In 1712, Michel Lequien printed the complete works of John Damascene (d. ca. 749) in two volumes (download from here and here), together with a Latin translation. This edition was reprinted by Migne in the Patrologia Graeca, vols 95 and 96. Among the genuine works, he printed in volume 2 a text which he called the “Sacra Parallela” or “Sacred Parallels”, with an appendix of more material from a codex Rupefulcaldina. (In my previous posts we discussed the pseudo-Josephus text, which appears in this edition as the final portion of the material.)
The text is an anthology of extracts from earlier writers; what is called, in academic jargon, a “florilegium”. As the literary culture of antiquity faded, the Byzantines, who were trying to preserve it, found that one of the most effective ways was to compile anthologies. A great number exist. Many which survive are compiled from still earlier anthologies.
So what we actually have is a bunch of Greek manuscripts, held in various manuscript repositories. Each manuscript contains extracts. Some manuscripts are copies of others.
The “Sacra Parallela” is one such florilegium. Lequien printed it from one Vatican manuscript, the “Florilegium Vaticanum”, and the appendix came from a “Florilegium Rupefulcaldinum.”
A collection of extracts needs an index, so that the reader can find whatever subject he is looking for. So the “Sacra Parallela” starts with a short prologue, followed by an index, and then the body of the text. The index itself may be copied from one anthology to another, and modified (often inaccurately), so may tell us something about the chain of transmission.
Here’s the start of the index in Lequien’s edition, vol.2, p.281:
The work is divided into sections. Each section is called a “stoicheion” (“element”), corresponding to a letter of the Greek alphabet. So here we see “Alpha”.
Each letter is divided into “titles” – subjects, basically. Letter A is divided into 51 titles, for instance. The first of these, title 1, is “On the eternity of the holy and consubstantial Trinity, and that there is only one God over all.” Title 2 is “That God cannot be avoided…”. Title 4: “On the love and fear of God…”. Title 6: “About angels…” And so on.
Here’s the start of the body text, at the end of the index, on p.297:
Here we see stoicheion/letter “Alpha”. We start with title 1, “On the eternity of the holy and consubstantial Trinity…,” and continue with a bunch of bible quotations, which Lequien helpfully printed in Italics. After a page and a half of these, we get the first extract, which is from Basil, followed by three extracts from Gregory Nazianzen.
The extract author is given in the margin. For Gregory Nazianzen the Greek says only: “of the theologian” (i.e. Gregory Nazianzen). I suspect this is exactly what is found in the manuscript margin, rather than by Lequien: marginal author identification.
After letter Omega, there is a list of authors referenced on p.730. I don’t know if this is an addition by Lequien rather than something in the manuscript.
That concludes my overview of what is usually meant when we refer to the “Sacra Parallela”. I’ll look at the prologue next.
In my last post, I mentioned that this Pseudo-Josephus text is transmitted to us in a range of manuscripts, but is also transmitted in the “Sacra Parallela.” The Sacra is an immense anthology of extracts from the Fathers. Since then I have been trying to find out more about the Sacra. It was originally in three volumes, often attributed to John Damascene, but only compilations derive from it survive.
The Sacra has only been edited once, by Michel Lequien, in 1712, in two volumes (here and here), with parallel Latin translation. But in recent years a German team has been working on the text, and now they have issued an edition of two recensions of the second volume of the Sacra, in the Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos series.[1] Each recension gets two volumes. Sadly these do not contain a translation.
The edition by J. Declerck of the second recension of Book II of the Sacra Parallela (volumes 3and4 ) contains 2,007 extracts. These are organised in alphabetical order, using 23 letters of the Greek alphabet. Apparently this recension included no entries for “zeta.”
But the last entry given is out of sequence. Indeed this entry is none other than pseudo-Josephus, “Against Plato, on the cause of everything”; in other words, our “discourse to the Greeks on Hades.” The section is noticeably far longer than the short extracts that precede it.
Here’s the start of this part.
Even the reviewer, Paul-Hubert Poirier, had some difficulty understanding the abbreviations at the top! *II2 is the second recension of book II of the Sacra. The asterisk is inscrutable, apparently. “PMLb” is a group of manuscripts.
That it appears there, out of sequence at the end, must mean that it is an addition, added later on to the end of some copy of this recension of the text, and transmitted with it. For the first recension ends with a short extract from Justin Martyr. The fact that it is a comparatively long text in several chapters also suggests that it is not part of the original.
We’ve already seen that this version of pseudo-Josephus was edited a century ago by Holl from two manuscripts. These also form the basis of the new critical edition. But this edition also ends at the same place, earlier than the Barocci manuscript used for the English translation.
I would infer from this that the pseudo-Josephus text is a free-floating bit of text, on version of which accidentally became attached to the end of one recension of the Sacra Parallela.
So pseudo-Josephus is not a portion of the Sacra Parallela which has gone solo. Rather it is an independent artist that has joined the band.
There is a text floating around the web under the title of “Josephus’s Discourse to the Greeks concerning Hades.” The full title is “An extract out of Josephus’s discourse to the Greeks, concerning Hades: wherein are contained the souls of the righteous and the unrighteous.” Bill Thayer has the most reliable version of the piece on his site, here.
This item is from William Whiston’s 1737 version of the complete works of Josephus, and in the original edition it was printed as Dissertation V in volume one. (Dissertation VI defended its authenticity). While omitted in most reprints, these dissertations can be found in the 1741 reprint.[1] But the text is plainly not by Josephus, not least because chapter 8 starts with an apocryphal saying of Jesus. This is found in other patristic texts and reads, “In whatsoever ways I shall find you, in them shall I judge you entirely.” So we may call it pseudo-Josephus.
Whiston’s “Dissertation V”
We need to find the Greek text for this, before we can discuss it. In his original edition, Whiston gives a note about this, which leads us down some quite interesting rabbit holes. As we shall see, it leads to a number of what appear to be unresolved issues.
In the reference literature today, the text is assigned to Hippolytus of Rome, and given a title such as “Adversus Graecos” or “Oratio ad Graecos de inferno”. It is hesitantly classified as fragment 1 of the lost “De universo,” περί τοῦ παντός, (Clavis Patrum Graecorum CPG 1898). This classification is based on Photius, Bibliotheca 48, which mentions such a work and ascribes it to Josephus, just as the manuscripts do today. But Whiston, despite his cranky ideas, was right when he noted that the basis for the proposed identification with De universo was unsound, as Alice Whealey recently discussed.[2]
The text is printed in the Patrologia Graeca 10, cols. 796-801, with a Latin translation copied from Etienne Le Moyne, of whom more anon. The first half of the same text appears in PG 96, 541-544, labelled as the “Rupefucaldinum” version of John Damascene’s Sacra Parallela (CPG 8056). There is a modern edition of our own text in K. Holl Fragmente vornizanischer Kirchenvater aus den Sacra Parallela (TU 20, 2), Leipzig (1899), pp.137-143.
Whiston’s translation predates all of these editions. Ordinarily that would not matter, but in this case, as we shall see, it does.
Whiston encountered the text in the Addenda of the 1726 Havercamp edition, the basis for his translation of the works of Josephus. This piece was in vol. 2, Addenda, p.145-7.[3]
But rather than using Havercamp’s text, he preferred that printed by David Humphreys, The Apologeticks of the Learned Athenian Philosopher Athenagoras, (1714). This had a loose English translation on pp.292-9 and the Greek on pp.302-307. Humphreys also collated it with a text printed in the end notes of David Hoeschelius, Photii Myriobiblon (1611). The Notae at the end restart the page numbering from 1, so its on columns 9-12 at the back of the book. Whiston mentions also Etienne Le Moyne, Varia sacra, ceu Sylloge variorum opusculorum graecorum, vol. 1 (1694), pp.53-62, whose Latin translation was adopted by Migne in the PG10. Le Moyne attributes the text, without manuscript authority according to Whiston, to Hippolytus, Sermone contra Graecos, cuius titulus, contra Platonem de universi causa.
But here the mysteries begin. Whiston prints the text in 8 chapters – the division and numbering are his own –, based upon the text of Humphreys. But although Whiston himself states, “All the four copies … very nearly agree, till towards the latter end of § 6,” after that we have a problem.
I have only skimmed the texts, but it looks as if all the editions seem to agree as far as the last-but-one sentence in chapter 6. Hoeschelius, the PG10 text, Le Moyne, and Holl also print a section of text equivalent to chapter 7. The chapter 7 of Humphreys is rather different. The chapter 8 of Humphreys is not present anywhere else.
Inevitably we have to ask what manuscript evidence each of these editions is based on.
The Pinakes database lists 10 manuscripts of our text: Barocci MS 26 (9th c.) in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, BNF Coislin 131 (14th c.) in Paris, one in the Lavra on Mt Athos (K 113, 16th c.), Vatican gr. 723 (13-16th), and 6 more recent MSS also in the Vatican. This from the online scan of a microfilm of Vatican gr. 723:
Vatican gr. 723, f. 239r (top)Vatican gr. 723, fol. 240v (end)
So we can now look at the editions.
The Humphreys edition is based on MS Oxford Barocci 26. Whiston tells us that this becomes nearly unreadable toward the end, but that this is the source of the material beyond chapter 6. Sadly it is not online. He adds that the Barocci copy “is much the most valuable; because it is about a forth part larger than the other; and yet appears equally genuine.”[4]
Whiston also refers to the Coislin manuscript, which is online here.
Hoeschelius used an Italian manuscript, without specifying it. He says only:
“Eius fragmentum ut ex Italia missum est pridem mihi a M.M. ita edo, pseudepigraphum, nec ne (non iniuria enim dubites) iudicent eruditi. Equidem homini Christiano adscripserim.”
“I publish this fragment, just as it was sent to me some time ago from Italy by M.M., pseudepigraphical or not (for you would not be wrong to doubt), let the scholars decide. For my part, I would attribute it to a Christian author.”
So this was probably one of the Vatican manuscripts. Whiston in “Dissertation 6” p.clxxxv tells us that “M.M.” was a certain Max Marguntius.
As far as I could tell from his rambling preface, Le Moyne does not identify the manuscript that he used for “Hippolytus”.
Pinakes also lists 39 manuscripts of the Sacra Parallela, from the 9th century onwards. This work exists in various different recensions, and I am unclear whether pseudo-Josephus is present in all of these manuscripts. Paris BNF gr. 923 (9th c.) and Venice Marciana gr. Z. 138 (10 med.) were used for the Holl edition, and there are three other manuscripts listed of recension “PMLb”, whatever that is. But the mysteries of the Sacra Parallela will have to await another blog post.
It looks as if we have at least two recensions, and possibly three; the Barocci text via the Humphreys edition, the manuscript itself nearly unreadable at the end; the PG10 / Hoeschelius / Le Moyne text; and perhaps the Holl and PG96 text as a third group similar to the second. Someone needs to collate these, collate the manuscripts, and establish a stemma.
I notice that even in the first sentence of the work, we find a separating variant. Humphreys prints “Καὶ οὗτος μὲν ὁ περὶ δαιμόνων τόπος,” “And this is the place of demons.” But other witnesses read “Καὶ οὗτος μὲν ὁ περὶ δαιμόνων λόγος,” translated by Whiston as “And this is the discourse concerning daemons.”
“topos” is the reading of Humphreys (and so, presumably, the Barocci MS), Hoeschelius, Le Moyne, and the PG10. It is also the reading of the Coislin MS, from which Whiston must have taken his reading.
“logos” is the reading of Holl, and also PG96, both based on the Sacra Parallela.
Paris BNF coislin 131, fol. 1r (top)
So there is editorial work to be done on the “ad Graecos”, or whatever we call the text. The text, its authorship, and relationships between the text witnesses, all this would make an interesting subject for publication. But not by me!
[1]William Whiston, The Genuine Works Of Flavius Josephus, The Jewish Historian. Translated from the Original Greek : according to Havercamp’s accurate Edition, vol. 1 (1737), pp.clxxix-clxxxiv.↩
[2]A. Whealey, “Hippolytus’ lost ‘De universo’ and ‘De resurrectione:’ Some new hypotheses”, in: Vigiliae Christianae 50 (1996), p.244-256. JSTOR.↩
[3]S. Havercamp, Flavii Josephi quae reperiri potuerunt, 2 vols (1726). BSB: Vol. 1. Vol 2. The text begins on p.676 of the PDF download of vol. 2.↩
