Month: November 2013

Haefner and Salvian on forgery

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In Forgery and Counterforgery, Bart Ehrman makes a series of statements about Salvian of Marseilles, suggesting that the 5th century monk and moralist was guilty of forgery, and also that Salvian actually confesses to the deed in his Letter 9.

In earlier posts, I have evaluated E.’s statements against the text of the letter — not given by E., curiously — and other pieces of evidence.  These posts are accessible here.

But the outcome is that E.’s statements seem remarkably unsatisfactory.  It wasn’t at all clear to me why he believes that, e.g. Salonius was Salvian’s “own bishop”; that Salonius’ comments are angry, that Salvian circulated the work without sending it to Salonius, and so forth.   No other commentator has inferred these statements from the text, or the extraordinary conclusion.

But all the time I lacked an important piece of evidence.

In F&C, E. references, not the standard American translation of Letter 9, by Eva Sanford, which I have given in full here, but an obscure paper by Alfred Haefner, published in 1934 in the Anglican Theological Review in Canada.[1]  The journal itself was not held in some major research libraries outside the USA, and I was unable to access it.

Fortunately a correspondent has come to my rescue, and supplied me with a copy.  In view of the difficulty of access, I have placed a PDF here.

On reading it, much is explained.  For here we find the curious mis-statements which I have discussed earlier.

It would certainly be surprising under these conditions if an author, after publishing his book pseudonymously, would proceed to make an open declaration of his “fraud” and publish his reasons for resorting to such an expedient. He would seem to be thwarting his own purposes.

Yet this is precisely the kind of document we have before us. About the year 440 A.D. there appeared a pamphlet entitled Timothei ad Ecclesiam Libri IV inveighing against the avarice of the times and appealing to the church to renounce its wealth and luxury. The pamphlet begins in the biblical epistolary style: “Timothy, least of the servants of God, to the Church Catholic in all the world, grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.” The tract was issued under the name of Timothy, with no indications as to its true authorship. When Bishop Salonius got this tract into his hands, he seems quickly to have guessed who wrote it, and forthwith sent a letter of protest to Salvian, presbyter of Marseille. Salonius feared that the work might be mistaken for an apocryphal work of the Apostle Timothy, and demanded reasons for publishing the book pseudonymously. Thereupon Salvian wrote an answer to Bishop Salonius—the ninth of his preserved letters—in which, always speaking of the author in the third person, he set forth his reasons for adopting the pseudonym and thereby strikingly exemplified the contemporary attitude toward the practice.

This letter of Salvian’s thus seems to be a unique document. The very man who has published a pseudonymous book is divulging his reasons for doing so. It is as though we had caught the “criminal” in the act.

Here we have the ideas from F&C, in their original (and somewhat milder) form.  E. has merely dramatised them.

H. himself, if I understand his career correctly, wrote this paper while a PhD student, or little more.   He has indeed propounded an interesting theory; although not one that will resist much investigation.  His area of expertise is the New Testament; of patristics he knows nothing.  Of the milieu of southern Gaul in this period he knew less than most of us, we who have benefited by the works of Peter Brown.  Nevertheless H. — unlike E. — rightly gives a translation of most of the letter in the article, so that the subject under discussion may be accessible to the reader.

H. ends in the following words:

Even so, I do not mean to exaggerate the importance of Salvian’s letter. For on the one hand, Salvian gives us little information about pseudonymity beyond what could be inferred from our previous sources; and on the other hand the letter is too late (ca. 440 A.D.) to permit of definite and unqualified conclusions with respect to the practice of pseudonymity in New Testament times.

Emphasis mine.  H. has the common-sense to realise that the letter’s importance can be exaggerated.  It is interesting to wonder what he would have made of F&C.

Then H. points out a couple of ways in which the letter is of interest, which will again ring bells to the reader of F&C:

[the letter] seems to be the only document in which the pseudonymist is speaking in his own defense (as it were), and it may fairly be called unique in this sense.  …  Finally, the document is one of two or three which may aid us in forming a judgment on the difficult question of the ethics of pseudonymity in ancient times.

It seems very much as if E. read this article and took it for gospel truth, without investigating further.  This explains why, whenever he refers to Salvian, he presumes him already guilty, rather than demonstrating anywhere in the book that he actually is so.

In any survey of a wide area, of the sort found in F&C, it is inevitable that much must be skipped over.  But sources are primary; if they are unsound, then the mass of the book is nothing.  Here E.’s failure to engage properly and critically has betrayed him badly.

UPDATE: I have revised this post to remove some over-hasty language.  The perils of blogging when tired!!

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  1. [1]A. Haefner, “A unique source for the study of ancient pseudonymity”, Anglican Theological Review 16, 1934, 8-15.↩

Theodoret’s “Life of Abraham” – related to that of “Abramius”?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

We have been discussing St. Abramius.  I’m not sure if the Life in the Acta Sanctorum is intended to refer to the same man, but let us read what Theodoret says, in his “History of the Monks”[1] about St. Abraham.  There is no reference to idols in all thus.

It’s worth remembering that Theodoret knew some of these men, and his account is much more prosaic and far less laden with cod-“miracles” (which mostly seem trite) or “prayers” which could hardly have been recorded by anyone present, than later texts.

    *    *    *    *    *    *

1. NOR WOULD IT BE PIOUS to pass over the memory of the wondrous Abraham[1], using as a pretext the fact that after the solitary life he adorned the episcopal chair; for because of this he would with good reason deserve to be remembered surely all the more, in that, when compelled to change his position in life, he did not alter his mode of life, but brought with him the hardships of asceticism, and completed his course of life beset simultaneously with the labors of a monk and the cares of a bishop.

2. This man too was a fruit of the region of Cyrrhus, for it was born and reared there that he gathered the wealth of ascetic virtue. Those who were with him say that he tamed his body with such vigils, standing, and fasting that for a long time he remained without movement, quite unable to walk. Freed of this weakness by divine providence, he resolved to run the risks of piety as the price of divine favor, and repaired to the Lebanon, where, he had heard, a large village was engulfed in the darkness of impiety. Hiding his monastic character under the mask of a trader, he with his companions brought along sacks as if coming to buy nuts — for this was the main produce of the village. Renting a house, for which he paid the owners a small sum in advance, he kept quiet for three or four days. Then, little by little, he began in a soft voice to perform the divine liturgy. When they heard the singing of psalms, the public crier called out to summon everyone together. Men, children, and women assembled; they walled up the doors from outside, and heaping up a great pile of earth poured it down from the roof above. But when they saw them being suffocated and buried, and willing to do or say nothing apart from addressing prayer to God, they ceased from their frenzy, at the suggestion of their elders. Then opening the doors and pulling them out from the mass of earth, they told them to depart immediately.

3. At this very moment, however, collectors arrived to compel them to pay their taxes; some they bound, others they maltreated. But the man of God, oblivious of what had happened to them, and imitating the Master who when nailed to the cross showed concern for those who had done it, begged these collectors to carry out their work leniently. When they demanded guarantors, he voluntarily accepted the call, and promised to pay them a hundred gold pieces in a few days. Those who had performed so terrible a deed were overwhelmed with admiration at the man’s benevolence; begging forgiveness for their outrage, they invited him to become their patron—for the village did not have a master; they themselves were both cultivators and masters.[2] He went to the city (it was Emesa), and finding some of his friends negotiated a loan for the hundred gold pieces; then returning to the village he fulfilled his promise on the appointed day.

4. On observing his zeal, they addressed their invitation to him still more zealously. When he promised his consent if they undertook to build a church, they begged him to start operations at once, and conducted the blessed man round, showing him the more appropriate sites, one recommending this one, another that. Having chosen the best one and laid the foundations, in a short time he put the roof on, and now that the building was ready bade them appoint a priest. When they said they would not choose anyone else and begged to take him as their father and shepherd, he received the grace of the priesthood. After spending three years with them and guiding them well towards the things of God, he got another of his companions appointed in his place and went back to his monastic dwelling.

5. Not to make the narrative long by narrating all he did —after gaining fame among them, he received the see of Carrhae, a city which was steeped in the sottishness of impiety and had given itself up to the frenzy of the demons. But after being honored by his cultivation and receiving the fire of his teaching, it has remained free of its former thorns, and abounds now in the crops of the Spirit, offering to God sheaves of ripe ears.’ The man of God did not perform this cultivation without labor; with innumerable labors and imitating the art of those entrusted with the treatment of bodies —in some cases sweetening by fomentation, in others contracting by astringent medicines, in others again applying surgery and cautery —he effected this sound state of health. His teaching and other attentions found support in the luster of his life. Illuminated by this, they hearkened to what he said and gladly welcomed what he did.

6. All the time of his episcopacy, bread was for him superfluous, water superfluous, a bed useless, and use of fire superfluous.[4] At night he chanted forty psalms antiphonally, doubling the length of the prayers that occur in between; the rest of the night he sat on a chair, allowing a brief rest to his eyelids. That ‘man will not live on bread alone’ had been said by Moses the lawgiver, and the Master recalled this utterance when he rejected the invitation of the devil; but that living without water is among the things possible, we have nowhere been taught in the divine Scripture —even the great Elijah first satisfied this need from the brook, and then on going to the widow of Zarephath first told her to bring him water and then likewise asked for bread. But this wonderful man throughout the time of his episcopacy took neither bread nor pulses nor greens cooked by fire and not even water, which is considered by those reputed clever about these things to be the first of the elements in utility; but it was lettuce, chicory, celery, and all plants of the kind that he made his food and drink, rendering superfluous the skills of baking and cooking. In the fruit-season fruit supplemented his needs. His food he took after the evening liturgy.

7. While wearing down his body with such labors, he was inexhaustible in the services he rendered others. For strangers who came a bed was ready, glistening and select rolls were offered, wine of a fine bouquet, fish and vegetables and all the other things that go with them; he himself at midday sat with the diners, offering to each portions of the fare provided, giving goblets to all and bidding them drink, in imitation of his great namesake — I mean the Patriarch — who served his guests but did not dine with them.

8. Spending the whole day on the lawsuits of those in dispute, some he would persuade to be reconciled with each other, while to those who would not obey his gentle teaching he applied compulsion.[5] No wrongdoer went away victorious over justice through audacity; to the wronged party he always accorded the just man’s portion, making him invincible and stronger than the one who wanted to wrong him. He was like an excellent physician who always prevents the excess of the humors and contrives the equilibrium of the elements.

9. Even the emperor desired to see him, for fame has wings and easily publishes everything, good and bad. He summoned him, and when he arrived embraced him, and considered his rustic goats hair cloak more honorable than his own purple robe. The choir of the empresses clasped his hands and knees; and they made supplication to a man who did not even understand Greek.[6]

10. And so for emperors and all men philosophy is a thing worthy of respect; and when they die its lovers and adherents win still greater renown. This can be learnt from all sorts of examples, but not least from the case of this inspired man. For when he died and the emperor learnt of it, he wanted to bury him in one of the sacred shrines, but realizing that it would be right to restore to the sheep the body of the shepherd, he himself escorted it at the front of the procession, followed by the choir of empresses, all the governors and governed, soldiers and civilians.[7] With the same zeal the city of Antioch received him, and the cities after it, until he reached the great river. Along the bank of the Euphrates there hastened townspeople and foreigners. Everyone both of the country and of the adjoining region pressed forward to enjoy his blessing; many rod-bearers accompanied the bier, to deter through fear of blows those who tried to strip the body of its clothing or who wanted to take pieces therefrom. One could hear some singing psalms, others dirges; one woman with sighs called him patron, another foster-father, another shepherd and teacher; one man in tears named him father, another helper and protector. With such eulogy and lament did they entrust to the tomb this holy and sacred body.

11. I myself, out of admiration at the way he did not alter his mode of life when changing his position in life, and did not as bishop love a relaxed regime but increased his ascetic labors, have listed him in the history of the monks, and have not separated him from the company he loved, in my desire to receive blessing from this source as well.

Notes:

1. Abraham was an ascetic, originally of Cyrrhus, famous for his missionary work. He was active as far afield as Phoenicia (§2-4), and was finally made bishop of the largely pagan city of Carrhae in Mesopotamia (§5). He died at Constantinople, during a visit to the imperial family (§9-10). This visit is to be dated to the 420s: the reference to ‘empresses’ (§9) implies a terminus post quem of 421, when Theodosius II married Eudocia.

2. Peasants, whether freeholders or tenants, badly needed patrons to protect them against oppression by landowners or officials. This is the theme of Libanius, Oration XLVII, De patrociniis (Loeb Selected Works, II: 500ff). Holy men could be active in this work; cp. XIV.4, and XXVI, note 33 below. They were popular patrons, both because of their influence and because they were disinterested: lay patrons had to be materially rewarded and sometimes reduced their clients to virtual serfs (e.g. Libanius, Or. XXXIX. 10-11). P. Brown, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man’, 115-129, is fundamental for this topic, though he exaggerates the extent to which holy men because involved in this work.

3. But we learn from Procopius, History of the Wars III.13.7 that Carrhae was still largely pagan as late as the sixth century.

4. For ascetic bishops, see I, note 5, above.

5. For episcopal jurisdiction, which took up a great deal of bishops’ time, see A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 480, and P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 195-6.

6. The emperor is Theodosius II (408-450), the empresses his sister Pulcheria and wife Eudocia. For Pulcheria’s exceptional piety, and her veneration for holy men and relics, see K. Holum, Theodosian Empresses, 91-146.

7. Evidently, the imperial family would simply have attended the initial ceremony at Constantinople. For this adventus (solemn translation) of relics, cp. the reinterment of the relics of John Chrysostom at Constantinople in 438, attended by Theodosius and Pulcheria (Theodoret, Eccl. Hist. V.36; Holum, 184-5), or the conveying, in a huge procession, of the body of Symeon Stylites from Telanissus to Antioch (Festugiere, Antioche, 369-375). See too, P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 98-100.

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More idols overthrown, this time by St Abramius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The next reference in Mango’s article to idol-smashing is the following:

In the middle of the sixth century we hear of St. Abramius destroying pagan idols near Lampsacus on the Hellespont, in a village that was totally pagan.

The reference is to the Acta Sanctorum, the Acts SS, Abramii et Mariae, March, vol. 2, p.933.  This is online here.

The reference appears to be to chapter 8.  I’m afraid my Greek isn’t up to doing this in the brief time that I have available, but I see from the marginal Latin that he comes to a pagan village, builds a church, “idola evertiti” — overturns the idols, and… does something that the online text does not make clear, as I can’t read the text.

Anyone like to translate chapter 8 for us?

UPDATE: It is actually chapter 1 part 8.  From the Latin (see comments below) it reads:

8.  Where, when the blessed Abramius gathered them, he prayed in the way of the Lord, saying: “Most blessed and best Lord, have mercy on my imbecility, and send your grace to my help, so that it may glorify your holy name.” But coming to the town, he saw everyone there to be passionately held prisoner by the insanity of idolatry.  So he wept bitterly, sighing, and raising his eyes to heaven said, “You, Lord, who alone are free from all sin, likewise alone are full of mercy, and alone are clement and benevolent, may you not despise the works of your hands.” And quickly he sent a proclamation to the city to some of his dearest friends, to send money to him from their remaining patrimony.  When he had received it, within a few days he built a church, in which assiduously he offered prayer to God, and so prayed with many tears and said, “Gather, o Lord, your scattered people and lead them to this temple: illuminate their eyes and minds, let them know that you alone are God so that the worship of images may be repudiated. When he had finished this prayer, he immediately went out of the church, rushed to the pagan temple, where he destroyed their abominations and dragged down the images with his own hands and overthrew them.  When those pagans found out, like so many wild beasts the bumpkins attacked him, and having been injured with many blows he fled from the town.

I don’t feel any great faith that this is a historical account.  What part of it could not have been written by any monk at any time during the middle ages?

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Ancient Egyptian idols destroyed in the life of Severus of Antioch

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Here is another statement from Mango’s article:

At the end of the fifth century a great number of idols, salvaged from the temple of Isis at Memphis, were concealed in a house behind a false wall. But their presence was detected by the Christians.  The statues were loaded on twenty camels and taken to Alexandria where they were exposed to public ridicule and destroyed.

The reference is to the Life of Severus of Antioch, by Zacharias Rhetor (d. 553), published in the Patrologia Orientalis II (1903), p.27-37.[1]  Originally composed in Greek, it survives only in Syriac.  The last date in it is 512 AD, as it finishes before the events of the patriarchate of Severus.  I’ve turned the French translation from the PO into English, and I have found that it is a very interesting read indeed.

Some introduction to the context is necessary.

The scene is set in Alexandria in the late 5th century.  The emperor Zeno is on the throne, and Peter Mongus is the (monophysite) patriarch of Alexandria.  The intellectual life of the city is lively, and the city is full of students.  Many of the teachers are Christians, and there are plenty of zealous young men actively interested in the controversies of the day, and doing church work.  These call themselves the Philoponoi — the “lovers of work”.  But circles of pagan teachers such as Horapollon are still teaching in Alexandria, even though paganism is officially illegal and has been for a century.  Some of these pagans are in touch with a temple and oracle of Isis at nearby Menouthis.  Students come from all parts of the Eastern Roman Empire to study.  There is also a (monophysite) monastery at Enaton, headed by a certain Salomon.  The Pachomian monasteries are Chalcedonian, and there is one at Tabennesiote.

Paralios of Aphrodisias in Caria is one of these students who have come to Alexandria to get an education.  He is a pagan, but has a brother who has gone into the Enaton monastery, and taken the name of “Athanasius”, where he works with a fellow monk and former sophist named Stephen.  But Paralios has been instructed by his family to have no contact with Athanasius.  He attends the lectures of Horapollon and Asclepiodotus; and then sneaks out to talk to Athanasius, and the shrewd Stephen.  The latter plants doubts in his mind about paganism.  For a while Paralios shuttles between the two camps.  He visits Menouthis and listens to the oracle; and then hears criticism of the stupidity and superstition of paganism at Enaton.

He learns from Asclepiodotos of a pagan miracle; that the latter has had a child, even though his wife is too old.  Stephen pointedly asks whether or not the sterile wife is also nursing the child.  Paralios’ investigation suggests that the child is actually a fraud; the illegitimate son of one of the Isis priestesses.  For his pains, he gets beaten up.  The Christian students are outraged, and there are disturbances.  The uproar is so great as to cause the monophysite monks at Enaton and the Chalcedonian Tabennesiote monks to make common cause against the pagans.

Now read on.  The speaker is Zacharias himself.

*    *    *    *   *    *   *    *

At the news of these facts, the great Stephen called us to Enaton, at the Convent of Salomon. He asked Paralios, if he could reveal the pagan idols hidden at Menouthis. Paralios said that he would reveal them, that he would hand over the altar, and prove the sacrifices that they had dared do. Thereupon, we decided once again, with the most illustrious Salomon, to go and make known these things to the Bishop Peter. Once there, Paralios promised before Peter to reveal the idols, the altar and the sacrifices, and to make known the priest of the idolatrous error. The high priest of God, Peter, then gave us some members of the clergy and invited by letter those who lived in the convent called “of the Tabennesiotes”, located at Canopus, to help us eradicate and overturn the demonic gods of the heathen.

After praying, as was right, we went to Menouthis and came to a house which was totally covered with pagan inscriptions (hieroglyphics).  In one corner the wall was double.  Behind this wall, the idols were hidden.  A narrow entrance in the form of a window led into it, and this is how the priest went in to conduct the sacrifices.  Hoping that our search would lead to nothing, helpers of the priestess who lived in this house – they were indeed aware of the uprising that had taken place in the town – had filled up the mouth of the entrance with stones and lime.  In addition, so that the recent nature of the masonry might not be observed, and so that we would not discover the ruse and the artifice, they placed a cabinet full of incense and popana (?) in front of the place, and above that they suspended a lamp which was kept burning until daylight.  The result was that Paralios was initially a little troubled and embarassed, not knowing what had happened to the entrance, in the form of a window.  However, not without difficulty, he discovered the ruse.  He then made the sign of the cross, took down the lamp, moved the cabinet aside and revealed the entrance which was blocked at that moment with stones, by recent masonry work.  He then asked the Tabennesiotes who were accompanying us to help, to bring an axe; then he ordered one of them to open what had been freshly constructed and to make the original aspect (of the opening) appear.  The Tabennesiote then entered.  When he saw the multitude of idols, and the altar covered with blood, he cried out in Egyptian, “There is only one God!”, meaning by this that the error of polytheism must be extirpated.  First he handed us the idol of Kronos, which was entirely filled with blood; then all the other idols of the demons, then a varied collection of idols of every species, including dogs, cats, monkeys, crocodiles, and reptiles; because in the past the Egyptians worshipped also these animals.  He also handed us the rebel dragon.  His idol was of wood, and it seems to me that those who worshipped this serpent, or rather that the latter wanted to be worshipped in this way, recalled the rebellion of the first creatures, who did so by the wood (tree) on the advice of the serpent.  It was said that these idols had been removed from the temple of Isis at Memphis by the priest of that period when it was realised that paganism had lost its strength and was abolished.   They had been hidden, as we have said.   It was hoped – a vain and futile hope – that they would not be discovered.

We gave to the flames, in Menouthis itself, those of the idols which, because of their high antiquity, were already largely deteriorated.

The inhabitants who lived in the town thought, under the influence of the demons who possessed them, that it was impossible for them to go on living if any outrage was inflicted on the idols; they believed that they would die on the spot.  So we wanted to show them by the facts that all the power of the pagan gods and the demons was broken and abolished since the coming and incarnation of the Messiah, the Word of God, who voluntarily suffered for us on the cross, in order to destroy every adverse power; for He said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven, and I have given you the power to trample underfoot serpents and scorpions and all the power of the enemy.”  And it was for this reason that we gave one part of the idols to the flames.  As for the other idols, we made an inventory of those that were of brass, and that were made with a certain ingenious art, as well as those which were of marble, of every form, without forgetting the brazen altar and the wooden dragon.  Then we sent this description to the city, to Peter the patriarch of our Lord Jesus Christ, and asked him to tell us what to do.

Those who passed for Christians at Menouthis, and those who were part of the clergy of the church of the town, were, with the sole exception of their priest, quite weak in their faith, to the point that they were enslaved to the gold that the pagans gave them so that they would not prevent the latter offering sacrifices to idols.  Evening arrived on the day on which we had done these things, and it was necessary to guard the idols, once the inventory had been made, so that they were not stolen, but they (the weak Christians) declared that they believed that they would suffer some kind of diabolical harassment in guarding them (the idols), and took the view that it was for us to guard them.  On their side the pagans living at Menouthis thought and said that we would infallibly die during the night.  The priest, seeing the fear of the Christians and the clergy – he was a good and faithful man, who adorned the virtues of the monastic life, as well as those of old age, and whose way of life was simple – led us, after he had given us a meal, into one of the chambers of the church, where the idols had been placed.  He said to us, “At this point I despise the idols, and trample them underfoot, and inflict every outrage upon them, not thinking in any way that these are anything.”  Then he prayed for us, and invited us to guard the idols throughout the night, without fear.  “He himself,” he said, “would be, as usual, occupied with the service of God.”

We spent the whole night guarding the idols.  We sang, “Let all those be ashamed who love the works of sculpture, and trust in their idols”, (Ps. 96:7) and then, “The gods of the nations are demons; but the Lord is the creator of the heavens,” (Ps. 95:5) and then, “The idols of the nations are of silver and gold, a work of the hands of men. They have a mouth and do not speak ….”,(Ps. 113:12-13)  as well as the words that follow and are like them.

In the morning, when we got up, we found the pagans astonished to see us still alive.  So greatly was the worship of certain demons and the error rooted in them!  We then ran once more with our Tabennesiote monks to the house where the idols had been found and where the sacrifices had taken place and we demolished it from top to bottom.  This was indeed the order of the archbishop.

Sunday arrived, the day when our Lord Jesus Christ rose from the tomb and broke the power of death.  All the people of Alexandria, at the hour of the celebration of the office, made thousands of imprecations against Horapollon, and shouted that he should no longer be called Horapollon but Psychapollon, i.e. “He who loses souls”.  Hesychios, who is admirable for his virtues (it was he that told me these things; at the time he was the leader of the Philoponoi, but now he is a priest), had stirred up everyone to zeal, with the help of Menas, who we mentioned earlier and whom it seemed right to leave in the town.   The patriarch of God in his sermon made known to everyone the description of the idols which we had sent, in which were indicated the material of which they were made and the number of idols that had been found.  Thereupon the people were inflamed, carried all the idols of the gods of the pagans, whether in the baths or in the houses, placed them in a heap and set fire to them.

A few days later we returned to the city (Alexandria).  Together with the idols, we also brought their (the pagans’) priest with us.  In fact it had been possible, with the help of God, to capture him also.  Twenty camels were loaded by us with the various idols, although we had already burned some of them at Menouthis, as we have said.  We brought them into the centre of the city, following the order which we had received from the great Peter.  The latter immediately summoned around him, before the prefect of Egypt, the commanders of the regiments of soldiers, and all those who held senior office, as well as the senate, the important people, and the owners (= the “possessors”) of the city.  When he sat down with them, he had the priest of the idols brought in, and ordered him to stand in a raised place.  Then, after the idols had been uncovered, he began to question him.  He asked him what this idolatry meant, which was exercised on a material without a soul, and ordered him to give the names of all the demons and say what was the cause of the form of each of them.  At this time all the people had rushed in to see what was happening.  He listened to what was said, and then laughed at the disgraceful deeds of the gods of the pagans whom the priest had made known.  When the brazen altar and the wooden dragon had arrived, the priest confessed to the sacrifices which he had dared to carry out, and said that the wooden dragon was the one who deceived Eve.  He believed this, he said, by tradition from the first priests.  He said that the pagans worshipped the dragon.  This was therefore given to the fire at the same time as the other idols.  One could then hear, somehow, all the people shout, “Here is Dionysos, the hermaphrodite god! Here is Kronos who hates infants! Here is Zeus, the adulterer and seducer of young people! This one is Athena, the virgin who loves war; that one Artemis the huntress and enemy of strangers.  Ares, that demon there, makes wars, and Apollo, that’s the one who kills lots of people.  Aphrodite, she presides over prostitution.  There are also some who have taken care to run away.  As for Dionysus, he protects drunkenness.  And see, among these idols the rebel dragon is also found!  Among their number there are again dogs and monkeys, and, in addition, families of cats; for these too were gods of the Egyptians.”  The people also laughed at the other idols.

If some of them had hands and feet, he [someone else is now speaking; presumably there is a lacuna] broke them and cried out jokingly in the language of the country, “Their gods don’t have any karoumtitin (?).  Look at Isis, who has come to wash them!”  Then he overwhelmed the pagans in a host of jokes of this kind, and praised Zeno, of pious end [this phrase seems out of place], who held at that period the sceptre of the empire, he praised Peter, the great patriarch, as well as the notables of the city who were sitting with him.  Then everyone retired, praising God on the subject of the destruction of the error of the demons and the worship of idols.  As for the priest of the pagan turpitude, it was ordered that he should be held for a more detailed investigation.

After these events, the great Stephen, remembering the fable of the sterile woman and the supposed child, and thinking what a great liar Asclepiodotos was, was worried in case the latter deceived people in Asia with his nonsense.  Also the great Salomon secretly advised the archbishop to order that a court record of the depositions be drawn up by the defensor of the city, so that he could ask that the priest be interrogated on the subject of the child.  This was done, and the priest confessed to all the things we have mentioned, because it is from him that we learned this.  When the imposture of Asclepiotodos was known to everyone, the illustrious Stephen decided along with the great Peter to address a synodal letter to Nonnos, the bishop of Aphrodisias, in which he made known to him all the machinations of the pagans that the priest, during his interrogation, had put in writing (?) on the subject of the supposed child, and in which he was exhorted to reveal to all the history of this fable.  But this synodal letter was never received.  He who was charged to carry it, at been, on his arrival in Caria, corrupted by a bribe, as we learned later.  In consequence the pagans of Aphrodisias believed for some time that the history of this fable was true, until the judge Adrastos took an interest – he was a pious man, who was the scholasticos of the country – and took care to bring from Alexandria to Caria, with the help of the prefect of Egypt at that time, a copy of the court record concerning this fable.

After he had offered an exploit of this kind to God, Paralios received the baptism of redemption, when Easter arrived, at the same time as many pagans, who had been full of zeal for idolatry until their old age, and had served the perverse demons for a long time.  With them also was baptised the admirable Urbanus, who today in this imperial city is a teacher of Latin grammar, and Isidore of Lesbos, brother of Zenodotos whom I mentioned earlier, as well as many others.  …

UPDATE: I find that Google Translate makes a very decent effort at translating the French text.  Have a look at it here.  You have to use your mind a bit, but you will still get a lot out of it.

UPDATE2: There is a complete English translation of this work available: The Life of Severus by Zachariah of Mytilene, tr. Lena Ambjörn, Gorgias (2008), 134p.  Amazon here.  It seems that the text itself was first published by J.Spanuth (ed.): Zacharias Rhetor: Das Leben des Severus von Antiochen in syrischer Uebersetzung, Gottingen (1893); and edited again and translated into French by F. Nau in ROC4 (1899), p.343-353, 544-571, and ROC 5 (1900), p.74-98.  The text is preserved only in Ms. Sachau 321, no. 26 in the catalogue of the Berlin mss., p.94.  The ms. dates from 741 AD, as a scribal note on fol. 173v tells us; the ms. was written by the priest and stylite Theudas (? Theodosius?) of the monastery of Psilta at the time when Stephanus was Abbot, i.e. A. Gr. 1052, which is 741 AD.

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  1. [1]Edited by M.-A. Kugener.  The PO2 volume is online here; the French translation in it has been digitised by Marc Szwajcer at remacle.org here.  There are emendations by E.W.Brooks in the JTS 5 (1904) p.369 f.  An English translation of portions of the Life, with commentary, can be found in R. A. Darling Young, “Zacharias: The Life of Severus” in Ascetic behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: a sourcebook, ed. V. L. Wimbush, Fortress Press (1990), p.312-28.  For an overview of the social context see Frank R. Trombley’s excellent work, Hellenic Religion and Christianization c.370-529, 2 vols, Brill (2001), Vol. 2, p.1 f. Preview here.  Also Peter Brown, Power and persuasion in late antiquity: Towards a Christian empire, Wisconsin (1992), p.130. See also Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict, JHU (2006), p.187, who makes the interesting point (p.188) that, judging from the rise of biblical names in tax rolls, only 10% of the countryside remained pagan by 400 AD. There is an article, Elżbieta Szabat, The ‘great persecutions’ of pagans in 5th century Alexandria. Palamedes 7 (2012), 155-176.  Here if you have a subscription.↩

Mark the Deacon on the destruction of the statue of Aphrodite

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Following my last post, I find that the Life of Porphyry of Gaza, by Mark the Deacon, is online.  Mango states (p.56):

At Gaza there stood in the center of town a nude statue of Aphrodite which was the object of great veneration, especially on the part of women. When, in 402, Bishop Porphyry, surrounded by Christians bearing crosses, approached this statue, “the demon who inhabited the statue, being unable to contemplate the terrible sign, departed from the marble with great tumult, and, as he did so, he threw the statue down and broke it into many pieces.” We may doubt that the collapse of the statue was altogether spontaneous.

The text is here and reads (slightly modernised):

59. But when we came into the city, in the place that is called the Four Ways, there was a statue of marble which they said was a statue of Aphrodite; and it was upon a base of stone, and the form of the statue was of a woman, naked, and having all her shame uncovered. And all they of the city did honour to the statue, especially the women, kindling lamps and burning incense. For they reported concerning it that it gave answers in dreams unto those who wished to make trial of marriage, but they deceived each other, speaking falsely. And often, being bidden by the demon to make a contract of marriage, they were so unfortunate that they ended up in divorce, or lived together in an evil way. These things we learned from those who turned aside from error and acknowledged the truth.

60. But some of the idolaters also, being unable to bear the calamity of the grievous marriages to which they had been led by the bidding of the demon of Aphrodite, were indignant and confessed the deceit. For that is what the demons do: deceive and say nothing at all that is true; for it is not in them to know for sure, but by guesses they delude and win over the people who are enslaved to them. For how can they speak truly who are fallen away from the truth? Even if they happen to prophesy something correctly, it is by chance that this happens, even as among men it often happens that one foretells concerning a matter and by chance it happens. When therefore they foretell the event correctly by accident, seeing that this is only seldom, we marvel; but though they continually get it wrong, of this we are silent. Thus much concerning demons and their error.

61. Now when we had come out of the ship into the city, as has been said, when we came to the place where was this idol of Aphrodite (but the Christians were carrying the precious wood of Christ, that is to say the figure of the Cross), the demon that dwelt in the statue beholding and being unable to suffer the sight of the sign which was being carried, came forth out of the marble with great confusion and cast down the statue itself and broke it into many pieces. And it happened that two men of the idolaters were standing beside the base on which the statue stood, and when it fell, it split the head of the one in two, and for the other it broke his shoulder and wrist. For they were both standing and mocking at the holy multitude.

62. And many of the Greeks when they beheld the sign which had come to pass, believed, and mingled with the lay­folk and entered with them into the holy church which is called Peace. …

Mango’s suggestion that Porphyry and his followers actually vandalised the statue is a little odd; surely it defeats the point of the story?

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Ancient statues in medieval Constantinople

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A truly fascinating article has come my way, thanks to a tweet by Dorothy King: Cyril Mango’s Antique Statuary and the Byzantine Beholder (online here).[1]  The tweet itself was as follows:

Rare scene of pagan statues that survived being destroyed during later Byzantium in Constantinople pic.twitter.com/UYKMlAnIoS

The article contains a great number of references to primary sources describing statues and the attitude of the Byzantines to them.  In some cases statues could be destroyed as idols; but more often they were left alone.  The idea of demonic inhabitation of statues became transmuted into the idea that the statues were talismans, infused with magical power to protect the city.

If I had any time at all at the moment I might chase down a few of these.  Book 2 of the Loeb Greek Anthology, however, does indeed contain a description of 80 ancient statues collected at the palace of Lausus in the 5th century.

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  1. [1]Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 17 (1963), pp. 53+55-75.↩

Theodore Abu Qurrah and an anti-Manichaean synod

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondent kindly sent me an article[1] which mentioned a synod against the Manichaeans, assembled by Theodore Abu Qurra, the Melkite bishop of Harran, at Harran in 764-5 AD.  This is mentioned in a 14th century source, a certain John Cyparissiotes.  The latter was previously unknown to me, but his works are found in PG152.

It seems that Cyparissiotes wrote against the “Palamites”, the followers of Gregory Palamas, and that our snippet about Theodore Abu Qurra and the anti-Manichaean synod may be found in PG152, column 784 B.  Migne gives only the Latin: the Greek is quoted by Hemmerdinger from a manuscript, Vaticanus Ottobonianus gr. 99 (s. XVII), fol. 133 r-v.

This is Decades, part 3, chapter 4:

Likewise, from the Panaria, a synod was held against the Manichaeans by the bishop of Harran (=Καρων), Abu Qurra: “The goodness,” he said, “which is found in the world receives increases or decreases as chance determines.”  And further on: “Goodness in God is a substance; but in creatures is an accident. For “Be merciful”, he said, “even as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:36)

The footnote in the PG suggests that the “Panaria” were anti-heretical texts of various sorts, such as the Panarion (=medicine chest) of Epiphanius of Salamis.

The same material appears almost word for word the same in col. 809 C, which is Decades part 5, chapter 2, which is on fol. 148v of the manuscript.

Theodore Abu Qurra wrote against the Manichaeans, and a work in Arabic is extant.[2]  The context of all this is perhaps given by the monophysite writer (ps.)Dionysius of Tell-Mahre in his Chronicle, which states that, in 764-5, the Manichaeans of Harran were accused of practising human sacrifice once a year.[3]  Dionysius does not mention the action of the Melkite bishop in holding a synod and writing against the Manichaeans, but Hemmerdinger suggests that this may be from sectarian animosity towards the Melkites.  We cannot say.  But the account ends with the words:

Bearing the head [of a previous victim] away at a rapid pace, he [the intended victim] went to find Abbas who was then Emir of Mesopotamia.  The latter, learning what had happened, had all the Manichaeans seized and imprisoned, men, women and children; [82] he seized all that they possessed, inflicted on them various tortures and took from them more than four or five hundred thousand minae (? fr. = “mines”).

Whether the Manichaeans of Harran really practised human sacrifice may reasonably be doubted.  It would be very risky to abduct random strangers once a year, after all.  It is more likely that they were the victims of an informer, who ran quickly to the greedy emir, hoping to profit thereby.  Whatever the truth of the matter, the emir certainly took the opportunity to profit from it!

In the west we are accustomed to rulers who identify with the ordinary people, and whose interests are the same as the nation.  It may be a shock to remember that the oriental despot felt no such feelings.  The Arabs were little more than bandits who came into ownership of wide lands and rich cities, and settled down to enjoy them as much as possible.  This alien ruling class were looters, not rulers.   The same habit of mind has persisted down to our own day in those parts.  We are fortunate that such cold exploitation is exceptional in our own lands.

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  1. [1]Bertrand Hemmerdinger, “Revue de l’histoire des religions”, tome 161 n°2, 1962. pp. 270.  Online here.↩
  2. [2]Hemmerdinger gives the reference: G. Graf, Des Theodor Abu Kurra Traktat uber den Schopfer und die wahre Religion, Munster i. W., 1913, pp.27-29.↩
  3. [3]J.-B. Chabot translated part 4 of the Chroniques, Paris, 1895, p.68-70, online here.↩

Cramer’s catena on Mark translated into English!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s remarkable what you can find on Google books if you look.  An idle search for “catena” yesterday revealed that someone has translated the entirety of Cramer’s catena on Mark into English!  Yay!

But first, a few words about catenas!

Not everyone will know what a “catena” (the word means “chain”) is.  The term itself is modern.  It refers to medieval Greek biblical commentaries.  These are composed entirely of extracts from earlier writers, chained together by slight wording alterations at the ends.  They usually appear in the margins of Greek bibles; or, rather, the biblical text appears in a small box in the centre of the page, surrounded by a mass of small writing!  The author of each catena entry is indicated, usually using the first letter of their name or something of the kind.  This of course gives plenty of scope for misattribution!  Often the main author used is John Chrysostom.

Catenas seem to arise in the 6th century, and often incorporate very interesting material.  There can be several catenas for each book of the bible, and the relationships between them are tangled things.

In 1840 Cramer published the Greek text of catenas on all the books of the New Testament in 8 volumes.  The work was shoddily done, as John Burgon among others remarked; but it was still an achievement, and Cramer’s work can be found on Archive.org.  But … it was the Greek text only.

The man who has made this translation is a certain William Lamb, The Catena in Marcum: A Byzantine Anthology of Early Commentary on Mark, Brill 2012 (Preview here).

Lamb doesn’t try to edit the text, which is probably a wise decision.  Pages 27-45 discuss what, precisely, it is that we are looking at.

Cramer published his catena on Mark under the name of Cyril of Alexandria, because a couple of the manuscripts attributed it to him.  But Cyril is too early.  Burgon suggested the little-known Victor of Antioch; and Lamb suggests (p.33) that we probably are mistaken to suppose that the work, in anything like its current form, was the work of any one man.

There is much in this.  Burgon took the view that even a compilation must have an author.  But this is to neglect the physical form in which the catena was transmitted; as a massive collection of marginalia.  Marginalia exist in most manuscripts anyway.  But bibles are a special case.

Most printed bibles belonging to members of modern Christian Unions bore the marks of ownership – underlinings, scribbled notes in the margins, and so forth.  Ancient readers had much the same needs in this respect as modern ones.  So it seems idle to doubt that notes on the meaning of the text would not arise spontaneously in manuscript copies of the scriptures.  A copy in a monastic library might well acquire marginalia from several hands, all of it excerpted from other books in that library, and placed in the (wide) margins where they would be useful.  Over time, we may suppose, some of these bibles could acquire quite a lot of marginal items.

Would a scribe copy such marginalia?  Surely he might.  Because the marginalia were not idle scribblings, but useful commentary.  Scholia get copied, as we know.

A body of marginalia may, quite naturally, evolve into the sort of catena that we see in medieval manuscripts.  If so, then there may indeed be no original author.

Later, of course, someone may decide to compose a set of marginalia.  Such a task is well within the capabilities of medieval scholarship, after all.

It’s hard to be sure.  All this is speculative.  But it is far from impossible.

If any of this is true, however, it does point to the exceeding difficulty in editing such a “text” – because it isn’t really a text at all.  It is whatever somebody thought worth adding to a bible margin.

Lamb’s book is a great deal more than just a translation.  The translation is the item of permanent value, for scholarship ages; but the scholarship in the book is also very welcome.  Chapter 2, which surveys the scholarship and the manuscript tradition, is interesting throughout and I refer you to the online preview.

It is a book to which I wish I had access.  The price is not as bad as some; but at $163 on Amazon.com, it is still prohibitive.

I look forward to seeing bootleg PDF’s in circulation!

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Farewell to the NIV?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The New International Version of the bible was on course to become the new standard English translation; until, in an act of incredible hubris and folly, the publishers, Zondervan, decided to tinker with it and keep tinkering with it.  Not, one might add, in the interests of greater accuracy, but to make it “gender neutral”.   But “gender neutrality” is not a principle of text criticism, nor of biblical theology, but a principle of the modern political movement referred to as “political correctness”.  So the publisher has acted to corrupt the translation in the interests of a modern political lobby – an incredible thing to do.  It went down about as well as you might expect; and I have written here about the story.

This week I came across an interesting blog post entitled “Farewell NIV”.

The version that many grew up reading has finally ridden off into the sunset, never to return. Zondervan has phased it out, buried it, and replaced it with something else.

Many people denied that a significant change had taken place, and tried to act like the Bible being sold now as the NIV is indeed the NIV they grew up with. That myth was sustainable for a while, but eventually it just didn’t work. This year many Christian schools finally dropped the NIV, and replaced it with something else. Even AWANA was forced to make the change.  …

[This] is a FAQ guide to the NIV, with an explanation for why churches and ministries are dropping it:

Why did so many churches and schools change their translation this year?  

Because Zondervan, the company that makes the NIV, stopped publishing it last year. It was widely used in churches and schools, and this changed forced those that used to find a new translation.

What do you mean they stopped publishing it? I see the NIV still for sale in book stores.

A brief history of the NIV: Translated in 1984, it quickly became one of the most popular versions, especially in schools. Then in 2002 Zondervan released an update (TNIV), which went over as well as New Coke, and the beloved NIV was resurrected. This time Zondervan learned from their errors, and released an update that they called the NIV2011, and for one year they sold both it and the NIV. But with a name like NIV2011, shelf-life was obviously not in view, and last year they simply dropped the old and beloved NIV, and then shrewdly dropped the “2011” from the updated one. In short, they pulled a switcheroo. What you see on shelves today is the new version which is sold and marketed as the NIV.

How is the NIV on the shelves now different from the one I’ve been reading for 20 years?

There have been deniers about the demise of the NIV. Many people have tried to hold onto the idea that the new one is the same as the old. After all, they have the same names, so how could they be that different? But the more people have tried to use the new one, the more the changes are evident.

Here are the stats: 40% of verses have been changed from the ’84 edition of the NIV. The stat that Zondervan gives is that 95% of the Bible remains unchanged. I assume they are counting words and not verses, but even so I’m not sure how they got that number. When you consider individual words, the new version is 9% new. That might not seem like a lot, but in schools and with curriculum,  verses are what is important, and that means that 4 out of 10 passages needed to be updated.

The whole post is worth reading, and makes me deeply sad.  I have used the NIV since my first days as a believer.  I too feel loss.

But who can now trust the “new NIV”, under whatever marketing name it is produced?  Who will trust any translation labelled “NIV”?

This sort of thing should not happen.  The author is quite right to say that Zondervan have destroyed the NIV; because, since you can’t buy it, and none of us want the TNIV (or whatever they call it), it is effectively dead.

On a humorous note, old copies of the Gideons’ bible may suddenly become rather valuable!

I cannot avoid feeling that Zondervan have not acted with integrity.  It pains me to say this, since I know otherwise only good things about them.  But you don’t address a real question of the utmost urgency — is this a corrupt version? — by the sort of “switcheroo” tactics that have been employed.  No: to do that is to railroad opposition; it is the kind of tactics used by lobby groups to force unpopular measures on a democracy which is denied the opportunity to vote.

Very, very sad.  I imagine we will all use the ESV instead now.  But I preferred the old NIV.

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Infra-red light can “remove” spilled ink from digital images of books?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An interesting email on the Ethiopian literature email list:

List members may value knowing that one of the positive results of the imaging of the 1513 first Ge’ez book – Psalterium Æthiopicum – Rome, Potken,

http://www.kingscollections.org/exhibitions/specialcollections/psalter1513/

was the use of Infra Red imaging to ‘remove’ spilled ink. Please see:-
This is a printed text; but no doubt the same would apply to manuscripts.  These are days of miracles and wonders indeed.
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