Cureton's most remarkable work was the edition with notes and an English translation of the
Epistles of Ignatius to
Polycarp, the
Ephesians and the
Romans, from a
Syriac manuscript that had been found in the
monastery of St. Mary Deipara, in the desert of
Nitria, near
Cairo. He held that the manuscript he used gave the truest text, that all other texts were inaccurate, and that the epistles contained in the manuscript were the only genuine epistles of Ignatius that we possess, a view which received the support of
Ferdinand Christian Baur,
Bunsen, and many other eminent scholars, but which was opposed by
Charles Wordsworth and by several German scholars, and is now generally abandoned. Cureton supported his view by his
Vindiciae Ignatianae and his
Corpus Ignatianum, a Complete Collection of the Ignatian Epistles, genuine, interpolated and spurious. He also edited: • a partial Syriac text of the
Festal Letters of St Athanasius, which was translated into English by
Henry Burgess (1854), and published in the
Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church; •
Remains of a very Ancient Recension of the Four Gospels in Syriac, hitherto unknown in Europe; This came to be known as the
Curetonian Gospels after Cureton. •
Spicilegium Syriacum, containing Remains of Bardesan, Meliton, Ambrose, Mara Bar Serapion; •
The third Part of the Ecclesiastical History of John, Bishop of Ephesus, which was translated by
Robert Payne Smith; •
Fragments of the Iliad of Homer from a Syriac Palimpsest; • an Arabic work known as the Thirty-first Chapter of the Book entitled
The Lamp that guides to Salvation, written by a Christian of
Tekrit; •
The Book of Religious and Philosophical Sects, by
Mohammed al Sharastani; • a
Commentary on the Book of Lamentations, by Rabbi Tanchum; • the
Pillar of the Creed of the Sunnites. Cureton also published several sermons, among which was one entitled
The Doctrine of the Trinity not Speculative but Practical. After his death
William Wright edited with a preface the
Ancient Syriac Documents relative to the earliest Establishment of Christianity in Edessa and the neighboring Countries, from the Year of our Lords Ascension to the beginning of the Fourth Century; discovered, edited and annotated by the late W. Cureton. ==References==