Signs Tertullian is Copying Out and Translating Into Latin a Greek Against Marcion

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Secret Alias
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Signs Tertullian is Copying Out and Translating Into Latin a Greek Against Marcion

Post by Secret Alias »

1. sibynas in Book 4 Chapter 1 = σιβύνη. Isaiah LXX has ζιβύνη
Last edited by Secret Alias on Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Stuart
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Re: Signs Tertullian is Copying Out and Translating Into Latin a Greek Against Marcion

Post by Stuart »

Secret Alias wrote: Tue Nov 28, 2017 10:49 pm sibynas in Book 4 Chapter 1 = σιβύνη. Isaiah LXX has ζιβύνη
This is not news (except to you). Scholarship has long thought Tertullian translated from Greek to Latin. Like almost all Christians he used the LXX.

Latinisms from translating Greek are a feature in Tertullian. It is not a sign that Irenaeus wrote AM in Greek a decade earlier. I frankly think we date Irenaeus two or three decades early based on a few lines from a later editor, and some of the material in his name is post-Decian. But you ignore that and go on and on and on.

This must be the 50th or even 100th thread you have started on this topic, and still nobody is convinced. :tombstone:
“’That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.” - Jonathan Swift
Secret Alias
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Re: Signs Tertullian is Copying Out and Translating Into Latin a Greek Against Marcion

Post by Secret Alias »

Yeah whatever Marcion fanboy. If you were capable of objectivity regarding the little golem you and numerous other Protestant scholars have created is that sibynas is not simply a transliteration of the LXX. It represents something else entirely - an attempt to explain what must have been an obscure terminology. Look at Adversus Marcionem III

Et iudicabit inter nationes, de errore scilicet earum: et revincet populum amplum, ipsorum inprimis Iudaeorum et proselytorum: et concident machaeras suas in aratra et sibynas in falces, id est animorum nocentium et linguarum infestarum et omnis malitiae atque blasphemiae ingenia convertent in studia modestiae et pacis: et non accipiet gens super gentem machaeram, utique discordiae: et non discent amplius bellare, id est inimicitias perficere, ut et hic discas Christum non bellipotentem, sed paciferum repromissum.

"And these shall rebuke a large nation," that of the Jews themselves and their proselytes. "And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; " in other words, they shall change into pursuits of moderation and peace the dispositions of injurious minds, and hostile tongues, and all kinds of evil, and blasphemy.

Tertullian has not simply transcribed the LXX for the benefit of his audience but used a translation which has this new term embedded in it. In other words, what we see in Book 1 is an attempt to explain a Greek term that he and his audience didn't necessarily understand.

I know Marcion is a sacred cow for you. I do hope you find yourself a real human to share all that intimacy you've stored up.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Signs Tertullian is Copying Out and Translating Into Latin a Greek Against Marcion

Post by Secret Alias »

It is also interesting to look at Irenaeus's use of this passage and compare it to Tertullian. From Book 4 of AH:
If any one, however, advocating the cause of the Jews, do maintain that this new covenant consisted in the rearing of that temple which was built under Zerubbabel after the emigration to Babylon, and in the departure of the people from thence after the lapse of seventy years, let him know that the temple constructed of stones was indeed then rebuilt (for as yet that law was observed which had been made upon tables of stone), yet no new covenant was given, but they used the Mosaic law until the coming of the Lord; but from the Lord's advent, the new covenant which brings back peace, and the law which gives life, has gone forth over the whole earth, as the prophets said: "For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem; and He shall rebuke many people; and they shall break down their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and they shall no longer learn to fight [et concident gladios suos in aratra, et lanceas suas in falces, et jam non discent pugnare]." If therefore another law and word, going forth from Jerusalem, brought in such a [reign of] peace among the Gentiles which received it (the word), and convinced, through them, many a nation of its folly, then [only] it appears that the prophets spake of some other person. But if the law of liberty, that is, the word of God, preached by the apostles (who went forth from Jerusalem) throughout all the earth, caused such a change in the state of things, that these [nations] did form the swords and war-lances into ploughshares, and changed them into pruning-hooks for reaping the corn, [that is], into instruments used for peaceful purposes, and that they are now unaccustomed to fighting, but when smitten, offer also the other cheek, then the prophets have not spoken these things of any other person, but of Him who effected them. This person is our Lord, and in Him is that declaration borne out; since it is He Himself who has made the plough, and introduced the pruning-hook, that is, the first semination of man, which was the creation exhibited in Adam, and the gathering in of the produce in the last times by the Word; and, for this reason, since He joined the beginning to the end, and is the Lord of both, He has finally displayed the plough, in that the wood has been joined on to the iron, and i has thus cleansed His land because the Word, having been firmly united to flesh, and in its mechanism fixed with pins, has reclaimed the savage earth. In the beginning, He figured forth the pruning-hook by means of Abel, pointing out that there should be a gathering in of a righteous race of men. He says, "For behold how the just man perishes, and no man considers it; and righteous men are taken away, and no man layeth it to heart." These things were acted beforehand in Abel, were also previously declared by the prophets, but were accomplished in the Lord's person; and the same [is still true] with regard to us, the body following the example of the Head.

5. Such are the arguments proper [to be used] in opposition to those who maintain that the prophets [were inspired] by a different God, and that our Lord [came] from another Father, if perchance [these heretics] may at length desist from such extreme folly. This is my earnest object in adducing these Scriptural proofs, that confuting them, as far as in me lies, by these very passages, I may restrain them from such great blasphemy, and from insanely fabricating a multitude of gods. [4.35]
It is interesting that Irenaeus's citation - even in its present translated state - is not a translation of the LXX:
καὶ κρινεῖ ἀνὰ μέσον τῶν ἐθνῶν καὶ ἐλέγξει λαὸν πολύν καὶ συγκόψουσιν τὰς μαχαίρας αὐτῶν εἰς ἄροτρα καὶ τὰς ζιβύνας αὐτῶν εἰς δρέπανα καὶ οὐ λήμψεται ἔτι ἔθνος ἐπ᾽ ἔθνος μάχαιραν καὶ οὐ μὴ μάθωσιν ἔτι πολεμεῖν

And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into sickles: and nation shall not take up sword against nation, neither shall they learn to war any more.
Compare Irenaeus:
and they shall break down their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and they shall no longer learn to fight

et concident gladios suos in aratra, et lanceas suas in falces, et jam non discent pugnare
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Signs Tertullian is Copying Out and Translating Into Latin a Greek Against Marcion

Post by Secret Alias »

And the underlying context of using Isaiah 2:4 as an argument against Marcion's claim of the newness of the law is clearly borrowed by Tertullian from Irenaeus. When Tertullian begins book 4 with:
So then I do admit that there was a different course followed in the old dispensation under the Creator, from that in the new dispensation under Christ. I do not deny a difference in records of things spoken, in precepts for good behaviour, and in rules of law, provided that all these differences have reference to one and the same God, that God by whom it is acknowledged that they were ordained and also foretold. Long ago did Isaiah proclaim that the law will go forth from Sion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem— another law, he means, and another word. In fact, he says, he shall judge among the gentiles, and shall convict many people,a meaning not of the one nation of the Jews, but of the gentiles who by the new law of the gospel and the new word of the apostles are being judged and convicted in their own sight in respect of their ancient error, as soon as they have believed, and thereupon beat their swords into ploughshares, and their sibynae (which is a sort of hunting-spear) into pruning-hooks—that is, they are converting their formerly fierce and savage minds into honest thoughts productive of a good result.
This is almost word for word appropriate from what appears now in Book 4 of AH:
"For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem; and He shall rebuke many people; and they shall break down their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and they shall no longer learn to fight [et concident gladios suos in aratra, et lanceas suas in falces, et jam non discent pugnare]." If therefore another law and word, going forth from Jerusalem, brought in such a [reign of] peace among the Gentiles which received it (the word), and convinced, through them, many a nation of its folly, then [only] it appears that the prophets spake of some other person. But if the law of liberty, that is, the word of God, preached by the apostles (who went forth from Jerusalem) throughout all the earth, caused such a change in the state of things, that these [nations] did form the swords and war-lances into ploughshares, and changed them into pruning-hooks for reaping the corn, [that is], into instruments used for peaceful purposes, and that they are now unaccustomed to fighting, but when smitten, offer also the other cheek, then the prophets have not spoken these things of any other person, but of Him who effected them ... Such are the arguments proper [to be used] in opposition to those who maintain that the prophets [were inspired] by a different God, and that our Lord [came] from another Father, if perchance [these heretics] may at length desist from such extreme folly. This is my earnest object in adducing these Scriptural proofs, that confuting them, as far as in me lies, by these very passages, I may restrain them from such great blasphemy, and from insanely fabricating a multitude of gods.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Signs Tertullian is Copying Out and Translating Into Latin a Greek Against Marcion

Post by Secret Alias »

And it is worth noting that the parallel passage in Against the Jews (there are almost inevitably parallels between Against Marcion III and Against the Jews because they come from a Greek ancestor) has 'lances' in Latin:
Denique ex hac domo dei Iacob etiam legem novam processuram sequentibus verbis adnuntiat Esaias dicens: Ex Sion enim exiet lex et verbum domini ex Hierusalem, et iudicabit inter gentes, id est inter nos qui ex gentibus sumus vocati; et concident, inquit, gladios suos in aratra et lanceas suas in falces, et non accipiet gens super gentem gladium, et iam non discent pugnare. [10] Qui igitur intelleguntur alii quam nos qui in nova lege edocti ista observamus obliterata veteri lege cuius abolitionem futuram actus ipse demonstrat ? Nam et vetus lex ultione gladii se vindicabat et oculum pro oculo eruebat et vindicta iniuriam retribuebat, nova autem lex clementiam designabat et pristinam ferocitatem gladiorum et lancearum ad tranquillitatem convertebat et belli pristinam in aemulos et hostes executionem in pacificos actus arandae et colendae terrae reformabat.

In short, the coming procession of a new law out of this "house of the God of Jacob" Isaiah in the ensuing words announces, saying, "For from Zion shall go out a law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem, and shall judge among the nations,"--that is, among us, who have been called out of the nations,--"and they shall join to beat their glaives into ploughs, and their lances into sickles; and nations shall not take up glaive against nation, and they shall no more learn to fight."51 [10] Who else, therefore, are understood but we, who, fully taught by the new law, observe these practices,--the old law being obliterated, the coming of whose abolition the action itself52 demonstrates? For the wont of the old law was to avenge itself by the vengeance of the glaive, and to pluck out "eye for eye," and to inflict retaliatory revenge for injury.53 But the new law's wont was to point to clemency, and to convert to tranquillity the pristine ferocity of "glaives" and "lances," and to remodel the pristine execution of "war" upon the rivals and foes of the law into the pacific actions of "ploughing" and "tilling" the land.54 [11] Therefore as we have shown above that the coming cessation of the old law and of the carnal circumcision was declared, so, too, the observance of the new law and the spiritual circumcision has shone out into the voluntary obediences55 of peace. For "a people," he says, "whom I knew not hath served me; in obedience of the ear it hath obeyed me."56 Prophets made the announcement.
It is fascinating to see that Tertullian had the ancestor of this text before him - obviously written by another Greek writer now - and actually argues against the original interpretation of the very author he is using in Against Marcion III. Look again at what is written there:
In these very words Isaiah says: "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord," that is, God's eminence, "and the house of God," that is, Christ, the Catholic temple of God, in which God is worshipped, "shall be established upon the mountains," over all the eminences of virtues and powers; "and all nations shall come unto it; and many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us His way, and we will walk in it: for out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem."[Isaiah 2.3,4] The gospel will be this "way," of the new law and the new word in Christ, no longer in Moses. "And He shall judge among the nations," even concerning their error. "And these shall rebuke a large nation," that of the Jews themselves and their proselytes. "And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their sibynas into pruning-hooks; " in other words, they shall change into pursuits of moderation and peace the dispositions of injurious minds, and hostile tongues, and all kinds of evil, and blasphemy. "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,"shall not stir up discord. "Neither shall they learn war any more,"306 that is, the provocation of hostilities; so that you here learn that Christ is promised not as powerful in war, but pursuing peace. [4] Now you must deny either that these things were predicted, although they are plainly seen, or that they have been accomplished, although you read of them; else, if you cannot deny either one fact or the other, they must have been accomplished in Him of whom they were predicted. For look at the entire course of His call up to the present time from its beginning, how it is addressed to the nations (Gentiles) who are in these last days approaching to God the Creator, and not to proselytes, whose election307 was rather an event of the earliest days. Verily the apostles have annulled308 that belief of yours.
So let's see what is really going on here:

1. as always Against Marcion 3.21 and Against the Jews 3.9 go back to some common ancestor
2. Against Marcion 3.21 and Against the Jews 3.9 (not surprisingly) both share a lost original exegesis of Isaiah 2.2 - 4
3. Against Marcion 3.21 and Against the Jews do not simply copy the original; Against the Jews 3.9 argues that Isaiah 2.2 - 4 means the gospel is the twilight of the authority of Moses's law while Against Marcion 3.21 (as is consistent throughout Against Marcion) argues against this interpretation as the epitome of Marcionite heresy
4. Against Marcion 3.21 and Against Marcion 4.1 share the unusual reading sibynas pertaining to Isaiah 2.2 - 4 and interestingly is a more explicit and systematic exposition of the 'anti-Marcionite' position hinted at in Against Marcion 3.21 Nevertheless oddly, when read alongside the parallel passage in Against the Jews 3.9 now reads like an exaggerated attack against the original passage behind both Against the Jews and Against Marcion 3.21

What this all seems to indicate is a strange situation I've made reference to many times in this forum (you are correct about that). However I think I now have the 'smoking gun' proving my original contention that - strangely:

A. Tertullian's Latin writing is really a copying out of an original second century Patristic text written in Greek (there are many other signs in Against Marcion of this).
B. That the original author of this Greek text that Tertullian employed was Irenaeus
C. Irenaeus's anti-Marcionite Greek text had sibynas and was not a simple translation of the LXX which had zibynas and a 'fuller' Greek translation of the original Hebrew (Irenaeus's citation is truncated).

What is equally apparent is that this situation helps solve the difficulty of the verbatim parallels between large sections of Against Marcion 3 and Against the Jews. Tertullian was not the editor of the common ancestor. Tertullian's creativity didn't lead to the schizophrenic situation where Against Marcion and Against the Jews and their use of Isaiah 2:2 - 4 actually argue against one another. Rather Tertullian must have commissioned the translation or received the re-purposed texts (Against Marcion and Against the Jews) in Greek and translated these already altered texts in Latin for his private library. It is also possible that he received the Latin texts already translated from the Greek - either both texts or one in Greek and one in Latin etc. But the point is that Against Marcion's use of Isaiah 2:2 - 4 to argue against Against the Jews interpretation of Isaiah 2:2 - 4 even thought the two go back to the same source means that Tertullian could not have written both texts.

Against Marcion was undoubtedly written by Irenaeus in Greek and 'Marcion' represents a more complex phenomenon than previously acknowledged. 'Marcion' - viz. the name associated with the unrestrained belief that the end of the temple meant the end of Judaism - was actually a theological position likely associated with Justin Martyr. Irenaeus seems to sweep up the entire idea of 'the beginning of the gospel means the end of the law' with the heresy of Marcion when in fact it was a position likely held by all Christians in the period before 150 CE.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Signs Tertullian is Copying Out and Translating Into Latin a Greek Against Marcion

Post by Secret Alias »

And you know you are not dealing with the LXX in Against the Jews because of this nugget placed in the middle of the argument:

Behold, says Isaiah, the proselytes shall come unto me through You,

This is not in any known edition of Isaiah. So the sibynas is peculiar; so too the "Behold the proselytes shall come unto me through You." Bottom line: strange text of Isaiah.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Signs Tertullian is Copying Out and Translating Into Latin a Greek Against Marcion

Post by Secret Alias »

2. συνταλαίπωρον and συμμισούμενον in Adv Marc 4.9

dvantage from the diversity which he supposes to exist between the Law and the Gospel, inasmuch as even this was ordained by the Creator, and indeed predicted in the promise of the new Law, and the new Word, and the new Testament. Since, however, he quotes with special care, as a proof in his domain, a certain companion in misery (συνταλαίπωρον), and associate in hatred (συμμισούμενον), with himself, for the cure of leprosy, Luke 5:12-14 I shall not be sorry to meet him, and before anything else to point out to him the force of the law figuratively interpreted, which, in this example of a leper (who was not to be touched, but was rather to be removed from all intercourse with others), prohibited any communication with a person who was defiled with sins, with whom the apostle also forbids us even to eat food, 1 Corinthians 5:11 forasmuch as the taint of sins would be communicated as if contagious, wherever a man should mix himself with the sinner.

Harnack's argument - Die Worte (s. o.) συνταλαιπωρος und συμμισουμενον sind Marcions Worte - implies the words are Marcion's. But I am not so sure.

Lorenz http://www.tyndalehouse.com/Bulletin/67 ... ENZ-34.pdf provides evidence that the understanding was polemical not textual on the Marcionites part. It is a fascinating question wrapped up in the strange and conflicting understanding that Jesus was 'angry' or 'compassionate' with the leper. I think it could prove once and for all that the Marcionite textual challenge was rooted in the gospel of Mark. But we're a long way away from that.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Signs Tertullian is Copying Out and Translating Into Latin a Greek Against Marcion

Post by Secret Alias »

I am having such a good day. I think this just about clinches my argument:
Because Tertullian opens the work [On the Veiling] by remarking that the treatise is a Latin version of a Greek original, we could assume that the first Greek version was a letter addressed to the virgins, who either belonged to North African families wealthy enough to educate their daughters in Greek or to Greek families who immigrated to North Africa. If the latter is the case, these women may have removed their veils in church because this was the custom oftheir previous community. A Greek background would also explain why Tertullian takes pains to debate certain Greek words in scripture and, as Geoffrey Dunn points out, why Tertullian sought to find examples of Greek communities who advised their virgins to remain veiled in church. https://books.google.com/books?id=4yKpA ... 22&f=false
I'd say that clinches at least one half of my argument! Now let's look at the actual passage that she and Dunn have in mind. It is here at the beginning:
Having already undergone the trouble peculiar to my opinion, I will show in Latin also that it behoves our virgins to be veiled from the time that they have passed the turning-point of their age: that this observance is exacted by truth, on which no one can impose prescription----no space of times, no influence of persons, no privilege of regions.

Proprium iam negotium passus meae opinionis Latine quoque ostendam virgines nostras velari oportere, ex quo transitum aetatis suae fecerint; hoc exigere veritatem, cui nemo praescribere potest, non spatium temporum, non patrocinia personarum, non privilegium regionum
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Signs Tertullian is Copying Out and Translating Into Latin a Greek Against Marcion

Post by Secret Alias »

From Dunn
He composed his treatises not only in Latin but also in Greek (On Baptism 15.2; On the Military Crown 6.3; On the Veiling of Virgins 1.1) [p.5].
On Baptism: "It is no duty of mine to take cognizance in them of a precept enjoined upon me: they have not the same God as we have, nor have they the one, that is the same, Christ: consequently they have not the one, because they have not the same, baptism. As they have it not in proper form, there is no doubt that they have it not at all, and there is no possibility of enumerating a thing which is not in any one's possession. Also they cannot have it given them, since they have it not <to give>. But I have already treated of this more fully in the Greek. So then, we enter into the bath once."

On the Military Crown "whence also the Apostle saith that it was made subject to vanity, not willingly 61, being subverted first through vain |169 uses, and then through such as were vile, and unrighteous, and ungodly? It is thus that, as touching the pleasures of the shows, the creation hath been dishonoured by those, who by nature indeed know that all the things, wherewith the shows are furnished, are of God, but lack knowledge to understand this also, that all these things have been changed by the Devil 62. But on this subject, I have, for the sake of our play-lovers, written fully in Greek also."
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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