Select Orations (review)

Many interested in patristic writings have profited greatly from the late nineteenth-century series, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers. Greek and Latin texts are not always ready to hand for those who want to know about the Church's formative period, and these translations are still helpful although they now suffer from their age. The grand project, however, had original limitations as all such efforts do. Gregory of Nazianzus, The Theologian for the Eastern Orthodox, was not given space even for all his orations. Thus, most of the nineteen in Vinson's translation have never previously been rendered into English.

The NPNF editors' decisions vividly display the uppercrust American and Oxbridge character of the translators. Doctrinal and liturgical pieces appear with good introductions and occasional notes, as do some of his letters. But nearly every oration that demonstrated at some length Gregory's concern for the poor and the sick is left aside. Oration 14 has, indeed, not gone without an English rendering (see Vinson, n. 3), but despite its importance as the programmatic essay for Basil of Caesarea's hospice and eventual hospital for those in need, it missed the NPNF cut. Thus, views of Gregory, including some scholary ones, too seldom emphasize his social concerns. He insists, for example, that lepers might have a deeper spirituality than the healthy, and thus they might bear the disease well. Leprosy could never be understood only as God's judgment on sinners.

The select bibiliography provided by the translator can lead any student farther on in the study of Nazianzus. Though the literature is large, Vinson has chosen wisely, and in the short introduction she has deftly described Gregory's life to the benefit of the expert and the novice as well. General and scriptural indices close the volume.

Footnotes make the content clear and show the breadth of Vinson's scholarship. She cites the PG text for each oration and demonstrates in the notes that she has looked at SC editions. My only wish is that she had referred to those works more often. Gregory used the term "sacred disease" for leprosy, not epilepsy as many others did (34, n. 46). Blindness is not a common result of modern leprosy; nevertheless, inflamed skin around the eyes can block sight by seeping. Gregory used vocabulary about leprosy which had been employed by Galen the physician (50, n. 69). The Theologian mentions "Petrine apocryphal material preserved more extensively in the Sacra Parallela attributed to John Damascene" (57, n. 97). Technical scientific and philosophical terms in their Aristotelian and Stoic contexts fit Nazianzen's arguments (64–66, nn. 121–25). Vinson also points out that Oration 24 has references to a number of women (142, n. 4).

Some notes give insight into Vinson's ways of translation. She renders anthrôpos as "my good fellow" (61, line 13 from the bottom) but suggests that it might be translated "Man, O Man" (61, n. 109). Nice and saucy. Once she chooses to use the translation "deluge" because Gen. 6.5–8.22 (224, l. 3) employs it, yet she notices that Gregory literally writes "an unworldly world," playing on the word kosmos and its connotations of order and beauty (224, n. 15). Her citations of Scripture are choice, including examples of Gregory quoting Deuteronomy 6 and 3 but confusing them both with different details (83, nn. 36 and 37).

With Vinson we have a lover of Nazianzen's texts and an expert translator. I find her renderings fine. Gregory was a master rhetorician, who never goes long without breaking rules both because he knows them and intends to say something more persuasive than rules allow. That makes translation extremely difficult; not quite Maximus the Confessor but never for an amateur. The rendering of the opening lines in 26.10 shows the easy flow. "Once I had arrived at this line of reasoning, I hit upon still another image that fits our present circumstances quite well. Perhaps you will think...