oa Silvanus en de Griekse gnomische traditie

*Een beknopte versie van dit opstel werd op 26.8.1987 voorgedragen op de tiende patristische conferentie te Oxford. Het doet mij genoegen het te kunnen opdragen aan Jannes Reiling, die voor de Utrechtse faculteit zoveel betekend heeft.

The Teachings of Silvanus (NHC VII, 4) show some influence of the Greek gnomic tradition. NHC VII, 102, 16-22, contains a combination of Sentences of Sextus, 352 and 22, which is also found in Origen (apud Epiphanius, Panarion 64, 7, 3). Both Origen and Silvanus reflect a later stage in the tradition of the Sextine sentences, in which originally independent maxims had been put together. The same phenomenon can be observed in a second passage of Silvanus, NHC VII, 108, 16-109, 9, and in Porphyry, Ad Marcellam, 15 and 16. Both authors prove to have made use of a source which had combined sentences which were still separated in Sextus (4, 376a, 381 (44), 402) and only partly united in the Pythagorean Sentences (40, 4, 102). In his Ad Marcellam, Porphyry is apparently more dependent on earlier (still unknown) gnomic sources than is assumed by his modern commentators.