From my diary

I had to empty my loft a week ago in order to have some insulation fitted.  I still have rather a lot of items lying in a heap.  Last night I put some of the heavier stuff back up.  But I noted that a lot of things were just in plastic carrier bags, and I wondered if I should repackage them.

This morning I found a Bleep and Booster annual (the one on the left).  My parents must have given it to me as a small child, back in the 60’s.  It was interesting to see it again, but I had to clean a thick layer of dust from it.

I also found some boxes for old PC networking kit.  These have gone down to a pile for throwing out!

What I would like to do is to put everything into transparent plastic boxes.  I bought one yesterday.  But these seem quite expensive, and it doesn’t take much in the way of contents to make them too heavy to lift. 

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From my diary

Oh bother … the cough I have been struggling with for the last week or so, and the sensitive stomach that I have lived with for nearly three weeks, have ganged up now with a streaming cold that came on last night.  It must be holiday time!  This business of living in an organic construct is not that great an idea, sometimes.  Everyone in our office is starting to cough and choke, so I imagine we will all get it.  It will stop me doing much this weekend, I suspect.

Last night was productive, tho.   I realised that I had only 8Gb left of the 500Gb on my PC.  Where had it gone, I wondered? 

I always use WinDirStat to work out which directories are hogging the space.  In this case, I found that one working directory for an OCR task had taken some vast area of disk, and I moved it out to my two external backup hard disks.  Finereader 10 is really a disk hog! 

Another 40Gb (!) was being occupied by two Internet Explorer temporary log files, named brndlog.txt and brndlog.bak.  I also took the time to reorganise a bit, as I found multiple copies of some large PDF’s.  After an hour or so I had 89Gb spare. I also backed everything up to the two backup drives. 

Very pleased with myself after that!

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From my diary

First, a gorgeous statement from the Monday Evening blog:

It’s a mistake to think, since they thought the sun and planets revolved around the earth, therefore medieval men were egocentric fools. It’s not so much they thought the earth was at the center, but that they thought it was at the bottom.

I am no medievalist, but these few words really do make an important point.

I’ve had a rather exciting email today which I can’t discuss yet, thanks to some rather sniffy bureaucrats, but may mean that some interesting material is public domain, and that it will indeed be possible to get it online in English.

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Eusebius update

The book is still selling well, I think.  Amazon are fulfilling orders quite quickly, or so I hear, which says that they are holding stock and, pleasingly, selling them!

Carol Downer and her team, who did the translation of the Coptic fragments, are thinking about translating more of the Coptic catena.  I am encouraging them!

A rather interesting copyright issue has developed with the book.   For the Eclogue, I licensed the Greek text edited by Claudio Zamagni from Les Editions du Cerf, who publish the Sources Chretiennes series.

I myself do not believe that copyright was ever intended to apply to the raw Greek or Latin text of ancient authors, however edited.  The publishing industry has pushed for ever more copyright, and I am told that some German courts have even acknowledged such ownership, improbable as it seems.  But I wanted no trouble, and indeed the Cerf were very easy to deal with and asked a modest percentage (unlike Brepols, whose demands were so outrageous that I was forced to use a pre-critical text and simply note the difference — five words! — in the footnotes).

But today I learn from Dr. Zamagni that he never licensed his Greek text to the Cerf.  His contract with them left the ownership of that (if any) in his own hands.  He tells me that the Cerf have acknowledged this.  Naturally I have written back and asked his permission to use it, and I have also written to the Cerf and queried the facts.  After all, if they don’t have any claim on the copyright, I don’t owe them any money.

I’m sure the Cerf negotiated in good faith, and I will happily give them the free copies that were part of the deal.  But I suspect Dr. Z. is quite right about the legalities. 

But it all raises an interesting issue.  Surely every scholar should ensure that the raw Greek text of his labours should not become the supposed property of Bloggins and Co?  After all, a scholar may wish to do an editio minora, and should not have to pay to use his own work again!

None of us would deny a publisher the chance for a return on his work.  But this whole business of claiming copyright on the works of someone dead 16 centuries smells, whatever the legal trickery.  I suggest that scholars put an end to it by declining to include that text within their deals with publishers.  Apparatus? Fine by me.  Translations?  Ditto.  Commentaries?  Ditto.  Wherever real work is done, it is fine that a copyright exist.  But where someone is merely editing a corrupt text back to what the author wrote, the circulation of the raw text should NOT be obstructed by copyright.

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Idiot of the week award goes to …

…, erm, <cough>, me.

“Why so?” I hear you cry.  (At least, I hope that’s what you’re saying.)  Well, it’s like this.

I’m interested in the Coptic catena on the Gospels, published without a translation by Paul De Lagarde back in the 1850’s-ish.  I knew that an Arabic translation exists of that catena, and that the Arabic version is more complete.  For the sole surviving Coptic manuscript has lost many of its pages in the years.  But as far as anyone knew, the Arabic was unpublished.

Some time back I discovered that an edition with Italian Spanish translation existed of part of the Arabic catena, covering Matthew.  The Arabic was edited by Iturbe, around 50 years ago, and attracted no attention, and I only stumbled on it through my habit of compulsive reading of patrology bibliographies.  I wanted to include the Arabic fragments of Eusebius in my book.  So I got hold of a copy of Iturbe, in two volumes, and had the fragments included in my book.

Recently the translator of the Coptic fragments has told me that she and her team fancy doing more of the De Lagarde catena into English.  That’s very good news, of course, and I want to help.  Apparently they also have some Arabic skills, so are interested in the Arabic version.  I’ve offered to supply them with a copy of one of the manuscripts — because most of the Arabic catena is still unpublished.  So I thought I’d look in Iturbe and find out what mss. exist.

She was also asking for details about the Arabic catena.  Now I have a couple of PDF’s of selected pages, which I sent her, telling her that I borrowed the book.  That’s what it usually means, when I have a PDF of a few photocopied pages.

Just now, then, I was looking for stuff about Iturbe online, and came across my own post above.  It turns out that actually I did NOT borrow the book, contrary to my statements in several emails.  It seems that, erm, I bought the book.  In fact, once I realised this, I realised that I knew where they were as well.  Yup: that’s them on my shelf. 

Ah, what a fallible creature is man!  “Quick Watson, the straight-jacket!”

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Christophe Guignard on the catena of Nicetas

Continuing from yesterday, here is another excerpt from Christophe Guignard’s book La lettre de Julius Africanus à Aristide

As I remarked, one of the charms of this book is that, in order to establish a text of the fragments of the letter of 2nd century writer Julius Africanus to Aristides on the genealogy of Christ, it provides a modern overview of all the sorts of sources of the fragments of lost patristic works.  These sources crop up in a rather hangdog, shamefaced manner in so many books, briefly referred to as if everyone knew everything about them, when in truth no-one knows much.  Dr. Guignard is, of course, surveying the scene for bits and pieces of the letter to Aristides, which has not reached us in its own right.  But the same sources are used, or not used, for most patristic authors, and are the source of all those “fragments” that tend to appear at the back of editions of authors.

One of the great failures of scholarship over the last two centuries is the failure to provide editions of the catenas.  These medieval Greek bible commentaries, composed entirely of chains (catenae) of quotations from the Fathers linked together, remain our brightest hope for extracts from many now lost authors.  Yet they remain unpublished, for the most part.  If they were published, it was in pre-critical editions of the 16-17th century.  The attempt by J. Cramer, in eight volumes in the mid-19th century, to remedy this for the New Testament, was met with much criticism.  I believe one or two scholars have attempted to edit a catena today, but if so their work has not come my way.

Let us return to Dr. G., p.56.  The translation is mine.

The catena of Nicetas on Luke

An immense work in four books,210 gathering more than three thousand extracts, the catena on Luke composed by Nicetas of Heraclea (11-12th century)211 is today still unpublished, even if fragments of many authors or works have been published.212   In the absence of an edition, the description of its content given by Ch. Th. Krikonis based on the manuscript Iviron 371 is of signal service, despite its imprecisions.213

The catena of Nicetas is an essential witness for the Gospel Problems and Solutions of Eusebius: it was in one of its manuscripts that Cardinal Mai discovered the most important fragments of the Eusebian text outside the ecloge.  It is, together with the latter, the sole witness to the first part of the Letter to Aristides (§1-9 of our edition), and also includes further extracts.  However it would be hasty to conclude that it is simply one of the witnesses to the text of the Gospel Problems, since Nicetas also had access to the Ecclesiastical History [of Eusebius].214  We must, therefore, consider this point.  For the moment, let us present the catena and its manuscripts, and indicate the content of the part which interests us.

I will also give the footnotes for this short section, which must have involved incredible labour to compile and are full of good things.  TU is the series Texte und Untersuchungen, in which this volume appears itself as TU 167.

210 The gospel of Luke was divided into 80 chapters in the time of Nicetas.  The first book of the catena covers the first 16; book 2 begins with the 17th (Luke 6:17 ff.); books 3 with the 40th (11:27ff); book 4 with the 63rd (18:18ff.).  All the same it is not certain that this division, which appears in the manuscript Vaticanus graecus 1611 and its descendants is by Nicetas (see J. Sickenberger, TU 22/4, p.34-36 and 80).

211 CPG C 135 (type IV of Karo and Lietzmann).  The Greek title is, according to the Vaticanus gr. 1611 (folio 1r): Συναγωγὴ ἐξηγήεων εἰς τὸ κατὰ Λουκᾶν ἅγιον εὐαγγέλιον ἐκ διαφόρων ἐρμηνευτῶν παρὰ Νικήτα διακόνου τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ μεγάλης ἐκκλησίας καὶ διδασκάλου γεγονυῖα (Sickenberger, TU 22/4, p.34)

212 See the references given by R. Devreese, “Chaînes exégétiques grecques”, DBS 1 (1928), col. 1184 ff; among the more recent publications, we cite as an example M. Richard, “Les citations de Theodoret conservées dans la chaîne de Nicétas sur l’évangile selon saint Luc”, Revue biblique 43 (1934), p.88-96 (reprinted in Opera minora, vol. 2, Turnhout: Brepols, 1977, no. 43) or P. Géhin, SC 514 (Chapters of the disciples of Evagrius).

213 Χ. Θ. Κρικώνης, Συναγωγὴ Πατέρων, (cited as: Krikonis).  See the criticisms of W. Lackner, Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 24 (1975), p.287-289 (equally useful for the identification of a certain number of extracts which were dismissed by Krikonis), of M. Aubineau, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 70 (1977), p.118-121, and of A. A. Fourlas, “Die Lukaskatene des Niketas von Heraclea”, p. 268-274, more positive.  The studies of J. Sickenberger remain equally useful (“Aus römischen Handschriften”, p.55-84, and above all TU 22/4; see likewise TU 21/1).

214 The lemma Εὐσεβίου ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἱστορίας appears against Luke 3:1-3 (extract no. 540 Krikonis: Iviron 371, fol. 124-5; Vaticanus gr. 1611, fol. 48).  According to the description by Krikonis, these are extracts from chapters 6 and 8-10 of book 1 [of the HE] (see also J. Sickenburger, TU 22/4, p.87).

I ought to add that the articles by Karo and Lietzmann, which classify catenas, are on archive.org, and, if you prefer a paper copy, I made one available at Lulu.com here for a nominal price.  I always felt that I should have added some material in English to that, by way of a guide to readers, but who has the time?

That’s part of one page, that lot!  Dr. Guignard promises us more on the manuscripts of this work in the next section or two, which I have not yet read.  But I think it will indeed be useful to have a list of these, over and above the three mentioned here. 

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The “Sententiae” of Publilius Syrus

Publilius Syrus is a name that few will know.  According to Pliny the Elder, he was brought to Rome in the first century BC as a slave, and rose to become the author of many mimes.  These are lost, but a collection of sayings or sentences is preserved.  The 1895 Cambridge edition here has 70 pages of English preface, although it leaves the text untranslated.

Such a collection of sayings was always likely to be popular in the Middle Ages, and consequently quite a collection of manuscripts exist, the oldest of which is 9th century.  There are 717 lines in the edition above; a mutilated version containing only the first half also circulated, and older English editions were based on this.  An old 1856 translation is here.  How this relates to the edition is not clear to me.

The text is in alphabetical order, all the sayings — in Latin! — starting with A, then those starting with B, and so on.

UPDATE: I have been gently reminded that most people will not be familiar with the Roman mimes.  The excellent Bill Thayer comes to my rescue with the following:

Among the Romans the word mimus was applied to a species of dramatic plays as well as to the persons who acted in them.

It is certain that the Romans did not derive their mimus from the Greeks in southern Italy, but that it was of native growth. The Greek mimes were written in prose, and the name μῖμος was never applied to an actor, but if used of a person it signified one who made grimaces.

The Roman mimes were imitations of foolish and mostly indecent and obscene occurrences (Ovid, Trist. II.515; Valer. Max. II.6 §7, X.11), and scarcely differed from comedy except in consisting more of gestures and mimicry than of spoken dialogue, which was not the case in the Greek mimes. The dialogue was, indeed, not excluded from the Roman mimes, but was only interspersed in various parts of the representation, while the mimic acting continued along with it and uninterruptedly from the beginning to the end of a piece. At Rome such mimes seem originally to have been exhibited at funerals, where one or more persons (mimi) represented in a burlesque manner the life of the deceased. If there were several mimi, one of them, or their leader, was called archimimus (Suet. Vespas. 19; Gruter, Inscript. 1089.6).

During the latter period of the republic such farces were also represented in the theatres; but it appears that they did not attain any high degree of perfection before the time of Caesar, for it is not until then that writers of mimes are mentioned: Cn. Matius, Decius Laberius, and Publ. Syrus were the most distinguished among them (Gellius, XV.25; Suet. Caes. 39; Cic. ad Fam. XII.18). These coarse and indecent performances, of which Sulla was very fond, had greater charms for the Romans than the regular drama: hence they were not only performed on the stage, but even at repasts in the houses of private persons. On the stage they were performed as farces after tragedies, and during the empire they gradually supplanted the place of the Atellanae. …

It was peculiar to the actors in these mimes, neither to wear masks, nor the cothurnus, nor the soccus, whence they are sometimes called planipedes (Diomed. III.487; Gellius, I.11; Macrob. Sat. II.1). As the mimes contained scenes taken from common life, such as exhibited its most striking features, their authors are sometimes called biologi or ethologi (Cic. pro Rabir. 12, de Orat. II.59), and the works themselves were distinguished for their richness in moral sentences.

That distinguished and living persons were sometimes exposed to ridicule in these mimes, is clear p764from J. Capitolinus (M. Ant. Philos. c29). (Cf. Reuvens, Collectan. Literar. I p51, &c.; Osann, Analect. crit. I p67, &c.; Ziegler, De Mimis Romanorum, Götting. 1788).

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Christophe Guignard on Julius Africanus’ letter about the genealogies in Matthew

I’ve started to read the volume of Christophe Guignard, La lettre de Julius Africanus à Aristide sur la généalogie du Christ, De Gruyters (2011).  It’s full of good things, like a well-baked cake in which every bite includes a nut or a raisin.  I have, so far, merely nibbled at it.  It is, in truth, a formidably expensive volume at $210.

Now I bought  the volume at half price at the Oxford Patristics Conference, after Dr. Guignard came to the stall where I was selling copies of the text and English translation of my Eusebius, Gospel Problems and Solutions (=Gospel Questions).  But thereby hangs a tale.  For I find that I was only just in time.  Today a correspondent writes to say  that he was also at the conference, and had gone out to a leisurely lunch with Dr. G.  My friend rushed back to the De Gruyter stall to buy the book, only to find that “some slyboots” — me! — had made off with the only display copy of the book.  Fortune favours the brave!  But probably De Gruyter will honour conference prices, if asked.

I’m not that interested in the letter of Africanus.  But the process of retrieving its fragments takes us over all sorts of sources for early Christian bible commentaries.  It is, in truth, very interesting indeed and full of nuggets of information.  It’s the polished version of a PhD thesis, which will amaze many who have seen anglophone dissertations.  But it makes most of those look babyish.   Evidently French theses achieve a level simply unknown to UK and American PhD supervisors.  The notes make clear a level of reading and knowledge far beyond my own, and I hope to give you, in translation, some bits of the book which will be of general interest. 

For this evening, I thought that I would give you a bit of the foreword in my own English translation, as I found myself translating it as I read last night.

The present work is a lightly reworked version of my doctoral thesis in protestant theology and Greek and Latin philology, completed at the universities of Strasbourg and Bari under the direction of professors Rémi Gounelle and Luciano Canfora, and submitted at Strasbourg on the 28 September 2009.

After I had started with the religious problem posed by the simultaneous coexistence of pagan and Christian elements within the Africanian corpus in my final thesis for theology studies, Julius Africanus: Réexamen d’une énigme (under the direction of prof. Eric Junod, Lausanne, 2004), I at first considered the project of composing for this author a comprehensive study, both biographical and literary.  Very soon, however, the Letter to Aristides attracted my interest.  Claudio Zamagni, that great scholar of the subject, had already drawn my attention to the presence of new extracts of the text in the Syriac tradition of the Gospel questions of Eusebius of Caesarea.  The attribution of the fragments, in two independent branches of the tradition, which not only had remained unknown to the last editor of the letter, W. Reichardt, but also did not fit into the system, on the basis of which he had constructed his edition, convinced me of the necessity to undertake afresh and extend the study of the tradition of the text.  To my great surprise, this process has allowed me to bring to light an unpublished fragment of the Greek, since I was convinced that all the materials for the Greek text had already been identified.  This discovery significantly altered the direction of my research, since, more than ever, it was necessary to give a fresh edition of the text.  Such is therefore the first aim of this work, but, since the text has never been translated as a whole, I have thought it useful to add to it a French translation, as well as a study, in part on the polemical context within which the letter of Africanus was written, and on the other hand on the argumentation which the author deploys to support his arguments and the origin of the traditions which he invokes.

The introduction continues with Dr. Guignard’s thanks to the various people and institutions who made this study possible.  All of them, in truth, should be proud to be associated with it.   It is truly excellent.  More later.

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More on Armenian catenas

In my last post, I mentioned the existence of an Armenian catena on Acts, published in Venice in 1839, and evidently of interest for the study of the so-called ‘Western’ text of Acts.  Since then I have been attempting to locate a copy online, or, indeed, to determine its title.  This is no easy task, but I seem to be making some progress.   Can anyone help find a copy online?  Here is what I have.

In Siegbert Uhlig’s Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: A-C, p.679, I found this, which I do not attempt to transcribe: 

 

Armed with this information, a search in COPAC gave me this: 

Main author: John Chrysostom, Saint, d. 407. 
Title Details: Meknutʻiwn Gortsotsʻ Arʻakʻelotsʻ / Khmbagir arareal nakhneatsʻ Hoskeberanē ew Hepremē.
Series: Matenagrutʻiwnkʻ nakhneatsʻ
Published: Venetik : I Tparani Srboyn Ghazaru, 1839. 
Physical desc.: 458 p. ; 24 cm.
Subject: Bible.N.T. Acts — Commentaries.
Other names: Ephraem, Syrus, Saint, 303-373. 
Language: Armenian

Which is undoubtedly our volume, and this copy is in Cambridge University Library in the UK in the Rare Books room, shelfmark 825:1.c.80.23.  Of course that does not help much, but it is something.

Clicking on the title details gives the information that the editor (or something) is Hovhannēs Oskeberan.  Clicking more of the links finds another copy at Oxford, in the Oriental Institute, shelfmark 694.11 Act.j S, published “Venetik : S. Ghazar, 1839” — we can see how this is the island of San Lazaro, the Mechitarist base, I think.   The main author again is given as Chrysostom.

As I’m sure you can imagine, I give these details, and variations, because these strangenesses and varieties are the reason why locating the volume is so difficult.  The more data we have, the better chance of finding a copy.

I also discovered an article by F. C. Conybeare, On the Western Text of Acts as evidenced by Chrysostom in the American Journal of Philology, 1896, 135f, where our interest begins with p.136 f.. This gives a number of interesting details on the book.  Since this will not be accessible outside the US, here are some salient details.

In the December of 1893 I translated from Armenian for Prof. Rendel Harris’s use a number of fragments of the commentary on the Acts written by Ephrem Syrus. These are contained in an Armenian catena on the Acts printed at the Mechitarist press of Venice in the year 1839. They are important because they attest that the text of the Acts used by Ephrem contained many of the glosses peculiar to the Codex Bezae. In his appendix, however, Prof. Harris threw out a hint which I have taken up and worked out in the following pages. For he recognised that one or two passages in the Greek commentary ascribed to Chrysostom are identical with fragments of Ephrem’s commentary as preserved in the Armenian. Chrysostom’s Greek does not, indeed, present many such points of contact; but I had already observed that the long and numerous extracts of Chrysostom preserved in the same Armenian Catena were different from the Greek text printed by Henry Savile; and that these differences were not attributable to the Armenian translator, but must have characterised the Greek which lay behind the Armenian. It then occurred to me to examine the Armenian text of Chrysostom with a view to see whether there were not more traces in it, than in the existing Greek, not only of an admixture of Ephrem, but of Bezan or Western readings. I was rewarded by finding many traces of Ephrem other than the two or three which Prof. Harris’s keen eyes had already detected; while of Bezan readings I found a copious harvest. These I now make public, along with some passages of the commentary which, though not reflecting a Western text, have an interest and are not found in the Greek form.

But first I may say a few words about the Catena itself. It consists of 458 closely printed pages octavo; and the matter is divided into 55 chapters, as is the existing Greek commentary of Chrysostom. A table of contents is prefixed also identical with the τῶν εις τὰς πράξεις ἠθικῶν πίναξ printed by Savile in volume IV, at the end of the work on the Acts. The arrangement of the Armenian Catena is thus based on Chrysostom. It is, as a rule, with a bit of Chrysostom that each chapter opens; and his excerpts occupy nine-tenths of the book. The Catena is printed from two codices, of which one is dated 1049 of the Armenian era, = A. D. 1601, and it contains, beside excerpts of Chrysostom, Ephrem and Cyril of Jerusalem, a few passages from Dionysius, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzen, Nerses Catholicos (Lambronatzi), Kiurakos and David the Philosopher. Nerses was born 1153, and his literary activity occupied the last 25 years of the century. Kiurakos belonged to the eleventh century. David the Philosopher was the translator of Aristotle and lived in the fifth century. The Catena therefore cannot have been compiled before the thirteenth century; nor is there good reason to suppose that all these writers had written commentaries on the Acts.

The anonymous compiler, however, does seem to have used classical Armenian versions, long anterior to his own age, of the entire commentaries at least of Chrysostom and of Ephrem; for in his dedicatory address to the Lord John, brother of the king and bishop of the province of the divinely preserved fortress of Maulevon and of some part of the lofty castles, and also overseer of the renowned and holy congregation of Goner, he writes thus (p.9):

“Thou badest me set before myself the original, and from the broad and copious interpretation of the Acts of the Apostles with level judgement (or ? taking passages of equivalent meaning) contract and arrange in brief the longer treatises .. . However, though intricate, ’tis nevertheless a plain and trodden path and likewise smooth and firm, which I was bidden by thee to pursue, more particularly because I have to guide me, as it were, bright torches and unapproachable suns—namely, the skilful Lord Ephrem, taught of God, and the famous Chrysostom, fountain of Christian lore. Clasping whose heavenward feet in fear, I humbly pray that they first pardon my temerity and then assist my weak faculties, so that I may cope with their profound and brilliant interpretations of the Acts of the holy Apostles; that I may string together and interweave like precious pearls their interpretations in some places differing and sometimes concordant . . . But they that have wider capacity and are strong in understanding will, in order to slake their thirst, have recourse to the fountains of the wise which stretch like a sea—I mean to the extensive original commentaries, from which the following exposition has been so much abridged and summarised.”

The above proves (i) that the Armenian compiler had the longer commentaries in his hands, and (2) found that they sometimes differed from one another, but sometimes agreed. The former of these facts is more explicitly avowed in the title which, after the above preface, is prefixed to his work: “From the original and extended commentaries on the Acts of the Apostles of the Saints, the Lord Ephrem and the blessed John Chrysostom, the following abridgement has been compiled. As thou perceivest, in their several places are written in against their respective comments the names of the Saints, by order of the Lord John,” etc.

It is therefore not vain to hope that the whole of Ephrem’s commentary on the Acts may yet be recovered in Armenian. It must surely be lurking in the monastic library of Edschmiadzin or of Jerusalem. The Mechitarists of Venice, however, declare that their library does not contain it, and it could hardly have escaped their eyes. This Catena is the only commentary on the Acts which I myself could discover there. In view of the peculiar differences which there are between the Armenian and the Greek forms of Chrysostom’s commentary, it is not superfluous to add here the gist of the colophon appended to this Catena. It is entitled

“The prayer of the new possessor and labour-loving renewer of the original commentary (or interpretation) from which this (i. e. the Catena) was abridged.” It runs thus: “In the year of the creation 6501, of the advent of the Saviour 1077, of the Chosrovian reckoning of the race of Hajk (i. e. of the Armenians) 525, in the reign of Michael, son of Dukas (spelt Dukads), and in the patriarchate of Kosmas and Gregory, son of Gregory Palhavouni; I having been elevated to the throne of my forefather, Saint Gregory, and according to the providence (or foresight) of Saint Isaac, being hard put to it by the persecution with the sword of the Scythians, came to the sumptuous resting-place (or abode = μονή) of Saint Constantine. And after eager search I found the guerdon of many, the magnificent interpretation of the Acts of the Apostles of the great John Chrysostom, (full of) brilliant and helpful teaching. And having met with a learned rhetor Kirakos advanced in Greek and Armenian studies, I caused him in his generous zeal to translate the desired prize of my spirit. And having received it with hearty joy, as if it were the tablets of the first prophet, I crossed with great toil the wide stretch of Libya and of the Asiatic gulf, and by the providence of the Spirit I came to the portion of Shem in the lower slopes of Taurus, to the abode of the saints wherein angels dwell. And there I found the learned and grace-endowed Kirakos, my son in spirit and pupil of the great scholar George, my successor (or vicar). And he eagerly undertook, according to the gifts of the Spirit richly bestowed on him, to restore anew the adulterated (i-odeim/upa) language of the rhetor, changing it into the fluent and harmonious idiom of our race . . .”

From the above it is clear that the version of Chrysostom from which this Catena was compiled was made in A. D. 1077 from a Greek copy found in a monastery of S. Constantine; and that this first version made by the rhetor Kirakos was remodelled and changed into pure Armenian by another Kirakos in the region of Taurus. Where the monastery of Constantine was, I know not; but as the writer crossed Libya and the Asiatic gulf on his way to the Taurus therefrom, he probably started from Cyrene, went by land to Alexandria and thence by sea to Iskanderoun. If so, we have here a text of Chrysostom’s commentary coming from Cyrene in the eleventh century.

The version of Ephrem’s commentary used by the compiler of this Catena may have been made along with the rest of the versions of Ephrem in a still earlier epoch of Armenian literature, perhaps in the seventh or eighth century. It was made by some one who had the Armenian vulgate at his elbow, for the citations are always given according to the text of that vulgate. So also are the citations of Chrysostom.

The article, which is full of interesting material, goes on to quote selections from the catena.  Conybeare was rather an eccentric, and his conclusions must be taken cautiously in general, but it is good to see someone who has not merely copied information from some secondary source.

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Some notes on Armenian catenas

Medieval commentaries (=catenas) on the bible were composed out of chains of quotations from earlier writers, with each verse of the bible having a chain of comments.  The Greek catenas have been classified by Karo and Lietzmann, but I have often wondered about Armenian catenas.

Robert W. Thomson refers to “the first Armenian catena of patristic quotations” from the 7th century as containing several excerpts from Gregory the Illuminator, as might be expected of the founder of Armenian Christianity.1

 There is a reference to an Armenian catena on Acts in an encyclopedia,2 which may have been printed in Venice in 1839.3  There are Armenian catena fragments of Irenaeus, it seems, one of which indicates that it comes from a lost work, On the Lord’s Resurrection.4  I learn that Yovhannes Vanakan (1181-1251), a monk of the Armenian monastery of Getik, compiled an Armenian catena, preserved in more than 50 codices, under influence from Greek models.5

And that is all that I could find in a search online.  We really need a scholarly survey of what exists, I suspect.

1. Robert W. Thomson, Agathangelo’s History of the Armenians, (1974), p.lxxvii.
2. International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: A-D, article on Acts, (1995)  p.33.
3.  Theodor Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament, vol. 1 (1909), p.215.
4. ANF frags. 53 and 54 (=Harvey, Sancti Irenaei, fr. 30 and 31).  Via here.
5. A. Berardino, Patrology, (2008) p.637.

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