Indo-European linguistics and classical philology
N. A. Bondarko N. V. Braginskaya, A. I. Shmaina-Velikanova. An Anonymous Sermon on the Incarnation on the Divine Word in the Cgm 176 (Munic, Bavarian State Library) Martyr as ascetic: the novelty of the Fourth Book of Maccabees (pp. 61–78)
Author
N. A. Bondarko N. V. Braginskaya, A. I. Shmaina-Velikanova (Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences The Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities (IASH), Russian State University for the Humanities; The Institute of Oriental and Classical Studies, Russian State University for the Humanities)
Keywords\n the Eastern Middle Bavarian dialect, Franciscan devotional prose, manuscript tradition. The Forth Book of Maccabees, Greek philosophical language in the Judaeo- Hellenistic literature, Jewish origin of the Christian martyrology
Pages\n 61–78
Summary\n
The paper presents the first publication of the still unexplored sermon on the Incarnation of the Divine Word preserved in the single known manuscript of the early 14th century (Cgm 176, Munic, Bavarian State Library), written in the Eastern Middle Bavarian dialect and containing a rich collection of Franciscan devotional prose. On the basis of the revealed parallels in the two German tactates included in the discussed MS and attibuted to David of Augsburg (†1272) it is argued that the sermon originated within Franciscan circle in Regensburg. Nevertheless, it had been copied from an unknown collection which stood apart from the mainstream manuscript tradition of Davidian text corpus. The origin of Christian asceticism as a practice of hermits and later, till the discovery of Qumran, has been traced back to the Greek philosophy, particularly, to Stoics ad Cynics, as well as to Indian gymnosophists known also through the Greek mediation. However, whatever the origin of the Christian asceticism could have been in reality, in the Fourth Book of Maccabees the image of an ascetic emerges as a way to tell about martyrdom for faith in the Greek philosophical language. The author retells and interprets the episode of martyrs’ tortures and death in the 2 Book of Maccabees in the form of a Greek philosophical treatise, amply using athletic, ascetic, military and agonal lexics and imagery. This is essential in order to win a competition with the Stoics and Cynics “on their field” by bringing evidence to the preeminence of the Torah as the love of wisdom (philosophy) over the Greek philosophy, since the Torah teaches how to bear sufferings better than the Hellenic sages. This polemic task as if involuntarily creates the language and the system of images that describes a new phenomenon, which had not had a language of description, i.e. martyrdom for faith. It happens as soon as the idea of expiatory sacrifice is associated with Greek agonistic images and this fusion forces a revival of the mythic substrate of the topical, faded and thus conventional imagery. This system of images created in the 4 Book of Maccabees was to enjoy a long life in the Christian martyrological and then ascetic literature.
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