Jerome Xavier and the Numbering of the Chapters of the Persian Gospels

Jerome Xavier (d. 1617), the Spanish Jesuit missionary to the Mughal court of Akbar (r. 1556 – 1605) and his son Jahangir (r. 1605 – 1627), not only preached Roman Catholicism in India, but also attempted to gather the already existing Persian Christian literature. Thanks to his efforts, two Persian manuscripts of the gospels have survived. The manuscripts include Xavier’s notes regarding the collection of the materials as well.
The contribution of Leonard Harrow "Jérôme Xavier and Two Persian Gospels (mss. cod. 7964 and cod. 7965) in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal at Lisbon" (p117-134), which appears in the volume ‘Contrabandista entre mundos fronterizos : hommage au professeur Hugues Didier’ includes a comparison of the content of two above-mentioned manuscripts. Still, one peculiarity of the manuscripts was not investigated sufficiently.
It was claimed by Xavier that both MSS, the Persian translations of the four gospels, are exactly equal. A particular difference between the contents of the gospels, however, is their chapter-numbering system. Each codex follows a different system of division of the chapters. The difference reflects the influence of two diverse traditions, which will be discussed in the presentation. The presentation will include some additional information about two manuscripts and Javier’s note on them.