"...Here are the very syllables as they fell from His lips when the matchless Teacher was here among men. It is a record to make the heart leap with excitement. Somehow, it is like hearing the One whose birth broke the ages in two, talking to our modern age without a language barrier between. Here is not a translation of the words, but the words themselves of that One...who declared: 'My words shall not pass away. They are spirit and they are life.' Gazing across the years to be, He warned that those who defy His precepts, which are the laws of life, will be ground to powder. What treasures will be found as the very language of Jesus is studied can only be imagined."

"The Manuscript is written on animal skin, and consists of 254 leaves (folios). They measure about 10" plus x 7". The writing is in black ink, now somewhat brownish, and is in one column of 29 lines to the page. Titles and subscriptions of books are in red ink, as well as the names of the places where they were written. The handwriting is uniform and very skilful, evidently the work of one scribe…The manuscript was written as a whole New Testament of the twenty-two books of the Oriental Canon, which excludes Revelation and four short Epistles (2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude)...

"The significance of the Codex should be based on the following factors, each of which is of supreme importance. It's colophon which ascribes it to the first decade of the 3rd century, makes it the oldest Syriac-Aramaic known to exist. It's complete text offers the scholars a source of information hereto-fore lacking in the Aramaic field…it should be remembered that the Syria-Aramaic Canon and text of the New Testament were already long established before the Christological disputes, which were then smoldering, and finally erupted in the fifth century, first divided the so-called Nestorians and then the Monophysites…Because this Manuscript is our first such whole New Testament, with so early a colophon, it becomes invaluable beyond comparison as a primary source in text criticism. It should be born in mind the authority which its early date commands. "For it was His language as well as that of His disciples and the people to whom He proclaimed His teachings. Aramaic studies thus play a key role in the New Testament problems, many of which are hotly contested problems of understanding, interpretation, translation, transmission, etc. Whatever we can glean from such studies increases the value of the New Testament to us. The significance of the prime source which the Khabouris Codex offers scarcely needs to be pointed out."