iv. THE LATIN TEXT.—The Milan Palimpsest (Bibl. Amb. e. 73 inf.), our sole witness for the text, appears to date from the 6th cent.t The Assumption occupies quire xvii, the preceding guitee containing the unique fragments of the
tin translation of the Book of Jubilees (wh. see). But, though the whole volume is marked by peculiarities of writing and spelling due to the scribe, the two works were not translated at the same time or place, as is clear from the divergent renderings of Greek words. The Latin vocabulary of the Assumption includes aedes (ναός), arbiter (μεσίτης), colonia (=‘a town’)§, nuntius (ἄγγελος), palam facere (ἀποκαλύπτειν), Summus (Ὕψιστος), and transliterations such as acrobistia (Ξε ἀκροβυστία), clibsis (θλίψις), scene (σκηνή). Important for the date is the rare use of secus for κατά ‘accordin to,’ parallels to which occur in Clem. Rom. Jat 21’, and in a non-Christian inscription found at Pes- chiera (CIL v. 4017). ||
The MS (which is often very hard to read) was transcribed by Ceriani with wonderful accuracy.{ But the Latin itself is disfigured by many corrup- tions, mostly due to the carelessness of tran- seribers, e.g. ex tribus for patribus (i. 8), sub anulo for sub nullo (xii. 9).** More serious are those which rest on mistakes in the underlying Greek. Dr. Charles has detected a notable instance in ii. 7, where adcedent ad testamentum Domini et jinem polluent must correspond to προσβήσονται τῇ διαθήκῃ Κυρίου καὶ τὸν ὅρον βεβηλώσουσιν ; here by reading παραβήσονται τὴν διαθήκην and ὅρκον (for ὅρον) we get the appropriate sense, ‘they will ¢rans- gress the covenant of the Lord and profane the oath.’ No doubt there are cases of still deeper corruptions which arose in the original Semitic, but these are more difficult to discover and remove.
A full discussion of all the obscurities presented by the text as we have it would be impossible here: one point, however, must be noticed, as it affects the general understanding of the book. This is the interpretation of chs. viii. and ix.,
* Comp., for instance, Mk 858 with ae. xi. (tune paredit vegnem (Dei). . . et tune tle pe tai bit).
t A rough facsimile of a couple of lines is given in Volkmar’s edition of the Assumption, p. 153.
t So dz in He 915 (not elsewhere).
8 Ct. Clem. Rom. lat, p. 26,
|| This use of secus must not be confused with the late and vulgar use of secua for rapa, e.g. secus mare Mt 18) in latt. omn. (exe. afr.), examples of which are hardly found before the 4th cent. a.p. Secus for παρά ocvuurs in Jubilees 1615 4919 ete.
“| Only in four places have we found ourselves unable to follow Dr. Ceriani. We read acrobisam (not norosisain), MS p. 67a12; iam (not tam), p. 100a7 ; eum (not cum), p. 100a15; incut (not in eut), p. 10007, 6 last word we take to be a mistake in the MS for sicut.
** The obscure phrase in tempore tribum (iv. 9) seems to the present writer like a corruption of in tempore retributionis (or retribuendi): οἵ. Hos 97, In the same verse Schmidt-Merx and Charles have already recognized that natos is a mistake of the scribe for nationes. In the very corrupt clause at the end of viii. δ suum looks like a mistake for suem.
é VOL. I1I,.—29
describing the ‘second tribulation’ of the Jews. As it stands, this section comes between the death of Herod and the final judgment, but the details of the perpcution notably coincide with that which befell the Jews under Antiochus Epiphanes, a period which is very rapidly passed over in chs. ν. and vi. owing to the author’s dislike of the Hasmonzans. Dr. Charles, therefore, in his Notes to pp. 28-30, supposes that the section has been misplaced, and that its real place is between chs. v. and vi. But this violent remedy is inadmissible: the final Theophany (ch. x.) comes in well after the story of the ideal saint Taxo (ch. ix.), but very badly after the description of the wicked priests and rulers in ch. vii. In the opinion of the present writer, the difficulty disappears if we regard the author of the Asswmption as having filled up his picture of the final woes from the stories of the Antiochian martyrs. Dr. Charles himself says of ch. ix. (p. 34): ‘Its purpose is to indicate the line of action which the Chasids or Pharisaic party of his own time should pursue. . . . It prescribes the duty our author would enforce on the Pharisaism of his own time. Just as his complete silence as to the Maccabean uprising forms an emphatic censure of its aims, so his vigorous statement of the opposed and Chasid line of action is designed as a commendation of its character.’
The latter part of the above quotation refers especially to Taxo, who (as Dr. Charles points out, p. 35) has been evolved out of the story of Eleazar (2 Mac 6!**-, 4 Mac 58). His seven sons correspond to the seven sons of the widow (2 Mac 7), and his cave of refuge corresponds to those of the Chasids (1 Mae 1® 2%), Various unsatisfactory explanations of the origin of the name 7azo have been put forward: they are given in Charles 35 f. What has hitherto escaped observation is that ‘Tazo’ itself, when put back into the original language of the book, is nothing more than a slightly corrupted cipher for Eleazar. All that is necessary is to read Taxoc for Taxo. The letter may have fallen out in the Latin of the Asswmption, as in ore for orbe (xii. 4), or in the underlying Greek, as in ὅρον for ὅρκον (ii. 7). Now Taxoc in the Latin implies ta wx in the Greek, and this in turn implies p02n in the Semitic original. This word means nothing asit stands, but if we take in each case the next letter of the Semitic alphabet, e.g. B for A, M for L, ete., we get ρὸν Eleazar, the oe name which of all others is most suitable.*