Jeff W. Childers, Divining Gospel: Oracles of Interpretation
in a Syriac Manuscript of John, Manuscripta Biblica 4 (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2020)
David
Calabro
Hill Museum & Manuscript Library
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James E. Walters
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2022
Volume 25.1
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https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv25n1prcalabro
David Calabro
Jeff W. Childers, Divining Gospel: Oracles of Interpretation
in a Syriac Manuscript of John, Manuscripta Biblica 4 (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2020)
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol25/HV25N1PRCalabro.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2022
vol 25
issue 1
pp 283-295
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.
File created by James E. Walters
Jeff W. Childers, Divining Gospel: Oracles of Interpretation
in a Syriac Manuscript of John, Manuscripta Biblica 4 (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2020). Pp. xi + 230; $99.99.
Divination in Syriac Christianity is a relatively new topic of
scholarly inquiry. Despite an abundance of sources, particularly for recent
periods,The
later Syriac divinatory tradition focused on astrology and had clear
connections with contemporary astrological traditions in Greek and
Arabic. The medieval Book of Medicines (ܣܦܪ
ܣܡܢ̈ܐ) incorporates an astrological section, and two other
Syriac astrological texts are attributed to Daniel and Ezra. See E. A.
W. Budge, Syrian Anatomy, Pathology, and Therapeutics,
or “The Book of Medicines”, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University
Press, 1913); G. Furlani, “Di una raccolta di trattati astrologici in
lingua siriaca,” Rivista degli Studi Orientali 7
(1918): 885–889; idem, “Eine Sammlung astrologischer Abhandlungen in
arabischer Sprache,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie
33 (1921): 157–168; idem, “Astrologisches aus syrischen Handschriften,”
ZDMG 75 (1921): 122–128; A. Fodor, “Malhamat
Daniyal,” in The Muslim East: Studies in Honour of
Julius Germanus, ed. G. Káldy-Nagy (Budapest: Eötvös Loránd
University, 1974), 85–159. An East Syriac manuscript from Mardin, CCM
000178, is an additional witness to the Daniel and Ezra texts (https://
w3id.org/vhmml/readingRoom/view/501121). reliable
syntheses have until now been lacking. The book under review, a masterful study
by Jeff Childers centered on a sixth- to seventh-century manuscript of John’s
Gospel, British Library Additional MS 17,119—a manuscript that includes a
divinatory apparatus, a fact not noted in earlier descriptions—portends an
auspicious future for the understanding of divination in the Syriac sphere in
late antiquity. Further, as Childers shows, the divinatory apparatus of this
manuscript fits within a widespread tradition of oracles attached to the Gospel
of John; the oracles are referred to within the texts themselves as
“interpretation” (Greek ἑρμηνεία, Syriac ܦܘܫܩܐ,
Coptic ⲉⲣⲙⲏⲛⲓⲁ, Armenian թարգմանութիւն, Latin interpretatio), implying that they are to be understood as
explications of the oracular meaning of Gospel passages. Childers’s study thus
contributes to a wider conversation regarding Christian divinatory practices in
late antiquity.
The book includes a table of contents, eight chapters, and a
bibliography. Following the bibliography is an appendix listing the Syriac words
that occur in the oracles of BL Add 17,119, which can function as a concordance
of these portions of the text. Finally, there are indices of the manuscripts
cited, of biblical citations, of ancient authors, and of subjects (including
the names of modern authors).
The book includes 14 figures showing color photographs of
manuscripts, including four images of BL Add 17,119. In addition, many figures
in chapter 3 show page layouts of the manuscripts figuring in the discussion.
One could wish for more manuscript photographs, especially of BL Add 17,119, but
those which are included suffice to give an impression of the script and layout
and to allow some of the readings to be checked. Fig. 1.1 on page 2, showing
fol. 52v of BL Add 17,119, takes up about three quarters of the available space
on the page; were the image enlarged just a bit, it could have approximated the
actual size of the leaf, which would have helped to illustrate the comments on
page 1 concerning the manuscript’s unusual dimensions.
The core of the book is chapter 5, which contains the analysis of
the puššāqē in BL Add 17,119. Each puššāqā is transcribed and translated, and parallels for each one are
adduced from Greek, Armenian, Coptic, and Latin Divining Gospels (the Peshitta
text of the Gospel, which is available from other sources, is not reproduced
here). However, the other seven chapters are far from being mere auxiliaries to
chapter 5.
Chapter 1, “Opening the Gospel,” sets BL Add 17,119 within a
context of popular religious practice in late antique Christianity. Childers
assembles evidence, including many quotes from church fathers, of the use of
John’s Gospel for apotropaic purposes. In addition to the chapter’s independent
value as an essay on the culture of religious text artifacts, this
contextualization of the Divining Gospel is a significant theoretical step, as
I will discuss below.
Chapter 2, “Divination in Late Antique Christian Practice,” gives
an erudite tour through divinatory practices from the Greco-Roman world through
late antique Christianity, ending with a categorization of the various types of
Christian divination.
Chapter 3 brings together all the diverse manuscript evidence for
the tradition of Divining Gospels. Here Childers describes the 20 manuscripts
that factor in his study according to four types: (1) manuscripts with segmented
layout including passages of Gospel text at the top and oracular
“interpretations” underneath (Childers considers this to be the earliest type);
(2) manuscripts that integrate the “interpretations” with their associated
Gospel readings as a single block of text (BL Add 17,119, the focus of this
study, is the sole surviving example of this type); (3) manuscripts that include
primarily the Gospel text, with oracular “interpretations” added secondarily in
the mar¬gins; and (4) manuscripts that have an uncertain connection to the
Divining Gospel tradition, including one fragment (Firenze, Istituto
Papirologico “G. Vitelli,” PSI XIII 1364) that contains only oracular material
with no extant Gospel readings.
Chapter 4 sets up the philological analysis of BL Add 17,119 in
chapter 5 by giving a codicological analysis of the manuscript, including a
discussion of its provenance.
Chapters 6 and 7 attempt to set BL Add 17,119 in the context of
late antique Christian divinatory practice, seeking to answer the question how a
manuscript such as this would actually have been used. This includes a detailed
description of a hypothet¬ical encounter in which the manuscript’s scribe,
Gewargis, consults the book through sortilege to obtain an answer for a client
(pp. 193–197). If parts of these chapters are speculative, it is nevertheless
refreshing to have a theoretical approach to the relationship between book and
practice so clearly set forth.
Finally, chapter 8 addresses the demise of the tradition of
Divining Gospels, a demise heralded by the rules attributed to Jacob of Edessa
(d. 708), which rules explicitly forbid monks from providing oracles from the
Gospels for clients (or, for that matter, from the Psalms, or from the text
known as “Lots of the Apostles”).
Childers has made a tremendous achievement in integrating BL Add
17,119 and the evidence from Greek, Armenian, Coptic, and Latin manuscripts into
a single coherent explication. In effect, he has singlehandedly illuminated late
antique Syriac divination as a component of a multicultural Christian
tradition. This tradition included an oracular book of Psalms, an oracular
Gospel of John (the “Divining Gospel,” of which BL Add 17,119 is an example),
and various books of oracles that are distinctly Christian but are not framed as
interpretations of scripture. Childers groups all these texts under the rubric
of sortilege, or the casting of lots. In the Divining
Gospel, the oracles are numbered, allowing each oracle to be referenced
according to a number obtained by casting lots.
An example, taken from p. 144, may serve to illustrate how
consistent this tradition is. On fol. 65v of BL Add 17,119, after John 17:1–2
(the beginning of Jesus’s intercessory prayer, ending with “that he might give
eternal life to all whom you have given him”), the following oracle is copied in
red ink:
ܦܘܫܩܐ ܡܕܡ ܕܪܓܬ ܗܘ̇ܐ ܠܟ
Interpretation: What you desire will be yours.
This oracle is numbered 248 in the margin, in red ink like the
oracle itself. As Childers shows, parallel oracles belonging to the Divining
Gospel tradition are attested in Coptic, Greek, Latin, and Armenian, with minor
variation in the verses to which the oracle is attached, the text, and the
numbering:
Language
Associated verses of John
Translation of text
Number
Syriac
17:1-2
What you desire will be yours.
248
Coptic
17:3
What you desire will happen to you.
(not attested)
Greek
17:1–2
What you desire will happen to you.
(not attested)
Latin
16:19–20
The matter is about to happen to you.
246
Armenian
17:1b–2
What you desire will happen.
256
This particular example is unusual in that all the known versions
of the tradition include this oracle; in most cases, due to the fragmentary
condition of the manuscripts, attestations are lacking from one or more
versions. The degree of variation from one version to another in this example is
typical of the book as a whole. No two versions are identical. The degree of
variation is considerable, particularly if one accounts for the variation in the
placement and numbering of the oracles. Nevertheless, those familiar with the
unrestrained variation characteristic of magical text traditions will be struck
with how mutually consistent the texts are. (It should be noted that the
idiomatic translation of the Syriac partially obscures its closeness to the
parallels: ܗܘ̇ܐ ܠܟ, literally “it will be to
you,” or more idiomatically “it will be yours,” could represent a wooden
translation of the Greek γιν[εται σοι] “it will hap[pen to you].”) There is no
doubt that Childers is correct in treating these examples as witnesses to a
single text tradition.
The presentation of the texts in this volume also reflects a
correct understanding of the nature of the textual tradition. Childers eschews
any attempt to reconstruct a standard text or to emend the Syriac version based
on the parallels. Thus, rather than presenting a single main text in chapter 5,
with the variants relegated to a critical apparatus, he reproduces all the
versions of each oracle in parallel. Childers writes the following concerning
the nature of the textual tradition (p. 83):
Whatever the integrity and coherence of this tool’s “first
edition” may have been, through copying, translation, and perhaps especially
through revision due to usage, subsequent editions and versions evolved in
different ways to produce quite a range of different books. We can easily
see that they belong together as a set and that they share a common
ancestry. But what is true of ancient lot texts generally also applies to
the Divining Gospels specifically: “[w]hat we encounter in the transmission
of sortes are fluid texts and free, creative lines of textual transmission
so that these different lot texts cannot be squeezed into traditional
scholarly manuscript stemmata.
Childers here quotes from a 2019 essay by AnneMarie Luijendijk and
Willian E. Klingshirn on “The Literature of Lot Divination.” In My Lots
are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and Its Practitioners in Late
Antiquity, ed. A. Luijendijk and W. E. Klingshirn (Leiden:
Brill, 2019), 25. Thus, where the parallel texts suggest that
a scribal change has occurred, Childers gives a diplomatic reproduction of the
parallels and includes a comment in a footnote. For example, on page 111, in the
oracle following John 4:10, the Syriac reads ܐܢ
ܡܫܪܝܬ, “if you begin,” but the parallels read “if you believe,”
suggesting an original Syriac reading ܐܢ ܡܫܪܬ
“if you are confident.” Childers gives the reading of BL Add 17,119 (ܐܢ ܡܫܪܝܬ) as the main one and includes a footnote
noting the possible emendation and stating that “a small inner Syriac error or
revision would account for the difference.” (Note, however, that in the table on
page 80, the reading of this passage that is presented includes the emendation:
ܐܢ ܡܫܪܬ.)
In his theoretical analysis in the introductory and closing
chapters, Childers raises some issues that I wish were developed further. The
first issue is the relationship between Christian divination and ritual power.
This relationship factors in the organization of the introductory chapters and
justifies the content of chapter 1. The overall plan of chapters 1 through 4
moves from the general to the specific. Childers first discusses the widespread
Christian use of scriptural books as objects of power in late antiquity,
especially the carrying of copies of the Gospel of John and of amulets inscribed
with its opening verses, for protection against malevolent forces, something on
which church fathers such as John Chrysostom commented (chapter 1). This
establishes the context for a discussion of late antique Christian divination
(chapter 2). The discussion then turns to the Divining Gospel tradition as a
specific case of Christian divination (chapter 3), and finally to manuscript BL
Add 17,119 as an especially complete example of the Divining Gospel tradition
(chapter 4). Implicit in this overall plan is the assumption that apotropaic
ritual somehow helps to explain text-based divination. More to the point,
Chapter 1 is meant to “establish the reasons why late antique Christian editors
would choose a biblical codex—and John’s Gospel in particular—to host an
extensive divinatory apparatus” (p. 18).
Yet the relationship between ritual power and divination is never
explicitly elaborated. We do get some hints in chapter 1, such as the following:
“As a sacred object, the Holy Bible lent divine potency to such things as
prayers for protection or healing as well as to divination—though some parts of
the Bible were seen to be more potent than others” (p. 14). Here divination,
like texts of protection and healing, is thought to rely on the “divine potency”
of the Bible. But it is unclear how this divine potency would be required in the
divinatory tradition, which focuses on the text itself rather than on the power
of the text artifact as an object. Quotation taken from E. Yarnold, The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initia¬tion: The Origins of the
R.C.I.A. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994),
125.
A more elaborate hint is given near the end of the chapter:
Perhaps more than any other Gospel, the Gospel of John, a book of great
majesty, mystery, and comfort for many Christians, was seen to embody the
presence of the incarnate Christ as the Word of God. People recognized the
power of the incarnation not only in John’s teachings and text but even in
certain material objects inscribed with John—including codices of the
Gospel.
One way this peculiar reverence for John expressed itself in Late
Antiquity is in the production of the Divining Gospel. We have not given
much considera¬tion yet to one of the most common expressions of respect for
scripture as an agent of divine power and wisdom—the use of the Bible for
divination.… Popular reverence for scripture, and John in particular,
combined with the abiding interest in divination to produce the Divining
Gospels. (pp. 17–18)
Here Childers points to “reverence” or “respect” for John’s Gospel
as a motivating factor. But what was it about this Gospel that would make it a
suitable vehicle for divination? Childers gets closest to the point when he
mentions that this Gospel was “an agent of divine power and wisdom.” This
chapter dwells at length on the use of the opening words of John, as well as the
use of codices of this Gospel, as agents of power. But he has not established
the perception of the text of the Gospel as an agent of wisdom. In the
phenomenology of the Divining Gospel tradition, the wisdom hidden in the text
seems to be more essential than the power emanating from the text. A Divining
Gospel is designed to serve the needs of those in search of answers, and those
answers are presented as interpretations of the scriptural text. There is no
indication within the Divining Gospel tradition of apotropaic use either of the
text or of the object on which it is inscribed. A statement by Ambrose on the
mysteries contained in the Gospel of John may be more to the point regarding the
divinatory use of this Gospel:
Yet in the book of the Gospel according to John—John, who
with greater clarity than the others saw the great mysteries and recounted
and explained them—the intention is to see in the blind man [John 9:1–7]
this mystery prefigured. Now all the evangelists are saints, and all the
apostles, except the traitor [Judas Iscariot], are saints. Yet it was St.
John, the last to write a gospel as the friend sought out and chosen by
Christ—he it was who trumpeted forth the eternal mysteries in the clearest
tones. Everything he has said is a mystery.
The opening words of John 1, which feature prominently in
apotropaic practice, do not seem especially significant in the Divining Gospel
tradition. As Childers shows on p. 101, the Syriac puššāqā associated with these opening words is wanting, but parallel
texts advise passivity: “Leave it, do not be contentious” (Greek); “Withdraw, do
not fight” (Latin); “Leave it, do not struggle” (Armenian). In fact, this
interpretation may indicate an approach quite different from that of the
amuletic tradition. The latter exploits the fact that the prologue of the Gospel
of John, to quote Childers, “presumes a backdrop of cosmic conflict and
emphasizes the victory of light over its opponent, the darkness” (p. 16).
We may tend to link apotropaic and divinatory practices as being
similarly “marginal” with respect to official religious practice or as
incorporating a “magical” approach to the supernatural, but the texts and
vocabulary associated with these practices are nevertheless different, and one
may question whether those who engaged in these practices viewed them as
mutually explanatory. There is a distinction between ܚܪܫܐ “magician”
(one who might prac¬tice apotropaic magic) and ܢܚܫܐ “diviner”; while
these are typically used as pejorative terms, it is still significant
that different terms are used for these functions. Moreover, despite the
frequent use of scriptural passages in texts of ritual power, the word
ܦܘܫܩܐ is not part of the technical vocabulary of these texts, nor do
divinatory texts typically use the terms ܐܣܪܐ “binding,” ܚܪܡܐ
“anathema,” etc., which feature in texts of ritual power.
A second issue has to do with the concept of text-based divination.
Childers uses this term broadly in his discussion of the varieties of divination
in chapter 2, including instances in which the text is the medium of
transmitting an oracle as well as instances in which the oracle is framed as an
interpretation of a preexisting sacred text. On pp. 25–27, a number of different
techniques, such as the use of written queries submitted to a deity, the use of
tickets containing answers from which the deity would choose, and the use of
extensive written collections of oracles accessed by the casting of lots, are
grouped together under the heading of text-based divination. On p. 30, Childers
uses a more specific definition: “Furthermore, Christianity’s reverence for its
sacred texts as the chief authoritative source of that knowledge indicates
another point of compatibility, in principle at least, between Christianity and
text-based divination, that sought to read the divine will through an
examination of the written word.” Here the definition of “text-based
divination” is essentially bibliomancy, the interpretation of a written text to
divine the future.
To be sure, both the broad and the narrow definitions of text-based
divination are relevant to the Divining Gospel tradition. The oracles are
clearly depicted as “interpretations” of the Gospel text, which seems most
closely related to divination based on mystical interpretation of Homer and of
Vergil’s Aeneid (pp. 25–26), while the numbering of the
oracles suggests that the lots could be accessed by an external means such as
the casting of lots. Childers also raises the possibility that the oracles of
the Divining Gospel may derive from a separate collection of written lots, from
which source they may have been applied secondarily to the Gospel of John,
although he notes that many of the oracles seem adapted to the themes of the
Gospel text (p. 84). But a more systematic categorization of the types of
text-based divination would help to clarify what the various practices described
in chapter 2 have to do with the Divining Gospel.
Childers envisions a three-stage development, first “from reliance
on conversational oracles tied to specific locations to the use of standard
written manuals” (p. 27) and ultimately to “Christian appropriation of
text-based divination” in the form of the Divining Gospel tradition (pp. 30–31).
He tentatively locates both of these developments in Egypt (pp. 27–28, 31).
While the “development from shrine to book was neither uniform nor strictly
linear” (p. 27),Here he cites D. Frankfurter, who writes of the persistence of divina¬tion through procession oracles in Egypt even after the emergence of ticket ora-cles (a practice which Childers loosely classifies with text-based divination). Childers maintains that “an increased reliance on [written]
texts as vehicles of [oracular] divine communication marks an important
development in ancient religion, one that certainly includes the growth in the
use of lot divination texts” (p. 27). Yet with the inclusive definition of
text-based divination, one is left wondering how this historical development
relates to the Divining Gospel. The latter embodies a very specific approach to
divination: the notion that God has hidden information about the fortunes of
individuals in the scriptural text, so that divination can be a form of
scriptural exegesis. Examples of a similar approach are known (such as the
oracular use of Homer and Vergil mentioned above), but do we have examples
situated in the right time and place to have influenced the Divining Gospel?
Moreover, do the Divining Gospel’s closest comparanda help to shed light on the
culture surrounding the Divining Gospel tradition? Thus, the more pertinent
questions of the cultural history of the Divining Gospel depend on a prioritized
treatment of the various types of divination.
There are some instances of mistakes in the text. The following is
not an exhaustive list, but it may serve in lieu of an errata page:
p. 36: ⲉϫⲙⲡⲉⲓϩϣⲃ should be ⲉϫⲙⲡⲉⲓϩⲱⲃ.
p. 46: In the third Syriac quote in the right column, ܙܒܢܐ ܝܕܝܬܐ
should be ܙܒܢܐ ܝܕܝܥܐ.
p. 80: footnote markers 135 and 136 in table 3.3 should be 134 and
135 respectively.
p. 80, right column, line 18: The numeral 76 is written as ος but
should be οζ.
p. 82, right column, line 11: peregino should be peregrino (compare
the transcription on p. 142).
p. 144, under John 17:1–2: The manuscript (BnF copte 156) reads as
follows:
ⲡⲉⲧ̅ⲕⲉⲡⲓⲑⲩⲙⲓⲉⲣ[
ϥⲛⲁϣⲱⲡⲉⲛⲁⲕ:
Crum, in the 1904 study cited in the footnote, transcribes this as
ⲡⲉⲧⲕⲉⲡⲓⲑⲩⲙⲓ ⲉⲣⲟ ϥ ϥⲛⲁϣⲱⲡⲉ ⲛⲁⲕ. It is likely that brackets were omitted from
around the first ϥ in Crum’s article. Theoretically, the grammar would also
permit ⲡⲉⲧⲕⲉⲡⲓⲑⲩⲙⲓ ⲉⲣⲟϥ ⲛⲁϣⲱⲡⲉ ⲛⲁⲕ, but the amount of space presumed to exist on
the right side of the fragment, and the somewhat low likelihood of ⲉⲣⲟϥ being
broken up between two lines, suggest that Crum’s reconstruction is correct.
p. 197 note 50: “Frankfurter 1995” should be “Frankfurter 1997”
(his book chapter “Ritual Expertise in Roman Egypt”). Another article by
Frankfurter is also relevant here: David Frankfurter, “Dynamics of Ritual
Expertise in Antiquity and Beyond: Towards a New Taxonomy of ‘Magicians’,” in
Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World, ed. Paul Mirecki and Marvin Meyer
(Leiden: Brill, 2002), 159–178.
p. 212, left column: some entries in the bibliography are out of
alphabetical order (Cuvigny, then de Bruyn, and then Collins).
All in all, Childers’s study is a crucial act in the understanding
of late antique Syriac divination within its wider Christian context. The book
succeeds on many levels, both as a thorough philological treatment of BL Add
17,119 and as a contribution to the cultural history of late antique
Christianity. As a clear exposition of a divinatory practice exemplified by
manuscript evidence, it has also given us much to follow up on. Even those
elements which are speculative or require further elaboration do not detract
from the core arguments concerning the character of the Divining Gospel. Future
investigations in this book’s domain will do well to give serious attention to
its insights.