Friday, September 13, 2024

Textual Variant in Cyprian

Someone asked about the textual variant issue in Cyprian that I alluded to during my recent episode on Cyprian and Purgatory (link to video).  Here's the relevant material from a critical edition of Cyprian's letters.  

First the main text:


As you can see, the editors have used "purged for a long time with fire" (purgari diu igne).  However, there are textual variants as noted for line 343, which would result in the word translated "with fire" (igne) not being present:


This is, of course, not a "knock out" argument against the Roman Catholic usage of Cyprian as supposedly teaching Purgatory.  Instead, as mentioned in the video, the stronger point is that the sentence is referring to the ecclesiastical discipline imposed on adulterers during their lives, which can be shown from the preceding and following context.