andrewcriddle

The Ascension of Isaiah survives in two forms.
a/ Represented primarily by the Ethiopic consists of chapters 1-11
b/ Represented by Latin and Slavonic consists of chapters 6-11
It is generally accepted that 6-11 originally circulated independently of 1-11 as in form b/.

Form b/ has a very abbreviated version of chapter 11 with much less reference to the life of Christ upon earth. (although there is some.) It has been claimed, e.g. by Earl Doherty, that the long version of chapter 11 in Form a/ is late and that the original had even less reference to the life of Christ upon earth than that found in form b/.

However there may be problems with the text of form b/ here. Our evidence for the relevant section of chapter 11 in form b/ comes from late medieval Slavonic manuscripts and a Latin text of unclear origin. The Latin and Slavonic are in reasonably close agreement but their precise relationship is unclear. It has been suggested that the Latin is a translation from Slavonic rather than Greek although most scholars disagree. It does seem that the survival of form b/ is linked to its use by Bogomil/Cathar dualists although the text itself does not show clear evidence of modification in a dualist-friendly way.

I have been reading the Italian scholar Enrico Norelli on the Ascension of Isaiah (or trying to do so my Italian is weak) and he notes thatt here is an important reference to the Ascension of Isaiah in the records of the Inquisition of Jacques Fournier (See Montaillou).

Beiträge zur Sektengeschichte des Mittelalters (My hesitant translation using Google translate.)

This is clearly based on the long version of chapter 11 of Ascension of Isaiah and seems to indicate that the original Latin version of 6-11 contained the full form of chapter 11. If so it seems likely that the original (Greek) version of 6-11 had the full form of chapter 11. Possibly chapter 11 was shortened in the Slavonic tradition because it was regarded as unsound and the surviving Latin has been assimilated to the Slavonic.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

What do you expect to achieve with your own PERSONAL translation of a passage while admitting your "Italian is weak".?

Grog

I've considered arguments based on AoI to be too tentative to accept one way or another. Your observation doesn't really change that, but I will accept your translation, no problem. Thanks for the information.

stephan huller

My secretary is Italian (from Brescia). Not an academic or used to theological language but if you need something translated she'll do a few for free. She works on the side translating technical business documents so she's quite smart.

Bingo the Clown-O

Maybe he is studying to become a game show host on Italian television.

:huh:

mountainman

It must remain the rule rather than the exception that a Greek original underlies all of the OT and NT apocryphal texts.

Commentary on this text notes:

Although I don't buy any of the chronology, other texts exist which appear related.




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

DCHindley

I thought Latin text of the Inquisitions by Jacques Fornier, later Pope Benedict XII of Avignon, preserved in Codex Vaticanus 4020 was critically edited by Jean Duvernoy in 1965, followed by a French translation by same in 1978.

Fournier, Jacques, Le Registre d'Inquisition de Jacques Fournier (Evêque de Pamiers) 1318-1325, traduit et annoté par Jean Duvernoy, Préface de Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Centre de Recherches Historiques, Civilisations et Sociétés 43, (Paris: Mouton, 1978) 3 vols. (in French)

From introductions I found online, Fournier's inquisitions were carried out with extra rigor, involving interrogation in the vernacular (French, I would suppose, in the Languedoc) with the detail recorded in Latin. I subjected the Latin text of the interrogation of Raymundi Valsiera de Ax (pp 155-173 of the work you referenced) to <shudder> Google translation, and from this it seems that what we really have here is a Latin translation of Manichaean beliefs preached in French by Peter Maurinus, as relayed by inquisition witnesses.

True, while there is a lot in the testimony that corresponds almost exactly to passages in the Greek Ascension of Isaiah, but unless it is supposed that Fournier's court recorder had substituted a now lost Latin translation for the usual Latin translation of the French verbal accounts, the best that we can say is that popular traditions existed in French that correspond to what is in the fuller Greek text. Whether this was because a fuller, although now lost, Latin translation was in circulation, or whether it may have existed in this period in French translation, or simply oral tradition, has to remain unknown.

DCH

Roger Pearse

This is very interesting: thank you. I have never paid any attention to this text, so all of what follows is from your post.

Do I understand that the "fingerprint" here is the idea that Mary grew large, as if pregnant; that the child appeared next to her; and her body returned to normal; rather than a normal pregnancy and Christ being born? This does sound like a gnostic or Manichaean idea, with its horror of the idea that Christ went through the muckiness of being born.

If I put the argument made into my own words, I come out with this:

1. The transmitted Latin text and the Slavonic text both have a shorter version of chapter 11 than the Ethiopic.
2. The inquisition record shows a heretic in Southern France with knowledge of this exotic element preserved only in the longer form of chapter 11.
3. He (or whoever told him this) could only have obtained this information from a text with the longer form.
4. Therefore a longer form of the Latin text existed in the 13th c., with this data in it.
5. Therefore a Greek form existed with that element, as otherwise the agreement between the supposed long-version Latin and the extant Ethiopic is inexplicable.

This seems like sound reasoning to me.

The question is whether any other source for the long-version element is possible. Is it possible that such a birth narrative could have another source? Is the idea a common-place in Manichaean material? (I have never heard this version of the story, but what I don't know would fill volumes). We would need to eliminate any possibility of a false-positive, that the fingerprint can ONLY belong to the long version of the Ascension of Isaiah, before we could use it for this argument.

The heretical nature of the additional material would explain its omission in the short version of the text. If the Slavonic and Latin are similar at this point, then they probably both translate a Greek text which was shortened at this point (since I don't know of a lot of Latin-Slavonic interchange)? But if the longer text was still in circulation at the time of the Cathars, then I would suggest that the abbreviation may have taken place not all that much earlier.

Ethiopic texts are often based on Arabic material, itself often from Egypt. It is possible that the heretical material circulated among the Copts (let's face it, Shenoute was purging collections of this kind of heavily heretical material even in the 5th century).

It does all hang together - well done. There is just the task of making sure the "fingerprint" is unique to do.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

According to Schneemelcher's NT Apocrypha the "short Latin text" is a dubious thing itself, very late medieval and dependent on Cathar inquisitions:

andrewcriddle

Hi Roger

Thank you for your comments.
Just to clarify.

It is generally accepted that the long version of chapter 11 goes back to a Greek text. It was part of the (lost) Greek text of the full version of the Apocalypse of Isaiah the one with chapters 1-11.

What is disputed is whether or not the (lost) Greek text of the short version of Apocalypse of Isaiah (the one with only chapters 6-11) had the long version of chapter 11. The version with only chapters 6-11 is probably earlier than the version with chapters 1-11, so if the 6-11 version always had the short version of chapter 11 then the long version of chapter 11 is a later expansion.

Now the Cathars used the 6-11 version not the 1-11 version. If they knew the long version of chapter 11 it establishes that there was a form of 6-11 with the long version of chapter 11.

Andrew Criddle