Tag: Patristics

Greek gospel catenas 4: catenas on John

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are six types of catena on John.  The bulk of all of them comes from the same sources:

  • John Chrysostom’s Sermons on John
  • Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on John
  • Ammonius
  • Origen’s Commentary on John; possibly also from the Excerpta in quasdam partes Iohannis which is attributed to him by Jerome (Letter 33, 4).

Type A: This consists of four catenas, starting in the 5-6th century and running down to the 8th century, according to Reuss.

  1. This catena contains extracts by Chrysostom and Hesychius of Jerusalem.
  2. This is an augmented version of #1, which adds extracts from Photius.
  3. This one was compiled by Leo Patricius, and is an abridged version of #1.  It adds a number of extracts without indicating the author, although in fact nearly all of them are by Chrysostom.
  4. The comprehensive version of type A adds extracts by many other fathers, including Ammonius, Apollinaris, and Theodore of Heraclea.

Type B: Two catenas make up this type.

  1. The first catena gives no names of authors for the extracts that it includes.  The compilation is attributed to Peter of Laodicea.
  2. A more complete version of the catena contains more than 800 extracts.  Most of these are by Ammonius, or preceded by the words: ἐκ διαφόρων or ἀνεπίγραφος.

Type C: This catena is mainly from John Chrysostom, and dates from the early 10th century.  The attributions are not always reliable.

Type D: This consists mainly of extracts from Ammonius, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodore of Heraclea and Theodore of Mopsuestia.  It is found in Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana gr. E. 40.

Type E: This catena also is mainly from John Chrysostom, and was compiled in 1080 by Nicetas of Heraclea.  Macarius Chrysocephalus’ λογός 16 uses material  from this catena.

Type F: This consists mainly of extracts from Ammonius, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodore of Heraclea and Theodore of Mopsuestia.

Others: There are also catenas on John in the following manuscripts:

  • Athos, Lavra B. 113.  Geerard labels this “Type G”.
  • Munich, State Library gr. 208.
  • Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale Suppl. gr. 1225.
  • Vatican gr. 349.
  • Vatican gr. 1229 (11-12th century)
  • Vatican gr. 1618 (16th century)
  • Rome, Biblioteca dei Lincei A. 300.

 The Curzon Coptic Catena published by de Lagarde and its Arabic descendant also contain a catena on John.

Editions: J. Reuss, Johannes-Kommentare aus der griechischen Kirche, Berlin (1966).

Studies: R. Devreese, Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplement 1 (Paris, 1928), pp. 1194-1205, on the John catenas.  M. Geerard, Clavis Patrum Graecorum 4, pp. 242-248.  Karo and Lietzman, (as in intro), pp. 143-151.

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Greek gospel catenas 3: catenas on Luke

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are five types of catena on Luke, according to J. Reuss.

Type A: This is the earliest catena-type.  It is attributed to Titus of Bostra.  Reuss divides it into three groups, composed between the 6th and 8th centuries:

  1. The basic catena
  2. An extended form
  3. A very extended form

Most of the contents are from Cyril of Alexandria’s 156 Sermons on Luke.  They also contain matter from Chrysostom’s Sermons on Matthew, Titus of Bostra’s Commentaries on Luke, and Origen’s Commentary on Luke and Sermons on Luke.

Type B: This is a different catena, attributed to Peter of Laodicea.  It too is divided into three groups in the same way, and containing material from much the same sources as A.

Type C: This very valuable catena contains almost 3,300 extracts from almost 70 authors.  It was compiled by Nicetas of Heraclea between 1100 and 1117.  The contents are very reliable; the authors quoted are correctly labelled and the extracts given are faithful to the originals. 

  • More than 870 extracts are from the works of Chrysostom.
  • 3 extracts from Cosmas of Maiuma (not Indicopleustes, as Geerard states)
  • 2 from Cyril of Jerusalem
  • 2 from Justin Martyr

The following authors are quoted once:

  • Alexander the monk, on Luke 2:1
  • Anastasius – either the presbyter or a disciple of Maximus the Confessor – on Luke 2:20.
  • Andrew of Crete on Luke 1:3
  • Flavian I of Antioch on Like 1:35
  • Phosterius on Luke 23:32 f.
  • Gennadius of Constantinople on Luke 6:3
  • John the Carpathian on Luke 8:56
  • Julius Africanus on Luke 3:24
  • Josephus against Luke 6:3
  • Ignatius on Luke 3:21
  • Isaiah of Scete on Luke 14:26
  • Methodius of Olympus on Luke 11:32
  • Paul of Emesa on Luke 23:33
  • Synesius of Cyrene on Luke 11:4
  • Theodore of Heraclea on Luke 10:13

There are also extracts from Latin authors (in Greek translation):

  • Ambrose of Milan, 4 times
  • Cyprian on Luke 23:40
  • John Cassian on Luke 18:10
  • Pope Sylvester on Luke 23:33
  • Pope Leo I on Luke 23:33

Some 50 extracts on Luke 1 are labelled “Him of Jerusalem”, and probably are from Hesychius of Jerusalem.

There are many manuscripts of this catena.  These may be divided into three classes.  The best codex is Vatican graecus 1611, dated 1116-7 AD.

The catena of Macarius Chrysocephalus is mainly of type C; the few extra extracts are marked with a chr-rho between an alpha and omega.

Type D: This catena was compiled in the 10th-11th century, but is earlier than that of Nicetas (type C).  It contains only a few extracts, which it abridges or paraphrases but does not alter.

  • Theodore of Mopsuestia
  • Cyril of Alexandria
  • Photius
  • Modestus of Jerusalem on Luke 24:40
  • Caesarius on Luke 6:1

Type E: This catena only covers Luke 1:1-11:33.  It is found in a manuscript of the British Bible Society, ms. 24 (codex Zacynthius rescriptus).  This dates to the 7-8th century; possibly after 750, and is the earliest witness to a catena on Luke.

Others: There are some anonymous catenas on Luke which contain extracts in the following manuscripts:

  • Vienna, National Library, theol. gr. 301 (11th century).  Reuss classifies this as type F.
  • Munich, State Library, gr. 208 (9-10th century), containing extracts on Luke 1:1-2:40.

The Curzon Coptic Catena published by de Lagarde, and its Arabic descendant, also contain catena materials on Luke.

Editions: J. Reuss, Lukas-Kommentare aus der griechischen Kirche.  Berlin (1984).

Studies: R. Devreese, Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplement 1 (Paris, 1928), pp. 1181-1194, on the Luke catenas.  M. Geerard, Clavis Patrum Graecorum 4, pp. 237-242.  Karo and Lietzman, (as in intro), pp.132-143.

Links: A thesis on Ms. Athos, Lavra 174 (1274 AD), which contains a diplomatic edition of a catena on Luke related to that of Nicetas, is here.

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Greek gospel catenas 2: catenas on Mark

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Continuing our series, we reach catenas on Mark.

Victor of Antioch composed Commentaries on Mark.  Two versions are known.  The fragments come mainly from:

  • Chrysostom, Sermons on Matthew
  • Origen, Commentary on Matthew
  • Origen, Commentary on John
  • Cyril of Alexandria, Sermons on Luke
  • Titus of Bostra, Commentaries on Luke

There are also some extracts from:

  • Basil of Caesarea, on Mark 9:50.
  • Gregory of Nyssa, on Mark 15:29-32.
  • Ambrose and Augustine (in Greek translation), on Mark 14:34.

Other catenas include:

  • An anonymous catena in Vatican gr. 1692, which also contains the Ambrose/Augustine material.
  • 180 extracts are present in Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale gr. 194.
  • A few may be found in Rome, Palatinus gr. 220; Vatican gr. 349; Biblioteca dei Lincei A. 300.

Editions:  Reuss did not publish a catena on Mark.  Instead we have rather older editions of Victor’s catena.

  • T. Peltano, Victoris Antiocheni Commentarii, Ingolstadt (1580).  There is no indication which recension this is.

Recension 1:

  • C. F. Matthaei, Βίκτωρος πρεσβυτέρου Ἀντιοχείας καὶ ἄλλων τινῶν ἁγίων πατέρων ἐξήγησις εἰς τὸ κατὰ Μάρκον ἅγιον εὐαγγέλιον ex codicibus Mosquensibus, 2 vols, Moscow (1775)
  • S. Markfi, Codex graecus quatuor Euangeliorum e Bibliotheca Uniuersitatis Pestinensis cum interpretatione hungarica, Pestini (1860), pp. 125-201.

Recension 2:

  • P. Possinus, Catena Graecorum Patrum in euangelium secundum Marcum, Rome (1672)
  • J. Cramer, Catenae Graecorum Patrum in Novum Testamentum, Oxford (1840).  Various versions of this edition exist.

It is unclear from the Patrology whether the Curzon Coptic Catena (and it’s Arabic descendant) are also classified as a recension 2 text; perhaps someone could clarify this point.

Studies: R. Devreese, Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplement 1 (Paris, 1928), pp. 1175-1181, on the Mark catenas.  M. Geerard, Clavis Patrum Graecorum 4, pp. 235-237.  Karo and Lietzman, (as in intro), pp.131-132.

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Greek gospel catenas 1: catenas on Matthew

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are four types of catena on Matthew.

Type A:  there are four versions of this.

  1. This contains mainly extracts from Chrysostom’s sermons.  Other authors are Isidore of Pelusium, Cyril of Alexandria; the monk Theodore.

  2. This is an expanded version of A.1.  In addition to the material in #1, it contains fragments of Photius, Basil the Great, Athanasius, Origen, Maximus the Confessor, and Gregory Nazianzen.

  3. This is an abridged version of A.1.  It contains mainly chunks of Chrysostom, but not identified as such.  This version was compiled in the time Leo VI ‘the wise’ (886-911).  Some late manuscripts identify Leo Patricius as the compiler.

  4. The most extensive version is also based on A.1.  Additional authors quoted include Severus, Theodore of Heraclea, and Theodore of Mopsuestia.

Type B: there are six versions of this, extant in multiple manuscripts.  This catena is attributed to Peter of Laodicea, but probably falsely.

Type C: this catena was compiled by Nicetas, Metropolitan of Heraclea in Thrace.  He was the last great catenist.  It was composed before 1080 AD.  The catena contains numerous extracts, mainly from Chrysostom.  The author attribution against each extract is unusually reliable.

Type D: this catena was composed in the 11th century, and contains mainly extracts from Chrysostom.  The catena can be found in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, graecus 194.

Unclassified: the following manuscripts also contain a catena on Matthew, which does not fit neatly into the above catefories:

  • Athos, Lavra B. 113.  This is an 11th century manuscript, and classified as type E by Geerard.

  • Vatican graecus 349.  11th century.

  • Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Suppl. gr. 1225.  11th century.
  • Rome, Biblioteca dei Lincei, A. 300.  12-13th century.

Macarius Chrysocephalus, Metropolitan of Philadelphia, also composed a catena on Matthew.  This made use of additional material, and not merely of earlier catenas.

A Coptic Catena is also known as the Robert Curzon catena, from its discoverer, was published by Paul de Lagarde.  It contains a catena on all four gospels.  This was translated from a now unknown Greek catena, which was more of a dogmatic anthology than an exegetical catena.  An Arabic Catena was made from it in a monophysite monastery in Egypt early in the 13th century.  The portion on Matthew was published with a Italian Spanish translation by F. J. Caubet Iturbe, La Cadena arabe del Evangelio suo Mateo, Vatican 1969-70.  Neither version has any relationship with any of the known Greek catenas.

Editions: J. Reuss, Berlin 1957 published material on Matthew, although this only scratches the surface.

Studies: R. Devreese, Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplement 1 (Paris, 1928), pp. 1164-1175, on the Matthew catenas.  M. Geerard, Clavis Patrum Graecorum 4, pp. 228-235.  Karo and Lietzman, (as in intro), pp.119-131.

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Greek gospel catenas 0: introduction

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m going to write a little series, on the various medieval Greek catenas on the Gospels.  This is because I detect in myself (and others) a deep ignorance about what classes of catena exist, and I need to mine these things for quotations from Eusebius.  These contain extracts from many now vanished works by the Fathers on the bible. 

For the newcomer, each catena gives a passage of scripture, followed by extracts from earlier patristic works on that text.  The compiler might abbreviate the text; or paraphrase it.

There is some exceedingly terse material by Maria Antonietta Barbarà in Di Berardino’s Patrology (tr. Adrian Walford), pp.645-9.  This material is good, but quite unreadable because of its over-condensed language and formatting.  This in turn arises because the book has to be in that form in order to contain so much material.  I have myself read those pages several times and emerged none the wiser! A clear academic English language study of the catena would seem to be overdue.

But a pencil is a powerful thing.  Tonight I sat down and drew a line at the end of each couple of sentences dealing with a type of catena, and written A, B, C or whatever in the margin.  To save everyone the effort of doing the same, here are some notes.  To take this further, with what few editions exist, consult the Patrology.  Errors, omissions, corrections are all very welcome of course.

Classification systems: The one used here was drawn up by J. Reuss, Matthaus-Kommentare aus der griechischen Kirche, Berlin 1957 (also similar editions on Luke and John).

M. Geerard follows his classification, in the articles in the Clavis Patrum Graecorum vol. 4, pp.228-248.

There is also the system of G. Karo and I. Lietzmann, Catenarum Graecorum 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 instead classify catenas as types I-VII, following a scheme drawn up by E. Preuschen.

Studies: R. Devreesse published articles on the catenas for each gospel in the Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplement vol. 1 (Paris, 1928), “Chaînes…”, pp.1164-1205.

I see that Nicole Petrin has a useful working bibliography on her blog here.

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Bibliographies of classical Armenian

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There comes a time in the life of every man interested in patristics when he needs to know about classical Armenian literature.  Hoc est hora.  There must be fragments of Eusebius in Armenian catenas, I reason.  But where to look?

The indefatigable Robert W. Thomson gave us a Bibliography of classical Armenian literature to 1500, published by Brepols in 1995 and available for an eye-watering sum.  I think that I will try and do an ILL for that!

But while surfing for it, in abebooks.co.uk I came across something strange, something otherwise unknown to Google.  It’s a series called “The Armenian Classical Authors”, published by the Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia ca. 2005.  There are at least 5 volumes, each running to around $100.  It starts with the 5th century of course.  Contents are in Armenian, which is why they don’t show up in an English-language book search.

Book Description: Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia, 2005. Hardcover. Book Condition: New. The Armenian Classical Authors Volume IV, 7th Century. Yegavian, Zaven (Director).

Book Description: The Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia, Antelias (Lebanon), 2005. Hard Cover. Book Condition: New. First Edition. xiii, 791 pp., Armenian text, double columns per page, hard back. A series of studies covering large number of Armenian authors. The idea of this work was pursued by his Holiness Aram I Catholicos. In the occasion of the 1600 anniversary of the Armenian Alphabet Genesis, invented by Mesrob Mashdots, and in celebration of the Armenian Golden literary age of the fifth century. This work contain a bibliography of famous Armenian authors of the fifth century, together with a study and analysis of the work of each author. Due to weight and size of the book, shipping to outside of the USA is $39.00. Inside USA is $10.00. Size: 8 1/2″ x 11″

How fascinating!  How wonderful that such a book should exist.  I’ve even managed to find an online bookseller in Lebanon who stocks it, Kutub Ltd (and even my Syriac is enough to recognise the triliteral root KTB = book).  Nice to see the Lebanese abandoning their pointless civil wars long enough to make money.  But… any chance of it in English?

Later: I’ve been asking in LT-ANTIQ, and the excellent Dominique Gonnet has told me that the Clavis Patrum Graecorum supplements cover versions of Greek texts in Syriac, Armenian, etc.  I must hie me to a library and look!

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7,300+ visitors to Tertullian.org last month

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I was interested to discover from this site that apparently more than 7,300 unique individuals used my site last month.  For a site dedicated to a subject as abtruse as the Fathers, that’s not bad going.  Perhaps we underestimate interest in early Christian history?

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Eusebius in Armenian

Posted on by Roger Pearse

We all know that many interesting works are preserved in Classical Armenian translation.  Eusebius’ Church History exists in an Armenian version; book 1 of his Chronicle is only preserved in Armenian.  But what else exists?

I’ve often mentioned that I have translators at work on Eusebius’ Gospel differences and their solutions (Quaestiones ad Stephanum, ad Marinum).  Today I received a translation of a chunk of this work from a Coptic catena, much to my delight.

But what about Armenian?  What exists?  What catenae exist?  What catalogues of unpublished manuscripts?  Is there any possibility that this work Eusebius exists whole somewhere?  Or new fragments in a catena?

I realise that I have no idea.  If anyone can point me in the direction of finding out, I would be most grateful!

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Linking electronic Greek words to their English meanings

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Ancient Greek is tough for computers, and computer programmers, to work with.  Firstly it’s a dead language, secondly it’s a non-Roman script, and thirdly no-one knows Greek anyway (although a lot of people pretend).

What we need are tools on our computers.  These are appearing, but very slowly.  The problem is the non-availability of data.

Except that data does exist.  For some years the Perseus site has had a very nice electronic edition of Liddell and Scott, and a tool wherein you can put in any Greek word and it will spit out the meaning and the standardised form.  The latter is known as the ‘lemma’, presumably to keep people from understanding. 

Perseus have now made their data available in the Perseus Hopper, which can be downloaded for non-commercial purposes.  Liddell and Scott is in a big XML file. 

Peter Heslin of Durham University has grasped the implications.  Version 3.1 of his Diogenes tool includes this XML file, and another file containing all the possible forms of all the words in the Greek language, their lemma, the part of speech (noun, verb, etc), tense, mood, singular or plural (etc), and most importantly the line number of the full description in the XML file.  This means that you can look up any word, and get a full description; so long as it’s in L&S.  The code is in perl, and is supplied.  Perl tends to be impenetrable, but this is a relatively well-written example.  So if you want to create your own dictionary program, here’s the materials.

But what about post-classical Greek?  Well, there’s the New Testament.  A list of all the words, in order, with part of speech, lemma, etc, was created long ago by James Tauber as MorphGNT.  The site is down at the moment, but the 1Mb text file does exist.

Now this is fine, but useless.  It doesn’t contain the English meaning.  But… Ulrik Sandborg-Petersen has digitised Strong’s dictionary and created an XML file of it.  This contains the Greek Lemma, for all words in the New Testament, plus the English meaning and other bits of info of no present concern.  You can see on his site what the data is, by tapping in his demo example.

MorphGNT also contains the lemma.  So this means that if we join the two together, we get all the possible forms of a word in MorphGNT, and the lemma for them; and the lemma plus the meaning in Strong’s.  Effectively, we now have a dictionary of NT Greek, forms, base form, and meanings.  All we have to do is program it.

What about other, non-classical Greek literature?  Somewhere around is a Septuagint in electronic form, with lemmas.  This can be referenced either against the meaning in Strong’s, or that in Liddell and Scott.  How many words appear in neither?  — I don’t know, but it would be interesting to know.  Mostly names, I would guess. 

Every lemmatized Greek text can now be a source of data to this process of creating as large an electronic Greek dictionary as we like.  And, of course, we need more dictionaries of lemmas-plus-English-meaning.  What others could be done, I wonder? 

I’ve just looked for “lemmatized Greek text” in Google and, among many interesting results, I have found the Lexis site, which claims to be able to help produced lemmatized Greek texts.  It runs on Mac, and I haven’t tried it; but it works with the TLG.  Likewise Hypotyposeis talks about lemmatized searches in TLG.  I think Josephus must be available somewhere in lemmatized form — where?

What I’m not finding is much Patristic Greek, tho.  What we need, clearly, is G.W.H.Lampe’s Patristic Greek Lexicon in XML.  This was published in 1961, so will be in copyright until all of us are dead.  But… couldn’t someone license an electronic version for non-commercial use?   It’s much too expensive for me to buy just at the moment (although a pirate PDF of the page images does exist, I see; apparently pp.1202-3 are missing, tho).

There is much that I don’t know still, tho.  Interesting to see that there is a blog called Coding Humanist.  Is there anyone out there interested in this stuff too?

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Digitization of the Plutei collection in Florence

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve had an email from the Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana in Florence telling me that they are actively exploring digitising the Plutei collection. This includes massive numbers of the oldest manuscripts of any number of the classics, including both Tacitus manuscripts. They think it will take around 30 months, and they intend to put the results online.

Remarkably, they’re also looking at ways for people to contribute to the online material and so enhance the content.  This is very far-seeing of them, and will be most interesting to see.

All early days, but very, very interesting.

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