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The Venerable Bede's Knowledge of Greek

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Kevin M. Lynch
Kevin M. Lynch*
Affiliation:
Central Connecticut State University
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Extract

Unlike today, when he is mostly remembered for his historical work, the Venerable Bede's renown in the Middle Ages was founded on his biblical exegesis. One reason that his comments on the Bible had such prominence was that Bede referred to both the Latin and Greek texts, and in western Europe outside of Italy during the eighth century; the ability to read Greek marked one as practically unique. Two eighth-century lives remark on Bede's Greek. In the Brevis commemoratio de Venerabili Beda, probably written by a disciple named Antonius, we learn that Bede studied both Latin and Greek: ‘Et cum in Latina erudiretur lingua, Graecae quoque peritiam non mediocriter percepit.’ Also, in an anonymous life, we read: ‘Cumque Latinae aeque ut vernaculae linguae in qua natus est percepisset notitiam, Graecae quoque non parva ex parte attigit scientiam.’ This belief, that Bede was able to read Greek, was uncritically accepted for centuries.

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Type
Miscellany
Information
Traditio , Volume 39 , 1983, pp. 432 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

1 The once widely held belief that Greek was commonly known in Ireland at this time has been dispelled by much fine scholarship, principally that of Bischoff, B. and McNally, R. E. See especially Bischoff's ‘Das griechische Element in der abendländischen Bildung des Mittelalters,’ Byzantinische Zeitschift 42 (1951) 27–55; and McNally's ‘The Imagination and Early Irish Biblical Exegesis,’ Annuale Mediaevale 10 (1969) 5–27. For a most amusing account of an incident revealing the limited extent of Irish knowledge of Greek in the mid-ninth century, see Nora Chadwick, ‘Early Culture and Learning in North Wales,’ Studies in the Early British Church (Cambridge 1958) 94f.Google Scholar

2 PL 90.37b.Google Scholar

3 PL 90.46d.Google Scholar

4 This is a widely held position. For example, Plummer, C. L., in his fine edition of Bede's historical works (Venerabilis Baedae Historia ecclesiastica, 2 vols.; Oxford 1896), states this view and for authority quotes William Stubbs (Dictionary of Christian Biography 1. 30): ‘He certainly knew Greek and Hebrew.’ This latter claim, that Bede knew Hebrew, was disproved by E. I. Sutcliffe (‘The Venerable Bede's Knowledge of Hebrew,’ Biblica 26 [1945] 300–6), who nevertheless added to the tradition of Bede's knowing Greek: ‘There is no ground for calling into question … his proficiency in Greek.’Google Scholar

5 Laistner, M. L. W., Thought and Letters in Western Europe (Ithaca 1931; rev. ed. 1957) 161; cf. ‘Bede as a Classical and Patristic Scholar,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th Series, 16 (1933) 84.Google Scholar

6 Laistner, M. L. W., ‘The Latin Versions of Acts Known to the Venerable Bede,’ Harvard Theological Review 30 (1937) 47.Google Scholar

7 Bolton, W. F., History of Anglo-Latin Literature: 497–1066 (Princeton 1967) 110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Ex. must have been written after 708 because it is addressed to ‘vere beatissimo Accan episcopo,’ and Acca did not become bishop of Hesham until 708. Also, Ex. must have preceded Bede's commentary on Luke in which it is mentioned. And Luke, in turn, is mentioned in the commentary on Samuel, which was being worked on when Ceolfrid set out on his last journey to Rome in 716. Dating Re. is more difficult. In the Praefatio Bede notes that in old age (‘Cum esset senior’) Augustine wrote a book of retractations. He continues that it pleases him to imitate Augustine's example and to write a book of retractations for his own work on Acts, which he says he had written many years before (‘quam ante annos plures … conscripsimus’). So it seems that Re. belongs near the end of his career, but there is much conjecture about just how near. In a list of his works which he drew up in 731 and included in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (hereafter HE), Bede mentions two works on Acts. So we may reasonably conclude that Re. was composed in the late 720s.Google Scholar

9 Laistner, ‘Latin Versions’ 49.Google Scholar

10 For a thorough discussion of the evidence that Bede used this e text, see Lowe, E. A., ‘An Eighth Century List of Books in a Bodleian Ms. from Würzburg and its Probable Relation to the Laudian Acts,’ Speculum 3 (1928) 3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Bolton, W. F., ‘An Aspect of Bede's Later Knowledge of Greek,’ The Classical Review’ n.s. 13 (1963) 37–50.Google Scholar

12 Bedae Venerabilis Expositio Actuum Apostolorum et Retractatio, ed. Laistner, M. L. W. (Cambridge, Mass. 1939) 68. Hereafter, Bedae.Google Scholar

13 Bedae 65.Google Scholar

14 PL 83.290b.Google Scholar

15 Bedae 117.Google Scholar

16 Bedae 89.Google Scholar

17 Bedae 113.Google Scholar

18 Bedae 110–11.Google Scholar

19 Bedae 144.Google Scholar

20 Laistner is not alone in noticing Bede's independent translation. In a footnote to Acts 27.1 in his Novum Testamentum: Graece et Latine, 9th ed. (Rome 1964), Augustinus Merk notes these two variants (nos and tradiderunt) and credits them to Bede (p. 464). It is surprising that Bede is the first to have emended eum to nos because this is one of the famous ‘we’ passage in Acts where Luke seems to have joined the group he is writing about.Google Scholar

21 Bolton, History 109.Google Scholar

22 Bedae 95.Google Scholar

23 Bedae 97.Google Scholar

24 Bedae 98.Google Scholar

25 Bedae 96.Google Scholar

26 Bedae 94.Google Scholar