A positive use of patristic evidence

Elsewhere, I’ve written about some limits of patristic evidence, but in this post, I want to give a positive example of how it can be used.

At James 5:4, the vast majority of manuscripts have ἀπεστερημένος (defraud, deprive of), but the earliest extant manuscripts (Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) have ἀφυστερημένος (withhold). In context, there is not much difference, and the two readings differ only with regard to two letters, -πε- or -φυ-. Still, there are only three Greek New Testament manuscripts extant for this part of James before the 9th century, and they are divided. Codex Alexandrinus supports ἀπεστερημένος, and this is the reading adopted by the Tyndale House Greek New Testament.

As it happens, Didymus the Blind cites James 5:4 in his Commentary on Genesis, and in his citation, he has ἀπεστερημένος (with the majority of manuscripts). I came across the quote when looking at Mike Arcieri’s McGill PhD dissertation on Didymus. That would be early support for ἀπεστερημένος, roughly contemporary with the earliest Greek manuscripts of James, but even if this was not Didymus’ text, this particular citation is still valuable.

When I checked the SC edition of Didymus, I noticed that it was edited from one of the Tura Papyri (Brent Nongbri has some helpful information on the Tura Papyri here). Specifically, Codex IV of the Tura Papyri contains Didymus’ Commentary on Genesis, and it dates to the 6th or 7th century.

The significance here is that regardless of what Didymus’ text of James 5:4 actually was (that is, even if we take a hyper-skeptical position that the Tura Papyrus does not give us Didymus’ text of James 5:4), we still have a witness to ἀπεστερημένος in James 5:4 from the 6th or 7th century, because that is the age of the manuscript of Didymus’ Commentary on Genesis that has the citation of James 5:4. This witness pre-dates the vast majority of Greek manuscripts of James from the 9th century and later. Admittedly, not by much, and admittedly, Codex Alexandrinus is still the earliest support for ἀπεστερημένος, but we no longer have a gap between the 5th and 9th centuries in which there are no witnesses to James 5:4.

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.

Resources for Patristic Citations in New Testament Textual Criticism

Some seven years ago, Peter Head compiled a useful blogpost with advice on how to check patristic citations (link in the right margin).

However, in this post I would like to mention two additional resources:

1. International Greek New Testament Project: Bibliography on work on the NT text of Greek authors

Recently, IGNTP committee members Rod Mullen and Mike Holmes, both involved in the SBL series The New Testament in the Greek Fathers, took the initiative to compile a bibliography of work on the New Testament text of Greek authors.

The list "keeps track of recent work on establishing the biblical text in patristic writers. It includes the volumes published in the SBL New Testament in the Greek Fathers series, as well as a list of work in progress."

2. Biblindex

The Biblindex = Index of Biblical Quotations and Allusions in Early Christian Literature is maintained by Laurence Mellerin et al. of the Institut des Sources Chrétiennes. It includes all the 270.000 references in the published Biblia Patristica volumes, and an additional ca. 130.000 references on Athanasius of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, Theodoret of Cyrus, Procopius of Gaza, Jerome and more. Access to data is free, after registration. This is a real treasure trove.  

I will update Peter's original blogpost with this information.