Front matter
THE 'MATTHEW-LUKE
COMMENTARY?
OF PHILOXENUS
| + = SBL Dissertation Series 43
The Library
SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
AT CLAREMONT
WEST FOOTHILL AT COLLEGE AVENUE
CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA
2.5 :
OF SE 10901
THE "MATTHEW-LUKE COMMENTARY"
OF PHILOXENUS
SOCIETY
OF BIBLICAL
LITERATURE
DISSERTATION SERIES
edited by Howard C. Kee Number 43
THE "MATTHEW-LUKE COMMENTARY
'"'OF
PHILOXENUS
(BRITISH MUSEUM MS. ADD. 17,126):
TEXT, TRANSLATION AND
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
by Douglas J. Fox
Douglas J. Fox
THE **MATTHEW-LUKE
COMMENTARY ¥ ` OF
PHILOXENUS
TEXT, TRANSLATION AND
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Scholars Press
a 4 3
brary'
Distributed by EGHSO. OE ie (| Scholars Press `
PO Box 5207 :
CA 14 Missoula, Montana 96 ( 3:
THE '"MATTHEW-LUKE COMMENTARY" OF
PHILOXENUS
(BRITISH MUSEUM MS. ADD. 17,126):
TEXT, TRANSLATION AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Douglas J. Fox Huron College London, Ontario, Canada Ph.D., 1975 Supervisor:
University of Toronto Ernest G. Clarke Copyright © 1979 Society of Biblical Literature Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Philoxenus, Bp. of Hierapolis.
The ''Matthew-Luke commentary" of Philoxenus (British Museum MS. Add. 17,126).
(Society of Biblical Literature dissertation series ; 43) Syriac text: p.
Originally presented as the editor's thesis, University of Toronto, 1975.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Bible. N.T. Gospels—Commentaries. I. Fox, Douglas J. 11. British Museum. MSS. (Additional 17,126) III. Title.
IV. Series: Society of Biblical Literature. Dissertation series ; 43.
BS2555.3.P5313
226'.2'06
78-12852 ISBN 0-89130-266-2 pbk.
Printed in the United States of America
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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vii
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CHAPTER I.
HISTORICAL AND LITERARY BACKGROUND
Career of Philoxenus Salevia es cael ts ts
Political and Religious Background
Cc.
Literary Activity of Philoxenus ..
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THE TEXT OF BRITISH MUS.
MS.
ADD.
17,126 + 43 ܫ, A.
Provenance and Condition ore er
Restoration, of £86 4688 § 1:5
£ cans we ܀ §
The Restored Text (Reproduced) Boe ies
III.
NATURE AND CONTENTS OF MANUSCRIPT
......
Translation
Descriptive and Analytical Notes 5.5 ܨ
Synthesis 9
IV.
BIBLICAL QUOTATIONS
IN THE MANUSCRIPT
....
Analysis of Biblical Quotations ....
Quotations Identical with Peshitta'.
Quotations Differing from Peshitta.
Comments on Variant Quotations cee ts
Results of This Analysis 0
Vio
PHILOXENUS
BXEGETICAL METHOD!
CONCLUDING POSTSCRIPT
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NOTES
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In presenting this work for publication, I am deeply aware of my indebtedness to many people who supported and encouraged me in its preparation.
I wish especially to thank my thesis supervisor in the University of Toronto, Professor Ernest G. Clarke, his colleagues in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Professor
Emeritus W. Stewart McCullough and Professor David J. Lane, and my External Examiner, Dr. Carmino J. de Cantanzaro.
I would also acknowledge my profound sense of gratitude to the Trustees of the British Library (formerly the British Museum) for granting me permission to reproduce their manuscript Add.
17,126, without which permission this thesis could not be meaningfully published.
Huron College, Douglas J. Fox London, Ontario, Canada.
June,
vii
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INTRODUCTION
In 1847, the British Museum acquired a large collection of Syriac manuscripts from the Monastery of St. Mary Deipara in the Nitrian Desert of Egypt.
Among these are fourteen fragments bound together in one volume and designated British Museum Manuscript Add.
17,126.
In his Catalogue of Syrtae Manuscripts in the British Museum Acqutred since the Year 1838
(published between 1870 and 1872), William Wright described this manuscript as containing "Fragments of the Commentaries of Philoxenus of Mabbug on the Gospels of S. Matthew and S.
Luke.
« He continues his description as follows:
"Folios
and 2 seem to belong to the Commentary on the Gospel of S.
Matthew (18:21,22); the remainder to that on the Gospel of S.
Luke (from the beginning to 3:22) 087 While a cursory reading would lead a cataloguer to such a conclusion, the description is quite inadequate and somewhat misleading; for example, the last four fragments belong to a discourse on Luke 3:23 involving a consideration of the genealogy which that verse
In his list of the works of Philoxenus, Budge in 1894 adopted Wright's conclusion and assumed this manuscript preserved fragments of "the Commentary on Saint Matthew...
(and) the Commentary on Saint Luke" which were part of a "Commentary on the New Testament. «×?
Wright's description was also accepted without question by A. Baumstark in 1902 when he published a survey of Syrian monophysite exegesis of the Gospels."
Concerning 'this precious fragment'
(das kostbare BruchstUck), Baumstark wrote:
Die vollstandige Mattauserklarung oder doch deren letzten Teil und die Lukaserklarung bis 3:22 scheint endlich von Hause aus die leider stark beschadigte
Handschrift Brit.
Mus.
Add.
17,126 enthalten zu haben.
Schon 511.
. war sie entweder ein einzelner Band einer in mehrere Bande zerfallenden Gesamtausgabe seiner Evangelienerkldrung oder sie wurde noch vor Vollendung der Lukasexegese nach seinem Autograph gefertigt.
Baumstark simply depended on Wright's Catalogue not only for
the above statement, but also for his brief reference to the manuscript in his Gesehichte der syrtschen Literatur twenty years later. * In 1911, J. Lebon published an important article,
"La version philoxenienne de la Bible," in which he critically analyzed the attempted reconstructions of the lost Philoxenian
<$ > © In his concluding footnote, he suggests that the writings of Philoxenus may provide the clue, but only if their chronology has been established:
Une chronologie exacte, obtenue par l'autres moyens, pour les oeuvres de Philoxene, serait la condition préalable de la détermination de celles qui pourraient avoir subi 1l'influence de la version polycarpienne et en révéler quelques traces.
Encore ne doit-on pas s'exageérer les chances d'aboutir par cette voie a des résultats surs et considérables.
While Lebon mentions no Philoxenian work except the Discourses published by Budge, it is clear that the principle he enunciated is a sound one, as the dissertation here presented will show.
The next important study (chronologically speaking) related to this manuscript was that of G. Zuntz,
The Ancestry of the Harklean New Testament (1945).
In his search for a pre-Harklean text, Zuntz turned to the writings of Philoxenus for evidence of the Philoxenian version.
In particular, he analyzed New Testament quotations in a work published by A.
Vaschalde in 1907 as "Tractatus tres de Trinitate et incarnatione."
He concluded that "the text of these quotations is something like a half-way house" between the Peshitta and the Harklean. 0
The discovery was an important one, but Zuntz ignored the fact that the chronological sequences of Philoxenus' writings needed to be established in order to relate any variant patterns of biblical quotations to the Philoxenian New Testament published in 508.
He did see, however, that the manuscript before us, along with the so-called "Commentary on John 1:1-17"
(British Museum Add.
14,534), had such a chronological relationship:
It is tempting to test one work of Philoxenus before all others; viz. the fragments of his commentary on the Gospels.
They are preserved in two manuscripts in the British Museum, written in Mabbug, one of them certainly (A.D.
510/511), the other probably, during his episcopate and after the completion of Polycarp's
version.
. Unfortunately this oldest document of monophysite exegesis is still unpublished, and the Manuscripts are at present inaccessible.
While recognizing that Zuntz's attempted solution to the problem of the Philoxenian version was in some ways unsatisfactory, A. V6dobus saw that his approach to the problem was promising.
In a "Festschrift" for C. KundzinS, Spiritus et Verttas (1953), he published a study, "New Data for the Solution of the Problem Concerning the Philoxenian Version," in which (following Zuntz's lead) he analyzed six quotations from John's Gospel in the unpublished manuscript of the "Commentary on the Gospel of John . .
Add.
14,534 in the British Museum. "12
His findings confirmed those of Zuntz (namely, that the Philoxenian stood between the Peshitta and the Harklean) and some of its features began to come into focus.
In this study, Voobus dismisses Add. 17,126 (the subject for our dissertation) as not being of much value for the understanding of the Philoxenian version, because in it
"Philoxenus quoted a (Syriac Biblical) text influenced deeply by the Old Syriac text."13
While this is in part true, our study will show that it too is valuable in helping us to recover some verses of the Philoxenian New Testament.
In 1963, A. de Halleux published a comprehensive study of Philoxenus, Philoxene de Mabbog -sa vie, ses écrits, sa théologie.*4 In his description of all the Philoxenian writings, he analyzed and re-described the fragments of Add.
17,126 (the first to do so since Wright published his Catalogue in 1872), and sought to link them with the other exegetical fragments in order to reconstruct Commentaries on Matthew, Luke and John???
His reconstruction was impressive but premature, for he presented a detailed synthesis of Philoxenian fragments (many of which remain unpublished) within a work which was much wider and more general in its scope.
My initial approach to his conclusions was one of acceptance, believing that the fragments, extracts and references which de
Halleux had pieced together did in fact belong to the contents of a lost Gospel Commentary.
Careful analysis, however, of the manuscript before us soon revealed de Halleux' reconstruction to be faulty and thus misleading.
It then became necessary to re-examine the nature of the "exegetical" fragments (at least,
those available to me), and this has been done in section .¢ 2 of chapter 1, where de Halleux' schema is critically assessed.
Chapter 3 sets forth a radically different understanding of this codex than that proposed by de Halleux.
In he last century, then, scholars have recognized the importance of this fragmentary work, but until now it has not been published.
Called a "commentary" by the scribe who copied it at Mabbug while the author was bishop there, it is important in at least two ways:
(1) it preserves many scriptural quotations which add to our knowledge of the history of the Syriac versions of the Bible, and (2) it gives some insight into Philoxenus' exegetical activity.
After presenting a critical restatement of the historical and literary context in which British Museum Manuscript Add.
17,126 was produced (chapter 1), this dissertation provides an edited facsimile of the Manuscript
(chapter 2), offers a translation with analytical notes and a proposed synthesis of its fragments
(chapter 3), and examines the nature of the biblical texts it quotes (chapter 4) and the kind of exegesis it exemplifies (chapter 5).
Because the final fragment is said to belong to a "commentary," the whole manuscript has repeatedly been so designated without further definition.
But the term asad usually translated "commentary," has a range of meanings that include the following three literary types.
First, it can be used to describe an exegetical or explanatory note on a biblical text incorporated into a larger literary unit whose overall purpose may be non-exegetical; thus, some of the letters and discourses of Philoxenus contain such exegetical notes.
In the second place, ܐ ̈ܙܒܫܘܦ can encompass a series of exegetical notes extending to book size on some writing
(biblical or otherwise); for example, Theodore of Mopsuestia wrote commentaries of this sort on various books of the Bible.
Whether Philoxenus ever wrote this kind of work which is exclusively exegetical in nature, remains to be seen.
Finally, the word can be used for a collection of homilies or sermons, each of which is based on a biblical text.
I refer to this genre as "homiletical commentary."
Chrysostom's expository homilies are of this order.
In our examination of the
so-called "Commentary" on Matthew and Luke, we shall seek to discover the sense in which that term is used in the colophon, and whether it can properly be applied to all fourteen fragments.
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