One of the things which I hoped for, in translating Eusebius “Gospel Questions”, was to find unknown material in the fragments that aren’t in Migne. Yesterday that hope was justified. In an obscure publication in Moscow in the 18th century of a catena, an extract from Ad Marinum 2 produced results:
At the line marked by my footnote 2, where I saw something was rather unusual about the Greek, it turns out that the Greek word for “dawning” came twice, and the scribe of the MS used by Mai (so also Migne and Zamagni) cut two whole lines by going on from the second one after just reaching the first. So we’ll be the first to give our thirsty readers the real thing!
That said, it’s only the usual verbosely repetitive hammering-in of a point already obvious; but still, it’s very nice to have a text that does make sense without straining the Greek, as I did, or ignoring the problem altogether like Mai and Zamagni.
Two more lines of ancient literature, rescued from the darkness. It is a small but definite triumph.