Bishop Amphilochius of Iconium

[sparky231]

I’m not sure if this is the right forum or not. If not please place this in the correct forum.

I have a question regarding Bishop Amphilochius of Iconium. I’m quite disturbed by a quote of his I stumbled upon: “This is THE LEAST FALSIFIED CANON of the divinely inspired Scriptures.” What on earth is he talking about?

 

[Mintaka]

Where did the quote come from? Were there references provided? How was it written in the original language? What was the context of his remark? Was he a heretic from some weird sect, or a respected scholar and theologian? When did he live?

It would help if you’d been able to provide these! But I’ll see what I can look up.

UPDATE: Okay, he was apparently a buddy of St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen, so he’s one of those Cappadocian guys. Therefore, probably bigger on Scripture scholarship and literal meaning than your Alexandrian school or some of the others, who liked more mystical interpretations. He’s got a whole volume to himself of his works, so he must have been very very prolific. (Thus, it would really help to know where the quote was from, especially since I don’t speak Greek.)

He’s credited in some histories with turning Emperor Theodosius against Arianism by walking into a council meeting, giving the Emperor his due ceremonial greeting, but not treating his son Arcadius with any respect. The emperor thought the good bishop just hadn’t seen his son, and pointed him out. The bishop said he’d done all he had to do by honoring the father. The emperor denied this hotly, so the bishop pointed out that this was exactly what the Arians did to God the Son. The emperor took his point.

 

[Mintaka]

Okay. According to An Introduction to the New Testament by Albertus Klijn, on pp. 178-179:

In 394, Bishop Amphilochus wrote a list of the books of the Bible in the form of a poem. (In iambic meter, if you care.) It’s called “Iambi ad Seleucum” in Latin. (Seleucus being the guy he sent the poem to.)

The relevant line says something like this (hopefully I transliterated it correctly):
“outos apheudestatos chanon an eiee theopneuston graphon”.

The book translates this as:
“This may be considered as the most truthful canon of the divinely inspired Scriptures.”

Jurgens translates the whole poem in Volume 2 of The Faith of the Early Fathers. It’s the last line and a half, and his version is:

“… Here then most certainly
You have the Canon of the divinely inspired Scriptures.”

I know that “-eu-” means a good thing or a positive comparison, so “least falsified” seems very unlikely as a translation.

 

[Mintaka]

Correction: I should have transliterated that word as “houtos”, not “outos”.

 

[Mintaka]

And it’s “apseudestatos”, not the other. So it’s not entirely wrong, and I apologize to your source.

“Apseudestatos” is a poetic sort of word. Using this word, the poet Archilochus described Zeus as “the most unlying foreteller”, meaning, the most absolutely truthful foreteller, because “he himself holds the outcome.” (You can’t be wrong if you not just know the end, but make it happen with your power. Zeus was the king of the gods and made stuff happen, which was much more than just being an oracle god. And yes, Zeus’ oak tree oracle at Dodona was very trusted in the ancient world.)

So it seems that most Greek dictionaries define this word as “the most truthful possible”, “absolutely honest”, and so on.

Anyway, the meaning of Amphilochius’ remark is that:

A) he needed a nice highfaluting three dollar word to fill out his next to last line, so he could end the poem in a resounding way.

B) he was assuring Seleucus that his list was absolutely true and correct, so far as he knew; he himself wasn’t lying.

He admits that some of the names on his list are still being debated (like Esther and Revelation), and it probably wouldn’t have surprised him to hear of other valid ones. But he’s not claiming that it’s a full or unerring list; he’s just claiming that it’s a truthful list.