Tag: Patristics

How not to do it; AbdulHaq’s “Before Nicea”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve come across a Moslem pamphlet rubbishing Christian origins.  It’s available as an eBook here.  The authors are not orientals, but Britons who have converted to Islam and taken Arabic names.  As such they have no access to Eastern literature and have had to make use of whatever anti-Christian literature they could find.

I find it hard to read 99 pages online, but the general approach is to heap up quotations by western writers, whoever they may be, rubbishing the bible, the fathers, and so on.  The quotations are plainly taken from atheist literature, quoting such elderly “authorities” as Gibbon and Toland (1718)!  Some of the quotations look extremely suspect — F. G. Kenyon is quoted in a sense opposite to every work of his that I have ever read.

But AbdulHaq goes further.  He wants to claim that the people he quotes were all Christians, that what is said here by anti-Christian polemicists is what Christians say about themselves.  He states:

During conversations whilst compiling this work, it was noted that many evangelical Christians would argue that the Christian scholars quoted in this work for example are ‘not really Christian.’

To this he responds as might be expected.

Unfortunately AbdulHaq has defeated himself before he began.   The argument he has borrowed is the old 19th century atheist jeer “Who are you to say who is a Christian and who is not?”  Logically that is nonsense, unless the word “Christian” has no meaning.  It’s merely a gibe intended to weaken the appeal to the name of Christian, so that people who live by convenience but claim the name of Christian may evade the plain teaching of Christianity. 

To assist this process, the establishment — hardly eager to have their lives examined! — has always appointed people to bishoprics who have publicly made clear that Christianity was not true, or were men of immoral life, or both.  These men act as cuckoos in the nest, pushing out the real nestlings and in the confusion allowing the vicious to continue as before.  A former bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, publicly said that he did not believe in Jesus’ Resurrection. When Christian evangelist David Watson was running university missions calling students to repentance and conversion, he used to run counter-missions to encourage them to remain drunken fornicators as before.  Such activity qualified him, in the view of the church appointments committee, for high ecclesiastical office.

We all know that there is a pool of hyopcrites and liars around, and atheists make use of them as the establishment intends, to divert the argument from “Is Christianity true” to “Is this revolting person lying when he claims to be a Christian, and who is to say?”  Atheists need confusion, in order that their lifestyle of convenience may be hidden in the smoke.

But none of this helps AbdulHaq.  He needs clarity.  He needs to attack what Christianity is, not what it is not.  Confusion merely obstructs him from coming to grips with the enemy. 

If I wrote against Islam, it would be very silly for me to find some depraved soul who drank and never prayed and didn’t believe in the Koran, yet still claimed the name of Moslem, and use his ‘views’ as evidence of what Moslems believed.  I would need, for my argument, to make sure that those I quoted were accepted, by Moslems, as Moslems.

AbdulHaq could compile endless quotes from enemies of the church.   But it would show nothing except that Christianity attracts the enmity of people who live immoral lives and want to claim the name of Christian!   Well, I think we all knew that!  

For his polemic to work, he must attack Christians.  It does him no manner of good to confuse into his argument people who Christians don’t accept as believers.   This element of his book simply fails.

If his argument is that many scholars reject Christianity, it must be observed that this must be a rather dangerous argument for him to make.  Do those same scholars accept Islam?  Or do they merely repeat what is the fashionable religious consensus of their age?  If the latter, their testimony again does not help him.

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Catenas on the Psalms: the “Palestinian catena”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There may be 29 different types of catena on the Psalms.  All of them contain quotations from works by the Fathers on the exegesis of the Psalms.  But the most important of these by far is the catena known to modern specialists as the “Palestinian catena”.  This catena was apparently originally compiled in 6th century Palestine, directly from a bunch of mostly now lost texts.

It stands out for the size and quality of the extracts that are preserved in it.  These are mainly taken from the commentaries of Eusebius of Caesarea, Didymus the Blind, and Theodoret.  In some of the psalms, there is also material from Apollinaris of Laodicea, Asterius the Sophist, Basil of Caesarea, and — of course — Cyril of Alexandria, Chrysostom, and Origen.  For psalm 118 there is also material from Athanasius.

Psalms is a long book.  A catena on the psalms is also a long book.  Some time after composition, the catena was turned into two editions.  The first of these was in three volumes; on Psalms 1-50, 51-100, and 101-150.  The other was a two volume edition; on Psalms 1-76 and 77-150.

Naturally the volumes of each version have travelled down the centuries independently.

The three volume edition

Volume 1 of this edition is preserved in good condition in the catena of type VI (Karo and Lietzmann).  This is found in he following manuscripts:

  • Oxford, Bodleian Library, Barroci gr. 235 (9-10th century)
  • Mt. Athos, Iviron monastery 597 (1st half of 11th c.)
  • Bucharest, Romanian Academy Library gr. 931 + Constantinople, Panaghia Kamariotissi Patristic Library 9 (1st half of 11th century)
  • Munich, National library gr. 359 (10-11th c.)
  • Vatican Library gr. 1789 (10-11th c.).
  • Oxford, Bodleian, Auct. 1.1 (= Misc. 179) (17th c.), pp.169-262 containing Pss.10-50 and pp.262-284 (Ps. 9)
  • Oxford, Bodleian, Barocci gr. 154 (late 15th c.), a copy of Barocci 235.

These are all derived from the Barocci ms., and the other mss. serve only to supplement some passages today missing from the Barocci (I presume this means leaves have been lost down the years).

Marcel Richard made a check on the value of the material using the text for Ps. 37.  The whole commentary of Eusebius on this psalm happens to be extant, under the name of Basil, and is accessible in PG 30, col. 81-104 (now I ought to commission a translation of that!).  Origen’s two homilies on this psalm have reached us, in a version in Latin by Rufinus.  Theodoret’s Interpretatio in Psalmos is extant, and in PG 80.  The work of Didymus has perished.

Richard found that all the extracts from extant sources were reproduced correctly, and attributed to the correct authors.  The remaining extracts, from Didymus, were not found in any of the other authors, so are presumably also corrected quoted.  This gives us great confidence in using the catena.

The second volume existed in a single manuscript in Turin, Cod. 300 (C.II.6, 10th c.).  Unfortunately this was destroyed in the fire on 26th January 1904, without ever being photographed or printed.  No doubt the librarians who watched it burn had congratulated themselves just as modern ones do, that they had never allowed it to be photographed, thereby preserving it from “damage”.  Some leaves remain, and the Institut de Recherches et Histoire de Textes did their best, but the majority of the material from this excellent source is lost.

Fortunately this matters less for the Commentary of Eusebius.  A portion of this massive commentary has reached us in direct transmission, and contains Pss.51-95:3.  It’s in Cod. Coislin 44 (10th c.).

The third volume, on Pss.101-150, did not reach us, and no traces of it are known.

The two volume edition

The first volume of this edition, covering Pss.1-76, has been lost.  No copy of it came down to our times.

The second volume, however, covering Pss. 77-150, is extant.  This is fortunate, as it complements the losses in the three volume edition.

This volume was classified by Karo and Lietzmann as type XI.  No single copy is entire, although it probably once existed complete in Milan, Ambrosian Library F 126 sup. (=A, 13th century) which is now mutilated at the start and end.  Fortunately Ms. Patmos, St. John’s Library 215 (=P, 12-13th c.) is complete at the end, and has only lost a couple of leaves at the front.  The material at the start of the catena is found in Ms. Vienna theol. gr. 59 (13th c.).

A and P both descend from a copy in uncial.  A is the better, as P has been contaminated with material from the commentary of Theodoret.  Fortunately this is usually placed in the same places, and can be readily identified.

Indirect tradition

The material contained in the Palestinian catena is good, but the same material also appears in secondary catenas; catenas that used the Palestinian catena as a source.  This means that this indirect tradition can be a control on mistakes in the text.

The catenas that form this tradition appear in two forms; either a condensed version of the whole catena, or else a collection of extracts from across the catena.

Printed editions

It was always obvious to scholars that it should be possible to recover the commentary of Eusebius in almost complete form from these materials.  B. de Montfaucon printed an edition of his commentary on Pss.1-118, which is reprinted in PG 23, cols. 71-1396.  J.-B. Pitra reedited this in Analecta sacra Spicilegio Solesmensi parata, 3: Patres antenicaeni, Venice: S. Lazaro (1883), p.365-529.

Angelo Mai added the remainder, from Pss. 119-150, which is reprinted in PG 24, 9-78.  Unfortunately the materials used were printed with insufficient care, and are contaminated by material from Origen.

Carmelo Curti wrote a series of articles on this subject, all reprinted in Eusebiana 1: Commentarii in Psalmos, Catania 1989 (2nd ed).  Unfortunately I have never managed to see this, but I’ve just put in an ILL for it.[1]

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  1. [1]Update, 5th June, 2015.  I came across this post this week, which I had entirely forgotten about.  I wish that I had added the sources at the time.  I think that the main source was Angelo di Berardino, Patrology: The Eastern Fathers from the Council of Chalcedon (451) to John of Damascus (d.750), 2006, p.618 f.↩

Last section of Abu’l Barakat

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Good news!  An email tells me that another of my projects is coming in.  The catalogue of Arabic Christian books, by the 13th century writer Abu’l Barakat, is progressing nicely.  The whole thing has now been translated into English, in first draft.  The wording will now be revised over the next two weeks, and then comment invited from others.

Once the whole thing is complete, I will post it online and make it public domain.

This is such an important text.  When you come into a literature, all is confusion.  What we need is a map, a list of major writers and what they wrote.  This acts as a skeleton, on which we can hang all the rest of our knowledge.  A modern list would be good, but none exists in English.  This ancient list is also good, as it probably refers to stuff no longer extant and tells us what might be out there.

The translation has been made from the older 1902 edition of Riedel.  But apparently there is somewhere a critical edition made by Samir Khalil Samir, SJ.  I think this was published in Cairo.  The text is so important that I have suggested to the translator that he acquire a copy of Samir’s publication, and do a revised version for formal publication on his own, so that scholars can reference it in their bibliographies.  This will happen, I think.

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Catalogue of catenas

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have referred previously to G. Karo and I. Lietzmann, Catenarum Graecarum Catalogus, published in the appallingly difficult to obtain Nachrichten der K. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse, 1, 3, 5 (1902).  In pp. 119-151, they classify catenas as types I-VII, following a scheme drawn up by E. Preuschen.  This really should be online.  Does anyone have a copy?

UPDATE: Apparently that volume of the Nachrichten is here.  Thanks to Andrew Eastbourne for the tip.

UPDATE2: I’ve now edited that PDF, removed everything except the Catalogus, and uploaded it to archive.org by itself.  It’s here.  That should make it easier to find, and more accessible.

Of course now I need to read it…

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What is a catena?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email recently reminded me that many people reading this will not know what a catena is.  I thought a post on this would be useful.

The word catena is Latin, and means chain.  It is used to refer to a book which is made up entirely of quotations from older writers, arranged to make a continuous text.  Usually it is a commentary on some book; first the main text is quoted, and then the opinions of older commentators in a chain underneath.

The catenas that we are concerned with are exegetical catenas; that is, catenas on the bible.  These tend to look like this:

<bible verse in large text>
Chrysostom. <quotation from some work or other by John Chrysostom, probably a sermon or commentary on this book, one or more sentences>. Eusebius. <quote from Eusebius of Caesarea>. Marcion. <quote from long dead heretic> Chrysostom. <another quote from C.> Theodore <quote from Theodore of Mopsuestia> <<and so on>>

<bible verse in large text>
Cyril. <quotation from Cyril of Alexandria>. O. <quotation from Origen>. <quotation where the author’s name has dropped out, so looks like Origen because it follows immediately after>

and so on.  The bible verses follow in the sequence in the bible. 

The actual arrangement of the text and the commentary can vary; the commentary can be in a very wide margin around a large column of central text of the bible, even above and below it sometimes; or a two column arrangement, text and commentary.  Catenas can surround a commentary, even.

The author name is the only division between the extracts.  The names of the authors are often abbreviated, or lost, which can cause a real problem, and in copying quickly leads to fragments being attributed to the preceding author.  The author names — technical term is lemmas — are often in red, which means if the rubricator didn’t do his bit, there are just gaps in the text.  (Anyone who has handled more than a manuscript or two knows that the red bits are added last, and often not at all).

I would post a real sample, but as far as I know none of the catenas have been translated into English.

What we have, then, is the biblical verse, and then a series of comments by older authorities, making up a text.  The quotations are often ‘adjusted’ at each end, in order to make the text flow.

These sorts of books were compiled during the 6th century onwards in the Greek church, using collections of sermons and commentaries on the bible by older writers.  Chrysostom is used a LOT!  But often writers are quoted whose works have perished; for, once the handy catena existed, what need of the full text?

Consequently the catenas are a gold-mine of material otherwise lost.

The term catena is modern.  The Greek terms for a catena were things like exegetikai eklogai, exegetical extracts.

Catenas can be primary or secondary.  Primary catenas are compiled from the works they quote.  Secondary catenas are compiled from other catenas.

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Cerf’s up!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I agreed to use the Sources Chrétiennes Greek text of Eusebius’ Quaestiones with the editors.  This will appear opposite the English translation that I commissioned, when I publish the book.

Well, the contract from Les éditeurs du Cerf has arrived! It’s all in French, of course, but is only three pages. 

In fact it’s a sensible contract, designed to facilitate business; that much I can see at once.  You see, I get to see a lot of contracts, professionally.  They get offered to me to sign when I do a freelance job.  Most of those are deeply unfair, and have one-sided clauses in them which one has to try to mitigate as best one can.  The Cerf contract has none of that rubbish.  All the clauses I have read so far seem reasonable, and designed only to protect them against a rogue, rather than to screw the translator.

Now I need to read it very, very carefully and make sure it won’t stop me doing what I need to do, which is put the English translation online under a Creative Commons license eventually.  I can’t do that with a thumping headache, so I will put off doing so for a day or two.

I wonder if we can call the board of directors the “Cerf board”!  I love that pun.  And they seem to be a good company, and one doing a great work for patristics.  All of us, you know, live in what people will one day call the “age of the Sources Chrétiennes”.  Long may they flourish.

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In praise of footnotes

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Ill at home today with a horrible cold, and unable to read much.  I picked up the translation by Frank Williams of the Panarion of Epiphanius, that great late 4th century catalogue of ancient heresies.  It is indeed a blessing to have this material in English.

But I found myself looking for footnotes, of the kind that we see in Victorian editions.  In these ample discussions, many an interesting point can be found.  In general, modern footnoting tends to be references, rather than disgressions, expansions, or clarifications.  This is a shame, in a way. 

Let’s hear it for the prolix footnote!

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The Armenian manuscripts of the French National Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The catalogue of Armenian manuscripts at the French National Library tells an interesting story of how the pre-revolution holdings were assembled. 

It all starts when Francis I of France entered into a treaty with the Grand Turk, and established a permanent ambassador in Constantinople.  This opened the Turkish state to French scholars in search of Greek texts.  Bindings of Henri II in the Royal collection show that Armenian manuscripts were being acquired in the middle of the 16th century.  But it was only in the second half of the 17th century, under the influence of Colbert, that a definite policy of acquiring Armenian mss came into being, as an official letter to the traveller Antoine Galland (1646-1715) shows, sent just before his third voyage to the East in 1679.  This instructed him to buy:

“…all the ancient Armenian books that can be found, and above all books of history by a certain author named Moses [of Khorene] in that language; also Armenian translations of the bible, written in ancient times, because an Armenian bible has recently been printed in Holland.” [1]

Colbert was interested in Armenian affairs, not least because there was an Armenian colony at Marseilles involved in the trade to Persia and India, and he arranged for Louis XIV to grant permission on 11 August 1669 to an Armenian bishop-cum-printer Oskan of Yerevan to operate at Marseilles.  This in turn sparked interest among Paris litterateurs like Richard Simon and Eusebe Renaudot in what bishop Oskan was doing.  These court Catholics made use of creeds as part of the literary war against Protestantism, to demonstrate the antiquity of catholic formulations.  A Dominican sent by Colbert to Ethiopia acquired one Armenian ms. in Cyprus on the way.  Others were bought from French merchants or travellers.  In this sort of way 165 Armenian mss were gathered in the Royal library alone prior to the French Revolution. 

Colbert himself acquired mss, as did other great persons of state or religious orders.  The collection of Renaudot went with the rest of his rich library to the Maurist fathers of St. Germains-des-Pres, which was seized at the revolution.

The first French scholar to interest himself in the study of the Armenian language was Petis de la Croix (1653-1716).  His father had been secretary-interpreter to the French ambassador in Constantinople for more than 20 years, from 1670.  De la Croix himself was a translator for the king.  He left a large Armenian-French dictionary in manuscript, assisted probably by the former Armenian patriarch of Constantinople and Jerusalem, who had been removed from Constantinople by the ambassador, the Marquis de Feriol, and held under arrest in the Bastile from 1706 until his death in 1711.  During his arrest the patriarch copied a number of Armenian mss now in the BNF.  Renaudot was authorised to negotiate with him concerning his possible release and return to the East.

A mission to the East in 1728-30 by Sevin and Fourmount resulted in the acquisition of 134 pieces.  A letter home by Sevin on 22 Dec. 1728 reveals optimism:

“Most of the works of Nestorius, Dioscorus, and some other famous heretics, have been translated into that language [Armenian] and it would be important to recover them, as well as various historical pieces composed in ancient times by the Armenians.  One of them, a friend of Fonseca, flatters himself that he has the power to supply us with these things but as the books of the Armenians are very carefully written and also mostly decorated with figures of plants and animals, a very high price is placed on them, which prevented me from buying the six that he brought to me, consisting of New Testaments, Rituals, and translations of St. Chrysostom, which it would be easy to find again.” 

In a last minute note on the same letter Sevin adds:

“Since I wrote the above, Mr. Fonseca has shown us in a house 160 Armenian mss, i.e. more than there are in all the libraries of Europe altogether, and even in all of Constantinople.  These mss are composed of commentaries on scripture, translations of the fathers, ancient works of theology and books of history; the most important is that of Armenia, which is not to be had at Paris for less than £500.  We have been promised also the history of the martyrs of Palestine by Eusebius, a piece which we don’t have in Greek, and which would throw a considerable light on the first three centuries of the church.  The acquisition of so many manuscripts in one language is very important, and there would be some risk in awaiting your order to buy it.”

Sevin went on to buy the mss anyway, for a total of £15,000, an incredible sum, and then, naturally ran into difficulties.  Sevin also stated that he would have to steal one ms, because the church to which it belonged could not sell its possessions.  The end result of his efforts, tho, was to substantially augment the holdings of the library further.

[1] Henri Omont, Missions archeologiques francaises en Orient au XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles, 1, Paris, 1902, p.206.

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Finding Armenian resources

Posted on by Roger Pearse

My queries to professional Armeniologists have gone unanswered, doubtless because they are very busy.  But I am still interested to learn whether there are catenas on the gospels in Armenian.

A thought struck me last night.  Suppose that none have been published?  Where could we find catenas?

The answer, surely, is to start looking at catalogues of Armenian manuscripts.  These will surely indicate the general content of manuscripts.  If there are catenas, they will probably indicate the authors quoted.

The French National Library has PDF’s of most of its catalogues online (bless them!).  This includes a splendid catalogue of their 300-odd mss, with a nice history of the collection at the front and some good indexes.

The results were a little disappointing, tho.  So in the Index of subjects on p.1002 (p.538 of the PDF), there are lists of mss by subject.  But catena is not one of those subjects.

However there is an anonymous Commentary on the genealogy of Matthew and Luke in Ms. 303, items 4-5.  This is something Eusebius talks a lot about in the Quaestiones ad Stephanum.  Probably the material here is at least influenced by him.  Unfortunately you would need Armenian to learn much more.

A few pages on, there is a category of Questions and Responses.  Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, and John Damascene all feature.  So, interestingly, does Philo!  There is no Eusebius listed, but who knows what someone sat in the reading room ordering up mss might find?

Looking in the author index there are fragments of the Church History and the Chronicon in various mss.  This is natural, since both exist in full in Armenian.  But no other works are listed.

All in all, this was an interesting exercise.  I learned more about the collection than I might have done.  But so far, no material for the Eusebius Quaestiones.

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New Czech site on Tertullian and Perpetua

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Czech scholar Petr Kitzler has started his own site.  He writes:

I have started my own site, as you advised. See https://sites.google.com/site/petrtert/.   For now, this is mainly my bibliography, with as many resources on-line or full-texts as was possible. I will of course update the pages, but it depends on my spare time (which looks bad these days). I hope people will find it interesting.

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