Sinai Syriac 16 has been of the greatest importance in the recovery of a document from early Church history. Eusebius records that Aristides of Athens was the first to make a defence of Christianity before a Roman emperor, and he gives an extract from an apology presented by a certain Quadratus, ‘a mere brick from a vanished house.’ In 1889, J. Rendel Harris was able to spend some weeks at Sinai, reading the Syriac manuscripts. He was astonished to see that Sinai Syriac 16 co