I believe there appeared some years ago, in the Revue de Numismatique, an article on the coins of the Zenobian family, but I do not remember when it was published, nor the conclusions to which the writer came. That is, however, the most recent investigation of the subject, and to it I must refer MR. TAYLOR, as I have not access to that periodical here.
Sir Gardner Wilkinson has published in the Numismatic Chronicle, vol. vii. or viii., an inscription containing the names of Zenobia and Vabalathus. After the name of Vabalathus, who has the title of Autocrator, is the word ΑΘΗΝΟΔΩΡΟΥ, which justifies the reading Αθηνοδωρου Υιος on the coins. Vabalathus is thus probably the son of Zenobia by a former husband, Athenodorus, while bearing himself the same name, as Vabalathus (better Vaballathus, as on the Alexandrian coins) is said to be equivalent to Athenodorus, Gift of Pallas.
W. H. S.
Edinburgh.
MARRIAGE OF ECCLESIASTICS.
(Vol. iv., pp. 57, 125, 193, 196, 298.)
I entirely agree with you that your pages are not a fit battle-ground for theological controversy. Still, since the question of the translation of Heb. xiii. 4. has been mooted, I beg with much deference to suggest that it will not be quite right to let it fall to the ground unsettled, especially since CEPHAS has thought fit to charge those of our Reformers who translated the Scriptures with mistranslating advisedly, and with propagating new doctrines.
CEPHAS'S version of the passage is right, and our English version is wrong; but the fault lies in the ignorance of our translators, an ignorance which they shared with all the scholars of their day, and many not bad scholars of our own, of the effect produced on the force of the article by the relation in which it stands to the other words in the clause, in point of order. ὁ τίμιος γάμος is "the honourable marriage;" ὁ τίμιος γάμος ἐστί is "the honourable marriage is;" ὁ γάμος τίμιος is untranslateable, unless you supply ἐστί, and then it means "the marriage" (or, marriage in general, in the abstract) "is honourable." But ἔστω might be supplied, as it is in Heb. xiii. 4., when it will mean, "let marriage be honourable:" and τίμιος ὁ γάμος has just the same meaning, with perhaps this difference, that the emphasis falls more distinctly on τίμιος. The circumstance that the mere assertion that marriage is honourable in all (men or things), true as it is in itself, ill accords with the tenor of the passage of which it forms a part, which is hortatory, not assertive, is a good reason why CEPHAS'S version should be preferred. But when we find afterwards the words καὶ ἡ κοίτη ἀμίαντος, it is impossible to deny this hortatory force to the sentence; for those words cannot mean "the undefiled bed:" and to translate them "the (or their) bed is undefiled"—which is the only version which they will here bear, but one—would give but a feeble sense. That sole remaining sense is, "the bed (let it) be undefiled;" subaudite ἔστω in the verse is, "Let marriage be honourable in all" (men or things), "and the bed be undefiled; but (or for) whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." Had our translators known that ἡ κοίτη ἀμίαντος could not mean "the bed undefiled," they would at once have been driven to see that the verse is a commandment: and the commandment that marriage should be held honourable in all men (or in all respects), would have served the purpose of their doctrines quite as well as the affirmative form which they have given to their present version. I say, it would have served their purpose; but I say more: they heeded not what did or would serve their purpose. They looked only for the truth and disregarded all else in their pursuit of it. With regard to the controversy about ἐν πᾶσι, it is immaterial which version be adopted. MR. WALTER is right in the rule which he enunciates, if he means that in those cases of adjectives in which the masculine and neuter forms are the same, "man" or "men," not "thing" or "things," must be understood: but it is not always observed, even in classical writers, either in Latin or in Greek. There is no reason why it should be broken here; and I do not believe it is broken. It must have been only by a slip of CEPHAS'S pen that he called πᾶσι a feminine adjective. It undoubtedly refers to both sexes. I wish E. A. D. had given the Greek of the passages from Chrysostom and Augustine, of which he has communicated the Oxford translation, which is as likely to err, perhaps, as any other. Jerome's Latin, like the Vulgate, though the words are not precisely the same, gives a literal version of the Greek, without supplying any verb at all, either est or sit, and, since the Latin has not that expressive power in cases like this which the article gives to the Greek, leaves the passage obscure and undecided.
THEOPHYLACT.