SERAPION OF AS WITNESS TO THE GOSPEL TEXT USED BY ORIGEN IN CAESAREA

by

ALEXANDER GLOBE Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Serapion, the mid-fourth-century orthodox bishop of the Egyp- tian town of Thmuis, quotes a pre-Byzantine text of the Gospels that agrees with the so-called Caesarean witnesses. His closest affinity lies with Origen, with whom he agrees on 60 of 76 possible occasions (79 % ). Even though almost every variant of Serapion is attested by some Caesarean witness or other, the exact mixture of Neutral, Western and Caesarean readings in his text differs from any other known source. Consequently, his quotations provide fur- ther evidence of wide variation in of the early manuscripts Gospels, ' similar to the highly divergent texts found in papyri 37 and 45, other third- or fourth-century documents from provincial . More important, Serapion's text illuminates the textual history of the Gospels in three ways. First, it preserves a number of early Western and Caesarean readings that, because of the fragmentary nature of New Testament witnesses in the first four centuries, have only sporadic attestation elsewhere. Second, it helps to illuminate the conscious purpose of the Caesarean text, which revised Mat- thew, Mark and Luke to remove awkwardnesses and inconsisten- cies in grammar, style and parallel passages. Third, it provides invaluable evidence of the processes of redaction that ultimately 1 produced the Byzantine text.'

1 My attention was drawn to Serapion by the crux in the first verse of Mark: see my article on "The Caesarean Omission of the Phrase 'Son of God' in Mark 1:1," HTR 75 (1982) 209-18. The standard textbook names for New Testament text types are retained here because they readily identify well known groups of witnesses. See B. M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament(2d ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1968) 211-19; Metzger, TheEarly Versionsof the New Testament(Oxford: Clarendon, 1977); Metzger, "The Caesarean Text of the Gospels,"JBL 64 (1945) 457-89, reprinted in his Chapters in the History of New TestamentTextual Criticism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1963) 42-72; L. A. Eldridge, The GospelText of 98

A trusted friend both of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, and of Antony the Egyptian Hermit, Serapion was a monk in provincial Egypt, where he became superior of a monastic colony. Sometime before 339, he was consecrated Bishop of Thmuis, a town in the delta about 170 kilometres east of Alexandria near the south- western end of Lake Menzaleh. While the Bishop of Alexandria presided over all of the episcopal sees in Egypt, Thmuis owed its immediate obedience to the metropolitan sees of the province of Augustamnica, which lay in the cities of Leontopolis and . The civil administration of Thmuis remained independent. In the year 356, Athanasius sent Serapion with other clergy to the court of Constantius, then resident in Milan, on an unsuccessful mission against the Arians. By 359, the Emperor had removed him from the see of Thmuis in favour of the Arian Bishop Ptolemaeus. Serapion may have been alive as late as 368, but the exact date of his death is unknown. 2

Epiphanius of Salamis (SD 41; Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah, 1969) 169-77; G. D. Fee, "Origen's Text of the New Testament and the Text of Egypt," NTS 28 (1982) 348-64, esp. 354; Fee, "Codex Sinaiticus in the Gospel of John...," NTS 15 (1968-69) 23-44; L. W. Hurtado, Text, Critical Methodologyand the Pre- CaesareanText: CodexW in the Gospelof Mark (SD 43; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerd- mans, 1981). On the difficulties posed by the theory of the "Caesarean" text, see n. 29 below. Neutral sourcesinclude: (p66 base text), p75, 01 (i.e., N), B, Origen's citations from John, Origen's citations from Matthew through Luke in works he wrote in Alexandria. Alexandrian:C, L, (W in Luke 1:1-8:12 andJohn), Z, 33, 579, 892, 1241, Coptic, Didymus-Alex., Athanasius, Cyril-Alex., and (Epiphanius in Matt. 1:1-11:18). Western:(01 in John 1-8), D, (W in Mark 1:1-5:30), Old Latin Afra and Itala, Old Syriac Curetonian and Sinaitic, Tatian's Diatessaron, early Latin fathers, Epiphanius in Mark, and (readings in p66and Clement-Alexandria). Caesarean:p37, p45, (W in Mark 5:31-16:20), fam. 1, fam. 13, 28, 565, 700, fam. 1424, Old Armenian, Old Georgian, citations of Matthew through Luke in works that Origen wrote in Caesarea, Eusebius, and (Epiphanius in Luke and John). Byzantine:A, fam. E, K, (W in Matthew and Luke 8:13-24:53), II, most minus- cules, lectionary, Epiphanius in Matt. 11:19-28:20. 2 On Serapion, see Athanasius, Life of Antony91, Historia acephala3.3, Festal index 25 and Letter49.7 (NPNF ser. 2, vol. 4.220, 497, 504, 559-60); F. E. Brightman, "Serapion," EncyclopaediaBritannica (1 1th ed.; Cambridge, 1911) 24.661-62; F. L. Cross, ed., The OxfordDictionary of the Christian Church(2d ed.; Oxford University, 1977) 1261; J. Quasten, Patrology(Utrecht: Spectrum, 1960) 3.80-85; Quasten, "Serapion," New CatholicEncyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967) 13.105-6. On Thmuis and its ecclesiastical affiliations, see M. C. McCarthy, "Thmuis", New CatholicEncyclopedia, 14. 100, who connects it with the metropolitan see of Pelusium; J. R. Palanque, et al., The Churchin the ChristianRoman Empire, vol. 2,