v. The Text
INTRODUCTION
If, as he argues in c. 4r. I11.3-6, the fact that the Son is in the Father involves that the Son is from the Father,* must it not be equally true that the Spirit, being i in the Son, must be from the Son ? If it is lawful to argue from unity of operation to unity of essence," must we not acknowledge that He from whom the Spirit receives the things of the Father no less bestows upon Him that divine life of which the Father is the unique source? Must not the temporal mission rest on an eternal relationship? By reaffirming the propriety of the Spirit to the Son,
Athanasius not only secured, at a decisive hour, the Church's faith in the one Godhead; he fixed the line upon which its Pneumatic doctrine was to develop.*
V. THE TEXT!
In preparing the editio princeps, Commeliniana, Felckmann used a collection of MSS. from Geneva, fifteenth—sixteenth centuries (b), and the great Basle codex B (thirteenth century), which is a copy of a recension of Athanasian corpora made by Doxopater at the beginning of the twelfth century. The text of ad Ser. I and II was reproduced from the first fascicle of the Genevan collection (b*), which still bears marks of the ruthless handling it received, with occasional emendations and variants from B and a MS. now in the British Museum
(Harley 5579), Codex Goblerianus, a copy of the Paris MS. $8. For Ep.
III and IV, which are lacking in b1, he made use of B. Montfaucon, for the Benedictine edition, took over Felckmann's apparatus, such as it was, without further examination of the MSS., but constructed a new text based on the Paris MSS., R (eleventh century) and § (twelfth century). These two supplement each other, the first nine works in R tv48 See the quotation in note on I.21(119).
4*Seeon I.14(98f.) and 19(110ff.), etc.
45 J. Draseke claims the credit for the development of the doctrine of the Spirit's
Person for Apollinarius. "Aber da ist es nicht Athanasios, der hier als Bahnbrecher und Wegweiser sich erweist ... sondern Apollinarios von Laodicea.' (Zur AthanasiosFrage, in Zeitschrift f tir Wissenschaftliche Theologie, Vol.XXXVIII (1895). See also his Apollinarios, Leipzig (1892), pp.134-6.) But this claim chiefly rests on the attribution to Apollinarius of ps.Basil, c.Eunomium IV and V and the first three dialogues de Trinitate which were current under the name of Athanasius or Maximus Confessor, and the assignment of these works to the seventh decade of the fourth century. Neither of these assumptions seems to be justified. vi The classification of MSS. is that of H. G. Opitz in his Untersuchungen. The following notes are no more than a summary of some of the conclusions reached in that work, with such comments as the present writer is able to make out of his limited acquaintance with the MSS.
THE LETTERS OF ST. ATHANASIUS
being the last in S. It is clear that the former MS. originally contained also § 1-20. They have a similar type of text.
Both RS and B represent the work of editors who have combined various corpora of Athanasian works to form complete editions. Thus we can identify an 'apologia corpus', composed of historical writings, which is contained in B 45-88 and R 10-26. By comparing B with Opitz's 'W Group'—U(N), WLQ, etc.2—we discover a collection of dogmatic writings contained, to a greater or lesser extent, in all these
MSS. and found in its entirety in B 1-28. Finally, there is what Opitz calls the 'middle corpus', the source of B 29-44. By contrast, the dogmatic section of the RS collection (S 1-29) differs considerably from B, both in the works it contains and the order in which they are given. With the exception of a small group, ZDN1*W! and K 52-7, which preserves fragments of an independent Antiochene corpus, all our MSS. can be related either to the B or RS collections, or else to both.
Earlier critics, misled by the date of R and S, assumed that the Doxopater edition could be regarded as dependent on the RS collection. But Opitz has shown conclusively that this is not the case. On the contrary that collection is itself dependent on the sources of the Doxopater edition. It is 'the result of a ruthless redaction of Athanasian writings'. Eighteen works from the 'W collection' (B 1-28) have been carefully edited and their text revised from a MS. of Z type.? To these have been added twelve works from the 'middle corpus', the Qutc. dix. (B 17) having been joined to ad Ser. IV (B 31) to form one work. These contents have been arranged in a 'literary' order. Thus de Inc. Verbt Det and de Inc. et c. Ar. immediately follow the de Inc. itself. c. Ar. 1V and ad Episc. have been put with c. 4r. I-III to form the mevtdPiBdoc of antiarian works which was familiar to Photius.
Ad Ser. \1I and IV were taken from the 'middle corpus' and added to I and II. Finally, to the collection of dogmatic works thus formed there was appended the 'apologia corpus'. Opitz thinks that this edition was made in Constantinople between 600 and 750. The sources he traces back farther, the 'apologia corpus' to the fifth century, and the 'W collection' to the middle of the sixth. Less satisfactory conclusions v? b! is descended from Q.
8 Opitz establishes this from examination of the text of ad Adelphium. Ludwig had already reached the same conclusion for that of ad Epictetum. We cannot be sure of the contents of this Antiochene corpus, or whether it was known in its entirety to the editors of RS.
INTRODUCTION
can be reached for the 'middle corpus', but it is certainly not later than the RS edition.
Doxopater, on the other hand, uses the same sources in good exemplars and quite mechanically. Examination of the text of ad Episc. in B reveals no such traces of the influence of RS text as can be discovered in U, for which a MS. of W type has been worked over with one of S type. The Doxopater edition was, however, re-edited at the beginning of the thirteenth century by a redactor who, at any rate in the nevtaBiBdoc, introduced readings from a MS. of S type. This revised edition is represented by the Vatopedi codex K (fourteenth century) and the Milan codex Ambrosianus (thirteenth century). The latter
MS. is more faithful to it than the former, which is really a new edition in itself.
In preparing this translation of the Epistles, the writer has been able to consult B, R, S, and A, and also L, M, N, and P. Any conclusion based on so partial and inadequate a survey of the evidence must necessarily be tentative. No attempt has been made minutely to revise the Benedictine text; but here and there emendations have been introduced from BA or, more rarely, from RS where Montfaucon prefers to follow B. A complete collation of MS. evidence would, no doubt, lead to a far more drastic revision. In all, there are some sixty places where the translation is based upon correction or emendation of the text as it stands in Migne. The more important emendations are mentioned in the notes, and many of the others can be followed from Montfaucon's apparatus.
In Ep. I and II we discover two text types, represented respectively by RS and BALNM. In the first group, R and § stand very close together, and there is nothing to show that either of them approximates more nearly to the B text than the other. The literary character of this type of text is indicated by its smoothness and amplitude; by the quotations from the New Testament, where the text is often assimilated to the Textus Receptus; and by a few instances in which the language of Athanasius has been modified so as to conform to later usage—e.g. the insertion of xai ovvdofdCew in 1.9, the excision of ayer[y]it@ inI.21, the substitution of ayPewadtyta for évPewnoy in II.9. To these examples we may perhaps add the reading wovoyeryc in §, 1.20, for yévynua povoyevés. But it is doubtful if S represents the recension here.
In the second group, each MS. represents a separate strand in the tradition. They all clearly go back to a common ancestor, a MS.
THE LETTERS OF ST. ATHANASIUS
Ny, embodying a good text but very carelessly written. Omissions due to homoioteleuton are especially noticeable. Members of the group mostly reproduce this exemplar faithfully without attempt at correc- — tion. For the greater part of the two letters (I.1-14, 30 to II.9) B is the best representative of the group, with A in close support. The latter
MS. shows few, if any, traces of being influenced by RS text. It has, however, suffered fairly extensive correction, and a proportion—but not all—of these emendations come from this direction. Collation of L with b? shows agreement, in I.1-14, 30 to II.9, in fifty-seven places against RSB. In the same sections, they are at thirty-four points supported by A.
In I.15—29 the relation of MSS. is very different. B is much closer to RS and correspondingly farther from A and L. BA agree against RS only thirty times; AL agree against BRS nearly 150 times. M, which elsewhere is very close to B, deserts it in this section for AL at many points; and the same holds good of N, except insofar as it is affected by RS influence. In a number of passages, e.g. in 20, 22, 24, there are strong suggestions in B of a conflation of the two types of text. Though it never entirely loses its character, it is hard to resist the conclusion that in this section B has come under the influence of the RS recension. If Opitz is right in assuming that KAY F are dependent upon the Doxopater edition, then the influence must have been exercised between the preparation of the edition and the copying of B; for there are no traces of it in A. The readings of A, therefore, assume a greater importance here; though A is never as good a representative of the group as B in the rest of the work. In order adequately to evaluate the tradition it will be necessary to have the evidence of other representatives, notably W and K.
Examination of N fully bears out the conclusion of Opitz, that in its exemplar, U, a text of B type has been modified in the light of the RS recension. It is a mixed text. In L.1-14, 30-33 there are seventy readings in which the influence of RS text can be observed. In 15-29 we find N in agreement with RS against BA only eight times; but twenty-eight times in agreement with RSB against AL.
For III and IV our authorities are RSBP and A®. These two letters | are to be found in the 'middle corpus' of B and have not received the attention paid by editors to the works in the 'W collection'. All our
MSS. contain the same type of text with few and unimportant variants. There is no evidence, from these letters, to show that A? is inde- —
ie ae Re 4 a av a8 a WA eda ) vl A '
4 ST ne tN' RO one f G a = t e ye iy | d Peli Aare et | , sorta yh ni e> bt a
Sh an x] .
€ > a.
: as Opitz thinks it to be. P is very closely connected with = t are only five points at which their disagreement can have f gnificance, B has twenty-five readings which are independent of —__ RS, Elsewhere, it is slightly closer to RP than to $. On the whole itis best representative. i,