Stephen Desmond Ryan, O.P., Dionysius Bar Salibi’s Factual and Spiritual Commentary on Psalms 73-82. Cahiers de la Revue Biblique 57. Paris: J. Gabalda et Cie, 2004. Pp. xix + 251. ISBN 2-85021-156-4. € 35.00.
Lucas
Van Rompay
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
TEI XML encoding by
html2TEI.xsl
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2005
Vol. 8, No. 1
For this publication, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
license has been granted by the author(s), who retain full
copyright.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv8n1prvanrompay
Lucas Van Rompay
Stephen Desmond Ryan, O.P., Dionysius Bar Salibi’s Factual and Spiritual Commentary on Psalms 73-82. Cahiers de la Revue Biblique 57. Paris: J. Gabalda et Cie, 2004. Pp. xix + 251. ISBN 2-85021-156-4. € 35.00.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol8/HV8N1PRVanRompay.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute,
vol 8
issue 1
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 Studies
Bar Salibi
Stephen Ryan
File created by XSLT transformation of original HTML encoded article.
[1]
Dionysius bar Salibi, one of the central figures in the Syriac
cultural and literary “Renaissance” of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, has received much attention from
Syriac scholars as well as from Syrian-Orthodox Christians who
kept his name and legacy alive up to the present day. Many of
Dionysius’ writings, however, are so vast and their
transmission so complex that they have defied scholarly
attempts to produce critical editions and studies.
[2]
Dionysius’ biblical commentaries pose their specific
problems. For several biblical books two or three different
commentaries exist, while the underlying biblical texts have
been identified as either Peshitta or Septuagint (or
Syro-Hexapla). In the absence of scholars willing to devote
their whole lifetime to studying and publishing the entire
corpus of Dionysius’ commentaries, numerous limited
studies of individual commentaries, or parts thereof, were
undertaken throughout the twentieth century – mainly in
academic theses and dissertations (which often remained
unpublished) – thereby causing a fragmentation of the
field. As for the textual tradition, a great number of
manuscripts have been located and identified, through the
efforts of Arthur Vööbus and, more recently, Gabriel
Rabo. Unfortunately, many of the Middle Eastern manuscripts are
not easily accessible or are available in the West only in
unsatisfactory microfilm copies.
[3] At first
sight, Stephen Ryan’s monograph, devoted to the
interpretation of only ten psalms (Pss. 73-82), seems to add
just one more publication to the fragmented field of the study
of Dionysius’ biblical interpretation. This first
impression, however, proves to be wrong. This study has much
more to offer! Due to its broad and comprehensive approach, its
thoroughness, and its rigid methodology, we are in fact dealing
with an exemplary piece of work, which sets new standards for
future research on Dionysius.
[4] The two
introductory chapters (“The Life and Work of Dionysius
Bar Salibi” and “Previous Studies on the Biblical
Commentaries”) provide an excellent survey of existing
scholarship, commenting on an impressive number of studies,
many of which – as mentioned above – did not lead
to official publications. Chapter Three addresses the
distinction between “factual” and
“spiritual” interpretation, terms that are often
used to characterize the double or multiple commentaries that
exist for each biblical book. While Dionysius himself uses the
terms sucronoyo and ruhonoyo, the distinction is not always very rigid
and commentaries are regularly described – by him or by
later scribes – as “factual and spiritual”
(at the same time) or “mixed” (mfattko).
While for some biblical books the factual commentary is longer
than the spiritual one, for other books it is the non-factual
commentary (i.e., “spiritual”, “mixed”,
or “factual and spiritual”) that is longer. This
raises the question of the interrelationship and the hierarchy
between the two types. Ryan argues that the original layout of
Dionysius’ commentaries was in synoptic columns, a layout
preserved in two early manuscripts (Z = Mardin Orthodox 67,
between the 12th and the 14th centuries, and R = Mardin
Orthodox 66, probably 1189 AD). Parallels for this bipartite,
or tripartite, layout may be found in Michael the Great’s
Chronicle, in which the materials are organized in three
columns, devoted, respectively, to ecclesiastical history,
civil history, and mixed materials – see particularly
Dorothea Weltecke, “Originality and Function of Formal
Structures in the Chronicle of Michael the Great”,
Hugoye 3/2 (July 2000), and
Ead., Die «Beschreibung der Zeiten» von Mor
Michael dem Grossen (1126-1199) (CSCO 594 / Subs. 110;
Louvain, 2003), 163-178. Just as the ecclesiastical history in
the case of Michael, Dionysius’ spiritual commentary,
deemed of greater importance, was originally placed in the
“superior”, i.e., right hand column.
[5] Basing
themselves on, and partly misled by, some of Dionysius’
own comments, previous scholars often assumed that the factual
commentaries were based mainly on the Peshitta, while the
spiritual commentaries had the Septuagint, or the Syro-Hexapla,
as their basis. Ryan shows this assumption to be wrong. The
high concentration of Syro-Hexapla quotations in the mixed
commentary of Pss. 1-26 is due entirely to the fact that this
section, as indicated by Dionysius himself, was copied from the
Psalm Commentary of Andrew of Jerusalem, supposedly of Greek
origin. In other parts of his work, in both the factual and
non-factual commentaries, Dionysius used the Peshitta
primarily. The limited number of quotations close to the Greek
(and often explicitly referred to as “Greek” or
“Seventy”) must have been part of Dionysius’
borrowings from Greek sources. Most of them are unrelated to
the Syro-Hexapla.
[6] This
brings us to the question of Dionysius’ sources, which is
discussed in Chapter Four. Dionysius himself explicitly
mentions “the work of Andrew, the priest of
Jerusalem”, which he used in his mixed commentary of Pss.
1-26, and “Athanasius and Daniel and Zurco the
Nisibene”, authors used from Ps. 27 onwards. While a
detailed analysis of all the data on Andrew and
Zurco does not lead to an identification of these
authors, we are on firmer grounds with Athanasius (of
Alexandria) and Daniel (of Salah). Ryan argues that the
long Syriac form of Athanasius’ Commentary on the Psalms
was known to Dionysius, while contacts with the short version
may also be detected (both versions were published by R.W.
Thomson, in CSCO 386-387 / Syr. 167-168, 1977). As for Daniel
of Salah,
Dionysius’ commentary shows correspondences with the
longer version of Daniel’s commentary (in the process of
publication by David Taylor) as well as with an abbreviated
edition of this work, often attributed to Daniel “of
Tella”, and possibly posterior to Dionysius. In addition
to Moshe bar Kifo, whose “Introduction to the
Psalms” Dionysius himself may have incorporated into his
own work, one other important source for Dionysius’
factual commentary – not acknowledged by him! – can
be identified, namely the ninth-century East Syrian commentator
Ishocdad of Merv (published by C. Van den Eynde in
CSCO 433-434 / Syr. 185-186, 1981). Dionysius’ dependence
on Ishocdad had been established as early as 1902 by
G. Diettrich (Išôcdâdh’s
Stellung in der Auslegungsgeschichte des Alten Testaments)
and is now further substantiated by Ryan.
[7] Chapter
Five deals with the manuscript tradition. Nine manuscripts
– five preserved in Western collections and four in the
Middle East – were used for the edition. Nine more
manuscripts, mostly of a recent date, were discarded or could
not be accessed. As appears from the stemma, three Mardin
manuscripts (all three from Deir ez Zacfaran) emerge
as the primary witnesses: mss. Z and R (mentioned above) as
well as ms. A (Mardin Orthodox 69); R and A go back to the same
(lost) Vorlage (Y). The three manuscripts all seem to
belong to the 12th-14th centuries. Ryan explains in great
detail his editorial method, which aims at establishing an
eclectic text, choosing “the best text for each reading,
assigning the other readings to the apparatus” (p. 107).
In this process, ms. P (= Paris, Bibliothèque
Nationale, Syr. 66, AD 1354 – an indirect descendant
of R) serves as “a reference text”. The reason for
not working from a clear base manuscript (in which only the
obvious errors and omissions would have to be corrected) is
that ms. Z, the obvious candidate, was available only in a
defective microfilm (preserved in the Vööbus
Collection at the Institute for Syriac Manuscript Studies,
Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago).
[8] Chapter
Six is the most substantial part of the book, offering the
critical edition, and translation of Pss. 73-82. The factual
commentary is presented first (p. 110-143), followed by the
mixed commentary (p. 144-211). The latter normally is longer
than the former, while within the mixed commentary of Ps. 74
two successive explanations are presented. Parallels to the
long and short versions of Athanasius, to Daniel of
Salah, and to
Ishocdad of Merv are indicated in the translation,
while footnotes provide textual comments as well as further
references to authors such as Evagrius Ponticus, Severus of
Antioch, and Hippolytus of Rome. The juxtaposition of the two
commentaries for each psalm clearly illustrates
Dionysius’ different approaches in each of them. At the
same time, we see Dionysius at work, incorporating earlier
tradition and building upon it, in order to create his own
synthesis. Apparently in an attempt to compensate for the
analytical and dissecting approach of most of the book, in a
brief concluding chapter (p. 212-223) Ryan sketches the broader
contours of Dionysius’ Psalm exegesis, putting him in
conversation with major interpreters of the Christian (Western)
and Jewish tradition.
[9]
Returning for a moment to the text edition, we should point out
that the choice for Psalms 73-82 was dictated by the existence
of an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation by Marjorie Helen Simpkin,
submitted at the University of Melbourne in 1974 and consulted
by Ryan. It is to be hoped, of course, that such a major work
as Dionysius bar Salibi’s Psalm Commentary, will soon be
available in full, and not just in bits and pieces, in
different states of accessibility. From this perspective, it is
to be regretted that the present edition could not be based on
the best manuscripts, thus inaugurating a homogeneous edition
of the whole work. Isn’t it sad that Western scholars
have to turn to poor and deteriorating microfilms, made several
decades ago, rather than being able to consult the manuscripts
themselves?
[10]
These remarks by no means detract from the very fine quality of
Ryan’s edition and annotated translation. A very few
minor suggestions are offered here.
P. 40 (in the quotation from Dionysius’
introduction to the factual commentary on the Psalms): the
translation “occasions” for
celloto (“their factual sense and
their occasions”, i.e., of the psalms) conceals the
fact that we are dealing with a technical term, reflecting
the Greek hypothesis. Perhaps “themes” or
“subjects” would be a better translation.
The translation of metyadcono is
problematic throughout the volume. The following translations
are presented: p. 28, first paragraph: “mystical”
(commentary); p. 144, line 7: “spiritual”
(Israel); p. 158, line 7: “metaphorical”
(“metaphorical darkness or iniquity of
idolatry”); p. 170, line 4: “mystical”
(Israel); p. 172, line 6: “suprasensual”
(beings); p. 190, line 7: “mystical”
(nourishment) [tursoyo metyadcono is
explained a bit further: “angels are not fed or
purified or illuminated by anything else other than knowledge
and revelations and the observance of the divine will”,
which indicates that an intellectual process is involved]; p.
198, line 4: “mystical” (peoples). In all these
instances a translation would be required that does justice
to the basic meaning of “understanding” (even if
different levels of understanding are involved).
“Intellectual” would have been an acceptable
translation in most, if not all, of the above passages.
P. 122: the Greek and Hebrew quotations of Ps. 76:10 [LXX
75:11] would deserve some explanation. While for the Greek
quotation Dionysius may have been inspired by
Ishocdad, he did not take over
Ishocdad’s actual reading (which agrees with
the Syro-Hexapla). Dionysius’ rendering of the Greek
heortasei as tecbed cido
“it shall make a feast” (vs.
ncadced in Syro-Hexapla and
Ishocdad) may reflect a non-Syro-Hexaplaric or
pre-Syro-Hexaplaric reading in one of Dionysius’
sources.
P. 174, line 10: if man is taken not as the
interrogative pronoun, but as representing Greek men,
there is no reason to regard the text as corrupt: “And
there is no consoler, i.e., as for consolation, I did not
find one in this world.” (Athanasius’ text,
quoted on p. 175, note, seems to confirm this, as it has the
opposition man – dên)
P. 208, line 6: wouldn’t the addition of men
be required after da-glizin “deprived of the
true Father”?
[11] In
conclusion, Stephen Ryan is to be congratulated with the
publication of this well-written, carefully presented, and
almost impeccably printed monograph on a significant work by a
major Syrian-Orthodox author. He has critically surveyed the
whole field of research on Dionysius and laid the groundwork
for important future contributions, by himself as well as by
others.