In the early eighteenth century, John Ernest Grabe produced in Oxford an edition of the LXX based on Codex Alexandrinus, which had come to England eighty years earlier (1627) as a gift from Cyril Lucar, at the time the Patriarch of Constantinople. Grabe's edition was published in four volumes, but only the first and the last volume were printed during Grabe's lifetime. The second volume was completed by Francis Lee and the third by William Wigan.
All four volumes are available on Google Books.
vol. 1 (1707), Octateuch
vol. 2 (1719), Historical Books
vol. 3 (1720), Prophets
vol. 4 (1709), Poetical Books
Note that vol. 4 is bound together with vol. 3, so you have to scroll down about halfway to see the title page to vol. 4.
The second volume contains the preface provided by Lee that proposes a theory of an Alexandrian Canon (previously mentioned here, with the exact reference).
By the way, if you want to look at Codex Alexandrinus itself, you can find images of the NT at the British Library website. For the OT, your best bet is the CSNTM website, which has images of the entire facsimile published in 4 vols. by E. M. Thompson in 1879–1880.
Friday, September 29, 2017
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Epiphanius on Ephesians 5:14
This is just a bibliographical note. I've been doing a little reading about the strange "quotations" in the New Testament, that is, the NT passages that seem to quote material that does not appear in our OT. Some examples are Luke 11:49; John 7:38–39; 1 Corinthians 2:9; Ephesians 5:14.
Ancient Christian writers noticed these same strange quotations, and they sometimes developed explanations for them, often either considering them free adaptions of verses from the OT or suggesting that they derive from apocryphal sources. Of course, the trouble with the latter suggestion is that we don't have apocryphal sources that contain the relevant text, either.
Jerome, for one, related John 7:38–39 to Proverbs (18:4?) and 1 Corinthians 2:9 to Isaiah 64:4 (see his Preface to the Pentateuch).
What about Ephesians 5:14? Jerome says that the simple answer would be to relate this verse to the apocrypha (he doesn't name an example), and that he hasn't been able to locate the verse in the Hebrew Bible, so he's unsure what Paul is quoting. (See his commentary, ad loc., p. 223.)
But, as my title indicates, I'm mostly interested in Epiphanius at the moment, and his comment on the origins of the quotation in Ephesians 5:14. This post comes after about a bit of digging, trying to locate Epiphanius' comment in his Panarion. Early on in this process, I learned (I forget where) that Epiphanius located the quoted material in an apocryphal work called the Apocalypse of Elijah. (Origen [Comm. Matt. ser. 117] had said this same apocryphal work was the source of the quotation at 1 Cor 2:9.) So I googled those search terms and obtained only imprecise references (e.g., here, here, here). They all refer to Haer. 42, and [Adversus] Haer[esies] is the alternative name for the Panarion, but ch. 42 (on Marcion) is a long chapter (100 pages long), so that citation is not exactly helpful.
Actually, it is more helpful than I realized, because the second part of this chapter has Epiphanius going through Marcion's Bible bit by bit, so had I realized that, I could have turned to ch. 42 and found the section dealing with Ephesians, and my search would have been over. But I did find a reference in a prominent commentary (can't remember if it was the AB or the ICC of Ephesians) that referenced Haer. 42.2.3, which is not at all the right reference.
Anyway, here's the right, more precise reference: Pan. 42.12.3, and to be even more precise (since that section itself goes on for 22 pages) you could cite it as 42.12.3.37, meaning the 37th Pauline passage discussed in §12.3 of ch. 42. Very fortunately, both the recent English translation of this work and the critical Greek text are both available online, and the relevant passage is located at pp. 179–80 of the Greek text and pp. 358–59 of the English translation. You'll see that Epiphanius actually does not mention the Apocalypse of Elijah. He merely says that the quotation circulates "in Elijah" (παρἀ τῷ Ἠλίᾳ). Since this immediately follows his statement that it comes from the OT, something strange seems to be happening, and Holl (the editor of the Greek text) proposes that we emend the reference to "Isaiah" (with a parallel in Hippolytus) so that we would understand Epiphanius to mean that Paul is freely adapting a verse out of Isaiah, perhaps Isa 26:19.
Ancient Christian writers noticed these same strange quotations, and they sometimes developed explanations for them, often either considering them free adaptions of verses from the OT or suggesting that they derive from apocryphal sources. Of course, the trouble with the latter suggestion is that we don't have apocryphal sources that contain the relevant text, either.
Jerome, for one, related John 7:38–39 to Proverbs (18:4?) and 1 Corinthians 2:9 to Isaiah 64:4 (see his Preface to the Pentateuch).
What about Ephesians 5:14? Jerome says that the simple answer would be to relate this verse to the apocrypha (he doesn't name an example), and that he hasn't been able to locate the verse in the Hebrew Bible, so he's unsure what Paul is quoting. (See his commentary, ad loc., p. 223.)
But, as my title indicates, I'm mostly interested in Epiphanius at the moment, and his comment on the origins of the quotation in Ephesians 5:14. This post comes after about a bit of digging, trying to locate Epiphanius' comment in his Panarion. Early on in this process, I learned (I forget where) that Epiphanius located the quoted material in an apocryphal work called the Apocalypse of Elijah. (Origen [Comm. Matt. ser. 117] had said this same apocryphal work was the source of the quotation at 1 Cor 2:9.) So I googled those search terms and obtained only imprecise references (e.g., here, here, here). They all refer to Haer. 42, and [Adversus] Haer[esies] is the alternative name for the Panarion, but ch. 42 (on Marcion) is a long chapter (100 pages long), so that citation is not exactly helpful.
Actually, it is more helpful than I realized, because the second part of this chapter has Epiphanius going through Marcion's Bible bit by bit, so had I realized that, I could have turned to ch. 42 and found the section dealing with Ephesians, and my search would have been over. But I did find a reference in a prominent commentary (can't remember if it was the AB or the ICC of Ephesians) that referenced Haer. 42.2.3, which is not at all the right reference.
Anyway, here's the right, more precise reference: Pan. 42.12.3, and to be even more precise (since that section itself goes on for 22 pages) you could cite it as 42.12.3.37, meaning the 37th Pauline passage discussed in §12.3 of ch. 42. Very fortunately, both the recent English translation of this work and the critical Greek text are both available online, and the relevant passage is located at pp. 179–80 of the Greek text and pp. 358–59 of the English translation. You'll see that Epiphanius actually does not mention the Apocalypse of Elijah. He merely says that the quotation circulates "in Elijah" (παρἀ τῷ Ἠλίᾳ). Since this immediately follows his statement that it comes from the OT, something strange seems to be happening, and Holl (the editor of the Greek text) proposes that we emend the reference to "Isaiah" (with a parallel in Hippolytus) so that we would understand Epiphanius to mean that Paul is freely adapting a verse out of Isaiah, perhaps Isa 26:19.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)