An example of how older editions mislead us about patristic citations

Earlier this week, I was speaking to Dirk Jongkind about Luke 1:50. The THGNT adopts the phrase “εἰς γενεὰς καὶ γενεάς“ as the viable reading that cannot be attributed to harmonisation. Some variants include a form of the phrase that uses singulars instead of plurals, “εἰς γενεὰν καὶ γενεάν“ (ℵ01 Ψ044 f¹ f¹³ [including 69] 892 1424) as well as the reading in the majority of manuscripts, “εἰς γενεὰς γενεῶν“ (A[^{nt; the odes have a different reading}] C² D¹ K Δ^c Θ 33 Byz).

One point of reference that Dirk mentioned is that the there might be patristic citations of the phrase that show that the phrase itself, “εἰς γενεὰς καὶ γενεάς“ is not inherently unusual. Sure enough, the TLG turns up two instances that I want to point out here.

The first instance is Origen’s commentary on Psalm 119(118):90. Origen makes an exegetical point that the text is singular, not plural: the two generations are Israel and the Church, so it is specifically “from generation to generation”.

Origen at the TLG

In the second instance, Chrysostom quotes part of Daniel 4:37 (LXX) in one of his Letters to Olympia (10.9), and he uses the exact same phrase:

Chrysostom in the TLG

So, here we have two patristic sources attesting the phrase that is adopted in the THGNT at Luke 1:50. Admittedly, neither of these phrases is a citation of Luke 1:50, but the question we are considering is whether the phrase itself is particularly unusual, and if so, would that mean that it could be subject to variation that would normalise the phrase into something more common. From the look of it, the phrase “εἰς γενεὰς καὶ γενεάς“ is common enough that Origen and Chrysostom use it, which would be a mark against the rationale that the phrase would be normalised and changed away from “εἰς γενεὰς καὶ γενεάς“ to either “εἰς γενεὰν καὶ γενεάν“ or “εἰς γενεὰς γενεῶν“, which are both more commonly attested.

Wait, not so fast.

Trying to do the responsible thing, I went to the CUL to pull the critical editions. Both are in the Sources chrétiennes series (henceforth, SC). The citation of Origen comes from a catena on Psalm 119(118). The edition is Harl, Marguerite, ed. La chaîne palestinienne sur le Psaume 118 (Origène, Eusèbe, Didyme, Apollinaire, Athanase, Théodoret): Tome I. Introduction, texte grec critique et traduction. Sources chrétiennes 189. Paris: Cerf, 1972. When I turned to the relevant pages, I did not find “εἰς γενεὰς καὶ γενεάς“ as the TLG reported for the text here. Instead, the author of the commentary attributed to Origen roughly quotes Psalm 119:90 in the form of the text attested by the Byzantine tradition at Luke 1:50 (there is an added οὖν, but otherwise it is the same):

Origen in the SC edition

Similarly, the TLG also disagrees with the edition of Chrysostom: Malingrey, Anne-Marie, ed. Jean Chrysostome: Lettres à Olympias. Sources chrétiennes 13. Paris: Cerf, 1947. Instead of the plural form of the phrase “εἰς γενεὰς καὶ γενεάς“ that the TLG says is Chrysostom’s text, we find the singular form “εἰς γενεὰν καὶ γενεάν“:

Chrysostom in the SC edition

But wait, there’s more!

This edition was primarily a revision of an older edition rather than being a genuinely new edition, but there is a second edition of this work in the SC series for that. This second edition of Chrysostom, which is the source of the TLG text, does in fact have “εἰς γενεὰς καὶ γενεάς“, and notes two manuscripts (a: Vatican Library, Palatinus gr. 228, and M: Paris, BnF, gr. 657) that have “εἰς γενεὰν καὶ γενεάν“. Malingrey does note that previous editions used these manuscripts for Chrysostom’s text (“a” in Savile, 1612, and “M” in Fronton du Duc, 1614 and Montfaucon, 1821—this is assuming my memory of the relevant page is correct; the Classics library wouldn’t let me borrow the book, so I had to read and take photos of the text itself with my phone):

Chrysostom in SE 2nd edition

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What then is the point of this rather pedantic post? There are two points.

1. Pedantic details matter, because [2].

2. When we rely on older editions, we can be misled about the form of the text that a church father quotes. There even appears to be an error in the first edition of the SC edition for Chrysostom that was carried over from previous editions, so sometimes even critical editions don’t quite get it right. And they differ at a phrase for which there are textual variants when it occurs in Luke 1:50. More than that, Origen (or the author of the comment attributed to him) specifically makes an exegetical point about the precise wording of the text, and even there, the SC edition and the TLG disagree on what that precise wording is. TLG’s text of Origen here is based on J.B. Pitra, Analecta sacra spicilegio Solesmensi parata, vols. 2 and 3 (Paris: Tusculum, 1882). This is also an example why it is appropriate to take older literature with a grain of salt when it claims that certain patristic authors supported one reading against another. They might not have.

For more on why we might have problems citing Chrysostom for particular readings, see Peter Montoro’s guest post, here.