CURETON, WILLIAM. - English Orientalist, b. at Westbury (Wiltshire) in 1804, d. in London on 17 June 1864. His name is linked to an important Syriac manuscript of the New Testament (v. BIBBIA), which he discovered and studied (1846).
After completing his studies at Oxford, he became a minister of the Anglican Church in 1832, sub-librarian of the Bodleian and later attached to the British Museum. CURETON studied and published many manuscripts, especially Syriac ones, such as the Syriac version of the letters of St. Ignatius (London 1845), a source of long controversy. He published the Syriac text of the festal letters of St. Athanasius and many parts of works by various authors, including John of Ephesus, Melito of Sardis, Bardesanes, the letter of Mara bar Serapion, and Eusebius of Caesarea’s history of the Martyrs in Palestine (1861).