Month: August 2012

Some Roman law on adultery

Posted on by Roger Pearse

From Julius Paulus, book 2, title 26:

(1) In the second chapter of the Lex Julia concerning adultery, either an adoptive or a natural father is permitted to kill an adulterer caught in the act with his daughter in his own house or in that of his son-in-law, no matter what his rank may be.

(2) If a son under paternal control, who is the father, should surprise his daughter in the act of adultery, while it is inferred from the terms of the law that he cannot kill her, still, he ought to be permitted to do so.

(3) Again, it is provided in the fifth chapter of the Lex Julia that it is permitted to detain witnesses for twenty hours, in order to convict an adulterer taken in the act.

(4) A husband cannot kill any one taken in adultery except persons who are infamous, and those who sell their bodies for gain, as well as slaves, and the freedmen of his wife, and those of his parents and children; his wife, however, is excepted, and he is forbidden to kill her.

(5) It has been decided that a husband who kills his wife when caught with an adulterer, should be punished more leniently, for the reason that he committed the act through impatience caused by just suffering.

(6) After having killed the adulterer, the husband should at once dismiss his wife, and publicly declare within the next three days with what adulterer, and in what place he found his wife.

(7) An angry husband who surprises his wife in adultery can only kill the adulterer, when he finds him in his own house.

(8) It has been decided that a husband who does not at once dismiss his wife whom he has taken in adultery, can be prosecuted as a pander.

(9) ….<illegible in manuscript>….

(10) It should be noted that two adulterers can be accused at the same time with the wife, but more than that number cannot be.

(11) It has been decided that adultery cannot be committed with women who have charge of any business or shop.

(12) Anyone who debauches a male who is free, against his consent, shall be punished with death.

(13) ….

(14) It has been held that women convicted of adultery shall be punished with the loss of half of their dowry and the third of their estates, and by relegation to an island. The adulterer, however, shall be deprived of half his property, and shall also be punished by relegation to an island; provided the parties are exiled to different islands.

(15) It has been decided that the penalty for incest, which in case of a man is deportation to an island, shall not be inflicted upon the woman; that is to say when she has not been convicted under the Lex Julia concerning adultery.

(16) Fornication committed with female slaves, unless they are deteriorated in value or an attempt is made against their mistress through them, is not considered an injury.

(17) If a delay is demanded in a case of adultery it cannot be obtained.

These are portions of Roman law that our modern politicians might not entirely find welcome.

Share

A new work by Aristotle in the Green collection?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Today I  learned of the Green Collection, a large private collection of manuscripts and papyri.  It is owned by the Green family of Oklahoma, who are (a) billionaires and (b) Christians.  In consequence they have been collecting material of wide interest. 

Brill have announced a new series of publications for the papyri:

The new series fits well among Brill’s strong portfolio of Classical Studies and Biblical and Religious Studies publications, as well as its extensive list of digitized primary source manuscript collections. Comprising of one to two new volumes per year, the new series will publish approximately 20 papyri with a thorough description, commentary with images, and web-based support for further resources.

The first forthcoming volume in the series, planned to be released in early 2013, is dedicated to an early 3c BCE papyrus containing an extensive, undocumented work by Aristotle on reason, and is currently being analyzed by a research group at Oxford University.

The Green Collection contains over 50,000 items, and now holds nearly 15,000 papyri acquired from private collections in Europe, and continues to grow. The collection is approximately 70% Greek, 15% Coptic and 15% late Egyptian. The collection is currently unpublished and contains items of extraordinary importance, including some of the earliest Greek literary texts known, dating to the early 3c BCE. A major building near Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. was purchased in July 2012 to house an international museum for these items.

They are also working with scholars at Tyndale House in Cambridge:

The Green Collection has announced that the Codex Climaci Rescriptus – containing the earliest-known texts of Scripture in something close to Jesus’ household language – will return to the University of Cambridge in collaboration with the collection’s international research arm, the Green Scholars Initiative.

Top manuscript scholars from Cambridge’s Tyndale House will conduct intensive, high-tech research on the codex’s 137 reused vellum leaves, which feature overlapping layers of text. Recent technological breakthroughs developed by Green Scholars at the University of Oxford allow once unreadable, underlying text from the codex to be “lifted” to the surface for enhanced study through a process known as “multi-spectral imaging.”

In selecting Cambridge as the official research home of the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, Green Scholars Initiative Director Dr. Jerry Pattengale said, “Tyndale House is a perfect fit for this project given both its excellent scholars and its reputation in biblical studies. We are pleased with the strength of their ancient languages, from Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew to Greek and Coptic – and, just as important, their passionate interest in biblical studies.”

They have launched the Green Scholars Initiative:

The Green Scholars Initiative is an international research project involving dozens of institutions under the auspices of The Green Collection, the world’s newest and largest private collection of rare biblical texts and artifacts.

Through thousands of cuneiform texts and papyri, Dead Sea Scrolls and Coptic texts to Gutenberg, Wycliff, Tyndale, Thomas à Kempis, Erasmus, King James and a litany of Reformation and post-Reformation original texts, the Green Scholars Initiative brings established and young scholars together to pioneer groundbreaking biblical discoveries

There will be a new museum in Washington:

A sampling of the Bible museum’s offerings — from the collection of more than 40,000 artifacts — have been displayed in the Passages Exhibit at the Vatican and in Oklahoma City and Atlanta and will soon appear in Charlotte, N.C.

All this is very encouraging for papyrus and manuscript studies: a family with the resources to collect and publish materials, and the desire to do so.  And for once it is being done from a Christian perspective too.  Well done!

Share

Eusebius book update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Eusebius: Gospel Problems and Solutions book is still selling copies, which is pleasing.  I put so much of myself into producing that book, and of course there was never any certainty of sales.

This evening I received the monthly statements from Lightning Source (US and UK), which tells me how many copies were sold via Amazon.  Rather chuffed to find that during July 3 copies sold in the US, and another 3 in the UK.  All of them were paperbacks.  6 copies at this stage … wow! Thank you, whoever you are!

Sales earlier in the year had dropped to pretty much nothing, so this is a surprise.  But then I have no idea what influences sales on Amazon.

In fact a total of 24 copies have sold in the US this year (6 hardbacks, 18 paperbacks), and 17 copies in the UK (all paperbacks).   I haven’t previously had a breakdown of what format sold, so this too is useful.

The book still has not broken even, but we’re doing much better than I had feared!  I need to sit down and work out total sales at some point, and find out exactly where we are.

Share

Did early heretics call themselves “Christians”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I was answering an email in great haste earlier today, which contained the assertion that heretics like Marcionites or Valentinians (there was no specific) referred to themselves as Christians.  I think that I sort of assented, or at any rate did not disagree, in the rush to disagree with other parts of the email.

But I found myself wondering.  Do we know that this is true?  Did they, in fact, using the word for themselves?

We are accustomed to different church groups all identifying themselves as Christians.  We are accustomed to modern heretics — liberal clergy who endorse unnatural vice and don’t believe in God — demanding indignantly to be referred to as Christians (to the amused cynicism of everyone else).  But … do we know that the same was true in antiquity?  For antiquity was a different world, and anachronism is always our enemy.

Modern heretics demand the Name, because the name of Christian has a residual positive image in the modern western world: what was once Christendom.  But in ancient times, was this the case?  After all, “christianus” was the name of an illegal cult: non licet esse vos, — you are not allowed to exist, the pagans jeer in the pages of Tertullian’s Apologeticum.

The heresies essentially were pop-pagan philosophical schools, which is, of course, why the early Christians referred to them by the word “haereses”, used, with no pejorative context, for those schools.  But every philosopher made his living by teaching pupils for pay.  And what he had to teach was his own special teachings.  If he was the disciple of some famous earlier philosopher, he would innovate, unless he inherited the school from his master, in order to attract pupils and distinguish himself from other pupils.  To such people, a fresh source of ideas, such as Christianity, was just grist to the mill.  It is telling that the same is true of gnostic groups.  The disciples of Valentinus, such as Apelles, did not teach classical Valentinianism, but their own flavour of it.

In each case, the members of the heresy were not a church in the way that a modern church is organised.  They were more like “hearers”.  The loose organisation of these groups is commented on by Tertullian in De praescriptione haereticorum, who in chapter 6 lists the old-time philosophies from which the new heretics draw their teaching, and towards the end remarks on this lack of structure and definition.

Someone following a school would usually take, I believe, the name of his master, or of the school.  Thus we have the cynics, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and so forth.

Likewise in Corinth, Paul has to tell the Christians not to do the same.  “I follow Paul … I follow Apollos …” is perhaps the same tendency. 

So … do we know that heretical groups generally did not do the same? 

When I read Ephraim the Syrian’s Madrasha 22 against heresies, I do not find that the Marcionites are saying “We are the Christians”.  What they are saying to the Christians is, “You are the followers of Palut”, an early Bishop.  And Ephraim spends a lot of time telling the Christians of the 4th century NOT to name themselves after anyone but Christ.  Do other patristic writers witness to this sort of thing, I wonder?

Did the Valentinians generally call themselves “Valentinians”, perhaps?  Or the Marcionites “Marcionites”?  What is the data, I wonder?

Of course the heretical groups of this period mainly sought to influence Christians, to persuade them to sacrifice and to take on board pagan teachings of one sort of another.  So perhaps it is possible that they found it useful to claim the Name.  I don’t know.  What we need to see, as always, is evidence.

As ever, we need to be so wary of an unconscious anachronism.

UPDATE: See the comments for a couple of examples.  The most interesting is that in the Life of Persian Syriac saint, Mar Aba.

Share

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve commissioned a translation of Ephraim the Syrian’s Hymns against Heresies 22.  I’ve also found somewhere that I can get hold of the text.  I also have a promise of an unpublished translation of the same work; and I have had an interesting email from someone working in the same area who has various translations of parts of the Hymns.  All this is grist to the mill, of course.

Share