Critical edition of Procopius' of Gaza Commentaries to Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus from the so-called Catena of the Octateuch

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Christoph Markschies
• Subject Area: Protestant Theology
• Term: from 2010 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 157246751

Subjects of the Langfristvorhaben are Procopius' of Gaza Commentaries to Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus from his "Eclogarum in libros historicos Veteris Testamenti epitome" (hitherto often called Octateuch catena). After a modification of the schedule of the project in 2012, the project's aims were an editio critica maior of the Commentary to Genesis and Exodus, to appear in the series "Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller" (De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston), and a translation of the Commentary to Genesis, which appeared in the same series. Since the edition of Migne in the "Patrologia Graeca" gives only part of the text of the works in its original Greek, each edition is for the most part an editio princeps.Edition and translation of the "Commentary on Genesis" were published in 2015 and 2016, both of them in the series "Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller". The remaining aim of this application for the years 2016-2019 is a manuscript of the Greek text of the "Commentary on Exodus", ready for the evaluation according to the rules of the mentioned series.The works, parts of a commentary on the Pentateuch and other historical books of the Old testament are of extraordinary meaning, as its author the Palaestinian orator and theologian Procopius of Gaza (ca. 465/475-528/530 AD) extracts an essence of patristic exegesis. Regardless of hermeneutical schools and dogmatic opinions, the collection unites excerpts and paraphrases of older commentaries, of which the originals are often lost, giving us a many-voiced concert of theological authors of the first Christian centuries in their pagan environment, commenting crucial problems of Christianity in the first centuries: They had to decide how to deal with the Jewish bible, how to think about biblical cosmology in the frame of pagan philosophy, how to understand psychologically the actions of the patriarchs, how to solve the philosophical problem of free will in the beginning of the book of Exodus. Some of the works have not come down to us in the original language, but only in these fragments.For Church history research, a critical edition is desirable in two regards: to reconstruct the wording of the fragments and to identify the sources. Procopius not only uses a previous work ("Urkatene"), as does the anonymous catena of the same bible book, but also some of the original works, sometimes citing the text more truthfully. He often adds the missing context between two fragments.The cited sources are of crucial meaning: Therefore, their identification is one of the major tasks within the usual workflow of the edition. Fragments without known sources are the most exciting ones, because they give access to lost authors and works of the Eastern church. From these aspects it is of main importance to restore a work to the scientific.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants