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Did pseudo-Ephraim believe in the Rapture? Some notes on the manuscripts, the passage and its Greek origins

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There is a Latin text from the early Dark Ages which some believe teaches the “Rapture”; the idea that, before the Tribulation described in Revelation, the saints will all be caught up in the air by God and taken away. This claim has become a subject of controversy in the USA, as has the discussion about the Latin text.

I don’t intend to discuss here the Rapture teaching. But I think that it would be interesting to look at this obscure text here, and verify the claim made about it. Will the text bear the weight placed upon it?

Also, since many of the manuscripts are online, we get to look at two critical texts and three manuscripts, and second-guess the editors!  But I do apologise for its length!

I suspect that this post might interest people involved in that controversy, so I have tried to avoid jargon and explain my terms, so that any interested reader can follow the discussion. If I have failed at any point, please let me know through the comments.

First, some bibliography. It’s as well to be clear that there is a text, known as the Syriac “Apocalypse of pseudo-Ephrem,” which is NOT the same work; and there are a lot of Greek sermons attributed to Ephraim, all about the end of the world.

Title of the work

In the Clavis Patrum Latinorum, the index of early Christian texts in Latin, this text is CPL 1144, and given the title “Scarpsum de dictis Sancti Efrem prope fine mundi et consummatione saeculi et conturbatione gentium”, i.e. “Extract from the sayings of St Ephraim On the end of the world, the consummation of the age, and the confusion of the nations.” It is generally known for convenience as “De fine mundi”, “On the end of the world”. The title as given in the earliest known copies is given below. However I notice that in some scholarship the work is listed as “De antichristo et de fine mundi”, “On antichrist and the end of the world”.[1]

Author of the work

Ephraim (or Ephrem) the Syrian lived from 306 to 373 AD. He wrote only in Syriac. He has nothing to do with the work that we are discussing, although it passes under his name. But his fame was such that works under his name appear in every single language of the ancient world.  So we need to explain the rather strange name of “pseudo-Ephraim Latinus.”

A very large collection of works in Greek can be found in the handwritten Greek books of the middle ages, where the title says that the author is Ephraim. Very few of these are in fact translations of his works, or even from works by other people in Syriac. Most of these works are of unknown authorship. These works are known for convenience as “Ephraim Graecus”. They have mostly been printed. Translations into English or French etc are few. Scholars have not worked here, for the most part.

There is also a small collection of works in Latin, where the Latin manuscripts give the author as Ephraim.  A collection of 6 sermons seems to be a translation of works from Ephraim Graecus. These are known for convenience to scholars as “Ephraim Latinus”.  The other Latin texts attributed to Ephraim are known as “Pseudo Ephraim Latinus”.  Our text is one of these. Much of this material has never been printed. Studies by scholars are few.

The author of our work, “De fine mundi”, will be referred to (for convenience – what else?) as pseudo-Ephraim Latinus. We shall see what we can deduce about him later on.

Manuscripts

This text has reached us in a small number of handwritten medieval copies, today preserved in libraries in cities across Europe. Each manuscript is unique, and each library assigns each a code or number of some sort (known as a shelfmark). Editors give each manuscript a single letter reference (or siglum) for quick reference by scholars.

  • P = Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Français, manuscript Latin 13348. Text starts on folio (in manuscript studies each leaf is numbered, rather than each page, and the front side is the “recto” or “r”; the reverse is the “verso” or “v”) 89v and ends on 93v. Followed by a short piece from Greek of Peter the Monk, then a sermon of pseudo-Methodius. The title in the manuscript is “Scarpsum de dictis Sancti Efrem prope fine mundi et consummatione saeculi et conturbatione gentium”. The type of book-hand used tells us that the manuscript was written in the 8th century. A monochrome PDF is online here.
  • A = Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, ms. 80. Fol. 103r-104v. Then a bit of Jerome on the works of Methodius, the preface of Peter the Monk, and ps.Methodius. Same title as P. 13th century.
  • B = Vatican, Barberini lat. 671. Foll.167-171. Followed by ps.Methodius. Same title as P. No later than 13th century. Online here.
  • G = St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, ms. 108. Foll.2-10. “Sermo Isidori de fine mundi” – the author of the text is given here as Isidore, not Ephraim. The next text in the ms. is the Revelation of Ps.Methodius. About 800 AD. Online here.
  • K = Karlsruhe, Landesbibliothek, ms. 196. Text starts on folio 24r, ends 29r. “Sermo sancti Effrem de finibus seculi” (Sermon of St Ephraim on the ends of the ages). Next but one text is the Revelation of Ps. Methodius. 9th century.

This list is from a modern edition of the Latin text – I list these in a moment -, namely that of Verhelst.

A Google search suggested that there might be another manuscript at Koblenz as well, but the opening words of the text (the “incipit”) indicate that this is a different unknown work.[2]

By examining copyist errors, Verhelst drew the following diagram of which manuscripts were copies of which:

X stands for the now lost original.  A and K are copies of P, while B and G are independent.

Editions

The Latin text has been printed twice, based upon the manuscripts.

  • P. Caspari, Briefe, Abhandlungen und Predigten aus den zwei letzten Jahrhunderten des kirchlichen Altherthums und dem Anfang des Mittelalters, 1896. Online here. Pages 208-20 contain the text (Caspari_text PDF); pages 429-472 contain Caspari’s discussion of it (Caspari_discussion PDF).
  • D. Verhelst, “Scarpsum de dictis sancti Efrem prope fine”, in: R. Lievens (ed), Pascua Mediaevalia : studies voor Prof. Dr. J.M. de Smet, Louvain, 1983, p.518-528. Online here.

Caspari edited the text based upon 4 manuscripts; Verhelst added knowledge of the Karlsruhe manuscript. The two editions differ slightly, as we shall see.

Translations

There were no translations into any language, until Grant Jeffery discovered the text, and asked Cameron Rhoades, professor of Latin at Tyndale Seminary in Texas to make a draft translation into English.[3] This translation Jeffrey published in an article:

Electronic transcriptions of the Rhoades translation have circulated on the internet, but these are apparently of doubtful accuracy.[4]

  • B. McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages, 1979. Chapter 4, pp.60-1, contains a translation of part of the work from Caspari.

Studies

Quite a few papers mention this work. Here’s a selection of those not included in the footnotes.

  • Paul J. Alexander, The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, p.136 ff. The discussion that started it all, when Grant Jeffrey read it. Preview here.
  • T.L.Frazier, A Second Look at the Second Coming: Sorting Through the Speculations, p.181. This is the anti-Rapture position with discussion of de fine mundi. Preview here.
  • Gerrit Reinink, “Pseudo-Methodius and the Pseudo-Ephremian ‘Sermo de Fine Mundi’”, In: R.I.A. Nip &c, Media Latinitas: A collection of essays to mark the retirement of L.J.Engels, Steenbrugis, 1996, pp. 317-321. First page visible here. Unfortunately I was unable to access this paper. However I was able to access a discussion of his claim that De fine mundi is derived from the Apocalypse of ps.Methodius, in S. Shoemaker, The Apocalypse of Empire: Imperial Eschatology in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 2018, p.202-3 n.94 f., which dismisses the claim as unconvincing. Preview here.
  • G. Kortekaas, “The Biblical Quotations in the Pseudo-Ephremian ‘Sermo de fine mundi’”, In: R.I.A. Nip &c, Media Latinitas: A collection of essays to mark the retirement of L.J.Engels, Steenbrugis, 1996, pp. 237-244. First page visible here. Again I was unable to access this.
  • D. Hemmerdinger-Iliadou, ‘Éphrem latin’, in: Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, vol. 4, Paris 1960, col. 815-819.
  • R. Gryson, Répertoire général des auteurs ecclésiastiques latins de l’Antiquité et du Haut Moyen Âge, t. 1, A-H, Herder, 2007. This is said to contain an overview of the scholarship ; again I was unable to access it.

Origins of De fine mundi

Before we look at the specific passage that concerns the Rapture, in chapter 2, we ought to establish something more about the text. Our text is not an original composition, but uses material from other ancient texts, which are therefore relevant.

C. P. Caspari (p.445) has identified no fewer than 8 works from Ephraem Graecus or Ephraem Latinus where the wording seems very close to that in De fine mundi. These were printed in the 18th century by J.S.Assemani in three volumes.[5] Let me give the page numbers and the conventional Latin titles for each, together with the reference in the CPG, the Clavis Patrum Graecorum, the index of early Christian texts in Greek:

  1. Vol. 1, p.294-99 – Beatitudine alia, capita XX. (= CPG 3935.2)
  2. Vol. 2, 222-230 – Sermo in Adventum Domini et de consummatine saeculi et in adventum Antichristi (= CPG 3946)
  3. Vol. 3, p.136-40 – In Adventum Domini, sermones III. (= CPG 4012, sermon 2)
  4. Vol. 3, p.376-80 – Sermo utilis de paenitentia, et judicio, et separatione animae et corporis (= CPG 4044)
  5. Vol. 2, 192-209 – Sermo in secundum adventum d.n.I.C. (= CPG 3944)
  6. Vol. 2, 209-222 – Sermo de communi resurrectione, de paenitentia et de caritate, et in secundum adventum d.n.I.C. (=CPG 3945)
  7. Vol. 3, 152-159 – Sermo paraeneticus de secundo adventu domini, et de paenitentia (=CPG 4016)
  8. Vol. 3, 579-81 – De die judicii (=CPG 4089) (Given in Latin)

There is quite a quantity of works here, connected to the Second Coming of the Lord, and repentance!  Nor is this all; at various points our text has the same words as passages in something known as the “Latin Apocalypse of pseudo-Methodius.”  This work is often found in the same manuscripts as de fine mundi.  Our text really looks like something of a hodge-podge, and indeed it may be.[6]

Only the two works in bold relate to our passage specifically. We will ignore the remainder, except to say that they indicate that the unknown author of our work was clearly very familiar with the Ephraim material in Greek and Latin.

Origins of chapter 2 of De fine mundi

Caspari’s discussion included a list of places where the text was parallel to that in some other work. Here is his entry for our passage.  Click on it to expand.

That’s rather hard to read.  The Latin of De fine mundi is on the left; the parallels to the right and below.  Each “parallel” has a reference at the end – III, 378, etc – which refers to the Assemani edition volume and page number, which I gave in full above.

*   *   *   *

Firstly, we need to recheck what De fine mundi actually says. Caspari prints his text from the Vatican manuscript. But since then we have Verhelst’s edition, and some manuscripts are actually online!

Here’s the text of De fine mundi, as given by Caspari. I have placed the key words in bold.

Omnes enim sancti et electi Dei, ante tribulationem quae uentura est, colliguntur et ad Dominum adsumuntur, ne quando uideant confusionem, quae uniuersum propter peccata nostra obruet mundum.

For all the saints and elect of God, prior to the tribulation that is to come, are gathered and are taken [up] to the Lord, lest they see the confusion, that will overwhelm the whole world because of our sins.

But the text given by Verhelst (p.524, l.36-39) is different:

Omnes enim sancti et electi Dei, ante tribulationem quae uentura est, colliguntur et a Domino adsumentur, ne quando uideant confusionem, quae uniuersum propter peccata nostra obruit mundum.

For all the saints and elect of God, prior to the tribulation that is to come, are gathered and will be taken by the Lord, lest they see the confusion, that will overwhelm the whole world because of our sins.

Verhelst’s apparatus shows that “ad Dominum” is just the reading of B, the Vatican manuscript, and this is online. Let’s look at it!

The text continues at the top of the next folio, 168r:

Looking at the bottom of folio 167v we find “etaddnm” (I can’t mark the overscore on the n in this post), which is abbreviated from “et ad dominum”. Note also the spelling “adsummentur”.

The other manuscripts do not say this. Here’s fol. 4 of manuscript G, the St Gall ms., with the abbreviated “a dnō” = “a domino”:

Here’s the same sentence in ms. P, with the same reading “a domino”.

Verhelst does not indicate where he gets the “adsumentur”, but we can see it in B. However both G and P have “adsumuntur” as Caspari printed it, and this is probably right.

None of this really amounts to much. It doesn’t change the meaning much, to say “taken up to God” or “taken up by God”, does it.

*   *   *   *

The order in which Caspari gives his parallels is somewhat confusing. Let’s do it a bit more systematically.

1.  Latin: De Beatitudine Animae (On the blessing of the soul)

The first parallel is in another Latin text. This is one of the 6 sermons in the Latin collection of Ephraim texts known as Ephraim Latinus; specifically in De beatitudine animae. This has the code CPL 1143.ii. This work is contained in several manuscripts. Caspari transcribes the St Gall manuscripts 92 and 93, which differ on one letter, “obruit” or “obruet”.  Here’s what he prints:

Omnes sancti et electi, ante tribulationem quae uentura est, collinguntur et a Domino assumuntur, ut non uideant confusionem illam magnam, quae universum obruit [obruet] mundum.

All the saints and elect, before the tribulation which is to come, are gathered and taken by the Lord, so that they may not see that great confusion, that will overwhelm [overwhelms] the whole world.

This is nearly identical to the passage in De fine mundi.  It’s pretty obvious that our author copied it from here.

Note also the “a Domino” “by God” wording.  The St Gall manuscripts 92 and 93 of De beatitudine animae are online, so let’s just confirm that. Here is the text as it appears in ms. 93: [7]

There’s an early printed edition of De beatitudine animae, which was printed before 1500, and that version is also online, and we can check that also.[8]  Often early editions are based on other manuscripts now lost.

That’s rather hard to read, but if you concentrate a bit you can see the “colligut” with abbreviation marks, followed by a “7” which is actually an abbreviation for “et”, followed by “a dno”. So this has the same reading.

The pseudo-Ephraim Latinus is probably derived from the Ephraim Latinus material, so I would conclude that there is very little doubt that the author of De fine mundi copied this word for word from De beatitudine animae.

The correct readings in both texts are “a Domino” and “assumuntur” – “are gathered and taken [up] by God, so that they don’t see that great confusion, that overshadows [or “will overshadow”] the whole world”.

*   *   *   *

Now let’s look at the Greek texts, from which the Latin texts probably derive. Caspari really presented this data in a confusing way. I hope we can do better! I will skate lightly over the many problems that the “Ephraim Graecus” material presents to us.

  1. Μακαρισμοὶ ἕτεροι, κεφάλαια κʹ / Beatitudines aliae, capita viginti / Other blessings, 20 chapters

This Greek text (CPG 3935, 2) is the Greek original of the Latin text that we just looked at, De beatitudine aliae. It was printed in J. S. Assemani’s 6 volume edition of Ephraem Graecus, in volume 1, on column 297 C.  It’s hard to read, as you will see.  Fortunately the Greek text was retyped in modern times and is now in the TLG.[9]. Here it is:

Οἱ ἐκλεκτοὶ συνάγονται πρὸ θλίψεως τοῦ μὴ ἰδεῖν τὴν σύγχυσιν καὶ τὴν θλῖψιν τὴν μεγάλην ἐρχομένην εἰς τὸν κόσμον τὸν ἄδικον.

Electi ne videant magnam illam confusionem, atque pressuram, quae iniquum hunc mundum obruet, colliguntur.[10]

The elect are gathered together before the tribulation so that they do not see the confusion and the great suffering to come over the whole world.

Click on the image for higher-resolution:

The sense is the same, but the “gathered and taken by the Lord” idea is reduced only to “gathered”. How being “gathered” will prevent the elect from experiencing the tribulation is not stated.

At any event we can see that the translator added the “a domino assumuntur” (“taken [up] by the Lord”). Presumably this was his explanation for that very question.

The Rapture teaching references 1 Thess. 4:17, so let’s see that, in the Latin bible.  This was probably known to the author of de fine mundi, but he may have used a different Latin version.

Deinde nos, qui vivimus, qui relinquimur, simul rapiemur cum illis in nubibus obviam Christo in aëra, et sic semper cum Domino erimus. (Vulgate)

After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. (NIV)

If the man who made the Latin translation – de beatitudine – from the Greek used here “rapientur” (“will be caught up”) instead of “assumuntur” (will be taken [up]), then we would have no doubt that he was thinking of this passage in the bible. But he did not.  It would be interesting to know what the Old Latin was for this verse, however.

3.  Λόγος περὶ μετανοίας καὶ κρίσεως, καὶ περὶ χωρισμοῦ ψυχῆς καὶ σώματος / Sermo utilis de paenitentia, et judicio, et separatione animae et corporis / Sermon on penitence, and judgement, and the separation of soul and body.

When we look at the CPG for the previous item, we are informed of links to yet another Greek work. This has the code CPG 4044, and appears in Assemani volume 3, page 376.[11] It was printed from a Vienna manuscript, no 62, folio 225 f, according to Assemani.  I’ve not looked at this.

But the page of interest to us is 378 (p.454 of the downloadable PDF of Assemani). There are two sentences on this page, not together, which Caspari quotes above.

The first appears at the top of Caspari, but is toward the bottom of p.378, section E, line 2.

Οἱ ἐκλεκτοὶ συνάγονται πρὸ τῆς θλίψεως, τοῦ μὴ ἰδεῖν τὴν σύγχυσιν καὶ τὴν θλῖψιν τὴν μεγάλην τὴν ἐρχομένην εἰς τὸν ἄδικον κόσμον.

Congregantur electi ante tribulationem, ne confusionem videant…

The elect are gathered before the tribution…

This is pretty much identical to the passage in Beatitudines aliae. In fact the Dictionaire de spiritualite 4, col. 815, section 10, signals “duplicia” – “a duplicate” – with Assemani’s “volume 1, p.294-99” – which in fact is the very same text, the Beatitudines aliae.

The second quote runs along the bottom of Caspari.  It can be found at the top of Assemani 3 p.378, section A line 3f. I’ve highlighted Caspari’s quote.

Ταῦτα μένουσι τὴν ἐρχομένην σύγχυσιν καὶ τὴν θλῖψιν τὴν μεγάλην τὴν μέλλουσαν ἐπέρχεσθαι ἐπὶ πάντα τὰ πέρατα τῆς γῆς. Διὰ τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν <καὶ> διὰ τὴν ἡμῶν χαυνότητα προβαίνουσι τὰ πονηρά. [12]

Haec expectant venturam confusionem, ac tribulationem magnam, quae ventura est super omnes terminus terrae propter peccata nostra….

These await the coming confusion, and the great tribulation, which will come upon all the ends of the earth because of our sins…

This is similar material, but this doesn’t include any of the “collected together and taken by God” material.

All the same, we can see quite clearly that the material in Beatitudines aliae is identical, or nearly so, to two passages in this other work in the Ephraem Graecus collection.

It should be added that neither of these Greek texts is a translation of anything in Syriac.

*   *   *   *

Let’s draw the threads together, after all those manuscript pictures and bits of Latin and Greek.  What have we discovered here?

We have discovered that in the Greek “Ephraim” material, there is a mysterious passage about the elect being gathered together before the tribulation, so that they don’t have to see the suffering.

We have discovered that one of these texts was translated into Latin, becoming De beatitudine animae, and that the translator “improved” the Greek by adding a couple of words, so that the elect are gathered and, crucially, taken away by the Lord, so that they don’t see the suffering.

We have discovered that the author of pseudo-Ephraim Latinus, de fine mundi, copied this sentence word-for-word from De beatitudine animae. Presumably he saw nothing unusual in it.

So we have a passage, appearing in two Latin authors, which says that before the Tribulation, the elect are gathered together and taken away by the Lord. We have the same passage, less explicit, in two Greek texts from which the Latin is derived. We can see that the Latin authors understood the text in that manner.

The sentence in De fine mundi is certainly copied from the Latin translation of De Beatitudine animae, rather  than derived from the Greek. The presence of “assumuntur” in the Latin translation of De beatitudine, which not found in the Greek, shows the author’s worked from the Latin version. Our only caveat is that we possess no critical edition of De beatitudine animae, so we cannot be sure that this wording is correct.

Other parts of De fine mundi come from a range of other works by Ephraim Graecus, for which we possess no Latin translation. Unless we hypothesise the existence of now-lost Latin translations, we must presume that the author knew Greek.

The Greek text of De beatitudine animae / Beatitudines aliae capita viginti contains the idea in similar wording, but without the “assumuntur” of the Latin. This work consists of 19 short blessings, and then, as chapter 20, a long section of text. It is hard not to look at the imbalance and feel that chapter 20 does not belong with the blessings; particularly when we look at the Sermo utilis de paenitentia and find the same ideas on the same page, although in two separate sentences. Chapter 20 is, perhaps, a summary of material culled from the Sermo utilis?

It should be added that neither Greek work was translated from Syriac, as far as we know.[13]

What about the date and place of composition?  Caspari noted the reference to “Persian wars” and the decline of Rome; which places it before the Islamic conquest of Persia in 640 AD.  He noted another reference to two “brother emperors” in the past, which can only be either Valens and Valentinian, ca. 378 AD; or perhaps Honorius and Arcadius, ca. 410 AD. We know that De beatitudine animae is found in a manuscript written around 700 AD.  From all this, Bousset dated the work to the 4th century; Caspari to before 628.

Perhaps we might speculate a little here ourselves.  As we have seen, the author of De fine mundi was clearly a Latin, as he copied from a form of the text only present in the Latin translation of De beatitudine animae.   So that translation must already have been made. It is known that this translation was made early, not least because a manuscript exists written around 700 AD. However the author was also clearly familiar with ideas from a range of works by Ephraim Graecus, of which no Latin translations are now known to exist. If we reject the hypothesis that a lot more of Ephraim Graecus was translated into Latin in antiquity, and then lost, we must conclude that he was also fluent in Greek, and had ready access to manuscripts. We also know that he refers to the “brother emperors”.

I suggest that the author was a westerner, living in Constantinople, sometime after the reign of Honorius and Arcadius – the brother emperors – and aware of the Roman collapse in the west, and of Persian attacks in the East, and in a place and time where there was intense interest in the subject of the end of the world, as might well have been the case in that period. The mass of western refugees in Constantinople at the second quarter of the 5th century fits this period nicely. On the other hand there was relatively little in the way of Persian wars until 502 AD, other than the brief wars of 421-2 and 440. There are references to the Nestorian debates in the Ephraim Graecus collection, and also to the Theotokos. Perhaps we might speculate from all this that De fine mundi was written by a Latin speaker in Constantinople around 450 AD?

If this is correct, it would follow that the Ephraim Graecus material used by him existed well before this date, and the Ephraim Latinus collection of 6 sermons also.

Did the author believe in the Rapture, much as modern Pre-Millenial Dispensationalists do? The cautious reader will hesitate. For we are sifting the meaning of a single sentence; and it is generally unwise to place too much reliance on a couple of words in a single sentence. There is no link to 1 Thess. 4:17, to being “caught up in the air”; only to being “taken [up]”.  Really there is not.  Does that by itself destroy the claim?  I don’t know.

What we can say that the data is consistent with Dr Jeffrey’s claim that ps.Ephraim Latinus believed in the Rapture; and indeed that the author of the Greek texts did so as well. The author states that the elect will be gathered together before the tribulation and taken away by God so that they do not see the suffering that is to come. What else, in a way, is the teaching of the Rapture than this?  The text of pseudo-Ephraim Latinus’ de fine mundi will bear this interpretation.

But … the statement is too brief for us to be certain.  Two key words cannot compel belief.  If we know of no other evidence that a modern teaching was present to the minds of 5th century believers, then we would probably be very wary of asserting it based on a single ambiguous sentence in an obscure work.  The evidence, in the end, leaves us doubtful.  The similarity may merely be an accident.

Much more research also would be needed for us to be sure that such an interpretation was possible at that period.  For any statement of this kind must be interpreted, not by the beliefs of 19th century America, but by the known beliefs of the period.  We know of no other evidence that this interpretation was in vogue.  Other interpretations are therefore more probable, as a commenter has already pointed out here, if they can be stated in a not-to-contrived manner. The wise man will be cautious.  But such a survey is beyond the scope of this already too lengthy post.

It’s certainly a very interesting text, in a neglected area of patristics.  We could use much more work on Ephraim Graecus and Ephraim Latinus and pseudo-Ephraim.

Update 11 June 2024:  I’ve been rereading the post, and just adding a few words where I realise that I wasn’t as clear as I might have been.

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  1. [1]E.g. W. J. Aerts & G.A.A.Kortekass, “Die Apokalypse des Pseudo-Methodius: Die Altesten Griechischen und Lateinischen Ubersetzungen”, 1998. CSCO 569, subsidia 97. Preview.↩
  2. [2]See Christina Meckelnborg, Mittelalterliche Handschriften im Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz, p.176, preview here. It’s in Bestand 701, manuscript 128, ff. 51r-57r. 13th century. It too contains Ps.Methodius. But the incipit is “Incipit tractatus sancti Effrem translatus de Greco in Latinum de antichristo et fine mundi. Omnes quotquot estis fideles Christi…” I did not find this incipit in the CPL.↩
  3. [3]I have been unable to discover anything whatsoever about Cameron Rhoades. Jeffrey tells us (Armageddon: Appointment with destiny, 2009): “Professor Cameron Rhoades, professor of Latin at Tyndale Theological Seminary, translated Ephraem’s Latin text into English at the request of my friend Dr Tommy Ice and myself.”↩
  4. [4]Bob Gundry, First the Antichrist: Why Christ Won’t Come before the Antichrist Does, 1996, Postscript: Pseudo-Ephraem on Pretrib Preparation for a Posttrib Meeting with the Lord, note 8: “The translation reads correctly in Jeffrey’s version (p.114) but not in that of the Pre-Trib Research Centre (compare note 3 above).”↩
  5. [5]Assemani also did three volumes in Syriac, confusingly. Here is the title for the Greek volumes. S. Assemani, Sancti Patris nostri Ephraem Syri Opera omnia quae extant graece, syriace, latine, in sex tomos distributa. Rome 1732-46. Online here, and Vol.1;  Vol.2; Vol. 3. Assemani made a complete mess of editing these texts; for details see Wilhelm Bousset’s criticism, Der Antichrist in der Überlieferung des Judentums, des neuen Testaments und der alten Kirche, Göttingen, 1895. Translated into English as The Antichrist Legend, 1986, online at Archive.org here in German and English; and D. Hemmerdinger-Illiadou, “Les doublets de l’édition de l ‘Éphrem grec par Assemani”, OCP 24 (1958), although this I have not seen.↩
  6. [6]Readers may be interested in the very intelligent comment on an earlier post by Matthias Gassman, here.↩
  7. [7]The ms. 93 is online here.↩
  8. [8] Ephrem Syrus, Sermones, ed. Kilianus Fischer (Piscator), Freiburg im Breisgau c. 1491, fol. 12-13v, online here.↩
  9. [9]beautitudines-aliae-capita-viginti (PDF)↩
  10. [10]I give A. Traversari’s renaissance translation for ease of comparison.↩
  11. [11]sermo-de-paenitentia-et-iudicio-et-separatione-animae-et-co (PDF)↩
  12. [12]Caspari’s quote misses the full stop part way through present in Assemani.↩
  13. [13]They do not appear in the list of homilies translated from Greek given at the syri.ac site.↩

Hunting for the modern Greek translation of Ephraim Graecus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

After my post on Ephraim Graecus here, I discovered that a modern edition of the whole collection exists, with a translation of all the works into modern Greek. This is Φραντζοᾶς, Ὁσιοῦ Ἐφραίμ τοῦ Σύρου, Thessaloniki, 1988-98, 7 vols.[1]  There is a website with a list of the contents by volume, and some mysterious-looking linked pages of text for each here.

My initial efforts to locate this, even in printed form, initially drew blank because the editor’s name does not appear on the websites.  You have to search for the Greek title, which is ΟΣΙΟΥ ΕΦΡΑΙΜ ΤΟΥ ΣΥΡΟΥ.  Searching for the editor name is futile.  If you do want to find it, try Phrantsoles (!).

I was luckier last night, and located a bookseller who had the volumes, in stock, and which played nice with Google Translate (just open in Chrome and right-click, and hit “Translate to English”.  It’s here: https://www.politeianet.gr/sygrafeas/osios-efraim-o-suros-10469, Βιβλιοπωλείο Πολιτεία.  I was able to create an account easily enough via the Google Translated form of the website, and no doubt could have ordered.

Translated:

The seven volumes each cost about 18.40 euros.  Unfortunately postage from Greece is as much again.

I have not been able to locate any copies of these volumes in British libraries.  No doubt some Greek Orthodox people have them.

But the existence of these volumes means that anyone whose first language is modern Greek has an enormous advantage over the rest of us.  It would be a tedious, but relatively straightforward business for such a person to prepare a summary of the contents of every work, in English and post it online.  Such a step would instantly make the works far more accessible.

There are quite a few people in patristics from a Greek Orthodox background.  Would any of them care to undertake the challenge?

There is more.  Google Translate does not handle ancient Greek, for some reason.  But it does handle modern Greek, as we have seen.  I wonder what it would make of some of these texts?

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  1. [1]Konstantinos G. Phrantzolas / Κων. Γ. Φραντζόλάς, Ὁσιοῦ Ἐφραίμ τοῦ Σύρου  ἔργα, Thessaloniki: Το περιβόλι της Παναγίας / To Perivoli tis Panagias, 1988-98, 7 vols.  I’ve also seen google results for Phrantzoles (!).  After looking at the edition itself, I can see the name is plainly Phrantzolas.↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s rare that I can mark my birthday, because it is in October.  Once the summer holidays are over, managers recruit contractors in September. So as a rule, I have just started a contract when my birthday comes round.  So, “big birthday” or not, it goes unmarked.

However this year I am still at home, so I went down to St Austell in Cornwall for a few days.

I was fortunate to have exceedingly good weather.  Each day I went down to the little port of Charlestown.  Let me inflict a couple of holiday photographs on you, before I move on to matter of more general interest.

Charlestown at dusk
The setting sun glitters on the masts of the yacht, and on the lighthouse on Gribben Head, as a huge moon fades into view at the top right.

Back I came yesterday, and unfortunately I had to spend a few hours at the end of a 350 mile journey in writing a sample coding exercise for a company that I have applied to.  Such exercises can consume a lot of applicants’ time, but cost the company nothing, so I usually avoid them.  But this role is very close to home, so worth it.  A splitting headache today is reminding me of the price for not resting on Sunday.

I spent some of the time in the hotel searching the web for material related to Ephraem Graecus and Ephraim Latinus.  Some of this was quite productive.  I need to download all of this, and digest it into my notes.

This raises the question of how best to proceed.  In one way it would be best to update my existing post on Ephraim Graecus, as I get more information.  In another this might become very long.  The alternative is to scatter the data across a series of posts as I read it, which is messy for those who come looking for it.  Possibly I should create a page on this blog about Ephraim Graecus, and then blog my progress, updating the page and using the blog posts as announcements, as it were.  I’m not sure.

Ephraim Latinus is still on my mind, and indeed the focus for all this work.  While I was away, the Ice/Demy (eds) volume When the Trumpet Sounds appeared.  Or, rather, I found it lying behind my back gate on the concrete, where the Yodel delivery man had thrown it.  This inaccessible volume contains an article with the publication of the English translation of Ephraem Latinus, De fine mundi.  I shall scan the article and place it here somewhere.

Incidentally isn’t it curious that an poor-quality delivery firm should name itself after a high-pitched ullulating scream?  More or less the same sound, in fact, that its customers make after discovering to their horror that the vendor has chosen to send their goods by Yodel?

I’m finding that early editions of Ephraim Graecus are not online – the Thwaites edition in particular.

A couple of studies are in dissertations which do not seem to be online.  For one of these I wrote to the author, but no answer.  These ought to be obtained.

There is also a 7 volume edition of the Greek text, printed from Assemani, with modern Greek translation.  I have yet to find any sign of this either.

So there is quite a bit to do.  But not today!

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A big hole in Patristics – the neglect of Ephraim Graecus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

We all know that Christianity spread west into the Greek and Latin-speaking world.  It also spread east, into the Syriac-speaking world.  Most important of the Christian writers in Syriac is Ephraim of Nisibis, known generally as Ephraim the Syrian, or Ephrem/Effrem Syrus, who flourished in the mid-to-late 4th century and died in 373 AD.  He wrote mainly in verse.  His work proved popular, and he was translated into or copied in most of the languages of the ancient world.

Ephraim’s Syriac works now exist in fine, modern critical editions, with German translation, thanks to the immense effort of E. Beck in the CSCO series.  Admittedly nobody actually has copies of them – unless somebody has bootlegged that series to PDF without my knowledge! – but the point is that they exist.  Sebastian Brock gives a masterly bibliography of them in his St. Ephrem: A Brief Guide to the Main Editions and Translations, now online at Syri.ac here, and this includes discussion of non-Syriac materials.

There is a huge collection of materials in Greek, attributed to Ephraim the Syrian.  Brock notes:

A glance at the second volume of the Clavis Patrum Graecorum (CPG)52 will indicate that the number of texts in Greek attributed to Ephrem (CPG 3905–4175, 366–468) is exceeded only by those attributed to John Chrysostom (CPG 4305–5197, 491–672). …

The second volume of CPG (1974) and the Supplement (1998)53 provide the essential guide to ‘Ephrem Graecus’, and include references to the main secondary literature.54 The corpus is in fact very disparate in character, consisting of at least three very different elements:

  • (1) translations of genuine works by Ephrem
  • (2) translations of Syriac works not by Ephrem
  • (3) a large body of material, itself disparate in character, for which Greek is the original language. Some of the Greek texts employ a syllabic metre; these may belong to any one of the three categories.

Another scholar writes:

The Greek manuscripts of Ephraem are so numerous that in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris he is counted as the fourth most popular of the Greek Fathers, after St Chrysostom, St Gregory of Nazianzus, and St Basil. The collection of Greek manuscripts of Ephraem in the Vatican Library is almost as numerous. The earliest witness is a papyrus in the Louvre containing fragments of the Life of St Abraamios.[1]

Unfortunately this great mass of material has attracted very little scholarly attention.  What we should like to see is a list of the material, with indications of whether it is (a) really by Ephrem Syrus and translated (b) really from Syriac, if not by Ephrem or (c) clearly a Greek originally composition.  Unfortunately I don’t believe that this basic list of works plus classification exists anywhere.

Lists of Works

What we do have is a list of works in the Clavis Patrum Graecorum vols 2 and supplement:   CPG 3905-4184, supplement pp.227-250, containing supplements – mainly but not exclusively of Arabic and Old Slavonic versions.  This often indicates connections with other versions; but it is quite unclear on what this information is based.

There is also an article by D. Hemmerdinger-Iliadou, in Dictionaire de Spiritualité, vol. 4 (1960), cols. 800-815, which answers some of these questions, in a rather disorganised manner.

There is Homilies of Ephraim Graecus at the Syri.ac site here, covering only the homilies, which suggests that all the homilies have some connection with Syriac.  This claim appears to be based on the CPG data.

A rather strangely formatted bibliography (but useful) is at A Comprehensive Bibliography on Syriac Christianity – Ephremiana [Greek], here.

There is also a dissertation which I have not been able to access: C. Emereau, Saint Ephrem le Syrien; son œuvre littéraire grecque, Paris (1918).

Likewise inaccesible is a festschrift where two papers seem interesting too:

  • S. P. Brock, “The Changing Faces of St. Ephrem as Read in the West”, (pp.65-80)
  • E. Lash, “The Greek Writings Ascribed to Saint Ephrem”, (pp. 81-98)

Both in K. Ware &c (edd.), Abba: the tradition of Orthodoxy in the West: festschrift for Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003.

Editions

The original edition of Ephraim Graecus was that of Edmund Thwaites, S. Ephraim Syrus, Graece, e codicibus manuscriptis Bodleianis, Oxford, 1709.  This was Greek only, so in a single volume, and can be downloaded from here.

Hardly anybody uses this.  Thwaites edition was of 159 Greek works attributed to Ephraim, plus two Greek vitae.  Thwaite’s edition was made without ever leaving Oxford, so all the manuscripts that he used are in the Bodleian library.[2]

The “normal” edition of Ephraim Graecus is that of Joseph S. Assemani, Sancti patris nostri Ephraem Syri Opera Omnia quae extant graece, syriace, latine; in sex tomos distributa. Romae, 1732-1746.  The first three volumes contain the Greek and Latin versions, the last three the Syriac.  All may be downloaded from here.

But the first two volumes of Assemani were largely a reprint of Thwaites, minus the manuscript sources, so these also are based entirely on manuscripts from the Bodleian.  However he printed in parallel column the renaissance translation of Ambrogio Traversari, thereby making the edition much more useful.  His third volume contains material from other collections to which he had access.

A further problem with Assemani’s edition is the presence of doublets – passages that appear word for word in more than one work.  The CPG indicates these; but this only indicates how bad the Assemani edition is.

Yet another problem with Assemani is the sheer number of works with near-identical titles.  This causes problems in the CPG and the CPL, where the editors themselves became confused in at least one case (since fixed).

S. J. Mercati did his doctorate on Ephraem Graecus,[3] and began an edition in 1915: S. Ephraem Syri opera, textum Syriacum, Graecum, Latinum ad fidem codicum recensuit prolegominis, notis, indicibus instruxit Sylvius Joseph Mercati, Rom 1915 (online here and here).  But only a single volume (of Ephraem Graecus) appeared.

A new edition appeared 1988-98 in Greece, which I am told is from Assemani mostly.  But it also contains translations of all the texts into modern Greek.  It is Κων. Γ. Φραντζόλάς, Ὁσιοῦ Ἐφραίμ τοῦ Σύρου, Thessaloniki, 1988-98, 7 vols.[4]   A bookshop with stock is here (and my notes on using it here).  There is also a website with a list of the contents by volume here, and each work has a linked PDF containing Greek text with a Greek government copyright on it.

Translations

Twenty-seven translations exist online, at the marvellous Saint Ephrem blog here. This is run by Tikhon Alexander Pino, an Orthodox Christian husband and father, and a PhD candidate at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI.

Some have been translated by him; others by the late Archimandrite Ephrem Lash, whose blog is now gone but which is archived at Archive.org.  He includes links to both.

Manuscripts

I have no list of manuscripts.  But I did discover that a 6th century papyrus fragment exists of a sermon, In secundum adventum domini nostri Iesu Christu, CPG 3920.[5]

    *    *    *    *

Frankly this looks a lot like a complete mess.

It’s not obvious to me how we might begin to solve such a mess.  The presence of the “doublets” makes it particularly difficult to say what any given work does or does not contain.  This in turn makes it very hard to do work on the corpus.

So there we are.  That’s what we have.  Rubbish, isn’t it.

UPDATE 23/10/2018: Added details on the Phrantzoles modern edition.
UPDATE 02/11/2018: Added details of translations.

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  1. [1]T. S. Pattie, “Ephraem the Syrian and the Latin manuscripts of De Paenitentia”, in: British Library Journal 13 (1987) 1-24. Online here.↩
  2. [2]Hemmerdinger-Iliadou “Démocracie. Les manuscrits de l’Ephrem grec utilisés par Thwaites”. In: Scriptorium 13 (1959) pp. 261-262; Online here.↩
  3. [3]So German Wikipedia.↩
  4. [4]Konstantinos G. Phrantzolas (google search results use various spellings like Phrantzoles, Phrantsoles, etc; but Phrantzolas is on the copyright page of the first volume.), Ὁσιοῦ Ἐφραίμ τοῦ Σύρου  ἔργα, Thessaloniki: Το περιβόλι της Παναγίας / To Perivoli tis Panagias, 1988-98, 7 vols↩
  5. [5]T.M.Teeter, “A fragment of Ephraim the Syrian”, in: Fabian Reiter (ed.), Literarische Texte der Berliner Papyrussammlung, (2012), pp.44-47, and table viiia. Google Books here.↩

The limits of politics

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This afternoon I was talking to a lady friend, when discussion strayed to the US.  I quickly became aware of a froideur, of a certain lack of sympathy with the views I was expressing.  Politely I changed the subject.

This evening I was reminded of a passage in Augustine Birrell’s essay on John Wesley, discussing his father, Samuel Wesley.

Here it is, taken from Selected Essays (1908), p.112-3.  The selection was made by none other than John Buchan.

The revolution of 1688 threatened to disturb the early married life of Samuel Wesley and his spouse. The husband wrote a pamphlet in which he defended revolution principles, but the wife secretly adhered to the old cause; nor was it until a year before Dutch William’s death that the Rector made the discovery that the wife of his bosom, who had sworn to obey him and regard him as her overlord, was not in the habit of saying “Amen” to his fervent prayers on behalf of his suffering Sovereign. An explanation was demanded and the truth extracted, namely, that in the opinion of the Rector’s wife her true King lived over the water.  The Rector at once refused to live with Mrs. Wesley any longer until she recanted. This she refused to do, and for a twelvemonth the couple dwelt apart, when William III. having the good sense to die, a reconciliation became possible.

We may smile at Mr Wesley’s folly.  For who but a fool would disturb his domestic happiness and quarrel for a year with his wife over something which affected neither of them.

Wesley knew neither monarch.  His good-wishes or otherwise signified precisely nothing.  The quarrel between James II and William III was of no importance whatsoever in the daily life of the couple.

But don’t we do this?  Which of us has not avoided someone with whose political views we disagree, or find ourselves uncomfortable?  We can all find reasons to say “Oh but it does affect me, if [insert name here] should choose to [insert action here].”  But in truth such claims are always special pleading.

Let us try not to deprive ourselves of the blessings or company of our fellow men, men with whom we must go through life together, over matters which affect neither of us.

At least Mr and Mrs Wesley were able to live together once more, thanks to King William’s unexpected early death!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A couple of days ago I became aware of a sermon de fine mundi by pseudo-Ephraim, in Latin, which allegedly contains a reference to the Rapture.  This is when all Christians on earth are caught up to heaven before the Second Coming of Christ, at least according to some American Christians.  A draft translation of the work received non-scholarly publication – I am waiting for a copy to arrive from the US – and online transcriptions are apparently defective.  The discovery in the 1990s produced an outbreak of venomous trench warfare between US proponents of the various ideas about how the Millennium in Revelation should be interpreted.  I hope that I don’t get shot at.

To make sense of this, I’m delving into Ephraim Latinus – basically a collection of 6 homilies translated from Greek, plus some spuria.  Because the possible Greek origin is important, I’ve started to wade into the swamp that is Ephraim Graecus – a mass of Greek texts, often apocalyptic, mostly not by Ephraim Syrus.  This in turn means dealing with the question of whether the Greek is a translation of something from Syriac.  Ephraim Syrus did not write in Greek – that seems to be agreed – so we have a mass of material, mostly pseudonymous.

Ephraim Graecus is a mess.  There’s little scholarly work on it, and the only edition is the mess of J. Assemani in the 18th century.  Assemani just printed whatever the manuscripts said, and didn’t worry about “doublets” – passages appearing in more than one work.  For translation he reprinted in parallel column the renaissance translation of Ambrogio Traversari.  Just to add to the fun, only Chrysostom has more texts listed in the CPG, so it’s a huge area of work.  On the bright side I have identified a list of works that are considered to be translated from Syriac (if not always genuinely by Ephraim).

I’ve already got a bit further than the US boys did.  It looks as if the de fine mundi is probably an original Latin composition – there’s no Greek – by someone who quoted quite a bit from Ephraim Graecus, and probably in the ancient Latin translation of Ephraim Latinus.  The key passage is in fact quoted from de beatitudine animae, sermon 4 in the collection of 6.  I need to look at the Greek for that, and see what is there.

My trusty Fujitsu Scansnap S1300 scanner developed a fault with its power-supply, and only wiggling the power input will make it work.  To the dump it must go.  A new S1300i arrived today from Amazon, and stands boxed on the floor.  I don’t use my PC on Sunday, to stay sane, so it will wait until Monday now.

The sabbath awaits.  God bless you all.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

As the year grows older, bright warm days grow fewer, and more precious.  Fortunately this week we had two; yesterday and today.  I resolved to take a break from contract-hunting, and go somewhere.  After some thought, a trip to Cambridge beckoned.

I started as I usually do, by visiting the University Library.  I dropped in during the summer and renewed my library card.  But at that time I’d got a photocopy of an article and forgotten one page.  So that was something.  Likewise I wanted to look at Bousset’s book on the Apophthegmata for a blog post.  That was something else to do.

Cambridge University Library in the sunshine

Everywhere there were cyclists.  In the library there were welcome desks, and tours.  Clearly it was freshers’ week.  All those young faces.  Others walked hand in hand.  I wished for a moment that I had made more effort to meet someone at university.  It gets so much harder to find someone suitable after!  Among these strode or cycled the occasional third year, faces which seemed too knowing or mature for their years.

A corridor of books, and students

My mobile phone kept buzzing, but I’d set it to silent.  I did sneak out to the courtyard to talk to one agent.

Every time I make one of my infrequent visits I find that something is different.  This year there was no photocopying room any more; just photocopiers scattered around.  I got the missing page easily.  The search engine on the website was different too.  Whatever happened to “Newton”?

Bossuet appeared in 1923, which means he is not online; but was in the Rare Books Room.  I hadn’t been there for years and years.  It was much the same, except that now we could use our mobile phone cameras!  The assistant told me that I wasn’t allowed to photograph, except for personal purposes, or put the results on the web.  The prohibitions were, of course, quite unenforceable.

The Rare Books Room

I settled down to snap some photos.  Fortunately I quickly realised that Bousset contained little that I needed, and a couple of dozen photos would serve my needs.  Because I wanted to be out in the sunshine!

Bousset’a “Apophthegmata” in the Rare Books Room

Then I was done.  Back I went out of the library, showing my card as I did so.  Into the sunshine, and walked down towards the backs.  So many cyclists!

Into Cambridge!

Over the river I went at the backs…

Looking left from the bridge

Over the bridge…

Into the town…

Still the sun shone.

I was making for a sandwich shop next to the Round Church in Cambridge.  But it wasn’t there any more!  How long, I wondered, since I had last walked the pavements of Cambridge.  I made do with a not-very-good teashop nearby, for I was hungry.

My next stop was Heffers, the university bookshop.  But I was shocked… the basement, in which there were always shelves of history and theology books, was now turned over to Harry Potter junk.  The whole shop was a shadow of itself.  Doubtless Amazon is to blame.  When I found the classics section it consisted of two cases only.  I walked from there down Green Street to Galloway and Porter, where I had bought many a remaindered textbook back in the day.  But it was gone.  Bookshops were at a discount.

I ended up walking along to CLC, the Christian bookshop.  It still existed, thankfully, but around it were endless ethnic restaurants, with name boards in scripts even I don’t know.  But within it too was a husk, or so it seemed to me.  Then again, what is gone is gone.

The sun shone, the streets were full of young and happy folk.  The city bustled with life.  The University Hotel had been rebuilt after a fire with a quite magnificent stone portico, of a sort that evoked the Victorian age.  On the side they had proudly chiselled MMXVII.  That’s the spirit!

Finally I passed by Kings, and headed back to the UL and my car.

Kings College

After that, a long journey to the outskirts, and then home.  But it was a lovely day.  I haven’t done any trips anywhere for over a year.  This was a nice exception.  It’s really important to make time for fun!

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A bibliography of the various collections of the Apothegmata Patrum (Sayings of the Fathers)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Apothegmata Patrum is a collection of around 2,500 sayings in total.  These are attributed in the manuscripts to one or another of the Desert Fathers; monks and hermits living in the Egyptian deserts from the mid-4th century onwards.  Originally passed from mouth to mouth, they were then gathered into small collections which appear in manuscripts, and then gathered into larger collections and translated into all the languages of ancient Christianity.  A volume of sayings may be known as a Paterikon, or even a Gerontikon!

The sayings date from the mid-4th century onwards.  The attributions may be imperfect, and the wording may have been polished in transmission.  Like all “sayings” literature, the nearest analogy is the modern joke book, where every saying tends to be attributed to Churchill or Groucho Marx, and the wording varies as the editor thinks fit to improve it.

The original sayings were transmitted orally, in many languages.  But the first written form of these was in Greek, and all the other language versions are derived from the Greek written material.

There are two major Greek collections.  These are distinguished by the order in which the material is presented:

  • alphabetical-anonymous: A collection by author name, in alphabetical order, with an appendix of sayings which are anonymous.
  • systematic or topical: A collection in 20 chapters, organised by subject matter – the monastic virtues -, containing both named and unnamed sayings.  Each chapter contains named sayings in alphabetical order, followed by anonymous sayings.

Earlier authors believed that there were three collections, not two, because the anonymous collection was edited separately from the alphabetical collection.  This was entirely the fault of the first (and only) editor of the alphabetical collection, Cotelier, who printed his work in 1677.  He printed the collection only from Paris manuscript graecus 1599.  This does not contain the anonymous sayings, and even the preface to the collection, which states clearly that a section of anonymous sayings is at the end, is damaged.  Sadly texts were often printed from a single manuscript in this period, and if it was a damaged ms., then so be it.  In consequence the two parts have been edited and translated separately.  No complete edition of the anonymous sayings has ever been made, but a complete French translation – made direct from five manuscripts – does exist.

Other collections do exist in Greek, but are derived from the “big two”.

Here are the two Greek collections:

Collectio Alphabetica-Anonyma

This has been edited in two parts.  It is normally preceded by a short prologue in which the compiler states that others have made smaller compilations of sayings before him (see PG 65: 72-76; esp. 73A).

[AP] G – Collectio Graeca Alphabetica, the Alphabetical-order Collection. (CPG 5560).  No critical edition exists.

Edition: J.-B. Cotelier, Ecclesiae graecae monumenta I, Paris 1677; reprinted in PG 65, 72-440.
Translation: Benedicta Ward, Sayings of the desert fathers: the alphabetical collection, 1975.  The edition and translation reflect a single manuscript, Paris gr. 1599. But Butler tells us that a more complete version of this collection exists in the British Library, Ms. Burney 50.[1] Dom Lucien Regnault, Les sentences des Peres de desert: Collection alphabetique, Solesmes, 1981. ISBN 2-85274-051-6 (Blurb).  John Wortley, Give Me a Word: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Series: Popular Patristics 52, SVS Press, 2015.

[AP] GN – Collectio Graeca Anonyma, the Anonymous Collection (CPG 5561).

Partial Edition (from cod. Coislin 126): F. Nau, “Le chapitre περὶ τῶν ἀναχωρητῶν ἁγίων et les sources de la vie de S. Paul de Thebes”, Révue de l’Orient Chrétien 10 (1905); F. Nau, Apophthegmata Patrum (collectio anonyma) (e cod. Coislin. 126), ed. F. Nau, “Histoires des solitaires égyptiens,” Révue de l’Orient Chrétien 12-14,17-18: I.e. 12 (1907): 48-68,171-181, 393-404; 13 (1908): 47-57, 266-283; 14 (1909): 357-379; 17 (1912): 204-211, 294-301; 18 (1913): 137-146.
Translations: Benedicta Ward, The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers: Systematic Sayings from the Anonymous series of the Apophthegmata Patrum, 2nd ed., SLG Press, 2001; John Wortley, The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A Select Edition and Complete English Translation, Cambridge 2013; Complete French translation:  Lucien Regnauld, Les Sentences des Pères du Désert, série des anonymes, Solesmes and Bellefontaine, 1985.  This is mainly from Cod. Sinaï 448 and Cod. Coislin 126, but working directly from 5 manuscripts.[2].

Collectio Graeca Systematica

[AP] GS – This is the subject-order collection (CPG 5562), and has been edited in the Sources Chrétiennes series.

Edition and French Translation: Jean-Claude Guy, Les apophtegmes des pères, Series: Sources Chrétiennes 387 (1993: chapters i-ix), 474 (2003: chapters x-xvi), and 498 (2005).  498 (2005). English translation of the Guy edition: John Wortley, The Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the Systematic Collection, Collegeville, Minn., 2012. Wortley writes here that “An earlier translation by Dom Lucien Regnault, Les chemins de Dieu au desert: collection systematique des Apophtegmes des Peres, Solesmes 1992, is particularly useful as it includes some items from the various “oriental versions” (Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic etc.), not found elsewhere.”

There are other collections extant in Greek.

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Latin collections

The 5 Latin collections are all derived from the Greek.

[AP] PJ – Collectio Latina Systematica (CPG 5570).  Latin translation attributed to Pelagius and John.  Made in the 6th century.  Chapter headings preserved in Photius.

Edition: H. Rosweyde, Vitae Patrum V- VI, Antwerpen 1615, 1623; reprinted PL 73: 851-1022; 1060-1062.
Translation: Benedicta Ward, The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, London and New York, 2003.  Les Apophtegmes des Pères (Recension de Pelage et Jean). Introduction de Dom L. Regnault. Traduction de Dom J. Dion et Dom G. Oury, Solesmes, 1966 (Review).

[AP] PA = Collectio a Paschasio Dumiensi = Collection by Paschasius of Dumio, disciple of Martin of Braga, under the title Verba Seniorum (CPG 5571).  Pa = the short recension in PL 73.

Edition: J. Geraldes Freire, A versao latino por Pascasio de Dume dos Apophthegmata Patrum, I, Coimbra 1971; PL 73: 1025-1062 (shortened version).
Translation: Lucien Regnault, Le Livre des Anciens. Recueil d’apophtegmes des Pères du désert traduit du grec en latin par le bienheureux Paschase, Solesmes. Blurb.

[AP] M = Collectio a Martino Dumiensi (CPG 5572) = Martin of Braga’s collection.

Edition: C. W. Barlow, Martini episcopi Bracarensis opera omnia, New Haven 1950; PL 74: 381-394, under the title Martin of Braga, Aegyptiorum Patrum Sententiae.

[AP] CSP = Collectio Commonitores Sanctorum Patrum (CPG 5573).

Edition: J. Geraldes Freire, Commonitiones sanctorum patrum, Coimbra 1974.

[AP] R = Collectio a pseudo-Rufino (CPG 5574).  This is a rag-bag compilation of material from the others (see CPG entry for details).

Edition: H. Rosweyde, Vitae Patrum III. Antwerpen 1615; PL 73: 739:810.

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Other languages

There are also collections in other languages, all derived from the Greek.

[AP] S = Collectio Syriaca, recensio Enaniesu = Syriac version by the Nestorian Anan-Isho / Ananjesus (CPG 5577).  An unpublished older translation is listed as CPG 5578.

Edition: P. Bedjan. Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum VII, Paris 1897; E. A. W. Budge, The Book of Paradise, I-II. London 1904 (with English translation).

[AP] A = Collectio Armeniaca, recensiones A & B (CPG 5582 + 5583).

Edition: Liber qui dicitur Patrum Vitae, ed. Gregorius Hierosolymorum patriarcha et Iohannes eparchus, Constantinople 1721; Vitae Patrum, I, Venice 1855. Louis Leloir, Paterica Armeniaca a P.P.Mechitaristis edita (1855) nunc latine redditat, CSCO 353, 361, 371, 379; 1974-6.

[AP] Sa = Collectio Sahidica (CPG 5588).  The Sahidic Coptic version.

Edition: M. Chaine, Le manuscrit de la version copte en dialect sahidique des “Apophthegmata Patrum”, Bibliotheque d’etudes coptes VI, Cairo 1960.  This version is preserved in a single manuscript, now scattered across five different libraries.  See T. O. Lambdin, Introduction to Sahidic Coptic, 1983, p.146.

[AP] Bo = Collectio Bohairica (CPG 5589).  The Bohairic Coptic version.

Edition: E. Amelineau, Histoire des monasteres de la Basse-Egypte (AMG 25), Paris 1894.

[AP] E = Collectio Ethiopica (CPG 5597 + 5598).  Ethiopic Collection.

Edition: V. Arras, Collectio Monastica (CSCO 238-239), Louvain 1963; V. Arras, Patericon Aethiopice. (CSCO 277-278), Louvain 1967.

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Nor is this all the language versions!

There are also Georgian versions of each of the two main Greek collections (CPG 5593 and 5594), discussed in M. Dvali, Anciennes traductions georgiennes de recits du moyen age. Vol. 1: Traduction par Euthyme l’Hagiorite d’une ancienne recension du Patericon, d’apres un manuserit du XIe siecle, Tiflis: Institut des Manuscrits, 1966.

There is also a “very rich” Arabic tradition.

Joseph-Marie Sauget, Une traduction arabe de la collection d’Apophthegmata Patrum de `Ananisho. Etude du ms. Paris. ar. 253. CSCO 495, Louvain, 1987.  See also articles listed in CPG 5602-4.

For an Old Slavonic version of the Greek Systematic Collection see William R. Veder, “The Systematic Collection of Apophthegmata patrum: The Life of Its First Greek Codex from ca. 500 to 885”, Ohio Slavic Papers 9 (2009), 375-386, online here.

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Studies

The standard study is Wilhelm Bousset, Apothegmata. Studien zur Geschichte des ältesten Mönchtums, Tübingen 1923, although unfortunately I was only able to obtain a few pages of this and it is less than clear.  This has around 100 pages of discussion, followed by extensive tables of what saying appears in what collection.

The Greek manuscripts and tradition is discussed in J.-C. Guy, Recherches sur la tradition grecque des “Apophthegmata Patrum”, Series: Subsidia hagiographica 36; Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1962.

An article by Samuel Rubenson, “Formation and Reformations of the Apophthegmata Patrum”, Studia Patristica 55.3 (2013), 5-22, is online here.

Databases

There is a rather wonderful database of sayings, texts (in various languages) and translations in Sweden, at Lund University at http://monastica.ht.lu.se/.  This is incomplete as yet, according to the home page, but is obviously of great value.

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So there you have it. I’ve referred a couple of times recently to Benedicta Ward’s translation of one form of the Apothegmata Patrum (also Apophthegmata!), or Sayings of the Fathers.  This evening I have spent some time trying to establish what other versions of this collection of sayings may exist, so I thought that I would share it with you.[3]  The material in the patrologies is sadly inadequate.  So… I hope this is helpful.

UPDATE: I find that there is an upcoming volume by John Wortley, More Sayings of the Desert Fathers : An English Translation and Notes, Cambridge, 2019, with intro by Samuel Rubenson.  Blurb: “Most of the Tales and Sayings of the Desert Fathers (apophthegms) have survived in Greek and most of them are now available in English, almost 2500 in number. A further six hundred items in six languages have been available in French for some time, but often in second- and even third-hand translations. These have now been newly translated directly from the original languages by scholars skilled in those languages and are presented, alongside an Introduction and brief notes, to the English reader…”  The Wortley volumes are pricey, however.  The reference to the French probably refers to Lucien Regnault, Les Sentences des Pères du désert – Troisième recueil & tables, 2005 (blurb: which says that this is material from the two Greek collections not found in the printed texts, and translated directly from manuscripts).  A further item from the abbey of Solesmes is rather mysterious: Les Sentences des Pères du désert – Nouveau recueil. Apophtegmes inédits ou peu connus rassamblés et présentés par dom Lucien Regnault, traduits par les moines de Solesmes.(Blurb)

UPDATE (11th Oct. 2018): I had intended to give the manuscripts of the Greek in a separate post, but it seems better to add them in here.  The Pinakes database lists hundreds of manuscripts for both the Alphabetical-Anonymous collection and the Systematic collection; but Guy, who edited the latter and prepared to edit the former, has a rather more useful discussion in his Recherches.[4]

Manuscripts of the Greek Alphabetical-Anonymous Collection

  • A = Paris, Coislin 126, fol. 1-158. (10-11th century).  Mutilated at the start, missing title, prologue, and start of the text as far as “Antony” 17.  Also mutilated at the end.
  • B = Berlin, Phillipps 1624 (12th c.).  Starts with “Isaiah 5”.
  • C = Paris, Coislin 232 (11th c.)  Mutilated at the start, but missing part replaced in 14-15th century with not very good material.
  • D = Paris gr. 1599 (12th c.)  Does not contain the anonymous sayings.  The basis for the Cotelier edition.  The prologue has a lacuna.
  • E = Paris gr. 916 (11th c.) Does not contain the anonymous sayings.  Water damaged.
  • F = Athens, bibl. nat. 504 (12th c.)
  • J = Sinai, St Catherine 448 (1004 AD).  The only complete manuscript.  The subscription at the end is now difficult to read.
  • K = Paris, Coislin 283 (11th c.) Contains only the anonymous sayings.
  • L = London, British Library Addit. 22508 (12th c.).  Starts with “Gelasius 1”.
  • N = Paris, Coislin 126, fol. 158-313v.
  • P = Paris gr. 890 (11th century). Contains only the anonymous sayings.
  • c = Paris, Coislin 257 (11th century) Abbreviated version.
  • d = Sinai, St Catherine 450. (12th c.) Contains only the anonymous sayings.
  • m = Milan, Ambros. F 100 sup. (1113 AD)  Abbreviated version.
  • (G = the printed edition of the Alphabeticon, edited by Cotelier, reprinted in PG 65: 71-440).

ABCEFJL tend to agree in their readings over against D, which is the base of the printed text G, even though they disagree among themselves.

There is also an abbreviated version of the collection preserved in 4 manuscripts.

Manuscripts of the Greek Systematic Collection

  • H = Milan, Ambros. C 30 inf (12th c.)
  • M = Paris, Coislin 282 (11th c.)
  • Q = Paris gr. 917 (12th c.)
  • R = Paris gr. 914 (12th c.)
  • T = Athens, bibl. nat. 500 (12th c.)
  • V = Vatican, Ottoboni 174 (10-11th c.)
  • W = Athos, Lavra B 37 (970 AD)
  • Y = Athos, Protaton 86 (9th c.) Mutilated.
  • (PJ = Latin translation of the collection edited by H. Rosweyde, reprinted PL 73: 855-1022).
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  1. [1]Cuthbert Butler, Lausiac History of Palladius, Cambridge, 1898, Part I, p.209, n.2.↩
  2. [2]So Wortley, here and n.11↩
  3. [3]The following list is based on Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of Saint Anthony, Fortress Press, 1995, and augmented somewhat by me.↩
  4. [4]See p.4 for sigla, p.16 for mss.↩

Epiphanius on reading the scriptures? An item from the Apothegmata Patrum

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A quotation via Twitter:

Reading the Scriptures is a great safeguard against sin…It is a great treachery to salvation to know nothing of the Divine Law…Ignorance of the Scriptures is a precipice and a deep abyss.” – Epiphanius of Salamis/Cyprus

Very sound… but it doesn’t sound like Epiphanius.  It is, in fact, taken from the modern Engish translation of the Apothegmata Patrum, the Sayings of the Fathers, from the version known as the “Alphabetical Collection”, in the translation published by Benedicta Ward.[1]  The Greek text may be found  in the Patrologia Graeca 65, cols. 71-440, which reprints the edition of Cotelerius, itself a transcription from Codex Paris gr. 1599 (12th c.).  In the PG the text is listed as an “appendix” to Palladius’ Lausiac History; but the material is organised in order of the letters of the Greek alphabet:

The saying comes from the section on Epiphanius, sections 4-12.  Here’s the context.  (PG 65, col. 164C; Ward p.58):

4. One day Saint Epiphanius sent someone to Abba Hilarion with this request, ‘Come, and let us see one another before we depart from the body.’ When he came, they rejoiced in each other’s company. During their meal, they were brought a fowl; Epiphanius took it and gave it to Hilarion. Then the old man said to him, ‘Forgive me, but since I received the habit I have not eaten meat that has been killed.’ Then the bishop answered, ‘Since I took the habit, I have not allowed anyone to go to sleep with a complaint against me and I have not gone to rest with a complaint against anyone.’ The old man replied, ‘Forgive me, your way of life is better than mine.’

5. The same old man said, ‘Melchizedek, the image of Christ, blessed Abraham, the father of the Jews; how much more does truth itself, which is the Christ, bless and sanctify all those who believe in it.’

6. The same old man said, ‘The Canaanite woman cries out, and she is heard; (Matt. 15) the woman with the issue of blood is silent, and she is called blessed; (Luke 8) the pharisee speaks, and he is condemned;(Matt. 9) the publican does not open his mouth, and he is heard.’ (Luke 18)

7. The same old man said, ‘David the prophet prayed late at night; waking in the middle of the night, he prayed before the day; at the dawn of day he stood before the Lord; in the small hours he prayed, in the evening and at mid-day he prayed again, and this is why he said, “Seven times a day have I praised you.'” (Ps. 119.164)

8. He also said, ‘The acquisition of Christian books is necessary for those who can use them. For the mere sight of these books renders us less inclined to sin, and incites us to believe more firmly in righteousness.’

9. He also said, ‘Reading the Scriptures is a great safeguard against sin.’

10. He also said, ‘It is a great treachery to salvation to know nothing of the divine law.’

11. He also said, ‘Ignorance of the Scriptures is a precipice and a deep abyss.’

12. The same abba said, ‘The righteous sin through their mouths, but the ungodly sin in their whole bodies. This is why David sings; “Set, Ο Lord, a watch before my mouth and keep the door of my lips.” (Ps. 141.3) And again, “I will take heed to my ways that I do not sin with my tongue.” ‘ (Ps. 39.1)

Good sound stuff, of course.

The attributions in any collection of “sayings” literature should all be taken with a pinch of salt, as this is not a literary genre, where the original form matters, but a practical one, where whatever is useful is included and attributed to whoever.  The same process in modern times gives us the vast number of sayings all attributed to Winston Churchill.

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  1. [1]Benedicta Ward (tr.), The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: the Alphabetical Collection, 1975.↩

That Museum in Washington

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Via here:

Why the Museum of the Bible Angered So Many Academics
Sept 14, 2018

Opened last fall and located not far from the National Mall in Washington, DC, the Museum of the Bible was a source of controversy even before it opened its doors, in part because of its founder, Steven Green, the president of Hobby Lobby and a devout evangelical Christian. Scholars of the Bible and archaeology were prominent among the museum’s critics, in part because they objected to the museum’s framing of certain issues in ways that differ from accepted scholarship, in part because of serious concerns regarding the provenance of certain artifacts—some of which turned out to have been looted from Iraq. But Alex Joffe [at Ancient Near East Today] argues that something else is at stake:

“For academics, [at] issue [is their] loss of public authority over the Bible. The intellectual monopolization of the Bible by academics in the post-World War II era coincided with the gradual collapse of biblical literacy in America, along with many mainline [Protestant] denominations. With this went an important part of the language of American identity, conversation, and consensus. The Bible in the public square was taken over by professors.

“Inevitable or not, this was not healthy in social or political terms. Invocations of the Bible, religion, or God in politics today—[whether] earnest, banal, or grotesque—are condemned instantly. And yet this [habitual condemnation] cuts Americans off from not only a vernacular but from history; [for instance], the national, personal, and spiritual agony that Abraham Lincoln expressed in his second inaugural address is explicable only by reference to the Bible. . . .

“Academics have hardly been faithful stewards of the Bible any more than of other forms of canonical knowledge; efforts to reclaim the Bible on the part of faith were also inevitable. If these also lead to more earnest engagement with the Bible as literature, tradition, and [a source of] morality on the part of academics and intellectuals, all the better. Unfortunately, I see the opposite occurring; [such] reclamation will be met with further academic criticism, which will only increase the distance between academia and society, heightening mutual suspicion and alienation, and setting up at least one side for a nasty surprise. . . .

“The families and church groups visiting the Museum of the Bible are unlikely to be troubled by [issues of provenance] or converted to one denomination or another, but they might have elements of their faith, in the Bible and in America, reaffirmed. They are also likely to come away interested in Biblical history and archaeology. Many will go on to the Air and Space Museum for other sorts of reaffirmations, in technology and the human imagination, or to the National Gallery, filled with silent tributes to religious faith and to beauty itself. None of these is an unalloyed good, but that is the nature of museums. The good that one comes away with depends in part on what one goes in with.”

This articulates well the unease that many of us have felt at some of the criticism of the Museum of the Bible project.  I’m very glad to see it.

The criticism from a few scholars has been disturbingly intemperate, for no obvious reason.  Surely any project that brings money and public interest to papyrology is welcome, even if we don’t agree with the political or religious views of those doing it?  Instead every possible objection was made.

For me the breaking point was when the people working at the Museum of the Bible were attacked for dismantling cartonnage in order to recover documentary or literary papyri embedded within; a practice undertaken for a century or more now, yet suddenly criticised.  One scholar even suggested that it was better for the texts to remain lost than to dare to lay a finger on the (near-worthless) cartonnage.  Everybody knows better than that.

Nobody benefits from this.  Not even the scholars objecting benefit.

I see more and more signs that US Republicans are getting irritated at the use of public money to fund the humanities in the US universities.  I read article after article suggesting that some departments in this area – subjects like Gender Studies for instance – are pseudo-disciplines, staffed entirely by people hostile to the Republicans.  It doesn’t matter if this is so; the perception is there.  That perception goes a lot further than just Gender Studies.  The Campus Reform site publishes article after article on bias, bigotry and absurdity, mostly directed at Republicans on-campus.  Its articles are widely read by the rightists.

By chance today I saw the following report in the Wall Street Journal – hardly a bastion of the alt-right:

Fake News Comes to Academia: How three scholars gulled academic journals to publish hoax papers on ‘grievance studies.’
Oct. 2, 2018.  Jillian Kay Melchior.

… Beginning in August 2017, the trio wrote 20 hoax papers, submitting them to peer-reviewed journals under a variety of pseudonyms, as well as the name of their friend Richard Baldwin, a professor emeritus at Florida’s Gulf Coast State College. Mr. Baldwin confirms he gave them permission use his name. Journals accepted seven hoax papers. Four have been published.

This will only add fuel to the perception that the US humanities are a fraud on the taxpayer.

May I make a plea to academics to be responsible.  Don’t gratuitiously annoy the heck out of any political or religious group.  It is irresponsible to cause others to lose trust in the academy.  It is utterly irresponsible to deserve to lose that trust, by peddling our political or religious opinions as if they were the assured results of scholarly investigation.  It is damnably irresponsible to use the academy as a platform to indulge our ever-so-privileged hatreds of those who pay for us.

We may have to hold our noses.  I rather doubt that most British people, of any political or religious views, would be able to pass through the Museum of the Bible without wincing.  British people find a lot of American culture cringeworthy.  But it doesn’t matter.

The archaeologists are way ahead of most of us in the field of classics and patristics.  Every archaeologist is Indiana Jones, in the public mind.  They get free labour, free advertising, and television series.  Everyone “knows” that archaeology is objective, is “science” (which is not true, of course).  Whatever money is around, in these straitened times, they get.  Not enough, I know; but a fortune compared to classicists.  Every county has a county archaeologist.  Not many have a county classicist!  Or a county patristics scholar.

Wouldn’t it be nice if they did?  So let’s not pick fights with people bringing money and publicity into the subject.

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