Month: September 2018

The Manuscripts of Photius’ Epitome of the Church History of Philostorgius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Arian Philostorgius wrote his Church History in twelve books.  A copy came into the hands of the patriarch Photius in the 9th century, bound into two volumes, and he reviewed it in his Myriobiblion or Bibliotheca, as codex 40 (online in English here).

But as the Myriobiblion went on, Photius returned to some of the volumes that he had read earlier, and wrote further remarks at greater length, often amounting to an epitome of the work.  He did the same for Philostorgius, although in this case the epitome did not form part of the Myriobiblion but was transmitted separately.  The complete work has since been lost, probably in the disaster of 1204 when Constantinople was sacked by the renegade army originally hired for the Fourth Crusade.

Here are the manuscripts in which the epitome has reached us.  A more complete list can be found at Pinakes here.  These details may be found at much greater length in the GCS edition by Bidez, p.xviii ff (1st edition of 1913 online here).

  • B.  Oxford, Bodleian: Codex Baroccianus 142.  Paper. 13-14th century.  292 pages.  Online here (use Chrome to view).  This is the archetype of most of the others, and consists of a collection of texts and excerpts on the history of the church, compiled by Nicephorus Callistus as source materials for his own Church History.  A list of contents may be found at Pinakes here.  Philostorgius is folios 243-261.  This is image 495 in the online facsimile, which starts with this.  The name of Philostorgius is in the centre; that of Photius to the right.

  • M. =   Venice.  Codex Marcianus gr. 337.  Parchment, 15th century, from the library of Bessarion.  Folios 353-370 contain Philostorgius.  The title is given as ἐκ τῶν ἐκκλησιαστικῶν ἱστοριῶν φιλοστοργίου ἐπιτομὴ ἀπὸ φωνῆς φωτίου πατρίαρχου.
  • Bern. = Bern.  Codex Bernensis 54.  Paper, 16th century.  Once owned by Jacques Bongars.  Philostorgius is fol. 1-53.
  • Harl. = London, British Library Harleian gr. 6316. Paper. 15-16th c.  Philostorgius is fol. 1-42.
  • Vall. = Rome, Codex Vallicelliana 181 (XCI), 16th century.  Item 14 within it is Philostorgius.
  • Langbaine = Oxford, Bodleian Library, Cod. Langbaine 20, paper, quarto size, unknown date.  Langbaine died in 1658.  Philostorgius is on pages 255-493.
  • Bochart = This manuscript is lost.  It seems to have been a copy of B. However a copy of Gothofred’s edition with marginal collation by Bochart exists in the public library at Caen.  (A 17-19th century copy of this collation is Paris BNF suppl. gr. 1005, fol. 6-9v.)
  • L. = Florence, Mediceo-Laurenziana Plutei 70, 5.  Paper, 15th century.  Fol. 63 contains two excerpts from Philostorgius.
  • Cairo = Cairo, Library of the Patriarch 86 (formerly 1002), paper, 13th century.

This gives a stemma:

The Bidez edition has been twice revised, but I don’t know whether these editions contain more details.  However Pinakes lists more manuscripts:

  • Oxford, Codex Barocci 67, 15th century.  Fol. 1-147.  Online catalogue.  But the digitised volume seems to be the second half, which is not Philostorgius.
  • Vatican, Codex Palatinus Graecus 4, 10th-11th century (!).  Folios 151v-189v.  This is not as yet online.

Useful to know all this.  A text gains reality when we see on what it is based.

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The last oracle of Delphi

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The oracle of Apollo at Delphi was perhaps the most famous of the Greek oracles.  It was known throughout the Greek and Hellenistic world.  It continued to exist in Roman times, doubtless in a somewhat artificially preserved way.  But Apollo ceased to speak to men as Christianity took hold, just as the other oracles also fell silent.

The last oracle delivered by the god has in fact come down to us. A messenger sent by Julian the Apostate returned with the following oracle.  Delivered in hexameters it reads:

ἔπατε τῷ βασιλε̃ι· χαμαὶ πέσε δαίδαλος αὐλά.
οὐκέτι Φοῖβος ἔχει καλύβαν, οὐ μάντιδα δάφνην,
οὐ παγὰν λαλέουσαν, ἀπέσβετο καὶ λάλον ὕδωρ.

Tell the emperor that the Daidalic hall has fallen.
No longer does Phoebus have his chamber, nor mantic laurel,
nor prophetic spring and the speaking water has been silenced.[1]

It is, perhaps, a plea for imperial patronage.  But the brevity of the reign of Julian doubtless precluded any such revival.  All the same, a law of 424 suggests that the games at Delphi were still being celebrated even then (Cod. Theodosianus 15.5.4), showing that at least some of the original institutions around the temple were still in being, a generation after the edict of Theodosius I which abolished paganism, in law at least.

The last oracle of Delphi was preserved in the Church History of Philostorgius the Arian, who died ca. 426 AD.  Philostorgius’ work itself has not survived, but it still existed, in twelve books and two volumes, when Photius reviewed it in his Myriobiblion in the 9th century.  Photius did more; he wrote an epitome of its contents which has reached us.  The modern GCS editor, Bidez, added to this fragments from various sources.

Philip Amidon has made a translation of this, assembled from various sources, and the full context is worth giving.  From book 7:

1b [AP 22].  When Julian had become master of the Roman Empire, as was said, his keenest desire was to restore paganism. He therefore sent letters to every place ordering that all haste and zeal should be applied to rebuilding the pagan temples and altars.

[AP 35: Artemius speaks to Julian]. Know therefore that the strength and power of Christ is invincible and unconquerable. You yourself are certainly convinced of this from the oracles that the physician and quaestor Oribasius recently brought you from the Apollo in Delphi. But I will repeat the oracle to you, whether you wish to hear it or not. It runs as follows:

Go tell the king the wondrous hall is fallen to the ground.
Now Phoebus has a cell no more, no laurel that foretells,
No talking spring; the water that once spoke is heard no more.

The edition of Bidez added fragments under each section of the epitome; these are taken from the 9th century Artemii Passio, the Martyrdom of St Artemius by John the Monk, which preserves sections of the text.[2]

The oracle is also preserved in the Byzantine historian, George Cedrenus.  It may be found on p.532 of volume 1 of the Bonn edition.  Sadly we still await the Australian translation of this useful work.

He sent Oribasius his doctor and quaestor to Delphi, to renew the oracle of Apollo.  When he arrived and began the work, he received this oracle from the demon: …

(Curiously the Latin translation of the oracle in the Bonn edition contains material at the start and end which is not in the Greek; perhaps Bekker, the editor, included a pre-existing paraphrase?)

Did the oracle speak again?  It would be rash to suppose that it did not.  But this is the last oracle known to us, and it speaks of the sanctuary fallen and the oracle silent.  However much the passing of superstition benefits mankind, to the antiquarian this is a melancholy picture.

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  1. [1]Timothy E. Gregory, “Julian and the Last Oracle at Delphi”, GRBS 24 (1983), 355-66, online here.↩
  2. [2]The work is BHG 170-71c, CPG 8082.  Text: PG 96, 1252-1320.  An English translation of the Artemii Passio by Mark Vermes, with notes by Samuel N. C. Lieu, is available in From Constantine to Julian: Pagan and Byzantine Views: A Source History (ed. Samuel N. C. Lieu and Dominic Montserrat; London: Routledge, 1996), p.224 f.↩

1 John 5:7 in the fourth century? Theodore, Diodorus, the Suda, and Byzantine punctuation

Posted on by Roger Pearse

From 1 John chapter 5 (KJV):

6 This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.

7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

1 John 5:7, the Comma Johanneum, has disappeared from our modern bibles, and probably rightly.  It is not found in any Greek manuscript prior to 1500, and it seems to be a marginal comment that found its way into the Latin bible.  This text critical evidence tells us that it formed no part of the original Greek text[1].  Theologically it is usually assumed or presumed that any additions or changes to the original Greek text are the work of men, rather than God, and are therefore not legitimately part of the divinely inspired text.  So on neither count should it appear in our bibles.

Incidentally let us never forget that text critical arguments and theological arguments are not the same thing.

However 1 John 5:7 still has its defenders today, and one of them wrote to me recently with an interesting query.  Michael Hollner had come across a defence of the authenticity of the passage written by a certain Ben David in 1825.  In this appears the claim that Theodore of Mopsuestia referenced 1 John 5:7.  Being an honest man, he wanted to know if this was actually true.

The pamphlet of 70 pages was entitled Three Letters Addressed to the Editor of The Quarterly Review, in which is Demonstrated the Genuineness of the Three Heavenly Witnesses – I John v. 7, and published in London.  “Ben David” was actually a unitarian minister named John Jones.[2] No doubt he felt that the high churchmen of the Quarterly Review might suspect a prank from a unitarian minister.

My correspondent’s quotation was itself corrupt and confusing.  It is always good policy to go to the original source, and so doing clarified much.

There is a digitised version of David’s pamphlet at Archive.org, and I have placed it here.  I think it is on Google Books; but I have not been able to locate it.  Here’s the passage:

Theodorus, the master of Chrysostom and a contemporary of the emperor Julian, as we learn from Suidas, wrote “A Treatise on one God in the Trinity, from the Epistle of John the Evangelist” Eis ten Epistolen Ioannou tou Euaggelistou peri tou eis Theos en Triadi. This is a remarkable testimony, as it implies the existence and notoriety of the verse about the middle of the fourth century. At that period, a writer of celebrity erects upon it the doctrine of a trinity in unity; which surely he would hardly have done, if any suspicion of its authenticity had been entertained by him, or by any other person of that age. Besides, the turn of the expression, as it supposes what was grounded on the verse to be grounded also on the whole Epistle, supposes the Epistle and the verse, in respect to their purport and authenticity, to stand exactly on the same foundation. (See Suidas on the word Diodoros.)

A quick look at the Suda online (we do not refer to “Suidas” these days) shows that Ben David made an error; it is not “Theodorus”, i.e. Theodore of Mopsuestia, but Diodorus of Tarsus who is in question here.

Diodorus is a shadowy figure to us today, because all of his immense output has perished.  Fragments exist, and attempts have been made to collect them, with limited success.  But a list of works exists in the Suda, as Ben David rightly says, in section delta 1149.

Ben David’s claim, therefore, is that Diodorus of Tarsus wrote a work entitled On the epistle of the evangelist John concerning one God in three, which is listed under that title in the Suda  (The subsidiary claim, that this must then refer to 1 John 5:7 is not our concern here).  But did he?

Here is the entry from the Suda online, based on the Adler edition of the 1930s which is sadly inaccessible to me:

Διόδωρος, μονάζων, ἐν τοῖς χρόνοις Ἰουλιανοῦ καὶ Οὐάλεντος ἐπισκοπήσας Ταρσῶν τῆς Κιλικίας. οὗτος ἔγραψεν, ὥς φησι Θεόδωρος Ἀναγνώστης ἐν τῇ ἐκκλησιαστικῇ ἱστορίᾳ, διάφορα. εἰσὶ δὲ τάδε: Ἑρμηνεῖαι εἰς τὴν παλαιὰν πᾶσαν: Γένεσιν, Ἔξοδον καὶ ἐφεξῆς: καὶ Εἰς Ψαλμούς: Εἰς τὰς δ# Βασιλείας: Εἰς τὰ ζητούμενα τῶν Παραλειπομένων, Εἰς τὰς Παροιμίας, Τίς διαφορὰ θεωρίας καὶ ἀλληγορίας, Εἰς τὸν Ἐκκλησιαστήν, Εἰς τὸ ᾆσμα τῶν ᾀσμάτων, Εἰς τοὺς προφήτας, Χρονικόν, διορθούμενον τὸ σφάλμα Εὐσεβίου τοῦ Παμφίλου περὶ τῶν χρόνων, Εἰς τὰ δ# Εὐαγγέλια, Εἰς τὰς πράξεις τῶν Ἀποστόλων, Εἰς τὴν ἐπιστολὴν Ἰωάννου τοῦ Εὐαγγελιστοῦ, Περὶ τοῦ, εἷς θεὸς ἐν τριάδι, Κατὰ Μελχισεδεκιτῶν, Κατὰ Ἰουδαίων, Περὶ νεκρῶν ἀναστάσεως, Περὶ ψυχῆς κατὰ διαφόρων περὶ αὐτῆς αἱρέσεων, Πρὸς Γρατιανὸν κεφάλαια, Κατὰ ἀστρονόμων καὶ ἀστρολόγων καὶ εἱμαρμένης, Περὶ σφαίρας καὶ τῶν ζ# ζωνῶν καὶ τῆς ἐναντίας τῶν ἀστέρων πορείας, Περὶ τῆς Ἱππάρχου σφαίρας, Περὶ προνοίας, Κατὰ Πλάτωνος περὶ θεοῦ καὶ θεῶν, Περὶ φύσεως καὶ ὕλης, ἐν ᾧ, τί τὸ δίκαιόν ἐστι, Περὶ θεοῦ καὶ ὕλης Ἑλληνικῆς πεπλασμένης, Ὅτι αἱ ἀόρατοι φύσεις οὐκ ἐκ τῶν στοιχείων, ἀλλ’ ἐκ μηδενὸς μετὰ τῶν στοιχείων ἐδημιουργήθησαν, Πρὸς Εὐφρόνιον φιλόσοφον κατὰ πεῦσιν καὶ ἀπόκρισιν, Κατὰ Ἀριστοτέλους περὶ σώματος οὐρανίου, Πῶς θερμὸς ὁ ἥλιος, Κατὰ τῶν λεγόντων ζῷον τὸν οὐρανόν, Περὶ τοῦ πῶς ἀεὶ μὲν ὁ δημιουργός, οὐκ ἀεὶ δὲ τὰ δημιουργήματα, Πῶς τὸ θέλειν καὶ τὸ μὴ θέλειν ἐπὶ θεοῦ ἀϊδίου ὄντος, Κατὰ Πορφυρίου περὶ ζῴων καὶ θυσιῶν.

[sc. At first] a monk, [sc. but later] in the times of Julian and Valens[1] bishop of Tarsus of Cilicia. He wrote a variety of things, as Theodore Lector[2] says in his Ecclesiastical History. They are as follows: Interpretations on the entire Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, and so forth; and On the Psalms; On the Four Books of the Kingdoms;[3] On Inquiries into the Books of Chronicles, On the Proverbs, What is the Difference between Exposition[4] and Allegory, On Ecclesiastes, On the Song of Songs, On the Prophets, Chronology, straightening out the error of Eusebius [the spiritual son] of Pamphilos[5] about the times, On the Four Gospels, On the Acts of the Apostles, On the Epistle of John the Evangelist, About the One God in Three, Against the Melchisedekites,[6] Against the Jews, About the Resurrection of the Dead, About the Soul against the Various Heresies Concerning It, Chapters to Gratian,[7] Against Astronomers and Astrologers and Fate, About the Sphere and the Seven Zones and of the Contrary Motion of the Stars, About Hipparchus'[8] Sphere, About Providence, Against Plato on God and the Gods, On Nature and Matter, in which is “What is the Just,” Concerning God and the Falsely Imagined Matter of the Greeks, That the Unseen Natures are not from the Elements but Were Made from Nothing along with the Elements, To the Philosopher Euphronius[9] by way of Question and Answer, Against Aristotle concerning Celestial Body, How Hot is the Sun, Against Those Who Say the Heaven is a Living Being, Concerning the Question of How the Creator is Forever but the Created is Not, How is there the Capacity to Will and to be Unwilling in the God who is Eternal, Against Porphyry[10] about Animals and Sacrifices.

But as we can instantly see, the Suda online edition introduces a comma, making two works where Ben David reads one.

Ben David is not making this up.  On the contrary, he is using a contemporary edition.  The Latin side of that does the same, as this image sent in by my correspondent makes plain: “In Epistolam Joannis evangelistae, de hoc quod unus est Deus in Trinitate”; but the Greek, note, has punctuation between the two.  It’s hard to say what edition Ben David used, of course – this is the Patrologia Graeca, reprinting an earlier edition.The Greek text is punctuated.  So the question then becomes… are the manuscripts punctuated?

Fortunately a 15th century manuscript is online, British Library Additional 11892.  The headwords are indicated by an initial red letter, although curiously the “diodoros” is not clear in the image – look at the left margin, line 2.  The relevant section is on folio 202r:

So we see… again it is punctuated.  These are two titles, not one.

The use of a single point as a divison mark is older than the 10th century, when the Suda was composed.  So there is little doubt that the author so punctuated his text.

Sadly for my friend, therefore, this particular argument fails.  The Suda does NOT say that Diodorus wrote a work on the epistle of John on one God in Trinity.

UPDATE: A kind gentleman has sent in the page of Adler’s edition.  Our bit is lines 10-11.

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  1. [1]General article <a href=https://bible.org/article/textual-problem-1-john-57-8>here</a>.↩
  2. [2]Wikipedia article on this interesting man here.↩

My experience of real-time censorship on Twitter

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I had a very odd experience this week, while I was away in York, and since it seems to be little known, I thought I’d share it with you.  In brief, I encountered real-time interference with the tweeting process while I was on twitter.

Over the last year or so Twitter has taken to interfering with the user by displaying all sorts of unwanted material when you hit the search button.  These are topics that are “trending” – attracting lots of tweets – although if you look at the number of tweets you can quickly see that Twitter is gaming the process to promote certain subjects.  They’ve also added “moments” which are much the same, but where they don’t even pretend that it is other than a choice.

These are objectionable as they tend to be sensationalist, chose to drive clicks and traffic, and so tend to disturb you from what you were doing.  They are intending to steal your attention.  And it works.

I found myself looking at a “moment” which was about free speech, a long term interest of mine.  The tweets consisted of establishment types and others gloating about some new form of censorship, where the victim would also be jailed.

I forgot myself enough to reply to two of them, pointing out that the revolution always devours its children, and did they want to be imprisoned too, for something they said.

Two of these replies I posted.  When I composed a third tweet, and pressed the send button, it did not send.  It hung there.  I thought that I had missed the button, so I clicked again and it sent.

The next time the same thing happened.  But when I clicked send again – I knew that I had already pressed send once – still nothing happened.  In fact it sat there.  The screen would not refresh, even.  But … I quickly found that I could press Cancel.  I did, and my control of the system returned.

Of course one might assume this was network trouble.  But it wasn’t.

A couple more attempts, and I realised that something or someone was watching me tweet, and blocking my attempts to respond negatively to tweets on this “moment”.

I confirmed this very simply.  I stopped tweeting to that moment, and went off and tweeted replies elsewhere.  I had not the slightest difficulty all evening.

Twitter is a rich company.  It’s possible for them to employ herds of minions to censor comments on certain threads, or whatever.  It could also be a bot, I suppose; but the sudden cessation is suspicious.

It’s all very awful.  It’s made worse because you can’t be sure that it is happening.  Thinking back, I believe that this has happened to me before, but as I wasn’t expecting it, I dismissed it as glitches in twitter.  I can do so no longer.  It was really, really, conspicuous this time.  Twitter is silently manipulating which opinions are displayed on its server.

Twitter is a nasty company.  It pioneered the trick of “shadow-banning” people; allowing them to post but ensuring their tweets were not seen by anyone else.  It’s very hard to protest censorship that you don’t know is happening, which is of course the point.  Now that shadow-banning is known, it probably happens less.  This new nastiness is right in line with their previous approach.

What a world we live in.

Fortunately US Republicans have caught on, and are starting to call for social media firms to be broken up.  Let’s hope this happens soon.

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