A Greek Source for the Treatise on the
Composition of Man Attributed to Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpaṭrōs?
Thomas
Benfey
Princeton University
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James E. Walters
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2019
Volume 22.1
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https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv22n1benfey
Thomas Benfey
A Greek Source for the Treatise on the Composition of Man
Attributed to Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpaṭrōs?
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol22/HV22N1Benfey.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2019
vol 22
issue 1
pp 3–37
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal
dedicated to the study of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in
January and July) by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998,
Hugoye seeks to offer the best scholarship available in the field of Syriac
studies.
Syriac medicine
Greek medicine
Aḥūdemmeh
Anṭīpaṭrōs
Hippocrates
File created by James E. Walters
Abstract
Here I establish the close relationship between a large portion of the
Syriac Treatise on the Composition of Man attributed to
Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpaṭrōs, originally published by Chabot in 1943, and the Greek
pseudo-Hippocratic treatise originally published as On the
Formation of Man by Jouanna in 2006, arguing that one of these texts must
be a translation of the other. While firm conclusions about the direction, place and
time of this translation must await an improved edition of the Syriac text, I make
several suggestions on these points as well. I also show that the Greek
pseudo-Hippocratic text may need to be revised, since certain manuscripts
consistently agree with the Syriac against others.
I. Introduction
Here I will show that a lengthy portion of the Treatise on the Composition of Man attributed to “Aḥūdemmeh
Anṭīpaṭrōs” (or simply “Anṭīpaṭrōs”--the text has two separate attributions) has
a close relationship to the Greek pseudo-Hippocratic treatise of the same name
first edited by Jouanna in 2006; one is certainly a translation of the
other. Although I
use “translation” in a somewhat broader sense than the one it has for
modern times, allowing for a somewhat higher level of invention and
adaptation on the translator’s part, I have found no egregious instances
of innovation on the part of any translator here, as far as the
translation’s putative Urtext is concerned. The text of the Syriac work,
as well as a Latin translation, appears in J.-B. Chabot, “Notice sur
deux manuscrits contenant les oeuvres du moine Isaac de Rabban Isho et
du métropolitain Aḥoudemmeh” (Notices et extraits des
manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale et autres Bibliothèques
43 [1943]), 53-60 (text) and 63-70 (translation). The pseudo-Hippocratic
treatise, meanwhile, has been edited and translated into French (as On the Formation of Man—I will discuss the
suitability of this title below) in J. Jouanna, “Un traité inédit
attributé à Hippocrate, Sur la formation de
l’homme: editio princeps,” in Ecdotica e
ricezione dei testi medici greci: atti del V Convegno
Internazionale, Napoli, 1-2 ottobre 2004, Collectanea 24, ed.
V. Boudon-Millot (Naples: M. D’Auria, 2006), 298-319 (text and
translation). In this Syriac work we have a new addition to
the “collection of texts” in various languages attesting to the post-Galenic
“development of the theory of the four humors” discussed by Jouanna. J. Jouanna, “The Legacy
of the Hippocratic Treatise The Nature of Man:
The Theory of the Four Humours” in Greek Medicine from
Hippocrates to Galen, Studies in Ancient Medicine 40, ed. P.
van der Eijk and tr. N. Allies (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2012),
348. Firm conclusions about the nature of this relationship (the
place and time in which the translation occurred, as well as the translation’s
direction) must await an edition of the Syriac text that incorporates all
relevant manuscripts; my aim here is simply to establish the relationship
between these texts. Along the way I will make some suggestions about the
underlying causes of their affinities, as well as some adjustments that may need
to be made to the Greek text on the basis of the Syriac.
The Treatise on the Composition of Man (Mēmrā ʿal rūkkābā d-barnāšā) attributed to Aḥūdemmeh
Anṭīpaṭrōs was originally edited and translated by Chabot in 1943. Chabot, “Notice,”
53-60 (text) and 63-70 (Latin translation). This edition,
which will serve as the basis for this article, was produced using the East
Syrian manuscript copied in the early 20th century now known as CSCO Syr.
21. The
whereabouts of CSCO Syr. 21 are currently unknown. This Treatise is also attested in two additional
20th-century manuscripts, which I have been unable to access: Mingana
Syr. 589 and BJI 13. In addition to the Treatise on
the Composition of Man itself BJI 13 also includes an anonymous
Treatise On the Humors that explicitly draws
upon the Treatise on the Composition of Man (G.
Kessel, “Field Notes on Syriac Manuscripts I: Two Medical Manuscripts
Digitized by the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library” (Hugoye 20:2 [2017]), 427-428; R. Degen, “Ein Corpus Medicorum Syriacorum” (Medizinhistorisches Journal 7.1/2 [1972]), 118, n. 23; A.
Mingana, Catalogue of the Mingana Collection of
Manuscripts, vol. 1 [Cambridge: W. Heffer, 1933],
1125-1127). Chabot already suspected that this work was based
on a Greek model, citing the Greek origin of the name Anṭīpaṭrōs, and the
“numerous Greek technical terms” that appear in the text. Chabot, “Notice,” 74.
Chabot suggests that the work’s Greek Vorlage had simply been attributed to a
certain Antipatros; the name Aḥūdemmeh was the addition of an overzealous
copyist, who was familiar with ʿAbdīšōʿ's attribution of a work with a similar
title, the Treatise on the Composition of the Person, or
Persons (Mēmrā ʿal rūkkāb
qnōmā/qnōmē) to Aḥūdemmeh, and, assuming that
this must be the same as what he had in front of him, “corrected” the
attribution accordingly.
Qnōmā (i.e., <qnwmʾ> without syāmē points), “person” or “hypostasis,” and qnōmē (i.e., <qnwmʾ> with syāmē points), “persons” or “hypostases,” are both attested
here in manuscripts of ʿAbdīšōʿ's catalog (Chabot, “Notice,” 73, n. 3;
J. Assemani, Bibliotheca Orientalis
Clementino-Vaticana, vol. 3.1 [Rome: Sacrae Congregationis de
Propaganda Fide, 1725], 192-4). Chabot mentions two Roman
physicians named Antipatros as possible authors of this Greek Vorlage. Chabot, “Notice,” 75. In
a note appended to an article by Gignoux touching on the origins of the
Syriac On the Composition of Man attributed to
Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpaṭrōs, Jouanna discusses an unsuccessful search for
parallels to the Syriac text in the attested writings and overall
intellectual orientations of either of these Antipatroses. (P. Gignoux,
“Anatomie et physiologie humaine chez un auteur syriaque, Ahūhdemmeh.”
(Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des
Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 142.1 [1998]),
141-2). As Chabot also notes, we have a West Syrian treatise
attributed to Aḥūdemmeh, first edited by Nau, with the all-but-identical title
Treatise on the Composition of Man (Mēmrā ʿal rūkkābeh d-barnāšā), but completely different content than
the treatise attributed to Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpaṭrōs; Chabot does not spell this
possibility out, but a copyist aware of the former work’s existence but
unfamiliar with its contents could have made an analogous overcorrection. Ibid., 73; this treatise
was edited and translated in F. Nau, Histoires d’Ahoudemmeh et de
Marouta, métropolitains jacobites de Tagrit et de l’Orient (VIe et VIIe
siècles): suivies du traité d’Ahoudemmeh sur l’homme, Patrologia
Orientalis 3.1 (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1909), 100-115. Reinink
adduces further support for the notion that the attribution of the East Syrian
On the Composition of Man to Aḥūdemmeh is late and
erroneous, in pointing to the work’s curious double attribution: the text’s very
first line, after the title “Treatise on the Composition of
Man, pronounced by Mār Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpaṭrōs,” includes a greeting
addressed to the “explorers of secret things... from Anṭīpāṭrōs.” G. J. Reinink, “Man as
Microcosm: A Syriac Didactic Poem and Its Prose Background” in Calliope’s Classroom : Studies in Didactic Poetry from
Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. A. Harder, A. A. MacDonald,
and G. J. Reinink (Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2007), 130-1.
Gignoux, meanwhile, has advanced a dissenting view, saying that
this work is “difficult to attribute to a Roman physician,” but is rather an
original Syriac composition, likely to be attributed to the same Aḥūdemmeh who
wrote the West Syrian On the Composition of Man. Gignoux, “Anatomie et
physiologie humaine,” 232-235. Gignoux believes that this
Aḥūdemmeh is to be identified with the East Syrian bishop “Aḥūdemmeh of Nisibis”
who is named as a participant in a 544 church council. Ibid., 231. Gignoux makes
two points to support his contention that this treatise is an original Syriac
work, neither of which is particularly convincing. First, he floats the
possibility that both Aḥūdemmeh and Anṭīpaṭrōs are not simply proper names in
the attribution of the East Syrian On the Composition of
Man, but are rather to be interpreted in their Syriac and Greek root
meanings--“brother of his mother” and “in the place of the father,”
respectively. For Gignoux, these terms could be working in concert to specify
the role the author of this work played in his family--an uncle who served as a
kind of “guardian” for his sister’s children. Ibid., 233. This explanation, while
ingenious, does nothing to get around the difficulty the unmistakably Greek name
Anṭīpaṭrōs poses for the identification of this text as an original Syriac
composition; indeed, if “Anṭīpaṭrōs” was actually meant to mean “in the place of
the father” here, rather than simply functioning as a name (given how
well-attested this name is in the Roman Empire, the latter possibility is much
more likely), this would actually be a strong indication that the bearer of this
name lived among Greek speakers. On the popularity of the name Antipatros in the Roman
Empire, consider that Chabot was able to find two Roman physicians named
Antipatros; and see the three additional Antipatroses in J. R.
Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman
Empire, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971),
106.
Second, Gignoux maintains that this work’s content is “not well
understood except within the Syriac tradition,” and that there is “no need to
appeal to a Greco-Latin tradition” in order to account for its origins. Gignoux, “Anatomie et
physiologie humaine,” 234. Curiously, the support for this
claim looks forward to a thirteenth-century didactic poem on the theme of “the
human being as microcosm” authored by George Wardā, which, Gignoux convincingly
demonstrates, has clear parallels with the treatise attributed to Aḥūdemmeh
Anṭīpatrōs, and likely drew on this work, whether directly or indirectly. Ibid.,
234-8. This has no clear relevance for the question of the
origins of the Treatise on the Composition of Man.
As it turns out, a large section of the treatise attributed to
Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpatrōs, beginning on page 54 of Chabot’s edition, closing on page
57, and immediately followed by the words “thus said the great Hippocrates,”
corresponds closely to the Greek pseudo-Hippocratic treatise On the Composition of Man edited and translated by Jouanna in
2006. Chabot,
“Notice,” 54.13-57.7 (text) and 64-67 (translation); Jouanna, “Un traité
inédit” 298-319 (text and translation). As will be discussed
below, multiple scenarios could explain this correspondence: the basis for the
Greek could be an excerpt from the Syriac treatise attributed to Aḥūdemmeh
Anṭīpatrōs, or one of the Syriac treatise’s component parts that circulated
separately; or the basis for part of the Syriac treatise attributed to Aḥūdemmeh
Anṭīpatrōs could be this Greek pseudo-Hippocratic treatise—the part of the
Syriac not corresponding to this pseudo-Hippocratic treatise would then consist
of other translations from Greek (or other languages), or original Syriac
compositions.
Jouanna’s edition is based on four manuscripts: the 15th-century
Ambrosianus gr. 331 (which I will hereafter designate as A., following Jouanna’s
shorthand); the 16th-century Parisinus gr. 985 (P.); the 16th-century Parisinus
gr. 2320 (Par.); and the 15th- or 16th-century Parisinus gr. 2494 (Pa.). Jouanna, “Un traité
inédit,” 275-283. Judging P. to be the manuscript preserving
the treatise in its “most complete” form, Jouanna makes it the basis for his
edition, but he leaves open the possibility that the version in P. is “in some
respects” a more “developed” form of an originally “shorter version” and that
Par. may preserve such a shorter version, rather than being a lacunary version
of the text in P. Ibid., 282-283.
In fact, as we will see, the section of the treatise attributed to
Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpatrōs corresponding to this Greek pseudo-Hippocratic work mostly
agrees with Par., as well as Pa., over P., indicating that Jouanna’s suspicions
about the chronological priority of Par. relative to P. were likely correct, and
that the former manuscript should be prioritized accordingly for any Greek text.
If the Syriac was the basis for the Greek, it is self-evident that the Greek
manuscripts corresponding more closely to the Syriac should be prioritized. If,
on the other hand, the Greek was the basis for the Syriac, it is probable that
this translation was made sometime between the sixth and ninth centuries—the
period in which medical translations are known to have been made from Greek into
Syriac. Given that even the ninth century precedes our earliest Greek manuscript
by some 500 years, in this scenario, too, the Syriac text should be assigned
great importance in any edition of the Greek text. On medical translations from
Greek into Syriac, see 22-3 below. This agreement of the
Syriac treatise with Par. and Pa. over P. extends to the work’s title, as the
treatise in Par., along with Pa., is said to be on the “composition” (κατασκευή) of human beings, rather than on their
“formation” (διάπλασις). Ibid., 298. Accordingly,
I take On the Composition of Man to be the original title
of the Greek treatise, and refer to it as such, rather than On
the Formation of Man, as Jouanna calls it.
The Syriac On the Composition of Man opens
with the aforementioned greeting from “Anṭīpatrōs” to the “investigators of
secrets,” and a discussion of the great benefits the medical discussions of “the
first philosophers” offer humanity. Chabot, “Notice,” 53.2-54.8. The final passage
of this introductory section includes a list of some of these “philosophers,”
who have helped to combat “subjection to harmful diseases,” in which Plato,
Aristotle, Asclepiades, Chiron, Democritus, Hippocrates, and Galen are named
explicitly.
Chabot, “Notice,” 54.8-13.
The section corresponding to the Greek On the
Composition of Man comes next. I will first give a general overview of
the contents of the text, and the relationship among the Syriac version and the
four Greek manuscripts, before turning to a more in-depth comparison of the
Syriac and Greek manuscripts’ respective renditions of selected passages and
phrases. The text begins with a general description of “man,” outlining “his”
relationship to God, and to the rest of creation (according to Jouanna’s
numbering of the sections, which I will adopt here, this is section I). Chabot,
“Notice,” 54.13-17; Jouanna, “Un traité inédit,” 298.1-5.
After this, it discusses the various attributes that help to define the human
being, including a detailed accounting of the amounts of bones and “conduits” in
the body (Jouanna’s II-III). Chabot, “Notice,” 54.17-55.5; Jouanna, “Un traité
inédit,” 298.6-304.10. The text then turns to the “places” or
“homes” of the various humors in the body, and the places in which they have
“dominion” (IV),
Chabot, “Notice,” 55.5-13; Jouanna, “Un traité inédit,”
304.11-306.8. followed by a discussion of the influences
various parts of the body and their associated humors have on human seed
(V), Chabot,
“Notice,” 55.13-20; Jouanna, “Un traité inédit,” 306.9-23.
the ways in which the hour of conception influences the individual’s
constitution, appearance and character (VI-IX), Chabot, “Notice,” 55.20-56.24; Jouanna, “Un traité
inédit,” 308.1-316.17. and, finally, the four different types
of seed, and the combined influence of seed and “surrounding air” on the
development of any creature (X). Chabot, “Notice,” 56.24-57.7; Jouanna, “Un traité
inédit,” 316.18-318.18. As discussed above, Jouanna bases his
text on P., but Pa. and Par. are considerably closer to the Syriac than P. (or
A.). Jouanna’s text generally corresponds to the Syriac quite closely, and
discrepancies between Jouanna’s text and the Syriac can often be resolved by
selecting a reading from Pa. or Par. over one from P. or A. Jouanna’s text
diverges most from the Syriac in the sections concerning the influence of one’s
time of conception (VI-IX); while Jouanna’s text and the Syriac continue to
share general structural features here, the two texts’ specific contents diverge
to a considerably greater extent than they do in the surrounding sections. Two
features of the Greek manuscript heritage may help to explain this: Pa., perhaps
the closest of the Greek manuscripts to the Syriac, breaks off just after the
beginning of section V; while Par.’s rendering of sections VI-IX is considerably
more laconic than that of P. (the basis of Jouanna’s text, of course), and is in
some respects closer to the Syriac.
The Syriac On the Composition of Man
continues after the conclusion of the section corresponding to the Greek
pseudo-Hippocratic text. In the Syriac text, the latter section closes with the
words “thus said the great Hippocrates,” almost certainly referring to the
sentence immediately before it, which discusses the effect the surrounding air
has on the constitution of the individual, in line with what is laid out in the
Hippocratic work Airs, Waters and Places. W. H. S. Jones, Hippocrates I, Loeb Classical Library 147 (New
York: Putnam, 1923), 65-137. After this, we have an
enumeration of the parts of the body and their respective functions, including a
broader description of the entire human body (introduced as a “return to our
theme”) from the inside out: “the human body on the outside is skin, and inside
the skin [there is flesh], and inside the flesh there is fat, and inside the fat
there are arteries…”
Chabot, “Notice,” (entire section) 57.9-60.20; (quoted passage, in its
entirety) 58.26-31. In Chabot’s text, the Treatise on the Composition of Man attributed to Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpatrōs
is directly followed by something entitled From The Book of
Medicine; this latter is now recognized to be an entirely independent
work from the treatise attributed to Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpatrōs. Ibid., 60.21-63.7. On this text’s
authorship, see the questions raised about whether this treatise is to
be attributed to Aḥūdemmeh
in Reinink, “Man as Microcosm,” 130; and the case for it being an
excerpt from a work of Šemʿōn of Ṭaibūteh laid out in G. Kessel, “La
position de Simon de Taibuteh dans l’éventail de la tradition mystique
syriaque” in Les mystiques syriaques, Études
syriaques 8, ed. A. Desreumaux (Paris: Geuthner, 2011),
126-128.
Aside from the awkward double attribution at the very beginning,
the treatise attributed to Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpatrōs is seamless and coherent,
proceeding from one topic to another with little redundancy or inconsistency:
from a general history of medicine, to a more detailed discussion of the
constituents of the human body, known thanks to the progress medical science has
made. On the
attribution of the text, see 4 above. There is therefore no
reason to suppose, purely on the basis of a reading of the Syriac, that we are
dealing with some kind of compilation here; only a demonstration that the Greek
is the basis for the section of the Syriac text to which it corresponds would
lead us to that conclusion.
II. Comparative Analysis of Selected Passages
I now turn to an in-depth analysis of selected passages and
expressions paralleling one another in the Greek and Syriac. This analysis will
illustrate the general degree of correspondence between the Greek and Syriac,
and the tendency of the Greek manuscripts Pa. and Par. to agree with the Syriac
against P. and A. It may also shed light on the direction of the translation,
though on this front my results remain preliminary and speculative. I will start
from the very beginning of the text; as the following table shows, the profound
similarities between the Greek and Syriac are already apparent here.
Syriac
Chabot, “Notice,” 54.13-17.
Greek (Jouanna text) Jouanna, “Un traité inédit,”
298.1-5.
Greek text (Pa. only) Ibid., 298.1-5 (text adjusted using Jouanna’s
critical apparatus).
netnē mādēn w-nēmarʿal barnāšā. ak
d-īt. w-hākanā bīdā bīdāʿal ḥšaḥtā d-sammmānē. barnāšā hākēl
alāha-w d-arʿānē. brīta-w d-tahrā. mārā da-knawāteh. esārā
d-tartēn brītē. dmūtā d-bāryeh. māna-w d-tedmūrtā. wa-ṣbūta-w
da-b-tahrā qaymā.
Ὁ ἄνθρωπος οὗτος· θεός ἐστιν ἐπίγειος· ἐπεὶ καὶ
πλάσμα θεϊκόν ἐστι· κύριος δὲ κατέστη ὑπὸ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ τῶν κτηνῶν
καὶ ἀλόγων, καὶ πάσης τῆς ὁρατῆς κτίσεως· ἐζωσμένος τέ τοῖς δυσὶ
μέρεσιν· εἰκὼν δέ ἐστι τοῦ πλάσαντος αὐτόν· ἐνδιαίτημά ἐστι
θαυμαστόν· καὶ θέλημα ἐπιθυμητόν.
Ὁ ἄνθρωπος θεός ἐστιν ἐπίγειος· θεϊκὸν πλάσμα·
κύριος ἐστὶν παντων τῶν κτηνῶν καὶ τῶν ἀλόγων ζώων· ἐζωσμένος τέ
τοῖς δυσὶ μέρεσιν· εἰκὼν ἐστι τοῦ πλάσαντος αὐτόν· ἐνδιαίτημά ἐστι
θαυμαστόν· καὶ θέλημα ἐστιν ἐπιθυμητόν.
Thus we will narrate, and we will speak of man, what he is; and
likewise, little by little, about the use of drugs. Now, man is a god of terrestrial things, a wonderful
creation, master of his
fellow [beasts?].
bond [or girdle; esārā] of the two creations, the image of his creator.
He is a marvelous instrument [or
“vessel”; mānā], and
is something [or a will; ṣbūtā] that consists
of wonder [or, perhaps, “exists in wonder”].
Man is such.
He is a terrestrial god, for
precisely [his] formation is divine. He was
made master of the beasts and of those lacking
reason, and of every visible creature, by the
craftsman. And he is girt with two parts. He is the image of
the one who created him,
and [his] dwelling-place is marvelous, and [his] willis desirable.
Man is a terrestrial god, a
divine formation. He is master
of the beasts and of the animals lacking reason.
And he is girt with two parts. He is the image of
the one who created him,
and [his] dwelling-place is marvelous, and [his] will
is desirable.
Even within these first few lines, then, we have several clear
parallels between the two texts, on the most noteworthy among which I will now
briefly comment. To begin, we have two particularly striking bits of
nearly-equivalent phrasing. In the Syriac and Greek texts “man” is called a “god
of terrestrial things” and a “terrestrial god,” respectively, in a nearly
parallel construction, which finds the copula after the noun, but before the
adjective (elāha-w d-arʿānē; θεός
ἐστιν ἐπίγειος ). Further, the Syriac text refers to “man” as “the
image of his creator” (dmūtā d-bāryeh) while the Greek
has the almost identical “the image of the one who created him” (εἰκὼν…τοῦ πλάσαντος αὐτόν).
There are also some curious partial parallels here, which may
point to the direction of the translation. First, there is the Syriac phrase
“bond of the two creations” (esārā d-tartēn brītē)
corresponding to “girt with two parts” in Greek (ἐζωσμένος... τοῖς δυσὶ μέρεσιν ). In this particular case, it is
easier to imagine the Greek being a translation from the Syriac than vice-versa.
This Syriac phrase “bond of the two creations” has a close parallel in an
anonymous Syriac homily initially attributed to Ephrem, which Jansma believes to
be of Greek origin. J.
J. Overbeck, S. Ephraemi Syri, Rabulae episcopi Edesseni, Balaei
aliorumque opera selecta e codicibus Syriacis manuscriptis in Museo
Britannico et Bibliotheca Bodleiana asservatis primus (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1865), 76; T. Jansma, “Une homélie anonyme sur la création du
monde” (L’Orient Syrien 5 [1960]), 389, 398-400. In this
text, the human being is designated as the single “bond” (esārā) which God made in order to “gather and fasten together the
creation” (neqoš w-neḥzoq l-brītā); humans are uniquely
“related to” both the “invisible” and “visible” parts of creation, insofar as
they possess both soul and body. Overbeck, S. Ephraemi Syri opera
selecta, 76.14-20 (text); Jansma, “Une homélie anonyme sur la
création du monde,” 389 (translation). The phrase “bond of
the two creations” in the Syriac On the Composition of
Man is surely an elliptical reference to the same notion, the unique
link between the “invisible” and “visible” that humanity constitutes. As for the
Greek “girt with two parts,” meanwhile, I have been unable to find such a clear
parallel elsewhere in this language’s corpus, though here it could mean
something analogous but not equivalent to the Syriac phrase: the “two parts”
could be the body and soul, which the human being has “put on” like a piece of
clothing. Furthermore, the Syriac word used for “bond” here (esārā) can also mean “girdle,” whereas the Greek word corresponding to
“girt” (ἐζωσμένος) cannot be construed in the
wider sense of “bound.” It is most likely that the discrepancy between the
Syriac and Greek on this point stems from a translator’s incorrect choice among
the meanings of the Syriac word esārā, rather than his
invention of an entirely new meaning for the Greek ἐζωσμένος.
The apparent correspondence between Syriac “thing” or “will” (ṣbūtā) and Greek “will” (θέλημα) may be an analogous case. Although the possibility that
ṣbūtā in Syriac means “will” rather than “something”
here should not be entirely discounted, here too we may have an instance of a
Greek translator choosing incorrectly among the various meanings of a Syriac
word, translating ṣbūtā as “will” rather than
“something.”
Finally, as noted in Chabot’s edition, the Syriac text refers to
the human being with a phrase from the Peshitta version of Ecclesiasticus 43:2, “marvelous instrument” (mānā
d-tedmūrtā).
Chabot, “Notice,” 54.16, 64; P. de Lagarde, Libri
Veteris Testamenti Apocryphi Syriace (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus,
1861), 43.31. Incidentally, precisely the same phrase, mānā d-tedmūrtā, is used as a descriptor for humanity
near the beginning of Aḥūdemmeh’s On the Composition of
Man.
Nau, Histoires d’Ahoudemmeh et de Marouta, 101.4. This phrase
seems to correspond to “marvelous dwelling-place” (ἐνδιαίτημά… θαυμαστόν ) in the Greek text. Jouanna deems this to
refer to paradise, adducing a parallel passage in ps.-Gregory Nyssa’s On Paradise, in which the same phrase meaning “marvelous
dwelling-place,” ἐνδιαίτημα… θαυμαστόν , refers
to paradise, and, as in the Greek pseudo-Hippocratic treatise, occurs just after
an assertion of humanity’s superiority to animals. There is a real possibility
of a translation going either way here, as both “marvelous instrument” and
“marvelous dwelling-place” make sense in context, and have clear parallels
elsewhere in Syriac and Greek, respectively. It is also conceivable that neither
of these phrases is a translation of the other, despite their similarity to one
another, and corresponding place in each text. Still, it is worth noting that as
in the two cases we have just examined, the Syriac word mānā has a broader range of meanings than the Greek word that seems to
correspond to it, ἐνδιαίτημα; in addition to
“instrument,” mānā can also mean “vessel.” A Greek
translator may have had difficulty understanding how human beings could be
“vessels” in themselves, and accordingly construed mānā
as the “vessel” containing humanity: their “dwelling-place” (ἐνδιαίτημα). In this case it is not too hard to see
the misunderstanding going the other way, however; it is conceivable that a
translator working from Greek to Syriac could have construed mānā in the passage from Ecclesiasticus as something more like
“vessel.” Seeing a corresponding equivalence between mānā
and ἐνδιαίτημα, he could have rendered
“marvelous dwelling-place” (ἐνδιαίτημα…
θαυμαστόν ) as “marvelous vessel” (mānā
d-tedmūrtā).
A broader stylistic comparison between the Greek and Syriac texts
may also be relevant for the direction of the translation. The Greek On the Composition of Man makes a somewhat abrupt
transition, from initially describing “man” directly, as “girt with two parts”
and “the image of the one who created him,” to describing his attributes--“he is
the image of the one who created him” is immediately followed by, literally,
“the dwelling-place is marvelous” and “the will is desirable.” The corresponding
passage in the Syriac text lacks this abrupt transition, as the descriptors
there are consistently predicated of “man” himself, not his attributes. Of
course, this discrepancy between the two texts could be the result of a
translator working from Greek to Syriac smoothing out an awkward transition he
found in his Vorlage. Still, it is somewhat easier to see the valiant attempt of
a translator working from Syriac to Greek to make sense of an incompletely
understood Syriac Vorlage here.
The Syriac text may also help to better establish the hierarchy
among the Greek manuscripts. As the above table shows, the Syriac text follows
the Greek manuscript Pa. significantly more closely than P., the basis for
Jouanna’s text. For example, the Syriac has no equivalent for the conjunction
ἐπεὶ (“for”) following θεός ἐστιν ἐπίγειος (“he is a terrestrial god”) in
Jouanna’s text, which Pa. and Par. also lack; and the Syriac has no equivalent
for the phrases κατέστη ὑπὸ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ
(“made by the craftsman”) or καὶ πάσης τῆς ὁρατῆς
κτίσεως (“and of every visible creature”), each of which is unique
to P. For this passage
Pa. is the closest to the Syriac among the four Greek manuscripts whose
variant readings are recorded in Jouanna; both Par. and A. include
several additional phrases that depart from the Syriac distinctly more
than anything in Pa. Here and throughout the text, A.’s departures from
the Syriac are particularly conspicuous.
Both the Syriac and the Greek then turn to the enumeration of
various body parts. Here again the close parallels between the texts are
unmistakable.
Syriac Chabot, “Notice,” 54.17-19.
Greek
Jouanna, “Un traité inédit,” 298.5-10.
kolleh gūšmā da-treʿsar haddāmaw.
w-rukkābā da-tlātmā wa-štīn wa-štā minyānaw. w-quyyāmā d->ḥamšā
<d-regšaw>. My emendation of Chabot’s d-reglaw, to be discussed below
(Chabot, “Notice,” 54.18).
māʾtēn gēr w-arbʿīn wa-tmānyā garmīn mdabbqīn
b-barnāšā.
Στάσις ἐστὶ σεπτὴ ὅλον σῶμα.
Σῶμα δέ ἐστι δωδεκάμελον ματηρτισμένον εἰς τριακόσια ἑξήκοντα· ὁ
ἀριθμὸς αὐτοῦ οὗτος· στοιχεῖα δ´·αἷμα, φλέγμα, χολὴ ξανθὴ καὶ
χολὴ μέλαινα· αἰσθήσεις αὐτῷ πέντε· ὅρασις, ὄσφρησις, ἀκοή,
γεῦσις καὶ ἀφή. Κεκόλληνται δὲ τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ ὀστᾶ
σμη´
And the whole body is of twelve members, and the
composition three-hundred sixty-six. [As for] his numbers: his state is of five <of
his senses>. For two-hundred
forty-eight bones are put together in man.
[His] state is venerable with respect to the whole body. His body is twelve-membered, compounded into
three-hundred sixty-six; its number is
such: 4 elements: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Five senses are there: sight, smell, hearing, touch
and taste. 248 bones are put together in
man.
Many parallels are immediately apparent here. The Syriac and the
Greek agree in assigning the body “twelve members,” some kind of further
subdivision into 366 parts, and 248 bones. In all likelihood, they also both
declare “man” to have five senses: Chabot’s text has d-reglaw (<drglwhy>), “of his feet,” but this is one letter away
from d-regšaw (<drgšwhy>), “of his senses.” The seemingly excessive
use of the Syriac conjunction/pronoun d- here is
worthy of attention; for Chabot it indicates a lacuna in the Syriac text
(Ibid., 64, n. 7). A discussion of the bones in the body
follows this passage, starting with the bones in the foot, and it is not hard to
imagine an inattentive copyist jumping the gun here, writing “feet” for
“senses.” Finally, as in the case of the passage examined before this one, the
Greek manuscripts Pa. and Par. are in a certain respect closer to the Syriac
than Jouanna’s text, which prioritizes P. The most obvious difference between
the Syriac and Jouanna’s Greek text here is Jouanna’s text’s enumeration of the
four “elements” of the body, the humors, which is entirely lacking in the
Syriac. As it happens, Par. entirely omits this section, while Pa. has “four
elements,” but also lacks the specific detailing of the four humors. Everything from the
beginning of the passage through the enumeration of the four humors is
omitted in Par. (Στάσις…μέλαινα), while
everything from “blood” through the “five” in “five senses” is omitted
in Pa. (αἷμα…πέντε) (Jouanna, “Un
traité inédit,” 298 [critical apparatus]). It is also noteworthy that
although the Greek sentence “[His] state is venerable with respect to
the whole body” (στάσις ἐστὶ σεπτὴ ὅλον
σῶμα) has nothing directly corresponding to it in the
Syriac text, two phrases from this sentence in the Greek do find
isolated parallels a bit later in the Syriac passage quoted above:
“whole body” (kolleh gūšmā), and “state” (quyyāmā). It is difficult to know quite what to
make of this.
A detailed discussion of the bones in the body follows, in both
Chabot’s Syriac text and the Greek. For this section, P., Pa. and Par. agree
with Chabot’s Syriac against A., which has something almost entirely
different. Aside
from one sentence, on the “opening and closing” accomplished by certain
bones near the heart, A.’s rendering of this section diverges entirely
from those of P., Pa. and Par. (Jouanna, “Un traité inédit,”
298.11-302.14). The following table shows the numbers of
bones the Syriac On the Composition of Man and P., Pa.
and Par. situate in each part of the body, in the order in which these figures
occur in each manuscript (an empty cell designates that nothing in the given
manuscript corresponds to whatever figures occur in the columns alongside
it):
Syriac
Chabot, “Notice,” 54.19-27.
P.
Pa.
Par. P., Pa.
and Par. all from Jouanna, “Un traité inédit,”
298.11-300.7.
30 [total] in the feet, “5 and 5 again” in
the sole of the foot
“5 and 5 per
toe”; 5 in the sole of the foot
3 in the knees
3 in the knees
2 in the thighs
2 in the back of the knee P., Pa., and Par. have ἄγκυον (meaning unclear), αγγύλην (a kind of javelin),
άγκῶνα (“bend in the arm or
leg”) here, respectively; Jouanna emends to αγκύλην, “back of the knee” (Ibid.,
298 [critical apparatus]).
1 in the chest
1 in the thigh P., Pa. and Par. have μιρὸν (meaning unclear), μηρὸν (“thigh”), μυρὸν (“unguent”) here, respectively; Jouanna
opts for μηρὸν, “thigh” (Ibid.
[critical apparatus]).
5 in the loins
9 in the [region of?] the kidneys
5 in the [region of?] the kidneys
8 in the legs
9 in the head
7 in the head
9 in the head
8 in the neck
5 in the neck
8 in the neck
5 in the palm of the hand
5 in the palm of the hand No “of the hand” in Par. (Ibid. [critical
apparatus]).
5 in each finger
5 per finger
5 [lit. “five five”] per finger Pa.’s “five five” (πέντε πέντε) finds a literal
parallel in the Syriac “five five” (ḥamšā
ḥamšā), used in the same context (Ibid., 300 [critical
apparatus]; Chabot, “Notice,” 54.23). But while doubling a
number in Syriac expresses distribution--in this case, “five
each”--it has no particular meaning in Greek, which expresses
this kind of distribution by means of a preposition or prefix
(T. Nöldeke, Compendious Syriac Grammar,
tr. J. A. Crichton [London: Williams & Norgate, 1904], 186;
H. W. Smyth, A Greek Grammar for
Colleges, Greek Series for Colleges and Schools
[Cincinnati: American Book Company, 1920], 106). This could be a
sign that the translation was made from Syriac to Greek, or that
the original Greek was somehow of a “Syriacizing” variety. Of
course, the duplication of a word is among the most frequent
errors for a copyist to make; and moreover it should be noted
that neither of the other two instances of distributive
repetition in the Syriac version of this passage (both of which
involve “one”) has this kind of literal parallel in any Greek
manuscript.
3 in the back
3 in the elbow
2 in the arm
1 in the shoulder
1 in the “muscle”
101 in the right side
5 in the right side
101 in the right side
102 in the right side
100 in the left side
5 in the left side
101 in the left side
118 in the left side
18 “ribs-vertebrae” in the back, “18 ribs are joined to them, these
vertebrae”
18 vertebrae in the lower back Par. omits the numeral (Jouanna, “Un
traité inédit,” 300 [critical apparatus]).
6 in each shoulder
6 in each shoulder
3 in each arm
3 in each arm
[something else] Jouanna notes that after giving the amount of
bones in the shoulder, Pa. has “another version,” and does not
correspond to P. and Par. again until the three manuscripts’
shared sentence on what “open and close [?] the members of the
body.” Unfortunately, Jouanna does not elaborate on the contents
of this “other version” attested only in Pa. (Ibid. [critical
apparatus]).
3 in each arm
5 in the openings of the heart
5 in the opening of the heart
5 in the opening of the heart
“The ribs are 6. The false [ribs] are 5. And for the vertebrae of the
lower back 14. For the right side 101. And for the left side 101. So
that altogether the bones are 360.”
Here the broad trends we saw in the passages previously examined
continue: the Syriac agrees closely with the Greek in general, and particularly
closely with the manuscripts Pa. and Par. As can be seen in the table above,
there are several instances in the discussion of the bones in which the Syriac
agrees partially or completely with Pa. and Par. over P.; and there are no
instances in which the Syriac agrees with P. over either Pa. or Par. These
instances of the Syriac agreeing with Pa. and Par. against P. include: the
Syriac, Pa. and Par. assigning five bones to the “loins” (in the Syriac) and
“kidneys” (in the Greek), where P. assigns nine bones to this region; Pa., Par.
and the Syriac addressing the bones of the head after those associated with the
kidneys and loins, where P. discusses the bones in the legs; Pa., Par. and the
Syriac assigning eight bones to the neck, as opposed to P.’s five; and Pa., Par.
and the Syriac assigning a hundred or more bones to the right and left sides of
the body, while P. locates only five in each side in the corresponding passage
(though P. does register a figure more in line with Pa., Par. and the Syriac
later in the text).
I will now discuss one recurring set of corresponding expressions
in the Greek and Syriac, whose Greek component has already been puzzled over by
Jouanna. Several times in the text, we have the corresponding phrases,
perplexing in the Greek and Syriac alike, “transformation [or, once, “form”] of
the back of the head [?]” (μεταμόρφωσις [or,
once, μόρφωσις] τοῦ
ἐγκροτάφου ) in Greek, and “form [?] of the brain” (<ṣwrtʾ>
[the vocalization is uncertain—perhaps ṣūrtā?] d-mūḥā) in Syriac. Ibid., 304.5, 9-10, 306.3, and (with μόρφωσις τοῦ ἐγκροτάφου) 9-10. Chabot,
“Notice,” 55.10, 13-14; 56.24.
The Greek μεταμόρφωσις/μόρφωσις τοῦ ἐγκροτάφου is a difficult expression to
understand. Ἐγκρόταφος is only otherwise
attested in the Etymologicon Gudianum, where it is
glossed as ἀντικέφαλος, “back of the head,”
though Jouanna opts for “part of the head between the temples” on the basis of
the word’s derivation (ἐν-, “inside” + κρόταφος, “temple”). Jouanna, “Un traité inédit,” 294; E.
L. de Stefani, Etymologicum Gudianum quod vocatur
(Leipzig: Teubner, 1909), 395.1-3. As for μεταμόρφωσις, Jouanna simply observes that this word
“cannot have its usual sense of transformation here,” and leaves it untranslated
in each of its attestations, rendering the entire phrase μεταμόρφωσις/μόρφωσις τοῦ
ἐγκροτάφου simply as “the part of the head between the
temples.” Jouanna,
“Un traité inédit,” 305, n. 10, and 307. Probably because of
the strangeness of the phrase, the Greek manuscripts have significant
discrepancies in their renderings of it; κρόταφος
(“temple”) often occurs as a variant for the scantily attested
ἐγκρόταφος (“the back of the head”?), as
does μορφή (“form”) for the more complex
μεταμόρφωσις (“transformation”), or for the
rarer μόρφωσις (“form”). It is only in P. that
the phrase consistently occurs as μεταμόρφωσις
(or, once, μόρφωσις) τοῦ
ἐγκροτάφου . The overall tendency of Pa. and Par. (in which
variants such as κρόταφος and μορφή often occur) to agree with the Syriac against
P. should raise some questions about whether P.’s reading of μεταμόρφωσις/ μόρφωσις τοῦ
ἐγκροτάφου is the correct one here. Ibid., 304, 306 [critical
apparatus]. Nonetheless, in my estimation here the principle
of lectio difficilior should override whatever general
fidelity to the original Pa. and Par.’s broader closeness to the Syriac implies;
it seems likely that a difficult phrase like this would have been simplified and
clarified in the course of its transmission, and that P. preserves an older
reading that has been adjusted in other manuscripts.
The Syriac phrase <ṣwrtʾ> d-mūḥā
presents its own difficulties. As for its distribution in the text, its three
attestations correspond directly to the last three attestations (out of four) of
μεταμόρφωσις/μόρφωσις τοῦ ἐγκροτάφου in the Greek--the first attestation of
this phrase in the Greek corresponds to “upper entrance” (tarʿā ʿillāyā) in the Syriac. Chabot, “Notice,” 55.1-2; Jouanna, “Un traité
inédit,” 304.5. In his translations of <ṣwrtʾ> d-mūḥā, Chabot consistently renders <ṣwrtʾ> as cervix, “nape”, claiming that the word’s literal meaning
is collum, “neck,” and suggesting that the whole phrase
<ṣwrtʾ> d-mūḥā designates the “cerebellum,” the
part of the brain in the back of the skull. Chabot, “Notice,” 65, n. 4., and 66.
Chabot’s suspicion that <ṣwrtʾ> means something other than simply “neck”
here finds support not only in the obscurity of the phrase “neck of the brain,”
but also in the fact that the most common Syriac word for “neck,” ṣawrā (spelled <ṣwrʾ>), is attested earlier in the
text (directly corresponding to τραχήλος, also
“neck,” in the Greek).
Ibid., 54.22; Jouanna, “Un traité inédit,” 298.14. But
Chabot’s reading of <ṣwrtʾ> d-mūḥā, while
persuasive to a certain extent, is on somewhat shaky ground in its own right; I
have been unable to find anything in the lexica for <ṣwrtʾ> as “nape,”
“neck” or, indeed, a word referring directly to any part of the body. The most
common meaning of <ṣwrtʾ> is “form” (in the vocalization ṣūrtā) though we also have the identically-spelled ṣāwartā recorded on its own with the meaning of “insanity” or
“confusion” and “ringing of the ears” in Mannā’s Syriac lexicon. J. E. Mannā, Chaldean-Arabic Dictionary (Beirut: Babel Center,
1975), 623.
Neither the Greek nor the Syriac phrase, then, has a particularly
obvious meaning in itself; hence, neither is obviously a translation of the
other. The correspondence between the most common meaning of <ṣwrtʾ>,
“form” (with the vocalization ṣūrtā) and those of the
Greek words μεταμόρφωσις and μόρφωσις, “transformation” and “form,” respectively,
is surely significant, as is the correspondence between the meanings of Syriac
mūḥā, “brain,” and Greek ἐγκρόταφος, which clearly has to do with the head; but what was
translated into what? We have signs pointing both ways. On the one hand, the
fact that <ṣwrtʾ> is so similar to the Syriac word for “neck” (ṣawrā), and that a word with this spelling, ṣāwartā, has two further meanings having to do with
health problems (“ringing of the ears”; “insanity” or “confusion”), could sway
us to take <ṣwrtʾ> d-mūḥā as a scantily attested
phrase with an anatomical significance in Syriac. The sense of this phrase could
have eluded a Greek translator, who simply did the best he could with the only
meaning of <ṣwrtʾ> known to him: “form.” Speaking for a Greek to Syriac
direction, on the other hand, is the obscurity of the word ἐγκρόταφος: why would a translator working from
Syriac to Greek use such an arcane word to render mūḥā,
“brain,” with the more straightforward ἐγκέφαλος also
available to him?
ἐγκέφαλος occurs later in the text
(Jouanna, “Un traité inédit,” 310.3, 6). Moreover, it is
conceivable, of course, that in the context in which it occurs μεταμόρφωσις could have an anatomical
sense in Greek as well, as a technical term referring to a specific part of the
body; <ṣwrtʾ> d-mūḥā could be an attempt at
rendering an unfamiliar Greek expression on the part of a Syriac translator.
III. Concluding Discussion
As discussed above, definitive conclusions about the direction,
place, and time of the translation that the profound correspondences between
these texts indicate will have to await an edition of the Syriac text that
incorporates all relevant manuscripts, as well as, perhaps, a revision of
Jouanna’s text prioritizing the Greek manuscripts that tend to be closer to the
Syriac. As far as these details go, at this point we only have a definite terminus ante quem for the Syriac text: the composition
of George Wardā’s poem on “man as microcosm” in the thirteenth century, which,
as Gignoux has convincingly demonstrated, draws upon the Syriac On the Composition of Man attributed to Aḥūdemmeh
Anṭīpaṭrōs.
Gignoux, “Anatomie et physiologie humaine,” 233-8.
Consequently, the following suggestions remain equivocal and provisional.
I will begin with the direction of the translation. The limited
collection of textual comparisons I have presented here does not decisively
point either way (nor have I been able to find anything conclusive in the rest
of the text), and this question is worth a comprehensive treatment once the
Syriac On the Composition of Man is available in a better
edition. At this point, several indications suggest that the original language
of the text was most likely Greek: the likely original attribution of the entire
Syriac On the Composition of Man to “Anṭīpaṭrōs,” as
convincingly argued by Chabot and Reinink; the many Greek philosophers and
physicians cited within the Syriac text; and, perhaps most importantly, the fact
that many more translations are known to have been made from Greek into Syriac
than from Syriac into Greek. If it is the case that the direction of the
translation is Greek to Syriac, this would fix the likely date of composition
for both the Greek and the Syriac between the sixth and ninth centuries, within
the period of known medical translation activity from Greek into Syriac. On the relative numbers
of Greek-to-Syriac and Syriac-to-Greek translations, see S. P. Brock,
“Greek into Syriac and Syriac into Greek” in S. P. Brock, Syriac Perspectives on Late Antiquity, Collected
Studies 199 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1984), 11. This range of centuries for
Greek-to-Syriac medical translations has been most recently given in A.
Muraviev, “La médecine thérapeutique en syriaque” in Les sciences en syriaque, Études syriaques 11, ed. E. Villey
(Paris: Geuthner, 2014), 264. More has come to light since the
publication of this article, but for orientation on these medical
translations see those listed in R. Degen, “Ein Corpus
Medicorum Syriacorum” (Medizinhistorisches
Journal 7.1/2 [1972]), 114–22. In this scenario the
Greek text would have likely been initially translated into Syriac on its own,
and then subsequently incorporated into On the Composition of
Man, alongside what were originally separate texts.
If, on the other hand, the direction of the translation is Syriac
to Greek—the less likely possibility, though some of the results of my
preliminary comparative analysis of the Greek and Syriac texts suggest that this
may have been the case—the range of plausible dates for each text’s composition
widens considerably. Translations from Syriac to Greek are firmly attested from
the third century through the eleventh century, and while the overall number of
such translations is quite low, and nothing medical is included among them, the
possibility cannot be excluded that this work went from Syriac to Greek at some
point during this stretch. S. P. Brock, “Greek into Syriac and Syriac into
Greek,” 11-17. Touwaide, meanwhile, has noted several
Byzantine Greek medical manuscripts that are either attributed to a “Syrian”
author or designated as “Syriac” themselves, construing them as part of a
broader “transfer of knowledge from the Arabic to the Byzantine world,” taking
place from the tenth century through the fourteenth, and ultimately resulting in
“Arabic medicine” being “massively present in late thirteenth- and early
fourteenth-century Constantinople.” See the list of texts in A. Touwaide, “Arabic into
Greek: The Rise of an International Lexicon of Medicine in the Medieval
Eastern Mediterranean?” in Vehicles of Transmission,
Translation and Transformation in Medieval Textual Culture,
Cursor Mundi 4, ed. C. Fraenkel, F. Wallis, R. Wisnovsky and J. C. Fumo,
200, 207-8; Id. “The Jujube Tree in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Case
Study in the Methodology of Textual Archaeobotany” in Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden, ed. P. Dendle and
A. Touwaide (Woodbridge/Rochester: Boydell, 2008), 98. The
linguistic origins of these texts have yet to be thoroughly investigated, but it
is possible that this corpus includes some translations of Syriac medical texts
into Greek, which would have been made sometime between the tenth and fourteenth
centuries, according to Touwaide’s reckoning; the hypothetical Syriac-to-Greek
translation now under discussion could have been part of this trend. The
scenario here would be either of the following, each somewhat involved, but not
impossible: a pseudo-Hippocratic work was initially composed in Syriac,
incorporated into the Treatise on the Composition of Man
attributed to Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpaṭrōs, and independently translated into
Greek; or the Greek On the Composition of Man was based
on an excerpt from the longer Syriac work attributed to Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpaṭrōs. In
the latter scenario, we can hypothesize that the Greek translator misconstrued
the concluding sentence of the portion of the Syriac text that corresponds to
the Greek pseudo-Hippocratic treatise, “thus said the great Hippocrates,” as
referring to the entire section of the text leading up to it, rather than simply
the preceding sentence (as it almost certainly does). Chabot, “Notice,” 57.7. On the
significance of this attribution to Hippocrates, see 8 above.
Of course, neither scenario, in itself, would imply any
particular terminus post quem for the composition of the
Syriac text; and the Greek translation could have happened after the
thirteenth-century terminus ante quem (discussed above)
for the Syriac text’s composition.
As for what the philological data say about the Greek and Syriac
texts’ respective dates, any conclusions on this basis must await an updated
edition of the Syriac text (as well as, perhaps, the Greek), but it is worth
noting that I could find nothing conspicuously late in the Syriac text: the text
contains no loanwords from Arabic, nor was I able to discern any other
linguistic features (such as a proliferation of certain adjectives in -āyā, or nouns in -ānā and -ānūtā) suggesting that the composition of the text
postdates the sixth century. On philological criteria for dating Syriac texts, see S.
P. Brock, “The Syriac Background to Ḥunayn’s Translation Techniques,”
(Aram 3.1&2 [1991]), 139–62; Id.
“Diachronic Aspects of Syriac Word Formation: An Aid for Dating
Anonymous Texts” in V Symposium Syriacum 1988:
Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, 29-31 Août 1988, Orientalia
Christiana Analecta 236, ed. R. Lavenant (Rome: Pont. Institutum
Studiorum Orientalium, 1990), 321-330; Id. “A Criterion for Dating
Undated Syriac Texts: The Evidence from Adjectival Forms in -Aya.” (Parole de l’Orient 35 [2010]), 111–24.
Interestingly, the spelling of “Hippocrates” in the Syriac text,
<ywpqrṭys>, finds no exact parallel in the Syriac corpus aside from the
Syriac Epidemics, a translation of an Alexandrian
super-commentary on Galen’s commentary on Hippocrates’ Epidemics.
Chabot, “Notice” 54.10, 55.7. G. Kessel, “The Syriac Epidemics and
the Problem of Its Identification” in Epidemics in
context: Greek commentaries on Hippocrates in the Arabic
tradition, Scientia Greco-Arabica 8, ed. P. Pormann
(Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2012), 120. The Syriac Epidemics is quite early; our sole manuscript was
copied no later than 705 CE, in Khuzestān, and in large part on these
grounds Kessel has argued that Sergius of Rešʿaynā translated the text from
Greek into Syriac during the sixth century. Ibid., 97-8. <ywpqrṭys>
is clearly closer to Sergius’ favored spelling, <ypqṭrys>, than it is to
Ḥunayn’s <ʾyppwqrʾṭys>, which follows the Greek much more closely, but it
should be noted that it is not identical to Sergius’ spelling. Ibid., 120. In any case,
this spelling of Hippocrates suggests that “Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpaṭrōs’s” Treatise on the Composition of Man was composed before
Ḥunayn’s floruit in the ninth century, and perhaps in the
same milieu (or even by the same writer) as the Syriac Epidemics.
Jouanna has singled out the Greek text’s usage of συγκερασμός for “mixture,” as opposed to the more
usual μίξις, κρᾶσις, and derivatives thereof, as an unusual feature of the
text. Jouanna observes that this word is quite rare; it is recorded in the Corpus Glossarium Latinorum, but is only otherwise
attested in a twelfth-century Byzantine chronicle, referring to a mixture of
colors. For Jouanna this suggests a late date of composition for the Greek,
though he holds off on drawing any firm conclusions on this basis. Jouanna, “Un traité
inédit,” 294-5. But given that συγκερασμός also occurs in a passage from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, which was almost certainly composed
prior to the sixth century, an attestation overlooked by Jouanna, there is
little reason to posit a late date for the Greek text on the basis of its use of
this word. J-C.
Guy, Les apophtegmes des Pères: collection
systématique, Sources chrétiennes 387 (Paris: Editions du Cerf,
1993), vol. I, 208.3. This passage’s presence in a sixth-century Latin
translation of the Sayings furnishes a solid terminus ante quem for its composition in Greek
(on the Latin translation, see the discussion in J. Wortley, The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A Select
Edition and Complete English Translation [New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2013], 2; the Latin passage itself, where συγκερασμός is rendered as modicum, can be found in the Patrologia
Latina reprint of Rosweyde’s 1612 edition of Pelagius and
John’s Verba Seniorum [PL
73:869.36-7]). I thank Reviewer 2 at Hugoye
for bringing this early attestation of συγκερασμός to my attention. Still, the rarity
of συγκερασμός is noteworthy nonetheless; and
it is worth mentioning in this connection that two of the very few known
attestations of a close relative of συγκερασμός
with the same meaning of “mixture,” συγκέρασμα,
apparently occur in purported Greek translations of Syriac texts: the Homily On Virtue and Vice attributed to Ephrem, which may
simply be an original Greek composition; and (probably) the Greek version of a
homily of Isaac of Nineveh, whose roots in Isaac’s original Syriac are not in
doubt. References
found in Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität,
s.v. “συγκέρασμα.” The places where
these attestations of συγκέρασμα occur
are, respectively, K. G. Phrantzolas, Hosiou Ephraim
tou Syrou erga (Thessalonike: Ekdoseis to Perivoli tēs
Panagias, 1995), vol. I, 68.8 [lower portion of page]; and, according to
the LBG, N. Theotokēs, Tou
Hosiou patros hēmōn Isaak episkopou Nineui tou Syrou Ta heurentha
askētika (Athens: Ek tou Typographeiou Paraskeua Leōnē, 1895),
219. I have been unable to locate συγκέρασμα on this page or nearby in Theotokēs’s edition,
however. One cannot be certain about this, but it seems most likely that
the word occurs somewhere in these translations of Isaac, and that the
LBG’s authors have simply made a mistake with
the page number—that they have not erroneously assigned an attestation
of συγκέρασμα to these texts, where
none actually exists. On the disputed origins of this homily attributed
to Ephrem, see D. Hemmerdinger-Iliadou, “Ephrem, Les versions, I, Ephrem
Grec” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, vol. IV
(Paris: Beauchesne, 1960-61), 808. On these early Greek translations of
Isaac’s works, made in the ninth century, see S. P. Brock “Greek into
Syriac and Syriac into Greek,” 15-16.
As for the Syriac text’s place of origin, the nature of the
manuscripts in which it occurs likely speaks to this. The Treatise on the Composition of Man attributed to Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpaṭrōs
is known to have been transmitted in three East Syriac manuscripts, all of which
also contain a likely extract from the Book of Medicine
authored by Šemʿōn of Ṭaibūteh, and two of which have a portion of the
anonymous Syriac Book of Medicines (eventually edited by
Budge). The
contents of CSCO Syr. 21 are discussed in Chabot, “Notice,” 51-3 and
A. de Halleux, “Les manuscrits syriaques du CSCO” (Le Muséon 100 [1987]), 45,
while the contents of the other two manuscripts, Mingana Syr. 589
and BJI 13, are discussed in Kessel, “Field Notes,” 421-8; and
Mingana, Catalogue, vol. I, 1125-1127,
respectively. While texts could and did circulate between
West and East Syrian communities in late antiquity, the fact that this
treatise is consistently attested in East Syriac manuscripts, as well as its
association with two texts whose origins lie in the territory of the former
Sasanian Empire--the anonymous Book of Medicines and
a work probably to be attributed to Šemʿōn of Ṭaibūteh, an East Syrian
monk based in seventh-century Khuzestān--suggest that this treatise, too, was
initially composed or translated by an East Syrian Christian, and circulated
among members of this community from an early stage, whether in the Sasanian
Empire itself, or in the Empire’s erstwhile territories in the centuries
following the Islamic conquest. On texts circulating between East and West Syrian
communities, see J. Tannous, “Greek Kanons and the Syrian Orthodox
Liturgy” in Prayer and Worship in Eastern
Christianities, 5th to 11th Centuries, ed. B. Bitton-Ashkelony
and D. Krueger (New York: Routledge, 2017), 161-166. On the linguistic
features of the Syriac Book of Medicines that
suggest an origin in territories in which Middle Persian was spoken
(i.e. the Sasanian Empire itself, or its former territories), see P.
Gignoux, “La Pharmacopée Syriaque Exploitée D’un Point de Vue
Linguistique” (Le Muséon 124.1–2 [2011]), 11–26.
On the life and career of Šemʿōn of Ṭaibūteh, and the case for his
authorship of the work entitled From the Book of
Medicine often (but not always) attested next to the treatise
attributed to Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpaṭrōs, see Kessel, “La position de Simon de
Taibuteh.”
* I thank Jack
Tannous, Michael Cook, Joe Glynias, Grigory Kessel, Mark Geller, and the
three anonymous peer reviewers for their valuable advice and criticisms,
which have improved this article considerably. Of course, the
responsibility for any remaining defects lies with me alone.
Yoeli-Tlalim’s “Exploring Persian Lore in the Hebrew Book of Asaf” (Aleph 18:1 [2018])
reached my attention too late to substantially figure into this article.
In connection with Yoeli-Tlalim’s important contribution, I will
restrict myself to the following brief note. One of Yoeli-Tlalim’s
central findings is that the Syriac text attributed to “Aḥūdemmeh
Anṭīpaṭrōs” has a close parallel in a lengthy passage from the
Hebrew Sefer Asaf. For Yoeli-Tlalim, this
(along with some other distinctly Iranian features of the text,
including month names and a history of science that parallels that of
Abū Sahl b. Nawbakht) indicates that Sefer
Asaf derived, at least in part from “Syriac medical literature of
the Eastern Church in Persia” (Yoeli-Tlalim, “Exploring Persian Lore,”
138-145). At first glance, it may seem that the existence of this Hebrew
parallel poses complications for my main argument in this article--that
the similarity between these Syriac and Greek texts reflects the fact
that one was directly translated from the other. But although the
possibility that the Hebrew served as an intermediary between the Syriac
and the Greek cannot be ruled out, I do not find this likely; there is a
much greater incidence of texts moving between Syriac and Greek in late
antiquity than between Greek and Hebrew, and, as far as I know, no
secular text has been demonstrated to have gone either from Greek into
Hebrew, or from Hebrew into Greek, during this period. *
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