On Epistle 47

I had forgotten entirely about #47 when, over the last couple days, I was hammering out #41 (which was more allusive, so harder to read). When updating the earlier posts to point to my then-three translations of the five-epistle Nisibene corpus I stumbled upon "XLV" again, thus forcing today's efforts. Forgive my vileness and my weakness, as Ishoʿyahb himself might say; and pray for me.

#41 and #47 belong together as post-#27 (to which both allude), with several structural differences. Foremost #41 is sent from the man where #47 is sent from the bishop of Nineveh. In #41, Cyriacos does not exist as he matters for #47. Also #41 promises 30 gribhae (10 wheat, 20 barley) to Moses where #47 promises 100 to Cyriacos - specified, to his city's Metropolitan account, as a loan. Which reminds me: Moses isn't being asked to pay it back.

I stumbled over Duval's virtualiter et ex sententia not finding it elsewhere as a Latin idiom. This may mean that Moses and Cyriacos are sending contemporary letters - that is, dueling letters. The letters' compiler thought as much hence why he assigned #41 to the Episcopal set, but post-#27: along with consciously Ninevene #47. Moses, then, is getting a share of the supper; the Metropole is getting the rest of it, and is expected to restitute all of it.

When Cyriacos dies, Nisibin will refuse a Metropolitan. That had the "accident" that one city could refuse to pay back the other - the debt was held in the Metro' ledger; no Metro, no ledger, no debt. It follows, to me anyway, that when Ishoʿyahb gets his own metropole (hoc est Arbela), he'd be uninclined to offer to any Nisibin churchman anything more, not without a reminder of what is owed to Nineveh and/or to the Church at large. Re #41 sometimes an omission, as Freud might say, is just an omission.

FIEY 4/16/23: E. XLVII is summarised ch. V, p. 18 in French, looking back.