Problems with Berchman’s translation of the fragments of Porphyry “Against the Christians”

I’ve been looking at Harnack’s edition of the fragments of Porphyry’s work against the Christians, and comparing bits of Berchman’s translation against it.  Berchman did not translate Harnack, but had his own ideas; nevertheless, we can connect the two.

Fragment 21, from Jerome’s prologue to his commentary on Galatians, reads:

Quod nequaquam intelligens Bataneotes et sceleratus ille Porphyrius in I. operis sui adversum nos libro Petrum a Paulo obiecit esse reprehensum, quod non recto pede incederet ad evangelizandum, volens et illi maculam erroris inurere et huic procacitatis et in commune ficti dogmatis accusare mendacium, dum inter se ecclesiarum principes discrepent.

which Berchman renders as:

Porphyry, completely ignorant and criminal, in the first volume of his work against us, says that Peter was reprimanded by Paul, that he did not go out immediately to evangelize. And thus he wanted to brand him with the blemish of error, the lie of impertinence, and of publicly fictitious teaching because between these princes of the church there were difficulties.

Now this didn’t look very good to me, not least because which bit renders “Bataneotes”.  Searching for this word, I discovered that the 19th century Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers translation had included this prologue, and renders this passage thus:

That wretch Porphyry Bataneotes [*] by no means understood this, and, therefore, in the first book of the work which he wrote against us, he raised the objection that Peter was rebuked by Paul for not walking uprightly as an evangelical teacher. His desire was to brand the former with error and the latter with impudence, and to bring against us as a body the charge of erroneous notions and false doctrine, on the ground that the leaders of the Churches are at variance among themselves.

[*] Probably from Batanea, the ancient Bashan, where Porphyry is said to have been born.

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Eusebius’ lost work against Porphyry – extant in 1838?

Eusebius’ refutation of Porphyry’s attack on the Christians is lost; but it seems it may not have been lost that long ago.

Does anyone know whether there are manuscripts still in Rodosto, a town 60 miles west of Istanbul and now known as Tekirdag? Or if not, where the mss of the expelled Greek community now are?

I ask because of references to manuscripts of Eusebius of Caesarea against Porphyry. There is a statement in Harnack’s edition of the fragments of Porphyry’s Against the Christians, p.30:

A listing of manuscripts in Rodosto, written between 1565 and 1575, on p.30b: Eusebiou tou Pamphilou Kata Porphuriou (s. Forster, De antiquitatibus et libris ms. Constantinopolitanis, Rostochii, 1877; cf. Neumann in Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1899, col. 299). In 1838 a great fire broke out in Rodosto.

It would be most interesting to know whether this ms. exists anywhere.   Does anyone know who would know?

I wonder if Forster and Neumann are online.

Harnack’s next paragraph continues with a statement that an ms. in the Iviron monastery on Mt. Athos, codex 1280 (s. XVII) which contains Eusebius, biblos peri ths euangekiwn diaphwnias; Eis thn prophhthn Hsaian logoi t konta [sic]; [Kata] Porphyriou logoi l’ [sic]; topikon logos a’ etc (see Meyer, Ztschr. fur. K.-Gesch. XI, p.156).

But this last is probably a red herring.  Long ago I scanned and translated MEYER, Ph., Der griechische Irenäus und der ganze Hegesippus im 17. Jahrhundert, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte (1890) pp. 155-158 (English translation).

Iviron 1280 mainly contains church music, but at the end is a letter with a couple of pages containing merely a list of books, which mentions Hegesippus, Irenaeus, Methodius against Porphyry, plus Eusebius Against Porphyry and his Biblical Questions (diaphonias).

There are a number of these lists from the renaissance and later in existence. Nigel Wilson has written that at least some of them look like the productions of dealers in the East, intended to draw in the too eager western buyer in order to do a ‘bait-and-switch’ scam. One of them even looks like a deliberate joke.

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