Tag: Bible

Collecting all ancient texts referring to the gift of tongues

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Charles A. Sullivan writes to say that his Gift of Tongues Project is up and running:

 It has been a while, but I have the majority of ancient church writings located, digitized, organized, and analyzed for the Gift of Tongues Project. Of course, there is always more to do, but a sound framework is in place. Here is the actual source texts along with some other apparatus.

This is a new website, and a useful resource.  While the Charismatic movement of the 1980s has faded rather, the basic idea – just what do the early Christians say about the gift of tongues – is a subject that will appeal to many.

Well done.

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A previously unknown governor of Judaea

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Via Haaretz (beware incredible amounts of popups, popunders and other junk), an excellent article gives us the following information:

Divers find unexpected Roman inscription from the eve of Bar-Kochba Revolt – A statue base from 1,900 years ago found at Dor survived shellfish and seawater, and to the archaeologists’ shock, revealed a previously unknown governor of Judea.

An underwater survey conducted by divers off Tel Dor, on the Mediterranean Sea, yielded an astonishing find: a rare Roman inscription mentioning the province of Judea – and the name of a previously unknown Roman governor, who ruled the province shortly before the Bar-Kochba Revolt.

Historians had thought that based on Roman records, the leaders Rome imposed on its provinces were all known.

The rock with the 1,900-year-old inscription was exposed by a storm on the seabed at a depth of just 1.5 meters in the bay of Dor. The town had been a thriving port in Roman times that even minted its own coins, which proudly proclaimed the city to be “Ruler of the Seas”.

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Found by Haifa University archaeologists surveying the remains of the ancient Roman harbor at Dor in January 2016, the rock, 70 by 65 centimeters in size, was partly covered in sea creatures when it was found.

The statue base found on the seabed at Dor is only the second known mention of the province of Judea in Roman inscription. The other is the “Pontius Pilate stone” dating to around 100 years earlier. Discovered by archaeologists in 1961 at the ancient theater in Caesarea, it is a rare piece of solid evidence mentioning Pilate, prefect of Judea, by name.

The newly found inscription, carved on the stone in Greek, is missing a part, but is thought to have originally read: “The City of Dor honors Marcus Paccius, son of Publius, Silvanus Quintus Coredius Gallus Gargilius Antiquus, governor of the province of Judea, as well as […] of the province of Syria, and patron of the city of Dor.”

The name Gargilius Antiquus had been known from another inscription previously found in Dor – as the governor of a province whose name was missing from that inscription. So far, reconstructions have suggested either Syria or Syria-Palaestina as the province he was governing. Dr. Gil Gambash, head of the Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, and Yasur-Landau were excited to read on the new inscription that Gargilius Antiquus was in fact the governor of Judea, shortly before the Bar Kochba Revolt.

The inscription outing Gargilius Antiquus was apparently the base of a statue, going by the tell-tale marks of small feet incretions on its top.

The putative statue has not been found, but it could plausibly have been of Gargilius Antiquus himself, who was not only the province’s governor but also a patron of Dor, as the inscription states.

…

During Israel’s War of Independence, in 1948, another statue base fragment was found at the east gate of the ancient city of Dor, with writing that reads: “Honored Marcus Paccius, son of Publius…Silvanus Quintus Coredius Gallus Gargilius Antiquus, imperial governor with Praetorian rank of the province Syria Palaestina”.

Clearly the Roman emperor, in this case Hadrian, had appointed Gargilius Antiquus as governor of the province of Judea, somewhere between 120 – 130 C.E. (perhaps around 123 C.E., succeeding Cosonius Gallus). …

(I was going to look up the other inscription, and compile the data; but I see that David E. Graves has already done this, with photographs and references, in his fine article here.)

This sort of discovery should be a constant reminder to us of a basic principle of archaeology.  Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.  We must never use lack of archaeological evidence as a reason to ignore literary evidence.  Only positive archaeological evidence may be used to confute an ancient mistake.

Our knowledge of the sequence of ancient officials is not comprehensive, however impressive it may look in a nice printed modern edition.

Many of these lists are compiled by guesswork.  We know how long a normal appointment would be; we have a number of people which seems about the right number in the right order; and there is suddenly “no room” for another one.

But in reality people are people.  Governors are called home unexpectedly for personal or political reasons, and a stand-in holds their post for an irregular period of time until another can be sent out.

It is a terrible anachronism to imagine the Roman empire as being like a modern state.  It was not.  Communications and travel were slow and difficult, as it was in Europe until comparatively recently.  Administration was loose.  Law could be, and was, enforced capriciously.  We can never say with confidence that such-and-such could never happen; only that with our limited knowledge, we do not think it accords with what we already know.

At this Christmas season, many of us will think of Luke 2:1-2:

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.  (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)

How much ink has been spilt, to show that Luke – and hence the bible! – is wrong at this point; or, alternatively, that it is not.  The choice made, in this as other political or religious matters, depends in both cases all too often on the prejudices of those writing.

This stone, hoisted out of the sea, is a reminder that we know much, much less than we think we do.  Only one stone records Pontius Pilate’s governorship.  Only one stone records Gargilius Antiquus’ tenure.

Nothing is gained by pretending knowledge that we do not have; or arguing from what we do not know.  Five minutes in a time machine would undoubtedly shatter our preconceptions of the ancient world in a million ways.

When the data is contradictory, we may decide to discard bits of it, especially when it fits our modern eyes.  But this we must avoid.  Contradictory data from antiquity always, always means that we have a little window into a situation which is more complex than the sources that have reached us reveal.  Let us hold lightly to our theories.

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Catenas on the Psalms – two important French works now online!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Great news!  A correspondent writes to say that two important French works on commentaries and catenae on the Psalms are now available online in full:

1) M.-J. Rondeau, Les Commentaires patristiques du Psautier (IIIe-Ve siècles), 2 vols, OCA 219-220, Roma 1982, 1985.

2) G. Dorival, Les chaînes exégétiques grecques sur les Psaumes: contribution à l’étude d’une forme littéraire, 4 vols, Leuven 1986, 1989, 1992, 1995.

These are tremendously useful, and one can only congratulate the publishers, Peeters, and the Pontifical Institute in Rome, respectively.  These highly specialist tomes now stand a chance of being read!

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Euthymius Zigabenus, Commentary on the Psalms – edition and translation completed!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A few months ago I heard from John Raffan, who was industriously working on a translation of the immense Commentary on the Psalms by the 12th century Byzantine writer, Euthymius Zigabenus (or Zigadenus).  He had posted on his Academia.edu page a draft of the commentary for Psalms 1-75.

Today I hear from him that he has now posted a text and translation of the complete commentary in the same place.  It is here.

This is an immensely worthwhile thing to do, which must have required real grit and determination.  Euthymius Zigabenus is a name that crops up in various places in discussion of biblical interpretation.  It is very useful indeed, therefore, to have an edition, and still more a freely available translation, of his work on the Psalms.  Thank you!

UPDATE: I had not known at the time of posting that in fact Dr Raffan has made the first complete edition of the Greek text.  He writes:

“I do not wish to make inflated claims for my edition of the Psalter Commentary, but I think it is more of a ‘first complete edition’ than a ‘fresh edition’. The edition reprinted in Migne 128 was incomplete (it did not include the commentary on the Biblical Canticles) and also thoroughly corrupt, being based on a single manuscript with lacunae and interpolations.

“My prime source for the edition is the 12th century ms. from the Moscow Synodal Library  (gr. 195), but this has been collated with a series of other  early manuscripts from Paris (Bibliothèque Nationale), London (British Library), Constantinople (Old Seraglio Library), Sinai (Saint Catherine’s Monastery Library), Florence (Laurenziana Library) and Munich (Bavarian State Library), many of which are now available on the internet in digital form. I have barely made any use of the Migne edition, which I found virtually unusable. On the top left corner of the Greek pages I have marked the folio numbers of the Moscow ms. and I also have marked the page breaks in the text. I will need to present all this information in an introduction, but I thought is would be helpful to make the text available even before I have completed writing the introduction.

“The mss. from Moscow, the British Library and Munich also contain the Dogmatic Anthology in varying states of incompleteness.”

Many thanks indeed for this – my mistake!

Euthymius is perhaps best known for his comment on the passage in John’s gospel, in his Commentary on the Four Gospels (PG129, col. 1280 C-D), about the woman taken in adultery, that it isn’t found in the best copies of his day, or is obelised.I discussed this myself in 2009 here. I posted a version of the translation into Wikipedia – it seems that I wrote the original version of that article – and this has circulated as follows:

But it is necessary to know that the things which are found from this place to that where it is said: Therefore Jesus again spoke of these things saying, I am the light of the world: in the more exact copies, these are either not found, or marked with an obelus, because they seem illegitimate and added. And the argument for this is because Chrysostom makes no mention anywhere of this; but for us we must also declare that this, because it is not without usefulness, is the chapter on the woman taken in adultery, which is placed between these.

I hope that we will get more of his works in English soon!  Dr Raffan has stated his intention to work on the Dogmatic Anthology next.  I asked about this, and he wrote:

The Dogmatic Anthology is not to be identified with the Dogmatic Panoply, which is indeed an anti-heretical work and perhaps the most widely-known of the works by Zigabenus, since it is one of the main sources for the Bogomil heresy. The Dogmatic Panoply was published in the early 18th century and reprinted as volume 130 of Migne’s Patrologia Graeca.

In the wake of the Bogomil debacle, Zigabenus was commanded by the Emperor Alexios Comnenos produce the Dogmatic Panoply to provide a compendium and refutation of all heresies. In her Alexiad, Anna Comnena states that Zigadenus was chosen by her father for this task because, in addition to his skill as a Grammarian and his prowess in Rhetoric, he ‘was unrivalled in his knowledge of doctrine’. His ‘grammatical’ and ‘rhetorical’ credentials are evidenced by his scriptural commentaries (on the Gospels, the Psalms and the Pauline Epistles), but the evidence for his unrivalled knowledge of doctrine has not hitherto been found.

A number of the mss. of the Psalter commentary, however, also include a Dogmatic Anthology, which has been described by cataloguers as ‘extracts from the Dogmatic Panoply’, and has never been published. I believe, however, that this Anthology predates the Dogmatic Panoply and explains Zigabenus’ reputation for doctrinal competence and hence his invitation to produce the larger work, which incorporates most of this earlier Anthology. The Dogmatic Anthology thus provides a link between the earlier tradition of Dogmatic Florilegia, as found in the well-known Doctrina Patrum, and the various ‘Panoplies’ that followed the work promoted by the Emperor Alexios. The Anthology displays Zigabenus’ skill in paraphrasing his beloved Chrysostomos and also later writers such as Photios.

Great to see new ground being broken!

NOTE: 11/6/16.  I have updated this post with additional information supplied by Dr Raffan, for which I am very grateful.

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Spamming to promote the NIV bible?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have written a couple of times before about the collapse in confidence in the New International Version (NIV) of the bible.  This happened after Zondervan, the publishers, decided to revise it to be “gender neutral.”  As I wrote in my last such post:

… “gender neutrality” is not a principle of text criticism, nor of biblical theology, but a principle of the modern political movement referred to as “political correctness”.  So the publisher has acted to corrupt the translation in the interests of a modern political lobby – an incredible thing to do.

It is now the 50th anniversary of the publication of the NIV.  It is, of course, a sad anniversary, considering what has happened.  Zondervan have been trying to boost the “translation” by having a website, thenivbible.com, which is of course their right.  The site is conspicuously silent about the controversy, I note, which is not so acceptable.

They have also, even less forgiveably, employed a PR industry firm to pester bloggers.

A few months ago I received a communication from a PR flack, via my contact form.  The message professed to be all excited about how wonderful my site was, and then seamlessly went on to say how I might like to engage with their new site, etc etc.

In other words, they sent me a spam email.  The content suggested to me that they had mined the lists of top 50 biblioblogs, and spammed the lot.  I deleted it, and thought no more of it.

Today I received another one, from the same PR flack, with the same dishonest message, professing again to be giving feedback and actually trying to get me to visit etc that sad old website.  I must confess to feeling contempt for such attempts to gain my support by such threadbare flattery.

I fear that Dante would have assigned an imaginative fate, for those who brought this about, in the Inferno. Perhaps he would have depicted them being endlessly sodomized by (gender neutral!) demons.  But then I am less imaginative than the Florentine master.

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English translation of Cramer’s catena on Galatians published

Posted on by Roger Pearse

John Litteral writes to tell me that a complete translation of Cramer’s catena-commentary on Galatians has been made by Bill Berg, and is available at a trivial price ($12)on Amazon here (US) and here (UK).

Some will be unaware of what a catena is.  The medieval church created its bible commentaries by stringing together chains of quotations from the fathers.  These chain-commentaries are known today as catenas (from the Latin for chain).  These often reference now lost works, and so are of value as a source for lost early Christian commentary on scripture.  They tend to be found in the margins of Greek bible manuscripts; but sometimes standalone.  The author of each excerpt is indicated by an abbreviation at the start.

It’s pretty hard to work with the catenas.  The text is often corrupt, the author marks even more often corrupt, and the editions are all old – sometimes very old – and difficult to access.  So … scholars have ducked the task of producing modern editions.

In the 19th century John Cramer published a set of catenas on all the books of the New Testament, in eight volumes.  Bill Berg has attacked the catena on Galatians.

The authors cited in this catena include John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Severian of Gabala, among others.

So … if ancient biblical commentary is your thing, pick up a copy.  It should certainly encourage work on this subject!

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A first century fragment of Mark’s gospel? Some thoughts by an outsider

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An article in Live Science two days ago:

Mummy Mask May Reveal Oldest Known Gospel

A text that may be the oldest copy of a gospel known to exist — a fragment of the Gospel of Mark that was written during the first century, before the year 90 — is set to be published. …

This first-century gospel fragment was written on a sheet of papyrus that was later reused to create a mask that was worn by a mummy.

Some sensible words of caution are here; and here at ETC, where it is suggested that the article at Live Science may be entirely derived from some public presentations.  There has also been some curious snarking from one or two papyrologists, who are not involved in the discovery, presumably out of sour grapes.

Is this a genuine discovery?  Who knows?  But I have some concerns about all this, even based on the story as we have it.

Mark’s gospel was completed ca. 70 AD, in Alexandria, according to the ancient literary sources, and to me there seems no pressing reason to suppose that they are wrong.  So it is possible, in principle, that a piece of an early copy could be found in waste papyrus in Egypt.  There’s no real reason why not.

But … surely it is somewhat improbable that one of the few copies of this text in existence at that date should happen to turn up in the limited amount of mummy cartonnage that has so far been dismantled?  Isn’t it?  Consider the vast output of papyrus made every year in ancient Egypt, of which a certain proportion ended up as waste papyrus.  What, statistically, are the chances of a 1st century copy of Mark being in that proportion?  They must be slim.

We’re told that portions of Homer have turned up, and this is not a surprise.  Likewise that documentary texts are found: this too does not surprise.  But something that must always have been a very rare item?

Of course probability is just that; a calculation based on averages.  All the same, it’s troubling.

In general, when a discovery is made which bears on matters of current interest or controversy (rather than something which was controversial in antiquity), it is wise to consider the possibility of forgery.   In the renaissance people forged stone monuments supposedly from well-known figures of classical antiquity, in order to make money.  Forgeries of papyri are not at all unknown.

There is a fingerprint for forgery, noted by Stephen C. Carlson.  By its very nature, a forgery must be of something which is exciting to people in the period in which it is “discovered”.   That’s where the money is.  Nobody is going to forge something that nobody is interested in.  But it is often the case that this modern excitement is over something that would not have been exciting in antiquity.  It is this dichotomy that marks out a forgery.

So any “discovery” that is of current interest, that fits squarely into a matter of current agitation, or fits the political or religious views of the discoverer particularly well, must be scrutinised with rational but exceptional caution.  Otherwise we will all be hoodwinked by those enterprising gentlemen in Turkey and Palestine whose attempts at forgery regularly attract interest from specialists.

A discovery of a first century fragment of a gospel fits that profile squarely.  A first century gospel could not have been of special interest in antiquity, when they were composed, but it would be very interesting today!

It is, therefore, of the utmost importance to do things right; to establish the provenance of the item, to look for signs of forgery, to get a range of experts involved, and, above all, to shed as much light as possible on the item.

When P52 was identified in the 1930s, the discoverer, Colin Roberts, proceeded with extreme care.  He did not publish, nor did he announce his find, until it had been examined by all the leading paleographers of the day, and a consensus reached.  The wisdom of his approach is evident: his result has not been seriously questioned in 80 years, even though it contradicted the established wisdom of biblical studies at the time, and reinforced the fondest wishes of Christians.

By contrast the way in which this supposed first century fragment is being made known raises in me the worst suspicions.

The papyrus trade is a secretive one, partly because of the foolishness of the Egyptian government in declaring all finds the property of state officials, and partly because of the stupidity of western activists, who harass those involved in the black market that has inevitably arisen.  It is, therefore, entirely understandable that nothing should be announced until everything is ready.  And if that silence is used, as Colin Roberts did, to determine the facts and build consensus, then well and good.  That’s one way to publish.

The alternative is better.  It is to shine a bright light on everything.  Publish the fragments now, without any very firm attributions, as soon as possible, with the provenance, and crowd-source an examination of every element of it.  The truth will out, and a consensus will come into being rather rapidly, as it did for the forgery known as the “gospel of Jesus’ wife”.

Either approach is acceptable.  But we seem to have neither.  Instead we have the worst of both worlds.

On the one hand we have a drip-drip of non-academic reportage, excitedly making all sorts of claims, possibly based on no more than a video by somebody who may (or may not) be involved in the project at all.  This feeds the fever of speculation; which, of course, increases the price that may be asked for publication, and generally increases the commercial value of the property.  It seems to benefit nobody in any other way that I can see.

On the other hand, we have an entire silence on all the matters that would allow professionals to form a judgement.

It is reminiscent of some of the hype around the Coptic Gospel of Judas.  That was a genuine text, and this mixture of whispers and real information is what we tended to get.  I suppose, in fairness, that this may be how Americans do things, for all I know.

But it is also reminiscent of how forgers operate: people whose sole aim is to boost the value of their merchandise and make a quick buck while the going is good.  For all I know, there is some Turkish forger at work, using some clever Swiss lawyer (or whatever) to control the whole process via “confidentiality agreements”, and manipulating the scholars at the far end who seek merely to recover knowledge.

If the discovery is genuine, then it is wonderful.  Any recovery of lost texts from antiquity is a joy, and any very early witness to any important text is to be treasured.

But is it genuine?  We cannot say.  But the manner in which it is becoming known to the public does nothing to give me confidence.

So I think we need to hold our horses, and await proper publication.  To me, all this is too good to be true.  But let’s hope not.

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Augustine to Jerome on the inspiration of scripture

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An interesting article at ThinkTheology.co.uk draws together some useful quotations from St. Augustine on the inspiration of scripture.

The quotations come from Augustine’s letter 82, addressed to St. Jerome himself.

For I confess to your Charity that I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it.

As to all other writings, in reading them, however great the superiority of the authors to myself in sanctity and learning, I do not accept their teaching as true on the mere ground of the opinion being held by them; but only because they have succeeded in convincing my judgment of its truth either by means of these canonical writings themselves, or by arguments addressed to my reason.

I believe, my brother, that this is your own opinion as well as mine. I do not need to say that I do not suppose you to wish your books to be read like those of prophets or of apostles, concerning which it would be wrong to doubt that they are free from error … (82.3)

But you will say it is better to believe that the Apostle Paul wrote what was not true, than to believe that the Apostle Peter did what was not right. On this principle, we must say (which far be it from us to say), that it is better to believe that the gospel history is false, than to believe that Christ was denied by Peter; and better to charge the book of Kings with false statements, than believe that so great a prophet, and one so signally chosen by the Lord God as David was, committed adultery in lusting after and taking away the wife of another, and committed such detestable homicide in procuring the death of her husband.

Better far that I should read with certainty and persuasion of its truth the Holy Scripture, placed on the highest (even the heavenly) pinnacle of authority, and should, without questioning the trustworthiness of its statements, learn from it that men have been either commended, or corrected, or condemned, than that, through fear of believing that by men, who, though of most praiseworthy excellence, were no more than men, actions deserving rebuke might sometimes be done, I should admit suspicions affecting the trustworthiness of the whole oracles of God. (82.5)

The translation is the 19th century one, which may be found online here.

I have never collected ancient statements concerned with the inspiration of scripture; doing so would certainly be an interesting and useful exercise.  But I do recall another passage of Augustine on scripture which deserves quotation here.  It is from De genesim ad litteram (On Genesis, literally expounded), book 2, chapter 9:

It is frequently asked what our belief must be about the form and shape of heaven according to Sacred Scripture. Many scholars engaged in lengthy discussions on these matter, but the sacred writers with their deeper wisdom have omitted them. Such subjects are of no profit for those who seek beatitude, and, what is worse, they take up precious time that ought to be given to what is spiritually beneficial. What concern is it of mine whether heaven is a sphere and the earth is enclosed by it and suspended in the middle of the universe, or whether heaven like a disk above the earth covers it on one side?

But the credibility of Scripture is at stake, and as I have indicated more than once, there is danger that a man uninstructed in divine revelation, discovering something in Scripture or hearing from it something that seems to be at variance with the knowledge that he has acquired, may resolutely withhold his assent in other matters where Scripture presents useful admonitions, narratives, or declarations. Hence, I must say briefly that in the matter of the shape of heaven the sacred writers knew the truth, but that the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, did not wish to teach men these facts that would be of no avail to their salvation.

This translation is as translated by J.H.Taylor, 1982.

All of this is sensible stuff.

We must always remember that there are only two groups of Christians; those whose ultimate authority is the word of scripture, and those who have come to think it is not the ultimate authority, and so, inevitably, give the last word elsewhere — invariably to the world, then to the flesh, and finally to the devil.  It is not enough to mean well; we must think well also.  It isn’t very clever to be so clever that we talk ourselves out of salvation.

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A list of translations into Arabic of biblical texts from Graf’s GCAL

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Seven years ago I placed online the table of contents to volume 2 of Graf’s GCAL,[1], which lists the original compositions in Arabic by Christian writers up to the 15th century.  I then promptly forgot all about it.

This evening I have been looking at volume 1.  This contains details of the translations into Arabic of Christian material from other languages.  I thought that it might be interesting to give what he says about biblical translations into Arabic.  Few know what exists, after all.

I include the page numbers from Graf, straggly though this makes the content, as it gives an idea of how much material there is under each section.

Complete bibles

Hunain ibn Ishaq         89
Melkite complete bible 89
Coptic complete bible 92
Polyglots of Paris and London 83
Propaganda edition 96
Raphael Tuki 97
Protestant editions 98
Dominican edition (Mosul) 99
Jesuit edition (Beirut)

A. Old Testament

1. Pentateuch translations……………………………101-108 —
by Gaon Saadia………………………………..101
from the Greek…………………………….103
from the Coptic………………………………103
from the Syriac………………………………104
by al-Harit ibn Sinan ibn Sinbat………………….107
from the Latin Vulgate……………………….108
of unknown origin…………………………..108

2. The other historical books…………………………108-114 —
Joshua…………………………………………109
Judges…………………………………………110
Ruth…………………………………………..110
Kings and Chronicles………………………………111
I and II Esdras………………………………..112
Tobit…………………………………………113 Judith…………………………………………113 Esther…………………………………………113 II Maccabees……………………………………114

3. Psalms…………………………………………..114-126 —
Oldest translation…………………………….114
Abu ‘l-Fath ‘Abdallah ibn al-Fadl………………….116
Coptic-Arabic Psalters……………………..119
Psalterium octaplum………………………………120
Roman edition (1614)…………………………121
Edition by Quzhaiya (1610)……………………..121
Other translations from Syriac…………..123
Mozarabic Psalter…………………………….124
Translations from Hebrew………………….124
Translations of unknown origin………………125

4. Job translations………………………………….126-127 —
from a syro-hexaplaric basis………………….126
by Pethion (Fatyun ibn Aiyub)……………………126
from the Syriac………………………………127
from the Coptic………………………………127
of unknown origin…………………………..127

5. Wisdom literature translations………… 127-131 —
from the Septuagint………………………………127
by al-Harit ibn Sinan ihn Sinbat………………….129
by Pethion……………………………………..130
of unknown origin…………………………..130

6. The Prophets translations……………131-137 —
by al-‘Alam……………………………………131
from the Septuagint……………………..133
from the Coptic………………………………133
from the Syriac………………………………134
from the Latin…………………………….136
of unknown origin…………………………..136

B. New Testament 138-185

2. Gospels translations…………………………….142-170 —
from Greek…………………………….142
from Syriac………………………………150
from Coptic………………………………155
in polished prose………………………………163
from Latin…………………………….167
of unknown origin…………………………..169

3. Acts translations…………………………..170-181 —
from Greek…………………………….170
from Syriac …………………………..172
from Coptic ……………………178
from Latin…………………………….179
of unknown origin…………………………..180

4. Revelation translations……………..182-184
from Greek ………………………..182
from Syriac………………………………182
from Coptic………………………………182
of unknown origin…………………………..184

5. Translations and editions of portions of the N.T. in vulgar Arabic dialects………………………………..194

Now that’s slightly more than 100 pages of detailed information.  And it ought to exist in English.  Really it should.

So … why doesn’t it?

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  1. [1]Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Litteratur.  The contents may be found here.↩

Fortunatianus of Aquileia and his lost gospel commentary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

From Quasten’s Patrology 4, p.572:

According to Jerome (De vir. into 97), Fortunatianus, an African was bishop of Aquileia in the mid-fourth century at the time of the Emperor Constantius. and Pope Liberius. He died, it seems, shortly before 368. Fortunatianus was at first a strong defender of Nicene orthodoxy and received Athanasius as a guest at Aquileia after the Synod of Serdica of 343. However, at the time of the council at Milan in 355, he succumbed to the threats of Constantius and signed the condemnation of Athanasius. He subsequently proved instrumental in persuading the exiled Pope Liberius to sign the Arian creed of Sirmium of 357.

There remain only three fragments of Fortunatianus’ commentary on the Gospels, which Jerome describes as a “margaritam de evangelio” (Ep. 10, 3) and which he read in preparation for his own commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (praef: PL 26, 20C).

Editions: Cf. CPL 104. — A. Wilmart, B. Bischoff, CCL 9(1957)365-370. — PLS I, 239, 217.
Studies: L. Duchesne, Libere et Fortunatien: MAH 28(1908)31-78 (cf. P. Glorieux, Hilaire et Libere: MSR 1[1944]7-34). – J. Lemarie, Italie. Aquilee: DSp 7(1971 )2161.

This is the entire entry for this obscure 4th century bishop and his now lost “pearl on the gospel”.

Why do I give this?

Today I discovered the CSEL site at the university of Salzburg, and the following page contained these interesting remarks.

An anonymous commentary on the Gospels in MS Köln, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibl. 17 (s. IX1/3) has now been identified by Lukas J. Dorfbauer as the work of bishop Fortunatianus of Aquileia.

It was thought that this commentary, of which only three fragments were known, had already been lost in its entirety by Carolingian times.

Thus, Fortunatianus’ work becomes the apparently oldest commentary on the Gospels written in the Latin West which is still extant; it amplifies our knowledge of ancient Christianity and its literature in many respects.

A critical edition of the text – in fact, the “editio princeps” – is currently in preparation for the CSEL. For now, please cf.

  • L. J. Dorfbauer,  Der Evangelienkommentar des Bischofs Fortunatian von Aquileia (Mitte 4. Jh.). Ein Neufund auf dem Gebiet der patristischen Literatur, Wiener Studien 126 (2013), 177-198).
  • Ders., Der Codex Köln, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibl. 17. Ein Beitrag zur Überlieferung des Evangelienkommentars des Bischofs Fortunatian von Aquileia, to be published in: Mittelalterliche Handschriften der Kölner Dombibliothek. Fünftes Symposion November 2012 (estimated for 2014).

A full digital reproduction of the manuscript in question can be found online via the homepage of Codices Electronici Ecclesiae Coloniensis: http://www.ceec.uni-koeln.de/

Well done, the CSEL, for giving the link to the online manuscript, rather than meanly concealing it.  It means that the text is accessible, if not in critical form.

It is always a delight to see something rescued from the losses of antiquity.  Congratulations Dr. Dorfbauer and the CSEL.  You have done something well worth doing.

I wonder if anyone will translate it into English?

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