BBKL article on Ibn al-Tayyib

The post on the Nestorian monk Ibn al-Tayyib and his commentary on the gospels, a source for the Diatessaron, has led to a very interesting set of comments and a large bibliography.  This is a text that really does need to be in English.  I shall continue to explore this in the comments on that article.

Today I learn that there is a BBKL article in German on Ibn al-Tayyib.  Since a lot of people find German difficult, I thought I would smarten up the Google translation and place it here.

Volume II (1990) Columns 1238-1239 Author: Michael Tillly

Ibn al-Tajjib, full name “Abu’l Farag Abdallah ibn at-Taiyib al Iraqi”, Nestorian monk, writer, philosopher, physician, priest, b. towards the end of the 10th century, † in October 1043 in Baghdad. – After studying medicine he worked ca. 1015 as a doctor in the hospital named after its founder Adud al-Dawla al-Adudiya in Baghdad. As a physician and teacher, over time Ibn al-Tayyib gathered a large group of disciples. He presided at the election-Synod of the Syrian Nestorian Church, which elected Elias I as Catholicos. As secretary he composed in 1028 the church’s approval of the report of Elias of Nisibis on his “Seven meetings”. Under the Catholicos Yuhanna ibn Nazuk he became Patriarchate secretary.

Ibn al-Tayyib wrote in Arabic many dogmatic, exegetical, and canonical works, as well as making translations from Syriac. However, of his literary work, only a fraction has been preserved. He wrote numerous works on teaching and explaining the scientific and medical works of Hippocrates and Galen, as well as on the logical and metaphysical works of Aristotle.

His main work in theology is the commentary on the whole Bible “Firdaus an-Nasraniya (Paradise of Christianity), the largest exegetical work in Christian Arabic literature. Other works are his exegetical commentary on the Psalms “Arraud an-nadir fi tafsir al-mazamir” (The flower garden – Explanation of the Psalms), with an introductory essay on the classification, origin and purpose of the Psalms and on the reading and linguistic peculiarities of the Psalms, a Translation and Explanation of the four Gospels, as well as several smaller exegetical commentaries. The most important among the dogmatic, ethical and canonical works is the apologetic compendium “Al-usul ad-diniya ar-rabbaniya” (The Basics of the religion of the Lord).

In the legal collection “Fiqu an-Nasraniya” (The law of Christendom), I translated and compiled the ancient Syrian collections of canons and compendia of laws, which he joined together in a collected work.

I. is the focus of current research as the translator of the Syriac Diatessaron of Tatian into Arabic.

The importance for Church history of the versatile and learned Nestorian Ibn al-Tayyib is justified by his rich and diverse literary work on natural scientific, philosophical, theological and ecclesiastical matters.  His great tradition of teaching and interest is representative of the Nestorians as a zealous agent of Greek science, philosophy and theology among the Arabs.

Works: Diatessaron, ed. Augustinus Ciasco, Rome 1888; Firdaus annasranija (Paradise of Christendom), ed. v. fransis Miha’il, Cairo 1898, 49, 236-240; Ar-Raud an-nadir fi tafsir al-mazamir (The flower garden – Explanation of the Psalms), ed. Yusuf Manqurius and Habib Girgis, Cairo 1902; Tafsir al-machriqi, ed. Yusuf Manqurius, Bd. 1, Cairo 1908, Bd. 2, Cairo. 1910; Maqala fi ‘l-‘ilm wal-muchiza (Treatise on science and miracles), ed. Paul Sbath, Vingt Traités, Cairo 1929, 179 f.; Fiqu an-Nasraniya (The law of Christendom), ed. W. Hoenerbach and O. Spies, in: CSCO 16 1-162 (1956), 167-168 (1957).

Lit.: G. Chr. Storr, Dissertatio … de evangeliis arabicis, Tübingen 1775, 44-47; – Paul de Lagarde, Die vier Evangelien, Leipzig 1864, 16 f.; – Karl Georg Bruns and Eduard Sachau, Syrisch-römisches Rechtsbuch aus dem 5. Jh., Bd. II, Leipzig 1880, 176 ff.; – Ignazio Guidi, Le traduzioni degli Evangelii in arabo e in etiopico, Rom 1888, 14, 19, 23 f.; – Ernst Sellin, in: Theodor Zahn (Ed.) Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentl. Kanons und der altkirchlichen Literatur IV, Leipzig 1891, 243-245; – O. Braun, Das Buch der Synhados, Stuttgart 1900, 315 ff.; – Arthur Hjelt, Die altsyrische Evangelienübersetzung und Tatisna Diatessaron, in: Theodor Zahn (Ed.), Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons und der altkirchl. Literatur VII, Leipzig 1903, 68 f.; – Georg Graf, Die Philosophie und Gotteslehre des Jahja ihn ‘Adi und späterer Autoren, Münster/Westf. 1910, 48-51; – Eduard Sachau, Syrische Rechtsbücher, Bd. 2, Berlin 1908, 23, 190-204, Bd. 3, Berlin 1914, 16 f., 289-344; – A. J. B. Higgings, The Arabic Version of Tatians Diatessaron, in: JThS 45 (1944), 187-199; – Brockelmann I, 482, I2, 635, Suppl. I, 884; – Graf I, 152 ff.; II, 162-176; – DThC XI, 276 ff.; – LThK V, 591. 

The last bit of biblio is interesting:

Samir Khalil Samir, I .- La place d’al-T. dans la pensée arabe, in: JEChSt 58.2006, p. 177-193.

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Old Slavonic manuscripts online

A comment on this post leads us to a wonderland of Old Slavonic patristic manuscripts, all online and in full colour.  I will repeat some of the information here.

I wonder if you know about this website: http://www.stsl.ru/manuscripts . This an online collection of manuscripts from the former library of St.Sergius Monastery near Moscow, now in the Russian National Library.

Now I know no Cyrillic.  But Google translate does!

http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?u=+http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stsl.ru%2Fmanuscripts&sl=ru&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8

The Russian-text images on the left are not translated, but if you hover the mouse over them, English text appears!

Then I clicked on the “Main Library” link.  This takes you straight to a catalogue.  OK, it’s a bit wonky, and you have to be a bit imaginative, but it’s perfectly usable for English-speakers, thanks to Google; and this link takes us to a list of manuscripts in the main library collection.  And if you click on the book, you get a detailed catalogue of the ms, and then a box at the bottom to ask for the folio!  This is SUPER!!!

  • No 6 is the Explanation of Revelation by the catenist Andrew of Caesarea.
  • No 7 is the Instructions of Ephrem Syrus.
  • No 8 is Gregory the Theologian.
  • No 10 is The Ladder of John Climacus.  There are loads more of this further down.
  • 124-5 are Cyril of Jerusalem
  • 126-8 are Ephrem, although 128 is not online.
  • 129-135 are Basil the Great
  • 154 is Antiochus the monk — I’m pretty sure he turned up in Harnack’s catalogue.
  • 172-5 is Isaac the Syrian, although whether anyone can stomach his mystical teachings I don’t know.  (Maybe it’s just that the English translation of his work is so bad)
  • 176-7 are John Damascene.
  • 178 is Theodore the Studite.
  • 180 is Symeon the New Theologian
  • Lives of the Saints start to appear around 680-ish
  • 687-690 are “Barlaam and Joasaph Indian and Theodore edesskago”; i.e. Theodore of Edessa.
  • 728 is a chronography!  Yes, it’s a world history.  The catalogue is worth a read here.

There are loads of biblical manuscripts in here.  Of course you have to wade through synodicons, and all the stuff that makes up the bulk of ecclesiastical libraries.  But … this is simply splendid!

My next stop was the search facility.  As expected, entering “eusebius” made no sense to the Cyrillic engine.  So I went back to Google translate, entered “Eusebius” into it and got out “Евсевий” in Russian.  I tried this; but it didn’t work.  Then I tried “Gregory”, got “Григорий” and tried that.  That didn’t work either.  Hum.  Lack of a search engine we can use is a problem.

Another collection is here.  These are not as well catalogued, but the images are top-notch.  Dionysius the Areopagite, the “Creation Methodius of Patara”… hmm!.  #75 is a Slavonic ms of Cosmas Indicopleustes!  #100 is the Annals of George Hamartolus; 102 is Cosmas again; 146 is Chrysostom.  I got to ca. 239, but have to stop there.

The mss are late, but so what?  They’re accessible!!!

But all the same, this is really wonderful!  The images are gorgeous, undefiled, and quite fit for any scholarly study imaginable (other than examining the stitching of the book!)  Frankly this is how it should be done!  Who, I wonder, did this?  I wish I knew the names of those involved, for they deserve a big cheer!

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Supposed quotation by Hypatia

An atheist post online used the following as a signature:

“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child-mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after-years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth – often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you can not get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.”

No reference was given, but the passage can be found attributed to a letter by Synesius.  Unfortunately it seems clear that this is not part of the standard English translation by Fitzgerald, which is online at Livius.org:

http://www.livius.org/su-sz/synesius/synesius_cyrene.html

http://www.livius.org/su-sz/synesius/synesius_letters.html

So… does anyone know where Synesius says anything like this?

I am suspicious.  Much of this doesn’t sound right.

UPDATE:  No sign of this anywhere in Fitzgerald’s translation.  Looking in Google books, I find the saying in Elbert Hubbard, Little Journeys to the homes of great teachers, 1908, p.84-5 (without reference, of course).  I can’t find anything earlier than that.

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Fathers in Old Slavonic – 2

A number of ante-Nicene writers exist in an translation in Old Slavonic.

  • Portions of the Shepherd of Hermas, from the Similitudes.
  • The Letter of Barnabas.
  • Ignatius of Antioch, Letters.  I don’t have any details of which ones, tho.
  • The martyrdom of Polycarp
  • The quotation of Papias in the work of Apollinaris on Judas.
  • Barlaam and Joasaf also exists in the list, although it isn’t ante-Nicene!
  • Justin Martyr
  • Irenaeus

I think all of these are extracts, tho.

  • Hipploytus, on the anti-Christ, the end of the world, and the Commentary on Daniel.  Also on the Song of Songs; on Revelation 20; on Proverbs 30; on the 12 apostles and 70 apostles.
  • Origen, On the psalms.
  • (ps).Origen, Dialogue of Adamantius.
  • Dionysius of Alexandria.  There is quite a section of materials by him.
  • Methodius.  Likewise there is a long list of manuscripts containing material.
  • Eusebius.  There’s some sort of explanation about the Psalms.  The Letter to Carpianus, and the canon tables.

Unfortunately now I look at it, I’m finding Harnack’s text almost impossible to understand!

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Patristic literature in Old Slavonic – 1

What do you do, when you find that the mediaeval Greeks carelessly forgot to preserve a copy of some patristic text in which you are interested?  Well, you have a couple of choices.

Firstly you can go and search manuscript libraries and see if you can find it.  This option is rarely exercised, since dealing with many Greek libraries is only just preferable to torture.

Your other alternative is to see if anyone translated it into something else, before it was lost.

This happened a lot.  Back in the 5th century, the Armenians sent off an expedition to Edessa, got a whole load of Syriac books, and translated these into Classical Armenian.  They also set up a monastery in Jerusalem, which translated books and sent them back to the old country.  As a result we have works by Irenaeus and Eusebius extant in no other language.

Old Slavonic is another language group that came into contact with the Greek world during the Dark Ages.  The language was spoken by Old Slavs (of course).  Once these had been taught literacy, they too acquired Greek literature.

I’ve found in Harnack’s Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius, Theil I, halfte 2 — which I can’t find online — a list of ante-Nicene patristic authors whose works are extant in Old Slavonic.  The list is more than a century old, but I think it would be interesting to look at, for those of us who know almost nothing about that language group.  More in my next post!

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The last Byzantine ecclesiastical historian

There’s nothing quite like having a book on hand in paper format.  Last night, troubled with insomnia, I browsed along my shelves for something gentle to read, and in vain.  But then my hand fell on a cheap modern reprint of Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius, Teil 1, Halfte 2.

This is the sort of book I just do not buy.  It’s best consulted in PDF.  But … for some reason I had seen it in PDF form, and had felt the urge to have a copy.

Basically it’s a patrology.  It’s stuffed full of Harnack’s notes on authors, full of untranslated bits of Greek and Latin and even Syriac.  Readability it has none.  But as a source to mine for untapped materials, it can’t be beaten.  I have it because of the Gospel Problems and Solutions of Eusebius.  Unlike any other source, it lists bunches of manuscript fragments.

But then my attention was drawn to the fact that Harnack says that Nicephorus Callistus (who?) mentions the Quaestiones ad Stephanum.  Who is this guy?

Well, he turns out to be the author of an Ecclesiastical History in 18 books.  In fact he lived in the 14th century, so was at the end of the chain of authors, extending and extending the basic HE of Eusebius.  There seem to be some letters of his extant also.  A web search revealed little more.

His HE is in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca, of course, vols 145-7.  But is there an English translation?  A search on the name revealed almost nothing since Migne, which is very curious.  I wonder if perchance people have started to spell his name differently, with K’s and ‘os’ instead of C and ‘us’, “to be more accurate”?  Such twiddling is a curse for an obscure author.

I did find an elderly text on Google books, W.F.Hook,  An Ecclesiastical Biography, vol. 7, which had something on him, p.411 here:

Callistus Nicephorus, an ecclesiastical historian, son of Callistus Xanthopulus, flourished in the fourteen century. Born with a taste for letters, at a period when there was no means of pursuing them but in the cloister, he became a monk, and passed his time in prayer and study.

He composed an Ecclesiastical History, in twentythree books, but only eighteen have been preserved, which extend from the birth of our Lord to the death of the Emperor Phocas, in 610, and the summaries of the five others, which include the reigns of Heraclius to Leo the philosopher. Callistus dedicated this work to Andronicus Paleologus the ancient; he had completed it before the age of thirty-six. It is only a compilation of the histories of Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, &c., but it contains fragments of some authors, whose works we no longer possess, and is written in a pleasing manner.

Schurzfleisch has called Nicephorus the Ecclesiastical Thucydides, on account of the beauty of his style; and Vossius calls him the Pliny of Theology, because he ornaments his accounts with so many fabulous details. The only MS. known of this history is at Vienna, in the Imperial Library. There is a Latin version by John Lang. Bale, 1553, fol. A French translation by Jean Gillot, Paris, 1567, fol. The Greek text was printed with the version by Lang, corrected by Fronton du Due. Paris, 1630, 2 vols., fol.

Besides this work, there remain some Verses of his; A Catalogue of the Emperors and Patriarchs of Constantinople ; A Short Abridgment of the Old Testament ; A Catalogue of the Fathers of the Church, &c.

Nicephorus is considered to be one of the principal compilers of the Synaxarius, or Abridgment of the Lives of the Saints; Combefis accuses him of having disfigured them, by inserting fables drawn from legends.— Weiss.

Hmm.  Surely a text worthy of a translation?  Let’s try searching for the barbarous-looking “Nikephoros Kallistos”…

A BBKL article in German hides him under Xanthopulos.

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How different is a critical text from a pre-critical text?

We like to work from a critical text, don’t we? And rightly so; a text established in a scholarly manner, from a proper analysis of the witnesses and due consideration of the style of the author and the period is a good thing.

But an awful lot of texts don’t exist in that form.  So … how usable are those pre-critical texts?

Today I compared the text of excerpts of Eusebius from Jerome’s Commentary on Matthew, published by Angelo Mai in the 1820’s from, no doubt, some older edition, with the latest critical text in the Sources Chretiennes.  I was struck by the lack of differences. 

Differences there were.  An ergo for an igitur, a quum for a cum.  A late antique peccatricibus is given by SC for Mai’s peccatores — but the sense is the same.  Indeed I couldn’t find an instance where the text changed meaning. 

I did find that Mai had punctuated his excerpts inadequately.  He didn’t indicate omissions properly.  Where he introduced the “Magi” as the subject of a verb, to clarify the sense, he didn’t indicate that he had added this word.  But what he did quote really differed little if at all from the SC text except in details such as above.

I am rather heartened by this.  I had expected worse. 

It will be interesting to do the same exercise with Ambrose’s Commentary on Luke, where again Mai quotes excerpts and the SC is the critical text, and see what the results are.

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Critical editions of the fragments of Eusebius

If I’m going to print a text alongside the translation of Eusebius, then I need to try to print a critical text.  Now I’m not going to edit the text — that crosses a line which I have decided not to cross.  But if the text has been edited more recently than Mai — not that difficult, in almost 200 years! — then I need to use the more up-to-date text.

I think I’m on top of the Greek and Syriac fragments.  I did go and find the text from the catena of Macarius Chrysocephalus, which Mai reprinted from an early publication — it was horrible to read, all abbreviations and ligatures.  It’s on Google books, thankfully.

But what about the Latin fragments?  There’s a couple of pages of these, excerpts from the Commentary on Luke by Ambrose of Milan, and the Commentary on Matthew by Jerome.  And both of these have been edited, I find, by the Sources Chretiennes.  So it looks as if I will have to ask for permission on these.  But first, I shall need to see whether the text really does differ.  I haven’t looked at either much.

Here’s the details I have on Jerome.  Even the Migne is more recent than the Mai!

  • Migne, ed. Commentariorum In Evangelium Matthaei Libri Quattor, PL vol. 26, coll. 15-218D.
  • E. Bonnard, Saint Jerome: Commentaire sur S. Matthieu, SC volumes 242 and 259 (Paris, 1977 and 1979)
  • And Thomas Scheck has just translated Jerome’s commentary on Matthew in its entirety (Catholic University of America Press, 2008), which is online in preview here.

I’ll need to get hold of these, compare them with the excerpts used by Mai, and see what the damage is.

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Printing the Greek text of Eusebius

I never use my PC on Sundays.  I sit before the magic box all day and all evening, six days a week.  If I used it on Sunday too, I think I’d become insane.  I always recall the poor cabman in Black Beauty who had a seven-day licence, and died of overwork.  “I never got my Sundays,” he lamented at the end.

But a very interesting email came in an hour ago as I was off to bed, with some very sound suggestions about how to make and sell the Eusebius book.  It’s way too late for me to digest, so I’ll mull it over on Monday.  It included a sample page that had just the look that I am aiming for.

However, it also recommended strongly that I print a Greek text, rather like the Loebs.  This I have very much wanted to do.  But there are obstacles, which I need to find a way around.

The book consists of an epitome, plus catena fragments, plus Latin fragments, plus Syriac fragments.  The catena fragments are printed from Angelo Mai, and were reprinted by Migne.  This exists in electronic form, so would be simple to include.  The Syriac would need to be typed, and I’d have to pay for that.  But I have someone in mind who would do it.  The Latin, if necessary, I could do myself from Mai. 

However, it’s not so simple for the epitome.  This was translated from the critical edition by Claudio Zamagni, published a few months ago by Sources Chrétiennes.  It would be a bit odd to use Migne’s text instead of that, although I suppose I physically could. 

While I don’t believe that Zamagni’s text can be in copyright (although the apparatus and translation certainly can), I don’t want a law suit.  In fact I don’t want to do anything that Zamagni wouldn’t like, since I’ve swapped emails with him and know him.  So I need to discover who “owns” the text, and find out if I would be allowed to reprint the bare text.  As a plus, they should probably have an electronic text available.

I don’t want to use their apparatus; this is not about printing a critical text, but about allowing readers to check interesting points in the translation against the original.  Anyone who wants to see how Claudio made his text should use his book.  It’s sobering to reflect that Claudio’s dissertation, of which the SC text is but a part, blows the socks off almost any piece of anglophone scholarship that I have ever read.  This is a book, remember, from a man just out of university.  What a guy!

So I’ve fought off the urge to go to bed, and written to Claudio to ask about these issues.  Who owns the text?  Can he help?  I’ve also written to a French Jesuit scholar whom I know, whom I think is associated with the SC.  He may know who I need to talk to, and put in a good word for me.

It’s worth asking.  If they are willing for me to use that text, and can provide an electronic text, then that settles it; I will print the original language on facing pages.  I’ll commission the transcription of the Syriac, and we’ll do it. 

But if it gets all difficult, or they want serious sums of money, then my choices will be to print the Migne text anyway with a disclaimer — rather horrible — or else omit the original languages altogether.

Decisions, decisions!  In that situation, I wonder what readers would prefer?

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The Sunday Sermons of John Xiphilinus

Among the fragments of the Gospel Problems and Solutions of Eusebius is one taken by Angelo Mai, back in the 1820’s, from a then unpublished Sunday Sermon by John Xiphilinus.

Xiphilinus is best known to us as the author of an epitome of Cassius Dio.  The epitome of Xiphilinus, together with that of Zonaras, are now all we have for many books of Dio.

But a Sunday sermon?  That’s new.

A query to LT-ANTIQ pointed me at the BBLK entry, by Erich Trapp.  This reads in English:

John Xiphilinus the Younger, nephew of the patriarch of the same name, also known as a philosopher who lived around 1080 as a monk and Logothetes in Constantinople. He made a name for himself as both a homiletic and historical writer.   In the continuation of Symeon Metaphrastes he wrote for the emperor Alexius I Comnenus (1081-1118) a dedicated Menologion for the months of February to August, which is, however, only extant in a Georgian version.  Furthermore, there are about 53 sermons (` ‘Eρμηνευτικαὶ διδασκαλίαι) by him on the Sundays of the year, which have been written by the author in a number of manuscripts.  He models himself particularly on John Chrysostom.  He also wrote on behalf of the Emperor Michael VII Ducas (1071-8) an extract from books 36-80 of Cassius Dio covering the period 68 BC to 229 AD.

Works: Georgian Proemion to the Menologion, ed K. Kekelidse, Christianskij Vostok 1 (1912) 325-347; M. van Esbroeck, La légende “romaine” des SS. Côme et Damien et sa métaphrase géorgienne par Jean Xiphilin, OCP 47 (1981 ) 389-425 and 48 (1982) 29-64; Homilies 1-25 ed. S. Eustratiades, ‘Oμιλίαι εἰς τὰς κυριακὰς τοῡ ἐνιαυτοῡ I, Trieste 1903; Cassius Dio, ed. Boissevain I-V, Berlin 1895-1931.

Lit:: Beck, Kirche 629f. (mit Bibl.); – LThK V (1960)1098 (F. Dölger); – F. Halkin, Le concile de Chalcédoine esquissé par Jean Xiphilin, Rev. ét. byz. byz. 24 (1966) 182-8; – H. Hennephof, Der Kampf um das Prooimion im xiphilinischen Homiliar, Studia byzantina et neohellenica Neerlandica 3 (Leiden 1972) 281-299; – Dict. Spir.VIII (1974) 792f. (D. Stiernon, mit Bibl.); – Der Kleine PaulyV (1975) 1434 (K. Ziegler); – L. Canfora, Xifilino e il libro LX di e Dione Cassio, Klio 60 (1978) 403-7; – P. Brunt, On Historical Fragments and Epitomes, Class. Quart. NS 30 (1980) 477-494.

 So it sounds as if 25 of the sermons have been published; not much.  A search in COPAC reveals that the PG 120 contains “orations”.  But no sign of the Eustratiades edition of sermons.  I haven’t been able to find any sign of these.

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