Volume 25, Issue 3

Many logicians and exegetes have read Titus 1,12 as an example of the Liar’s Paradox without paying sufficient attention to the nature of ancient oracular utterance. Instead of reading the verse as a logical puzzle, it should be read from its ancient context in the history of religions—a context of which ancient Christian scholars were aware. The Syriac scholars preserved a shocking Cretan tradition about Zeus’s death that probably goes back to Theodore of Mopsuestia. The god responsible for Epimenides’ oracle presumably rejected the Cretan tradition of Zeus’s death and tomb. The truth value of 1,12 consequently depends on the oracle and not the human being (i. e., Epimenides) who delivers the oracle. A reading sensitive to the history of religions preserves the Pauline author’s perspective in Titus 1,13: ἡ μαρτυρία αὕτη ἐστὶν ἀληθής. There is, consequently, a strong analogy between Caiaphas’s words in John 11:49–50 and those of Epimenides in Titus 1,12.

A hundred years ago (1917/1918) Wilhelm Bousset broke new ground with the thesis that the Acts of Thomas showed traces of Manichaean editing, especially in the Hymn of the Pearl, perhaps the most famous and the most beautiful poem in the Syriac language. In this poem, according to Bousset, the stages in the life of the prince, the protagonist, strangely match the stages in the life of Mani, the founder of the Manichaean religion. The present article revisits this thesis, which enjoys as much interest as ever and is accepted by several well-known contemporary scholars. It takes account of older witnesses (such as the traditions of the early church) while introducing new arguments based on a consideration of original Manichaean literature and striking features of language and style. In a kind of panoramic view, it shows that the Hymn of the Pearl was indeed subjected to Manichaean editing: motives and themes from older traditions were adapted to refer to Mani and supplemented with new interpretive material. Taken together, the old and the new observations confirm Bousset’s thesis that the son of the king in the Hymn of the Pearl was identified with Mani and that an editor (or a school of editors) reworked the poem to make it point to him.

The keeping, storage and circulation of documents and acts created by the eastern (anti-Cyrillian) bishops at the council of Ephesus (431) is obscure. A letter by Theodoret written on the eve of the Second Council of Ephesus provides an exceptional window into a set of documents relating to the occasion and stored at Antioch at the time. The description reveals the overall scope and character of this set of documents, including some aspect of their probable materiality, and the tendencies and purposes guiding their compilation. It further allows to tentatively identify several of the documents mentioned with those surviving in later collections.

The city of Leontopolis in Isauria first appears in the sources towards the end of the 5th century, more precisely: in a legal text of the later Codex Iustinianus . In general, the surviving information is very sparse. In this essay, the source material is reviewed, in particular the mentioned law and the Martyrdom of Konon of Bidana . On this basis, a date of foundation is suggested, a new localisation of the city is established and the question of its own episcopal see is pursued.