The opening gives us a good insight into the nature of the different
Recensions, even though Lightfoot does not see the need ‘for examination’ of
this passage.
We can see that they are mostly literally identical, albeit with significant
differences in details. By ranging them Long – Ms. Sinaï ar. 443
– Symeon Metaphrastes
– Middle – Short, I am not intending to give a genealogical order, as in
places, we will see, they all rely on older versions, and do, in places,
provide an older text, and are certainly not directly dependent on each other.
And yet, as we will discover, the order Long – Ms. Sinaï ar. 443 – Symeon
Metaphrastes – Middle – Short seems to reflect the principal age of these
texts.
Starting from the Long Recension in comparison
to that of the 10th c. of attested by Symeon Metaphrastes, we notice
that the bold elements (3 x ‘God’, ‘faith and’, ‘and Saviour’, ‘Almighty God’,
‘even the Father’, ‘Lord’) are additional divine epithets and creedal
allusions. In these the Long Recension is richer than the others, although ‘Lord’
also appears in the Arabic, ‘God’ in Metaphrastes and the Middle Recension. The
added ‘and is possessed of the Spirit’ which is part of a longer addition which
is partly also present in the Middle Recension, but without the ‘and is
possessed of the Spirit’, indicates that the Long Recension, as we have it,
seems to be a developed version which represents at least doctrinal
developments of the late fourth century with the emphasis on the Spirit and the
developed creed. Symeon Metaphrastes, the Arabic and Short Recensions may have
here preserved an older text.
When we compare the Recensions, the Long, Arabic,
Symeon Metaphrastes’ and the Middle Recensions have elements in common. They share
the ‘only[-begotten]’, also that the Father ‘willed’ all things, and yet, only the
Long Recension here adds ‘God’, ‘faith and’, ‘Saviour’. On the other hand,
there are also commonalities of the Long, the Middle and Short Recensions over
and against the Arabic and Symeon’s Recension, so the longer passage ‘worthy of
God … presideth over’. In this respect, the Arabic and Symeon’s Recension are very
similar. This similarity begins already in the opening address, where only these
two mentione that Ignatius is ‘the bishop of the holy Church of God in Antioch’.
In this respect, they represent a different tradition from the rest of the Recensions
and because of the literalness need to be based on a common ancestor recension.
Then, however, the Arabic version seems to reflect an older stratum which is less
parallel to the Middle and Long Recensions, as Metaphrastes sides with these two
on ‘his Church which is’.
Why the entire praise of the Church of Rome is
missing in the Arabic and Symeon is not clear, as some elements are also
present in the Short recension. Either already the Short Recension is here an
expanded version, or the Arabic and Symeon’s Vorlage has left the passage consciously out. As it is a praise of
the Roman Church, one could easily imagine that the passage had been skipped in
a Byzantine redaction at a time when Rome was no longer the centre of the
Empire and the epithets may have sounded misleading. Equally, however, one could
assume that here not the Short Recension, but the Arabic-Symeon Recensions preserved
the unexpanded older version. In the salutation we have the phenomenon that the
Lond, Arabic, Symeon’s and the Middle Recensions go together against the text largely
missing in the Short Recension, whereas here the Long Recension seems to be a clear
expansion of the others. In the very end the Arabic and the Short Recensions go
together with their wish for ‘peace’.
When comparing the four versions to the Short
Recension, both the bold of the Long, the Arabic and Symeon’s Recensions, and
the underlined text of the Middle Recension display a similarly doctrinal
tendency that alludes to the creed with the added ‘Jesus Christ, His
only[-begotten] Son … God.’ If one where to think of the short version as of an
abbreviation one would need to answer the question why a Christian scribe took
out the first reference to Jesus Christ in the introduction of a Christian
letter? As the second mention of the Christological formula in the Long, Arabic,
Symeon’s and the Middle Recensions show (‘love of [Jesus Christ], our God’), where
it seems that the Arabic with its ‘love of our God our brother’ sounds the older
tradition with the term ‘brother’ skipped by Symeon and the Middle Recension and
altered by the Long Recension into ‘Saviour’, it seems that doctrinal views led
to changes, alterations, shortenings and broadenings of an existing text. Again,
it is hardly likely that the Short Recension would have taken out the entire Christological
statements of the beginning of this letter.
Compared to all other Recensions, the Middle
Recension has an added elevated and emphatic tendency by turning the straight
forward ‘worthy of credit’ or ‘worthy of prosperity’ into a spiritual ‘worthy
of obtaining her every desire’. It seems that in this passage, the Long
Recension preserved the older tradition, shared with the Short Recension.
Overall, with the exception of the missing
praise of Rome in the Arabic and Symeon’s Recensions which has been touched upon
before and which might be a further development or a kind of contamination between
the Short, Middle and Long Recensions, the Short Recension seems to represent
the oldest text of this preface which does not yet reflect the clear
differentiation between ‘the Father Most High’ and the ‘only[-begotten] Son’,
let alone ‘the Spirit’. On the contrary, there is only mention of ‘the Father
Most High’, of ‘God’ and the Church which ‘is perfected in the law of Christ’,
a Monarchian expression without further binitarian or trinitarian
differentiation which cannot be explained as a later abbreviation.
If the praise of Rome was part of the older text and left out by the Arabic and
Symeon’s Recension, then the simple praise of Rome, ‘worthy of life and
happiness’, contrasted with the ‘worthy of honour, worthy of the highest
happiness’ of the Long/Middle Recensions. These latter than show emphatic
locutions which are signs of a reworking of the Short Recension. We can
conclude from these observations that in this preface to
IgnRom the Short Recension, as preserved in the Syriac tradition, may
give us the oldest text that has come down to us of this letter, unless the praise
of Rome might have been later added, as it is missing in the Arabic and Symeon’s
Recensions.
The textual relations are even more complex, if
we add the Latin translations. Quite clearly, these translations reflect the
Longer, and the Middle Recensions more than the Arabic, Symeon’s or the Short Recensions,
yet they seem to rely on different Vorlagen.
This can be seen with the missing ‘et’ in front of ‘Jesu Christi’ which is present
in the Greek of the Long, Symeon’s and the Middle Recension, but only preserved
in the Latin translation of the Middle Recension. Similarly, the αὐτοῦ in
front of ἐκκλησίᾳ,
present only in the Long and Symeon’s Recension, has not been rendered into
Latin. In the following translation of ἐκκλησίᾳ ἠγαπημένῃ the
Latin of the Long and Symeon’ Recensions (‘ecclesiae sanctificatae’) seem to be
a later development, as they stand against an ‘ecclesiae dilectae’ of the Latin
Middle Recension which translates the Greek present in three Recensions (Long,
Symeon, Middle). Then, we have the case, where the Latin translation of Symeon
goes with the text of the Middle Recension with the missing ‘Dei’ after
‘voluntate’ against the Greek text of Symeon, yet, then, Symeon’s Latin
translation sides twice with the Long recension by translating the Greek πίστιν with
‘fidem’, and καὶ σωτῆρος with ‘et Salvatoris’, not
present in Symeon’s Greek text. Interesting is also the Latin rendering of ἐν τόπῳ
χωρίου by ‘in
loco chori’ in the Latin Middle Recension against ‘in loco regionis’ in the
Long and Symeon’s Recension. Also note the different rendering of the Latin
praise of Rome, where the Latin of Symeon has the passage that is missing in
the Greek, and also the Latin of the Middle Recension is more extensive than
its Greek text. Noticeable is the translation of πνευματοφόρος, only
present in the Long Recension by ‘spiritiferae’ in the Latin of both the Long
and Symeon’s Recensions. The same case we have with the translation of θεοῦ
παντοκράτορος of the Long Recension by ‘Dei omnipotentis’ in
both the Latin Long and Symeon’s Recensions. Also the ending in the three
Recensions is noteworthy. Symeon’s Latin translation follows the Long
Recension, although the Long Recension’s Latin omits to translate the ἀμώμως,
present there, and in this case reflects Symeon’s text against the other recensions.
In conclusion:
1) We are
lacking an editio maior of the Ignatiana which is an urgent desideratum for
any further scholarship on the letters.
2) We
need to take into account all extant witnesses. I have not checked for this repliminary
study the versions of other languages, not gone beyond the three handful of Greek
manuscripts that have been used for the critical text of Symeon’s Recension. But
it has become clear from this exercise, the Arabic Recension as well as that of
Symeon, but then quite independently all the Latin translations are textual witnesses,
as they show both dependency and in places independency and reflect lost
manuscript traditions.
3) The rough
cut of three Recensions is far from reflecting the manuscript evidence. There are
certainly Recensions and traditions, as can be seen, for example, from the proximity
of the Arabic and Symeon’s Recensions, but there are more than three and all Recensions
show signs of cross-contamination.
4) The scholarly
settlement on the Middle Recension as the oldest, authentic text of Ignatius is
more than dubious. If at all, then the Short Recension shows signs of being an older
text, yet even in this case, there are doubts whether the version that we have got
has not also been contaminated by later Recensions.
To test and
deepen the first impression, in the book I will look into another passage of IgnRom,
this time into chapter 3, and the results there confirm the observations here.
