ScriniumPub Date : 2022-12-12DOI: 10.1163/18177565-bja10069
Liudmila Navtanovich
{"title":"“Obscure Places” in 2 Enoch: What Can They Tell Us about Its Provenance?","authors":"Liudmila Navtanovich","doi":"10.1163/18177565-bja10069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18177565-bja10069","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 2 Enoch is one of the Slavonic pseudepigrapha that has caused and continues to provoke controversy about its origin. In particular, there is no agreement as to whether it comes from Jewish or Christian circles. However, there is a consensus among Slavists on a number of questions concerning its provenance, and these conclusions made by philologists have been confirmed by the Coptic fragments of the text discovered in 2009, and the Slavonic manuscripts themselves give us a lot of information about the possible origin of the text. Among others, the examining of the “obscure places” in 2 Enoch permits us to give an opinion on its possible original, the article deals with the analysis of one of them. At the same time, the research into such readings also demonstrates a long and complicated history of the pseudepigraphon in Slavonic, which we should always have in mind while studying 2 Enoch.","PeriodicalId":38562,"journal":{"name":"Scrinium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42511913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ScriniumPub Date : 2022-12-12DOI: 10.1163/18177565-bja10064
Dirk Krausmüller
{"title":"Scripture and Philosophy in the Writings of Arius of Alexandria: A Brief Note","authors":"Dirk Krausmüller","doi":"10.1163/18177565-bja10064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18177565-bja10064","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This brief note seeks to cast light on the sources that Arius used in his writings. The first part focuses on Scripture and the second part on philosophical texts. Two passages will be analysed, the first part of the creedal letter to bishop Alexander of Alexandria, and one section of the hymnic Thalia.","PeriodicalId":38562,"journal":{"name":"Scrinium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44989479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ScriniumPub Date : 2022-12-12DOI: 10.1163/18177565-bja10070
F. Schulz
{"title":"How Salome Seduced Constantius II on Stage","authors":"F. Schulz","doi":"10.1163/18177565-bja10070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18177565-bja10070","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, was a master of invective. In this paper, I want to take a closer look at the negative representation of Arian bishops and emperor Constantius II in the Historia Arianorum through a close reading of a key passage that is often quoted, but rarely discussed in detail (chapter 52). I want to highlight how Athanasius supercharges his representation with references to the past, to drama and to the bible. This topic is indebted to recent scholarship on Athanasius and his polemics, which it hopes to enrich by highlighting Athanasius’ allusiveness and influence. Occasionally I will draw on Athanasius’ earlier works to show how his line of argument developed and refer to other authors who either took over his image or held different views. This paper contributes to the ongoing study of invective, which was so prominent in the religious sphere.","PeriodicalId":38562,"journal":{"name":"Scrinium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42270134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ScriniumPub Date : 2022-12-12DOI: 10.1163/18177565-bja10071
A. Orlov
{"title":"Worthless Secrets","authors":"A. Orlov","doi":"10.1163/18177565-bja10071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18177565-bja10071","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The article explores the fallen Watchers’ cosmological secrets and their connection with the cosmological law or the “law of the stars.” It argues that the Watchers’ cosmological expertise is closely connected with their roles in relation to the “law of the stars” as the former participants and guardians of this reified cosmological covenant.","PeriodicalId":38562,"journal":{"name":"Scrinium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47829486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ScriniumPub Date : 2022-12-12DOI: 10.1163/18177565-bja10062
A. Cherkashina, Dmitry Cherkashin, Ortal-Paz Saar
{"title":"Syriac Spells for a Mill and Their Historical Context","authors":"A. Cherkashina, Dmitry Cherkashin, Ortal-Paz Saar","doi":"10.1163/18177565-bja10062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18177565-bja10062","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article considers a text-unit known in five Syriac codices and consisting of up to three magical recipes. The target of all these recipes is a mill: two of them are curses (ˀassārā ‘binding spell’) and intend to stop the mill, while the third one is a counter-spell (šeryānā ‘loosening spell’), which aims to annul the curse. One of the two binding spells includes a rare example of an Arabic incantation written in Garshuni. The main purpose of this article is to make these texts available via critical editions. In addition, light is shed on the broader context of magical practices, by drawing attention to Syriac recipes for an oven and their Jewish parallels, and by presenting two Jewish parallels of spells related to a mill: a Judaeo-Arabic text from the Cairo Genizah and a spell from a Byzantine manuscript. We offer a reconsideration of the interpretation of the Judaeo-Arabic text, as our reading differs from that of the Editio Priceps.","PeriodicalId":38562,"journal":{"name":"Scrinium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41894162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ScriniumPub Date : 2022-12-12DOI: 10.1163/18177565-bja10072
Liudmila Navtanovich
{"title":"Is There Indeed a Coptic 2 Enoch?","authors":"Liudmila Navtanovich","doi":"10.1163/18177565-bja10072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18177565-bja10072","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In 2009, Joost Hagen made a remarkable discovery: he attributed four Coptic fragments from material excavated at Qasr Ibrim to 2 Enoch, since then most scholars no longer refer to this pseudepigraphon as “Slavonic Enoch”. Nevertheless, some works have appeared that question the authenticity of this attribution, the article deals with the problem and provides arguments in favour of Hagen’s identification of the fragments.","PeriodicalId":38562,"journal":{"name":"Scrinium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47866717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ScriniumPub Date : 2022-11-17DOI: 10.1163/18177565-bja10068
Dmitry Kurdybaylo
{"title":"The Great Chasm of Luke 16:26 and Its Interpretations in Byzantine Patristics","authors":"Dmitry Kurdybaylo","doi":"10.1163/18177565-bja10068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18177565-bja10068","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The ‘great chasm’ mentioned in Luke 16:26 is a hapax legomenon in the New Testament. However, the same wording appears in the Theogony of Hesiod and in several later classical Greek writings, which connect the great chasm with the mythology of the underworld or some metaphysical conceptions. Byzantine exegetes of Luke could hardly avoid correlating Luke’s great chasm with its long history in the pagan culture. Thus, several exegetical paths were developed. Origen, with several followers, omit the great chasm at all. Comparing this fact with later anti-Origenian polemic writings, it is plausible that Luke 16:26 was used to argue the rejection of the doctrine of apokatastasis. Other writers, prone to apokatastatic position, such as Didymus the Blind and Gregory of Nyssa, introduced interpretations of the great chasm that unite ethical and metaphysical perspectives. Gregory of Nazianzus and Maximus the Confessor brought allegorical interpretations of the great chasm to the highest level of generalisation. The evolution of understanding the great chasm reveals the shift in the conceptions of a human soul’s destiny and afterlife, its fate and deliverance from it.","PeriodicalId":38562,"journal":{"name":"Scrinium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49395265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ScriniumPub Date : 2022-10-19DOI: 10.1163/18177565-bja10065
S. Frantsouzoff
{"title":"Aenigmatic Names","authors":"S. Frantsouzoff","doi":"10.1163/18177565-bja10065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18177565-bja10065","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The corruption of personal names in Arabic, especially those borrowed from foreign languages (such as Greek), goes back to the specific features of its script and often results in the multiplication of historical figures and hagiographic characters. In this article, is analysed the orthography and functional features of the name of the Jewish king of Ḥimyar Yōsēf called Y(w)sf/’s’r/Yṯ’r in the South Arabian epigraphic documentation and Yūsuf Dhū Nuwās in Arab Islamic tradition. The article deals with several sobriquets and epitheta, under which he is known in Eastern Christian historiographical and hagiographical traditions and some of them have received new interpretations. The derivation of the unusual Ethiopic form of his name Ṭamnus is attested in the Chronicle of John of Nikiu. It can be identified as “Dimnos” found in the Chronography of John of Malalas (c. 491–578). The same name in the form Dīmnōn appears in the Chronicle of Ps.-Dionysius of Tel-Maḥrē (sed. 818–45). In the article it is cautiously suggested that these three similar names came into being as a result of a corruption of the Greek “δαιμων” or “demon”. The title nəgusä aḥzab, which the Jewish monarch bears in the Chronicle of John of Nikiu, proves to be very close to the original title of Yōsēf, the mlk/kl/’š‘b-n, viz. “the king of all the communities” (Arab. malik al-shu‘ūb). The author proposes an assumption that this is rare evidence of the influence of South Arabian historical tradition upon Byzantine historiography.","PeriodicalId":38562,"journal":{"name":"Scrinium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45754573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ScriniumPub Date : 2022-10-11DOI: 10.1163/18177565-bja10066
E. Gusarova
{"title":"A Case of Mǝhǝrkä Dǝngǝl","authors":"E. Gusarova","doi":"10.1163/18177565-bja10066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18177565-bja10066","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Within the framework of medievel Ethiopian historiography Mǝhǝrkä Dǝngǝl is often considered as its typical representative. He was a royal secretary, the Court confessor and authored the beginning of the chronicle of the Ethiopian King Susǝnyos (1604–1632). The present article deals with the other side of this highly educated scribe, who proved to be a translator from Arabic into Gə‘əz of the Universal History by John of Nikiu (fl. 680–690) and one of the rare Ethiopian Christian scholars, who converted to Catholicism. Therefore, the written heritage of Mǝhǝrkä Dǝngǝl and his religious beliefs require particular attention. Although it would be tempting to explain his apostasy from the so-called “Alexandrian Faith” by expanding his confessional horizons through acquaintance with the early Byzantine history described in detail in the Chronicle of John of Nikiu, it seems quite more probable that Catholicism aroused his sympathy as a reliable ideological basis for royal autocracy.","PeriodicalId":38562,"journal":{"name":"Scrinium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44102630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ScriniumPub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.1163/18177565-bja10063
Kevin M. Clarke
{"title":"Προοικονοµία in Melito","authors":"Kevin M. Clarke","doi":"10.1163/18177565-bja10063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18177565-bja10063","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Melito’s presupposition that Israel should have been able to recognize the Christ has drawn him much criticism. This essay explores the identity of Melito’s Israel and the rhetorical trope that Melito employs: censure of Israel. Melito’s understanding of the continuity between the “old” and “new” remains underexplored in the significance of its claim. Melito has a profound insight in his interpretative key for the relationship of the old covenant with respect to the new, namely that God made prior arrangements (προοικονοµία) for Christ’s sufferings in the Old Testament. Finally, the essay will examine Melito’s οἰκονοµία. In short, the προοικονοµία provides an early Christian account to describe the manner in which the mysteries of the life of Christ (οἰκονοµία) could be hidden beforehand (προ-) by God in the life and history of the people of Israel and made manifest in the Easter celebration. Melito therefore develops a truly mystagogical exegesis.","PeriodicalId":38562,"journal":{"name":"Scrinium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45668617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}