Roger Pearse

<hard-sell>QuickLatin is your friend...</hard-sell> ='carried'.

There is no certainty of punctuation (or word division) in antique Latin texts. The Romans did experiment with punctuation but had abandoned it by this period under Greek influence.

Yes we should expect one, given that Marcion hereticus is nominative and so indicates that some kind of new clause or sentence is starting up (Papias being the previous nominative).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman

Hi hatsoff,

Are you aware of the chronology estimate for
the anti-Marcionite prologues ? They are generally
thought to have been written in the fourth CE.

They are thus not generally associated with issues
of "early christianity" conjectured in earlier centuries.

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Ben C Smith

That is correct. The prologues are not attested that early. Their frequent dating to century II is based on internal considerations and parallels to other literature from century II.

For my money, they are probably all late except possibly that of Luke, which may be earlier than the rest, but I am by no means certain of that.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

I would not say it is an outright mistake to say it is Marcion, but it is quite strained, I think.

As you implied, the longer recension is clear that it is Papias, using the relative pronoun qui, whose antecedent has to be Papias.

The shorter recension is most naturally read, IMVHO, as also referring to Papias:

Descripsit vero evangelium dictante Iohanne recte. verum Marcion hereticus, cum ab eo fuisset inprobatus eo quod contraria sentiebat, abiectus est a Iohanne.

He [Papias] in fact wrote down this gospel while John dictated. But Marcion the heretic, when he had been disapproved by him because he supposed contrary things, was thrown out by John.

But this is what I think is leading to the idea that Marcion was the secretary instead of Papias:

Descripsit vero evangelium dictante Iohanne recte verum Marcion hereticus. cum ab eo fuisset inprobatus eo quod contraria sentiebat, abiectus est a Iohanne.

Marcion the heretic in fact wrote down this gospel while John in fact dictated. When he [Marcion] had been disapproved by him because he supposed contrary things, he was thrown out by John.

This is, I believe, acceptable grammatically, since it is permissible to suspend the subject for effect, but I completely agree with Roger that the word order would lead us more naturally to think that Papias is still being referred to and that everything to do with Marcion starts with verum.

I did not put all the variants in the text on my web page, but I just checked my photocopy (of an old microfiche record of) Regul and do not see any other variants that would affect this discussion.

Also, Roger is right to prefer in fact or such to truly as a translation of verum. My translation was probably a bit to literalistic. (My translations often are.) I note that in truth is an option listed in the dictionaries for this adverb (verum being cognate with veritas, truth), but other options are probably preferable.

Ben.