Procopius of Gaza, Commentary to Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus


Studying the time of ancient Christianity, scholars are yet missing modern editions of important theologians, i. e. editions following the rules of textual criticism. One project to fill this gap is the edition of the so called Catena in Octateuchum of Procopius of Gaza (ca. 465/475-528/530 AD), beginning with the commentary to the book Genesis, followed by the commentaries to Exodus and Leviticus. Procopius work is similar to catenas, exegetical handbooks, which contain a huge number of citations to a certain book of the bible, bequeathed in a fragmentary form, taken from the authors of Late Antiquity seen as canonical in the 5th and 6th century. Fragments are often the remains of lost works, which got lost by different reasons due to the Arabic conquest or dogmatical struggles, in which the authors were condemned and are therefore a main object of the project. To examine whether we know the originals of the excerpts or have new fragments conserved by Procopius is one of the main targets of the project. The other, as mentioned above, is the philological reconstruction of the text of Procopius of Gaza. It is a project of the chair of ancient church history, headed by Prof. Dr. Christoph Markschies, performed by the scholar Dr. habil. Karin Metzler; 2006 - 2009 and since the beginning of 2010 it is financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) as a Langfristvorhaben (longtime project). Before, it was maintained by the funds of the Leibniz prize awarded by the DFG (2001 - 2006) and 2009 by the Thyssen Stiftung. The forthcoming edition will be published in the book series of Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte , edited at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften.


Principal investigators
Markschies, Christoph Prof. Dr. Dres. h. c. (Details) (Ancient History of Christianity)

Financer
DFG: Sachbeihilfe

Duration of project
Start date: 01/2010
End date: 12/2012

Last updated on 2022-22-12 at 04:05