Private notes on Mithras Myth

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Corpus Parisinum

Denis Searby (denis.searby@klassiska.su.se) writes:

Zoroaster does not occur in CP. There is a minor collection of "pagan oracles" prophesying the life of Christ, but it is just a variant version of a collection edited by Erbse.

Reference: H. Erbse, Theosophorum Graecorum fragmenta, Leipzig 1995

...Whether intended by the compiler or not, the oracles ascribed to pagan sages proclaiming Christian dogmas in CP 2 create a convenient transition from the Christian excerpts of CP 1 to the profane selections in CP 3. Otherwise, these oracles, concerning dogmas such as, among others, the consubstantiality of Father and Son, and the virgin birth, do not fit in well with the overwhelmingly ethical content of CP as a whole. It is not surprising that they were ignored in Max and the related sacro-profane florilegia.

In the late fifth century a work entitled Theosophia was composed in defense of Christianity by an anonymous author. This work was lost, although something of it survives in what has come to be known as the Tübingen Theosophy. Included in this later compilation are a number of brief collections under titles such as Chresmoi or Propheteiai that ascribe oracular pronouncements of Christian dogmas to pagan authors. The author(s) of the various collections found inspiration in the Sibylline Oracles and in Porphyry's De philosophia ex oraculis haurienda (ed. G. Wolff , Berlin 1856, repr. Hildesheim 1962). These oracles were much in vogue during various periods, being cited in a number of sermons (e.g. the Coptic sermons examined by Van Den Broek) and reflected in ecclesiastical art (see Dujčev esp. pp. 19-20, who also refers to Adolf von Premerstein's Griechisch-heidnische Weise als Verkünder christlicher Lehre in Handschriften und Kirchenmalerei, in Festschrift der Nationalbibliothek in Wien, herausgegeben zur Feier des 200jährigen Bestehens des Gebäudes, Viena 1926, 647-666; see also Brock 1983 p. 205, where he cites K. Spetsieris, Eikones hellēnōn philosophōn eis ekklēsias, in Epistēmonikē epetēris tēs philsophikēs scholēs tou panepistēmiou Athēnōn II.14 1963/4 p. 426; the influence of the Jewish Sibylline Oracles on art is most famously exemplified in the Sixtine Chapel). John Malalas includes a number of them in his Chronicle, citing parallels to CP 2.1-2 and pointing out that "even though Hermes Trismegistos was ignorant of what was to come, he confessed the consubstantiality of the Trinity" (trans. Jeffreys et al. Malalas 27 p. 13). The oracles were translated into other languages, among them, Syriac and Coptic. Treatises spuriously attributed to Athanasius and Didymus contain several of the chresmoi below. No doubt, the original composer of these odd pieces had apologetic intentions in his work. The Syrian author Dionysios bar Salibi made apologetic use of them against the Muslims (cf. Brock 1984 pp. 77 and 80, and the introduction to the Syriac collection edited in Brock 1983 as translated on p. 227). The entire theosophic tradition is closely related to the Corpus Hermeticum.

The indispensable work on the Theosophy and the Chresmoi is Erbse (1941). Good, brief summaries of the tradition are to be found in Brock (1983) and (1984) and, especially, in Van Der Broek. The improved Teubner edition of the texts is Erbse (1995). Erbse (1941) is referred to in the later edition by the abbreviation "diss." See Gärtner (1998) for a review of the Teubner edition. The testimonia noted below for the oracles in CP 2 are to be taken only as a supplement to Erbse's two works, which any interested reader must consult. The Syriac tradition is edited, discussed and translated in Brock (1983), and further texts, comment and translations are to be found in Brock (1984). Some Coptic fragments are discussed and translated into English in the very informative article by Van Den Broek, but these texts do not happen to parallel the oracles in CP. On the Corpus Hermeticum and the various Hermetic collections, see Copenhaver pp. xiii-lix. On the specific tradition of the Sibylline Oracles, see Copenhaver pp. xxix-xxxii. For Malalas, see the introduction to the English translation by Jeffreys et al. pp. xxi-xxii and the Studies in John Malalas by the same group of scholars published in Sydney 1990 (Byzantina Australiensia 6), passim. For the text of Malalas, I have consulted the new edition by Thurn (2000) but refer to the pages in the Dindorf edition for the location of the passages. For the passages in ps.-Athanasius and ps.-Didymus, however, I was compelled to use the texts available in Patrologia Graeca and in the TLG database.

S. Brock, "A Syriac Collection of Prophecies of the Pagan Philosophers" in Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 14 (1983) 205-246.

S. Brock, "Some Syriac Excerpts from Greek Collections of Pagan Prophecies" in Vigiliae Christianae 38 (1984) 77-90

R. van den Broek, "Four Coptic Fragments of a Greek Theosophy" Vigiliae Christianae 32 (1978) 118-142

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