Month: February 2010

Devreesse – introductory notes on catenas on Matthew

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The post on the fragments of Eusebius extant in catenas on Matthew really needs some material from earlier in Devreesse’s article.

VII.  CATENAS ON ST. MATTHEW. — 1.  OVERVIEW. — It is to P. Poussines, S. J., that we owe the first edition of a catena on St. Matthew, Symbolorum in Matthaeum tomus prior exhibens catenam graecorum Patrum unius et viginti editam ex bibliotheca Illustrissimi D. Caroli de Montchal … Petrus POSSINUS e Societate Jesu… ex antiquis membranis eruit… Tolosae excudebat Ioannes Boude. MDCXLVI, in-fol.  [=Possinus, 1646].  The manuscript of the archbishop of Toulouse [=Charles de Montchal] has been identified; it is Paris gr. 194 (13th century).  It is one of the two mss. that Poussines used equally for his edition of the catena on Mark.  We possess on this subject an interesting letter from the archbishop of Toulouse to Combefis [=another editor of catenas], dated 16 August 1642, from which we will extract some words:  “Father Poussines has transcribed from my library during the past few days a catena on St. Matthew and St. Mark, in order to publish it soon.”  (Patrologia Graeca vol. 94, col. 515).  The first pages of the manuscript were badly damaged, so Fr. Poussines, who had no other exemplar of the catena on St. Matthew at his disposal, allowed himself to follow his imagination rather than give an accurate edition of what he could read.  Richard Simon did not fail to reproach him for this, and to propose some corrections to his work, Hist. critique du Nouveau Testament, vol. 3, ch. 30, p. 423-424.

A year later, another Jesuit whom we have already met, Cordier published a new catena on St. Matthew, which was presented as a supplement to the edition of his fellow-Jesuit, Symbolarum In Mathaeum tomus alter, quo continetur catena Patrum graecorum triginta collectore Niceta episcopo Serrarum interprete Balthasar CORDERIO societatis Jesu theologo.  Prodit nunc primum ex bibliotheca electorali serenissimi utriusque Bavariae Ducis.  Tolosae, excudebat Johannes Boude, MDCXLVII, in-fol. [=Corderius, 1647]  Why this attribution to Nicetas of Serrae?  Probably because the prologue and first few explications which follow on the beginning of the first gospel are given in Cordier’s manuscript (Munich 36) under the name of Nicetas.  This is a pretty arbitrary attribution, at first sight, since most of the scholia correspond exactly to parallel passages in the homilies of St. John Chrysostom on St. Matthew, but the remainder does indeed seem to have been taken from authors who are only generally cited in the other catenas by Nicetas.

In 1844 Cramer published the first volume of his catena on the New Testament.  Catenae graecorum Patrum in Novum Testamentum edidit J. A. Cramer… Oxonii, e typographeo Academico.  The base text was printed from ms. Coislin 23 (11th c.)  The major part of the catena is taken from the homilies of St. John Chrysostom, to which have been added, following, some scholia by different fathers.

Devreesse then goes on to mention a bunch of anonymous scholia, published with a commentary by Peter of Laodicea, by Henrici, Des Petrus von Laodicea Erklarung des Matthausevangeliums… Leipzig, 1908.  He then discusses this commentary and Peter himself at length.  He then mentions the catena of Euthymius Zigabenus (in PG 119), and a couple of other minor catenas.

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Devreesse on the fragments of Eusebius in the catena on Matthew

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In his article on medieval Greek commentaries made up entirely of chains of quotations from the Fathers — catenas, as they are called today — Devreesse has some good material on each of the four gospels on Eusebius.  This is very relevant to the translation of the remains of Eusebius’ Gospel Questions and Solutions.  Here is the entry on Matthew’s gospel, run into English.  I have split the main paragraph so each item is separate.

Eusebius — Of the work περὶ διαφωνίας εὐγγελίων [on the differences in the gospels] composed by Eusebius, different catenas give us different extracts.  It was divided into two parts (Patrologia Graeca vol. 22, col. 879-1006).  The first part, relating to the genealogies [of Jesus] comprised two books; it was dedicated to Stephanus.  The second, one book only, concerning the disagreement of the evangelists on some texts of the Passion, was addressed to Marinus.

In Poussines [=Possinus], Cramer, and in manuscript Vatican gr. 1618 (on Matthew, 1:1-21) there are various citations which derive from questions 1, 2 and 3 of To Stephanus.  Those which Poussines gives have been reproduced, PG, 22, cols. 972-976, with two others.

One fragment on the name of Jesus (1, 3-8b) placed sometimes in the mouth of Origen belongs in reality to Eusebius (cf. G. Mercati, Un supposto frammento di Origene, in Revue biblique 17, 1910, p. 76-79).

Sometimes the scholiast seems to have hesitated about the attribution to Eusebius (cf. Cramer, p. 12, 15).

As for the questions To Marinus, some fragments can be found in Cramer p. 251-256 which belong to this.

Some other citations can be met with in Cramer, p. 56 (Mt. 7:27), and 81 (Mt 10:34);  Pousinnes, p. 35 (Mt 3:3), and 145 (Mt 10:24-25).  Perhaps all this Eusebian material is analogous to some that was signalled in the Bodleian Library manuscript Laud 33, fol. 80b (Harnack-Preuschen, Geschichte, vol. 1, p.577). 

Zahn has published (Geschichte d. Neutestamentl. Kan. vol. 2, p. 915) another scholion of Eusebius on Matthew 16:9-20, from manuscript Moscow Holy Synod 139.

I need to get hold of the Mercati and Zahn articles.   It all reinforces the impression of fragments all over the place.  Any editor of this material will have a considerable job simply to assemble the raw materials!

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Lemma-out of here!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The word lemma is widely used in the humanities.  Indeed it leaves confusion wherever it is employed.

Because no-one knows what it means.  When was the last time you went down to get your car serviced, and told the mechanic to look at the lemma?  When did you hear a TV announcement talk about the lemmas in the latest failed government IT project?  It doesn’t mean anything, chaps.

What brought this on, I hear you ask?  The answer is a deeply confusing exchange discussing the fragments of Origen’s comments on Ezekiel with the translator.  The said gentleman used the word, in an email discussion of how we are going to present the catena fragments, and communication promptly took a nose-dive.

You may think you know what it means.  You are wrong.  All you know is one use of the word.  There are many.

I first came across the term in connection with the MorphGNT file, containing a Greek New Testament, one word per line, with grammatical information for each word.  The help file — I use the term ‘help’ loosely — used the word to describe one item on the line.  As a normal person, or at least, not one of the in-crowd, I had no idea what it meant.  So I emailed James Tauber, who maintained the file and asked.  Answer came there none!  In the end I figured out that in MorphGNT lemma here meant “base form of a word, uninflected, in the form found in a dictionary”.  It is a little difficult to think of an English alternative, although “dictionary form” or “base form” would do.  Doubtless this difficulty led to the use of lemma.

What other uses are there?  Well, we just saw Devreesse use it in his description of catenas.  In this case he meant “name or abbreviation stuck in the margin of the book to indicate that this extract was by this author.”  Again, a short term is not immediately apparent; but lemma does not help.

The translator was using it in yet another sense.  Often in a catena, the discussion is preceded by a short quotation of the scripture under discussion.  You guessed it — he called that a lemma as well!  Nor was he to blame, when others have led the way.

In short, it is an omnipresent jargon word.  And I think it should be banned.  It is an example of language as a means of intimidation, rather than a means of communication.

Some might say that we could achieve this end by holding a convention, adopting better terminology, setting new standards.  But I think the answer is simply to find those using the word and chop their goolies off.  If we refer to it as mandatory de-lemmatisation, they won’t know until our posse rolls up and I shout the secret code phrase, “Grab him, boys!”

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Devreesse on the extracts of Origen on Ezekiel in the catenas

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve continued to work away at the monster article on the catenas by R. Devreesse, Chaines éxégetiques grecques, Supplément to Dictionnaire de la Bible, vol. 1 (Paris: Letouzey, published 1928).   The print-out that I got using the default settings in Adobe was very hard to read, very grainy and faint.  Fortunately I found a way to set the printer to denser printing, and this improved this.  So this morning I made a pile of print-outs, stapled them together in four sections, took my pen and … went off to lunch.  They went very well while waiting for a steak to appear!

The material concerned with Origen on Ezechiel is quite brief and begins on col. 1154.  Here it is in English, omitting chunks of Greek quoted where it would be a pain to transcribe them.  It is rather full of unfamiliar names.  Who, for instance, is Faulhaber? (<cough> A quick google search reveals that I have asked this question before, and that his book is online!).  Moving quickly on:

V.  EZEKIEL. — Faulhaber has placed the work by Pradus-Villalpandus, In Ezechielem explanationes et apparatus urbis ac templi Hierosolymitani commentario et imaginibus illustratus, 3 vols, Rome, 1596-1604, in its true context.  These volumes may have some importance for biblical topography, but they have nothing to do with the literature on the catenas.  There are again many manuscripts of Roman catenas derived from the ms. Chisianus which we must examine.

This is a reference to various catena manuscripts in Rome, in the Vatican etc, which he has already referred to for other Old Testament catenas.

The catalogue of Karo and Lietzmann adds to these on the one hand ms. Coislin 17 (13th century), Ambrosianus E. 46 sup. (10th c.)  and on the other the two Laurentianus V, 9 (11th c.) and XI, 4 (11th c.).

The catenist, probably John Drungarius, prefixed his collection with a preface in which he declared that he had searched in vain for commentaries of the fathers on Ezekiel; he could only discover passages of the prophet referred to or explained by them, randomly, in one or another of their works.  Lacking works by the holy Fathers, he searched elsewhere for materials for his collection; the “heretics” Theodoret, Polychronius and Origen furnished him with scholia.    But he also came across an earlier catena which it seems contained anonymous extracts.  These he included preceded by the lemma  Ἄλλος.  Faulhaber, p. 141-2.  The sources for John’s catena — which we will call this, for convenience — are thus the following:  some anonymous scholia, based on a primitive catena and prefixed with the lemma Allos, some interpretations detached from context on odd passages of the prophet, and some fragments taken from authors of limited orthodoxy.  All this material has been treated with some freedom.  What is the Allos material?  Faulhaber has remarked that these extracts look very strongly like extracts from Polychronius.  These fragments must have come from some primitive catena, itself derived from a commentary by Polychronius.

I’m sure all of us are wondering who Polychronius is.  I certainly don’t remember the name!  A quick Google search reveals that he was bishop of Apamea in the early 5th century and the brother of Theodore of Mopsuestia.  No doubt his “heresy” consisted of following the Antiochene approach to the various controversies of the period, nearly all political in inspiration.  Quite a bit of his exegetical work has survived, including nearly all his work on Ezechiel.

But back to Devreesse:

Let us note, in passing, that in Ambrosianus E. 46 sup (10th c.), we find the commentary of Theodoret surrounded by scholia.

AUTHORS CITED.  — Origen. — We are told in the Church History of Eusebius (V, 32:1-2) that Origen began at Caesarea and completed at Athens a commentary (tomoi) on Ezechiel.  The work comprised 25 books.  Of this commentary there remains only a section from the 20th book, preserved in the Philocalia (Patrologia Graeca vol. 13, cols. 663-666; ed. Robinson, p. 60).

I ought to add here that the Philocalia is a compilation of extracts from Origen, which was made in the 4th century by the great Cappadocian Fathers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa.  It survives, and I long ago scanned the English translation and placed it online here.

The commentary was not the only exegesis that Origen undertook on Ezekiel.  A translation by St. Jerome has handed us fourteen sermons (PG vol. 14, cols. 665-768; also edited by Baehrens, Griechische Christlicher Schriftsteller, 1925, p. 318-454).  There is no question, both in Eusebius and Jerome, that Origen also left scholia or excerpta on Ezekiel.  The fragments given in the catenas (233 in the ms. Ottobonianus 452, according to Faulhaber, p. 153) are taken from the homilies.  An edition of them by De la Rue can be found in the PG 13, cols. 695-787.  The Ottobonianus 452 was exploited by Cardinal Mai to furnish four further extracts (Novum Patr. Bibl. vol. 7, 2, praef., p. v [1], reprinted as PG 17, col. 288).  The manuscripts Vatican 1153 and Ottoboni 452 permitted Cardinal Pitra to pursue this collecting further, and to discover some next texts (Analecta sacra vol. 3, p. 541-550; the first extract had already been edited by De la Rue, the last and next-to-last by Mai).  The edition of Baehrens gives the fragments taken from the Ottoboni 452, Vatican 1153, and Laurentian V, 9 manuscripts, but we know that the homilies, which were the object of this publication, were attached to specific passages of the prophecy and did not go further than Ezechiel 44:2.  The remainder of the scholia are perhaps all that survives of lost homilies and commentaries.  The study of these fragments must therefore begin by establishing from the best manuscript witnesses a complete list, and then determining their relationship to the texts preserved in the direct tradition.

Devreesse then goes on to talk about the fragments of Hippolytus, but we need not follow him.

What does all this tell us?  Much and little.  It is reasonably certain that we have most of the catena fragments on Ezechiel by Origen.  It is equally certain that we don’t know that much about them, and that some of them are bogus.

I think it is time to clarify who the modern editors of Origen have been.  Schaff as always gives us something, but here is a little more:

Charles de La Rue (d. 1739) was the Benedictine editor of the complete works of Origen, reprinted by Migne in PG 11-17 after 1850.  He was one of the Maurist fathers, whose fabulous erudition was only brought to an end by the French Revolution, when their headquarters at St. Germain-des-Près were stormed by the mob.  Most of their books went to the National Library; a certain number were acquired by a Russian agent, Petrus Dubrovsky, and shipped out and sold to the Tsar, and are in St. Petersburg.  Dubrovsky himself was denounced to the Committee of Public Safety and had to flee, leaving some of his manuscripts to be scattered over Paris.

C. H. E. Lommatzsch also seems to have reprinted De la Rue, in 25 small volumes: Opera omnia quae graece et latine tantum exstant et ejus nomine circumferuntur … Ediderunt Carolus et Carol. Vincen. De La Rue … denuo recensuit … Carol. Henric. Eduard. Lommatzsch, Berlin: Haud and Spener (1831-1848).

The most  modern text on Origen on Ezekiel is that in the Berlin Griechische Christlicher Schriftsteller  series by Baehrens, which was reprinted by Borrett in the Sources Chretiennes edition.   Fortunately Baehrens is out of copyright, so there is no barrier to using his text.

I wonder what Baehrens thought of De la Rue’s work?

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Devreesse on quotations from Eusebius in catenas in John

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are quite a few nuggets of interesting information in the 78-page article by R. Devreesse on Greek exegetical catenas in the Dictionaire de la Bible — supplement 1.  Naturally there are catenas on each of the Gospels, and he lists the authors quoted.  Here is what he says on John’s gospel, under the heading Eusebius.  Cordier/Corderius is one of the first catena editors; Cramer the editor of a catena in the 19th century.

Eusebius — Eusebius is the source of many citations in the catenas on St. John.  The first that we encounter (Cordier, p. 80) relates to John 2:22.  Cordier p.136 (on John 19:13-17) gives an extract from Severus [of Antioch], which is also found in Cramer, p. 398, with an indication of the source:  Σευήρου ἐκ τῆς πρὸς Θωμᾶν Γερμανικίας ἐπίσκοπον, where Severus reports the opinion given by Eusebius ἐν ταῖς πρὸς Μαρῖνον.  Cf. Brooks, A collection of letters of Severus of Antioch … in Patrologia Orientalis vol. 14, p. 268 [438].  The text of Cordier was reprinted in the Patrologia Graeca vol. 22, col. 1009 A-C.

On John 20:3-7, the Roman catenas cite a long passage of Eusebius.  The first part of this citation corresponds to P.G. 22, col. 984, A-C4, Eusebii Caesariensis supplementa quaetionum ad Marinum … ex Nicetae catena in Lucam; the second part is found in P.G., col. 989 B-C8.

Cordier, p. 449-450, gives a text which agrees with Question III to Marinus (P.G. 22, col. 948-949).  Finally on these same verses of chapter 22 of St. John, Cordier (p. 450-451) gives a citations which is almost identical to the content of P.G. col. 984-985.

It’s not quite clear from all of this whether Migne actually contains all this material, although it looks like it.  The most interesting reference is to the letters of Severus of Antioch, the monophysite patriarch of Constantinople in the reign of Anastasius until dethroned by the new emperor Justin in 517.  Long ago I scanned Brooks’ English translation of the letters, which are extant in Syriac.  Indeed I still remember the pain of doing so, because the volumes were very heavy to lift and place on the photocopier, and the pages had Syriac at the top and English in a grainy print at the bottom.

The Severus can be found here.  It is a truly interesting passage, all for itself!  I have added extra paragraphs for readability.

But that our Lord Jesus Christ our God was pierced in the side with a lance by that soldier after he gave up the ghost, and blood and water came forth from it in a miraculous manner, the divine John the Evangelist recorded, and no one else wrote about this. But certain persons have clearly falsified the Gospel of Matthew and inserted this same passage, when the contrary is the fact, in order to show that it was while he was alive that the soldier pierced his side with the spear, and afterwards he gave up the ghost.

This question was examined with great carefulness when my meanness was in the royal city, at the time when the affair of Macedonius was being examined, who became archbishop of that city, and there was produced the Gospel of Matthew, which was written in large letters, and was preserved with great honour in the royal palace, which was said to have been found in the days of Zeno of honourable memory in a city of the island of Cyprus buried with the holy Barnabas, who went about with Paul and spread the divine preaching; and, when the Gospel of Matthew was opened, it was found to be free from the falsification contained in this addition, [437] of the story of the soldier and the spear. …

But Eusebius of Caesarea (1141), who is called ‘Pamphili’, whom we mentioned a little above, when writing to a man called Marinus about questions concerning the passions of our Saviour and about his Resurrection, showed us nothing whatever about the said addition, as being unknown and having no place in the books of the gospel.

But in the same letters to Marinus, who had asked him for an interpretation on the subject of our Saviour’s passions and his Resurrection, he inserted the following exposition also in his letters, that the divine Mark the Evangelist said that it was the 3rd hour at the time when Christ who is God and our Saviour was crucified, but the divine John (he said) wrote that it was at the 6th hour that Pilate sat upon his judgment-seat at the place called ‘the pavement’, and judged Christ.

And therefore Eusebius said that this is an error of a scribe, who was inattentive when writing [441] the Gospel. For it is the letter gamal that denotes 3 hours, while the letter which is called in Greek episemon denotes the number of 6 hours, and these letters are like one another in Greek, and, the scribe wishing to write ‘3’ quickly, and having turned the letter a little backwards, it was thereby found to be ‘6’, because, since the letter had been turned backwards, it was supposed to be the letter that denotes ‘6’. Since therefore the three other evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke stated alike as with one mouth that from the 6th hour to the 9th there was darkness over all the land, it is plain that our Lord and God Jesus Christ was crucified before the 6th hour, at which the darkness took place, that is from the 3rd hour, as (1142) the blessed John himself wrote. Similarly we say that it is the 3rd hour, because those who wrote before, as we have said, changed the letter. We must insert also in this our letter upon this matter a part of what Eusebius himself stated at length; and his words are as follows:

“We agree not with any chance man, but with the evangelist who gave this testimony, [442] Mark. For it happened that there was an error on the part of the scribe so that he changed the letter by adding length to it, and it was thought that the letter which represents ‘3’ was ‘6’, on account of the likeness of the two letters of that which denotes ‘3’ and that which denotes ‘6’.

If therefore it is stated by John that it was the preparation of the day of unlevened bread, and it was about the 6th hour, and Pilate said to the Jews ‘Behold! your king’ (1143), and so on, let there be read instead of ‘6th’  ‘3rd’, since the beginning of his trial took place at that time, and in the middle of the hour or after it had been completed they crucified him, so that the result is that they judged and crucified him at the same hour”. (1144)

If you look for and find the volume addressed to Marinus about the interpretation of these things, you will find the accuracy of the writer as regards these matters.

The footnotes:

1141. 2. This passage to ‘letter’ (p. 441,1.12) is published in Greek in Cramer, Cat. in Luc. et Jo., p. 389 (cf. Corderius, Cat. in Jo., p. 436; P. G., XXII, 1009).
1142. 2. Some words have perhaps fallen out {Syriac}.
1143. 1. John, xix, 14.
1144. 2. Not known except from Severus

The next extract is from a letter to Theognostus of Germanicea, and Brooks notes:

1145. 3. A Greek extract from a letter to Theognostus of Germanicea is published in Cramer, Cat. in Epp. Cath., p. 159.

Hmm.  Well, I had forgotten (if I ever knew) that extract.  It had probably better be included in the Eusebius book!

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Styles of translation – an example from Isidore of Pelusium

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A friend has been typing up the Greek text of letter 212 of Isidore of Pelusium for me.  This is one of the fragments of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel Problems and Solutions, so I have a translation of it.  The friend commented on the style of translation adopted, versus a more literal approach. 

Your translator did a nice job making a loose translation that is quite faithful to the intent and meaning of the letter.   …  I don’t think the translator was too loose.  For an academic translation, which is usually more literal, it does toe the line a little bit, but it does make a far more interesting and pleasant read.   Here are two passages that I translated literally.  Mine are in [normal text], your translator’s are in italics.

Τὸ γὰρ ἀδύνατον καὶ ὄν καὶ δοκοῦν, ὅσον πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἀσθένειαν, φημὶ, κατορθώσας, ούκ ἄν περὶ τὸ δυνατὸν ἐξησθένησεν

He accomplished, I say, something both apparently and actually – as far as human weakness is concerned – impossible; so he would have shown no weakness in a matter that was possible.

For, I say, having accomplished what both is and seems impossible, as much as concerns the weakness of man, he would not be weak concerning what is possible.

Τὸ μὲν γὰρ θᾶττον ἀναστῆναι, ἔγκλημα οὐκ εἶχε

An early resurrection was irreproachable.

For a swift resurrecting does not have reproach. [Infinite changed to a participle]

For to resurrect swiftly does not have reproach. [Adjective changed to an adverb]

He adds:

I added an alternate translation of the last bit.  Basically there is an infinitive acting like a noun that is modified by an adjective.  In English we either have to make the infinitive a participle or the adjective into an adverb to be grammatically correct.  We can’t say “For to swift resurrect does not have reproach” but that is what the Greek says.  I guess what I am saying here is that either of my two translations I gave are equally literal in their own way. 

Now there are those who quibble about how “literal” is a meaningless and a subjective term, but I think that being able to reconstruct the original language from a translation is a fairly objective standard.  Irenaeus’ Against Heresies has a loose Latin translation and a very literal Armenian translation.  The Armenian can potentially be used to reconstruct the Greek.  The Latin can’t really.  It doesn’t mean one is necessarily better than the other, it just means one is more literal.  I would be interested in what more professional people think of my “literal” translation.  Maybe they have better suggestions!

Any such suggestions would be welcome, as would opinions on the version in Italics.

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Doing it right – an new edition and Italian translation of a work by Hunain ibn Ishaq

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s always delightful to see things moving in the right direction (especially when it isn’t because I pushed them).  Quite by accident I came across this site, which is the English-language page of an Italian journal.

The arab version of De differentiis febrium of Galen, edited by Claudio De Stefani, is the first issue of the Collection «Studi di Eikasmós Online».

Galeni De differentiis febrium versio Arabica (Bologna 2004)

Hunain ibn Ishâq di al-Hîra (808-873[?] A.D.), physician and philologist, author of original works and translations into Syriac and Arabic, was the most important arabic translator of the Middle Ages, and one of the best in the world. Because of this celebrity, many translations from Greek were wrongly attributed to him in the arabic mss. Most of his translations from Greek concern the works of Galen of Pergamon (128/131-210/213 A.D.). Here is the translation of one of Galen’s pathologic works on fevers (in two books): it was largely spread in the byzantine Greece (many Greek mss. preserve this work and several summaries on the same subject), in Western Europe (there are some latin translations from Greek, for example that of Burgundius), and in the Arabic East, where the galenic doctrines on fevers were going to survive for a long time. This electronic edition is interesting for people working on Galen, Arabists, historians of medicine.

Book I,1-8
(file.pdf)
Book I,9-14
(file.pdf)
Book II,1-7
(file.pdf)
Book II,8-18
(file.pdf)

The text (as a pdf file) can be scrolled or free downloaded (clic the file name and choose “Save as”), and printed for study. All rights are reserved for commercial reasons and aims.

Now this is simply splendid!  The files contain an electronic Arabic text with Italian translation.  And quite rightly too!  For the subject is so obscure that very few people will be interested. 

Most such pieces of work vanish into specialist libraries and never become known to the public.  Here someone — who? — has realised that there is another audience out there, one that will never see the printed paper journal, will never buy it, will never read its contents or know of them; the general educated public.  People like us, in fact.

Well done, the Italians!  In one stroke they have probably multipled by ten the number of people who can read this.

Thanks to this site.

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Possible outages ahead

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I don’t mind posting my thoughts online. Why not?  But I do not want to post sensitive personal information online. Unfortunately doing the former without doing the latter is getting harder. More and more companies are taking — read “stealing” — freely available personal data and posting it on their own sites in order to produce new services, and thereby make money. That means that data passes out of your control.

A few days ago I had a run-in with someone rather unpleasant online who started threatening me. This led me to consider just how much information a malicious person might be able to locate about me.  Could someone find my home address, telephone number and so on?   I’ve always been cautious; but the answer is “too much”.

I’ll be moving the roger-pearse.com domain to another registrar.  This is because the existing one, Network Solutions, demand money not to broadcast a lot of personal information about me online.  I’ve resorted to turning the WHOIS entry into garbage, but this is not ideal.

During the changeover it is possible that the site may become inaccessible for a while. Don’t be alarmed if this happens; it will get fixed!

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The external appearance of catenas

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A kind correspondant has sent me a PDF of R. Devreese’ article Chaines exégétiques grecques, in the French Dictionaire de la Bible – supplement.  It’s around 80 pages long, and double columns, and very detailed even in the generalities.  I thought I would give an English version of a portion of the introduction, starting on col. 1089.

g) Page layout of catenas — So far we have only examined the titles of compilations to which the name of exegetical catena is given.  If we open one of these volumes, what do we see?

Most often, the text of scripture occupies the centre of the page, and is written in larger letters than the extracts which surround it.  To these catenas the name of marginal catenas (Rahmencatene) is given.  The names of the authors, sometimes written in red, precede each fragment of exegesis. (Cf. Vat. gr. 749 in Pio Franchi de’ Cavalieri -Lietzmann, Specimina codd. Vatic., tabula 8).  To the same type of arrangement belong the types of catena which are formed around a commentary or an existing catena.  There are no lack of examples, we could cite some covering almost all the books of scripture.  We will only name Coislin 81, where the elements of the catena are found dispersed in the margin around the commentary of Theodoret on the Psalms; Reg. 40, where the centre of the page is occupied by the commentary of Hesychius on the Psalms; Paris 128, where a scribe was completing a commentary on the Octateuch; the beginning of Palat. 20 where the centre is filled by a catena on Luke and the margins by the catena of Nicetas on the same gospel…  This manner of adding new scholia to compilations or finished treatises was continued to the end of the Middle Ages, because there are certain mss. commentaries of Euthymius on the Psalms where the procedure described is found still in use.  This procedure was flagrantly inconvenient for later copyists; there was a risk that texts written in the margin could end up integrated into the commentary or existing catena, and that all this would be presented without distinguishing the elements of which it was comprised.  Because of this, it happens that some of our commentaries are found in an interpolated state.

In the manuscripts that we are going to talk about, the glosses occupy the outer three margins of the page.  Sometimes, but rarely, the biblical text occupies exactly the middle of the page and the scholia are presented on all four sides; we find this layout in Vallicell. E. 40, and in Monac. gr. 9 (cf. Lindl, Die Octateuckatene des Prokop von Gaza, which reproduces folio 20 of this last manuscript).

Another layout just as common as the last gives one or more verses of Scripture written in sequence and then, on the following lines, the scholia of various authors, each preceded by a proper name, that of the author.  We call these catenas long-line catenas (Breitkatene).

Let us finally mention catenas in two columns.  Many of those already mentioned of the eclogae of Procopius are in this format.  An idea of their layout can be had from a reproduction of a page of Coislin 204, given by Swete, op. cit., p. xvii.

h) The lemmas — In these different catenas, whatever their layout, the name of the author is generally indicated, whether by the copyist himself or by a rubricator, either in the body of the text or in the margins.  Just as in legal manuscripts, the name is given in the genetive (Eusebiou, Theodorou).  It is customary to designate these by the word lemma, a convenient expression, if one that sometimes is found rather a long way from its original meaning.

Rarely — only in the most ancient manuscripts — the lemma is written in entirety.  More often, it is abriged into contractions, which may lead to a mistake.  A list of the most frequent abbreviations can be found in Montfaucon, Paleographica Graeca, p. 348.  Cf. M. Faulhaber, Babylonische Verwirrung in gricchischen Namensigeln, dans Oriens christianus, vol. VII , 1907 , p. 370-387.

More than once, whether because the copyist intended to come back and add them later, or because he left the task to a rubricator, the lemmas are omitted, and the spaces that should have contained them are left empty.  Scribes who copied these incomplete manuscripts found it easiest to run together the extracts presented to them without authors.  Whether they didn’t find lemmas, or omitted them, the result is the same.  When the lemmas were omitted and the scholia run together, the appearance was created of continuous exegesis.  This is how some names are found with material added, and others diminished.  This is how, for example, one part of the commentary of Eusebius on the Psalms (see below col. 1124) is in reality only a catena without lemmas.  All this supposed commentary is distributed in fragments among a half-dozen authors, from Athanasius to Hesychius.  It is probably for identical reasons that we possess pseudo-commentaries of Peter of Laodicea on the Psalms and Gospels, of Oecumenius on the Letters and Acts, which are really also just catenas without lemmas.

Very frequently, in recent manuscripts, we find omitted in sequence one or more lemmas.  It is necessary then to go back and locate the first error and return to many what has been ascribed to one author.

Later, when the number of interpretations had multiplied, in the marginal chains and chains on long lines a system of reference signs was used, made up of various geometrical combinations.  In this way, at a glance, one could see which scholia explained a given passage of the bible and conversely which biblical passage related to an exegesis one was looking at, just as with modern signs and notes.

I think we can all agree that this material is actually very interesting.  The French of Devreese is not difficult — I was reading this in bed before I felt obliged to come and type it in — and the precision of his remarks is most useful and plainly derived from specific examples.

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