chapter twelve

THE GOTHIC VERSION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT*

Carla Falluomini

I. Introduction

The Bible was translated into Gothic by Wul la (or Ul la), bishop of the Goths, or more likely by a team under his supervision.1 The translation was probably begun orally in Dacia,2 as Wul la was lector,3 and completed in Moesia Inferior, after his settlement (347–348) near Nicopolis ad Istrum.4 Seven now incomplete manuscripts—most likely copied in Italy in the  rst third of the sixth century—transmit part of this version: around three- fths

* I am grateful to J. Albert Harrill, Michael W. Holmes, Antonio Piras, Ulrich B. Schmid, and Klaus Wachtel for many helpful comments; thanks are also owed to Andreas Juckel and Siegfried Richter for their information on the Syriac and Coptic versions, respectively. Of course, responsibility for faults is entirely my own. 1 On various renditions of the Gothic bishop’s name, see Ernst A. Ebbinghaus, “Ul la(s) or Wul la?” Historische Sprachforschung 104 (1991): 236–238; on the translation of the Gothic Bible, see Philostorgius, Hist. Eccl. II.5; Socrates, Hist. Eccl. IV.33; and Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. VI.37. About Wul la’s work see Piergiuseppe Scardigli, Die Goten: Sprache und Kultur (Munich: Beck, 1973), 95–132; and the literature cited in Bibliographia gotica amplicata (ed. C.T. Petersen; Hanau: Syllabus, 2005). 2 Where Wul la settled, north of the Danube, is unknown. The Visigoths occupied Bessarabia, Muntenia, Moldavia, and eastern and central Transylvania; see the old but still useful Edward A. Thompson, The Visigoths in the Time of Ulla (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 4. 3 Maximinus, diss. 35, in Scripta Arriana Latina I (ed. R. Gryson; Turnhout: Brepols, 1982), 149–171. Regarding the difusion of the Christianity among the Goths, see Knut Schäferdiek, “Gotien: Eine Kirche im Vorfeld des frühbyzantinischen Reichs,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 33 (1990 [1991]): 36–52, and idem, “Das gotische Christentum im vierten Jahrhun- dert,” in Triuwe: Studien zur Sprachgeschichte und Literaturwissenschaft: Gedächtnisbuch für Elfriede Stutz (ed. K.-F. Kraft et al.; Heidelberg: Heidelberger Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 19–50. 4 Near to the modern Nikyup (Northern Bulgaria). On Wul la in Moesia, see, e.g., Velizar Velkov, “Wul la und die Gothi minores in Moesien,” Klio 71 (1989): 525–527; Herwig Wol- fram, Die Goten: Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechsten Jahrhunderts: Entwurf einer historischen Ethnographie, vol. 3 (neubearb. Au.; Munich: Beck, 1990), 73, 89; Peter Heather, The Goths (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), especially 60–61, 90–91. 330 carla falluomini of the Gospels, around two-thirds of the Pauline Epistles, and a small portion of the Old Testament (Nehemiah 5–7).5 The Gothic version is a word-by-word translation. It cannot help in iden- tifying the Vorlage when the Greek traditions diverge in the use of tenses and moods, and in the presence or absence of articles or demonstrative pro- nouns;6 it is reliable regarding textual additions or omissions, and, in many cases, word order.7 Because of its adherence to the Byzantine text,8 the Gothic version has been omitted in the critical apparatus both of Novum Testamentum Graece9

5 Codex Argenteus (Uppsala, Universitetsbiblioteket, DG 1, 187f. [http://www.ub.uu.se/ arv/codex/faksimiledition/contents.html] + Speyer, Historisches Museum der Pfalz, 1f.; Gos- pels), Codex Carolinus (Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Guelf. 64 Weiss., f. 255, 256, 277, 280; now palimpsest; Pauline Epistles [http://diglib.hab.de/mss/64-weiss/start.htm]), Codex Gissensis (Giessen, Universitätsbibliothek, 651/20, part of a bifolio, now lost; Gospels [http://bibd.uni-giessen.de/papyri/images/pbug-inv018--1.jpg and http://bibd.uni-giessen .de/papyri/images/pbug-inv018--2.jpg]), Ambrosianus A (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, S 36 sup., 102f. + Turin, Biblioteca Universitaria Nazionale, f. IV.1 Fasc. 10, 4f.; now palimpsest; Pauline Epistles), Ambrosianus B (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, S 45 sup., 78f.; now palim- psest; Pauline Epistles), Ambrosianus C (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, I 61 sup., f. 90, 91; now palimpsest; Gospels), and Ambrosianus D (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, G 82 sup., f. 209, 210, 451, 452, 461, 462; now palimpsest; Old Testament). The Gothic manuscripts were writ- ten with a proper alphabet, devised by Wul la, but after the Greek-Gothic war (535–553), there were no longer many Goths who could understand the Gothic alphabet and language. As was the case with Greek and Hebrew codices that circulated in Italy, so also the Gothic manuscripts were palimpsested during the seventh and eighth centuries (most of them in the monastery of Bobbio, in northern Italy). Also the fact that the Goths were Arians may have played a role in the loss of Gothic texts. On Wul la as creator of the Gothic alphabet, see Patrizia Lendinara, “Wul la as the Inventor of the Gothic Alphabet: The Tradition in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” General Linguistics 32 (1992): 217–225; on the Gothic codices, see Carla Falluomini, “Kodikologische Bemerkungen über die Handschriften der Goten,” Scriptorium 60 (2006): 3–37. 6 See George W.S. Friedrichsen, “Limitations of Gothic in representing Greek,” in The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origins, Transmission, and Limitations (by Bruce M. Metzger; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 388–393. 7 In the cases where there are not any textual variants in the Greek tradition, the word order of the Gothic translation follows closely the order of the Greek text. Therefore, it can be supposed that the deviations of the Gothic text—when they are not traceable to Gothic syntactical particularities—depend upon the Greek Vorlage. Doubts can arise concerning the position of the demonstrative, personal, and possessive pronouns. 8 For his translation, Wul la used a manuscript (or manuscripts) of the early Byzantine text type; see below. A summary of earlier studies on this topic in Metzger, Early Versions, 384–385. 9 Novum Testamentum Graece, post Eberhard et Erwin Nestle […] communiter (ed. Bar- bara Aland et al.; 27th rev. ed., 9th rev. pr.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2006). Although mentioned in the introduction (here 29* and 70*); the Gothic version never appears in the apparatus.