DATING THE DIALOGUE OF TIMOTHY AND AQUILA: REVISITING THE EARLIER VORLAGE HYPOTHESIS

Extract

The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila (TA) is an anonymous, Jewish and Christian dialogue situated in Alexandria during Cyril's episcopacy (412–444 C.E.). It is preserved in eight Greek manuscripts, the earliest of which is an eighth- or ninth-century C.E. palimpsest,manuscript R, whose underwriting is sparse and difficult to decipher. The remaining manuscripts fall into two groups: those preserving the longer form of TA, manuscripts P and O from the eleventh century and manuscript V from the twelfth, and a group of three shorter recensions: manuscript Z from the twelfth century, and manuscripts M and E from the fifteenth century. Robert Robertson identified an eighth witness to TA, manuscript A from the twelfth century, which preserves unacknowledged excerpts of TA previously believed to be a corrupt witness to Epiphanius's Weights and Measures. While Angelo Mai published the first excerpts of TA in 1843,Angelo Mai, “Praefatio: De Quodam Dialogo,” in Spicilegium Romanum 9 (Rome: Typis Collegii Urbani, 1843) xi–xiii. Mai described TA as “aetatis ambiguitas” and did not identify his manuscript source. He printed only a title, the first half of verse 1.1a, and the last 16 verses (57.4–20). Reprinted in PG 86.1.l.251–54. and F. C. Conybeare presented the first unabridged edition in 1898,F. C. Conybeare, The Dialogues of Athanasius and Zacchaeus and Timothy and Aquila (Anecdota Oxoniensia, Classical Series 8; Oxford: Clarendon, 1898). it was not until 1986 that Robertson established a critical edition.Robert G. Robertson, “The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: A Critical Text, Introduction to the Manuscript Evidence, and an Inquiry into the Sources and Literary Relationships” (Th.D. diss., Harvard University, 1986) 1–49, provides a text-critical analysis of TA's manuscripts. Sigla (except Z) and versification follow Robertson's edition. See Pastis, “Representations,” 29–67, for additional discussion of the manuscripts and for a description of manuscript Z (not included by Robertson). He identified two principal manuscript families in his stemma of manuscripts.Robertson, “A Critical Text,” 47. In the AOM family, A, O share an exemplar that is prior to and directly related to the exemplar of manuscript M. In the PVE family the exemplar of E is also prior to and directly related to the exemplar of P, V.Ibid., 19: “There is no question … that in many places the text of O is definitely superior to that of PV.” Further (p. 48), “In a substantial number of readings,however, E agrees with O (M) against PV, thus demonstrating that E's archetype had not yet suffered the corruptions exhibited by the exemplar of PV.” He tentatively placed manuscript R “near the center of the textual tradition, between the archetype of O(M) and PVE, probably no more than one step removed from (a) [the archetype of all manuscripts].”Ibid., 48. Thus according to Robertson, the most trustworthy witnesses to TA are R, O, and E.