Tag: Catena

Origen, the Homoousion, and the use and abuse of catenas

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Back in 2017 I wrote about Origen’s “Commentary on Matthew”, giving an account of which parts of it existed in English at that date.  A later comment on that post drew my attention to a publication by Dr Panayiotis Tzamalikos, Origen: New Fragments from the Commentary on Matthew. Codices Sabaiticus 232 & Holy Cross 104, Jerusalem, Brill (2020).

A few days ago I came across a Twitter post here quoting an earlier work by Dr T, which gave an edition and English translation of previously unknown sections of the “Commentary.”  This remarkable material shows Origen using the term “homoousios” (consubstantial) and expounding what is essentially the Nicene definition, that the Son is co-eternal with the Father.

The title of the book is “Anaxagoras, “Origen, and Neoplatonism“, 2 vols, De Gruyter (2015-6), making up a massive 1822 pages; and the material can be found in vol 2, appendix 2.  The text is on pp. 1565-7.  Here it is:

Dr. T. then discusses this material at length, including the following interesting statement:

Quite simply, the text of the present codex is Origen’s, the attribution made in this manuscript is correct, and one should not be deterred by religious (but hardly scholarly) precepts claiming that any Nicene statement occurring in ante-Nicene authors should be branded unquestionably spurious. No matter how embarrassing to certain religious allegiances, the simple truth is that the way to Nicaea was paved by Origen – yes, the ex-pagan philosopher of note and a lifetime Anaxagorean.

This is a world rather different to ours, and perhaps reflects arguments within Greek universities today.

Where does the material printed by Dr. T. come from?  It comes from MS. Sabaiticus 232, an 11th century catena manuscript in Jerusalem, two thirds of which is made up of quotations from Origen.1    Dr T. went on to give a full edition of the manuscript, although with limited translation, in his “Origen: New Fragments from the Commentary on Matthew”.

Earlier material from the catena was published as part of the fragments of Origen.  It is the contention of Dr Tzamalikos that in fact the latter sections of the catena are also by Origen.  If so, they would indeed be of very great interest.

But how do we know that this is indeed material from Origen?  Because the text in the manuscript is not a work composed by Origen.  It is a catena.

A catena is a medieval bible commentary made up of a chain (“catena”) of extracts from the fathers, each of them adapted to some extent to make a continuous commentary.  The author of each extract is identified in a rather casual way by a couple of letters, an abbreviation of his name.  Often the start of the extract is identified, but not the end.  Often the identifying letters are wrong; or are omitted.  The latter inevitably leads to extracts being identified with the author of the previous extract.  Later catenas adopt material, not from the original author, but from earlier catenas.  So there is a world of problems in using them as a source of material.  Scholars have rather shrunk away from editing them, because of the sheer labour involved.

In the early modern period a number of catenas were printed, usually with a Latin translation.  In the absence of any systematic knowledge of the world of catenas, these early editions have been plundered for fragments which have been collected by editors of the works of Origen, as Klostermann did in the GCS series volume of the Commentary on Matthew.2  These extracts in turn have been included in English translations of the works of Origen. I notice that Heine, the most recently translator, did not accept that all those fragments included by Klostermann were genuine.3

But perhaps we do wrong in treating a catena as a collection of excerpts?  Possibly we should see it as an original composition, which happens to have embedded in it a lot of excerpts.  The author is not concerned to transmit unaltered the sources he references.  He is writing a commentary.  He’s not even concerned to use “authorities”, as we can see from references to heretical writers, Nestorius, etc.  His purpose is to produce a text which is useful, a text to aid understanding of the bible text.

Quite possibly we should edit these things as original compositions.  That at least would be a possible thing to do, without disappearing down dozens of rabbit-holes, trying to restore the “original” text of each extract.  The catena author may not have had the original text.  He may have an earlier catena before him, which he is excerpting.  Or he may have altered the text before him for his own purposes.  Far better to edit what the catena says, and let studies based upon this give us this information.  Reduce the catena editing problem to something manageable.

Because the text as a whole is later, it can and will contain later ideas.  The USA of the late 2010s and early 2020s had an official ideology, composed of hot-button phrases and things that must be said, or must not be.  Byzantium was the same.  So when we identify the characteristic phrasing of the ideology of one particular era in a catena, we should assign that passage to that era or later, regardless of the author initials assigned to it in the catena margin.  When we come across chunks of material giving the Nicene definition, we must presume that it post-dates Nicaea.  We cannot, must not, put the cart before the horse, and say “Oh the margin says ‘Origen’, clearly Origen was at Nicaea.” Instead we should say “Clearly the marginal identification is wrong.”

These points are not profound, and no doubt Dr. T was aware of them. Unfortunately this subject is only appendix 2 of his immense book, and the discussion is diffuse, and covers too many points to address this one squarely.

I did look at the other book, the edition.  The structure of the introduction is such that it is difficult to locate material within it.  The Sources Chrétiennes series has set an admirable pattern for the structure of a critical text plus translation, with extended introduction.  Authors are generally well advised to do likewise.  I was unable to locate any relevant discussion of the authorship issue within it.

These are fascinating books, full of interesting ideas.  The author rightly wrote them in English, to reach a wider audience.  Unfortunately his publishers did not exercise adequate editorial control, which means that there are minor failures of English usage.  A good editor would have made both books much more readable, and therefore more likely to be read.

  1. ”Anaxagoras…”, v. 2, p.1565, n.21.[↩]
  2. GCS 41 (1941).[↩]
  3. Heine, vol. 1, p.320.[↩]
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New publication: Georgi Parpulov’s catalogue of NT catenas

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A useful new open-access publication!  Georgi Parpulov has compiled a fresh catalogue of manuscripts containing the medieval chain-commentaries (“catenas”) on the Greek New Testament.  It’s being [published by Gorgias Press, here, but a free PDF is available here.  Get it now while it’s hot!

From Gorgias Press:

The book is a synoptic catalogue of a large class of Greek manuscripts: it describes all pre-seventeenth century copies of the Greek New Testament in which the biblical text is accompanied by commentary. Manuscripts where this commentary consists of combined excerpts (catena) from the works of various authors are described in particular detail. Those that have similar content are grouped together, so that the potential relatives of any given manuscript can be easily identified. Several previously unknown types of catenae are distinguished and a number of previously unstudied codices are brought to light for the first time. To ensure its longer shelf-life, the volume systematically references on-line electronic databases (which are regularly updated). It will be of use to anyone interested in Byzantine book culture and in biblical exegesis.

I remember that Eusebius’ Gospel Problems and Solutions included fragments of the work quoted by Nicetas of Heraclea in the catena on Luke.  It was very hard to find source material.  I’ve written before on catenas, and they are a very neglected area.  This catalogue must be of very great value.  Thank you, Dr. P.!

Via: Elijah Hixson at ETC Blog here.

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Hugh Houghton on New Testament catenas

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The late antique and medieval commentaries on scripture took the form of chains of quotations from ancient writers, including much lost early Christian commentary.  These are known today as the catena (=chain) commentaries, and their study is a rather specialised one.

Thankfully it is receiving some real attention today.  Hugh Houghton writes to say that a volume of papers edited by himself on the subject is now online. This contains a great number of papers that will interest most of us.

It begins with “An Introduction to Greek New Testament Commentaries with a Preliminary Checklist of New Testament Catena Manuscripts”!  Of course we’re discussing ancient Greek New Testament commentaries here.  This paper alone will be of use to many.

The volume is H.A. Houghton, Commentaries, Catenae and Biblical Tradition: Papers from the Ninth Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, in association with the COMPAUL project. Gorgias Press (2016)

Those who remember my volume of Eusebius, Gospel Problems and Solutions, may know that it included Coptic fragments of the work.  Dr H’s volume includes an interesting paper, “An Overview of Research on Bohairic Catena Manuscripts on the Gospels” by Matthias Schulz – something that I would have killed to read back in 2011.

Of deep interest to many will be C. M. Kreinecker’s paper on Rufinus’ translation of Origen’s commentary on Romans.  It’s always interesting to wonder how accurate Rufinus is, considering that he is the only version of much of Origen, and also remembering a load of accusations by Jerome.  The rediscovery of the original Greek of the Commentary on Romans means that this particular work can now be investigated; and this paper examines the Latin biblical text involved.

Fortunately the work is online.  Dr H. writes:

The new Gorgias online repository is now available at https://www.gorgiaspress.com/gorgias-open-repository

 The book on catenae can be downloaded at: https://www.gorgiaspress.com/Content/files/GorgiasOpen/978-1-4632-0576-8.pdf

This is excellent news.  Add it to your library now.

Dr H. also added a note to my post on the lost – and now found! – gospel commentary of Fortunatianus, to advise that he is producing an English translation which will be available with the text in 2017.  But, better yet, the translation will be available online.  Which means, of course, that we can all read it.

It is really a great pleasure to see useful scholarship being made available to the whole world like this.  Well done, everyone involved, and especially Dr Houghton.

Postscript: I also see that Dr H.’s own website has a bunch of his papers which, inevitably, are also of wide interest.  Recommended.

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Catenas on the Psalms – two important French works now online!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Great news!  A correspondent writes to say that two important French works on commentaries and catenae on the Psalms are now available online in full:

1) M.-J. Rondeau, Les Commentaires patristiques du Psautier (IIIe-Ve siècles), 2 vols, OCA 219-220, Roma 1982, 1985.

2) G. Dorival, Les chaînes exégétiques grecques sur les Psaumes: contribution à l’étude d’une forme littéraire, 4 vols, Leuven 1986, 1989, 1992, 1995.

These are tremendously useful, and one can only congratulate the publishers, Peeters, and the Pontifical Institute in Rome, respectively.  These highly specialist tomes now stand a chance of being read!

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English translation of Cramer’s catena on Galatians published

Posted on by Roger Pearse

John Litteral writes to tell me that a complete translation of Cramer’s catena-commentary on Galatians has been made by Bill Berg, and is available at a trivial price ($12)on Amazon here (US) and here (UK).

Some will be unaware of what a catena is.  The medieval church created its bible commentaries by stringing together chains of quotations from the fathers.  These chain-commentaries are known today as catenas (from the Latin for chain).  These often reference now lost works, and so are of value as a source for lost early Christian commentary on scripture.  They tend to be found in the margins of Greek bible manuscripts; but sometimes standalone.  The author of each excerpt is indicated by an abbreviation at the start.

It’s pretty hard to work with the catenas.  The text is often corrupt, the author marks even more often corrupt, and the editions are all old – sometimes very old – and difficult to access.  So … scholars have ducked the task of producing modern editions.

In the 19th century John Cramer published a set of catenas on all the books of the New Testament, in eight volumes.  Bill Berg has attacked the catena on Galatians.

The authors cited in this catena include John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Severian of Gabala, among others.

So … if ancient biblical commentary is your thing, pick up a copy.  It should certainly encourage work on this subject!

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“Glossa ordinaria” on 1, 2 and 3 John now available in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Glossa Ordinaria is a medieval Latin commentary on the bible, composed of excerpts from earlier writers (including the Fathers).  John Litteral writes to say that he has setup a project to translate it, here.

The results are now starting to appear.  The translation of the section on 1 John, 2 John and 3 John into English has now appeared.  The book is available on Amazon here, for the trivial sum of $10.

Dr Litteral tells me that his team will start work on a portion of Cramer’s Catena on the epistles next.  This is very good news indeed, for the catenas are nearly inaccessible, for practical purposes.  To produce a critical edition is tough; to master the contents impossible except for those with excellent Byzantine Greek and plenty of time.  In the modern academic environment, the latter is nearly impossible to supply.  A first step in remedying the lack is to provide serviceable translations; and this is what John hopes to do.

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Cramer’s catena on Mark translated into English!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s remarkable what you can find on Google books if you look.  An idle search for “catena” yesterday revealed that someone has translated the entirety of Cramer’s catena on Mark into English!  Yay!

But first, a few words about catenas!

Not everyone will know what a “catena” (the word means “chain”) is.  The term itself is modern.  It refers to medieval Greek biblical commentaries.  These are composed entirely of extracts from earlier writers, chained together by slight wording alterations at the ends.  They usually appear in the margins of Greek bibles; or, rather, the biblical text appears in a small box in the centre of the page, surrounded by a mass of small writing!  The author of each catena entry is indicated, usually using the first letter of their name or something of the kind.  This of course gives plenty of scope for misattribution!  Often the main author used is John Chrysostom.

Catenas seem to arise in the 6th century, and often incorporate very interesting material.  There can be several catenas for each book of the bible, and the relationships between them are tangled things.

In 1840 Cramer published the Greek text of catenas on all the books of the New Testament in 8 volumes.  The work was shoddily done, as John Burgon among others remarked; but it was still an achievement, and Cramer’s work can be found on Archive.org.  But … it was the Greek text only.

The man who has made this translation is a certain William Lamb, The Catena in Marcum: A Byzantine Anthology of Early Commentary on Mark, Brill 2012 (Preview here).

Lamb doesn’t try to edit the text, which is probably a wise decision.  Pages 27-45 discuss what, precisely, it is that we are looking at.

Cramer published his catena on Mark under the name of Cyril of Alexandria, because a couple of the manuscripts attributed it to him.  But Cyril is too early.  Burgon suggested the little-known Victor of Antioch; and Lamb suggests (p.33) that we probably are mistaken to suppose that the work, in anything like its current form, was the work of any one man.

There is much in this.  Burgon took the view that even a compilation must have an author.  But this is to neglect the physical form in which the catena was transmitted; as a massive collection of marginalia.  Marginalia exist in most manuscripts anyway.  But bibles are a special case.

Most printed bibles belonging to members of modern Christian Unions bore the marks of ownership – underlinings, scribbled notes in the margins, and so forth.  Ancient readers had much the same needs in this respect as modern ones.  So it seems idle to doubt that notes on the meaning of the text would not arise spontaneously in manuscript copies of the scriptures.  A copy in a monastic library might well acquire marginalia from several hands, all of it excerpted from other books in that library, and placed in the (wide) margins where they would be useful.  Over time, we may suppose, some of these bibles could acquire quite a lot of marginal items.

Would a scribe copy such marginalia?  Surely he might.  Because the marginalia were not idle scribblings, but useful commentary.  Scholia get copied, as we know.

A body of marginalia may, quite naturally, evolve into the sort of catena that we see in medieval manuscripts.  If so, then there may indeed be no original author.

Later, of course, someone may decide to compose a set of marginalia.  Such a task is well within the capabilities of medieval scholarship, after all.

It’s hard to be sure.  All this is speculative.  But it is far from impossible.

If any of this is true, however, it does point to the exceeding difficulty in editing such a “text” – because it isn’t really a text at all.  It is whatever somebody thought worth adding to a bible margin.

Lamb’s book is a great deal more than just a translation.  The translation is the item of permanent value, for scholarship ages; but the scholarship in the book is also very welcome.  Chapter 2, which surveys the scholarship and the manuscript tradition, is interesting throughout and I refer you to the online preview.

It is a book to which I wish I had access.  The price is not as bad as some; but at $163 on Amazon.com, it is still prohibitive.

I look forward to seeing bootleg PDF’s in circulation!

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Another interesting fragment from Origen on Genesis

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In the Patrologia Graeca 12, col. 93-4, we have a further interesting fragment of Origen’s thought on Genesis 1:22.

The PG is a reprint of the Delarue edition, and these Selecta in Genesim are extracted from the medieval Greek bible commentaries, or catenas (=’chains’), which were made up of quotations from earlier authors on each verse in turn, strung together in a chain.  Here is one:

And God said, “Let us make man in our own image and likeness”.  The first thing to discuss is whether this “image” means in body [ἐν σώματι], or in mind [ἐν πψχῇ]. 

And first let us consider the passages made use of by those who assert the former; among whom is Melito, who left works in which he asserts that God is corporeal.  For when they discover the members of God named, the eyes of God looking down at the earth,1 and his ears listening to the prayers of the just,2 and the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma,3 and the mouth of the Lord has spoken this,4 and the arm of God, and the hand, and the feet, and the fingers; at once they suppose that these [passages] teach about nothing else than the form of God. 

For in what way, they say, did God appear to Abraham, Moses, and  to the saints, if he did not have a form?  and if he had a form, what form, if not human? and they heap up a thousand places, in which the members of God are named.

Against these it is necessary to reply firstly from the words of scripture. 

And we oppose to these, who know nothing beyond the letter, the words of scripture contrary to their opinion, from Zechariah: the seven eyes of the Lord range through the whole world.5 Because if God has seven eyes, while we have only two, we were not created in his image. 

And neither are we provided with wings, as is said of God in the 90th Psalm: Under his feathers we will shelter,6  Because if God has feathers, but we are animals without feathers, man was not made in the image of God.

And in what way can heaven, which is spherical and revolves constantly, be the throne of God, as they suppose?  More, in what way is earth his footstool? 

Let them tell us. 

For is it possible that of the body, which extends from the knees to the soles of the feet, understanding the distance which there is between heaven and earth, when the earth is in the middle of the whole universe, and is upheld by Him, as is shown by geometrical demonstrations, the soles of God’s feet are among us, or among the antipodeans [αντιχθοσι]?

And after a few more rhetorical questions of the same kind, he finishes with:

And in what way can it be said that those who suppose these things are not stupid? 

It’s an interesting point.  The scriptures are inspired, but Jesus told parables, so that human beings could understand profound truths, and God uses this poetic language similarly, not to reveal that He has wings (!) but to teach us things not otherwise easy to express in human language.

I learn from the footnote 30 in the PG that this whole fragment is given by Theodoret in his Questiones on Genesis, Q. 20.

Likewise footnote 31 discusses the reference to Melito, the impeccably orthodox 2nd century Christian writer.  It seems that Origen had in mind the lost work of Melito, Περὶ ἐνσωμάτου Θεοῦ, and supposed that this meant that Melito was one of those who stated that God was corporeal — some misunderstanding of Stoic terminology is probably involved here — while in reality the title should be understood On the incarnation of God.  Since Origen wrote only 40-50 years after Melito, I wonder whether Origen had ever read the work, or whether it was already scarce?

  1. Ps. 100:6.[↩]
  2. Psalm 33:16.[↩]
  3. Gen. 8:21[↩]
  4. Isaiah 1:20[↩]
  5. Zechariah 4:10.[↩]
  6. Psalm 91:4, He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; Origen used the LXX Greek text, but modern editions of the Psalms number these differently.[↩]
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IVP’s Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Today I found myself wondering just what the early Christians would have to say on various controverted passages in Scripture, passages where modern issues cause us to look urgently at the text.  If Theodoret’s Commentary on Romans is any guide, not much: but I would like to know, all the same.

This naturally caused me to think about the Inter-Varsity Press series, the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture.  These take the catena approach to commentary, as is natural and sensible.

The volumes in this series are rather pricey, I recall, which is unfortunate.  This material ought to be online, surely?  It is slightly sad to read the following comment in the introduction to the series:

We have chosen and ordered these selections primarily for a general lay reading audience of nonprofessionals who study the Bible regularly and who earnestly wish to have classic Christian observations on the text readily available to them.1

 

Yes, but how will this audience ever access the product?  My only access to any of it vanished with Library.nu.

Now I was wondering just how the volumes were assembled.  We all know that the catenas have not been critically edited, and even accessing them is not a trivial matter.  There is some discussion of this in the general introduction (PDF) to the series, which appears to be in the Genesis I-II volume:

[We] identified these classic comments by performing global searches of the Greek and Latin patristic corpus. They have searched for these texts in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) digitalized Greek database, the Cetedoc edition of the Latin texts of Corpus Christianorum from the Centre de traitement electronique des documents (Universit. catholique de Louvain), the Chadwyck-Healey Patrologia Latina Database (Migne) and the Packard Humanities Institute Latin databases. We have also utilized the CD-ROM searchable version of the Early Church Fathers, of which the Drew University project was an early co-sponsor along with the Electronic Bible Society. …

Having searched Latin and Greek databases, we then solicited from our Coptic, Syriac and Armenian editorial experts selections from these bodies of literature, seeking a fitting balance from all available exegetical traditions of ancient Christianity within our time frame. To all these we added the material we could find already in English translation. …

[We] supplied to each volume editor a substantial read-out [=print-out] of Greek and Latin glosses, explanations, observations and comments on each verse or pericope of Scripture text. …

TLG and Cetedoc are referenced more often than Migne or other printed Greek or Latin sources for these reasons: (1) the texts are more quickly and easily accessed digitally in a single location; (2) the texts are more reliable and in a better critical edition; (3) we believe that in the future these digital texts will be far more widely accessed both by novices and specialists; (4) short selections can be easily downloaded; and (5) the context of each text can be investigated by the interested reader.2

 

Note that the searches were carried out by computer specialists, rather than scholars.  The editors also say that only a fraction of the material assembled was used, as is natural.

I think we may be fairly confident, therefore, that ancient catena material was not used. 

It’s still a good project.  Would that I could access it!!

  1. Introduction, p.xv.[↩]
  2. Introduction, p.xiii.[↩]
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Coptic-Arabic gospel catena also known in Ge`ez?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This evening I found the following snippet in Google Books, given as in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1989, p.380:

… Ethiopia’s access to foreign commentaries (including that of Iso’dad of Merv and the other Syrian scholars) is through the Geez version of Ibn at-Taiyib’s exegetica and the Geez adaptation of Coptic-Arabic Catena….

Now call me daft, but this sounds as if the Coptic gospel catena published by De Lagarde, which was translated into Arabic, was then onward translated into Ethiopic, or more precisely Ge`ez.  And that someone out there knows this.  It’s in a book review of some kind.

Unfortunately I have no access to the article in which this appears.  Poking around the website for the JRAS of 1989, p.380 belongs to Michael Loewe, of “East Asian civilizations: a dialogue in five stages. By Wm. Theodore de Bary. (The Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures, 1986.) pp. xi, 160. Cambridge, Mass, and London, Harvard University Press, 1988. £15.95.”  That doesn’t sound right, nor does the abstract look right.  Cambridge University Press greedily demand 20 GBP to access the article, the swine. 

Wish I could find the article.  Anyone got any ideas?

UPDATE: I think the Google Books snippet must be in error in some way, probably in the page number?  I’ve found the book itself reviewed above, and it has nothing relevant in it.

UPDATE: Found it!  I took the snippet and pasted it into the general Google search, and up it came as a JSTOR review in JRAS 1990, p.379f.  The article is a review of Roger W. Cowley, Ethiopian Biblical Interpretation, CUP, 1988.  Now that sounds like an interesting book.  Amazon list it at a fantastic price, unfortunately.

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