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More on experimenting with Arabic and Ibn Abi Usaibia

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In this post I asked if anyone had access to the following texts:

B. L. Van der Waerden, “Die Schriften und Fragmente des Pythagoras,” RESupp. 10 (1965): 843-64; see also idem, Die Pythagoreer. Religiose Bruderschaft und Schule der Wissenschaft (Zurich: Artemis, 1979), 272-73.

A correspondent kindly sent me the latter item today.  A PDF is here.

What this is about is a passage in the medieval writer Ibn Abi Usaibia (translation here), not found in the Kopf edition, but referenced by Bart Ehrman in his recent book Forgery and counterforgery.  E. indicates that the version given by Van der Waerden is unreliable, but does not repeat it.  Naturally I wanted to see what it said.  The text begins on p.272.

The writings of the older Pythagoreans

Archytas [the Pythagorean] not merely wrote a lot himself, but he collected the writings of older Pythagoreans, and of Pythagoras himself, and combined them to form a corpus.  The most detailed report on this is found in a long fragment from a work by Porphyry, given by the Arabic physician Ibn Abi Usaibia in his dictionary of physicians (5).  Porphyry distinguishes between “authentic books”, written by Pythagoras himself and the “heirs of his wisdom”, and “false books” which “were placed in the mouth of the sage and written under his name.”  After he has noted the titles of twelve such forgeries, Porphyry tells us that there were 280 “books on which no doubt rests”, and that 80 were by Pythagoras himself, and 200 by the “mature men who belonged to the group of Pythagoras, to his party, and to the heirs of his knowledge.”  These books, so he says, in particular were collected by Archytas.  They were then “forgotten, until they regained their place in a host of ways, mainly by showing their instrinsic good intent and devotion.”

The quotations given in the preceding paragraph in translation from the Arabic I owe to Mr. Matthias Schramm of Tubingen.  The latter has explicitly endorsed the following interpretation of the testimony of Porphyry.

If I understand the report of Porphyry correctly, Archytas was the first to put together a collection of the books of Pythagoras and his students.  They were unknown in Greece at this time, but preserved in Italy.  Then they were lost, and then came “wise men” — probably the Neopythagoreans — who collected them once more.

That Porphyry understood that there were two different periods of collecting and assembling, the period of Archytas, and that of the “wise men”, is indicated by the fact that Ibn Abi Usaibia, according to a communication by Mr. Schramm, uses a different verb for the collecting activity of Archytas to that of the “wise men”.

The testimony of Porphyry agrees well with that which we know from other sources.  As we saw in chapter 1, Dicaearchus, who lived a century after Pythagoras, knew of no books by Pythagoras: the Pythagoreans, so he said, kept their teachings strictly secret.  The books of Pythagoras, as Porphyry rightly says, did not become known in Hellas.  That the books came to the fore again in Italy is suggested because the learned Roman Varro (60 BC) gives as representative the opinion that there had always been “Pythagoras of Samos and Occelus of Lucania and Archtyas the Tarentine”.  As Thesleff rightly remarks, Varro also knew a corpus of Pythagorean writings, containing the writings of Pythagoras, Occelus and Archytas.

I give the German as well, for the benefit of search engines.

Die Schriften der älteren Pythagoreer

Archytas hat nicht nur selbst viel geschrieben, er hat auch die Schriften von älteren Pythagoreern und von Pythagoras selbst gesammelt und zu einem Corpus vereinigt. Die ausführlichste nachricht darüber finden wir in einem längeren Fragment aus einer Schrift von Porphyrios, das der arabische Arzt Ibn Abi Usaybi`a in seine Ärztebiographie aufgenommen hat.(5)  Porphyrios unterscheidet darin «authentische Bücher», die von Pythagoras selbst und den «Erben seines Wissens» verfaßt wurden, von «falschen Büchern», welche «dem Weisen in den Mund gelegt und unter seinem Namen geschrieben» wurden. Nachdem er die Titel von zwölf solchen Fälschungen vermerkt hat, teilt Porphyrios uns mit, daß es zweihundertachtzig «Bücher, an denen kein Zweifel besteht» gegeben hat, und zwar achtzig von Pythagoras selbst und zweihundert von den «reifen Männern, welche zur Gruppe des Pythagoras, zu seiner Partei und zu den Erben seines Wissens gehörten». Diese Bücher, so sagt er, wurden besonders von Archytas zusammengestellt. Sie seien dann «in Vergessenheit geraten, bis sich ihre Existenz bei einer Schar von Weisen, denen guter Vorsatz und Frömmigkeit eigen war, ergab». Diese Weisen hätten die Bücher «zusammengefaßt, zusammengestellt und komponiert, ohne daß sie zuvor in Hellas bekannt gewesen wären; vielmehr wurden sie in Italien aufbewahrt».

Die im vorigen Absatz in Anführungsstrichen angeführten Übersetzungen aus dem Arabischen verdanke ich Herrn Matthias Schramm, Tübingen. Dieser hat der nachfolgenden Interpretation des Zeugnisses von Porphyrios ausdrücklich zugestimmt.

Wenn ich die Mitteilung von Porphyrios richtig verstehe, so hat Archytas zuerst eine Sammlung von Büchern des Pythagoras und seiner Schüler zusammengestellt. In Griechenland waren sie zu dieser Zeit nicht bekannt, sondern sie wurden in Italien aufbewahrt. Dann sind sie verlorengegangen, und dann kamen «weise Männer» — wahrscheinlich Neupythagoreer —, die sie von neuem zusammengefaßt haben.

Daß Porphyrios zwei verschiedene Perioden des Sammelns und Zusammenstellens voneinander unterscheidet, die Periode des Archytas und die der «weisen Männer», dafür spricht auch, daß Ibn Abi Usaybi’a nach einer Mitteilung von M. Schramm für die Sammeltätigkeit von Archytas ein anderes Verbum benutzt als für die der «weisen Männer».

Das Zeugnis von Porphyrios stimmt gut überein mit dem, was wir aus anderen Quellen wissen. Wie wir im Kapitel i gesehen haben, hat Dikaiarchos, der ein halbes Jahrhundert nach Archytas lebte, keine Bücher von Pythagoras gekannt: die Pythagoreer, so sagt er, hielten dessen Lehren streng geheim. Die Bücher des Pythagoras sind also, wie Porphyrios ganz richtig sagt, in Hellas damals nicht bekannt geworden. Daß die Bücher in Italien wieder zum Vorschein kamen, stimmt auch, denn der gelehrte Römer Varro (um 60 v.Chr.) führt als Vertreter der Ansicht, daß es immer Menschen gegeben hat, «Pythagoras von Samos und Okkelos den Lukanier und Archytas den Tarentiner» an. Varro hat also, wie Thesleff richtig bemerkt, einen Corpus von pythagoreischen Schriften gekannt, in dem Schriften von Pythagoras, Okkelos und Archytas vorkamen.

(5) Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopaedie, Supplement X, Sp. 862: Schriften des Pythagoras IV, Nachtrag.

This is useful, but not really concerned with the issue of whether the students of Pythagoras felt able to write in his name.  In particular the author is clearly concerned with something else.  Finally the quotations are just snippets, not even sentences.

The RE article is not simple to find.  Pythagoras in general falls in Band XXIV of the RE, p.172 f.  But in Supp. 10 (1965), column 862-3, there is a section “IV. Nachtrag”.  This discusses Ibn Abi Usaibia.  A PDF of these two pages is here.  It likewise mentions Mr. Schramm.  In fact it becomes clear that Van der Waerden’s text is almost word for word the same!  The RE gives a few more details, but the quotations are the same too.

All this is unsatisfactory.  What we want, of course, is the text of Ibn Abi Usaibia, with which Ehrman is disagreeing.  E., it will be noted, renders “heirs of his wisdom” as “inheritors of his sciences”.

Update: I have only just realised that the “other article” above in “RESupp” is in fact the RealEncyclopadie Supplement article!  The perils of abbreviations…

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The informer and the sycophant in Diogenes Laertius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m currently rereading Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Philosophers as my bedtime book.  This evening I came across a curious passage in the life of Plato (III, 24):

There is a story that he [Plato] pleaded for Chabrias the general when he was tried for his life, although no one else at Athens would do so, and that, on this occasion, as he was going up to the Acropolis with Chabrias, Crobylus the informer met him and said, “What, are you come to speak for the defence?  Don’t you know that the hemlock of Socrates awaits you?”  To this Plato replied, “As I faced dangers when serving in the cause of my country, so I will face them now in the cause of duty for a friend.”

I noted the words, “Crobylus the informer”, and I wondered what Greek word ‘informer’ represented.  For we think of informers — delatores — as a feature of Roman society.  So I looked across the page — I’m reading this in the Loeb edition — and was amused to read Κρωβύλος ὁ συκοφάντες – “Crobylus the sycophant“.

I had never associated sycophancy with tale-bearing and informing, but of course the link is an obvious one.

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Ehrman’s use of the term “forgery”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Before I go further in reviewing Ehrman’s Forgery and Counterforgery, it would be good to look at what E. means when he uses the word “forgery” — a word which he uses very frequently — and what we mean when we use the word, and whether the two are the same and of the same extent.

If we think of instances of contemporary use of the word “forgery” in current English, we may imagine a number of instances: a forged will; the forged “Hitler diaries”; a forged and discreditable letter from a public figure; or some form of forged financial document; or a forged bank note.

The man who forges a will intends to obtain property belonging to another; the man who composed the supposed “Hitler diaries” hoped to obtain money for them; a forged financial instrument is created and submitted to cheat another of money.  A forged letter from a public figure intended to discredit him is intended to steal reputation, to obtain power or influence by removing it from another.

Likewise the man who creates a forged bank note does so in order to use it to obtain goods, stealing them from his victim.  On the other hand, there have been artists who have created “art” based around an image of a bank note.  The intent, and still more the use of the item, determines whether it is a forgery, or something else.

A google search will quickly confirm that the term is morally as black as black can be, indicating a fraud, something created maliciously with the purpose of injuring others in some way, or, at the very least, indifferent as to whether others are injured.  It is not a neutral term, but has a considerable emotional loading.  As such, in any scholarly study, it must be used with care, and only for items where the forgery is generally accepted, and in which none of the readership has any personal, political, religious or emotional investment.  To do otherwise can have no other effect than to turn a book into polemic against those sections of the readership, whether intentionally or not.  The book ceases to be scholarship at that point.

The google search to which I referred will also quickly reveal the existence of a 1930 book by a certain Joseph Wheless, entitled Forgery in Christianity: a documented record of the foundations of the Christian religion, which consists of extensive quotations from patristic writers with the intent of proving that the early Christians were determined and persistent liars.  The book may be found here.  Hate-literature very frequently levels an accusation of this sort at the object of its venom, whatever this may be.

Wheless, who had been an attorney, defines forgery in his introduction, and we might usefully quote it, in order to see what a malicious person intent on harm might do with the word.

Forgery, in legal and moral sense, is the utterance or publication, with intent to deceive or defraud, or to gain some advantage, of a false document, put out by one person in the name of and as the genuine work of another, who did not execute it, or the subsequent alteration of a genuine document by one who did not execute the original. This species of falsification extends alike to all classes of writings, promissory notes, the coin or currency of the realm, to any legal or private document, or to a book. All are counterfeit or forged if not authentic and untampered.

How, then, does E. define forgery?  Verbosely and diffusely, unfortunately, or I would quote him directly, rather than in excerpts.

First he defines (p.29-30) as “pseudonymous” writings where the name at the top is not that of the person who composed it.  The name may be a pen-name, or it may be that of a “well-known person who did not, in fact, write it.”

He then divides the latter class into two; (a) works originally published without a name, or under a name which is the same as a more famous person, and later ascribed by copyists or whoever to the “well-known person”; and (b) works published under the name of a well-known person, by someone knowing full well that he was not that person.

E. states that (b) is ‘typically meant to deceive the reader … this kind of pseudepigraphy is what I am calling “forgery,” when an author claims to be someone else who is well known, at least to some readers.  Forgeries involve false authorial claims.’  He then wanders off into justifications of his usage, of no special interest now,  and all rather vague and discursive.  He’s said what he wants to say, and the rest is detail.

Many will feel rather uneasy with these definitions.   These are not conclusions, or useful ways to summarise, based on what a study of the material has revealed.  This is only chapter three, is introductory material.  Rather these are guiding principles, invented ex animo by E., for the purpose of classifying the materials he proposes to deal with.

To label every writing composed by a man under another name as “forgery” is very aggressive indeed.   Do we know this?  Do we know that, in every case, 2,000 years ago, the author intended malice, fraud and deception?  That he sat there intending to cheat the public?  It seems most unlikely.  So why use this loaded term?

But can we test E.’s definitions?  Is there a case, where we do know the background and the author’s intentions?

Let us consider the case of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations.  These take the form of a dialogue between various persons.   We know quite a bit about the composition of the text from Cicero’s Letters to Atticus, in which he discusses it; but let us, for the moment, ignore this, and apply E.’s principles to the speakers in the text.

In the Tusculan Disputations, a number of speeches are atttributed to Scipio.  Did Scipio actually say this?  Let us say, after investigation, that the style is typically Ciceronian, and that Scipio did not write those words.  These, then, are pseudonymous.

Do these fit E.’s class ‘a’? — originally anonymous?  They do not.  The names of the speakers were always set forth as they are now.  So, by default, we come to the conclusion that Cicero was engaged in forgery, representing the opinions and words of Scipio when in fact they were his own.

Yet in fact no question of forgery arises; we learn from the Letters to Atticus that Cicero merely sought literary effect, that the speakers were all dead at the time he wrote, and that everyone understood that this was merely a literary convention.   In fact a reasonable man, reading the Tusculan Disputations, would not rush to judgement anyway.

It may be objected that speeches in a literary composition are not the same as a work transmitted independently.  This is quite true; we know from Justinus’ epitome of Pompeius Trogus that the speeches in Livy were so composed, for instance, and that this was acceptable.  It would be nice to be able to point to some similarly documented case of a whole work under another name; but none with such background comes to mind.  But the point here is that we have identified, very quickly, a case where ancient writers set forth material under the names of others, with no intent to deceive, and where no forgery is involved.  E.’s definitions fail as soon as we apply them to material where we do know quite a bit about the background.

Nor should we be surprised.  99% of ancient literature is lost.  Our knowledge of antiquity will often be rather tentative.  Our information about the authors and the process of composition of most ancient documents is minimal.  Anachronism is an ever-present danger.  Bad scholarship always starts by imposing a modern outlook onto the data.  A wise man will refrain from rushing in to denounce, to fingerpoint, to label, when he knows full well that five minutes in the company of the author would probably change his every assumption utterly.  To do otherwise is unscholarly.  Good scholarship avoids applying loaded terms to conclusions reached on the basis of little evidence.  Once emotion comes in, balance and judgement go out of the window.  Let the text speak; and let us walk warily.

Yet E. proceeds to apply these criteria of his own devising to texts where we have very little information.  He does so in order to brand the authors as forgers and – eventually – as liars.

Likewise E.’s purpose is to apply these categories, not to texts whose forgery is universally accepted and uncontroversial, but to the foundation documents of the Christian church, whose followers are everywhere.   This amounts to a direct religious statement on a matter of current controversy.  Indeed, as we have seen, he follows in the footsteps of a hate-writer in so doing.  At which point whatever scholarship E. brings to the subject is merely equipment for polemic.

This is a pity.  What it means is that, in the book as a whole, accusations of forgery will be thrown around without adequate evidence, in cases where the real position is actually unknown.  This is certain to render the book rather useless and misleading.

Finally we may reflect that E. has rather shot himself in the foot.  After all, someone who applied to E. himself the kind of black-and-white dogmatism that he proposes to apply to ancient texts might give him back some hard names at this point!  But a reasonable man would not.  E. no doubt intends no deception.  He has merely spent too much time brooding on a religious position that he does not share.   Such a process would make any man morose.

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Ehrman on the long recension of Ignatius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Some busy days have prevented me getting to grips with Ehrman’s Forgery and counterforgery.  My query about the Apollinarians earlier today led me back to it, as a Google link brought me to the Google Books version, where I found material on the long recension of the letters of Ignatius of Antioch.  I thought that I would review this section, therefore.

Pages 460-480 are headed “the pseudo-Ignatian letters”.   Let’s have a quick refresher on the background.

In the Greek manuscript tradition we find numerous manuscripts of a collection of 13 letters attributed to Ignatius of Antioch, the apostolic father.  This is known as the long recension; for 7 of these letters have reached us, but only just, in a handful of manuscripts in a shorter version, which we will refer to as the short version.  The differences between the two seem to relate to late 4th century theological arguments, with an Apollinarian or Arian tinge.  Finally there is a Syriac epitome of 3 of the letters, and I have seen a reference in Aphram Barsoum to Syriac texts of other letters.

E. begins by stating more or less what I have told you, and then discusses the discovery in the 17th c. by Archbishop Ussher that the long version had been tampered with, and the recovery of the short version.  He then moves on to discuss the author, summarising the scholarship of Lightfoot and others, and including the recent (1975) work of D. Hagedorn suggesting that the interpolator is the same as the author of a commentary on Job attributed to Origen.[1]

E. usefully describes the argument that the commentary author may be an otherwise unknown Julian of Antioch, so named in 1 manuscript of a catena which sometimes ascribes the work to “Julian” — the abbreviated designations in catenae are a nuisance! — and whose name is, we are told, present in the prologue.  E. tells us that Hagedorn thought that the two works are by the same author, as well as the Apostolic Constitutions, a church order of the same period, introducing itself as from the apostles.  Usefully he tells us why the commentary and the AC should be associated: “…35 points of contact … precisely the same topics, using precisely the same somewhat unusual expressions” and then that verbatim similarities of wording show that the author of the long recension and the commentary must be the same.  The argument is, on the face of it, a reasonable one; although arguments based on similarities are notoriously subjective, and can easily give false positives.  The Arian nature of the Commentary is also explained — the author rejects both homoousios and homoiousios, which marks him plainly as an Arian.

However E. then goes on to address objections to the identification without actually making clear what those objections are.  The main objection is that the long recension is not markedly Arian, while the Commentary makes its loyalties quite clear.  This E. evades by appealing to the idea that the author might have developed his views.  So he might; but the reader deserves to have the objection stated plainly.  To his credit E. makes clear that there is anti-Arian seeming material in the long recension.

The next section is entitled “Purpose of the forgeries”.  It is hard to say why somebody composed the long recension, for the obvious reason that we know nothing for certain about the author (aside from the proposals of Hagedorn), and certainly not what his motivations were. E. proceeds to discuss this by suggesting that much of the material is written as if from a 2nd century outlook, and attack various heresies of the period, as listed in the stock anti-heretical treatises of the 4th century.  All this material is useful, and E.’s acknowledgement of Lightfoot is generous.

But at this point E.’s over-emphasis on “forgery! forgery!” causes the reader confusion.  E. tells us that the author must have wanted to put forward his own theological position.  This is probable enough, to be sure; but it tells us little, for the same is true of most authors, and we have already seen that we don’t know for sure what the author’s theology was, unless we accept Hagedorn’s theory.  Worse, it is speculation.  We don’t know what the author wanted: we can only infer.

Next he tells us that the author is:

… clearly engaged, consciously, in the act of forgery…

But surely we do not know this?  It is likely enough, again; but we actually know nothing about the origins of the long recension, nothing about its author, and treating theory as fact is for politicians, not scholars.

E. however believes that we know the author intended forgery because of the author’s “attempts at verisimilitude” and because some of his alterations to the genuine text are “highly significant”.  The logic is not easy to follow here.

The first point will make little sense to us unless we realise that E. is trying throughout his book to argue that small personal details in letters, far from being indications of authenticity, are in fact indications of forgery — he is, inevitably, thinking primarily of reasons to debunk the N.T. here.  Such broadbrush arguments are not impressive: if I write a letter, or a blog post, what I put in it depends on who I write to and what I have to say, and how I feel.  It would be unwise for E. to assign posts on this blog as “authentic” or “interpolated”, based on such a criterion.

The second point is left unclear; but E. then devotes a couple of pages to “important features” of the long recension, which is probably intended as explanation.  Unfortunately it is not easy to follow the argument, nor the connection to what precedes and follows it.  Lack of focus is a failing of this book throughout.  It makes it very hard to read a work critically, when the subject drifts off into points whose connection with the topic is tenuous.  Here E. has been poorly served by his publisher, who should most certainly have edited it more tightly.

He then moves onto some work of his own, looking for theological battle-cries in the text of the long recension (including changes to Ignatius’ own wording) and finding many phrases which sound a bit heretical, in one way or another, notably with a subordinationist flavour.  These ought to be tabulated, not left in the body of the text.  But this leads the reader nowhere; the text again loses focus and drifts off into a very vague discussion of whether the author might or might not be an Arian, and might be addressing somebody unknown rather like Marcellus of Ancyra.  This takes up most of the remainder of the section, and might perhaps be useful to someone interested in the long recension.  As E. rightly remarks, a thorough study would be nice to have.

One defect in this last section of the text is that E., on p.476, having already presented his data on fingerprint phrases on p.470-4, then starts to list further pieces of data.  This is very naughty.  Any critical reader will demand all of the data first; and then the theory later.  For to mingle the two makes it hard for the reader to evaluate the argument.  Indeed doing so is a trick of polemicists to shut down disagreement; and again the publisher should have caught this.

The discussion of the long recension is a bit waffly.  The bits that are good are mainly by others, and the bits that are original are not that well structured.  But on the whole it’s a useful summary.

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  1. [1]E. does not give the full bibliographic reference: it is Dieter Hagedorn, Der Hiobkommentar des Arianers Julian, Patristische Texte und Studien, 14, Berlin: deGruyter, 1975.↩

The “forgeries of the Apollinarians”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This evening I stumbled across a book which few, perhaps, will have read: Georges Florovsky’s The Byzantine Fathers of the Sixth to Eighth Centuries.  Fortunately the book is accessible here, for it is otherwise quite uncommon.

What led me here was a question about the “forgeries” of the Apollinarians.  We know that in the 6th century, works were in circulation which were ascribed to Pope Julius I, Athanasius, or Gregory Thaumaturgus, but were in reality by Apollinaris or his followers.  We know this because of a dossier of quotations, assembled by Leontius of Byzantium as Adversus Fraudes Apollinistarum.  Indeed a correspondent kindly translated this text for us all, and it is accessible online.

Apollinaris of Laodicea lived in the second half of the 4th century A.D.  He wrote an excellent refutation of Porphyry’s anti-Christian work, and, when faced with Julian the Apostate, did what he could to frustrate the latter’s desire to prevent Christians acquiring an education.  However he must have found himself out of his depth in the increasingly vicious theological-political currents of the late fourth century.  The opinion now known as Apollinarism is given by the old Catholic Encyclopedia thus:

A Christological theory, according to which Christ had a human body and a human sensitive soul, but no human rational mind, the Divine Logos taking the place of this last.

“Apollinarism” was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 381, or so the CE says.  After this point, it may well have been dangerous to circulate texts under his name.  In the circumstances those who still agreed with him chose to place the other names at the head of his and their works.  This had the unfortunate consequence that monophysite writers such as Cyril of Alexandria found themselves quoting Apollinaris when they believed that they were quoting Athanasius.  In the disputes of the 6th century, the supporters of Chalcedon made use of this to attack the monophysite position.

But did the Apollinarians intend fraud?  or merely to preserve their now illegal belief?  It would be extremely harsh, surely, to condemn them for the latter.  The later use of their works is nothing to do with them.

Another supposed Apollinarian forgery is the long recension of the letters of Ignatius.  Seven letters were interpolated, while a further eight were composed.  The identity of the interpolator is unknown, unless we accept the suggestion that it is an otherwise unknown Arian named Julian of Antioch, whose name appears as author of a Commentary on Job of the same period.  But the author of the long recension is not obviously Arian, any more than he is certainly Apollinarian.  His purpose in interfering with the text in this way is entirely unknown today.  It is entirely possible that it was for dishonest purposes, to put into circulation a text in order to make an argument based on forged evidence; but we do not know this.

At all events, I then came across Florovsky’s work, which includes a discussion of the Apollinarian forgeries:

One work ascribed to Leontius which may actually belong to him and which modern scholarship should consider carefully is Against the Frauds of the Apollinarians. In the history of Monophysitism the so-called “forgeries of the Apollinarians” played a major and fateful role. Many of Apollinarius’ compositions were concealed and “armored” under the forged inscription of respected and honored names. Faith in such pseudo-patristic writings very much hindered Alexandrian theologians in their dogmatic confession — it is sufficient to recall St. Cyril of Alexandria. Even if the work titled Against the Frauds of the Apollinarians is someday conclusively proven to be not that of Leontius of Byzantium, it is discussed here. Regardless of the authorship of this work — and it is very possible that it was Leontius of Byzantium — it was a significant work which deserves attention.

It is difficult to reconstruct the history of these “forgeries” but they became especially wide-spread in the Monophysite milieu. Even Eutyches in his appeal to Pope Leo at the Council of Constantinople in 448 refers to the forged testimony of Pope Julius, Athanasius, and Gregory the Miracle-Worker. He referred to them in good conscience, not suspecting any “forgery.” In his document to the monks of Palestine, Emperor Marcian observed that among the people books by Apollinarius were circulating which were being passed off as dicta of the holy fathers. Justinian also mentions some forgeries. The historian Evragius discusses the influence of these forgeries — the inscription of honorable names (Athanasius, Gregory, Julius) on Apollinarius1 books kept many people from condemning the impious opinions contained in them. At the famous “conference” with the Severians, which took place about 532 (between 531 and 533, in any case), Hypatius of Ephesus challenged a whole series of patristic references by pointing out their spuriousness, their the false inscriptions.

Under such circumstances the uncovering and demonstration of forgeries became a pointed and recurrent task of theological polemics. In performing this task, it is the author of Against the Frauds of the Apollinarians who occupies the most prominent place. The author gathered much material in this work. He adduces the false testimonies, and compares them with the original opinions of those persons to whom they are ascribed. (It is noteworthy that this same procedure is followed in the work Against the Monophysites, a work modern scholarship does not regard as that of Leontius of Byzantium). The author then collates these testimonies with the undisputed texts of Apollinarius and his followers and shows the points of correspondence between them. In this connection the author has to enter into a detailed critique of Apollinarianism. The author’s critical conclusions are distinguished by great precision and cogency.

Interesting indeed.

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Getting started with the Fathers

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Via Twitter I learn of this post at Triablogue, answering the question:

Jason, where would you recommend someone start with the church fathers, both in terms of primary and secondary reading? It seems such a dauntingly large field to a non-specialist…

The answer is worth reading, but inevitably I disagree profoundly!

If you are interested in history, and have some idea about Greeks and Romans, then I think that I would recommend the following.

First, read the Didache, or “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles”.  It’s a first century work (one of the few not in the New Testament), which combines a Jewish moral manual (boring) with some practical instructions on how congregations should treat apostles and prophets! (very interesting).  I would suggest getting a modern translation; but a Google search will bring up others.  This is the only ancient text outside the New Testament to mention them.  It’s short.

Secondly, go and look at this page.  It’s the table of contents (sort of) for a massive collection of old translations of the Fathers, in chronological order.  It will give you a  bunch of names, and centuries, at a very high level.  You can click through and get the very olde-worlde translations too; but the main reason to look at this is just to get a high-level view of who wrote when.

Thirdly … get hold of a modern translation of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Church History.  There is a Penguin edition, translation by G.A. Williamson, which is excellent (the older version with Williamson’s own notes is better than the one with Louth’s, in my opinion).  This was written around 325 AD.  It’s in 10 books (some 480 pages of English – sorry!), and it contains any amount of very early sources in quotation, which aren’t preserved otherwise.  This gives you a strong, primary source account of how the church rose and progressed, right down to the legalisation of the church in 313 and the first ecumenical council (of Nicaea) in 325 AD.  It will also tell you how the early church thought about the New Testament.

After that … I would suggest looking into the earliest literature, known as the “apostolic fathers”.  It’s all boring, but on the other hand it isn’t very extensive.  You should certainly read “1 Clement” (written ca. AD 90, and a bit of a follow-up to 1 and 2 Corinthians in the NT).  The martyrdom of Polycarp (you read about him in Eusebius) is good.  The letters of Ignatius are worth a look also.

But from here you can find your own way in the sources.  Generally you find that the Fathers have “lovely moments, and dreadful quarters of an hour”, as was said of Wagner.  You have to learn to skim-read.

Now, secondary sources.  What you need here, obviously, is an overview of what exists.  For this there is no better source than J. Quasten, Patrology.  It’s in 4 volumes; the first two of reasonable size, the last two both immense.  But it really does list all the works by all the writers.  And it gives them in chronological order — so you can read it from cover to cover –, it discusses what they thought, quotes some “good bits”, and it has a very useful reading list at the end of each small chunk, including where to find the texts, translations, and studies.  The only drawback is that vols. 1-3 are now 50 years old (vol. 4 is 20 years old), and so don’t include more recent stuff.  The main omission is the Nag Hammadi library, which only got into the hands of the public in the 1960’s.

This may be overkill; but I’m rather fond of such volumes.  Just skimming, you get a very, very good idea of everything that exists.

I have no suggestions for more recent studies, since I specialise in primary sources.  I would caution you against modern American scholarship, which pretends that all the heresies were Christians, and then sneers that early “Christianity” believed all sorts of unbiblical things.  The Fathers think different; as you will see.

Let me recommend a couple of personal favourites.

S.L. Greenslade’s translation of Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum – on the Prescription of heretics.  It can be found here.  It gives principles on arguing with heretics — liberals, in our day –, some pitfalls to avoid in using the bible in such arguments, and ends with a skit on the frequency with which heretics change their minds.  Chapters 1-8 and the last couple are the really good bits.

Origen’s Contra Celsum is very long, but certainly the opening chapters are worth reading.  Henry Chadwick’s translation is the one to use.

The opening few chapters of Evans’ translation of Tertullian, Adversus Praxean, here, are well worth reading.

Don’t work at it; just potter around, and look at stuff you find interesting!  And … good luck!

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Ibn Abi Usaibia – the GAL entry, and the manuscripts

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have finally managed to find some hard information on Ibn Abi Usaibia (translation here), the two editions of the text, and the manuscripts of both.  What follows may be hard going; but it is almost entirely hard data.

A google search turned up this site.  It gives, thankfully, the GAL reference for Ibn Abi Usaibia, which means that, at long last, I can find the entry.  Here is the reference on the website.

BROCKELMANN KARL (1868-1956), Geschichte der arabischen Literatur. Weimar, Berlin 1898 ; Leipzig, C. F. Amelang 1901 [vi-265 p., 23 cm]; Leyde, E. J. Brill 1943 [2e sup.] ; Leyde, E. J. Brill 1996 [augm. et préface de Just Witkam] (I) p. 325-326; (sup. I) p. 560.

I.e. p.325-6 of volume 1 of the 1st edition, plus p.560 of vol. 1 of the supplement.

Here are the corresponding pages (p.397-8) from vol. 1 of the 2nd edition (which has the page numbers of the 1st ed. in the margin):

brockelmann2_vol1_397brockelmann2_vol1_398

And from the supplement:

 brockelmann2_suppl1b_560In the interests of googleability, here’s a transcription, with a few extra line breaks to make the detailed info more comprehensible.

10. Muwaffaqaddin a. ’l-`Abbās A. b. al-Q. b. a. Usaibi`a as-Sa`di al-Hazragi, geb. nach 590/1194 in Damaskus, wo sein Vater Augenarzt war, studierte Medizin in seiner Vaterstadt und am Nāsirischen Krankenhaus zu Kairo; besondere Anregung verdankte  er dem bekannten Arzt und Botaniker b. al-Baitār (S. 492). 631/1233 wurde er von Salāhaddin an einem neugegründeten Krankenhause zu Kairo angestellt, ging aber schon 632 an den Bimāristān an-Nuri zu Damaskus und 634 als Leibarzt des Emirs ‘Izzaddin Aidamur b. `Al. nach Safad. Dort starb er im Gum. I, 668/Jan. 1270.

Wüst. Gesch. 350, Leclerc II, 187/93. `Uyun al-anbā’ fi tabaqāt al-atibba’ (noch Patna II, 317,2469), in zwei Recensionen, einer v. J. 640/1242 und einer jüngeren mit manchen Zusätzen.

Hsg. v. A. Müller, Königsberg (Kairo) 1884.

Vgl. dens. ZDMG 34, 471, Travaux du VIe congr. intern, d. or. à Leide II, 218 ff., SBBA, phil.-hist. Cl. 1884, S. 857 ff.

and from the supplement:

10. Muwaffaqaddin a. ‘l-`Abbās A. b. al-Q. b. a. Usaibi`a (1) b. Halifa as-Sa`di al-Hazragi, geb. nach 590/1194 in Damaskus, wo er 632/1234 am Bimaristān an-Nuri angestellt wurde; 634 ging er als Leibarzt des Emirs `Izzaddin Aidamir b. `Al. nach Sarhad und starb dort im Gum, I, 668/Jan. 1270.

Nallino, `Ilm al-falah 64ff. K. `Uyun al-anba’ fi tabaqat al-atibba’, Hdss. noch Münch. 800/1, Wien 1164, Leid, 1062/4, Paris 2113/7, 5939, Nicholson JRAS 1899, 912, Fātih 4438, Top Kapu 2859/60, Sehid `A. P. 1923, Yeni 891/2, Köpr. 1104, Dämäd Ibr. 935, Kairo2 V, 275, Mosul 25,42, XIV, 26,78, Rampur, I, 642,176, Bank. XII, 786, Abkürzung Paris 2118.

S. noch Hamed Waly, Drei Kapp, aus der Ärztegeschichte des b. a. Us., med. Diss., Berlin 1911.

(1) So die Hds. Brit. Mus.

This is the origin of the “two recensions” story; there is one made in 1242 AD, and a “younger one, with some additions”.  The details may be found in Müller, Arabische Quellen zur Geschichte der indischen Medizin, in the ZDMG 34, starting on p.469 f., which may be found online here.  This also gives a list of manuscripts of the two recensions.

The JRAS (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society) article is online, and consists of a list of Arabic manuscripts owned by orientalist Reynold A. Nicholson.  The Ibn Abi Usaibia ms. was copied in Constantinople in 1136 A.H. (=1758 A.D.), and has the inscription, “E. Libris Theodori Preston Coll. S. S. Trin. Cant. Socii Damasci 1848”, and a note stating that Mr Preston purchased it in Damascus for 900 piastres.  I wonder where his manuscripts are now.

The supplement gives a further list of manuscripts — supplemental to that in the ZDMG article –, as does the webpage with which we started:

  • Ms. Cod. Arab. 800, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek preußischer Kulturbesitz
  • Ms. Cod. Arab. 801, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek preußischer Kulturbesitz
  • Ms. 715, Universitätsbibliothek, Leipzig
  • Ms. 4781, Dublin, Chester Beatty Library
  • Ms. Ar. 2113, Paris, Bibliothèque de France
  • Ms. Ar. 2114, Paris, Bibliothèque de France
  • Ms. Ar. 2115, Paris, Bibliothèque de France
  • Ms. Ar. 2117, Paris, Bibliothèque de France
  • Ms. Ar. 2118, Paris, Bibliothèque de France
  • Ms. 2859/1, Istanbul, Topkapi Saray
  • Ms. 2859/2, Istanbul, Topkapi Saray, daté 1334

So we’re getting some real, useful information at last here.  Curious that the GAL mentioned a British Museum manuscript in the footnote as the source of the author’s full name, but does not give the shelfmark for it!  It is, no doubt, British Library Add. 7340, an exemplar of the longer recension, mentioned in the ZDMG article.

The Muller edition of Ibn Abi Usaibia is only in my hands in a rather rubbish-looking reprint, which I suspect is incomplete.  I wish the original was online!

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A little information on Ibn Abi Usaibia, from Ibn Khallikan

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A thought struck me, to look into Ibn Khallikan’s biographical dictionary, of which an English translation exists.  The index to this is not nearly so confusing as for the GAL, and I eventually found a reference to vol. 4, p.158, where in the footnote we read:

Abu ‘l-Abbas Ahmad Ibn al-Kasim Ibn Khalifa Ibn Abi Osaibia, surnamed Muwatrak ad-Din and a member of the Arabic tribe of Khazraj, was born in Damascus, where his father was an oculist and his uncle, Rashid ad Din Abu ‘l-Hasan Ali, director of the hospital for the treatment of the maladies of tbe eyes. He studied philosophy under Rida ad-Din al-Jili, and profited greatly by the lessons of Abu Muhammad Abd Allah Ibn Ahmad Ibn al-Baitar, with whom he made a number of botanical excursions. Ibn al-Baitar is the author of the Dictionary of Simples, a deservedly celebrated compilation of which Dr. Sontheimer published a German translation, at Stuttgard, in the year 1840.  Ibn Abi Osaibia kept up for some time an epistolary correspondence with the celebrated physician and philosopher, Abu al-Latif. In the year 684 (A. D. 1236-7), he got an appointment in the hospital founded at Cairo by the sultan Salah ad-Din (Saladin). Some years after, he accompanied the emir Izz ad-Din Aidmor to Sarkhod, in Syria, and he died there, aged upwards of seventy years.

His history of the physicians, entitled Oyun al-Anba fi Tabakat al-Atibba (Sources of information concerning the physicians of divers classes), contains a number of curious and highly interesting articles. The list of its chapters has been given by Mr. Wustenfeld in his Geschichte der Arabischen Aertze, No. 237, and from that work are taken the indications given here. In the catalogue of the Bodleian library , tome II. p. 131. et seq. will be also found this list of chapters.

But on what does this depend?  Wustenfeld’s work is available online, of course.  Section 237 is on p.132.  This gives only the information above, and lists three works:

  1. Fontes relationum de classibus Medicorum.  A Latin translation by Reiske is at Copenhagen, we are told, no doubt in manuscript.
  2. Liber experimentorum et observationum utilium, about which we are told nothing further.
  3. Liber de monumentis gentium, a fragment not completed.

That the titles are in Latin tells us that Wustenfeld just copied this from earlier modern writers.

But then follows a list of chapters.  Some are marked with an asterisk (*), indicating that the chapter is not found in Reiske.  Others are marked with a dagger (+), indicating that “Nicoll” does not contain them.  Some titles are written in italics – Wustenfeld doesn’t say why.

The differences between the contents given by Reiske, and that by Nicoll, in later sections of the book are fairly considerable.  Clearly there are different versions of this text in circulation.

If we look for Ibn Abi Usaibia’s name in the Kopf translation (here), we quickly find that it appears as a source for various statements.  This itself suggests that the author of the work is someone else, someone later.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m trying to discover whether there is knowledge anywhere that Ibn Abi Usaibia (d. 1207) did, or did not, produce two editions of his great work, The History of Physicians.  The reason that I want to know is the existence of a supposed quotation from Porphyry, extant in a version of the text different from that translated by Kopf, presumably from the Muller edition.

The obvious place to look is Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur.  I believe that I have expressed my opinions of this mess of a book at some length in the past.  Briefly, B. produced his book in 2 volumes in 1898.  Then, during the 20’s, he produced 3 volumes of supplements for it.  Finally in the 30’s he produced a second edition of the original 2 volumes, complete with references back to the 3 volumes of supplements, which themselves refer to the pages of the 1st edition.  So you need all 7 volumes to find anything.

It’s a mess, in short.  I once decided to translate the stuff on early biographies of Mohammed.  It really is not possible to assemble all the material on one topic into one narrative – or, at least, it wasn’t for me.

And for reasons we can hardly imagine, the editors allowed him to abbreviate virtually every name and every other word, in the certain knowledge that few would understand the abbreviation.  To use the GAL as it is known is to know suffering.

Now the supplements and the first volume of the 2nd edition are online at the Digital Library of India site (and good luck to working out how to download them; but I managed it, once, so you can also).  The other two are at Google books, in a low-resolution form.  I was able to get Lulu.com to print me a copy of the 2nd edition volume, plus the first supplement (split into two halves, because of size limits at Lulu), and these, fittingly in a green cover, stand on my shelves.  And … they don’t contain what I want.  They contain sections on medicine; but no entry on Ibn Abi Usaibia (or “b. a. Us.” as Brockelmann unhelpfully calls him).

I’ve just looked through my PDF of vol. 1 of 1st ed; nothing.  I wonder if there is an index at the end of vol. 2…?  And there is!  And … it is in some mysterious non-alphabetical order!  And abbreviated heavily too!  Which means … I can’t find the name in here either.

Boy, it all eats time!

He must have an entry … somewhere … mustn’t he?

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