You're right about the Latin being rough compared to the Greek, but where both exist for a certain passage and can be compared, the Latin does seem to follow the Greek. At least IIRC (questionable assumption)Not sure that clarus isn't a misunderstanding or garbled reference to Epiphanes. Are you sure of the alternative?
Irenaeus is generally thought to have written in Greek. The Greek text is generally preferred to the Latin which is deemed to be secondary. Is there enough time between the original publication and 195ish (the Stromateis) for Clement to have read the Latin copy (or it's predecessor?) and further mistook Epiphanes for a Carpocratian? Could the reference go back to Justin's Syntagma?
There's a lot here. Not sure Clement reading a supposed Greek proto-text for the Latin variant is necessarily the best answer given clearer examples of Irenaeus reading the Stromateis and the Protrepticus.
But it seems Tertullian, a native Latin speaker with a standard classical education for someone of an elite class (son of a Roman Centurion), appears to have come across the Latin of Irenaeus as we have it, "barbarous." He wasn't fazed by it. Tertullian flourished relatively shortly after Irenaeus' time, and I might suggest, Irenaeus may have "translated" his own Greek treatise into Latin himself.
We really don't know what he did for a living up there in Lugdunum in Gaul, I only know of it as a military supply route for Roman troops in Germany & Britain. Why not be a scribal concern, reproducing and distributing military orders (usually in a Latin even more barbarous, with phonetically spelled words)? Copying and transmitting Christian texts was his side business, I would think, maybe relying on Greek archetypes (e,a,,p,r) he had got from Polycarp of Smyrna, in Asia Minor.
DCH
Statistics: Posted by DCHindley — Sat Nov 23, 2024 3:34 pm