OF THE ATHOS CODEX OF THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS TOGETHER WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SPYR. P. LAMBROS PH.D. PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS TRANSLATED AND EDITED WITH A PREFACE AND APPENDICES BY J. ARMITAGE ROBINSON M. A. FELLOW AND DEAN OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1888 [All Rights reserved.] UNTIL PREFACE. TIL about thirty years ago the Shepherd of Hermas was known to us only in a Latin Version. In 1857 Dressel edited a second Latin Version from a Palatine manuscript of the fourteenth century preserved in the Vatican. In 1860 an Ethiopic Version was also published. This had been discovered by Antoine d'Abbadie some thirteen years previously: but he was not aware of its importance until he had shewn it to Dillmann, with whose assistance he then published it together with a literal Latin translation1. Meanwhile an extraordinary controversy was raging in Leipsic. In 1855 Constantine Simonides had sold to the Library of the University what he declared was the original Greek text of the whole of the Shepherd, with the exception of a small missing portion at the close. This he produced in a twofold form, consisting of (1) three leaves of a paper Ms. from Mount Athos, very closely written in a hand of the fourteenth century, and (2) a copy of six other leaves of the same Ms. which he had not been able to bring away with him. The text thus obtained was immediately published by Anger and Dindorf who edited it with scrupulous exactness from the three original leaves and the apographon of Simonides. They promised to add a volume of critical materials: but this 'pars 1 Hermae Pastor. Aethiopice primum edidit et aethiopica latine vertit Antonius d'Abbadie. Lipsiae, 1860. It came out as no. 1 of the second series of the Abhandlungen der Deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft. It has a strange argument appended at the close to prove that Hermas was S. Paul himself; in proof of which is quoted the text: "They called Silas Zeus and Paul Hermes". 2 Hermae Pastor. Graece primum ediderunt et interpretationem veterem Latinam ex codicibus emendatam addiderunt Rudolphus Anger et Gulielmus Dindorf. Pars prior quae textum Graecum continet. Lipsiae, 1856. |