Tag: Bible

Bogus Bible Translations

Posted on by Roger Pearse

People are strange, and they do weird things.  But, as they said at Watergate, when nothing makes sense, follow the money.  See where it goes from, and who it goes to, and that will tell you what’s really going on.

There are people out there who have created, deliberately, and at some expense, faked “translations” of the bible.  Truly there are.  Obviously you can’t believe that what you are doing is honest, or that the product of your scissors is in any way the word of God.  You must, indeed, believe that there is no god – only guns, girls and gold, and that you want them.  The history of religion is not lacking in examples of clergymen who thought in precisely those terms.

Marcion was an early exponent of this approach to the bible.  Faced with a nascent New Testament that did not say what he wanted, he took out his knife and chopped out all the bits that he didn’t like.  Tertullian pointed out, in reply, that, from even the passages that Marcion had not excised , the falsity of Marcion and his claims could be shown.

Nor is this a purely ancient trend.  In Nazi Germany, one of Hitler’s slaves demanded that the bible be purged in a similar way, to eliminate the Old Testament and to revise the New Testament “in accordance with the principles of National Socialism”.  This was too much, even in Nazi Germany, and the Reich authorities were obliged to disown the over-eager flatterer.

These days we know better.  We can simply “adjust” the translation into English, and pretend that the text is “uncertain”, even though nobody ever was uncertain about what it meant.

The best known example of this is the New World Translation, produced by the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  This mistranslates John 1:1 as “and the word was a god”.  Of course nobody outside of that harmless cult pays any attention to this.  It is entirely possible that the leaders of the cult got themselves sincerely confused; but on the other hand, they profit from it.  It helps to shore up their organisation.  The cult arose among US Protestants, who revere the bible, so there is an obvious motive to have your own bible version, in order to muddy the waters as to what the bible says.  This can hardly be done honestly, unless those leaders were truly ignorant, but of course maybe they were.  Let us hope so.

Most cultists, however, do not go this far.  Instead they produce supplementary texts, such as the Koran or Book of Mormon.  This requires far less effort.

I wonder what other faked translations exist?  There must be others!  A list would be a useful thing to have.

A few weeks ago I heard of a new one.  Again produced in the USA, this calls itself the “New Revised Standard Version – Updated Edition” (NRSVue).  It’s based on the respected NRSV, but edited, according to the preface, with the following principles:

The NRSVue extends the New Revised Standard Version’s (NRSV) purpose to deliver an accurate, readable, up-to-date, and inclusive version of the Bible. … The NRSVue continues and improves the effort to eliminate masculine-oriented language when it can be done without altering passages that reflect the historical situation of ancient patriarchal culture. … Only occasionally has the pronoun “he” or “him” or other gendered language been retained in passages where the reference may have been to a woman as well as to a man, for example, in several legal texts in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. …. In the vast majority of cases, however, inclusiveness has been attained by simple rephrasing or by introducing plural forms when this does not distort meaning.

One of the editors states, with a curious lack of self-awareness:

To avoid defining a person by a disability, the NRSVue makes a good faith effort to adopt person-first diction. Thus, Matthew 4:24 in the NRSVue speaks of “people possessed by demons or having epilepsy or afflicted with paralysis.”

Likewise, to make a distinction between a person’s identity and a condition imposed on that person, the NRSVue of Galatians 4:22 uses the expression “an enslaved woman,” as opposed to a “slave woman.”

In the tradition of the NRSV, the NRSV tries to avoid what famed translator Bruce Metzger called “linguistic sexism,” which means “the inherent bias of the English language toward the masculine gender” (see the “To the Reader” preface in the NRSV). So, in Romans 16:1, the NRSVue retains the word “deacon” for Phoebe as opposed to the belittling “deaconess” terminology found in a few other translations. Going beyond the NRSV, however, the NRSVue replaces the belittling “servant-girl” expression in Mark 14:69 by referring to the woman of that text as a “female servant.”

Finally, the NRSV regrettably had used lowercase letters to describe some Jewish calendrical observances. Lest doing so be interpreted as disrespectful, such observances as the Sabbath and Passover are now rendered in capital letters. Accordingly, in John 5:9, the NRSVue reads “Now that day was a Sabbath,” which replaces the NRSV’s reading: “Now that day was a sabbath.”  …

The goal all along was to be as gender diverse and ethnically diverse as possible and to welcome teams of translators that were both ecumenical and interfaith in their composition.

Few will be very impressed by any of this.  This is no way to produce a translation.  The purpose here is the same as with the JWs – to take advantage of those with an inherited respect for the bible, and abuse it in order to advance their own, and quite different, ends.  As might be expected, the new “version” makes some improvements on 1 Cor. 6:9.  This reads in the NRSV:

9 Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, 10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.

but in the NRSVue:

9 Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes,[a] men who engage in illicit sex,[b] 10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, swindlers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.

With the footnote in both places “Meaning of Gk uncertain”.  I’m sure the authors laughed as they wrote that.

It is slightly sinister to find that Bible Gateway has removed the real NRSV in favour of the faked version – I had to use the “Anglicised” version.  But we need not spend more time on this mendacious exercise, although doubtless some people will have to.  The contempt of posterity, and the hell in which they do not believe, awaits its authors.  The production also highlights a deep-seated intellectual corruption affecting the humanities in US universities.

But … can anyone name other, deliberately falsified, versions of the bible?

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The translators of the KJV speak! What they did about obscure words etc

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Translator’s Preface to the Authorized Version is online here, yet few are aware of it, or refer to it.  It begins with many tedious pages justifying their task.  But then it becomes more interesting.

First, on p.25, they discuss marginal notes, or variants as we would call them.  I’ve over-paragraphed and modernised the language slightly.

Some peradventure would have no variety of senses to be set in the margin, lest the authority of the Scriptures for deciding of controversies by that show of uncertainty should somewhat be shaken. But we hold their judgment not to be so sound in this point. For though “whatever things are necessary are obvious,” as St. Chrysostom says; and, as St. Augustine, “In those things that are plainly set down in the Scriptures, all such matters are found, that concern faith, hope, and charity.”

Yet for all that it cannot be dissembled, that partly to exercise and whet our wits, partly to wean the curious from loathing of them for their every where plainness, partly also to stir up our devotion to crave the assistance of God’s Spirit by prayer, and lastly, that we might be forward to seek aid of our brethren by conference, and never scorn those that be not in all respects so complete as they should be, being to seek in many things ourselves, it hath pleased God in his Divine Providence here and there to scatter words and sentences of that difficulty and doubtfulness, not in doctrinal points that concern salvation, (for in such it hath been vouched that the Scriptures are plain,) but in matters of less moment, that fearfulness would better beseem us than confidence, and if we will resolve, to resolve upon modesty with St. Augustine, (though not in this same case altogether, yet upon the same ground,) Melius est dubitare de occultis, quam litigare de incertis: “It is better to make doubt of those things which are secret, than to argue about those things that are uncertain.”

There be many words in the Scriptures, which be never found there but once, (having neither brother nor neighbour, as the Hebrews speak,) so that we cannot be helped by conference of places.  Again, there be many rare names of certain birds, beasts, and precious stones, &c. concerning which the Hebrews themselves are so divided among themselves for judgment, that they may seem to have defined this or that, rather because they would say something, than because they were sure of that which they said, as St. Jerome somewhere says of the Septuagint.

Now in such a case, does not a margin do well to admonish the Reader to seek further, and not to conclude or dogmatize upon this or that peremptorily? For as it is a fault of incredulity, to doubt of those things that are evident; so to determine of such things as the Spirit of God hath left (even in the judgment of the judicious) questionable, can be no less than presumption. Therefore as St. Augustine saith, that variety of translations is profitable for the finding out of the sense of the Scriptures: so diversity of signification, and sense in the margin, where the text is not so clear, must needs do good ; yea, is necessary, as we are persuaded.

We know that Sixtus Quintus expressly forbids that any variety of readings of their vulgar edition should be put in the margin; (which though it he not altogether the same thing to that we have in hand, yet it looketh that way;) but we think he has not all of his own side his favourers for this conceit. They that are wise had rather have their judgments at liberty in differences of readings, than to be captivated to one, when it may be the other. …

Their point about obscure technical terms is well-taken.  This seems to be the reason that the King James Version uses the word “unicorn” for what we today would call a “rhinoceros”.  The translators in 1611 had no way to know how best to render the Hebrew, and lacked our dictionaries of species, which were yet to be compiled.  So they preserved what came down to them, and rendered the Greek “monokeros”, “one horn”, as “unicorn”.  I have read that in 1611 there was no agreed term for this animal, nor any certainty as to what it looked like, although I have not been able to locate a source for it.  But it is quite possible that this is so.  A.H. Godbey, “The Unicorn in the Old Testament”, in: American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 56 (1939) 256-296 (JSTOR) states that in antiquity “monokeros” and “rinoceros” were understood to mean the same thing; and that monokeros was the older Greek usage.  No doubt the KJV translators just made a stab at finding an English word for this odd creature, and chose “unicorn”.  Unfortunately for subsequent readers the word for it that actually won out, in English, was “rhinoceros”.  I would prefer to have a proper source for this last point, though.

They then discuss whether the same English word should always be used for the same Hebrew or Greek word in the original.  This is quite hard to ensure, even today.  They defend themselves against this criticism as follows:

Another thing we think good to admonish thee of, gentle Reader, that we have not tied ourselves to a uniformity of phrasing, or to an identity of words, as some peradventure would wish that we had done, because they observe, that some learned men somewhere have been as exact as they could that way. Truly, that we might not vary from the sense of that which we had translated before, if the word signified the same thing in both places, (for there be some words that be not of the same sense every where,) we were especially careful, and made a conscience, according to our duty.

But that we should express the same notion in the same particular word; as for example, if we translate the Hebrew or Greek word once by “purpose”, never to call it “intent”; if one where “journeying”, never “travelling”; if one where “think”, never “suppose”; if one where “pain”, never “ache”; if one where “joy”, never “gladness”, &c. Thus to mince the matter, we thought to savour more of curiosity than wisdom, and that rather it would breed scorn in the atheist, than bring profit to the godly reader. For is the kingdom of God become words or syllables?! Why should we be in bondage to them, if we may be free? use one precisely, when we may use another no less fit as commodiously?  A godly Father in the primitive time shewed himself greatly moved, that one of newfangledness called “krabba/ton”, “ski/mpouj”, though the difference be little or none; and another reports, that he was much abused for turning “cucurbita” (which reading the people had been used to) into “hedera”. Now if this happen in better times, and upon so small occasions, we might justly fear hard censure, if generally we should make verbal and unnecessary changings. …

…we cannot follow a better pattern for elocution than God himself; therefore he using divers words in his holy writ, and indifferently for one thing in nature: we, if we will not be superstitious, may use the same liberty in our English versions out of Hebrew and Greek, for that copy or store that he hath given us.

It’s an interesting position, although their practice may have been better than their position.  Every reference to “unicorn” in the KJV translates the same Hebrew word, whereas the Latin vulgate mostly used “rhinoceros” and used “unicorn” only in the Psalms.  It’s clear that they did at least attempt some consistency.  So this is perhaps mainly intended to deflect captious criticism.

Lastly, we have on the one side avoided the scrupulosity of the Puritans, who leave the old Ecclesiastical words, and betake them to other, as when they put “washing” for “baptism”, and “congregation” instead of “Church”: as also on the other side we have shunned the obscurity of the Papists, in their azymes, tunike, rational, holocausts, prepuce, pasche, and a number of such like, whereof their late translation is full, and that of purpose to darken the sense, that since they must needs translate the Bible, yet by the language thereof it may be kept from being understood. But we desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood even of the very vulgar.

Here we see a conscious decision not to depart from the ecclesiastical language that had grown up over the centuries.  Opinions on this may vary, of course.

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The decretal “Consulenti tibi” (JK 293) and the canon of the bible

Posted on by Roger Pearse

During the fourth century a change comes over the church, and indeed the bishop of Rome.  By the end of the century the medieval papacy is coming into existence.  The accession of Pope Damasus was attended with rioting in the streets and in the churches of Rome, as supporters of the candidates sought to impose their man by means of violence; and the lifestyle of Damasus was such that the Urban Prefect, Praetextatus, was reported as saying to him, by St Jerome (To Pammachius, against John of Jerusalem, c. 8):

“Facite me Romanae urbis episcopum , et ego protinus Christianus.”

“Make me bishop of Rome and I will at once become a Christian!”

Various pieces of imperial legislation require the church courts to follow the practices of the secular courts when hearing appeals.  Likewise it is in this period that the church began its collections of canon law, and papal decretals, and the other apparatus of a institution.

My attention was drawn to the letter of Pope Innocent I to Exsuperius of Toulouse in 405, which contains a canon of scripture.  This turns out to be a papal decretal. I have never known anything about these.  Apparently D. Jasper’s paper “Papal letters and decretals from the beginning through the pontificate of Gregory the Great (to 604)”, pp. 7 ff in D. Jasper & H. Fuhrmann, Papal letters in the Early Middle Ages, CUA (2001) is the orientation to read. (Preview).  A decretal is a papal letter, containing a ruling in response to an appeal for such a ruling from a subordinate bishop.

There is a catalogue of decretals, begin by Ph. Jaffé, Regesta pontificum romanorum; the 2nd edition, co-edited with S. Lowenfeld (who did 882-1198 AD), J. Kaltenbrunner (everything up to 590 AD), and P. Ewald (590-882 AD), appeared at Lepizig in two volumes in 1885 (here) and 1888 (here).  This lists all the decretals and gives them a number, with a brief summary of content.

The letter of Innocent to Exsuperius is JK 293 (on p.45, PDF page 86), with the incipit “Consulenti tibi”.  Here’s the entry:

This summarises the content, which falls into several chapters.  The last, as an appendix, gives a list of the canon of scripture, “which books are received in the canon.”

The Latin text of the letter / decretal is in PL20, 495-502, where it is labelled as Letter 6″ of Innocent I. Apparently a critical text was given by H. Wurm in 1939 in 87 Hubert Wurm, Decretales selectae ex antiquissimis romanorum Pontificum epistulis decretalibus, in: Apollinaris 12 (1939), 40-93, but this I have not seen; in fact I can’t even find any information about the journal.

A couple of chunks of the decretal were translated by Denzinger, and are online here.  An English translation of chapter 7 is online here with the Latin.

(2). . . It has been asked, what must be observed with regard to those who after baptism have surrendered on every occasion to the pleasures of incontinence, and at the very end of their lives ask for penance and at the same time the reconciliation of communion. Concerning them the former rule was harder, the latter more favorable, because mercy intervened. For the previous custom held that penance should be granted, but that communion should be denied. For since in those times there were frequent persecutions, so that the ease with which communion was granted might not recall men become careless of reconciliation from their lapse, communion was justly denied, penance allowed, lest the whole be entirely refused; and the system of the time made remission more difficult. But after our Lord restored peace to his churches, when terror had now been removed, it was decided that communion be given to the departing, and on account of the mercy of God as a viaticum to those about to set forth, and that we may not seem to follow the harshness and the rigor of the Novatian heretic who refused mercy. Therefore with penance a last communion will be given, so that such men in their extremities may be freed from eternal ruin with the permission of our Savior.

…

(7) A brief addition shows what books really are received in the canon. These are the desiderata of which you wished to be informed verbally: of Moses five books, that is, of Genesis, of Exodus, of Leviticus, of Numbers, of Deuteronomy, and Joshua, of judges one book, of Kings four books, and also Ruth, of the Prophets sixteen books, of Solomon five books, the Psalms. Likewise of the histories, job one book, of Tobias one book, Esther one, Judith one, of the Machabees two, of Esdras two, Paralipomenon two books. Likewise of the New Testament: of the Gospels four books, of Paul the Apostle fourteen epistles, of John three [cf. n. 84, 92] epistles of Peter two, an epistle of Jude, an epistle of James, the Acts of the Apostles, the Apocalypse of John. Others, however, which were written by a certain Leucius under the name of Matthias or of James the Less, or under the name of Peter and John (or which were written by Nexocharis and Leonidas the philosophers under the name of Andrew), or under the name of Thomas, and if there are any others, you know that they ought not only to be repudiated, but also condemned.

Here’s the relevant bit of a (very poor) scan of the PL.

The last sentence is telling:

Data x kalendas Martias, Stilicone secundo et Anthemio viris clarissimis consulibus.

Given on the 10th day before the kalends of March, the nobile Stilicho for the second time and Anthemius being consuls.

The sack of Rome by the Goths was a mere 5 years away.

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More on the Homeromanteion

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Yesterday I mentioned the Homeromanteion.  This work consists of an introduction, followed by a list of oracular extracts from Homer.  Using three 6-sided dice, you can get a random extract.

The work is extant in three papyri, P.Bon. 3, P.Oxy. 3831, and PGM VII.  One of these, P.London 1, 121 is a six foot long roll.  It is mentioned in this excellent British Library Manuscripts blog post post, by Federica Micucci, which also gives this image of the end of it.  The three numerals are at the start of each line.

The end of the translation given in Betz, Greek Magical Papyri, PGM VII, is as follows:

The left-most numbers are modern, as we can see.

I should have liked to give the instructions at the start of the work, but these were only preserved in P.Oxy. 3831.  There is a translation apparently by P.J. Parsons, in the original publication in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. 56 (1989), p.44-48, but this does not seem to be online.  The BL blog gives an extract:

First, you must know the days on which to use the Oracle; second, you must pray and speak the incantation of the god and pray inwardly for what you want; third, you must take the dice and throw it three times.

There is an excellent article by Raquel Martin-Hernandez – whose Academia.edu site contains a great deal of material about sortilege, the art of divining using dice – on using Homer for divination, with special reference to the Homeromanteion. It may be found here.

Similar methods could be used with biblical texts, of course; and so they duly were.  Both Augustine and Jerome refer to these, according to Martin-Hernandez, who gives two interesting footnotes:

[4] Augustine, Epist. 55.20.37. Jerome, Epistula ad Paulinum Nolanum 53, 7 (CSEL 54, 453). See Klingshirn 2002: 82-84.

[5] The use of the Bible for divination was not only conducted by secular people, but also by members of the clergy on the light of Canon 16 of the council of Vannes, dated to the 462 and 468 CE: aliquanti clerici student auguriis et sub nomine confictae religionis quas sanctorum sortes vocant…hoc quicumque clericus detectus fuerit vel consulere vel docere ab ecclesia habeatur extraneus. “Some clergy are devoted to the interpretation of signs, and under the label of what pretends to be religion, what they call Saints’ Lots…any cleric found either to have consulted or expounded this should be considered estranged from the church” (Concilia Galliae, A. 314-A. 506 [CCSL 148:156]). Text provided by Klingshirn 2005: 100. For the use of the Bible for divination see Klingshirn 2005.

In the decay of the church in the late 4th century, it is perhaps unsurprising that such superstitions should take hold.

They are not really very different from opening the bible at random; a practice not unknown even today.

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Illiterate bishops decided the canon of the New Testament! Or did they?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It is often claimed that the canon lists given in the canons of the council of Hippo in 393, and the council of Carthage in 397, in some way created the canon of the New Testament.  This is not the case, and cannot be the case – the lists are merely for local use in deciding what books to read in church.

 But I was intrigued by some comments on the bishops, by none other than Henry Chadwick:[1]

The old bishop of Hippo who had ordained Augustine presbyter feared lest some other church might carry him off to be their bishop. He therefore persuaded the primate of Numidia to consecrate Augustine to be coadjutor bishop of Hippo. The appointment (irregular in canon law) became surrounded by some controversy. The combination of Augustine’s Manichee past and his extreme cleverness helped to make him distrusted. Hippo was not a city where people read books. Numidia was not a province where congregations expected to have a prodigy of intelligence on the episcopal bench. (Augustine noted that illiterate bishops were a favourite butt for the mockery of the half-educated: CR 13.) Augustine’s presence induced apprehension. He was known to be a terror for demolishing opponents in public disputations. Some did not quite believe in the sincerity of his conversion at Milan.

“CR 13” is chapter 13 of De catechizandis rudibus (on the need to instruct newcomers).  But a look at the old English translation online does not really support this, interesting tho it is:

13. There are also some who come from the commonest schools of the grammarians and professional speakers, whom you may not venture to reckon, either among the uneducated, or among those very learned classes whose minds have been exercised in questions of real magnitude.

When such persons, therefore, who appear to be superior to the rest of mankind, so far as the art of speaking is concerned, approach you with the view of becoming Christians, it will be your duty in your communications with them, in a higher degree than in your dealings with those other illiterate hearers, to make it plain that they are to be diligently admonished to clothe themselves with Christian humility, and learn not to despise individuals whom they may discover keeping themselves free from vices of conduct more carefully than from faults of language; and also that they ought not to presume so much as to compare with a pure heart the practised tongue which they were accustomed even to put in preference.

But above all, such persons should be taught to listen to the divine Scriptures, so that they may neither deem solid eloquence to be mean, merely because it is not inflated, nor suppose that the words or deeds of men, of which we read the accounts in those books, involved and covered as they are in carnal wrappings, are not to be drawn forth and unfolded with a view to an (adequate) understanding of them, but are to be taken merely according to the sound of the letter. And as to this same matter of the utility of the hidden meaning, the existence of which is the reason why they are called also mysteries, the power wielded by these intricacies of enigmatical utterances in the way of sharpening our love for the truth, and shaking off the torpor of weariness, is a thing which the persons in question must have made good to them by actual experience, when some subject which failed to move them when it was placed baldly before them, has its significance elicited by the detailed working out of an allegorical sense.

For it is in the highest degree useful to such men to come to know how ideas are to be preferred to words, just as the soul is preferred to the body.

From this, too, it follows that they ought to have the desire to listen to discourses remarkable for their truth, rather than to those which are notable for their eloquence; just as they ought to be anxious to have friends distinguished for their wisdom, rather than those whose chief merit is their beauty.

They should also understand that there is no voice for the ears of God save the affection of the soul. For thus they will not act the mocker if they happen to observe any of the prelates and ministers of the Church either calling upon God in language marked by barbarisms and solecisms, or failing in understanding correctly the very words which they are pronouncing, and making confused pauses.

It is not meant, of course, that such faults are not to be corrected, so that the people may say ‘Amen’ to something which they plainly understand; but what is intended is, that such things should be piously borne with by those who have come to understand how, as in the forum it is in the sound, so in the church it is in the desire that the grace of speech resides. Therefore that of the forum may sometimes be called good speech, but never gracious speech.

Moreover, with respect to the sacrament which they are about to receive, it is enough for the more intelligent simply to hear what the thing signifies. But with those of slower intellect, it will be necessary to adopt a somewhat more detailed explanation, together with the use of similitudes, to prevent them from despising what they see.

This makes no reference to illiterate bishops.  Chadwick was a great scholar, but all of us can fall victim to printer errors.  So what did he have in mind?

The answer seems to be a passage in Monceaux, Histoire littéraire de l’Afrique chrétienne depuis les origines jusqu’à l’invasion arabe, (1901) vol. 4, p.423, here[2].

Des incidents de toute sorte mettent un peu de variété, ou même de gaieté, dans la monotonie des débats. Ce sont les scrupules bouffons des Donatistes, qui refusent de s’asseoir. Ce sont les scènes amusantes ou violentes, auxquelles donne lieu la vérification des signatures: confrontation des évêques d’une même localité, qui se regardent de travers et s’injurient ou s’accusent mutuellement … ou d’ailleurs; attitude piteuse de pauvres prélats qui n’ont pu signer eux-mêmes, ne sachant pas écrire[10]; fréquentes interventions et bavardage d’Aurelius de Macomades,

10) Collat. Carthag., I, 133 : « litteras nesciente ».

Incidents of all sorts brought variety or even gaiety in the monotony of the debates.  There were the idiotic scruples of the Donatists who refused to sit down.  There were amusing or violent scenes, caused by the verification of signatures: the confrontation of bishops belonging to the same place, who stared at each other and mutually insulted or accused…; the pitiful attitude of poor prelates who could not sign themselves, not knowing how to write[10]; the frequent interjections and jokes of Aurelius of Macomades…

This is undoubtedly our source; the reference given is to the Gesta Collationis Carthaginensis (CPL 724), the minutes of the miserable, rigged state-sponsored conference (collatio) of 411 AD between the Catholics, led by Aurelius and Augustine, and the Donatists.  As it happens, a new edition of this text has been published by the CSEL,[3] and a Google Books preview includes page 129, on which the relevant section appears:

Et recitavit: “Qui supra pro Paulino Zurensi praesente litteras nesciente coram viro clarissimo tribuno et notario Marcellino suprascripta mandavi et subscripsi Carthagini.” Quo recitato et accedente episcopo Paulino catholico idem dixit: “Catholica est.” Habetdeum diaconus Primiani episcopi dixit: “Presbyter est illic noster. Diocesis est nostra.”

As the bishops confirmed their signatures, one by one, the poor catholic bishop Paulinus of Zura had to listen to this as it was read out, litteras nesciente, not knowing his letters.

But I didn’t see any other examples.  Was this the only one?

The collatio is unusual because of the verbatim record of the proceedings.  But the same people were at other synods.  It is defensible that some of those attending were illiterate.  But at such proceedings, they must have been very rare indeed.

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  1. [1]Augustine: A very short introduction, Oxford (1986) p.68↩
  2. [2]I owe this reference to Garry Wills, “Augustine’s Hippo: Power Relations (410-417)”, Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Third Series, Vol. 7 (1999), 98-119, JSTOR, p.103.↩
  3. [3]C. Weidmann (ed.), Collatio Carthaginensis anni 411: Gesta collationis Carthaginensis Augustinus, Breviculus collationis Augustinus, Ad Donatistas post collationem, De Gruyter, 2018.  The Gesta are printed in Serge Lancel, Actes de la Conference de Carthage en 411, 3 vols. (Sources chretiennes 194, 195, and 224) (Paris, 1972 and 1975), in Gesta Conlationis Carthaginensis Anno 411, volume 149A of Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, also edited by Lancel (Turnhout, Belgium, 1974); J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 11.1257- 1418 (Paris, 1844-); and in J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio 4.19-246 (Florence, 1739-1798; reprint and continuation: Paris, 1901-1927).↩

Searching for the Vulgate: one genuine text and two “fakes”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

What do you do if you want a reading copy of the traditional Catholic Latin bible, the Vulgate?  The unwary purchaser may easily end up with something unsuitable.

First, some necessary background.

The original Vulgate Latin bible was created by St Jerome in the 5th century out of a mass of earlier “old Latin” translations, of variable quality, complete with a preface to many of the books.  It was then transmitted by copying down the centuries, becoming the standard medieval bible in the west, and the source for a vast amount of Dark Age and Medieval writing.  Along the way it acquired a certain amount of copyist errors – I have no idea what these are – and it also acquired punctuation and other forms of reader helps.  At the counter-reformation, with the arrival of printing, the Catholic church felt the need for an official text.  After Pope Sixtus V made some clumsy attempts at this, Pope Clement VIII produced four editions: in 1590, 1592, 1593 and 1598.  The last of these is referred to as the “Clementine Vulgate”.  This was the official version of the Bible in the Catholic Church until 1979.  This is what you probably want.

Title page of the 1598 Vulgate edition.

There is a copy of this edition at Google Books here.  Here is Genesis 1:11 in that volume, where “juxta” is still printed as “iuxta”.

Over the following centuries, the text of the Clementine Vulgate was reprinted many times, and the readability improved with better fonts, text layout, and the modernisation of orthography by getting rid of the long-s (ʃ) form of the consonant “s”.

One innovation that has affected all printed books is to divide the Latin letter “I”, which represented two sounds, into the modern vowel “i” and the modern consonant “j”.  This was proposed by Gian Giorgio Trissino in a letter in 1524,[1].  It was advocated and adopted in an English book in 1634, in Charles Butler’s English Grammar.[2]  We still use this convention today.  The Vulgate was intended to be read, despite being in Latin, so copies began to appear in this form also, such as in the 1688 edition here.

The standard 19th century edition of the Vulgate, as far as I can tell, is that of Samuel Bagster.  It seems to have been created for his Biblia Sacra Polygotta, and then reprinted separately.  I have an undated copy (probably late 19th century) in my possession, with very tiny text, designed to be placed in a pocket.  The typeface is visibly worn.  The Bagster edition continued to be printed into the 20th century.

The modern equivalent is the A. Colunga – L. Turrado edition, Biblia Vulgata, BAC (1991), ISBN 978-8479140212, available for 45 euros (or equivalent) at the BAC site, and also at Amazon.com ($55) and Amazon.co.uk (£56).  I’m not sure why it is so much cheaper in the USA.  I’ve not seen this, so I can’t say whether it uses “j” or not; but I think not.

In 2002-2005, Michael Tweedale and friends created an electronic text of the Clementine Vulgate, Biblia Sacra Juxta Vulgatam Clementinam, which was authorised by the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales.  This can be found online here.  The styling of the site is a little odd; the files are only visible from the left-top menu.  But they are all there.  It is a splendid piece of work, undertaken for the benefit of everyone.  It seems to be based on the Colunga edition but with corrections and it does use “j”.

Another very useful site is the SacredBible.org, which contains online scans of the Leander van Ess edition which compares all four Clementine editions, and also includes a 1914 Hetzenauer edition (no “j” in this tho).  All this material is free and public domain.

These are all “real Vulgates” – the book actually used by people who used the Latin bible for reading and liturgy, right down until recent times.

But by the late 19th century various academics were getting restless.  The Clementine Vulgate was a practical useful book, but it was not a critical text.  It reflected 15 centuries of tweaking, but had started to drift – allegedly – from Jerome’s original.  In 1878 John Wordsworth started the Wordsworth-White edition of the Latin New Testament.  In 1907 a Benedictine edition was started.  Neither produced an edition of the complete text, but the work done fed into the “Stuttgart Vulgate”.  This is the standard critical edition of the Vulgate, aimed at giving us the text as it was ca. 500 AD, with an apparatus of manuscripts. It is a very valuable thing to have, of course.

All this means that someone wishing to purchase a Vulgate, for practical reading purposes, may be led astray by what I have seen called – rather unfairly – “fake vulgates”.  There are two possible candidates: books that will appear in a Google search but are probably not what you want.

The first “fake vulgate” is the critical text, the Stuttgart Vulgate, edited by R. Weber and now – in its 5th edition –  by Roger Gryson.  Of course it isn’t really a “fake”! This is a real critical edition of Jerome’s text of the Vulgate, as I understand it, based upon text-critical principles and early mss.  It has an apparatus.  But it isn’t the text that most people using a Latin bible would think of.  It lacks punctuation, capitals, or paragraphs, just as books did back in Jerome’s time.  This makes it nearly unreadable, even before the language barrier is considered.  For the half-dozen people who need to work, not with a medieval text, but the text of the 500s, it is a useful tool.  It can be found at Archive.org.  It is, indeed, not a book at all.  It’s a tool, a reference item. It’s invaluable, but if you want a Vulgate for reading, it’s not what you want.

The second “fake vulgate” is the “Nova Vulgata”.  This is a secondary consequence of the massive loss of confidence in traditional Catholicism by the Catholic hierarchs after WW2, a process that led to Vatican II.  The Nova Vulgata uses a great deal of Jerome’s Vulgate, derived from 20th century critical editions, but it revises them in line with the Greek and Hebrew original.  It is, in reality, a new Latin translation of the bible, rather than a Vulgate.  It is officially approved, since 1972, as the standard Catholic Church Latin bible.  I’m not sure how successful it is, or what most of us would use it for.  But anyone wishing to buy a Vulgate for reading needs to be aware of it, if only to avoid it.  The text may be found online here.

There is an interesting discussion of both by Ron Conte, a traditionalist Catholic, here.  Another interesting comment is that the text of 4 Esdras in the Stuttgart Vulgate is 140 verses as compared to 70 in the Clementine Vulgate, as a portion of the text was only recovered in the 19th century.

You can most easily distinguish the three texts by looking at Genesis 3:20.  Eve’s name is different in each:

  • Heva: the Clementine Vulgate.
  • Hava: the Stuttgart edition of the Vulgate.
  • Eva: the New Vulgate.

A rather useful parallel Greek, English and Clementine Vulgate in parallel columns is at NewAdvent.org here.

It’s all rather confusing.  I would like a pocket-size Clementine Vulgate, in a nice soft leather binding, properly sewn.  Does such a thing exist?

 

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  1. [1]Thus Wikipedia which links to the text of the letter.↩
  2. [2]Lilo Moessner, “Chapter 10: Standardization”, in: Alexander Bergs &c (ed.), Early Modern English, p.171.↩

A miscellany of things

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Here are a couple of things that I noticed recently, and might be useful to others.

Following an enquiry, I find that there is a translation of Theophylact on Matthew online here.  This is certainly better than the $70 needed to obtain the 1992 translation of the same work, at Amazon.com here.

Next, the physical remains of ancient Rome are always interesting.  Piranesi printed a drawing of the rear of the Pantheon, with what he claims are the remains of the Baths of Agrippa, completed before 12 BC and therefore one of the original public baths of thermae:

I was able to find online some photos of the same area, here.

Much of the baths still stood in the 17th century, despite use as a quarry for building materials.  It would be interesting to track down the older sketches that apparently exist.

Finally I saw something about the Ethiopian canon of the bible.  It is a common atheist jeer online is that the Ethiopian canon of the bible is larger than the normal, insinuating – the argument is rarely made explicit – that this proves that the bible does not exist, or is not by God, or something of the kind.  I’ve never worried about the odd additions to the Ethiopian canon, since Ethiopia was not converted to Christianity until the canon was pretty much set, and the isolation of that community, the little that we know about it, and its unusual circumstances could result in any amount of oddity.  One Ethiopian emperor used to eat pages of the bible when he was feeling ill, for instance.  This is not a very educated world.

But I spent a little time looking into this.  The Wikipedia article contains very poor sources.  The only one of any value seemed to  be by G.-A. Mikre-Sellassie,[1]  This says on p.119:

It is rather difficult to determine what exactly the official Canon of Scriptures of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is. As R.W Cowley has rightly observed, one of the problems in this study is that in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church “the concept of canonicity is regarded more loosely than it is among most other churches”.[46] Apparently, the two terms, protocanonical and deuterocanonical, employed among many churches nowadays, are not known within the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

46. R.W. Cowley, “The Biblical Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Today” in Ostikirchliche Studien, 23 (1974), 318-323. In this short article the author has attempted a careful study of the Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

This is not encouraging.  In fact the article did not give any kind of history of how the canon came to be – a common problem.  In general one gained the idea that in Ethiopian history the church was rather more important than the scriptures were, and the apocrypha might have a near-canonical status, or not, as times demanded.  Perhaps our own view on canon is shaped by the Reformers here, and is more precise than might have been the case either than in antiquity or the middle ages?  If so, the Ethiopians are merely continuing a late-antique vagueness, albeit shaped by their own unusual world.

One of the key sources is apparently E. Ullendorf, Ethiopia and the Bible: the Schweich Lectures 1967, OUP (1968).  This I could not access, but a Google Books preview gave me p.31 f., which gives an account about the translation of the Old and New Testaments into Ge`ez:

I don’t think that we need to rely on this very much.  Ullendorf also discusses the equally traditional idea that the bible in Ethiopian was translated by Arabic; and it seems to be a fact that many Ethiopian versions of ancient texts derive from an Arabic translation.  However I quickly drowned in the number of books and articles that I would have to read to know more!

That’s it for now.  More next time!

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  1. [1]Mikre-Sellassie, Gebre-Amanuel (1993). “The Bible and Its Canon in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church,” The Bible Translator 44 (1): 111-123.↩

Where are the academic reviews of bible translations?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This evening something drew my attention to the New World Bible Translation, the English translation of the bible made by and for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  I knew nothing much about it, except that it is generally derided as biased and edited to reflect the theological ideas of that group.

But I prefer not to rely on hearsay for such things, and I began to search for information.  I came across a great many webpages, all of them amateur.  I came across the Wikipedia page, full of supposed quotes by scholars.  But it was clear that the JW’s themselves have also edited it to include material advantageous to themselves.  None of the material, for or against, seemed particularly reliable to me.

At this point, I wanted to know more.  I’m not a Hebrew scholar of any description.  The Greek text is something I could read, but not as a specialist.  So what I want is the professional, unbiased opinion of someone specialising in the relevant language skills.  I want someone with no axe to grind.   In other words, I want a solid academic review.

Naturally I skipped off to JSTOR, which my university makes available to alumni, and typed in “New World Translation”.  And I came up with … nearly nothing.  One review, in fact, just over a page long, which did not seem to me to be of a high standard.

On a hunch, I repeated the search but for the “New International Version”.  Again I got nothing worth having.  I did the same for a couple of other versions, with the same result – nothing worth having.

Google searches revealed a single study, by a certain Robert H. Countess.  I have not seen this, but the information available to me did not suggest that Dr. Countess was the kind of language scholar that I was looking for.

I have begun to wonder if I am looking in the wrong place!  Some of those who read this must know.  Am I doing this wrong?  Are all the reviews of bible translations hidden away somewhere?

The taxpayer funds universities to make it possible for us to find studies of knowledge.  To make available objective information as to whether a translation of an ancient text is accurate or not – whatever the ancient text – is one of the fundamental duties of a scholar in the relevant discipline.  This is particularly true for a text like the Bible, or indeed the Koran, where an error may produce heavy social consequences.

The world is heavy with biblical scholars.  You can’t throw a brick without one popping up, it sometimes feels.  So where are the reviews?

In my ignorance, it is hard to believe that these things don’t exist.  Could that possibly be the case?

Answers in the comments, or using the Contact Me form please!

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Some thoughts on Craig Evans, “How Long Were Late Antique Books in Use?”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A few days ago I wrote about the statement of Peter of Alexandria (d.311) that the original manuscript of John’s gospel was still around and that readings could be obtained from it.

A few days ago I came across an interesting article by Craig Evans, “How Long Were Late Antique Books in Use? Possible Implications for New Testament Textual Criticism”, Bulletin for Biblical Research 25 1 (2015) 23-37.  The article makes some interesting points.

The first part of the article is a dossier of evidence that ancient papyrus books could be in use for considerable periods of time, perhaps even a couple of centuries.  Our papyrus data is from Egypt and the desert of Qumran, both locations where the climate may play a part.  But there are literary references as well, that refer to Rome.  The article might also have referenced Aulus Gellius for further examples of long-lived literary texts, such as Fabius Pictor.  The evidence does suggest that a papyrus book containing a literary text might be in use 200 years after it was written.

The article then digresses, before giving us the statement of Peter of Alexandria that the church at Ephesus preserved the autograph of the Gospel of John, and what a particular reading was said to be in that autograph.

These two things together lead to an interesting thought.

Firstly, we have clear evidence that papyrus books could remain in use in the ancient near east for a couple of centuries.

Secondly, we have clear evidence (from Peter of Alexandria) that this actually happened to the original manuscript of the Gospel of John.

These two points together seem rather interesting.  Neither point is exciting by itself.  Just because a few rare books did remain in use for centuries does not mean that the gospel autographs were among them.  But then we have an ancient literary testimony that one of them was among them.

I don’t see that the force of this evidence can be disregarded.  The autograph, the original manuscript of the Gospel of John, was around much later than we would expect; possibly as late as 300 AD.

This is a rather amazing statement, but it is what the evidence says.  What kind of contrary evidence do we have?  Nothing.

Having established this point, unfortunately the article introduces various distractions.

The first distraction is references to the parchment codices of late antiquity; but the long life of such items is irrelevant, because these are parchment codices of a higher technological standard than anything available in the first century AD.  I have myself handled British Library Additional 12150, which was written in 411 AD, and is none the worse for its fifteen centuries.

It may be guessed that the reason for introducing parchment books lies in 2 Tim. 4:13, where Paul refers to the books and the parchments.  This phrase was used as a title for a famous book by F. F. Bruce, and was likely enough in Dr.E’s mind.  But there is no evidence in our possession that the NT autographs were written on anything but papyrus.  They may have been in roll or codex form, but we can’t suppose a parchment codex without evidence.

The next distraction is an attempt to draw upon Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum 36:1-2:

Age iam, qui uoles curiositatem melius exercere in negotio salutis tuae, percurre ecclesias apostolicas apud quas ipsae adhuc cathedrae apostolorum suis locis praesident, apud quas ipsae authenticae litterae eorum recitantur sonantes uocem et repraesentantes faciem uniuscuiusque.  (CSEL 57)

Come now, if you are ready to exercise your curiosity better in the business of your own salvation, run through the apostolic churches, where the very thrones of the apostles preside to this day over their districts, where the authentic letters of the apostles are still recited, bringing the voice and face of each one of them to mind.[84] (Greenslade’s translation)

Greenslade indeed adds a footnote:

84. Eusebius, H.E., VII, 19, believed that the actual throne of James still existed at Jerusalem. Some think that Tertullian means by cathedrae here the physical objects. That is unnecessary, and on the whole unlikely, but not impossible. But “authentic” will scarcely mean autograph; he means unmutilated texts.

If we look to see how Tertullian uses “authenticae”, we find only one other reference, in De Monogamia 11:16:

Sciamus plane non sic esse in Graeco authentico, quomodo  in usum exiit per duarum syllabarum aut callidam aut simplicem   eversionem: Si autem dormierit vir eius, quasi de futuro  sonet ac per hoc videatur ad eam pertinere, quae iam in fide  virum amiserit. (CSEL 57, Bulhart)

Let us plainly know that, in the Greek original, it does not stand in the form which (through the either crafty or simple alteration of two syllables) has gone out into common use, “But if her husband shall have fallen asleep,” as if it were speaking of the future, and thereby seemed to pertain to her who has lost her husband when already in a believing state. (ANF, Thelwall)

There seems no reason to suppose a reference to the original manuscript of 1 Corinthians; but instead to the correct reading, the authentic reading of scripture, rather than the somewhat dodgy Old Latin translation then in circulation.

Dr. E. plainly consulted his dictionaries. The Oxford Latin Dictionary does indeed define “authenticum, -i, n.” as “an original document, autograph” and the adjective as “(of documents) Original”, referencing the Greek αὐθεντικός (Glare, p.220), but the examples given in both cases refer to documentary or legal texts, where the original means the actual thing itself.  But Souter’s Glossary of Later Latin has the adjective meaning “authoritative, genuine, true, original”, and even “authentica” used for Greek antigrapha, “copies” – presumably authentic ones.  Both of the Latin usages belong to the time of Tertullian, but here he is anticipating the later, and indeed the modern use of “authentic”.  A look at Liddell and Scott reveals both meanings hanging around the Greek word.

Tertullian, then, does not provide any support for the idea of autograph New Testament manuscripts; the subject is rather of honest copies instead of heretical forgeries or corrupt translations.

The article continues with some interesting general points about ancient letters, but this really only distracts from the key message.

Finally it ends with the very distracting claim that the NT texts were more textually stable than the gnostic writings, and hypothesises that the availability of the autographs may be the reason why.  This leads up to the tremendous final statement:

…. there really is no justification for supposing that the text of the NT writings underwent major changes in the first and second centuries.

Indeed not; but that does not follow from what has been said.

Such claims weaken the paper, because they have nothing to do with the evidence presented.  We can discuss them briefly, but as I said, they are a distraction.

The gnostic texts are known to us in tiny quantities of manuscripts, and, to the best of my knowledge, show a great deal of variation which is not a matter of textual transmission, but rather of editing changes.  In this they resemble the later hagiographical texts.  But we know from Irenaeus and especially Tertullian that the gnostics themselves did not consider that a rigid fidelity to what they heard was important.  As Tertullian pointed out – “what has Athens to do with Jerusalem” – they drew upon the pop-philosophical schools, where innovation was necessary in order to become a teacher.  Consequently every gnostic master taught something different.  The texts that they produced – we need hardly suppose any of them to be very old – will not be exempt from such an attitude.  Consequently they tell us nothing about the stability or otherwise of the New Testament texts.

Likewise the documented existence of the autograph of John by Peter of Alexandria does not force us to understand that it was consulted in such a way as to control the text.  Cathedrals preserve relics, in our own day, but getting access can be a test of patience.[1]  In fact the reading offered by Peter of Alexandria, with the authority of the autograph, looks very much the opposite, a lectio facilior.

This corrupt reading is most likely evidence that the Ephesus church was not doing what the article suggests.  If they were not doing it then we cannot suppose that others were doing so.

It is perfectly possible that Peter of Alexandria was an isolated instance.  It is quite likely that he was copying from an earlier, now lost source – he must have had access to lost works of Origen, for instance.  So the date of his anecdote may easily be fifty years earlier.

Nor does the existence of a “standard text” prevent the creation of “wild copies”.  Most ancient copies of books were probably produced in-house, by a literate slave.  Such copies are commonplace in the texts of the classics at Oxyrhynchus.  The medieval codices that transmit the Iliad and Odyssey to us do not derive from such trashy copies, but from the corrected texts of Alexandria, as the scholia show.  But the trashy copies still got produced.  No doubt it was exactly the same for Christian texts.  It is telling that our solitary text critical anecdote itself also comes from Alexandria.

These points should not distract us from what is a fine and interesting paper.

It may be relevant that it is the Gospel of John that is preserved.  Anybody who reads Eusebius’ Church History will be struck by the way in which stories about John are preserved.  Little is recorded about the other writers of the New Testament.  There were few Christians in the early days, and most likely they died before the Christian community was numerous enough to preserve very much.  How could those early believers in their house churches have managed to preserve autographs anyway?  But Irenaeus tells us that John lived on until the time of Trajan, 100 AD, and that Polycarp came to Rome ca. 155 and preached about what he had himself heard the apostle say.  Pliny the Younger tells Trajan that the temples are deserted.  This is a numerous group.  If John wrote his Gospel around 90 AD, it would appear in a world a generation later from that which the works of Mark and Luke had to face.  We are not obliged to believe in all or even most of the stories recorded, but the point is that they were recorded at all.  Such a world and such an environment might have been favourable to preservation.  But all this is speculation.

But regardless of its defects, this is a useful article.

Note: For some reason Dr. E.’s article greatly offended some readers.  Of the material that Google throws up, the hostile blogpost by Brice Jones is written in terms that would most certainly mean a duel in earlier days.  It also has comments below by various scholars.  Timothy N. Mitchell gives a critical but less excited reply.

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  1. [1]This writer was once comprehensively prevented over a period of months from accessing an incunable by the apparently motiveless spite of an archivist at Canterbury Cathedral.↩

Extracts from Peter of Alexandria (d.311) and the original copy of the Gospel of John

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In the 10th century one or more scribes created what is now a parchment manuscript with the shelfmark Vatican gr. 1941 (scanned microfilm online here).  The majority of the pages today (folios 19r-290v) are occupied by an anonymous chronicle of the 7th century, written, as it tells us, by a contemporary of Heraclius.  This world chronicle is known today as the Chronicon Paschale, bcause the manuscript starts with a long preface dedicated to discussing differing methods of calculating Easter.  The only copies known to us of the work are three of the 16th century – Munich 557 (written 1573), “Holmensis e. 30. I. 21, and Upsala 2; and there are some extracts in two manuscripts of the 15th and 18th century, Ambrosian 814 f.1-14, and Athos mon. Lavra 1866, f. 265-279.[1]  But largely the work was ignored.[2]

The text, including the prefatory material about Easter, was edited by L. Dindorf under the title “Chronicon Paschale” in the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae (=CSHB) series in Bonn in 1832, with the Latin translation of Du Cange.  Vol. 1 is online here. Dindorf basically reprinted Du Cange’s Paris edition of 1688 (reprinted in Venice in 1729), and made corrections from the Vatican manuscript.[3]  This is most noticeable in the page of Greek text at the start, where there is no Latin translation.

But the start of the work contains something else altogether.  The horrible microfilm is too poor for me to make out what is actually in the Vatican manuscript.  The work starts with an extract from Philo, On the Life of Moses, book 3.  Then it says, “So much for Philo”, and tells us that after the fall of Jerusalem under Vespasian, various church writers discussed the question of the date of Easter, including Peter of Alexandria, an unknown Tricentius, the great Athanasius, and Epiphanius. (p.4, ll.1-5).  We then pass into material on the subject itself, which Du Cange headed as being by Peter of Alexandria from his lost work on Easter.  This has all been translated in the ANF 6, where it appears as fragment 5, ending in the CSHB on p.12, line 7.  What follows seems to be editorial, and then there is material from Hippolytus and then Apollinaris.

Nothing in the text actually identifies this material as being by Peter of Alexandria, but it is a reasonable inference – by Du Cange? – from the list of names just before it.

One portion of the text, however, is very interesting, on page 11, lines 5-10:

ἤ δὲ παρασκευὴ τοῦ πάσχα· ὥρα ἦν ὡσεὶ τρίτη”· καθὼς τὰ ἀκριβῆ βιβλία περιέχει, αὐτό τε τὸ ἰδιόχειρον τοῦ εὐαγγελιστοῦ, ὅπερ μέχρι νῦν πεφύλακται χάριτι θεοῦ ἐν τῇ Ἐφεσίων ἁγιωτάτῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ, καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν πιστῶν ἐκεῖσε προσκυνεῖται.

And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the third hour,” as the correct books render it, and the copy itself that was written by the hand of the evangelist, which, by the divine grace, has been preserved in the most holy church of Ephesus, and is there adored by the faithful.[4]

The evangelist here is John.  This is a claim that the autograph copy of John’s gospel was preserved at Ephesus at the time of the writer.

The context is the discrepancy between Mark 15:25, which says that Jesus was crucified at the third hour; and John 19:14, which says that Pilate sentenced Jesus to death at the sixth hour.  [5]

Peter is saying that the text of John 19:14 is corrupt, and should read “third hour”, rather than “sixth hour”; and he is appealing to the original copy of John’s gospel.This is extraordinary!

This passage was mentioned in a controversial article by Craig Evans, “How Long were Late Antique Books in Use?”, in: Bulletin of Biblical Research  (BBR) 25.1 (2015), 25-37.  I have no access to this, but it drew excited responses such as this by G.W. Schwendner[6] and this by Brice C. Jones.  Evans suggested, I believe that this was evidence that the autographs of the NT were accessible for centuries and were used to correct the text.

In a way, the statement of Peter of Alexandria is inscrutable.  It says what it says.  What can we make of it?

Firstly, Peter does not say that he has seen the autograph.  Rather he says that it is the treasured possession of the church of Ephesus.

There is nothing at all improbable about this.  Indeed modern cathedrals across Europe preserve a great many relics of the apostles, such as their heads, and other body parts.  The authenticity of many of these may be doubtful – and indeed should be subject to DNA testing – but they do boast of holding such relics.  No doubt the church of Ephesus did indeed boast of such a thing.

Did they actually have the autograph, in the late 3rd century?  The autograph would have been a papyrus roll, perhaps; and by that date would have been rather fragile.  But it could be.  If it did exist, possibly it perished during the persecution of Diocletian, when such things were sought out.

But does the testimony of Peter actually suppose that this item existed in his time?  I think of Tertullian referring to the Acts of Pilate, probably copying Justin Martyr.  Peter may simply be using the testimony of a now lost earlier writer, such as a lost work of Origen.  He’s not saying he saw it himself.  Likewise his testimony as to what the reading of this passage was may be derived from his source.  But if we suppose that his source was around 200 AD – picking a random date – there is nothing at all impossible about supposing that the autograph existed at that date.

Was this reading really to be found in it?  Who can now tell?  But let us guess that the volume existed.  If so, it would be treasured, and it would be frail.  Anybody with any experience of dealing with “treasures” will know how the keepers would respond to requests to see it; with hostility.  In such a situation I would imagine that an “authorised” copy of the original might be made available in the church, to save wear and tear on the frail original.  Such a copy, “guaranteed” to be an “exact copy”, is what visitors would have access to.  The actual accuracy of the copy might be less than perfect.

In the end it is all speculation.  But it is certainly interesting to reflect on the longevity of ancient books.

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  1. [1]Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica (Berlin 1958) i. 241-2.↩
  2. [2]Whitby and Whitby, Chronicon Paschale: 284-628 AD, TTH7 (1989), p.xiv.↩
  3. [3]As indeed he states on p.4.↩
  4. [4]ANF 6 p.280 translation.  The references given in the ANF are very strange.  They read, “5 Apud Galland, Ex Chronico Paschal., p. 1, seqq., edit. Venet., 1729.” and “31 Apud Galland, Ex Chronico Paschal., p. 175, D.”  The introduction, on the other hand, says “(4) A passage from the Sermo in Sanctum Pascha, or from some other work of Peter’s on the same subject, is given in the Diatriba de Paschate, prefixed to the Chronicon Alexandrinum S. Paschale, and published separately in the Uranologion of Petavius, fol. Paris, 1630, p. 396.”  P.396 of the Uranologion can be found here, but only contains a Greek text. No work of Galland entitled “Ex Chronico Paschal.” exists, and the truth is that the translator was actually working from the Patrologia Graeca, vol. 18, col. 512, where the following screen shot explains all: The actual source used by the translator is the PG; the 1729 edition mention in it is not by Galland, but simply the reprint of Du Cange’s edition of the Chronicon Paschale that we saw earlier. This error has confused others; the same mistake is found on p.67 in Sacha, Calendar and Community: A History of the Jewish Calendar, 2nd Century BCE to 10th Century CE, Clarendon, 2001, p.67, in the otherwise excellent footnote 261: “261.  This letter, preserved in the preface of the Chronicon Paschale, was published separately by Migne, PG 18. 512 b—520 b, following Galland, Ex Chron. Pasch. (Venice, 1729), which itself follows Du Cange’s first edition of the Chronikon Paschale (Paris, 1688), and on which was based the English translation by Hawkins (1869: 325-32). However, a better edition of this text, based on MS Vat. gr. 1941, was published by Dindorf (1832) and followed by Migne, PG 92. 73 b-c.”↩
  5. [5]Stephan Witetschek, “The hour of the Lamb? Some remarks on John 19:14 and the hour of Jesus’s condemnation and crucifixion”, in: P. N. Anderson &c, John, Jesus, and History, Volume 3: Glimpses of Jesus through the Johannine Lens, SBL Press, 2016, p. 95f.  Preview here.↩
  6. [6]This also repeats the “Galland” mistake.  It is terrifying to consider just how many publications must have trusted that lazy editor from the ANF06!↩