The last editor of Fourth Esdras, Bruno Violet, in summing up the literature which had appeared on the subject between the first and second parts of his edition, observes with regret that he is unable to add anything more to his original discussion of the Georgian version. In substance his conclusions were as follows. The Georgian printed text of Fourth Esdras is an eighteenth-century translation from the Latin. Only two manuscripts of the original version exist, one of the year 978 in the monastery of Iviron on Mt. Athos, the other dating from about the year 1050 at Jerusalem. In the latter the mutilated text ends, according to Tsagareli, with chapter 9, 1–2. This latter manuscript Violet was unable to find during his visit to Jerusalem in 1901. Furthermore, upon hearing that Professor N. Marr of Petrograd possessed a manuscript of Fourth Esdras, he applied to him for information, but without success. Violet was thus unable either to make use of the text in extenso or to obtain any clear conception, whether of its character, of its importance, or of its position in the textual tradition of the work. Among the pia vota which are set up in the course of the introduction is included the wish that further light might be forthcoming on the Georgian version. The present essay is an attempt to meet this need, at least in part.

The present writer visited the Wâdi Naṭrún in February 1923, and at the monastery known as Abû Maḳâr he found the fragment which is here published.

The Greek Catenae to the Bible, of which a great number of manuscripts are preserved in numerous libraries of Europe and the East, are of great importance because they furnish the sole tradition for about one-half of all the extant remains of the exegetical writings of the Greek fathers. From them all editions of most of the Greek patristic writers who commented on the Scriptures must draw a large part of their contents. For the textual criticism of the Greek Bible, for the history of Christian thought, and sometimes for the understanding of the biblical writers, they have much to offer. In order, however, that these resources may be used securely, the complete investigation of the whole body of catena-manuscripts is indispensable, and the highly complicated relations of the witnesses to one another make this study peculiarly difficult. Commentaries of all ages are a growth, and in most instances not independent creations. The individual copies of the several catenae almost always differ somewhat, and often very largely, in contents, although they yield unmistakable evidence of relationship in origin; while in details of expression the ancient excerptors and copyists allowed themselves greater freedom than might have been permissible in continuous texts of authors.