Der Rmerbriefkommentar des Origenes: Kritische Ausgabeder bersetzung des Rufins. Buch 1-3 (review)Peter J. Gorday

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 1993,pp. 93-94 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/earl.0.0141

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BOOK REVIEWS 93

Caroline P. Hammond Bammel, ed.Der Rmerbriefkommentar des Or-genes: Kritische Ausgabeder bersetzung des Rufins. Buch 1-3.Aus der Geschichte der lateinischen Bibel 16.Freiburg: Herder, 1990. Pp. 264

Already preceded by the necessary prolegomena in Der Rmerbrieftext des Rufinund seine Origenes-UbetSetzung (Freiburg: Herder, 1985), this volume is the firstportion of the full critical edition of the text itself. To follow are volumes containingbooks 46 and 710 of Rufinus of Aquileia's translation and abridgement ofOrigen's original Greek commentary on Romans in 15 books. A fourth volume willcontain the Greek fragments as well as indices to the entire edition. Further, theeditor has announced that she is preparing a separate English translation of thecommentary. This combination of prolegomena, critical text and translation willbe the result of many years of work in a project which goes back at least to her 1965Cambridge dissertation on the manuscript-tradition of Origen-Rufinus on Ro-mans. A series otJTS articles has marked her progress in the intervening years. Thepresent volume is a handsome first-fruits of this labor and an impressive testimonyto meticulous scholarship on a complex text.

Indeed, until the present, the existing editions of Origen-Rufinus on Romanshave been a classic example of the gross inadequacy of eighteenth and earlynineteenth-century printings of patristic texts. The standard editions of the Maur-ists Charles and Charles Vincent Delarue (1759, reprinted in Migne, PG 14) and ofC. H. E. Lommatzsch (1832) are based on a small number of late, heavily contami-nated manuscripts and exhibited little in the way of scientific acumen in the selec-tion of readings (cf. Bammel's discussion in JTS 16 [1965] 338357). At the sametime, it has been known for a long while that a much larger stock of sources wasavailable for collation and use in a critical edition. The discovery of the Turapapyrus with its large fragment of the Greek text, along with some enrichment ofthe long-known Greek catena-fragments, helped pave the way, as has, I believe, themuch increased interest in patristic exegesis since the second world war. Furtherhelp in purifying the lemmata has come from the work of A. Souter and H.-J. Vogelon the Old Latin and Vulgate texts of the NT. The appearance in recent years ofmany more critical editions of the work of both Origen and Rufinus has contributedas well to the "fullness of time" for the present edition.

The archetype for books 1-5 is a ninth-century semi-uncial manuscript, nowfound in the city library of Lyons. Bammel describes the manuscript families, bothdescended from and independent of the archetype. Her printed text is the archetypeas it has been corrected from the independent tradition, from the Greek fragmentsand from the emendations introduced by medieval copyists. Each page of printedtext has the following features: section and subsection numbers of Rufinus' capitu-lation, indication of the section of Romans being commented upon, the text itselfwith marginal notations of the corresponding page numbers in Migne and Lom-matzsch, a list of the witnesses with note of any omissions or dislocations in specificwitnesses, a full primary apparatus of the Latin tradition, a listing of any Greekfragments that seem relevant to the section, and a secondary apparatus with

94 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

scripture-references, references to others of Origen's works, references to the "indi-rect tradition" of using Origen-Rufinus in later commentaries, and references to arich selection of other patristic, late-Roman and rabbinic texts. The sheer volume ofcritical (and potentially exegetical) information contained on each page of thisedition is enormous and is sure to serve as an inducement to further scholarship. Arandom comparison of this edition with that of Lommatzsch detected from six totwelve differences in the text for each page, many minor but a number of substantivevalue.

One particular complexity in the production of a critical text of a patristiccommentary is the matter of constructing an apparatus for the lemmata. In thepresent volume the apparatus is simply incorporated as part of that on the full text,thereby serving the purpose of establishing the most reliable critical text. In the1985 introductory volume, however, the critical text of Rufinus' lemmata of Ro-mans is printed with a much fuller apparatus, including important comparativematerial from Ambrosiaster and Pelagius, which can serve the needs of the scholarinterested in the history of NT text-types. Further, an especially intriguing part ofBammel's presentation is the contention that the Lyons archetype preserves con-ventions and orthographic features that go back to Rufinus himself (full discussionin JTS 29 [1978] 366-39; 30 [1979] 430-462; 35 [1984] 347-393). In another ofthe earlier JTS essays she offers a reconstruction of the earliest history of Origen-Rufinus by looking at the circumstances in which Rufinus found himself during thefirst years of the fifth century. Embroiled in controversy at Rome (rather thanAquileia), and surrounded by figures like Paulinus of ola, Melania the Elder,Pinian, Jerome and even Palladius on his mission of defense for John Chrysostom,his translations played a key role in the debates about Greek asceticism and Ori-genist doctrine (cf. JTS 28 [1977] 372-429).

This edition will make a further contribution, if any is needed, to the erosion ofthe prejudice that has long existed against using Origen's commentaries as a majorsource for the exposition of his thought. Bammel echoes the view represented byHenry Chadwick, that Origen-Rufinus faithfully sets forth, when suitable al-lowances are made, a reliable rendering of Origen's own exegetical labors. Throughthis critical edition of the Romans-commentary we have another passageway alongwhich to travel back to the mind of the Alexandrian himself. In this volume Dr.Bammel has continued the process of presenting in first-class form a work whosehistorical, doctrinal and exegetical implications have only begun to be unfolded. Avital tool, whose lack has long been felt, is now beginning to be available to us.

Peter J. Gorday, Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta, Georgia

Elizabeth Struthers MalbonThe Iconography of the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.Pp. xxi + 256. $47.50

The subject of this handsomely produced monograph is what is probably the singlemost famous piece of early Christian relief sculpture. It is an iconographically