Saturday, August 22, 2009

St. Irenaeus on the salvation of the flesh

"the final result of the work of the Spirit is the salvation of the flesh [(Fructus autem operis Spiritus, est carnis salus)]."

     St. Irenaeus, Adv. haer. V.12.4, trans. Roberts and Rambaut (ANF 1, as reproduced here: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ix.vii.xiii.html). The Latin is taken from SC 153, p. 154. Cf. p. 353 of vol. 2 of the edition edited by W. Wigan Harvey (Sancti Irenæi episcopi Lugdunensis Libros quinque adversus haereses (Cambridge, 1857), which is online here: www.archive.org/details/sanctiirenaeiep00harvgoog).
MPG 7b (http://www.veritatis-societas.org/103_Migne_gm/0130-0202,_Iraeneus,_Contra_Haereses_Libri_Quinque_(MPG_007b_1119_1225),_GM.pdf), col. 1154, places "Fructus autem" and "Spiritus" in quotation marks to implicate Gal. 5:22. Homoeoteleutic error is responsible for the absence of "the salvation of the flesh" in the Armenian, and indeed everything up through a second occurrence of "Spirit" in the line following. Col. IX, ll. 14-15 of the Jena Papyrus (Pap. Iéna 12 in the SC edition ed. Rousseau) has . . . καρ]πὸν ἒρ[γ]ου ὡμολόγη[σεν . . . . . .] ἡ τῆς σαρκὸς σωτηρί[α . . ., "fruit of work promised the salvation of the flesh" (or something like that). The fragment in question is the large one at almost dead center of the verso here (http://papyri-leipzig.dl.uni-leipzig.de/receive/IAwJPapyri_fragment_00000270?XSL.Style=detail), and the line that reads . . . πὸν ἒρ[γ]ου ὡμολόγη. . . is the one that runs into the bottom edge of the little rectangular spur that juts off to the right (on, again, the verso). Cf. Hans Lietzmann, "Der Jenaer Irenaeus-Papyrus," in Kleine Schriften I: Studien zur spätantiken Religionsgeschichte, ed. Kurt Aland (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1958), p. 402, Kol. IX, ll. 14-15, and p. 373 (where col. IX is the verso of col. I on p. 371).


No comments: