William Cureton (1808-1864) was a leading nineteenth-century scholar and translator of Oriental texts. Working from a composite manuscript obtained in 1842 from the Syrian monastery of St. Mary Deipara, Cureton reconstructed the fragmentary remnants of what he identified as a fifth-century manuscript of the four canonical Gospels. His Remains of a Very Ancient Recension of the Four Gospels in Syriac presents the Syriac text and an English translation of a variant Gospel tradition, differing not only from the Greek Textus Receptus, but also from all previously known Syriac manuscript evidence.