the_cave

The Vilnius, Archival, and Volokolam manuscripts of the Slavonic Testimonium (slTF) apparently include Luke 23:1-15, inserted into the Testimonium itself. (The Volokolam manuscript adds Malalas X. 12.1-13.9.)

Luke 23:6-12 is one of only two passages in the Lukan PN which are uniquely Lukan. (The other is the “Two Swords” saying in the Gethsemane section.)

But how did the Slavonic author happen to pick out one of two passages in Luke's PN (and one of only a small handful in the three synoptic PNs) which happens to contain unique material?

Was it dumb luck?

Note some oddities of this passage:

--it is the only version in which Pilate releases Jesus, sending him to Herod, only to receive him back.

--It is the only version which mentions that Herod hoped to see Jesus perform a miracle (Lk 23:8), immediately after his release by Pilate.

--It is the only version which contains the extended pronouncement of innocence by Pilate (Lk 23:14-15).

Now note how each of these oddities finds an echo in the slTF:

--In the slTF, Jesus is arrested twice, and released the first time by Pilate

--In the slTF, after Jesus is released the first time, Jesus returned "to his usual places and performed his usual deeds".

--In the slTF, there is an extended exoneration of Jesus: Pilate "after inquiring about him understood that he was a doer of good, not of evil, not a rebel nor one desirous of kingship; and he released him."

This text of Luke cannot have been included at the time of the composition of the slTF surrounding it. Otherwise the original author of the contents of the slTF would have first had Pilate examine Jesus and then explain Jesus' innocence, and then immediately narrate these very same events a second time.

Furthermore, why would an original author suddenly revert to a direct gospel quotation, after narrating gospel events in a much more abbreviated fashion? Especially among so many incorrect details (which I've enumerated elsewhere). If the original author of the contents of the slTF were reading directly from Luke, it seems impossible that he would have gotten the chronology of the gospels so wrong. (The Slavonic passages on John are also quite different from those found in the gospels.)

The Lukan quotation is much more easily explained as an insertion into an already-existing text—a second author, trying with only clumsy and limited success to augment what was already there. But it is present in the slTF. In which case...it must have been added by the Slavonic scribe...to a version which did not contain it. (As an aside, its presence in the Volokolam manuscript must mean that the Volokolam manuscript is one of the earliest manuscripts in the "separate" tradition of the Slavonic Josephus).

Granted that it's possible the Lukan passage was added at a later time by a different Slavonic copyist. But this is sheer conjecture; there is no manuscript evidence for it, nor any external reason why this need be true.

Meaning, the Slavonic scribe did not compose the slTF himself. He was working from an earlier manuscript that the slTF was already a part of. Scholars have shown the likelihood that the Slavonic Josephus is based off a Greek original. And if the Slavonic manuscript was composed near Constantinople around 1000CE, the text it was translated from almost certainly was in Greek.

Meaning the contents of the slTF were originally composed in Greek. And that the Slavonic scribe had this Greek version before him as he composed the Slavonic translation.


Let's go back now to Luke 23:1-15. The Slavonic author must have added it as he translated a Greek version of the Testimonium (presumably found in a version of War he had). Why did he add it?

It seems to me that he must have come across the confusing chronology of what we can now call the "pseudo-Testimonium Flavianum" (psTF). He cast about for a gospel passage from the PN that could possibly explain it, and came across Luke 23:1-15. He started at the beginning of the chapter, quoting the pronouncement of Pilate as a way of explaining the text of the psTF, and then returned to the text of War.

We now see that it can’t be the case that the Slavonic scribe copied in the Testimonium from the version found in Antiquities (or from any other version of the traditional TF in any other author). Because…he then would have had no reason to add the passage from Luke 23:1-15. The presence of the Lukan passage is totally arbitrary and superfluous, unless the scribe already found the psTF in the version of War he was using.


But now we must ask...how is it possible that the scribe could find a passage like this at all? One which bears the faint echoes of the psTF itself? And why does this passage just so happen to contain the only uniquely Lukan material found in the PN, besides the "Two Swords" saying? Presumably the scribe did not go hunting for uniquely Lukan language in the PN…but he just so happened to find it, and it just so happened to echo the non-canonical, psTF that he was reading. Could all of this really be a coincidence?

Clivedurdle

I thought it was rare for scribes to be able to read. One day a gust of wind blows through the scriptorium and messes up the papers, or someone is working on two documents at the same time and gets lost.

I wonder how many insertions might be accidental - if it can go wrong...

Doug Shaver

I've never heard that, and it seems improbable. A lot of what scribes did for a living involved writing from dictation, and you can't do that if you can't read.

Clivedurdle

Source for that is Umberto Eco Name of the Rose. I thought it was accepted - think about division of labour - you only need someone who can copy. Of course some could read and some would learn by immersion. Others would be trained to do dictation.

Clivedurdle

http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture19b.html

Also directly related to Essene discussion about this human tendency to go aesthetic.

This article notes the high intellectual and social calibre of monks - including high levels of literacy and relates it to the Word. Decorating and copying books are integral to discovering the word.

But as Eco brilliantly describes, all communities need servants and others to make it all work. All I am saying is that lowly scribes in the scriptorium doing menial tasks is obvious - in Nepal, iodine deficiency is a major cause of cretinism - the severely learning disabled people are parts of the society - the water carriers. The medieval world is best defined by the lame, the crippled, the ugly, the mad and the thick. Monasteries were key social institutions - you can guarantee they employed people where they could. Autistic savants are not a new phenomenon - anyone with any skills would have been used.

Eco's descriptions of the chaos of the library are brilliant. The medieval world was not as neat and tidy as now - we are neat and tidy only in specific places like Switzerland!

the_cave

When I say "scribe", I just mean the person who wrote the text. I imagine this was a Byzantine monk of some sort, but that is just an idea.

Doug Shaver

If you have one copy of a book or other document, and all you want is one more copy of the same document, then yeah, that would work.

But if you want 10 copies, it would be a lot more efficient to get 10 literate people, assemble them into a room (aka scriptorium), and have one person read the text to them while they wrote down what they heard.

I have read in several sources that that's how it was often done in medieval times.

Roger Pearse

The Slavonic "Josephus" is nothing of the kind. It is an original Old Slavonic composition entitled "The three captures of Jerusalem." Part 3 of that work is based heavily on Josephus' "Jewish War", but also incorporates material from the bible and Malalas; in short whatever material the author had. The third part circulates separately in the manuscript tradition.

There is no need to suppose that the TF that appears in it has any relation to the TF in any Greek text. Editing in medieval Arabic historical texts is fairly commonplace; I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the same is true in Old Slavonic, although I know little about that.

All this can be found in the preface to N. Meshcherskii's edition of the Old Slavonic Josephus.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

the_cave

How does this contrast with anything I have said? Indeed, all my facts are taken directly from Meshcherskii's preface.

Indeed there is not--in any extant Greek text, that is. I have presented evidence suggesting (strongly, IMO) that there must nevertheless have been a Greek basis for the Slavonic TF. That Greek basis is now lost to us.

andrewcriddle

IIUC Roger's point is that the Old Slavonic author used his Greek sources with considerable freedom and that it is hence risky to attribute unique features of the Old Slavonic to an earlier Greek text.

Andrew Criddle