Critical edition of the Greek translation of the Ascetic Words by St. Isaac the Syrian

Pirard M. Ἀββά Ἰσαὰκ Σύρου, Λόγοι ἀσκητικοί. Κριτικὴ ἔκδοση. Ἱερὰ Μονή Ἰβήρων, Ἅγιον Ὅρος 2012. The Greek text of Abba Isaac’s “Words of the Ascetic” was first published in Germany, in Leipzig, in 1770. The work on the text was carried out by the most educated hieromonk Nikifor Theotokis 1. The text of his edition is often unclear and full of errors. Theotokis used as his original the text of the only manuscript Constantinopol Folitanus, Magnae Scholae 37 (XIV century). In certain places he referred to the manuscript Constantinopol Folitanus, Magnae Scholae 30, (14th century, with the exception of some sheets dating from the 17th century), from which he quotes numerous variants at the bottom of the page under the label - Τὸ Ε. X. (from the Greek τὸ ἕτερον χειρόγραφον - another manuscript). The published text is like a fragmented sculpture or a painting damaged by time, which is covered with a thick layer of dust. In his preface, Theotokis expresses the following opinion, however, a very derogatory one, about the language of his text: “This translation of words seems to us to be largely spoiled by vernacular, in some cases by pomposity and certainly completely inconsistent with grammatical rules. Therefore, in many words there is ambiguity, which we, with the consent of His Beatitude Patriarch [Ephraim of Jerusalem] and by his sovereign decision, and not at all by our own choice (if anyone is interested), removed from the text where it was possible and as far as possible, trying to clarify the meaning, correcting a lot of ignorant and worthy errors” 2. Saint Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, wrote about this: “The translator was apparently not sufficiently educated and did not know the rules of grammar, for which reason he confused the words, and instead of suitable expressions, he wrote down incorrect, dark words. Errors and impossible words were also added by copyists” 3. In 1895, Archimandrite Joachim Spetseris published the text of the “Ascetic Words” in Athens, to which he only added the following words in the title of the book: ἀνατυπούμενα ἐπιμελείᾳ Ἰωακεὶμ Σπετσιέρη ίερομονάχου - “republished in the edition of Hieromonk Joachim Spetseris.” This addition misled some authors, who decided that it was a reprint or even a second edition of the collection published in 1770 by Theotokis. It must be said with complete confidence that the situation is completely different. My comparison of these two editions made it possible to identify approximately 500 extra errors in the 1895 edition compared to the 1770 edition, which cannot be reduced to simple typographical errors. The reason for this critical publication was given to me by Father Vasily in July 2000, who was then abbot of the Iveron Monastery on Athos. Earlier, when he was still the abbot of the Stavronikitsky monastery on Athos, three monks of the monastery compiled a catalog of surviving Greek manuscripts and began a detailed study of the Svyatogorsk manuscripts of Abba Isaac. The late hieromonk Nektarios especially carefully studied the ancient Greek manuscript Parisinus Suppl. gr. 693. My work began with a search for Greek and Syriac manuscripts. I consulted the catalogs of major libraries and the special catalog of the Greek department of the Institute of History and Text Research (France's National Scientific Center). I discovered that the catalog compiled at the Stavronikita monastery contained almost all Greek manuscripts. Having received photocopies of most of the Greek manuscripts (120), I began a partial but consistent comparison of all the manuscripts available to me (the work on the manuscripts of the National Library of Greece and the Athonite manuscripts was done on site). As a result, in the process of work it was necessary to identify groups and their divisions, divide manuscript traditions into two large families, identify a considerable number of contaminated manuscripts, and separate older manuscripts from those that were subject to revision in order to adapt the language to the laws of the “classical” Greek language. In general, the work included those manuscripts whose text belongs in style and type to a more ancient tradition and seemed to us the most reliable in relation to the Syriac original. But before starting to collate the Greek manuscripts, it was necessary to carry out the following work: – compare the edition of Theotokis with the Syriac text published by P. Bejan in 1909, which belongs to the East Syriac tradition; – compare the edition of Bejan with the Syriac manuscripts of the West Syrian edition, especially Sinai syr. 24, which was compiled in the Lavra of St. Sava at the end of the 8th or beginning of the 9th century, and Vatican syr. 125 (before the 10th century). A comparison of Theotokis's edition with the West Syrian edition, on the one hand, showed that the source of the Greek translation, as well as the Arabic and Georgian, was the West Syrian edition. But, on the other hand, I discovered strong differences between the Eastern and Western editions, which, however, were overcome by restoring the Greek text, thanks to manuscripts that contain an older text. If we talk about the Greek manuscript tradition, then, not counting the manuscript Parisinus Suppl gr. 693 (IX century), complete (that is, containing the entire text of the Greek translation of the works of St. Isaac the Syrian), but which has come down to us in a damaged form with many flaws, the first Greek complete manuscripts were created during the 13th century. The Greek version has come down to us in the form of two editions, originating from the same translator, since we find in both editions the same corrupt passages: - a lengthy edition (recensio major) is available in most surviving manuscripts (of which there are about a hundred), dating from the 9th to the 16th centuries, initially complete, but more than half of which are currently incomplete. This edition corresponds in the content of the Words (Λόγοι) to the largest part of the text transmitted by the Melkite tradition. This edition, in turn, is divided into two large families, each of which has its own word order. Manuscripts in this edition offer long chapter headings. The number of treatise words varies from manuscript to manuscript. But this does not affect the integrity of the text; most likely, we are talking about rearrangement (for example, a certain word may be presented in a manuscript as two different words). – a short edition (recensio brevior) is a selection of words from a lengthy edition. We are talking about 30 manuscripts (ten of which are incomplete), containing a third of the complete corpus. Words are presented in a constant order and do not contain letters. These collections have been found since the 10th century. (eg Coislin 370). The chapters in the manuscripts of this short review have short headings. For four centuries from the end of the 10th to the turn of the 13th-14th centuries. Mainly manuscripts belonging to the short edition are recorded. In addition to these editions, some conversations were included in various collections along with other patristic texts. The text of the Greek manuscripts, despite the diversity among versions, goes back to the original translation: there are often insertions, “corrections”, contamination, errors, different word orders, but the very fact that the same obscure passages and abbreviations are found in all Greek manuscripts indicates a common source for the Greek manuscripts. The study of Greek manuscripts made it possible to isolate, on the one hand, a high degree of contamination, which is explained by the fact that most of the manuscripts were concentrated in a chronological period with clear boundaries (the first half of the 14th century). On the other hand, one cannot but agree that “the tradition of monastic texts is a living tradition: scribes’ insertions and contamination in certain places are very frequent in it” 4 . The Greek text of Isaac has been the focus of much activity and it is no secret that such texts are often the most contaminated. Based on the Greek text we reconstructed, the following translation features were identified: – the text of the most reliable Greek manuscript suggests that the translation was done mechanically, word for word, “mirror”, which is especially risky in the presence of idioms; – the translators thought in Semitic and wrote in Greek; in fact, the Greek language of the translators, as presented by me in the critical edition of the text, is Syriac Greek, originating from the Syro-Aramaic linguistic environment. The following signs of Semitism in the Greek translation can be identified: – the words ψυχή and ἑαυτός are used interchangeably to translate the Syriac word ͧͫ͐͢ (napšā), which includes both meanings; – use of the noun υἱός to indicate a definition, for example: ἐκ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν τῶν υἱῶν τῆς σαρκός (from the eyes of the sons of the flesh) – means ἐκ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν τῶν σαρκικῶν ἀνθρώπων (from the eyes of carnal men); – a noun in the genitive case replaces an adjective, or is transformed into an adjective, for example: virtue of a being (or nature) means natural virtue. Sources of the works of St. Isaac the Syrian is known to everyone - this is the Old Testament, the New Testament, St. Mark the Hermit, Abba Macarius, Dionysius the Areopagite, “Lavsaik” by Bishop Palladius of Elenopolis, letters of Ammonius (or Ammon), collections of sayings of the fathers, Life of St. Anthony the Great, Life of St. Paul of Thebes, Evagrius of Pontus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Diodorus of Tarsus. I would like to note that the text of Abba Isaac was written in the spirit of the works of St. John the Hermit (5th century) and Abba Isaiah, although he does not mention their names. A few words about the translation into Greek of the theological terminology of St. Isaac. Archimandrite Vasily (Iversky) notes that “Abba Isaac outlines a space that is difficult to describe, or rather indescribable <...> The text speaking about the spiritual world of Isaac the Syrian cannot be systematically built. It cannot be divided into parts, it cannot contain his teaching as a teaching” 5. For my part, I can only confirm this opinion. At the same time, as a researcher of the works of Abba Isaac, I tried in the preface to the publication to understand how the ascetic terminology of Abba Isaac was transmitted in Greek. The terminology of Abba Isaac was of interest to many scientists, such as Sebastian Brock 6, Dana Miller 7, Fr. Seraphim Seppala 8. This terminology has its source in the earlier Syriac tradition and Syriac translations of Greek texts. Despite this, two types of terminology coexist in the works of Abba Isaac: on the one hand, biblical and John the Hermit (5th century), on the other – Theodore of Mopsuestia, Evagrius of Pontus and, to a lesser extent, Dionysius the Areopagite and St. Macarius of Egypt. My research showed that to convey the meaning of Syriac terms in Greek, translators avoided neologisms and preferred pre-existing Greek terms. Some uncertainty or hesitation is also evident in the Greek translation, although it is present to some extent in the Syriac original. According to Sebastian Broca, Abba Isaac, like other spiritual writers, did not set himself the task of presenting some kind of systematic guide to the inner spiritual life, 9 which can largely explain some of the uncertainty in the original. The French translator of the 1st volume, Andre Louf, on the contrary, believes that Abba Isaac, in describing spiritual life, adheres to strict discipline in handling spiritual terminology 10. Despite this, Abba Isaac himself is fully aware of this uncertainty: “Sometimes this so-called spiritual prayer is called the path in one place, and in another - knowledge and in another - intelligent vision [in Greek, “revelations of intelligent things” - ἀποκαλύψεις νοερῶν πραγμάτων]. Do you see how the fathers change the names of spiritual objects? 11 Concerning the word path, in Greek ὁδός, it can be noted that, most likely, this is an error of the copyist who rewrote the East Syriac word ͬ ͐ ͘ ͪ ͝ ͐ (teʔoriya) in its West Syriac version ͐ ͚ͪ͐͘ (ʔurḥā). In the Syriac manuscript the two terms are easily confused. The result of a critical edition is a “cleaned” text, but not a simple one. In the task of selecting the correct option from among the various examples offered by the Greek manuscripts, I was guided by the data of the Syriac original. All the mistakes of the scribes were corrected, but the translators' mistakes remain in the text: the Syriac words of the original source are indicated in the apparatus under the text and a more correct Greek translation is offered in the language of that time. Words and sentences that needed philological commentary are indicated in the text with two asterisks and explained in the apparatus. Cases of disagreement between the two aforementioned Syrian traditions are also mentioned. The disagreements between the Greek text and the equivalent of the Syriac original, which are discussed in the Syriac-Greek critical apparatus, were verified with two more ancient (independent of each other) translations from Syriac - these are the Arabic and Georgian translations. The reason for the variety of variants of the West Syriac edition are damaged words from the manuscript of the East Syriac edition (as we saw earlier with the example of the word path). Only a critical edition of the Syriac text will reveal the more correct of the two editions. The context itself testifies to the greater reliability of the text of the East Syriac tradition. The order of the Discourses and Epistles presented in the edition of Nikephoros Theotokis is arbitrary and does not correspond to any Greek manuscript. The order of the Conversations in the new, critical edition follows the order of the most reliable manuscripts and repeats, with some deviations, the order of the West Syrian version. It may also be noted that most of the 4th Epistle and four Conversations were published by me in the appendix as not belonging to the pen of Abba Isaac. The Syriac original of these texts has been published in various critical publications. These Conversations belong to John of Daliyat. As for the fourth Epistle, then, examining the two related Melkite manuscripts Sinai syr. 24 and Vatican syr. 125, I found that in both of them the hand of a later period had erased the name of the author and inserted in its place the name of Philoxenus. The name of the addressee of the message was also erased, and in its place the name Baṭrîq Urhoyo was put. This was noted back in 2001 by Sebastian Brock regarding the manuscript Vaticanus syr. 125 12 and further Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev) 13, Grigory Kessel 14 and Alexey Muravyov 15. In conclusion, I would like to note that Hieromonk Placidas (Dezeus) is preparing the second edition of the French translation of the works of Abba Isaac 16, taking as a basis the Greek critical edition, which is also being translated into Russian. In addition, the Center for Oriental Studies at the University of Leuven is planning to compile a lexical index for Greek, Arabic and Georgian ancient translations. Theotokis lived in Constantinople, Moldavia and Germany. In 1776 he arrived in Russia, in 1779 he became Archbishop of Slavic and Kherson, in 1786 - Archbishop of Astrakhan and Stavropol. In subsequent times and until his death, he was abbot of the Danilov Monastery in Moscow, where he was buried. Θεοτόκης Ν. Τοῦ όσιου πατρὸς ήμῶν Ἰσαάκ ἐπισκόπου Νινευΐ τοῦ Σύρου, τὰ εύρεθέντα Ἀσκητικά. Leipzig, 1770. P. XII. Lives of Russian Ascetics of Piety of the 18th and 19th centuries. M., 1907. P. 487. Géhin P., Guillaumont Cl., Guillaumont A. Evagre le Pontique. Sur les Pensées. (Sources chrétiennes, 438). P., 1998. P. 99. Archimandrite Vasileios. Abba Isaac the Syrian. An Approach to his World. Montréal, 1999 [2]. P. 7. See Brock S. Some Uses of the term theory in the Writings of Isaac of Nineveh // Parole de l’Orient. 1966. N 22. P. 417–419; Idem. Discerning the Evagrian in the Writings of Isaac of Nineveh: a Preliminary Investigation. Adamantius 15 (2009). P. 60–72. See The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian. Boston, 1984. P. LXXXV–XC. See Seppälä S. In Speechless Ecstasy. Expression and Interpretation of Mystical Experience in Classical Syriac and Sufi Literature. Helsinki, 2003. (Studia Orientalia, 98) See Isaac of Nineυeh (Isaac the Syrian). "The Second Part", Chapters IV–XLI / Ed. S. P. Brock. Louvain, 1995. P. XVII. See Louf A. Isaac le Syrien. Oeuvres spirituelles – II 41. Discours récemment découverts. Abbaye de Belfontaine, 2003. P. 77. Word 16 // Isaac the Syrian, St. Ascetic words / Ed. S.I. Sobolevsky. Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, 2008. P. 91. See Brock S. Syriac into Greek at Mar Saba: the Translation of St. Isaac the Syrian/Ed. J. Patrich. The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Century to the Present. Leuven, 2001, pp. 206–207. See Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev). The spiritual world of St. Isaac the Syrian. St. Petersburg, 2002. P. 34. See Kessel G. Sinai syr. 24 as an Important Witness to the Reception History of some Syriac Ascetic Texts. Sur les pas des Araméens Chretiens. Melanges offers à A. Desreumeaux. P., 2010. P. 195–207. See Muravyov A.V. Message to Abba Simeon // Ἀσκητικοὶ Λόγοι of Isaac the Syrian: The story of one pseudepigraph // URL: https://www.academia. edu/1925074. P. 52–54. Deseille P. Saint Isaac le Syrien. Discours ascétiques selon la version grecque. Monastère Saint-Antoine-le-Grand, Monastère de Solan, 2006.