Saturday, June 24, 2023

St. Augustine on John, the voice, and the Word

"The tongue is being released because a voice is being born—for when John was already heralding the Lord, he was asked, Who are you? and he replied I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
     
"John is the voice, but the Lord in the beginning was the Word.  John is a voice for a time, but Christ is the eternal Word from the beginning."

"soluitur lingua, quia nascitur uox: nam Ioanni iam praenuntianti dominum dictum est, «tu quis es?» et respondit, «ego sum uox clamantis in eremo».  uox Ioannes, dominus autem «in principio erat uerbum». Ioannes uox ad tempus, Christus uerbum in principio aeternum."

     St. Augustine, Sermon 293.2-3 (24 June 413), as trans. Universalis.  Cf. WSA III/8, 149-150, as trans. Hill.  Latin:  PL 38, col. 1328, ll. 46-53, as reproduced in CAG.  Several additional versions of this homily for 24 June (293A-E) survive, just for example 293A (Dolbeau 3/Mainz 7, WSA III/11, pp. 253 ff.).

  • 293B (401 according to Éric Rebillard in Augustine through the ages)
  • 293 (413 acc to Éric Rebillard Augustine through the ages)
  • 293D (417 acc to Edmund Hill in WSA III/8 (admittedly only a "guess"))
  • 293E (c. 420 acc to Edmund Hill in WSA III/8 (admittedly a "guess"))

I have not yet checked the Augustinus-Lexikon, let alone any of the scholarship.


Wednesday, June 21, 2023

"what does it profit if I should say that Jesus has come in that flesh alone which he received from Mary and I should not show also that he has come in this flesh of mine?"

"Quid . . . prode est, si in illa tantum carne, quam de Maria suscepit, dicam venisse Iesum et non ostendam etiam in hac mea carne quod venerit?"

     Origen, Homily 3.7 on Genesis, as trans. Ronald E. Heine, FC 71 (Washington, DC:  Catholic University Press, 1982), 101.  Latin of Rufinus from GCS 29 (1920), as ed. W. A. Baehrens, 49 ll. 26-28, not SC 7.