ABSTRACT
The loss of the Greek originals notwithstanding, we have obviously not been altogether deprived of Evagrius’ works. Thanks to the ancient translations of Evagrius’ works (particularly the Syriac translations) mentioned earlier, many otherwise lost letters and brief treatises are available. Obviously, working from the ancient translations has to be done with great care, and not just because we have lost the author’s original words. Evagrius was the mystical doctor nonpareil for the Christian Orient, as is revealed by occasional remarks in the works of the great Syrian theologian and scholar of the thirteenth century, Gregory Barhebraeus, for whom Evagrius was ‘the greatest of the gnostics’.1 So sometimes it happened that the writings of lesser authors were ascribed to Evagrius in the Syriac tradition, to increase their reputation.2 A good example is the case of Abraham of Nathpar, several of whose writings were ascribed to Evagrius in the Syriac manuscript used by Frankenberg for his edition.3 This inclusion of this material within the Evagrian corpus may well have contaminated the transmission of Evagrius’ own works. The ancient translations also sometimes enable scholars to restore to Evagrius certain Greek texts that were wrongly attributed to Nilus or to Basil the Great. For instance, Evagrius’ On prayer survives in Greek under Nilus’ name; and his On the faith is preserved as Letter 8 in the collection of Basil’s letters. It has also been possible to extract Evagrius’ scholia from lengthy chains of scholia on various books of Scripture (e.g., his particularly interesting On Psalms).4 Taken together with the surviving Greek texts found, for instance, in the Philokalia, these various sources make up a respectable collection. As a result of this textual work, we can now study a dossier of primary material from a writer whose signifi-
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can now re-evaluate Evagrius’ writings and come to conclusions about them while being critically aware of the historical limitations of the sixth-century condemnations. It is worth thinking about how this is done.
