint, is conventionally placed in the 2nd century AD and traditionally associated with Edessa's Jewish or Jewish-Christian community, though neither the translators, their institutional setting, nor the precise date is independently attested, and the New Testament portion of the Peshitta represents a later, separate standardization of older Syriac gospel and epistle translations rather than a single original act of translation alongside the Old Testament.