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.
Eriugena’s Greek Variant Readings of the Fourth Gospel 83
enough ground as a testimony from Eriugena to the text of John, at least
not for text-critical reasoning.
Jn 3:3 ἐὰν μή τις γεννηθῇ] ἄνωθεν [οὐ δύναται
Comm. III. i [...] Respondit Iesvs et dixit ei: Amen, amen dico tibi, nisi
qvis natvs fverit denvo, non potest videre regnvm dei. [...] Notandum
quod in codicibus graecorum ΑΝΩΘΕΝ legitur, ubi in latinis codici-
bus ‘denuo’ reperitur, ut sit sensus: Nisi quis natus fuerit ΑΝΩΘΕΝ,
hoc est desursum, ut ‘desursum’ dicamus pro ‘denuo’.
‘Jesus answered and said to him: Very truly I tell you, unless they are
born again, no one can see the Kingdom of God.’ [...] One must take
note that, where in Latin codices ‘again’ is found, the Greek codices
read ἄνωθεν, so that the meaning is the following: unless they are
born ἄνωθεν, that is from above, with ‘from above’ instead of ‘again.’
As in other cases, Eriugena’s interpretation plays on the polysemy of
a given Greek word. The Greek reading Eriugena explicitly refers to –
ἄνωθεν – has wide support elsewhere, and is the text of NA28.
Jn 3:12 εἰ τὰ ἐπίγεια] εἶπον [ὑμῖν
Comm. III. iv. [...] Si terrena dixi – uel, sicut in graeco legitur, dicebam
– vobis, et non creditis, qvomodo, si dicam vobis caelestia, credetis?
‘If I have told you’ – or, as reads the Greek, ‘was telling you’ – ‘about
earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I told you
about heavenly things?’
As in the similar case of dicebam in Jn 1:15, this dicebam seems to point
to the same εἶπον, the Latin equivalent being the result of Eriugena’s
idiosyncratic (though consistent) rendering of the second aorist by means
of a Latin imperfect, particularly when ending in –ον. The reading εἶπον
has wide support elsewhere, and is the text of NA28.
Jn 3:13 καὶ οὐδεὶς] ἀναβέβηκεν [εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν
Comm. III. v. Et nemo ascendit in caelvm, nisi qvi de caelo descendit,
filius hominis qvi est in caelo. ‘Ascendit’ ambiguum est cuius tempo-
ris uerbum sit, utrum praeteriti an praesentis. Sed in graeco non est
ambiguum: praeteriti temporis est.
‘And no one ascended to heaven, except he who descended from
heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven.’ It is ambiguous whether as-
cendit is a perfect or a present tense. But the Greek is not ambiguous:
it is perfect tense.