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A student of Dr. Cureton, Dr. Francis Crawford Burkitt wrote the definitive work on Syriac Christianity that came from the Curetonian Manuscripts and the Palimpsest Manuscript, which is an earlier version than the Curetonian Manuscript. Found in 1892, this Manuscript contains nearly complete versions of the Four Gospels. These manuscripts are both assigned to the fifth century and represent a Syriac version which can be dated no later than 200 A.D. Therefore, between 1842 and 1904, biblical manuscripts suddenly became available that more than doubled the age of biblical source material. This important development also enabled scholars to compare contemporary Bible texts to documents that were written in a dialect of the same language that Jesus spoke.
Dr. Burkitt's finest work on the subject is his book Early Eastern Christianity - Saint Margaret's Lectures on the Syriac Speaking Church. Published in 1904, this book is a masterpiece of scholarship. Within the parameters of the thoroughly researched and well-documented translations of the ancient documents, Dr. Burkitt reconstructs the history of Syriac Christianity so convincingly that it seems as if Dr. Burkitt had been there in Edessa when it all happened.