The Donatist Compendium of 427 and Related Texts

This volume contains the first translation into English of a number of documents associated with the Donatist movement in North Africa, a dissident church which flourished during the fourth and fifth centuries before the Vandal invasion obscures our view of it. Donatists are often remembered for their fanatical opposition to traditores—those who had “handed over” the sacred scriptures during the Diocletianic Persecution—and their belief that those baptized by such people were not part of the true church. The writings contained in this volume add critical nuance to this portrait. At its centerpiece is the Donatist Compendium of 427, a collection of eleven exegetical texts compiled c. 427 CE by an unknown Donatist editor; other translated writings include a chronograph revised on the eve of the Vandal conquest of Carthage known as the Genealogy Book, a set of section-headings for the Major Prophets and the book of Acts, and a Donatist homily on the Epiphany, one of the few sermons by a Donatist preacher that still survives. All of these texts were produced within a Donatist milieu, and taken together, they offer us a unique window into the inner life of the dissident communion as well as valuable insight into the exegetical tools that late antique bishops had at their disposal as they sought to illuminate the biblical text for their congregations.

Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction

The Donatist Compendium: Text and Translation
1. The Genealogy Book (Liber genealogus)
2. The Collected Biblical Prophecies (Prophetiae ex omnibus libris collectae)
3. The Miracles of Elijah and Elisha (Virtutes Heliae et Helisaei)
4. The Discovery of Names (Inventiones nominum)
5. The Book of Generations (Liber generationis)
6. The Names of Jacob’s Sons, Translated from Hebrew into Latin (Item interpretationes filiorum Iacob de Hebreo in Latino)
7. A Hebrew-Latin Glossary (Item interpretationes Hebreas in Latinam translatas)
8. Indices of the Old and New Testaments and the Writings of Cyprian (Incipit indiculum ueteri testamenti, Item indiculum noui testamenti, Indiculum Caecili Cipriani)
9. Nameless People in the New Testament (Item interpretationes Hebreas in Latinum)
10. A Guide to Places Mentioned in the Bible (Nomina locorum et interpretatio nominum de Hebreo in Latinum)
11. A List of Hebrew Names and Their Meanings (De nominibus de Hebreo in Latinum)

Appendix A: Section Headings from a Donatist Bible: The Major Prophets
Appendix B: Section Headings from a Donatist Bible: The Book of Acts
Appendix C: A Donatist Homily: The Sermon on the Birthday of the Holy Innocents
Appendix D: The Genealogy Book (Florence Recension of 438)

Bibliography
Index