Dan Batovici, «Eriugena’s Greek Variant Readings of the Fourth Gospel.» index, Vol. 26 (2013) 69-86 page 79

Dan Batovici, «Eriugena’s Greek Variant Readings of the Fourth Gospel.», Vol. 26 (2013) 69-86

In a 1912 note of less than two pages, E. Nestle presented a number of instances where Eriugena mentions several readings of the Greek text of the Gospel of John which did not survive in our manuscripts and which where not mentioned by Souter or Tischendorf. He stressed that such an example ‘shews that even so late an author deserves the attention of an editor of the Greek New Testament’ (596), before asking where these would fit in the manuscript tradition of John. This article will follow Nestle’s suggestion and re-examine the variant readings offered by Eriugena – all explicit quotations – in light of the post-1912 developments in textual scholarship on both the Greek text of John and on Eriugena’s works devoted to the Fourth Gospel.

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Eriugena’s Greek Variant Readings of the Fourth Gospel 79 Codex Fossatensis (nisi ei fuerit datum de super), and the Latin text of Codex Bezae (nisi illi datum fuerit desuper). All in all, Eriugena should at least join 13, 69 and 124 in supporting the ἄνωθεν interpolation. The rest of explicit Greek readings offered by Eriugena confirm the text of NA28. Jn 1:3 καὶ] χωρὶς αὐτοῦ [ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν Hom. viii. [...] Et sine ipso factum est nihil [...] Et hoc facilius in graeco datur intelligi. Vbi enim latini ponunt ‘sine ipso’, ibi graeci ΧΩΡΙC ΑΥΤΟΥ, hoc est extra ipsum. Similiter et ipse dominus suis discipulis dicit: “Extra me nihil potestis facere”. Qui pe uos, inquit, extra me fieri non potuistis, quid extra me facere potestis? Nam et ibi non ΑΝΕΥ, sed ΧΩΡΙC, hoc est non ‘sine’, sed ‘extra’ graeci scribunt. Facilius autem propterea dixi quia, dum quis audit ‘sine ipso’, potest putare ‘sine ipsius consilio uel adiutorio’ ac, per hoc, non totum, non omnia illi distribuit; audiens uero ‘extra’, nihil omnino relinquit quod in ipso et per ipsum factum non sit. [...] “And without him nothing was made.” [...] This is easier to unders- tand from the Greek. Where the Latins say, sine ipso [‘without him’], there the Greeks say χωρὶς αὐτοῦ [‘outside of him’]. Likewise the Lord himself says to his disciples: ‘Outside of me you can do nothing’. You who could not be made through yourselves outside of me, what can you do outside of me? For here too the Greeks write not ἄνευ, but χωρίς, that is, not sine [‘without’], but extra [‘outside of’]. I said, howe- ver, that it was easier to understand the Greek precisely because, when one hears ‘without him,’ one can understand ‘without his counsel and help,’ and on this account fail to attribute everything, all things, to the Word. But when one hears ‘outside of,’ one leaves nothing at all that is not made in him and through him.33 Both Jeauneau and Cristiani take note, following an ironic remark of Erasmus, that Eriugena’s philological skills are not at their finest when he proposes extra instead of sine as an improved rendition of χωρίς in the place of sine (for which the better rendition would have been absque),34 and builds an interpretation on this; yet his blunder has no bearing on the nature of the reading he is reporting, which can safely be taken as such. This reading has wide support elsewhere, and is the text of NA28. 33 O’Meara, Eriugena, 164. 34 Cristiani, Omelia, 107.