Aporiae

Looks like we've filled out this last month with real content. Wahoo! So here is a last-day link, to Paul Ulishney on Mar Anastasios. Saint Anastasius was a monk of Sinai who enjoys pride of place in Hoyland's Seeing Islam. Here's a new work to add.

Hoyland's problem in 1997ish was that many of the texts we needed simply weren't edited. They were known in manuscript, and after Hoyland well-known; but if you wanted a copy you needed to beg somebody for a xerox. There was a Diyarbakri MS of "The Monk of Bet-Hale" which became infamous for only existing in xerox or (soon) TIFF, the MS subsequently being lost - or, perhaps, hidden, because too many dirty Western researchers were pawing at it. Anyway that's been published now, but not in the 1990s, which is when everyone was getting excited about it. (It is now known as too late to be of scope for Hoyland but, he couldn't know that.)

Anastasius' work, popular as it was in the AD 700s, was suffering a similar fate. Excerpts were floating all over the 'web but not in any organised form. Ulishney, now, has a real dataset. His focus is on Hodegos #22, which concerns "Apostasis" and what questions - ἀπορίαι - an "apostate" might pose to Christians. And yes, Christians; not just his own Melkites or Miaphysites or whoever. Which means the apostates have become something Other.

For Anastasius overall, apostasis springs from Christians of any camp when they enter Saracen territory. In the Hodegos chapter under review, our saint collects the aporiae which his readers must hear. Ulishney points out that these were not the usual "Epaporēmata" which an Internet apologist might set up, to knock down thus to prove Bishop Ussher right. Anastasius does not (here) have the energy to confront these particular aporiae line by line; he basically punts, to suggest attending Mass and letting in the Spirit.

The questions levied against Christianity include five questions against the Torah. This means the apostates weren't Jews or "Judaisers". Ulishney is aware of the amir who was still accepting Torah between him and the Christians of Damascus; who isn't. Ulishney however contrasts that disputation - as in the Epaporēmata genre; he argues it didn't happen.

One aporia which hit the NT could equally go to the OT - in our day. That's the problem Muslims now call tahrif. In Anastasius' day this affected only the Christians - who shared that belief, for better or worse. A Jew could simply deny it because, hey, Masoretic. Greeks were then aware of several Bible versions, owning not only the old "Septuagint" but also straight MT translations, and LXX editions corrected to the MT. Syrians had become equally aware, since the Peshitta was a MT translation but also (now) the LXX had made it to Syriac. In Latin the reverse held: although Jerome had made the MT popular, "Vetus Latina" translations from LXX survived and were still copied. In Sinai, Anastasius would have seen at least these three languages and maybe more, like Armenian.

If I may switch to black-and-white, like Feral Historian does on Youtube: several of the aporiae are stupid, easily countered by a Catholic today - or by Augustine before us. Fundamentalists might care about calendar discrepancies in Genesis; we don't. On the minus side, when Anastasius does dare an answer, sometimes his answers aren't great either, as he brings the majority-text tactic against the "orthodox corruption" complaint. Thus Anastasius must confront Jesus' prayer in Gethsemene. Now back to polychrome.

The aporiae clearly weren't going away. Ulishney plonks this chapter in roughly the same milieu as James/Jacob of Edessa, who must convince his own flock not to jump the fence. James faced similar questions; to which, unlike Anastasius, he will moot a serious theologic response on the part of the Free Will debate (thus supplementing Michael Cook). We'll see more earnest attempts to counter aporiae in Leo III's response to him Anastasius might have known as the Umayyads' governor of the Madina, eventually to become a caliph himself: 'Umar II.