Ancoratus

Foreword

FOREWORD UR HOLY AND great father Epiphanios was from Eleutheropolis in Palestine, where he became a father of monks.1 He first asceticism, withdrawing into Egypt, and persevering until his return in his twentieth year of life, when he returned back to the country around Eleutheropolis and built a monastery there.2 His treatise was called Ancoratus, because like an anchor, it leads the mind seeking after life and salvation, thanks to its holding fast of the arrangement in it [the treatise] of many parts of the faith, indeed I mean concerning the consubstantiality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, about the perfect parousia of the Incarnate Christ, about the resurrection of the dead, life everlasting, and judgment of body and soul, and at the same time against both idols and heresies and in turn Jews and others. It even contains the names of the eighty heresies and the accurate interpretation of other questions in sacred Scripture. It was written to those in Syedra of Pamphylia, who requested [it] through the letters placed herein before the text of the treatise.3 These things were done in the ninetieth year after Diocletian, the tenth year of Valentinian and Valens, the sixth of Gratian. 51 1. According to Holl, GCS I, 1, and Holl, Die handschriftliche Überlieferung, 65, this biographical foreword comes from the first editor of the first complete edition of the work of Epiphanius. 2. The “twentieth year” has caused some confusion and contention in the dating of Epiphanius’s return to his homeland, but one must bear in mind that this preface was a later editorial addition. See Kösters, Die Trinitätslehre, 29–33. 3. Syedra was located in southeastern Pamphylia. On its geographical and ecclesiastical context, see Kösters, Die Trinitätslehre, 89–90. ...