Acts of Archelaus (Acta Archelai)

XIV

This perhaps prompted Jerome, a connoisseur of the East, to make his assertion. If, however, one regards the disputation as fictitious, the relocation of the site of the disputation to a remote border region is explained as an attempt to make the meeting between Archelaus and Manes appear plausible: conclusions regarding the original language should therefore not be drawn from the geographical designation. That the author was not accurately acquainted with the region of Mesopotamia is proven by his geographical statements.

In earlier times, no one seems to have doubted the authenticity of the report. The authorship of Hegemonius remained unknown, or he was considered merely the stenographer and was not given further attention.

That Cyril, Epiphanius, and Socrates used a Greek text is fairly certain; the only question is whether there was more than one Greek version and how the versions in other languages (e.g., the Arabic version by Bishop Severus in Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexandr. pp. 40–48, and the Coptic one, excerpted in English translation by Crum, Proceedings of the Society of Bibl. Archaeology, 1902, p. 68 ff.)1 related to the Greek version.

The first attempt to determine the original and the authorship was made by Zacagni in the introduction to his edition of the Acta (Rome, 1698). He attempted to reconcile the contradictory statements of Heraklian and Jerome by the assumption that Archelaus had first written a report of his disputation, and that Hegemonius had reworked this report and provided it with an introduction, epilogue, etc., perhaps translating the Acta into Greek at the same time. Zacagni's views were challenged by Beausobre (Manichéisme, I, 1734), who denied both the authenticity of the disputation and the existence of a Syrian original. Since then, both opinions have found their proponents, yet in recent times the communis opinio common opinion is that the work by Hegemonius is fictitious, and there will likely be few who still believe in the existence of a Syrian original. The last attempt to defend the assertion of Jerome was undertaken by Kessler (Mani, 1889). Although he sought to defend Jerome's claim on the basis of linguistic evidence, his attempt cannot be described as successful (cf. Nöldeke, Ztschr. d. deutschen morgenl. Gesellsch. Vol. 43, 1889, p. 537 ff., and Rahlfs, Gött. gel. Anz. 1889, p. 927 ff.). Also, Kessler himself no longer seems to maintain his views in their full extent, since in the new edition of the Realencyklopädie f. prot. Theol. u. Kirche, Vol. 12, p. 193 ff., he states that the Greek model is perhaps itself not the original script, but traces back to a Syrian original at least in its components, namely because of linguistic evidence.

1) Crum points out that Renaudot has omitted many interesting passages. The differences, which are said to be particularly noteworthy in the story of the charitable Marcellus, will become apparent as soon as the new edition by Evetts has been published.