patristics | manuscripts

The AnTrAF Project (the Ancient Translations of the Apostolic Fathers), explores in various ways the reception of the this corpus in the manuscript cultures of the languages in which they were translated, which makes for a peculiar and very intricate chapter of the History of the Book.

• The moniker ‘Apostolic Fathers’ designates a modern collection that gathers some interesting if motley early Christian writings, composed in Greek roughly around the second century. While the Greek text was edited several times in the last decades, the ancient translations are sorely neglected, despite important punctual exceptions. They are, however, windows into very interesting reception contexts.

In 2020 Dan Batovici was awarded a three-year Project Grant from Fritz-Thyssen Stiftung, based at KU Leuven (2021-2024), to work on the Syriac and Coptic reception of the corpus, and a one-year postdoctoral grant from UCLouvain (Mandat FRS Chargé de Recherche) to work on its Armenian reception (2020-2021). The first half of 2022 Dan was Visiting Scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford, for which he was awarded a long-stay abroad grant from the FWO (Research Foundation – Flanders). The project has further been supported by one-month fellowships at Academia Belgica (December 2021), the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (July 2019), and Dumbarton Oaks (August 2019).

In 2019, a generous conference grant from the Fritz-Thyssen Stiftung was awarded to Dan for the first AnTrAF conference. Organised in May in Leuven at the Irish College (The Leuven Institute for Ireland in Europe), it featured papers on the AF transmission in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Slavonic, Middle Persian, Ethiopic and Arabic (conference report here). The proceedings are now published as a journal thematic issue, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 98.3 (2022), co-edited with Joseph Verheyden. Furthermore, a second thematic dossier on new witnesses of Ignatius of Antioch in Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, and Old Slavonicis in preparation for Le Muséon, stemming from the same conference.

1Clement.VMR: A Digital Edition of All Witnesses

In July 2020 a collaboration started with David Downs (Oxford) on the digital project 1Clement.VMR, hosted on-line in the New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room of INTF Münster, which aims to produce digital transcriptions for all manuscript witnesses of 1 Clement. The letter was composed in Greek and there are four witnesess in this language known to date, two of them being partial. Beyond the Greek, there are two papyri with 1Clement in Akhmimic Coptic, an isolated Latin medieval witness, and – so far – five Syriac manuscripts. This is meant as a first exploratory step towards a future broader project of digitising the ancient versions of the AF.

Related Publications

• Dan Batovici and Joseph Verheyden (eds.), Versions of the early Christian past: ancient translations of the Apostolic Fathers  (Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 98.3 [2022]), a journal thematic issue that stemms from the 2019 AnTrAF conference in Leuven, gathering the following eight contribution on the reception of individual AF in Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic, and Middle-Persian:
  • Donatella Tronca, “The Latin Translation of the Letter of Clement to the Corinthians in Manuscript Namur, Grand Séminaire 37: A Miscellany on Papal Primacy,” 379-389.
  • Benjamin Gleede, “Image and Instrument: Conflicting Martyrologies in the Martyrdom of Polycarp and Its Literary Latin Translation,” 391-409.
  • Paolo Cecconi, “Hermas and His Readers: New Cues in the Translation Technique Employed by the Two Latin Versions of the Shepherd,” 411-425.
  • Adrian C. Pirtea, “The Shepherd of Hermas Fragment from Turfan (M97) and Its Manichaean Context,” 427-449.
  • Ted Erho and Ralph Lee, “References to the Shepherd of Hermas at the monastery of Gunda Gundē,” 451-461.
  • Massimo Villa, “The Reception of Ignatius of Antioch in Ethiopic Literature: A Survey,” 463-479.
  • J. Gregory Given, “How Coherent Is the Ignatian Middle Recension? The View from the Coptic Versions of the Letters of Ignatius,” 481-502. (OA)
  • Dan Batovici, “Apostolic by Proxy: Corpora, editiones minores, and Network of Texts,” 503-524.

• The recently edited volume, Madalina Toca and Dan Batovici (eds.), Caught in Translation: Studies on Versions of Late-Antique Christian Literature (Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity 17; Leiden: Brill, 2020), contains two AnTrAF related chapters:
  • Dan Batovici, “Four New Syriac Witnesses to the Middle Recension of the Ignatian Corpus,“ 122–37.
• And especially:
  • Ted M. Erho, “A Fourth Ethiopic Witness to the Shepherd of Hermas,“ 241–66. As the title suggests, it contains a transcription of a new witness to the Ethiopic Hermas, an important discovery towards the desideratum of a critical edition for this translation.

The volume is reviewed by Matthieu Cassin in Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 106.1 (2022), Joseph Verheyden in the Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 74.3-4 (2022), Yuliya Minets in Church History 90.1 (2021), and Bernard Coulie in Le Muséon 133.3-4 (2020).

• Further contributions:
  • Dan Batovici and Joseph Verheyden, “Digitizing the ancient versions of the Apostolic Fathers: preliminary considerations,” in Tim Hutchings and Claire Clivaz (eds.), Digital Humanities and Christianity: An Introduction (IDH 4; Berlin, De Gruyter, 2021) 103-123. [OA]
  • Dan Batovici, “Dating, Split-Transmission Theory, and the Latin Reception of the Shepherd of Hermas,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 60 (2017 [2018]) 83–90.
  • Dan Batovici, “Some Observations on the Coptic Reception of the Shepherd of Hermas,” Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin 3.2 (2017 [2018]) 81–96. [OA]
  • Dan Batovici, “Two Lost Lines of the Coptic Hermas in BnF Copte 130 (2) f. 127,” Journal of Theological Studies 68.2 (2017 [2018]) 572–75.
  • Dan Batovici, “Hermas in Latin: Notes on a Recent Edition,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 94.1 (2018) 151–57.
  • The recording of a fairly recently offered paper (October 6, 2022) on the Clementine letters in Syriac manuscripts is available on Youtube, posted on the channel hosted by the TeTra Joint Research Seminar:

For further details and AnTrAF conversation please get in touch at dan.batovici@kuleuven.be.

Detail of HMML CFMM 309, from the vHMML Reading Room.