Adamantius 20 (2014) formatADAMANTIUS 20 (2014) 4 S.I.M. PRATELLI, Il commento di Gregorius Barhebraeus ai Profeti Maggiori e a Daniele. Struttura e caratteri 396 F. RUGGIERO, A proposito

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Adamantius Rivista del Gruppo Italiano di Ricerca su

“Origene e la tradizione alessandrina”

*

Journal of the Italian Research Group on “Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition”

20 (2014)

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Adamantius

Rivista del Gruppo Italiano di Ricerca su “Origene e la tradizione alessandrina”

Journal of the Italian Research Group on “Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition”

Comitato Scientifico Scientific Committee

Gilles Dorival (Aix-en-Provence / Marseilles), Giovanni Filoramo (Torino), Alain Le Boulluec (Paris), Christoph Markschies (Berlin),

Claudio Moreschini (Pisa), Enrico Norelli (Genève), David T. Runia (Melbourne), Guy Gedaliahu Stroumsa (Oxford / Jerusalem), Robert Louis Wilken (Charlottesville, Virginia)

Comitato di Redazione Editorial Board

Roberto Alciati, Osvalda Andrei, Guido Bendinelli, Paola Buzi, Antonio Cacciari (vicedirettore), Francesca Calabi, Alberto Camplani (direttore scientifico),

Tessa Canella, Francesca Cocchini, Chiara Faraggiana di Sarzana, Mariachiara Giorda, Leonardo Lugaresi, Angela Maria Mazzanti, Adele Monaci,

Domenico Pazzini, Lorenzo Perrone (direttore responsabile), Francesco Pieri, Teresa Piscitelli, Emanuela Prinzivalli, Marco Rizzi, Pietro Rosa, Eliana Stori, Stefano Tampellini,

Daniele Tripaldi (segretario), Andrea Villani, Claudio Zamagni

Corrispondenti esteri Foreign correspondents

Cristian Badilita (Romania), Marie-Odile Boulnois (France), Harald Buchinger (Austria), Dmitrij Bumazhnov (Russia), Augustine Casiday (United Kingdom),

Tinatin Dolidze (Georgia), Samuel Fernández (Chile), Michael Ghattas (Egypt), Anders Lund Jacobsen (Denmark), Adam Kamesar (U.S.A.), Aryeh Kofsky (Israel), Johan Leemans (Belgium), José Pablo Martín (Argentina), Joseph O’Leary (Japan),

Anne Pasquier (Canada), István Perczel (Hungary), Henryk Pietras (Poland), Jana Plátová (Czech Republic), Jean-Michel Roessli (Switzerland), Riemer Roukema (The Netherlands), Samuel Rubenson (Sweden),

Anna Tzvetkova (Bulgaria), Martin Wallraff (Germany)

La redazione di Adamantius è presso il Dipartimento di Filologia Classica e Italianistica, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Via Zamboni 32, I-40126 Bologna (tel. 0512098517, fax 051228172). Per ogni comunicazione si prega di rivolgersi al Prof. Alberto Camplani (e-mail: [email protected]) o al Prof. Antonio Cacciari (e-mail: [email protected]). Il notiziario segnalerà tutte le informazioni pervenute che riguardino specificamente il campo di ricerca del gruppo, registrando in maniera sistematica le pubblicazioni attinenti ad esso. Si prega d’inviare dissertazioni, libri e articoli per recensione all’indirizzo sopra indicato.

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Indice

1. Contributi

1.1. Origene commentatore dei Salmi: dai frammenti catenari al Codice di Monaco / Origen on Psalms: From the Catenae Fragments to the Munich Codex, a cura di C. BARILLI – L. PERRONE.

C. BARILLI – L. PERRONE, Introduzione 6 1.1.1. Sezione monografica I

Origen in the Catenae on Psalms I. G. DORIVAL, An Overall Outline 8 II. C. BANDT, The Rather Complicated Case of Psalms 51 to 76 15 J.-M. AUWERS, Origène et la structure littéraire du Psautier 28 F.-X. RISCH, Das Handbuch des Origenes zu den Psalmen: Zur Bedeutung der zweiten Randkatene im Codex Vindobonensis theologicus graecus 8 36 O. MUNNICH, La pluralité du texte scripturaire dans l’exégèse origénienne des Psaumes: le témoignage de la Chaîne palestinienne sur le Psaume 118 49 B. VILLANI HANUS, Überlieferung und Auslegung des vierten Psalmes bei Origenes: Katenen und Exzerpierungen 70 L. PERRONE, L’interpretazione origeniana del Salmo 27(28) e il linguaggio della preghiera 84 A. CACCIARI, Il Salmo 35 nell’esegesi origeniana 112 A. FÜRST, Bibel und Kosmos in der Psalmenauslegung des Origenes 130 C. BARILLI, Elementi di filosofia nei commenti di Origene ai salmi 147 M. GIRARDI, Origene in Cappadocia. L’esegesi origeniana dei Salmi e Basilio 160

1.1.2. Sezione monografica II M. MOLIN PRADEL, Il Codex Graecus 314 della Bayerische Staatsbibliothek di Monaco 173 L. PERRONE, «La mia gloria è la mia lingua». Per un ritratto dell’autore delle Omelie sui Salmi nel Codice Monacense Greco 314 177 E. PRINZIVALLI, Il traduttore ritrovato: le Omelie greche sul Salmo 36 a confronto con la versione di Rufino 193 A. CACCIARI, Nuova luce sull’officina origeniana: i LXX e gli ‘altri’ 217 C. BARILLI, Aspetti del lessico origeniano nelle Omelie sui Salmi 226 A. MONACI, Problemi liturgici e cronologici delle nuove Omelie sui Salmi 238 A. LE BOULLUEC, La polémique contre les hérésies dans les Homélies sur les Psaumes d’Origène 256 A. FÜRST, Judentum, Judenchristentum und Antijudaismus in den neuentdeckten Psalmenhomilien des Origenes 275

1.2. Articoli G. CHIAPPARINI, Sulle tracce di un Valentinianesimo ‘perduto’ di metà II secolo: il problema della datazione della ‘Lettera dottrinale valentiniana’ (Epiph. Haer. 31,5-6) 288 D. DAINESE, Le vestigia di una dottrina dell’anima in Clemente Alessandrino. Nota a margine di due incisi sul linguaggio di animali e angeli 306 M.-O. BOULNOIS, La bouchée de Judas (Jn 13,26-30) d’Origène à Thomas d’Aquin 322 E. FIANO, From ‘Why’ to ‘Why Not’: Clem. Recogn. III 2-11, Fourth-Century Trinitarian Debates, and the Syrian Christian-Jewish Continuum 343 V. NERI, La scelta di Paolino e Melania ed il dibattito contemporaneo sulla pericope del ‘giovane ricco’ 366

1.3. Note e Rassegne G. TONDELLO, Babai il grande e il santo Evagrio 389

ADAMANTIUS 20 (2014)

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S.I.M. PRATELLI, Il commento di Gregorius Barhebraeus ai Profeti Maggiori e a Daniele. Struttura e caratteri 396 F. RUGGIERO, A proposito di agiografia cristiana antica: rileggendo il volume di Adele Monaci Castagno 408 T. PISCITELLI, Senso e atto della preghiera in Origene e negli scrittori cristiani dei primi secoli. A proposito del volume di Lorenzo Perrone 419

2. Notiziario 441

2.1. Attività recenti del Gruppo e iniziative in preparazione 441 2.1.1. Riunioni del Gruppo 441 2.1.2. Origene antico e nuovo. Vent’anni del Gruppo Italiano di Ricerca su Origene e la tradizione Alessandrina / Origen Old and New. Twenty years of the Italian Research Group on Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition (1994-2014) 444 2.2. Notizie su tesi e attività didattiche

G. HERTZ, Dire Dieu, le dire de Dieu chez Philon, Plutarque et «Basilide» (F. CALABI) 476 F. OERTELT, Herrscherideal und Herrscherkritik bei Philo von Alexandria. Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel seiner Josephdarstellung in De Josepho und De Somniis II (M. NIEHOFF) 481 F. SOLER, El Λόγος Θεός comprendido desde su relacionalidad en los libros I y II del Comentario a Juan, de Orígenes (S. FERNÁNDEZ) 482 F. BERNO, Determinismo ontologico e dialettica soteriologica: ambiguità del ‘Corpo di Cristo’ nella Scuola di Valentino (A. CAMPLANI – G. LETTIERI) 482 V. MARCHETTO, L’anima in esilio: il Commento alle Lamentazioni di Origene (A. CACCIARI) 484 E. ORLANDI, I Tractatus in Psalmos di Gerolamo alla luce delle omelie inedite di Origene sui Salmi (Cod. Mon. Graec. 314) (A. CACCIARI) 485 G. MARIANI, La predicazione come fonte per la storia della cultura: origenismo e altre dispute escatologiche nel Quattrocento (F. BACCHELLI) 486 C. BULL, The Tradition of Hermes: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom (A. CAMPLANI, J. PODEMANN SØRENSEN, S. UNDHEIM) 490

3. Repertorio bibliografico 494 3.1. Pubblicazioni recenti su Origene e la tradizione alessandrina (a cura di L. PERRONE, con la

collaborazione di M.-O. BOULNOIS, A. CAMPLANI, A. JAKAB, C. ZAMAGNI) 0. Bibliografie, repertori e rassegne; profili di studiosi, 494; 1. Miscellanee e studi di carattere

generale, 496; 2. Ellenismo e cultura alessandrina, 508; 3. Giudaismo ellenistico, 509; 4. LXX, 511; 5. Aristobulo, 515; 6. Lettera di Aristea, 515; 7. Filone Alessandrino (1. Bibliografie, rassegne, repertori, 515; 2. Edizioni e traduzioni, 515; 3. Miscellanee e raccolte, 515; 4. Studi, 515); 8. Pseudo-Filone, 517; 9. Flavio Giuseppe (1. Bibliografie, rassegne, repertori, 517; 2. Edizioni e traduzioni, 517; 3. Miscellanee e raccolte, 517; 4. Studi, 517), 517; 10. Cristianesimo alessandrino e ambiente egiziano, 518 (1. Il contesto religioso egiziano, 518; 2. Il periodo delle origini, 520; 3. Gnosticismo, ermetismo e manicheismo, 520; 4. La chiesa alessandrina: istituzioni, dottrine, riti, personaggi e episodi storici, 528; 5. Il monachesimo, 529); 11. Clemente Alessandrino, 533; 12. Origene (1. Bibliografie, rassegne, repertori, 535; 2. Edizioni e traduzioni, 535; 3. Miscellanee e raccolte, 535; 4. Studi, 535); 13. L’origenismo e la fortuna di Origene, 541; 14. Dionigi Alessandrino, 545; 15. Pierio di Alessandria, 545; 16. Pietro di Alessandria, 545; 17. Alessandro di Alessandria, 545; 18. Ario, 545; 19. Eusebio di Cesarea, 546; 20. Atanasio, 547; 21. I Padri Cappadoci (1. Basilio di Cesarea, 548; 2. Gregorio di Nazianzo, 549; 3. Gregorio di Nissa, 550); 22. Ambrogio di Milano, 551; 23. Didimo il Cieco, 551; 24. Evagrio, 552; 25. Rufino di Aquileia, 552; 26. Teofilo di Alessandria, 553; 27. Sinesio

INDICE

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di Cirene, 553; 28. Gerolamo, 558; 29. Agostino, 564; 30. Isidoro di Pelusio, 565; 31. Cirillo Alessandrino, 565; 32. Nonno di Panopoli, 566; 33. Pseudo-Dionigi Areopagita, 567; 34. Cosma Indicopleuste, 567; 35. Giovanni Filopono, 567; 36. Massimo il Confessore, 568

3.2. Segnalazioni di articoli e libri (a cura di F. ALESSE, O. ANDREI, M. BETRÒ, M. CASSIN, G. CATAPANO, F. COCCHINI, D. DAINESE, F. GORI, R. GOULET, B. LOURIÉ, C. MAZZUCCO, R. PANE, J. PATRICH, D. PAZZINI, R. PERETÓ RIVAS, P. TERRACCIANO) 569

4. Comunicazioni 620 4.1. Congressi, seminari e conferenze 620 4.1.1. Congressi: Cronache 620

5. Indici 5.1. Indice delle opere di Origene 5.2. Indice degli autori moderni

6. Indirizzario 6.1. Elenco dei membri del Gruppo 6.2. Elenco dei collaboratori

7. Libri e periodici ricevuti 8. Pubblicazioni del Gruppo

Annuncio «Adamantius» 21 (2015):

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From ‘Why’ to ‘Why Not’: Clem. Recogn. III 2-11, Fourth-Century Trinitarian Debates,

and the Syrian Christian-Jewish Continuum1 di

Emanuel Fiano

Die Unverständlichkeit ist in III 2-11 geradezu ein Zeichen für Echtheit B. Rehm2

1. Introduction

Around 406 Rufinus of Aquileia set his hand to translate from Greek to Latin part of the puzzling congeries of narrative materials known today as the Pseudoclementines3. Soon, however, he was faced with a quandary. In both the different, yet largely overlapping, corpora that he was handling he ran across some «discussions about the unbegotten God, the begotten, and several other things that, to say no more, exceeded [his] intelligence». He preferred therefore, as he explained to Gaudentius of Brescia, dedicatee of his translation, «to reserve those [sections] to somebody else, rather than reproduce them less richly»4. The complex stratification of the Pseudoclementines (a group of writings pseudo-epigraphically attributed to Clement, bishop of Rome) had begun as early as the second century5. Their origin is almost unanimously traced back to Syria, and at least some of their earlier layers are commonly tied to a speculative ‘Jewish Christian’ tradition6. Both their literary embodiments, Recognitions (= R) and 1 I wish to thank Alberto Camplani (Sapienza – Università di Roma), Cavan Concannon (Duke University), Alister Filippini (Univesità degli Studi di Palermo), Gaetano Lettieri (Sapienza – Università di Roma), Manlio Simonetti (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei), and Lucas Van Rompay (Duke University) for their careful reading and helpful advice, as well as Jacob Golan for his linguistic revision. 2 Pseudo-Clemens, Recognitiones, ed. B. REHM – G. STRECKER, Die Pseudoklementinen (GCS 51), Berlin 19942 (first ed.: 1953-1965), II, xcviii, n. 1. 3 F.X. MURPHY, Rufinus of Aquileia (345-411). His Life and Works, Washington (DC) 1945, 101ss. assigns the translation to the time immediately following the year 404. C.P. HAMMOND, The Last Ten Years of Rufinus’ Life and the Date of His Move South from Aquileia, JThS 28 (1977) 372-429, 428, proposes the year 407. L. CIRILLO – A. SCHNEIDER, Les Reconnaissances du pseudo Clément. Roman chrétien des premiers siècles (Apocryphes 10), Turnhout 1999, 18, date the translation to a time slightly earlier than 406. Y.-M. DUVAL, Le texte latin des Reconnaissances Clémentines. Rufin, les interpolations et les raisons de sa traduction, in Nouvelles intrigues pseudo-clémentines = Plots in the Pseudo-Clementine Romance. Actes du deuxième colloque international sur la littérature apocryphe chrétienne, Lausanne-Genève, 30 août - 2 septembre 2006, ed. F. AMSLER – A. FREY – R. GIRARDET – C. TOUATI (Publications de l’Institut romand des sciences bibliques 6), Prahins (Switzerland) 2008, 79-92, 79, proposes a year between 406 and 408. 4 Tyrannius Rufinus, Prologus Recognitionum 10, ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 4, lines 16-18. These two corpora should probably be identified with two versions of Recognitions, rather than with Recognitions and Homilies. On this question cf. B. REHM, Zur Entstehung der pseudoclementinischen Schriften, ZNW 37 (1938) 77-184, 82; J. RIUS-CAMPS, Las Pseudoclementinas. Bases filológicas para una nueva interpretación, RCatT 1 (1976) 79-158, 80; L. CIRILLO and A. SCHNEIDER, Les Reconnaissances du pseudo Clément, cit. (n. 3), 19; and A. FILIPPINI, Atti apocrifi petrini. Note per una lettura storico-sociale degli Actus Vercellenses e del romanzo pseudo-clementino tra IV e V secolo, Mediterraneo antico. Economie società culture 11 (2008) 17-41, 24, n. 14. 5 The literature on the Pseudoclementines is so vast that any selection would be arbitrary. For a series of recent collections of studies containing abundant bibliographical references cf. Nouvelles intrigues pseudo-clémentines, ed. F. AMSLER – A. FREY – R. GIRARDET – C. TOUATI, cit. (n. 3); The Pseudo-Clementines, ed. J.N. BREMMER (Studies in early Christian apocrypha 10), Louvain 2010 (where J.N. BREMMER, Pseudo-Clementines: Texts, Dates, Places, Authors and Magic, ibid., 1-23, 1-12 provides a very concise introduction, and ID., Bibliography Pseudo-Clementines, ibid., 307-325 a medium-sized bibliography); F.ST. JONES, Pseudoclementina Elchasaiticaque inter Judaeochristiana. Collected Studies (OLA 203), Louvain 2012; and B. POUDERON, La genèse du Roman pseudo-clémentin. Études littéraires et historiques (ColRÉJ 53), Louvain 2012. References to studies by Jones and Pouderon throughout this article will be given according to the original publication and not to their versions reprinted in these two volumes. 6 On the Syrian origin of the Greek final redaction of R there seems to be general agreement: cf. F.ST. JONES, The Pseudo-Clementines: A History of Research, SecCent 2 (1982) 1-33 and 63-96, 75-79. On the ‘Jewish-Christian’


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Homilies (= H)7, recount Clement’s journeys in the company of the apostle Peter; the pair’s successful disputations with Simon Magus; and the bishop’s serendipitous reunion with his long-lost family members. While H has reached us in Greek, R is only known through Rufinus’ Latin version and the remnants of a Syriac translation (SR), likely composed in Edessa8. The disserta (‘discussions’) to which Rufinus referred as being beyond his ken are commonly identified with R III 2-11, a section containing Peter’s doctrinal exposition, and with the interpolated ‘Eunomian’ passages of which he speaks elsewhere9. By leaving out of his translation these chapters of the now-lost

character of the Pseudoclementines cf. G. STRECKER, Das Judenchristentum in den Pseudoklementinen (TU 70), Berlin 19812 (first ed.: 1958), 221-254; F.ST. JONES, An Ancient Jewish Christian Source on the History of Christianity: Pseudo-Clementine “Recognitions” 1.27-71 (SBLTT 37; Christian Apocrypha Series 2), Atlanta 1995, 157-168; ID., Jewish Christianity in the Pseudo-Clementines, in A Companion to Second-Century Christian ‘Heretics’, ed. P. LUOMANEN – A. MARJANEN (VigChrSup 76), Leiden 2005, 315-334 (with particular reference to the source known as Circuits of Peter); and ID., The Pseudo-Clementines, in Jewish Christianity Reconsidered. Rethinking Ancient Groups and Texts, ed. M.A. JACKSON-MCCABE, Minneapolis 2007, 285-304, 331-333. 7 I will list here in alphabetical order all the abbreviations used in the course of this article to indicate different translations and recensions of Recognitions (their meaning will be explained in due time): *GR = Greek Recognitions (unattested); *GRHet = Greek recension of Recognitions as interpolated by anonymous Heteroousians (unattested); *GRLat = Greek recension of Recognitions used by the anonymous translators of R III 2-11 (unattested); *GRNic = Greek recension of Recognitions censoring the Heteroousian interpolation of *GRHet (unattested); *GRO = Greek Recognitions as originally composed (unattested); *GRRuf = Greek recension of Recognitions used by Rufinus (unattested); LR = Latin Recognitions; SR = Syriac Recognitions. 8 SR was edited in W. FRANKENBERG, Die syrischen Clementinen mit griechischem Paralleltext. Eine Vorarbeit zu dem Literargeschichtlichen Problem der Sammlung (TU 48.3), Leipzig 1937. The Syriac version of the Pseudoclementine corpus contains sections corresponding to a bit more than the first three books of R (I-IV 1,4) and to almost five books of H (X-XII 24; XIII-XIV 12). At the end of the 19th century, J. LANGEN, Die Klemensromane. Ihre Entstehung und ihre Tendenzen aufs neue untersucht, Gotha 1890, 146, followed by H. WAITZ, Die Pseudoklementinen, Homilien und Rekognitionen. Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung (TU. N.F. 10), Leipzig 1904, 370-372, proposed Antioch as the birthplace of the translation. As it seems, however, the suggestion of an Edessene setting for the composition of SR made by Jones (cf. infra, n. 70) has much to recommend it, in primis the earliest attestation of the text. SR is in fact attested in two manuscripts, the earlier of which is the earliest dated Syriac manuscript, copied in Edessa in November 411 CE (ms. A = BL Add. 12,150, ff. 1-72). The other Syriac manuscript (ms. B = BL Add. 14,609, ff. 123-187) was dated to the year 587 CE by W. WRIGHT, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum Acquired since the Year 1838, London 1870-1872, III, 1089; A. BAUMSTARK, Die Petrus- und Paulusacten in der litterarischen Ueberlieferung der syrischen Kirche. Festgruss dem Priestercollegium des Deutschen Campo Santo zu Rom zur Feier seines 25 jährigen Bestehens (8 December 1901), Leipzig 1902, 38; and ID., Geschichte der syrischen Literatur mit Ausschluß der christlich-palästinensischen Texte, Bonn 1922, 68, n. 4. Also [W. CURETON], British Museum - MSS. from the Egyptian Monasteries, QR 77 (1845-1846) 36-69, 65 assigned it to the sixth century. Other scholars, however, considered it to be as late as the ninth century: cf. P. DE LAGARDE, Clementis Romani Recognitiones Syriace, Leipzig 1861, v; G. BICKELL, Conspectus rei Syrorum literariae, additis notis bibliographicis et excerptis anecdotis, Münster 1871, 46; and W. FRANKENBERG, Die syrischen Clementinen mit griechischem Paralleltext, cit. (in this footnote), vii. On the connection between the Pseudoclementines and Edessa cf. the cautious remark of H.J.W. DRIJVERS, Apocryphal Literature in the Cultural Milieu of Osrhoëne, Apocrypha 1 (1990) 231-247, 237. 9 Cf. Tyrannius Rufinus, De adulteratione librorum Origenis 3. An exception to the scholarly consensus is represented by C. SCHMIDT, Studien zu den Pseudo-Clementinen nebst einem Anhange. Die älteste römische Bischofsliste und die Pseudo-Clementinen (TU 46.1), Leipzig 1929, 301 n. 2, according to whom R III 2-11 goes back to the Preachings of Peter. Rufinus’ declaration to the effect that he failed to understand this section in Schmidt’s opinion should be taken seriously: no contemporary of his in the West could be expected to grasp «judenchristlich-gnostische Spekulationen». B. POUDERON, La genèse du Roman clémentin et sa signification théologique, in Studia Patristica 40. Papers Presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2003, ed. M. EDWARDS – P. PARVIS – F. YOUNG, Louvain 2006, 483-507, 500 and ID., Aux origines du roman pseudo-clémentin. Lecture critique de récents travaux et évaluation des enjeux, ASE 24 (2007) 177-206, 204 hinted at the fact that he considers the interpolated status of R III 2-11 as still in need of proof. According to C. SPUNTARELLI, «In nome della morte di Cristo»: la costruzione dell’identità cristiana nella formula battesimale eunomiana, ASE 21 (2004) 315-330, 322 n. 22 the origins of *GR III 2-11 (along with those of Apostolic Constitutions and of the Pseudo-Ignatian Letters) should be sought in the so-called ‘council of the heresies’ gathered in 383 by Theodosius, when the emperor asked the chiefs of the anti-Nicene factions to present a profession of faith. F.ST. JONES, La christologie des

EMANUEL FIANO – From ‘Why’ to ‘Why Not’

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Greek text of Recognitions (= *GR), Rufinus acted with considerable shrewdness. These portions were in fact loaded with language and concepts aligning with the bluntly anti-Nicene theological postures of the so-called Heteroousians (from heteroousios, ‘differing in substance’)10. It was no doubt far from Rufinus’ convenience and intentions to popularize in the West a text so incompatible with the by-then-ruling Constantinopolitan faith, which posed itself in formal continuation with the legacy of the council of Nicaea (325). A different translator, whose identity remains for us unknown, took it upon himself to render R III 2-11 into Latin at a later time11. Rufinus of Aquileia was not the only ancient reader who gave signs of unease before the heterodoxy of those chapters. If this portion of SR is compared with the post-Rufinian Latin version of the corresponding sections, the suppression or emendation, in the Syriac, of the Heteroousian statements still legible in the Latin leaps to the eye. Scholars have long, and correctly, agreed upon the interpolated status of R III 2-11. However, any efforts to theoretically strike R III 2-11 out of R are bound to find their limit in the fact that no version of R excluding this section is attested. More importantly, the interpolated nature of R III 2-11 is no sufficient reason for neglecting these chapters’ potential as a source of information about the redaction, circulation, and transmission of R as a whole. At the same time, any conclusions about SR (and even more so about R) drawn on the sole ground of the investigation of this idiosyncratic and relatively brief portion of the text are bound to be tentative as long as a systematic study of the ideological character of SR as a whole remains a mere desideratum. With this caveat in place, the aim of the present paper is to use R III 2-11 as a tool to situate R within the context of persistent Christian-Jewish contiguity – or, as the title suggests, of a religious continuum – in Roman Syria, attested in a rich body of fourth-century evidence often construed as capturing images of a ‘Jewish Christian’ movement. In order to do so, I will initially survey a few of the ways in which scholarship has dealt with the alleged ties between ‘Jewish Christianity’ and Heteroousianism coming forth in R (section 2). I will then go on to highlight some ideological features of SR III 2-11, outlining a possible reading of SR as the product of a purposeful strategy of theological normalization (section 3). A comparative analysis of the Syriac and Latin versions of a selection of passages contained in the interpolation (R III 8 and III 9,5), offered in a synoptic translation, will provide examples of the amender’s procedure (section 4)12. Following a Reconnaissances (R 3,2-11), BAELAC 20-21 (2010-2011) 11-14, 13 considers R III 2-11 in its current state a product of the years 325-330; A. FILIPPINI, Atti apocrifi petrini. Note per una lettura, cit. (n. 4), 26 and n. 16 assigns it to the years 356-359. 10 B. REHM, Zur Entstehung der pseudoclementinischen Schriften, cit. (n. 4), 168-184 provides, in the apparatus to his Greek retroversion of the Latin text of R III 2-11, parallels with fourth-century sources attesting Heteroousian doctrine (particularly Eunomius’). 11 In B. REHM – G. STRECKER, Die Pseudoklementinen, cit. (n. 2), II, xcviii n. 1 the Latin translator of R III 2-11 is described as being less well-versed in Greek than the translators of medical works such as Oribasius’ and Dioscorides’, but as mastering Latin slightly better. According to F.ST. JONES, La christologie des Reconnaissances (R 3,2-11), cit. (n. 9), 12 the translator made an effort to render his model as literally as possible. R III 2-11 is preserved in Latin by the manuscripts of the Π group, of West-French origin, as well as by two other individual manuscripts, Λx (ms. Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek Lat. quart. 908), dating to the 13th century, and Ψa (ms. Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana pl. 68 cod. 22), dating to the 15th century, both of Italian origin: cf. B. REHM, Zur Entstehung der pseudoclementinischen Schriften, cit. (n. 4). 87. On the Latin tradition of R cf. A. FILIPPINI, Atti apocrifi petrini. Note per una lettura, cit. (n. 4), 37-41. 12 I learned about the release of F.ST. JONES, The Syriac Pseudo-Clementines. An Early Version of the First Christian Novel (Apocryphes 14), Turnhout 2014 while this article was going to press. The reader is advised to compare and supplement the English version of SR III 2-11 that I offer here with that contained in Prof. Jones’ volume, of which I have unfortunately not yet been able to obtain a copy. My translation is based on a new implicit critical text of SR III 2-11, which cannot be provided here for the sake of brevity. LR III 2-11 was translated into Dutch at the beginning of the past century by H.U. MEYBOOM, De Clemens-Roman, Groningen 1904, I, 128-140, and, more recently, into French by L. CIRILLO – A. SCHNEIDER, Les Reconnaissances du pseudo Clément, cit. (n. 3), 212-223 (cf. also ibid., 575-576). For a Greek retroversion of SR III 2-11, cf. W. FRANKENBERG, Die syrischen Clementinen mit griechischem Paralleltext, cit. (n. 8), 156-168 (on which cf. F.ST. JONES, An Ancient Jewish Christian Source on the History of Christianity, cit. (n. 6), 51, n. 2); for a Greek retroversion of LR III 2-11, taking into account also the Syriac, cf. B. REHM, Zur Entstehung der pseudoclementinischen Schriften, cit. (n. 4), 168-187. On the general limits of


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discussion of two possible scenarios for the textual history of SR III 2-11 (section 5), I will briefly introduce evidence for the existence of a broader discursive and institutional setting—encompassing also the Jews—than normally assumed when examining the Trinitarian discussions of the fourth century (section 6). Finally, I will draw some general conclusions about the ways in which R III 2-11 can help us situate the fourth-century Trinitarian discussions against the backdrop of a Christian-Jewish continuum (section 7). I hope to show that the so-called ‘Eunomian interpolation’ can contribute to the collective telling, already undertaken by scholars, of «a story that centers on Syrians in the late second and third centuries, as received and reshaped into the fourth and fifth—with an agency, creativity, and energy not marginalized from the construction of Christian identities at least until the age of Epiphanius»13.

2. Recognitions III 2-11 and Heteroousianism

The fourth-century conflict around the correct definition of the relationship between the Father and the Son, known as the Trinitarian controversy, was no doubt one of the discursive fields within which the redaction and the re-workings of the Pseudoclementines were situated14. It is against the backdrop of this dispute that the interpolation of R III 2-11 needs to be set in order to establish its ideological nature, as well as its relation to the rest of the work in which it lodges. A genealogical approach has often been deployed in the pursuit of these two tightly intertwining, yet not identical, tasks. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship has shown a tendency to either attribute to R III 2-11 a pristine ‘Jewish Christian’ character, in supposed agreement with the rest of the work15; or consider these chapters to be the product of an anti-Nicene author, whether an ‘Arian’16 or, as has more often been suggested, a ‘Eunomian’ or ‘Anomoean’17 (i.e., according to the more current terminology, a Heteroousian)18. But even scholars who agreed to see R III 2-11 as a radically subordinationist (i.e. ‘Arian’ or Heteroousian) text differed on how this related to the doctrinal character of R as a whole. For some, this portion of the book was generically a proof to the existence of a relationship between the ‘Eunomians’ and those ‘Jewish Christian’, Ebionitic circles that were deemed responsible for the

Frankenberg’s edition and on the impossibility of dispensing with de Lagarde’s edition cf. F.ST. JONES, The Pseudo-Clementines: A History of Research, cit. (n. 6), 5, n. 10. R III 2-11 is found in P. DE LAGARDE, Clementis Romani Recognitiones Syriace, cit. (n. 8), 82-88; FRANKENBERG, Die syrischen Clementinen mit griechischem Paralleltext, cit. (n. 8), 156-168; and B. REHM – G. STRECKER, Die Pseudoklementinen, cit. (n. 2), II, 96-107. 13 A.Y. REED, Reflections on F. Stanley Jones, Pseudoclementina Elchasaiticaque inter Judaeochristiana. Collected Studies, ASE 30 (2013) 93-101, 101. Reed was here referring to the insights contained in F.ST. JONES, Jewish Christians as Heresiologists and as Heresy, RSC 6 (2009) 333-347. 14 Cf. N. KELLEY, Knowledge and Religious Authority in the Pseudo-Clementines. Situating the Recognitions in Fourth Century Syria (WUNT 213), Tübingen 2006, 192-197. 15 Cf. C. SCHMIDT, Studien zu den Pseudo-Clementinen nebst einem Anhange, cit. (n. 9), 301 n. 2; and O. CULLMAN, Le problème littéraire et historique du Roman Pseudo-Clémentin. Étude sur le rapport entre le gnosticisme et le judéo-christianisme (ÉHPhR 23), Paris 1930, 162-163. 16 Cf. G. UHLHORN, Die Homilien und Rekognitionen des Clemens Romanus nach ihrem Ursprung und Inhalt dargestellt, Göttingen 1854, 42-43; A. VON HARNACK, Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius, Leipzig 1893-1904, II.2, 535; and F.ST. JONES, La christologie des Reconnaissances (R 3,2-11), cit. (n. 9), 12-13. 17 Cf. A. HILGENFELD, Die Clementinischen Recognitionen und Homilien nach ihrem Ursprung und Inhalt dargestellt, Jena 1848, 371; D.J. CHAPMAN, On the Date of the Clementines, ZNW 9 (1908) 21-45 and 147-159, 23; B. REHM, Zur Entstehung der pseudoclementinischen Schriften, cit. (n. 4), 89-98; R. LORENZ, Arius judaizans? Untersuchungen zur dogmengeschichtlichen Einordnung des Arius (FKDG 31), Göttingen 1979, 177; and G. STRECKER, Das Judenchristentum in den Pseudoklementinen, cit. (n. 6), 270. For the reconstruction of the philological debate I am indebted to the by-now-classical survey contained in F.ST. JONES, The Pseudo-Clementines: A History of Research, cit. (n. 6). 18 The term ‘Anomoean’ is first attested in Athanasius, De Synodis 31. L. AYRES, Nicaea and Its Legacy, Oxford 2006, 145 cautions against its use, as well as against that of the label ‘neo-Arians’. For evidence of historical connections between Heteroousians and ‘Collucianists’ cf. Philostorgius, Historia ecclesiastica III 15; for evidence of Eunomius’ acquaintance with Arius’ Epistula ad Alexandrum Alexandrinum cf. Apologia 21.


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authorship of R19. In the opinion of others, the disserta, present in the original version of the novel, confirmed its ‘Eunomian’ character20. For others yet, R III 2-11 was a later interpolation, altering R’s original ‘orthodox’ nature21. Opinions of this kind tend to populate the entire logical spectrum of possibilities, proliferating through the combination of a series of thought habits and patterns. One such custom is the tendency to filter one’s understanding of sources through established scholarly notions whose reliance upon a specific set of texts (and possibly the very same text that is under scrutiny) has been long forgotten. To this, there may be added the tendency to appeal to the presence of an interpolation in order to make the text speak with the voice of a subject of the interpreter’s choice. Also particularly treacherous is the assumption of a series of historical traits d’union (e.g., between Arius and ‘Arianism’; Eunomius and Heteroousianism; or ‘Arianism’ and ‘Anomoeanism’, i.e. Heteroousianism) ultimately drawing on the ancient writers’ habit «to portray theologians to whom they were opposed as distinct and coherent groups, and […] to tar enemies with the name of a figure already in disrepute»22. Similar scholarly practices are exemplified by the interpretation history of two passages of R III 2-11 (R III 3,8 and R III 7,3-923). These sections contrast with traditional accounts of Heteroousian theology as boasting—unlike Arius’ doctrine—thoroughgoing acquaintance of the divine essence, in their outright assertion of God’s incognizability and of the undesirability of any discourse about His essence. The hermeneutical odyssey of these apophatic passages runs the gamut of the possible (and of the impossible alike). They have been, from time to time, employed to denounce R III 2-11 as a spurious ‘Arian’ re-working of a pre-existing Christological discussion found in R 24 ; justified as ‘orthodox’ micro-interpolations within the ‘heretical’ macro-interpolation represented by the disserta25; and used as an argument to challenge the common understanding of the doctrine of Eunomius, who allegedly never maintained that human knowledge of God’s essence equals God’s own – limiting himself, rather, to claiming «to know enough about the ousia of God […] to ensure […] that our speech about God has a purchase on reality»26.

19 Cf. A. HILGENFELD, Die Clementinischen Recognitionen und Homilien nach ihrem Ursprung und Inhalt dargestellt, cit. (n. 17), 317. 20 Cf. H. WAITZ, Die Pseudoklementinen, cit. (n. 8), 371. 21 Cf. B. REHM, Zur Entstehung der pseudoclementinischen Schriften, cit. (n. 4), 401; and G. STRECKER, Das Judenchristentum in den Pseudoklementinen, cit. (n. 6), 270. 22 L. AYRES, Nicaea and Its Legacy, cit. (n. 18), 2. 23 Cf. J.H. NEWMAN, An Essay on the Development of the Christian Doctrine, London 1845, 59. 24 Cf. G. UHLHORN, Die Homilien und Rekognitionen des Clemens Romanus nach ihrem Ursprung und Inhalt dargestellt, cit. (n. 16), 42. 25 Cf. B. REHM, Zur Entstehung der pseudoclementinischen Schriften, cit. (n. 4), 93-95. M. TARDIEU, Une diatribe antignostique dans l’interpolation eunomienne des Recognitiones, in Alexandrina: hellénisme, judaïsme et christianisme à Alexandrie. Mélanges offerts au P. Claude Mondésert, Paris 1987, 325-337, 325 n. 3 seems to agree with Rehm. The question could be raised, why an ‘orthodox’ author working on GO would have not gotten rid of the entire interpolation, or at least censored it throughout. Also, this second interpolation augments by one the number of recensions that would need to have been produced within the short time window described below (cf. infra, section 5). 26 M. WILES, Eunomius: Hair-splitting Dialectician or Defender of the Accessibility of Salvation?, in The Making of Orthodoxy. Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick, ed. R. WILLIAMS, Cambridge 1989, 157-172, 164. According to Wiles (who showed some oscillations in his argument), while some Heteroousians may have vaunted exhaustive knowledge of God’s ousia, R III 3,8 and R III 7,3-9 would reflect a more mature stage, in which such pretences would have been laid to rest (cf. ibid., 168). The two passages from R had already been pointed out by R.P. VAGGIONE, Aspects of Faith in the Eunomian Controversy, Oxford (Ph.D. Dissertation) 1976, 270-280. The key sentence for Wiles’ argument in R III 3,8 presents several difficulties of construal both in Latin and in Syriac, and can be interpreted in ways different from that in which he reads it. Wiles seems to see his stressing of Eunomius’ religious concern for the grasp of language on reality as a development of R. Heine’s account of the evolution of the Heteroousian doctrine of the cognoscibility of God. According to R.E. HEINE, Perfection in the Virtuous Life. A Study in the Relationship between Edification and Polemical Theology in Gregory of Nyssa’s De vita Moysis (Patristic Monograph Series 2), Cambridge (MA) 1975, 135 Arius’ original acknowledgment of the impossibility to penetrate God’s essence would have backfired, turning de facto into an admission of ignorance about the issue of the


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The idea that R III 2-11 might be aboriginal in the book partly relies on the circumstance that this section appears firmly anchored in the flow of the narrative27. The literary transition introducing the disserta (R III 1,7-8) and the reference (R III 2,3)28 to Simon’s teaching in R III 49,1 may in fact at least undermine the notion that R III 2-11 as a whole represents a Fremdkörper in the narrative of R29. Thus, L. Cirillo and A. Schneider suggest that in the Grundschrift (one of the few indispensible conjectural sources in a scholarly imagery populated by many philological fictions) «l’entretien de Pierre avec ses disciples devait déjà offrir des points d’appui, sur lesquels l’auteur des Reconnaissances a pu greffer l’interpolation (voir Rec III 1, 7-8 et 2, 3)»30. It can indeed be surmised that a theological dissertation of sorts, later re-worked by a Heteroousian, was found in R III 2-11 from the first Greek redaction of the novel. Alternatively, it may be argued that the interpolator was so crafty in his seaming as to integrate slyly those markers of narrative continuity. For M. Tardieu, for example, R III 1,7-8 represents «une

consubstantiality with the Father. For this reason, «the Anomoean leaders» would have corrected it into its opposite. This account arguably identifies a line of genealogical continuity—at least in the intents—between the early ‘Arian’ movement, whose consistency Wiles himself questions (cf. M. WILES, Eunomius, cit. in this footnote, 159), and the later Heteroousian groups; recent scholarship, however, tends to gainsay such a link: cf. above all L. AYRES, Nicaea and Its Legacy, cit. (n. 18). 27 Cf. G. UHLHORN, Die Homilien und Rekognitionen des Clemens Romanus nach ihrem Ursprung und Inhalt dargestellt, cit. (n. 16), 40; and L. CIRILLO – A. SCHNEIDER, Les Reconnaissances du pseudo Clément, cit. (n. 3), 575-576. F.ST. JONES, La christologie des Reconnaissances (R 3,2-11), cit. (n. 9), 11-12 develops five arguments in favor of the original presence of the disserta in R. 28 Cf. B. REHM, Zur Entstehung der pseudoclementinischen Schriften, cit. (n. 4), 95-96. 29 It takes quite some dedication to reconstruct, on the basis of Rehm’s edition, the four different forms that LR assumes in the manuscript tradition with regard to the narrative framing of the disserta, i.e. to their introduction and explicit. For this reason I will indicate them here, by dividing the section comprised between R III 1,7 and R III 12,1 (excluded) in three blocks of unequal length (a. R III 1,8, i.e. the introduction to the disserta; b. R III 2,1-11,11, i.e. the disserta proper; c. R III 11,12, i.e. the explicit of the disserta), and considering R III 2-11 as a homogenous block, whose variants will be disregarded. Here are the four forms: 1) All the manuscripts of the Π group except ms. Πq read: a. R III 1,8: et post haec incipiens de patre et filio et spiritu sancto, breviter nobis et evidenter exposuit, ut omnes audientes miraremur quomodo homines, veritate derelicta, conversi sunt ad vanitatem; b. [R III 2,1-11,11]; c. R III 11,12: multa autem et alia de patre et filio et spiritu sancto, breviter nobis et evidenter exposuit, ut omnes audientes miraremur quomodo homines, veritate derelicta, conversi sunt ad vanitatem (on this introductory sentence cf. P. DE LAGARDE, Anmerkungen zur griechischen Übersetzung der Proverbien, Leipzig 1863, v). 2) ms. Πq reads as follows: a. R III 1,8: same as in 1.a; b. [R III 2,1-11,11]; c. R III 11,12: multa autem et alia de patre et filio et spiritu sancto, breviter nobis et evidenter exposuit, ut omnes audientes miraremur quomodo, veritate derelicta, ad vanitatem inciderunt. 3) Mss. Λx and Ψa, to which the Syriac text corresponds, run thus: [a. R III 1,8 is lacking]; b. [R III 2,1-11,11]; c. R III 11,12: multa autem et alia de patre et filio dicens et spiritu sancro instruxit nos non minus iudicare a persona intimans sensum auditui nostro, ita ut omnes audientes plangeremus, quomodo homines a veritate exerraverunt. 4) All other Latin manuscripts read as follows: a. R III 1,8: same as in 1.a and 2.a; [b. R III 2,1-11,11 is lacking; c. R III 11,12 is lacking]. For B. REHM – G. STRECKER, Die Pseudoklementinen, cit. (n. 2), xcvi-xcix mss. Λx and Ψa contain a more original text than the manuscripts of the Π group. Rufinus, reading in his Greek Vorlage the disserta, would have suppressed this section and replaced it with a sentence (modeled upon R III 11,12) that corresponds to R III 1,8 as it is found in all the manuscripts in which R III 2-11 is not attested, as well as by those of the Π group. The later, anonymous Latin translator, having transposed R III 2-11 into Latin, incorporated this section into Rufinus’ version. In mss. Λx and Ψa (as well as in the Syriac text) the sentence with which Rufinus supposedly attempted to summarize the contents of the disserta is missing, and R III 11,12 contains the section’s explicit in the form in which it must have originally read. In the manuscripts of the Π group, for some reason, Rufinus’ introductory sentence has been reduplicated, and appears (with the exception of the first few words, which are different) also instead of the original reading of R III 11,12. Rehm’s reconstruction is admittedly ingenious. I wonder, however, whether the circumstance that mss. Λx and Ψa offer in this section, on the level of macro-variants, a textual form that, according to Rehm’s own scheme, is identical with what Rufinus’ Greek model would have read like (i.e. no Rufinian introduction in R III 1-8; R III 2,1-11,11 in place; and the original reading of R III 11,12), but do so only as an upshot of a series of philological accidents, should not induce us to re-evaluate this scholar’s proposal altogether. Unfortunately such a task lies well outside the possible scope of the present paper. 30 L. CIRILLO – A. SCHNEIDER, Les Reconnaissances du pseudo Clément, cit. (n. 3), 575-576.


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transition littéraire de convention, servant à insérer l[es] disserta dans le cadre du roman pseudoclémentin et à définir son objet»31.

3. The Ideological Profile of *GR III 2-11

But what was the content of the instruction that *GR III 2-11 (as transmitted in LR III 2-11) had Peter impart to his coreligionists in Caesarea32? The vastly debated ideological nature of this section is difficult to tease out. Whoever composed *GR III 2-11 in its final form appears to have been pursuing a twofold polemical agenda: opposing the Nicene homoousios on the one hand, and the definition of God as autopatōr (‘Father of Himself’) and autogennētos (‘self-begotten’) on the other33. In more than one instance the interpolator contends that, had God been the begetter of Himself, He could not have remained impassible, as two contradictory realities, one begetting and one begotten, would have arisen within Him34. At one point, however, the Trinitarian theme and the preoccupation with the divine autopatoria become interwoven35. The readers are told that, if they are aware of the risks, inherent in the concept of autopatōr, of sundering the divine monas, and are interested in safeguarding its integrity, they should refrain from embracing the Homoousian solution. The homoousios – the text seems to reason – by envisioning one ousia shared by Father and Son paradoxically results in a division of the unity of the godhead. The Father has chosen to remain alone in His substance, and to set apart the Son’s from His own36. The suggestion that the upholders of the homoousios, by positing an ousia that begets something of its own same kind, turn God into a self-begetting entity may well be a cunning rhetorical strategy, aimed at associating Nicaea with the gnostic heresies. In the text, however, those upbraided for envisioning God as autopatōr and autogennētos are said to have explicitly called Him those names—something that, of course, no supporter of Nicaea would have dreamt of doing. For this reason it appears unlikely that, as M. Tardieu suggested, the association between autopatōr/autogennētos and homoousios could be simply a subterfuge aiming «à faire passer [l]a diatribe anti-nicéenne sans trop éveiller les soupçons»37.

31 M. TARDIEU, Une diatribe antignostique dans l’interpolation eunomienne des Recognitiones, cit. (n. 25), 329. 32 The present analysis will be conducted within the economic assumption (neither demonstrable nor falsifiable in the current state of things) that the Latin translator of *GR III 2-11, to whom we owe the extant text, did not intend to further emend his Vorlage. 33 Peter calls God autogennētos in H XVI 16,1,3, ed. REHM and STRECKER, I, 225, lines 20.24. Here the Father’s unbegottenness is, like in R III 2-11, explicitly contrasted to the Son’s begottenness, but, unlike in our interpolation, equated to self-begottenness; the Son is also said to be of a different ousia from the Father’s: cf. H XVI 16,3, ed. REHM and STRECKER, I, 225, line 25. Space limits prevent me from pursuing here an examination of this interesting theological disquisition, extremely atypical in H, where, as suggested by B. POUDERON, La genèse du Roman clémentin et sa signification théologique, cit. (n. 9), 499, «le nom de ‘Fils’ renvoie généralement à la formule baptismal trine […] ou encore à la formule évangélique ‘Fils de dieu’, mais non à une théologie de la trinité plus ou moins élaborée». In light of this passage, the interpolator’s insistence on the erroneousness of the expression autogennētos could be understood as an attempt to correct this view, expressed in H. The notion that R may be trying to rectify a series of ideas found in H was already proposed by A. SCHLIEMANN, Die Clementinen nebst den verwandten Schriften und der Ebionismus. Ein Beitrag zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte der ersten Jahrhunderte, Hamburg 1844, 323-328. Both autopatōr and autogennētos are widely attested in gnosticism. On the pre-Nicene (and gnostic) history of homoousios cf. I. ORTIZ DE URBINA, L’homoousios preniceno, OrChrP 8 (1942) 194-209. Cf. also G.C. STEAD, Homoousios, in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum. Sachwörterbuch zur Auseinandersetzung des Christentums mit der antiken Welt, ed. T. KLAUSER, Stuttgart 1950-, XVI, 364-433; W.A. BIENERT, Das vornicaenische homoousios als Ausdruck der Rechtgläubigkeit, ZKG 90 (1979) 151-175; M. SIMONETTI, Ancora su Homoousios a proposito di due recenti studi, VetChr 17 (1980) 85-98; and P.F. BEATRICE, The Word “Homoousios” from Hellenism to Christianity, ChH 2 (2002) 243-272. 34 Cf. R III 9,6; III 10,7.a; and III 11,1. 35 Cf. R III 11,3. 36 This same argument is attributed by Basil of Caesarea, Epistulae LII 1 to the fathers gathered at Antioch in 268 to condemn Paul of Samosata’s use of homoousios, and is employed in Eusebius of Nicomedia, Epistula ad Paulinum Tyrium 3. Cf. also Arius, Epistula ad Alexandrum Alexandrinum 4-5. 37 M. TARDIEU, Une diatribe antignostique dans l’interpolation eunomienne des Recognitiones, cit. (n. 25), 328-329.


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The conceptual and terminological parallels with various gnostic texts adduced by Tardieu himself, along with the presence, in R III 9,7, of the reproof of an androgynous conception of the godhead (obviously holding no connection to Homoousian doctrine), do nothing but detract from the likelihood of Tardieu’s intriguing ‘faux anti-gnostic’ hypothesis. If the interpolator’s main intention had been to use the gnostics as a proxy to censure the Homoousians, he could have done so far more effectively. R III 2-11 reveals, rather, two actual, distinct polemical targets: gnostics and Nicenes. If the possibility that the late-fourth-century interpolator was concerned with gnosticism were to appear far-fetched, an alternative solution stands to reason: *GR, with its multi-pronged polemical agenda, could have originally contained R III 2-11 as an anti-gnostic treatise, which was subsequently remodeled to serve anti-Nicene purposes38. The doctrinal program of the interpolation, at any rate, does not become entirely clear until the theological Leitmotif of the text, the definition of God as an ʾityā d-lā hwā (‘Being that did not come into existence’) in SR and as ingenitus (‘unbegotten’) in LR, is clearly laid out (R III 7,4). This designation is connected, in SR, to a terminological distinction, repeated throughout this long section, between two dichotomous ontological dimensions. The ‘Being that did not come into existence’, marked by the existential particle ʾit and by the related noun ʾityā, is opposed to the ‘being that did come into existence’, expressed by the root hwā. The Syriac translator may have found this ontological opposition terminologically marked in his Greek model, possibly in forms such as ōn (or agen(n)ētos) and gen(n)ētos39. The inventive periphrasis that the Syriac translator fashioned, while evidently attributing a technical meaning of ‘less full’ being to the verb hwā (‘to come into existence’), if considered in its isolation does not clarify whether the relative clause d-lā hwā (‘that did not come into existence’) is meant as restrictive or nonrestrictive. ʾItyā d-lā hwā could in fact mean either ‘the (kind of) being that did not come into existence’ or ‘the (fuller) being, (which) did not come into existence’. The doubt dissipates in the later paragraphs of the section, where the latter is shown to be the case. Here SR, in correspondence to the Latin ingenitus and infectus, presumably indicating the presence of agen(n)ētos in the Greek original, features the bare ʾityā alternated with ʾityā d-lā hwā, seemingly with the same exact value. After familiarizing the reader, through the use of d-lā hwā, with the meaning of ʾityā, SR begins to use the word in a more technical sense, to signify the ‘Being that did not come into existence’. Five different expressions correspond, in LR, to the Syriac phrase ʾityā d-lā hwā, behind which the presence of the word agen(n)ētos in the Greek Vorlage can again be hypothesized40. Seven times we find ingenitus (‘unbegotten’)41; five ingenitum (‘unbegotten being’)42; four times quod est ingenitum (‘that

38 This idea is compatible with both scenarios depicted by figs. n. 1 and n. 2 below (cf. infra, section 5). In the situation described by fig. 1, *GRO might have contained R III 2-11 as an anti-gnostic treatise, while *GRHet (= *GRRuf = *GRLat = *GRSyr) would have expanded and interpolated it in a Heteroousian direction, later reverted by SR but untouched by LR. In the scenario described by fig. 2, *GRO could have, again, contained an anti-gnostic R III 2-11, but *GRHet (= *GRRuf = *GRLat) would have expanded and interpolated it with Heteroousian materials, subsequently emended by *GRSyr. On the presence of anti-gnostic polemics in R cf. O. CULLMAN, Le problème littéraire et historique du Roman Pseudo-Clémentin, cit. (n. 15). 39 On the role of the word agen(n)ētos in the course of the Trinitarian controversy, and on the graphic confusion between agenētos and agennētos, cf. L. PRESTIGE, ἀγέν[ν]ητος and γεν[ν]ητός, and Kindred Words, in Eusebius and the Early Arians, JThS 24 (1923) 486-496; J. LEBRETON, Ἀγέννητος dans la tradition philosophique et dans la littérature chrétienne du IIe siècle, RSR 13 (1926) 431-443; and L. PRESTIGE, Ἀγέν[ν]ητος and Cognate Words in Athanasius, JThS 34 (1933) 258-265. Cf. also R.P.C. HANSON, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God. The Arian Controversy 318-381, Edinburgh 1988, 202-207; and M. PARMENTIER, Rules of Interpretation Issued against the Heretics (CPL 560), Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 60 (2008) 231-273, 268. 40 Already B. REHM, Zur Entstehung der pseudoclementinischen Schriften, cit. (n. 4), 167 had remarked on «die Inkonsequenz des Lateiners in der Terminologie: ἀγέννητος wird mit ingenitus und innatus, vielleicht auch mit infectus wiedergegeben, οὐσία und ὑπόστασις wahrscheinlich mit substantia (essentia nur 7,8). Der Syrer», he added, «scheint hierin treuer, aber er ändert zuweilen aus dogmatischer Bedenklichkeit». 41 Cf. R III 3,7, ed. FRANKENBERG, 158, line 1 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 97, line 8; R III 8,7, ed. FRANKENBERG, 164, line 13 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 102, line 16; R III 9,7, ed. FRANKENBERG, 164, line 32 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 104, line 4; R III 11,2, ed. FRANKENBERG, 166, line 23 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 106, line 3; R III 11,6, ed.


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which is unbegotten’)43; once innatus (‘unborn’)44; and once quod infectum est (translatable as ‘that which did not come into existence’, if infectum is taken to derive from fio)45. This terminological plurality is more likely due to LR’s tendency towards lexical diversification (a result either of keenness for variatio or of lack of penetration of the unifying ideological rationale behind *GR’s use of technical terminology) than to SR’s homologation of a variety of terms found in the Greek model46. Even so, however, it is worth noticing the creative effort made by the Syriac translator to seek but one fitting rendering (ʾityā d-lā hwā) for the theological technical term agen(n)ētos47. This attempt may be seen as part of an intellectual endeavor, undertaken by Christian thinkers of the Syrian region in the fourth century, to forge a sharper theological vocabulary in Syriac. For example, Aphrahat, writing only some decades earlier, had referred to God as ʾityā d-napšeh (‘essence of itself’, ‘being of Himself’)48. By the same token, Ephrem, who must have been active in Edessa around the time when our translation was composed, polemicized against the Bardaisanian use of the word ʾityā as expressing any of the four—later five—cosmological elements, while using it in his compositions exclusively to describe the Father’s ‘self-existing being’ (although not yet employing it to translate the Greek ousia)49.

4. The Ideological Profile of SR III 2-11: Analysis of Select Passages (R III 8 and 9,5)

The theological exposition proper begins only several chapters into the interpolation (R III 7,4). After discussing various topics—from the nature of the ‘principles’ (rešānwātā; principia) to God’s self-knowledge—, Peter detects in his audience an interest in hearing about the ‘Being that did not come into existence’ (R III 7,2-3). Following a cautionary introduction about the dangers of any theological discourse (the apophatic passages discussed above), Peter starts instructing his fellow believers about the relationship between the Father and the Son. It is here, and specifically in the sub-section constituted by the last four chapters of the disserta (SR III 8-11), that SR’s deft strategy of emendation and suppression can be most clearly observed. Over the next few pages I will present a synoptic translation of the first chapter of this sub-section (SR/LR III 8) and of one passage drawn from the following chapter (SR/LR III 9,5), interspersed with a commentary pointing out clues to SR’s ideological profile. Through these samplings I wish to test the

FRANKENBERG, 168, line 2 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 106, line 14; R III 11,9, ed. FRANKENBERG, 168, line 6 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 107, line 2; R III 11,10, ed. FRANKENBERG, 168, line 8 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 107, line 4. 42 Cf. R III 6,3, ed. FRANKENBERG, 162, line 13 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 101, line 3; R III 7,1, ed. FRANKENBERG, 162, line 15 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 101, line 4; R III 7,4, ed. FRANKENBERG, 162, line 23 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 101, line 11; R III 7,4, ed. FRANKENBERG, 162, line 25 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 101, line 12; R III 10,2, ed. FRANKENBERG, 166, line 10 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 104, line 14. 43 Cf. R III 6,3, ed. FRANKENBERG, 162, line 11 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 100, line 22; R III 3,8, ed. FRANKENBERG, 158, line 3 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 97, line 10; R III 3,9, ed. FRANKENBERG, 158, line 7 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 97, line 15; R III 7,8, ed. FRANKENBERG, 162, line 33 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 101, line 21. 44 Cf. R III 10,1, ed. FRANKENBERG, 166, line 6 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 104, line 10. 45 Cf. R III 4,3, ed. FRANKENBERG, 158, line 22 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 98, line 12. 46 D.J. CHAPMAN, On the Date of the Clementines, cit. (n. 17), 23 had already remarked that the Latin translator shows sometimes a lack of understanding of his model. 47 Analogously, in correspondence of the Syriac ʾabā d-napšeh we find, in LR, two different expressions: autopatōr (obviously a transliteration from Greek), three times (R III 3,8, ed. FRANKENBERG, 158, line 3 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 97, line 9; R III 4,3, ed. FRANKENBERG, 158, line 19 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 98, line 9; R III 11,3, ed. FRANKENBERG, 166, line 25 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 106, line 5); and sibi pater, once (R III 4,2, ed. FRANKENBERG, 158, line 18 // ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 98, line 8). 48 Aphrahates, Demonstrationes 23,52: «In you (scil. Christ) we praise the essence of itself (or: ‘being of Himself’) (ʾityā d-napšeh), Him who has separated you from His (uncreated) essence (ʾitutā) and has sent you to us». Cf. also Demonstrationes 23,58. 49 Cf. U. POSSEKEL, Ephrem’s Doctrine of God, in God in Early Christian Thought: Essays in Memory of Lloyd G. Patterson, ed. T.J. GADEN – A.B. MCGOWAN (VigChrSup 94), Leiden 2009, 195-237, 215-217 and 230, with further references ibid., 216 n. 114; and P. BENETTON, Il linguaggio trinitario di Efrem, Rome (Th.D. Dissertation) 2011, 120-124. On Ephrem’s theology cf. also P. BRUNS, Arius hellenizans? Ephräm der Syrer und die neoarianischen Kontroversen seiner Zeit. Ein Beitrag zur Rezeption des Nizänums im syrischen Sprachraum, ZKG 101 (1990) 21-57.


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hypothesis that SR shows a version of the text normalized in a Homoiousian, broadly pro-Nicene direction. Nevertheless, unlike the Heteroousian interpolator, who was anxious to ensure the diffusion of his theological views by giving them an authoritative dwelling, the Homoiousian amender appears mostly interested in neutralizing the perceived heterodox elements contained in a text that he thought it important be copied and preserved. By means of wily expunctions and well thought-out lexical choices, he shaped an ambiguous theological common ground, and carefully avoided the transformation of R III 2-11 into an anti-‘Arian’ treatise, thus creating the conditions for a wider reception of the work.

EX. N. 1

SR LR

8.1. God then, who is without beginning, begot His first-begotten Son before all creatures, as it befits God: without having been altered or changed, without having been divided, without having issued forth, and without having diminished in anything50.

8.1. The one, then, who did not begin to be, the afore-mentioned God, begot the first-begotten of all the creation as it befit God: not altering Himself, not converting Himself, not dividing Himself, not flowing, not extending anything.

8.2. For you remember how these passions of the body are those that we refrained from attributing also to the soul, since we feared that, with these (passions) attributed to it, its immortality would become void.

8.2. Remember, indeed, that these are the passions of the bodies, which we avoided to attribute also to the soul, because of the fear that immortality might be taken away from it by these attributes.

8.3. God, then, begot, that (scil. the fact that He begot) which we learned to call also ‘creation’51. To call then this very (reality) ‘begetting’ and ‘creation’ and other such terms allows (one) to consider a model of begetter that which happens to be shapeless.

8.4. For those, in fact, who have a difference of shapes, it is necessary to distinguish a generation and a creation.

The content of R III 8,1-2 patently originates from the idea that any form of begetting other than creation amounts to an impersonal procession: hence the reference to the flux. Although Arius had held this notion, it was still acceptable from a Homoiousian standpoint52. Those who favored Nicaea, in fact, vigorously rejected their opponents’ allegations of forwarding a theological divisionism, and spoke rather of a begetting occurring without alteration. This is probably the reason why the paragraphs were kept in the Syriac. To the contrary, R III 8,3-4, presenting theologoumena and terminology that must have been perceived as overtly ‘Arian’, was not included in the Syriac translation. In this section we find the blunt identification of ‘begetting’ as ‘creation’, already proposed by Arius in his Letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, and commonly justified based on the account of the creation of Wisdom in Pr 8,2253.

50 Or: «emanated». 51 Or (yet less likely): «God, then, begot that (being) whom we learned to call also ‘creature’». 52 Cf. Arius, Epistula ad Eusebium Nicomediensem 3 and Epistula ad Alexandrum Alexandrinum 3,5. Already Origen (De principiis I 2,6; IV 4,1) had rejected the gnostic use of probolē as describing a generation of the animal sort. This opposition represents a clear element of continuity between Arius and Heteroousian theologians: cf. Hilarius Pictaviensis, Contra Constantium 13 (about Eudoxius); Eunomius, Apologia 17; and Basilius Caesariensis, Adversus Eunomium III 2,52. 53 For an overview of the exegesis of Prov 8,22 in early Christian authors cf. M. SIMONETTI, Sull’interpretazione patristica di Proverbi 8, 22, in ID., Studi sull’arianesimo (VSen 5), Rome 1965, 9-87; and F. YOUNG, Proverbs 8 in


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Admittedly less diffident readings of those two paragraphs were possible: the pro-Nicene translator could have chosen to appreciate their peculiarly mild phrasing (genuit ergo deus quod et facturam vocare didicimus)54, as well as their seeming concession to the viability of a distinction between begetting and creation on the limited level of human logical reasoning (to which activity the term schemata, translated above as ‘shapes’, may refer)55.

EX. N. 2

SR LR 8.5.a. In the very (condition of) His being, then, did God beget, without undergoing 56 any division.

8.5.a. God, therefore, begot while remaining (the same), not suffering any division.

8.5.b. That which is (as a result of this begetting, i.e. the Son) is not more honorable than God and than this unbegotten (i.e. God), because (God) is not like the begotten.

In R III 8,5.a God is declared not to have suffered any division, and to have persisted within His being during the generation of the Son57. These notions, as just mentioned, are easily reconcilable with a Homoiousian perspective, and for this reason the Syriac translator spared the sentence in which they are expressed. But R III 8,5.b contained two affirmations that must have appeared to him insidious. First, the assertion that the Son is not more honorable than God: this must have sounded perilously close to an expression of radical subordinationism, and evoked in any case the sensitive question of the relative glory of the Father and the Son. Second, and more importantly, the statement that God is unlike (non esse velut) the begotten, in its complete lack of qualifications (e.g. ‘according to the substance’), is more radically subordinationist than anything attested in the writings of Aëtius or Eunomius: no pro-Nicene of any affiliation could have countenanced such a profession. It is arguably for these two reasons that R III 8,5.b is not featured in SR.

EX. N. 3

SR LR

8.6. For in His (act of) willing, His power was not found lame with regard to His will; nor did His power go beyond the goal of His will. But, in (full) agreement, just as He wanted, did He beget, in (the condition of) His being and not in (the condition of) undergoing (any change).

8.6. In fact, in (His) willing He did not have (His) power lazy for (the carrying out of) that which He wanted, nor did (His) power exceed (His) will, but rather, according to measure, (a being) such as He wanted did He also beget, while remaining (the same), without suffering.

Interpretation (2): Wisdom Personified. Fourth-Century Christian Readings: Assumptions and Debates, in Reading Texts, Seeking Wisdom: Scripture and Theology, ed. D.F. FORD – G. STANTON, Grand Rapids (MI) 2004, 102-115. 54 Emphasis mine. 55 If read out of the context of the Heteroousian disserta, the insistence on the meaningfulness of the indifference between genitura and factura may even be seen as redolent of the doctrine of Basil of Ancyra, one of the main promoters of the Homoiousian initiative. Coming from ‘Eusebian’ positions, Basil had sought a way out of the doctrinal impasse in which radical subordinationists and Nicenes were caught, by suggesting that the act of exteriorization of otherness through which God brings the Son into existence contains both a human-like component (the ‘begetting’) and a craftsmanly one (the ‘making’). On Basil cf. M. SIMONETTI, Basilio di Ancira, in Nuovo dizionario patristico e di antichità cristiane, ed. A. DI BERARDINO, Genoa 2007, I, 723-724; and ID., La crisi ariana nel IV secolo (SEAug 11), Rome 1975, 586. 56 Literally: ‘suffering’. 57 On the theme of divine passibility in Arius’ (and more generally ‘Arian’) reflection cf. G. LETTIERI, Passione e/o impassibilità di Dio nella controversia ariana, in Croce e identità cristiana di Dio nei primi secoli, ed. F. TACCONE (Appunti di teologia 18), Rome 2009, 37-57, 41-45.


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8.7. For if bodies, which by necessity have volume58, produce the existence of shadows, how much more then will we concede to that power, (namely) the Being that did not come into existence, (the possibility) that the only-begotten, who is from Him, be attached to him?

8.7. In fact, if bodies, which serve under the necessity of thickness, make shadows exist, how much more would we concede that the only-begotten is subsequent to the unbegotten power, since (God’s) will precedes?

R III 8,6 did not pose any problem for the anonymous censor. Nor, in principle, did the affirmation that the Son is ‘subsequent’ to the Father (LR III 8,7) need to present any issue, as it would have been reconcilable with a moderate Origenist subordinationism. However, the term that in the Vorlage was behind the Latin word subsequens (which both Frankenberg and Rehm reconstruct as akoloutheō) seemed perhaps at risk of conveying an ‘Arian’ chronological hierarchy. This advised the Syriac translator to neutralize it by means of a skillful linguistic device: in SR we find the verb nqep (meaning both ‘to come with’ and ‘to come after’), whose polysemy allowed for virtually as diverse a range of readings as the conflicting Trinitarian perspectives of the time would have required. In the clause that comes next in the Latin (voluntate precedente), the mention of the role of God’s will in the siring of Christ must have appeared problematic to the composer of SR. Although the idea of the Son’s willful generation on the part of God was common throughout the second and third centuries, this notion had begun to carry along ‘Arian’ overtones since the diffusion of Arius’ Letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, where Christ was said to have subsisted thelēmati kai boulē[i] («by/in will and intention») before time and ages59. Athanasius and other Nicene authors had thus come to identify the Son himself with the Father’s will. In all certainty, however, it was the mention of the priority of God’s will to the generation of the Son, marking a chronological distinction between the two and thereby precluding their co-eternity, that advised the censor to eliminate this clause from R III 8,7.

EX. N. 4 SR LR

8.9. For this reason, then, (the only-begotten) is truthfully and properly called ‘begetting’ 60 , because in his substance he is not Father.

8.9. Therefore [the Son] is indeed appropriately called ‘begotten’, ‘product’, and ‘creature’, because, as for the substance, he is not an unbegotten (being).

The Greek words gennēma, poiēma and ktisma may be safely assumed to have stood behind the Latin series genitura, factura and creatura, found in this passage. It is easy to imagine why in SR the second and the third terms, so compromised with Heteroousian theology, would be omitted61. Here, however, the skills of the Syriac translator are at their best. After faithfully rendering gennēma (‘begotten’) with yaldā, he plays with this Syriac word’s extensive meaning of ‘child’ and ‘son’. It is then with this meaning, rather than with that of ‘begotten’, that he artfully builds a correlation, writing ʾabā (‘Father’) where LR has ingenitum (‘unbegotten [being]’), and where the Greek Vorlage featured, in all likelihood,

58 Literally: «which are subject to the necessity of thickness». 59 Cf. Arius, Epistula ad Eusebium Nicomediensem 4. On this theme cf. C. STEAD, The Platonism of Arius, JThS 15 (1964) 16-31, 26; E.P. MEIJERING, Ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν ὁ Υἱός. A Discussion on Time and Eternity, VigChr 28 (1975) 161-168, 161; ID., Die Diskussion über den Willen und das Wesen Gottes, theologiegeschichtlich beleuchtet, in L’Église et l’empire au IVe siècle. Sept exposés suivis de discussions par Friedrich Vittinghoff, ed. A. DIHLE and F. VITTINGHOFF (Entretiens sur l’Antiquité classique 34), Genève 1989, 35-71, 42-43; R. MORTLEY, The Alien God in Arius, in Platonism in Late Antiquity, ed. S. GERSH – C. KANNENGIESSER, Notre Dame (IN) 1992, 205-215, 214; C. STEAD, The Word “From Nothing”, JThS 49 (1998) 671-684, 677; and W. LÖHR, Arius Reconsidered, ZAC 9 (2006) 524-560 and 10 (2006), 121-157, 142-144. 60 The Syriac term yaldā may denote either the act of begetting or its result. The text seems to emphasize that the Son, while being attached to the Father (cf. R III 8,7), is distinct from Him. 61 Cf. Eunomius, Apologia 17-18, where the Son is called ktisma. In Apologia 15 the Son is described as gennētheis kai ktistheis.


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agen(n)ētos. The reason for this maneuver is patent. The differentiation of the Son from the Father was per se innocuous for the advocates of the homoiousios, who deemed the Sabellian huiopatoria (‘identity between Father and Son’) a heretical aberration62. But Basil of Ancyra, the inspirer of Homoiousian theology, had condemned the Heteroousian use of the antonyms ‘begotten’ and ‘unbegotten’ because of their failure to express the relation of mutual interdependence expressed by the couple ‘Father’ and ‘Son’63. The dichotomous opposition of Father and Son, and above all its explicit connection to a difference in their substance (qnōmā), understandably made the Syriac translator wary64. Once again, however, he did not opt for a polemically anti-subordinationist rendering, but simply for one that would be harmless in the eyes of the defenders of the homoiousios. The section following this passage (R III 8,10-9,3) amounts to a short parenesis, after which the theological exposition resumes, in R III 9,4, with a section purged from the Syriac. The paragraph that follows contains the last example of suppression that will be examined here:

EX. N. 5

SR LR

9.5.a. Be it known to you, then, that as it befit God did (He) beget His only-begotten and first-begotten Son before all creatures.

9.5.a. Be it understood, though, how it befit God to beget an only-begotten and first-begotten of all the creation,

9.5.b. but not as if (He begot him) from something: this (namely being begotten from something), in fact, is the serfdom of the animate and inanimate beings.

Both the terms ‘only-begotten’ and ‘first-begotten’ had been used before Nicaea to refer to the pre-existing Logos. Nevertheless, Marcellus of Ancyra (followed, with some originality, by Athanasius) had come to differentiate their usages, by assigning the former designation to the pre-existing Christ and the latter to Christ incarnate. The Homoiousians had reverted to the habit of attributing both terms to the pre-existing Logos: R III 9,5.a, therefore, presented no problems for the author of SR. But in R III 9,5.b he could not avoid expurgating the doctrine according to which the Son originated ex ouk ontōn (‘out of things that were not’). During the earliest stage of the controversy Arius had used this expression as a sharp tool to posit the Son’s created status65. Soon, however, the scandalous phrase and

62 The huiopatoria appears, as a polemical target, in Arius, Epistula ad Alexandrum Alexandrinum 7; Epiphanius, Panarion sive Contra Haereses 62,1; and Basilius Caesariensis, De ecclesiastica theologia I 1. It is unknown whether Sabellius ever actually utilized this concept. The identification of homoousios and tautoousios (‘self-substantial’) is found in the Synodal letter of the Homoiousian council of Ancyra (358). 63 Cf. Epiphanius, Panarion sive Contra Haereses 73,14.19-20. 64 The argument that the Father, being unbegotten, cannot be similar in substance to the begotten Son is also found in the writings of Homoian authors: cf. M. SIMONETTI, La crisi ariana nel IV secolo, cit. (n. 55), 267. 65 Cf. Arius, Epistula ad Eusebium Nicomediensem 5. On the philosophically and theologically problematic nature of this phrase cf. H.A. WOLFSON, Philosophical Implications of Arianism and Apollinarianism, DOP 12 (1958) 3-28, 18; C. STEAD, The Platonism of Arius, cit. (n. 59), 24-26; ID., The Word “From Nothing”, cit. (n. 59); and ID., Philosophy in Origen and Arius, in Origeniana septima. Origenes in den Auseinandersetzungen des 4. Jahrhunderts. International Colloquium for Origen Studies (7th: 1997. Hofgeismar, Germany, and Marburg, Germany), ed. W.A. BIENERT and U. KÜHNEWEG (BEThL 137), Louvain 1999, 101-108, 101-102. The expression ex ouk ontōn is already absent from Arius’ Letter to Alexander of Alexandria, and, though reported in Athanasius, Orationes contra Arianos I 5-6, was probably not utilized in the Thalia: cf. M. SIMONETTI, Ancora sulla datazione della Thalia di Ario, SSR 4 (1980) 349-354, 353; R.P.C. HANSON, Who Taught ΕΞ ΟΥΚ ΟΝΤΩΝ?, in Arianism. Historical and Theological Reassessments. Papers from the Ninth International Conference on Patristic Studies. Oxford, September 5-10, 1983, ed. R.C. GREGG (Patristic Monograph Series 11), Philadelphia 1985, 79-83, 80; M. PARDINI, Citazioni letterali dalla «ΘΑΛΕΙΑ» in Αtanasio, Ar. 1,5-6, Orph. N.S. 12 (1991) 411-428, 423-424; and A. CAMPLANI, Studi atanasiani: gli Athanasius Werke, le ricerche sulla Thalia e nuovi sussidi


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its associated concept had been abandoned, so much so that, as noted by M. Simonetti, they are absent not only from Arius’ own later writings, but also from what he terms «second-, third-, and fourth-generation Arian literature»66. It is therefore remarkable to find it in LR III 9,5.b, and unsurprising to see it censored in SR67.

5. The Textual History of SR III 2-11

As the preceding analysis suggests, SR III 2-11 offers a text form in which the Heteroousian views contained in *GRO, and still observable in LR, have been either omitted or neutralized, be it by the Syriac translator (= fig. n. 1 below) or by the author of its Greek Vorlage (= fig. n. 2 below). In the absence of any evidence pointing in the direction of a differentiation, Rufinus’ refusal to translate R III 2-11 signals the identity between the Greek text form used by the monk (= *GRRuf) and that employed by the later Latin translator of those chapters (= *GRLat). This recension (= *GRRuf = *GRLat) can be assumed to have been the product of a Heteroousian re-working (= *GRHet) of the Greek text as confected by somebody whom we may call the final redactor of R (= *GRO). Furthermore, we can hypothesize that both the Syriac and the Latin translators worked on the same Heteroousian re-configuration of the original text of *GR. This hypothesis can be graphically represented as follows:

FIG. N. 1

*GRO |

*GRHet = *GRRuf = *GRLat = *GRSyr

In this case, SR would have censored its heterodox Vorlage, whereas LR would have maintained it intact68. Alternatively, it could be speculated that SR was working on a Greek model (= *GRNic) that had already rectified the Heteroousian contents of R III 2-11. This scenario can be schematized as follows:

bibliografici, Adamantius 7 (2001) 115-130, 122 (contra K. METZLER, Ein Beitrag zur Rekonstruktion der “Thalia” des Arius (mit einer Neuedition wichtiger Bezeugungen bei Athanasius), in Ariana et Athanasiana. Studien zur Überlieferung und zu philologischen Problemen der Werke des Athanasius von Alexandrien, ed. EAD. – F.J. SIMON (Abhandlungen der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaft 83), Opladen 1991, 11-45, 22-23). Homoians are represented by their opponents as interested in exculpating themselves from the charge of embracing the creatio ex nihilo of the Son (while still fundamentally upholding it) by stating that he had come into existence not «from the things that are not» but «from God»: cf. Hilarius Pictaviensis, Contra Valentem et Ursacium II 20, ed. A.L. FEDER, Hilary, Collectanea antiariana (CSEL 65), Leipzig 1916, 176 (= Series B VIII, 2 [2 (3)]; transl. L.R. WICKHAM, Hilary of Poitiers. Conflicts of Conscience and Law in the Fourth-Century Church. “Against Valens and Ursacius”, the Extant Fragments, together with His “Letter to the Emperor Constantius” (Translated texts for historians 25), Liverpool 1997, 91. 66 M. SIMONETTI, Ancora sulla datazione della Thalia di Ario, cit. (n. 65), 353. 67 R III 9,5.b thus deserves to be numbered among the passages of R III 2-11 contrasting with the teaching of Eunomius, who in Liber apologeticus 15 had rejected this doctrine. For a discussion of Eunomius’ stance on the ex ouk ontōn cf. R.P.C. HANSON, Who Taught ΕΞ ΟΥΚ ΟΝΤΩΝ?, cit. (n. 65), 81-83 (opposing, among others, T.A. KOPECEK, A History of Neo-Arianism, Cambridge [MA] and Winchendon [MA] 1979). 68 This hypothesis was pioneered by E. SCHWARTZ, Unzeitgemäße Beobachtungen zu den Clementinen, ZNW 31 (1932) 151-199, 154.


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FIG. N. 269

*GRO |

*GRHet = *GRRuf = *GRLat

| *GRNic = *GRSyr

In support of the hypothesis that LR III 2-11 contains the original of its model virtually throughout, whereas the Syriac translator thoroughly revised it (= fig n. 1), three arguments – none of them particularly definitive – may be set forth: 1) In absence of clear evidence to the contrary, it best abides by the lex parsimoniae; 2) It is generally assumed that R III 2-11 was interpolated into *GRO after 36070. If, as I suggest, a dating between 360 and 385 can be supposed for the penning of SR71, within the alternative scenario (= fig. n. 2) we would have to admit the production of no less than two new Greek recensions of

69 A third scenario could be envisioned in principle: the Latin translator may be responsible for the introduction of anti-Nicene statements into the text. SR would then represent a faithful rendering of its Vorlage [= *GRSyr]. This situation may be graphically represented as follows: *GRO = *GRRuf = *GRLat = *GRSyr. However, this scenario will appear unlikely if only one considers Rufinus’ statement about the presence of the disserta in his Greek manuscript, as well as the persistence, in SR, of a series of passages attending to an argumentatively non-decisive exposition about the divine agennēsia (‘unbegottenness’). These passages can be best explained as leftovers from the Greek model, where they were aimed, as they still are in LR, at the characteristically Heteroousian demonstration of the ontological chasm yawning between Father and Son. The notion of God’s unbegottenness, a cornerstone of Heteroousian doctrine, was per se acceptable to pro-Nicene thinkers as well. The passages in which such idea was expounded, then, were preserved in SR after being amputated of the sentences containing their governing raison d’être: the gap between God’s and Christ’s ousiai.

70 The presence, in the interpolation censored by SR, of passages of subordinationist tone concerning the Holy Spirit (for the debates concerning which cf. A. MARTIN, Athanase d’Alexandrie et l’Eglise d’Egypte au IVe siècle (328-373) (Collection de l’École française de Rome 216), Rome 1996) clearly indicates a date after 360. Less credit should be given to J. LANGEN, Die Klemensromane. Ihre Entstehung und ihre Tendenzen aufs neue untersucht, cit. (n. 8), 151s., according to whom R is presupposed by the Doctrina Addai, likely to be dated around 360: on the basis of the parallels adduced by this scholar the Doctrina Addai’s acquaintance with R appears far from «unstreitig» (ibid., 151). 71 P. DE LAGARDE, Clementina herausgegeben von Paul de Lagarde, in ID., Mittheilungen, Göttingen 1884, I, 26-54, 52 n. **, wrote that the presence, in ms. A, of several scribal errors meant that the text of R had undergone several transcriptions before being copied into that manuscript. In light of this consideration, F.ST. JONES, Evaluating the Latin and Syriac Translations of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, Apocrypha 3 (1992) 237-257, 239s., assigned the translation to a time «perhaps around the year 380» and pointed to the Edessene School of the Persians, where at that time, under the direction of Qiore, «particular attention was given to the study of Greek texts» (ibid., 240). He also set (ibid., 239 n. 10) a tentative terminus ante quem for SR to 373 CE based on the quotations contained in Ephrem’s Commentary on the Diatessaron (which in 21,5 cites SR I 41,3 verbatim, and in 16,22 seems to presuppose R I 54,2), though warning that the authenticity of the section where the citations occur is sub iudice. On these parallels cf. also ID., Early Syriac Pointing in and behind British Museum Additional Manuscript 12,150, in Symposium Syriacum VII. Uppsala University, Department of Asian and African Languages, 11-14 August 1996 (OrChrA 256), ed. R. LAVENANT, Rome 1998, 429-444, 437-438 and n. 28, where their relevance is treated as probable, and a dating is consequently suggested in «the early period of the School of the Persians» (ibid., 442 n. 43); and ID., The Gospel of Peter in Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1,27-71, in Das Evangelium nach Petrus: Text, Kontexte, Intertexte, ed. T.J. KRAUS – T. NICKLAS (TU 158), Berlin 2007, 237-244, 238-241 (I owe thanks to Prof. Jones for pointing me to the latter piece). The connection with the School of the Persians is evoked again in ID., Early Syriac Pointing in and behind British Museum Additional Manuscript 12,150, cit. (this footnote), 442 n. 43. Cf. also ID., A Jewish Christian Reads Luke’s Acts of the Apostles: The Use of the Canonical Acts in the Ancient Jewish Christian Source behind Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1.27-71, in Society of Biblical Literature 1995 Seminar Papers, ed. E.H. LOVERING JR. (SBLSP 34), Atlanta 1995, 617-635, 623 n. 20, suggesting a dating around 365. In light of the conclusions of C. LANGE, Ephraem der Syrer. Kommentar zum Diatessaron (Fontes Christiani. Zweisprachige Neuausgabe christlicher Quellentexte aus Altertum und Mittelalter 54.1), Turnhout 2008 about fifth-century additions to Ephrem’s Commentary on the Diatessaron the terminus ante quem of 373 can hardly be considered valid any longer. The end year of my dating takes into account Lagarde’s argument (followed by Jones), but conservatively extends the time frame by some five years.


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R within a twenty-five-year span. Contrariwise, if *GRLat and *GRSyr were one and the same (= fig. n. 1), this time window would only need to have seen the production of one new recension; 3) In two of the passages examined above (ex. n. 3 and 4), the Syriac text was shown to deploy a linguistically subtle strategy, which would be ‘lost in retroversion’, or at least require further explanation, if ascribed to a hypothetical Greek Vorlage. On the other hand, external historical circumstances suggest that the disserta may have already been amended in the Greek version (= fig. n. 2). At the time we are discussing, comparable alterations of Christian texts of recent composition were being performed in the Greek-speaking environments of Antioch. As A. Camplani has recently shown, e.g., «those who were organizing the archives of Antioch […] when the acute phase of the Arian controversy was drawing to its end (and therefore under the bishopric of Meletius [362-381]), and when the need was felt to adapt the language to that of the pro-Nicene bishops of the Western part of the Empire», are responsible for changes in the Greek symbol of the Eastern bishops at Sardica (343) reflected both in the Latin and in the Syriac translations of the collection of documents of which this creed was part72. As in SR III 2-11, the amenders of this text did not introduce any technical terminology specific to the pro-Nicene party. Admittedly, R, being a novel73 (though a special one, cherished for its self-avowed apostolic origin), may not have been typical material for ecclesiastical archives74. Nonetheless, a process similar to the one just described for the Eastern creed of Sardica may have been put in motion for *GRHet. R, previously made the object of attention by radical subordinationist milieus, may have been further altered in a Homoiousian direction under Meletius in Antioch. Here, thanks to the presence of episcopal archives, the ecclesiastical power could easily undertake complex operations of re-writing, functional to the promotion of a broad cultural and geo-ecclesiological project. People belonging to ideologically contiguous Edessene environments, receptive to the operation performed in Antioch, may have then translated the emended text into Syriac and later copied it, in 411, into ms. A along with

72 A. CAMPLANI, Fourth-Century Synods in Latin and Syriac Canonical Collections and their Preservation in the Antiochene Archives (Serdica 343 CE-Antioch 325 CE), in Cultures in Contact: Transfer of Knowledge in the Mediterranean Context. Selected Papers, ed. J.P. MONFERRER-SALA – S.T. TOVAR (Series Syro-Arabica 1), Beirut 2013, 61-72, 68. Cf. also ID., Lettere episcopali, storiografia patriarcale e letteratura canonica: a proposito del Codex Veronensis LX (58), RSC 3 (2006) 117-164, 148-149. The Latin text is preserved in Codex Veronensis LX (58), ff. 78b-79b (edited by G. BALLERINI and P. BALLERINI in PL 56, 854-856). On this ms. cf. E. SCHWARTZ, Über die Sammlung des Cod. Veronensis LX, ZNW 35 (1936) 1-23; W. TELFER, The Codex Verona LX(58), HThR 36 (1943) 169-246; and L.L. FIELD, On the Communion of Damasus and Meletius. Fourth-century Synodal Formulae in the Codex Veronensis LX (Studies and texts 145), Toronto 2004. The Syriac text is preserved in several manuscripts (ms. Bibliothèque nationale de France syr. 62, ff. 182-183; mss. Mardin, Library of the Residence of the Archbishopric 309, 310, 320 (modern copy); and ms. Vaticanus Borgianus syr. 148), and it is edited in F. SCHULTHESS, Die syrischen Kanones der Synoden von Nicaea bis Chalcedon, nebst einigen zugehörigen Dokumenten, Berlin 1908, 167-168. 73 Cf. I. CZACHESZ, The Clement Romance: Is It a Novel?, in The Pseudo-Clementines, ed. J.N. BREMMER, cit. (n. 5), 24-35 (questioning the attribution of the Pseudoclementines to the literary genre of the novel); J. BOLYKI, Recognitions in the Pseudo-Clementina, in The Pseudo-Clementines, ed. J.N. BREMMER, cit. (n. 5), 191-199 (reasserting ibid., 199 that R belongs to the genre of the ‘recognition novel’). The question of genre should be investigated in connection to that of the identification of the work’s intended audience. I. CZACHESZ, Commission Narratives. A Comparative Study of the Canonical and Apocryphal Acts (Studies on early Christian apocrypha 8), Louvain 2007, 216, comparing the Pseudoclementines to other works, remarks that in H, which recounts Clement’s troubled journey through the schools of the philosophers and his disapproval of the mockery that these made of the unsophisticated preaching of Barnabas (cf. R I 3 and R I 9—Czachesz makes reference only to H I 3,1-2 and H I 10,1), we witness a «shift of cultural canon, a turning away from classical education». Can we thus conclude, as Czachesz does with regard to the Acts of Titus, which display a comparably troubled attitude toward pagan paideia, that R’s «readership […] is to be sought among the educated of the time who had similar conflicts of whether or not they should read the classical authors» (ibid., 216)? 74 On the role of public archives in early Christian Syria cf. W. ADLER, Christians and the Public Archive, in A Teacher for All Generations. Essays in Honor of James C. Vanderkam, ed. K. COBLENTZ BAUTCH – A.K. HARKINS – D.A. MACHIELA – E.F. MASON (JSJSuppl. 153), Leiden 2012, II, 917-937; and M. DEBIÉ, Record Keeping and Chronicle Writing in Antioch and Edessa, Aram 12 (2000) 409-417.


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works mostly by Eusebius of Caesarea, whose Eastern theological legacy of moderate subordinationism they were interested in furthering75. This proposal shows that the question as to whether the emendation of R III 2-11 took place in the Syriac or Greek text should not be seen as a minor philological quibble, as it has a bearing on the ideological, social, and linguistic affiliations of the individuals responsible for censoring this section. Similarly, we could ask whether the supposable contrary circumstance of a Syriac Homoiousian translation of a Greek Heteroousian re-working (= fig. n. 1) would provide any insight into the socio-linguistic status of Syriac and Greek in late-fourth-century Edessa, and into its relationship to religious allegiances in the local and regional churches76.

6. Fourth-Century Trinitarian Discussions and the Christian-Jewish continuum

Pseudoclementine scholarship in the last decades has shown a considerable shift from a source-critical (and tradition-historical) to a redaction-critical approach. This has brought the focus onto the rationale behind the operations performed by the third-century author of the so-called Grundschrift and the fourth-century redactors of *GR and H, through their appropriation of sources of ‘Jewish Christian’ as well as other origins77. Such ‘appropriations’, however, should not be understood as alterations of a pristine and hitherto intact idea or text – a notion hardly appropriate for an almost aboriginally spurious, composite, and protean work like R, which was since its very beginning the fruit of the collecting and seaming of heterogeneous materials. What is, then, the historical significance of the utilization of sources commonly referred to as ‘Jewish Christian’ on the part of the author of *GR? The link between ‘Arianism’ (including so-called ‘neo-Arianism’) and Judaism was a topos of pro-Nicene rhetoric. Some Christian writers, such as Ephrem and Athanasius, liked to conflate their opponents’ subordinationism with what they saw as Judaism’s strict monotheism. Others, like the Cappadocian fathers, famously saw in ‘Arianism’ an indefinite tertium genus, indefensibly lying in-

75 Ms. A (on which cf. supra, n. 8) was copied by one Jacob (cf. f. 255r). In addition to a mostly Western martyrology, it contains Syriac translations of Titus of Bostra’s Against the Manichaeans and of Eusebius of Caesarea’s On Divine Manifestation, History of the Martyrs in Palestine, and Encomium of the Martyrs (cf. W. WRIGHT, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum Acquired since the Year 1838, cit. (n. 8), II, 631-633). 76 On bilingualism in Edessa cf. F. MILLAR, Greek and Syriac in Edessa: From Ephrem to Rabbula (CE 363-435), Semitica et Classica 4 (2011) 99-114; and ID., Greek and Syriac in Edessa and Osrhoene, CE 213 to 363, Scripta Classica Israelica 30 (2011) 93-111. More in general on bilingualism and diglossia in Syria cf. D.G.K. TAYLOR, Bilingualism and Diglossia in Late Antique Syria and Mesopotamia, in Bilingualism in Ancient Society, ed. J.N. ADAMS – M. JANSE – S. SWAIN, Oxford 2002, 298-331; and F. MILLAR, A Greek Roman Empire. Power and Belief under Theodosius II (408-450), Berkeley 2006, 107-116. 77 For a critique of the traditional conception of the Pseudoclementines as a mere repository of early Christian materials, cf. N. KELLEY, Problems of Knowledge and Authority in the Pseudo-Clementine Romance of Recognitions, JECS 13 (2005) 315-348, 318; A.Y. REED, “Jewish Christianity” after the “Parting of the Ways”. Approaches to Historiography and Self-Definition in the Pseudo-Clementine Literature, in The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. A.H. BECKER – A.Y. REED (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 95), Tübingen 2003, 189-231, 203-204; N. KELLEY, Knowledge and Religious Authority in the Pseudo-Clementines, cit. (n. 14), 1-6; B. POUDERON, Aux origines du roman pseudo-clémentin, cit. (n. 9), 197; A.Y. REED, Reflections on F. Stanley Jones, Pseudoclementina Elchasaiticaque inter Judaeochristiana. Collected Studies, cit. (n. 13), 100; and N. KELLEY, On Recycling Texts and Traditions: The Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Religious Life in Fourth-Century Syria, in The Levant, Crossroads of Late Antiquity: History, Religion and Archaeology = Le Levant, carrefour de l’Antiquité tardive : histoire, religion et archéologie, ed. E. BRADSHAW AITKEN and J.M. FOSSEY (McGill University monographs in classical archaeology and history 22), Leiden 2014, 105-112. On the Pseudoclementines as an instance of «recollection, interpretation, re-contextualization, and selective preservation» of the ‘past’, and as an at least partly conscious historiographical enterprise, cf. A.Y. REED, ‘Jewish Christianity’ as Counter-history? The Apostolic Past in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, in Antiquity in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World, ed. G. GARDNER – K. OSTERLOH, Tübingen 2008, 173-216.


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between Judaism and Christianity. For all these ‘orhodox’ authors, the association between Judaism and their theological foes was rhetorically expedient78. Possibly in partial dependence upon these heresiological accounts, contemporary scholarship examining the intersections between ‘Arianism’/Heteroousianism and ‘Jewish Christianity’ has proven unable to eschew the temptation of reifying the entities at hand, pursuing at times improbable genealogies. In his famous monograph exploring the possibility that Arius was a ‘Judaizer’, e.g., R. Lorenz set out to verify the hypothesis of an ‘Arian’ character of the Pseudoclementines, previously championed by Waitz. Lorenz, though utilizing primarily H as his source, questionably treated the two novels as a coherent corpus, highlighting some theological similarities with (what he construed as) ‘Arian’ theology79. Notwithstanding these resemblances, however, he established that the likeness between the Pseudoclementines and ‘Arianism’ was reduced «auf den strengen Monotheismus, die Engelchristologie und die Bestreitung der Gottheit des Sohnes», and concluded that the Pseudoclementines cannot be the work of an ‘Arian’80. Lorenz’s implicit reliance on a simplistic understanding of the category of ‘influence’ in history of ideas is among the greatest criticalities of his study: even if the Pseudoclementines did indeed testify to ‘Arian’ doctrines, this circumstance would hardly be relevant to the identification of the supposed ‘Jewish Christian’ roots of Arius’ own thought 81 . And yet, the dismissal of the genealogical approach

78 Cf. C. SHEPARDSON, Anti-Jewish Rhetoric and Intra-Christian Conflict in the Sermons of Ephrem Syrus, in Studia Patristica 35. Papers Presented at the Thirteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 1999, ed. M.F. WILES – E.J. YARNOLD, Louvain 2001, 502-507; EAD., “Exchanging Reed for Reed”. Mapping Contemporary Heretics onto Biblical Jews in Ephrem’s Hymns on Faith, Hugoye. Journal of Syriac Studies 5 (2002) 15-33; EAD., Defining the Boundaries of Orthodoxy. Eunomius in the Anti-Jewish Polemic of His Cappadocian Opponents, ChH 76 (2007) 699-723; and R. LAIRD, John Chrysostom and the Anomoeans: Shaping an Antiochene Perspective on Christology, in Religious Conflict from Early Christianity to Early Islam, ed. W. MAYER – B. NEIL, Berlin 2013, 129-149, 134-136. On the association of Eunomius with Philo in the writings of Gregory of Nissa cf. D.T. RUNIA, Philo in Early Christian Literature. A Survey, Assen-Minneapolis 1993, 244-261; and C. SPUNTARELLI, «In nome della morte di Cristo», cit. (n. 9), 316 n. 2. More in general on this theme cf. A. CAMERON, Jews and Heretic: A Category Error?, in The Ways that Never Parted, ed. A.H. BECKER – A.Y. REED, cit. (n. 76), 345-360. 79 R. LORENZ, Arius Judaizans?, cit. (n. 17), 150 and n. 73 called attention to a passage of R in which Simon Magus affirms that the unknown God emanated a creating God, who in turn styled himself as God: cf. SR II 57,3, ed. FRANKENBERG, 140, lines 7-9 // LR II 57,3, ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 85-86 lines 29-1. He also remarked (ibid., 151) on the alleged «(ziemlich unbestimmte) Gemeinsamkeit» running between the ‘Arian’ conception of Christ and the speculations of the Pseudoclementine Peter about the angels of seventy-two nations, the highest of whom would have been the archangel assigned to Israel. Furthermore, he pointed out that in R II 38-39 Simon, making use of a series of quotations from the Pentateuch (Gen 1:26; 3:5; 3:22; 11:7; Ex 22:28; Dt 32:9.12: cf. SR II 39,5-11, ed. FRANKENBERG, 120.122, lines 25-4 // LR II 39,5-11, ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 75, lines 1-15), asserts the existence of many gods, among whom is the god of the Jews, and of a supreme, hidden God (cf. SR II 38,3, ed. FRANKENBERG, 120, lines 8-9 // LR II 38,3, ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 74, lines 10-11; and SR II 39,4, ed. FRANKENBERG, 120, lines 22-23 // LR II 39,4 ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 74, lines 24-25), unknown to the Jews themselves (cf. SR II 39,11-12, ed. FRANKENBERG, 122, lines 3-6 // LR II 39,11-12, ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 75, lines 14-17). Oddly enough, the word ʾalāhunā, a diminutive of ʾalāhā generally meaning ‘minor deity’ (cf. M. SOKOLOFF, A Syriac Lexicon. A Translation from the Latin, Correction, Expansion, and Update of C. Brockelmann’s Lexicon Syriacum, Winona Lake [IN] and Piscataway [NJ] 2009, 47b), seems here to be employed to designate the supreme God. In his rejoinder, Peter insists that God is one, creator of heaven and earth, God of the Jews and of all the gods of whom Simon has spoken (cf. SR II 40,1, ed. FRANKENBERG, 122, lines 9-11 // LR II 40,1, ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 75, where God is called his ipse Iudaeorum – a designation missing in the Syriac; and SR II 41,1-3, ed. FRANKENBERG, 122, lines 15-22 // LR II 41,1-3, ed. REHM – STRECKER, II, 76, lines 1-7). 80 R. LORENZ, Arius Judaizans?, cit. (n. 17), 153. Lorenz’s conclusions were that Arian theology had to be traced back to an attempt to solve a particular problem within Origenist Christology: for Arius the Son is Christ’s pre-existing soul merging with his sōma apsychon (‘soulless body’). For the debate about Lorenz’s theses cf. the sharp criticism of M. SIMONETTI’s Review, RSLR 16 (1980) 455-460, as well as the response contained in R. LORENZ, Die Christusseele im Arianischen Streit. Nebst einigen Bemerkungen zur Quellenkritik des Arius und zur Glaubwürdigkeit des Athanasius, ZKG 94 (1983) 1-51, 43-49. 81 For a classical critique of the category of influence in the pursuit of intellectual history cf. Q. SKINNER, The Limits of Historical Explanation, Phil. 41 (1966) 199-215; and ID., Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas, HTh 8 (1969) 3-53, 25-27.


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exemplified by Lorenz’s methodology still leaves us with the question: how are we to evaluate the historical factuality of the connection, emerging both in R III 2-11 and other late ancient texts, between some of the participants in the Trinitarian controversies (particularly the Heteroousian camp) and literary and canonical traditions linked to the phenomena commonly treated under the label of ‘Jewish Christianity’? The articulation of an answer might begin from T.A. Kopecek’s judicious assessment that, although Arius had neither Jewish nor ‘Jewish Christian’ influences, «Neo-Arianism emerged from and was nourished by a conservative Eucharistic liturgical tradition which was pronouncedly Jewish-Christian in character»82. His claim was founded upon an analysis of Apostolic Constitutions (= AC). One of the books of this fourth-century work, which has been recently characterized as a ‘Christian Talmud’83, appends to a re-writing of the Didachē84 a series of prayers corresponding «both in general content and in the order of the prayers to a Jewish prayer collection, the Hebrew Seven Benedictions»85. AC was composed in Syria (possibly in Antioch) around 380, has been traditionally linked to Clement of Rome, and clearly bears the marks of its author’s theological subordinationism (although scholars debate whether of a Heteroousian kind or one forwarding a more moderate Christo-centric soteriology, with a majority leaning towards the former posture)86. This work could therefore provide a significant parallel for the connection between anti-Nicenism and ‘Jewish Christianity’ to which R appears to bear witness. Furthermore, AC is partly dependent upon ‘church orders’ literature (including the Syriac Didascalia, in its turn defined in recent scholarship a ‘Christian Mishnah’87), which has been shown to share a tradition

82 T.A. KOPECEK, Neo-Arian Religion. The Evidence of the Apostolic Constitutions, in Arianism, ed. R.C. GREGG, cit. (n. 65), 153-179, 155. 83 Cf. E.M. SYNEK, “Dieses Gesetz ist gut, heilig, es zwingt nicht…” Zum Gesetzbegriff der Apostolischen Konstitutionen (KuR 21), Wien 1997; and EAD., Die Apostolischen Konstitutionen. Ein “christlicher Talmud” aus dem 4. Jh, Bib. 79 (1998) 27-56. 84 For scholarship dealing with the Jewish character of the Didachē cf. the extensive bibliography in M. DEL VERME, Didache and Judaism. Jewish Roots of an Ancient Christian-Jewish Work, New York 2004, 88-111. 85 D.A. FIENSY, Prayers Alleged to Be Jewish. An Examination of the Constitutiones Apostolorum (Brown Judaic Studies 65), Chico (CA) 1985, 130. For a comparison of the two sets of prayers cf. ibid., 131-134. AC, though integrating Jewish liturgical materials, presents the reader with ‘Apostolic canons’, composed at the same time as the compilation of the rest of the book (cf. F.J.E. BODDENS HOSANG, Establishing Boundaries. Christian-Jewish Relations in Early Council Texts and the Writings of Church Fathers [Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series 19], Leiden 2010, 119), which prohibit clergymen and laymen from entering a synagogue to pray (Can. 65), observing a Jewish fast or festival (Can. 70), or lighting lamps in a synagogue (Can. 71). 86 The subordinationist character of AC was noticed in Photius, Bibliotheca 112-113. Among modern scholars, already C.H. TURNER, C.H., A Primitive Edition of the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons: An Early List of the Apostles and Disciples, JThS 15 (1914) 53-65 and ID., Notes on the Apostolic Constitutions, JThS 16 (1914-1915) 54-61 and 523-538 identified theological commonalities between ‘neo-Arian’ doctrine and AC. Of the same opinion are M. WILES, Triple and Single Immersion: Baptism in the Arian Controversy, in Studia Patristica 30. Papers presented at the Twelfth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 1995, ed. F.A. LIVINGSTONE, Louvain 1997, 337-349; and R.P. VAGGIONE, Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution, Oxford 2000, 339-341. D. HAGEDORN, Der Hiobkommentar des Arianers Julian, Berlin 1973, xli-lii, identifies the compiler of the work as one Julian, the author also of a Heteroousian Commentary on Job and of the Pseudo-Ignatian epistolary. P. NAUTIN, Costituzioni apostoliche, in Nuovo dizionario patristico e di antichità cristiane, ed. A. DI BERARDINO, cit. (n. 55), II, 1256-1257, sees in this writer Julian bishop of Neapolis (near Anazarbus). Some doubt on the ‘neo-Arian’ origin of AC is cast by M. METZGER, La théologie des Constitutions Apostoliques par Clément, RevSR 57 (1983) 29-49; 112-122; 169-194; and 273-294. The ‘neo-Arian’ hypothesis is opposed by R. WILLIAMS, Baptism and the Arian Controversy, in Arianism After Arius. Essays on the Development of the Fourth Century Trinitarian Conflicts, ed. M.R. BARNES – D.H. WILLIAMS, Edimburgh 1993, 149-180, 166-168. According to J.G. MUELLER, L’ancien testament dans l’ecclésiologie des pères. Une lecture des Constitutions apostoliques (Instrumenta patristica et mediaevalia 41), Turnhout 2004, AC was produced in contraposition to Meletius of Antioch’s assembling of pro-Nicene canons under the aegis of emperor Theodosius I. 87 Cf. C.E. FONROBERT, The Didascalia Apostolorum: A Mishnah for the Disciples of Jesus, JECS 9 (2001) 483-509; and EAD., Menstrual Purity. Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender, Stanford (CA) 2000, 160-210. On the Didascalia as a ‘Jewish Christian’ text cf. also J. MARCUS, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Didascalia Apostolorum: A Common Jewish Christian Milieu?, JThS 61 (2010) 596-626. On the Didascalia in general


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of Hebrew Bible ‘ecclesiological exegesis’ – and even to engage in conscious dialogue – with contemporaneous Jewish literature88. However, neither R nor AC – as this paper proposes – need be taken to point to privileged real-life interactions between some Heteroousians and a well-identifiable fourth-century ‘Jewish Christian’ community. Although both the notion of the existence of a ‘Jewish Christian’ heritage in Syria – and particularly in Edessa – and the idea of its persistence in the late fourth century are sometimes treated as a truism89, scholars’ understanding of the consistency of this phenomenon, and of its functioning within the religious fabric of the region, remains at best hazy90. In addition, if we insisted on working within a theoretical framework positing the existence of a hybrid religious formation called ‘Jewish Christianity’, we would have to ask why the legacy of a group by then allegedly so marginalized, residual, and religiously irrelevant to mainline Christianity might prove so attractive to so many different – and diversely affiliated – exponents of the latter. What the web of literary ties sketched above is likelier to indicate is simply the presence of a wider cultural and institutional setting, shared by Syrian Christian and Jewish communities, than has been thus far assumed when reconstructing the fourth-century Christian debates about the relative status of the Father and the Son. In a series of important contributions focusing on H, A.Y. Reed has highlighted striking similarities between the fourth-century, redactional layer of this work and contemporaneous Jewish texts with regard to «a set of concerns, including the discussion of menstrual purity, the articulation of non-priestly models of authority, the tracing of oral lines of succession from Moses, and the argument for monotheism against scripture-wielding, dualist minim/‘heretics’»91. Granted, as Reed herself writes, «Homilies contains more Jewish and ‘Jewish-Christian’ elements than the Recognitions and […] reworks their shared material in a manner more irenic towards Judaism»92. This should not prevent us, however, from asking questions about R’s circulation within a discursive and material space of which the Jews were undeniably part.

7. Conclusion: From ‘Why’ to ‘Why Not’

R was constructed, as N. Kelley remarked, «in the midst of an intensely competitive and diverse religious marketplace» 93 . The same is true of the novel’s various re-workings. A wide-ranging

cf. A. VÖÖBUS, The Didascalia Apostolorum in Syriac (CSCO.S 175-176 and 179-180), Louvain 1979, I, 23*-68*. For an early-fourth-century dating of the Didascalia cf. A. STEWART-SYKES (ed.), The Didascalia Apostolorum: An English Version, Turnhout 2009, 49-55. 88 Cf. J.G. MUELLER, The Ancient Church Order Literature: Genre or Tradition?, JECS 15 (2007) 337-380. 89 Cf. e.g. P. MARAVAL, Égérie. Journal de voyage (Itinéraire) (SC 296), Paris 1982, 212 n. 1. 90 On ‘Jewish Christianity’ in Edessa cf. H.J.W. DRIJVERS, Edessa und das jüdische Christentum, VigChr 24 (1970) 4-33; ID., Jews and Christians at Edessa, JJS 36 (1985) 88-102; ID., Syrian Christianity and Judaism, in The Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire, ed. J.M. LIEU – J. NORTH – T. RAJAK, London 1992, 124-146; S.C. MIMOUNI, Le judéo-christianisme syriaque: mythe littéraire ou réalité historique?, in VI Symposium Syriacum 1992. University of Cambridge, Faculty of Divinity, 30 August-2 September 1992, ed. R. LAVENANT (OrChrA 247), Rome 1994, 269-279; and P. BETTIOLO, “E l’assemblea divina passò in Edessa”. Sulle origini e le prime fattezze del cristianesimo siriaco, in Le ricchezze spirituali delle Chiese sire. Atti del 1° Incontro sull’Oriente Cristiano di tradizione siriaca, Milano, Bilblioteca Ambrosiana, 1 marzo 2002, ed. S. CHIALÀ – E. VERGANI, Milan 2003, 37-50, 45-48. 91 R.S. BOUSTAN – A.Y. REED, Blood and Atonement in the Pseudo-Clementines and The Story of the Ten Martyrs: The Problem of Selectivity in the Study of “Judaism” and “Christianity”, Enoch 30 (2008) 333-364, 348. Cf. A.Y. REED, Heresiology and the (Jewish-)Christian Novel. Narrativized Polemics in the Pseudo-Clementines, in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. E. IRICINSCHI – H.M. ZELLENTIN, Tübingen 2008, 273-298; and A.Y. REED, Parting Ways over Blood and Water? Beyond “Judaism” and “Christianity” in the Roman Near East, in La croisée des chemins revisitée: quand l’Église et la synagogue se sont-elles distinguées? Actes du colloque de Tours 18-19 juin 2010, ed. S.C. MIMOUNI – B. POUDERON, Paris 2012, 227-260. 92 A.Y. REED, “Jewish-Christian” Apocrypha and the History of Jewish/Christian Relations, in Christian Apocryphal Texts for the New Millennium. Achievements, Prospects, and Challenges. Proceedings of the Ottawa Conference 2006, ed. P. PIOVANELLI, Leiden 2014 (Forthcoming). 93 N. KELLEY, Problems of Knowledge and Authority in the Pseudo-Clementine Romance of Recognitions, cit. (n. 77), 344.


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examination of the religious and social contexts in which this continued process of re-writing took place—beyond the limited scope of R III 2-11—would help recover, as Reed writes, «the significance of the texts’ final forms by exploring the significance of their composition/compilation, transmission, translation, and reception for our understanding of the ongoing discourse about Christian and Jewish identities in Late Antiquity»94. Already in the fourth century, R enjoyed a remarkably large diffusion: *GRO underwent at least one re-writing between approximately 360 and 385; SR, if we are to trust Lagarde’s judgment, was copied numerous times between its composition and the year 411 (dating of ms. A); Rufinus, around 406, had access to two distinct recensions of *GR, composed in all likelihood decades earlier; and it is probable that in the second half of the fourth century the longer of these two recensions had been further re-worked by means of the addition of the apocryphal Acts of Peter95. The reception of R in the fourth century, however, is noteworthy not only for the breadth of its circulation, but also for the novel’s ability to command interest across groups often assumed to be hardly permeable to each other’s doctrinal lexicon and ideas. Several agents, of divergent religious persuasions, show themselves keen on mobilizing the Pseudoclementine materials in different directions. They range from the original reviser of the Grundschrift, interested, for whichever reason, in ‘Jewish Christian’ traditions; to the Heteroousian interpolator; to the re-worker who, having some stake in the furthering of a Petrine heritage, attached the apocryphal Acts of Peter to *GR as a narrative appendix96; to the orthodox Latin expunger (Rufinus); and, finally, to the Syriac or Greek censor (as well as – in case the emendation occurred in Greek – to the Syriac translator of the censored Greek text). Later, in the fifth century, the actors will multiply, and will come to include the anonymous Latin translator, either sympathetic or unconcerned with the heterodoxy of the disserta. The history of R, then, is one of broad dissemination and, at once, intense self-differentiation. The novel’s ‘textual fluidity’ – to be understood as «the transformation of texts in the process of re-writing»97 – came about both as a result of wide, trans-partisan circulation and through a series of moves of self-demarcation within a flowing reading domain. The various re-writings – and re-readings98 – that left traces on the text may be seen as acts of conscious appropriation of a variously circulating literary tradition. Such acts were often prompted by specific ecclesiological interests99. The Heteroousians’ re-writing might have been triggered by the potential for self-legitimation that the integration of their doctrines into a work claiming apostolic authority offered to a community lacking a foundational council such as Nicaea100. Similarly, the Antiochene institutionally-mandated production of an emended copy of R that I have hypothesized above could be connected to the fact that R, unlike H, included in a later addition

94 A.Y. REED, “Jewish Christianity” after the “Parting of the Ways”, cit. (n. 77), 226. 95 Cf. M.C. BALDWIN, Whose Acts of Peter? Text and Historical Context of the Actus Vercellenses, Tübingen 2005; A. FILIPPINI, Gli atti apocrifi petrini fra tradizione testuale e contesto storico-sociale. A proposito di uno studio recente, Mediterraneo antico. Economie società culture 10 (2007) 587-603; and ID., Atti apocrifi petrini. Note per una lettura, cit. (n. 4). 96 A. FILIPPINI, Atti apocrifi petrini. Note per una lettura, cit. (n. 4), 26 and n. 16 attributes this recension to «the entourage of the secretaries-scribes following the Anomoean leaders Aetius and Eunomius» (and dates it to the years 360-362), adducing as an argument the fact that it is this version that was utilized by the ‘Arian’ author of Apostolic Constitutions. 97 I. CZACHESZ, Re-writing and Textual Fluidity in Antiquity. Exploring the Socio-Cultural and Psychological Context of Earliest Christian Literacy, in Myths, Martyrs, and Modernity. Studies in the History of Religions in Honour of Jan N. Bremmer, ed. J. DIJKSTRA – J. KROESE – Y. KUIPER, Leiden 2010, 425-441, 425. 98 Cf. T. EAGLETON, Literary Theory: An Introduction, Minneapolis (MN) 1996, 11: «All literary works […] are ‘re-written’, if only unconsciously, by the societies which read them», and «indeed there is no reading of a work which is not a ‘re-writing’». 99 Cf. E.A. CLARK, Creating Foundations, Creating Authorities: Reading Practices and Christian Identities, in Religious Identity and the Problem of Historical Foundation, ed. J. FRISHMAN – W. OTTEN – G. ROUWHORST, Leiden 2004, 553-572, 557. 100 The Heteroousians’ ecclesiologically motivated interest in the Pseudoclementines is testified also by the Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum, which cites them at eight distinct, theologically irrelevant points: cf. B. POUDERON, La genèse du Roman clémentin et sa signification théologique, cit. (n. 9), 500.


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the geo-ecclesiologically precious designation of Peter as bishop of Antioch101. Likewise, Rufinus’ translation may have been primarily motivated by its vouching the apostolicity of the Roman church102. R’s lasting success in general may owe a great deal to the presence of apostolic auctoritates within its narrative texture, and in particular to the prominence assumed in its plot by Clement, a legitimizing figure whose glorious reception in the late ancient Mediterranean can be observed in texts such as Clementine Octateuch, AC, the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum, and an Alexandrian Monophysite prayer for patriarchal ordination103. If the institutional motives behind these literary operations are somewhat obvious, when it comes to tracing doctrinal trajectories from an intellectual-historical prospective we seem to be moving on shakier grounds. More than one scholar has tried her or his hand at this exercise104. But similar searches for specific points of theological consonance with Heteroousian doctrine (e.g. the Pseudoclementine insistence on God’s absolute independence and self-sufficiency), even when not inspired, as they were in Lorenz’s case, by a phylogenetic methodology, appear aimed at explaining a historical connection that may otherwise appear as a freak of history. In other words, their very asking of a ‘why’—a question to which one clear-cut answer is normally provided—may be revealing of a series of unspoken assumptions about the limited circulation of religious constructs across a fictitious border separating mainline Christianity (in both its ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ Trinitarian varieties) from Judaism (and its miscellaneous religious hybrids). But scholarship in the past few years has posed meaningful questions about the ways in which the different re-writings of H emerged out of debates precisely over the boundaries between those two entities105. The nexus between ‘Jewish Christianity’ and Heteroousianism highlighted by R III 2-11, therefore, asks to be interrogated as a product of engagement, re-positioning, and self-identification that occurred within a shared discursive and institutional field. In describing the shifting of the novel’s polemical target – through its different re-writings – from Paul (embodying gentile Christianity) to Simon (incarnating dualist gnosticism) to the Nicenes, Pouderon utilized the term glissement106. The image of a smooth doctrinal and polemical shift can be profitably taken past *GR – at whose production Pouderon’s analysis left off – to illuminate also its various reworks, and to qualify the self-conscious conveyance of complex intellectual trajectories on the part of their authors. This notion proves particularly apt to describe, for examples, the Homoiousians’ ability to appreciate and retain some aspects of the subordinationism of the Heterousian interpolator, while conveniently pruning away some others. More in general, this approach may allow us to move away from the search for specific doctrinal explanations of the literary connections highlighted above (that is, the asking of ‘why?’). It may thus become possible to acknowledge that the broad circulation and incessant revision of R testifies to that continuum, ranging «from rabbinic Jew to Christian», postulated by D. Boyarin’s «wave theory of Christian-Jewish history» (i.e., the asking of ‘why not?’). The whole of Judeo-Christianity, to be understood «as a single circulatory system within which discursive elements could move from non-Christian Jews and back again, developing as they moved around the system»107, must have encompassed also the competing varieties of Christianity on whose tangled roads R transited. 101 Cf. B. POUDERON, Aux origines du roman pseudo-clémentin, cit. (n. 9), 197. 102 Cf. A.Y. REED, “Jewish Christianity” after the “Parting of the Ways”, cit. (n. 77), 230. 103 Cf. H. BRAKMANN, Pseudo-Clemens Romanus, homilia 3,72 als petrinisches Konsekrationsgebet der Kopten und der ägyptischen Melchiten, ZAC 10 (2007) 233-251. 104 C. SPUNTARELLI, «In nome della morte di Cristo», cit. (n. 9), 316-317 suggests that the Heteroousian interpolation of R originated from the consonance between the conception of Adam as a ‘true prophet’ typical of the Pseudoclementines and the identification between Adam and the Logos lying behind Eunomius’ linguistic theory. For B. POUDERON, La genèse du Roman clémentin et sa signification théologique, cit. (n. 9), 500 the doctrinal component of the Heterousians’ interest in the Pseudoclementines lay in Peter’s anti-ditheistic polemics, into which these Christians had an easy time reading back their opposition to the perceived ditheism of the Nicenes. 105 Cf. e.g. A.Y. REED, “Jewish Christianity” after the “Parting of the Ways”, cit. (n. 77), 227. Cf. also ibid., 202-203. 106 B. POUDERON, Aux origines du roman pseudo-clémentin, cit. (n. 9), 192. 107 D. BOYARIN, Dying for God. Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism, Stanford 1999, 6 and 9-10. Cf. also ID., Introduction: Judaeo-Christianity Redivivus, JECS 9 (2001) 417-419; ID., Semantic Differences; or, “Judaism”/“Christianity”, in The Ways that Never Parted, ed. A.H. BECKER – A.Y. REED, cit. (n. 77), 65-85; and ID., Rethinking Jewish Christianity: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (to which Is Appended a Correction of My Border Lines), JQR 99 (2009) 7-36.


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The fourth century has long been identified as a decisively formative period, when two centuries of sustained efforts to erect clearer boundaries between Judaism and Christianity finally came to fruition. The Trinitarian controversies, which originated under the aegis of imperial power within the fluid religious context described above, represented at the same time a landmark on the route to the so-called ‘parting of the ways’. The kind of perspective proposed here may allow us to expand the contours of the arena in which the Trinitarian debates are deemed to have unfolded. Doing so will ultimately help us pay closer heed, beyond the loud clangors of this doctrinal strife, to the voices – echolalic, appropriated, and counterfeited – of all those subjects who, at a time of ever-increasing religious institutionalization, found themselves inhabiting spaces of in-betweenness.

Emanuel Fiano Duke University – Durham, NC 27708, U.S.A.

[email protected]

Abstract This article focuses on the so-called ‘Eunomian interpolation’ contained in Pseudoclementine Recognitions (= R III 2-11). A comparative analysis of the Syriac and Latin translations of the lost Greek text will suggest that the Syriac translator (or the author of his Greek Vorlage) tampered with the interpolation, neutralizing its radically subordinationist theological agenda and bringing its contents in line with a broadly Homoiousian perspective. After assessing the ways in which scholarship has dealt with the connections between Heteroousianism (‘Eunomianism’) and ‘Jewish Christianity’ emerging in R III 2-11 and other late ancient texts, this paper will use the rich reception history of this section to suggest that fourth-century Trinitarian debates in the Syrian region are to be set against the discursive and institutional backdrop of a Christian-Jewish continuum.

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