Yesterday I stumbled across PJ Hillery's The Georgian Language: An Outline Grammatical Summary. No, this page isn't about how y'all talk down there in Atlanta; it is about the language of the country of Georgia. Vööbus describes Georgia as "that rough mountain-district between the Black and Caspian Seas — known to the ancient world as Iberia" (Vööbus 173).

I'm always at least superficially interested in the languages of the early versions of the New Testament (Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Gothic, etc.). This gave me a chance to re-read sections of Vööbus and Metzger on the Georgian Versions (see citations below). You could also check the wikipedia entry on Georgian Language for general background on the language.

What do we know (or at least, what do we think we know) about the Georgian version?

• Christianity probably came to the region in the middle of the fourth century — that's like 350, y'all! (Metzger 184; see also Vööbus 176). For comparative purposes, that's around the same date that many ascribe to the copying of Codex Sinaiticus.
• The Georgian version was probably in currency " ... in the second part of the fifth century. Its origin, then, seems to belong to the decades before the middle of the fifth century" (Vööbus 178; see also Metzger 184). For comparison, many date Codex Bezae in the fifth century.
• Vööbus concludes the Georgian was likely originally translated from the Armenian and later subjected to editing against Greek exemplars (Vööbus 187-192). Metzger makes no conclusions, he just reports conclusions others have made (Metzger 190-196).

A quick search of the NA27 apparatus shows that it is only cited twice, in Mt 27.64 (supporting the omission of a pronoun) and Mk 10.25 (supporting the reading of a phonetically-similar word, καμηλον [NA27] vs. καμιλον). This makes sense because the Georgian is at least a translation of a translation (or perhaps a translation of a translation of a translation, depending on your view of the origin of the Armenian text). But Metzger, in his Textual Commentary, cites 'geo' almost 100 times. So it is of some value in the realm of NT textual criticism.

Wikipedia has some images from the Adysh Gospels (a canon table and an illumination) and also the Vani Gospels (an illumination), two early (10th century) Georgian codices. Here's the canon table from the Adysh Gospels, copied in 897 AD:

Works Cited

Metzger, Bruce M. The Early Versions of the New Testament. London: Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 182-214.

Vööbus, Arthur. Early Versions of the New Testament: Manuscript Studies. Stockholm: Estonian Theological Society in Exile, 1954, pp. 173-209.