Dan Batovici, «Eriugena’s Greek Variant Readings of the Fourth Gospel.» project, Vol. 26 (2013) 69-86 page 80

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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80 Dan Batovici Jn 1:15 ὁ ὀπίσω μου] ἐρχόμενος ἔμπροσθέν μου [γέγονεν Comm. I. xxiii. [...] Qvi post me ventvrvs est, uel sicut in aliis codici- bus scribitur: Qvi post me venit. Nam quod in graeco scriptum est ΕΡΧΟΜΕΝΟC, et praeteriti temporis participium est et futuri. ‘He who will come after me,’ or, as is written in other codices: ‘who came after me.’ For what in the Greek is written ἐρχόμενος, is both a perfect participle and a future participle. Hom. I. xvi. Et iterum: “Qui post me venit, ante me factus est”. Quod eudentius in graeco legitur: ΕΜΠΡΟCΘΕΝ ΜΟΥ, hoc est coram me, ante conspectum meum factus est. Ac si aperte diceret: Qui in ordine temporum post natiuitaem meam natus est in carne, ante conspectum meum, dum adhuc essem in uisceribus meae matris sterilis, propheti- co uisu uidi illum coram me conceptum et hominem factum in utero uirginis. And again: ‘He who comes after me was made before me.’ The Greek reading is clearer: ἔμπροστθέν μου, that is, he was made before me, before my face. As if he said openly: he who in the order of times was born in the flesh after I was born, him, while I was still in the womb of my sterile mother, I saw, before my eyes in a prophetic vision, conceived in my sight and made man in the womb of the Virgin.35 Comm. I. xxiii. [...]Qvi post me ventvrvs est [...]. Quod enim in graeco scriptum est ΕΜΠΡΟCΘΕΝ ΜΟΥ, proprie interpretatur ‘coram me’, hoc est ante oculos meos. ‘He who comes after me.’ [...] For in the Greek it is written ἔμπροστθέν μου, which means ‘in front of me,’ that is before my eyes. Taken together, in these three passages Eriugena indicates that he knows and explicitly reports the reading ἐρχόμενος ἔμπροσθέν μου for Jn 1:15. Expectedly, he then derives an interpretation starting from the Greek text. This reading has wide support elsewhere, and is the text of NA28. Jn. 1:15 περὶ αὐτοῦ] καὶ κέκραγεν [λέγων· οὗτος ἦν] ὃν εἶπον Comm. I. xxiii. Iohannes testatvr de ipso, uerbo uidelicet, et clamat – uel, sicut in graeco legitur: et clamavit – dicens: Hic erat qvem dixi uel, sicut in graeco habetur, qvem dicebam, quod multo significantius est. John testifies about him, that is about the Word, ‘and cries out’ – or, as the Greek reads: ‘and has cried out’ – saying: ‘This was the one of 35 O’Meara, Eriugena, 170.