andrewcriddle

On further investigation I'm dubious about whether my argument here is correct.

Augustine City of God Book 18 chapter 45 has This has strong similarities to Panarion 51 but is clearly and unambiguously having Christ born during the reign of Herod.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

Further Ramblings About Epiphanius

i/ I've come to agree that Panarion 29 as it stands says unambiguously that Jesus was born in the days of Alexander Jannaeus.

ii/ I've come to think it likely that Richard is right that Panarion 51, despite its way of putting things is not claiming that Jesus was born any time other than c 2 BCE.

iii/I still feel that the similarities between the passages in Panarion 29 and 51 suggest that both are describing Epiphanius' views rather than the passage in 29 describing the false views of the Nazarenes and 51 describing the true views of Epiphanius.

Hence I have been wondering about whether the problem in Panarion 29 can be solved by conjectural emendation.
In one sense the answer is obviously yes, by rewriting te pasage I can make it say what I want it to say.
However I have thought of an emendation which IMHO is both intrinsically plausible and resolves the difficulty.

(What follows may be entirely misguided and I would welcome criticism.)

We start with the current Greek text of the critical pasage in Panarion 29
this is the modern critical text except I've replaced hEWS GAR AUTOU hHGOUMENOI. with the Migne hEWS GAR AUTOU TOU ChRISTOU hHGOUMENOI. which can be construed.

This translates as The central difficulty is DIEPESE DE hH TAXIS KAI ESTH EXOTE AUTOS GENNATAI EN BHThLEEM THS IOUDAIAS EPI ALEXANDROU TOU APO GENOUS hIERATIKOU KAI BASILIKOU. If one transposes the two coloured clauses we have DIEPESE DE hH TAXIS EPI ALEXANDROU TOU APO GENOUS hIERATIKOU KAI BASILIKOU KAI ESTH EXOTE AUTOS GENNATAI EN BHThLEEM THS IOUDAIAS . producing an emended text which translates as The passage now reads much mores traightforwardly. Epiphanius begins by saying that the royal and priestly line failed in the time of Alexander and was set (back) up when Christ was born in Bethlehem. The subsequent passage goes on to expound these themes in more detail.

As to the plausibility of this emendation it may be worth noting that the two transposed clauses are of almost identical length.

Andrew Criddle

Richard Carrier

This (the arguments and evidence I clipped out but that are included in this thread above) is very interesting, and I agree it is plausible, for all the same reasons, though I am saying this only having skimmed the substantial points. I will not likely ever spend enough time to examine this thesis in detail, but it's worth keeping in mind. I think it even gains more plausibility in light of the passage from Augustine you cited earlier in this thread.

I can add to the overall picture that the manuscripts of Epiphanius are in awful shape scribally, so a transposition like you suggest would not be bizarre, especially since the segments have a length that could correspond to an actual line length (it depends), making transposition of the entire line an even more plausible culprit. It would be worth checking extant mss. to see if any physical evidence of transposition has been preserved (e.g. if the actual segments correspond exactly to actual lines in extant mss., that would be strong support; weaker support could come from other indications, such as faulty punctuation, etc.).

I can speak from direct experience as to the Weights and Measures (another text by Epiphanius), which I have worked with quite closely, both critical editions and photoplates of the extant manuscripts, having given a paper on this at a conference at UC Berkeley, and that text is an outright nightmare of accidental interpolations, confusions, misspellings, errors, and I don't doubt transpositions as well. Though we have reason to expect this more in that text than in the Panarion, I've seen indications the Panarion is not in sterling shape.