What do you think of this review by Aelred Cody of Vetus Latina: Die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel nach Petrus Sabatier neu gesammelt und herausgegeben von der Erzabtei Beuron. Band 25: Epistulae ad Thessalonicenses, Timotheum, Titum, Philemonem, Hebraeos, Pars I: Einleitung; Epistulae ad Thessalonicenses, Timotheum by Hermann Josef Frede?
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This first part of VL 25 is devoted το 1-2 Thessalonians and 1-2 Timothy, but its introduction is valid also for Titus, Philemon, And Hebrews, which are reserved for VL 25.2. The format is that of previously published volumes of VL; see the detailed description by Β . M. Peebles (CBQ 16 [1954] 210-25), written long before his tragic death but still valid and accurate. Here in VL 25.1, for the first time in VL, the critical apparatus includes indications of the Gothic version's readings when they are releνant for comparison with a Latin reading. The long introduction on the various types of Latin text and their witnesses, specifically for the Pauline corpus, is built upon what Frede wrote on texts and witnesses in VL 24.1 and 24.2, but it introduces some interesting new witnesses and reveals the new developments in F's experienced insight. The introduction includes an excursus on the different prologues accompanying the Pauline epistle in the Latin mss tradition, and another excursus on the Pauline summaries (capitula). In addition, the Pastoral Epistles are preceded by their own brief foreword and by an excursus on the type(s) of text found in Zeno of Verona. The test of Hebrews, a special case in some respects, will have its own supplementary introduction in 25.2.
In F.'s current reasoning, when he deals with the question of who revised the Pauline corpus to produce its Vg text, the prologue Primum quaeritur, which intro- ducts that corpus in the Vg, is important, F. insists that the author of the prologue Primum quaeritur (text now in Biblia Sacra iuxia Vulgatam versionem [ed. R, Weber ct al.; Stuttgart: WUrttembergische Bibdanstalt, 1969] 2. 1748-49) was himself the Vg reviser of the corpus. He reasons that Jerome cannot be the reviser of the corpus because Jerome (Vir. ill. 5) is very sceptical about the Pauline authorship of Hebrews, while the author of Primum quaeritur accepts and defends Hebrews' Pauline authorship. That reason is not a bad one. although Jerome wrote De viris Illustribus in a.D, 393, and his opinion on the author of Hebrews later became a bit more open to Paul. Perhaps the best argument against his responsibility for the Pauline corpus is still this: several Latin readings in the Pauline epistles for which Jerome himself argued on the basis of a Greek text arc not those of the Vg, while the Vg, readings in those same places, whether peculiar to the Vg or not, are precisely those which Jerome criticized (examples collected by D. de Bruyne, RB n.s. 12 [1915] 363-64). Some may brush that argument aside, however, as J. Chapman did (RHE IS [1922] 469-81; 19 [1923] 25-42; JTS 24 [1923] 33-5J, II3-25, 282-99), by concluding that Jerome vacillated and changed his mind. Pelagius, then? Ε sees the form of the Pauline quotations in the original text of Pclagius* Expositions as one very close to the pure Vg text; but, unlike De Bruyne, he rules out Pelagius as the Vg reviser of the Pauline corpus because Pelagius in his
Expositions follows the order Philippians Thessalonians Colossians (instead of the Vg order Philippians Colossians Thessalonians) and entirely omits Hebrews {so strongly defended by the author of Primum quaeritur).
Nevertheless, reason F and others engaged in the VL project, the Pelagian text of Paul is so close to that of the Vg that the Vg's Pauline reviser should be sought among the early promoters of Pelagian doctrine. The candidate whom B. Fischer originally and then W Thiele in VL 26 and Κ in VL 24.2 and again here (pp. 99, 155) propose as reviser both of the catholic and of the Pauline epistles in the Vg is Rufinus "the Syriani.e., the person identified by B. Altaner (TQ 130 [1950] 432-49) both as the author of the doctrinally Pelagian Liber de fide (PL 21, 1123-54) and as the really Latin Rufinus who had been with Jerome in Bethlehem (hence his being said to have been provincial Palaestinae or natione syrus) before going to Rome between a.d, 399 and 402. With regard to such an identification we may perhaps ask: if we accept both (a) that the Vg reviser of the Pauline corpus was the author of the prologue Primum quaeritur, and (b) the identification of that reviser as Rutin us the Syrian, or even some other promoter of Pelagian doctrine, how are we to explain in Primum quaeritur the presence of the patently anti-Pelagian statement that "the Romans, for the most part, were so uncultivated that they did not understand that they were saved not by their merits but by God's grace"?
In the years since F did the introductions and texts in VL 24.1-2, there has been some refinement of his views of the nature and textual history of the different types of OL text and of the Vg, and some modification of his choice of fundamental models for three of his texts. His X text continues to be based on Tertullian, who is not a witness to an OL text actually circulating, because he seems to have made his own rather free translations from a Greek text. Frs Κ text remains the one current in Carthage at the time of Cyprian and Pseudo-Cyprian (the fundamental witnesses), Le.» the so-called African text, which Ε and others see as the African branch of an originally Italian text for which consistent European witnesses are lacking.
Whereas the D type of text in VL 24 was an attempted recension of the archetype of the Latin texts (with characteristically Western readings) found in Greek/ Latin bilingual mss of the Pauline corpus like Claromontanus and Boemerianus, in which the Latin text was to a great extent harmonijed with Ihe readings of its Greek partner, F. now bases his D text on Codex latinus medii aevi 1 of the Hungarian National Museum.. By relying on this codex, whose singular place in the history of the OL lext of Paul was first appreciated and demonstrated by F himself (Ein neuer fhulusiext und Kommentar [Vetus Latina: Aus der Geschichte der lateinischen Bibel 7-8; Freiburg: Herder, 1973-74]), and on the biblical citations which can be gleaned from Lucifer of Cagliari, F now intends his U text to be a Western type of Latin text uninfluenced by the Greek text of the bilinguals and probably older than the archetype of the bilinguals' Latin text. Whereas the "I" text in VL 24 was based on the citations by Marius Victor in us (except for Phil 1:1-15 and Colossians, for which Marius is not available), the "I" text in VL 25, as for Colossians in VL 24,2, is based on Ambrosiaster, a witness to a text which, according to F,, is further evolved than Μarius' and has moved away somewhat from Western readings, although it contains many typically "D" readings as well. Below the "I" line of text, F. often gives, in addition to simple unmarked variants, those readings more recent than Ambrosiastcr which he finds sufficiently representative of a subspecies of "I" text to be marked formally with a J (a certain "Italian" text), an A (characteristically found in Augustine's works), or an Μ (characteristically Milanese). The Vg line of VL 25 is taken, with few exceptions, from the Stuttgart edition of the Vg, as it was for Colossiaro in VL 24,2, while for Ephesians and Philippians in VL 24 it was the product of F/s own recension of the Vg. Vg variants in the fifth-century Spanish edition of Peregrinus and preceded by an S.
Frede suspects that all of these textual types except X are derived ultimately from a single Latin translation of the entire Pauline corpus, of which K. and D are two separate but parallel derivatives, with Κ closer to the original (p. 146). He believes that from the "African" K's lost European-Italian line evolved I, a Roman text discernible already with Novatian, characterized by changes toward what was becoming the standard Christian Latin vocabulary. Earlier I readings are often equivalent to those of D: later 1 readings are often equivalent to those of the Vg, E's view of the Vg's Pauline corpus as a Work which Was done Once and for all by its reviser but which began to be contaminated with OL readings as soon as its divulgation got under way (already with Pelagius) is retained. In recent reactions it may not always have been understood that this view of F's does not entail any idea of subsequent revisions of the Vg itself on the basis of a Greek text, once it left its reviser's hands. For F. the better witness to the original text of Pelagius' Expositions is the Reichenau ms now in Karlsruhe, critically controlled by comparison with some other witnesses, rather than the MS in Balliol College, Oxford, favored by A. Souter and, more recently by E. Ncilessen.
We salute F for the high quality of his work.
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