oleg wrote:Ben C. Smith wrote:And we have papyrus Oxyrhynchus 405, a fragment of the Greek text of Against Heresies, dated to about 200, only about 20 years after the purported composition of the work.
Andreas Schmidt: Der mogliche Text von P. Oxy. III 405, Z. 39-45 (The Possible Text of P. Oxy. III 405. 39-45) published in 1991, New Testament Studies
"variant of Matthew 1:22-25" i.e. not text written by Irenaeus. Do we know why it is thought by some that the text of Oxyrhynchus 405 contains an extract of Matthew 3:16?
Hi, oleg. To answer your question, let me lay out the various fragments of papyrus Oxyrhynchus 405 as found in volume 3 of Grenfell & Hunt.
- Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 405.png (86.16 KiB) Viewed 8110 times
Notice that there are 6 fragments presented (a-f), and that the line numeration runs across all 6 of them. (Grenfell and Hunt actually say that there are 7 fragments, but I have only ever seen the six; I am assuming that either two of them were fitted together like puzzle pieces before publication and assigned the same letter or one of the fragments contained no writing on it.)
I do not currently have access to the article by Andreas Schmidt, but I can already see in the abstract that he is dealing with lines 39-45 on fragment d, claiming that it represents Matthew 1.22-25 (and I can already see the Greek word for "virgin/maiden" there, even without analyzing the fragment very closely).
The extract from Matthew 3.16-17, on the other hand, comes from lines 15-22 of fragment a, which the abstract for that article does not mention. This quotation is both preceded (line 14 = line 56; see below) and followed (lines 23-27) by material which pretty clearly identifies the fragment as a bit of
Against Heresies 3.9.3, which quotes Matthew 3.16 with the same "you are my beloved son" variant (instead of "this is my beloved son") that we find in the fragment.
Is it not the tradition to regard this as text of Irenaeus, based upon J.A. Robinson's identification? Was Robinson correct? Was he working with a Greek translation of the (? sixth century?) Latin copy of Against Heresies?
Robinson may have simply been working with the Latin translation itself, back translating into Greek himself. I do not think there was a known Greek quotation of this part of
Against Heresies at that time.
Is it possible that the Latin translation of Irenaeus, that we have today, differs from the Greek version used by Eusebius?
Yes, I think it is fairly certain that there are differences between the Latin translation and the Greek text.
Was Eusebius working with a Greek replica of the original text, or a Greek translation of the Latin translation of the Greek original?
On what basis would we assume that the Greek text of Ireneaeus had been lost by that time, with only the Latin translation to make up for it?
At any rate, we now have the Greek text for
Against Heresies 3.9.3, anyway, in the form of a quotation from a medieval florilegium of century XIII. This quotation confirms the Matthean variant "you are my beloved son" in the Greek, whereas the Latin has "this is my beloved son" (Greek text from Marcel Richard and Bertrand Hemmerdinger,
Trois Nouveaux Fragments Grecs de l’Adversus Haereses de Saint Irénée, on pages 252-255 of
Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 53.3, 1962, quoting from the
Florilegium Achridense, century XIII, page 145; the introductory line is from this same text):
Εἰρηναίου ἐπισκόπου Λογδώνου ἐκ τοῦ κατὰ αἱρέσεως βιβλίου· | - | Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, from the book against heresy: |
«Ἔτι φησὶν ἐπὶ τοῦ βαπτίσματος ὁ Ματθαῖος· Ἀνεῴχθησαν αὐτῷ οἱ οὐρανοί, καὶ εἶδε πνεῦμα θεοῦ καταβαῖνον ὡσεὶ περιστεράν καὶ ἐρχόμενον εἰς αὐτόν· καὶ ἰδοὺ, φωνὴ ἐξ οὐρανοῦ λέγουσα· Σὺ εἶ ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητὸς, ἐν ᾧ εὐδόκησα. οὐ γὰρ τότε κατῆλθεν ὁ Χριστὸς εἰς τὸν Ἰησοῦν, οὐδὲ ἄλλος μὲν ὁ Χριστὸς, ἄλλος δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, ἀλλ' ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ, ὁ σωτὴρ πάντων καὶ κυριεύων οὐρανοῦ και γῆς, οὗτός ἐστιν Ἰησοῦς καθὼς προεδιδάξαμεν, προσλαβόμενος σάρκα καὶ χρισθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς τῷ πνεύματι, Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς ἐγίνετο, καθὼς Ἠσαΐας φησίν.» | Adhuc ait in baptismate Matthaeus: Aperti sunt [ei] coeli, et vidit spiritum dei quasi columbam venientem super eum. et ecce, vox de coelo, dicens: Hic est filius meus dilectus, in quo mihi bene complacui. non enim Christus tunc descendit in Iesum, neque alius quidem Christus, alius vero Iesus, sed verbum dei, qui est salvator omnium et dominator coeli et terrae, qui est Iesus, quemadmodum ante ostendimus, qui et adsumtsit carnem et unctus est a patre spiritu, Iesus Christus factus est, sicut et Esaias ait. | "Still Matthew says on the baptism: 'The heavens were opened up, and he saw the spirit of God descending just as a dove and coming into him. And behold, a voice from heaven saying: "You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased."' For Christ did not at that time descend into Jesus, nor was Christ one person and Jesus another, but rather the word of God, which is savior of all and lord of heaven and earth, who is Jesus, just as we have taught before, who took on flesh and was christened by the father in the spirit, became Christ Jesus, as Isaiah says." |
Grenfell and Hunt, in their original publication of papyrus Oxyrhynchus 405, speak only of the extract coming from Matthew 3.16-17; they say nothing of Irenaeus; apparently that identification had yet to happen. But identifying the text as a Matthean quotation found in
Against Heresies actually enables one to see that fragments a and f belong together.
Once one sees that line 14 of fragment a and line 56 of fragment f are actually the same line split into pieces, the phrase μὴ ζητούσιν comes into view, which would correspond to the last words of
Against Heresies 3.9.2, right before the quotation in the florilegium above and therefore extant only in Latin:
non quaerebant eum.
Ben.