Nonni Panopolitani Paraphrasis S. Evangelii Ioannei

by Nonnus of Panopolis, Augustin Scheindler

"Ere Time, ere Space, ere Speech, dwelt the Archaic Word."From the sonorous opening line of this remarkable discovery, the Gospel of John sings out in words written over 1500 years ago.Never before available in English, the Paraphrase of the Gospel of John tells the Gospel story in brilliant epic poetry, translated for the first time into English verse.This ancient version of the Fourth Gospel was written during turbulent times in the early Church, when the very nature of Christ was being hotly debated. This manuscript sheds a new light on the very early Christian understanding of the divinity and humanity of Jesus.The last great epic poet of antiquity, Nonnos of Panopolis created an inspired story of Jesus, fleshing out the bare Gospel tale, and showing the humanity of Christ and his apostles. Each episode is brought to life in a way that is at once familiar, yet intriguing, as all the characters are developed, and speak with voices of their own.Favorite Gospel verses appear in a new light, as they are rendered into poetic verse, and shining through all is the image of the triumphant Christ, fully God and fully man, seen through the eyes of one of the earliest, and least known, Christian writers. Translated from the Greek by Mark A. Prost

Paperback

First published November 1, 2003

About the author

Nonnus of Panopolis (Νόννος) was a Greek epic poet. He was a native of Panopolis (Akhmim) in the Egyptian Thebaid, and probably lived at the end of the 4th or early 5th century. He is known as the composer of the Dionysiaca, an epic tale of the god Dionysus, and the Metabole, a paraphrase of the Gospel of John.

There is almost no evidence for the life of Nonnus. It is known that he was a native of Panopolis (Akhmim) in Upper Egypt, by his naming in manuscripts. Scholars have generally dated him from the end of the 4th to the early part of the 5th century AD. He must have lived after a poem of Claudian's which he appears to be familiar with (after 394–397 AD), but before Agathias Scholasticus' reference to him as a "recent author." (before 530–580). He is known chiefly for his 48-book poem the Dionysiaca, the longest surviving poem in Greek from antiquity (it is only 7,000 lines shorter than the Iliad and Odyssey combined). A poetic paraphrase of the Gospel of John, the Metabole is attributed to him as well, which is thought by certain verbal echoes to have been composed after the Dionysiaca. At least two other works by Nonnus are lost. Only four lines of the Bassarica (also on the subject of Dionysus) have been preserved in a commentary by Stephanus of Byzantium, and according to an epigram in the Palatine Anthology (9.198), Nonnus was the author of a work titled the Battle of the Giants.

Also surviving is his paraphrase of the Gospel of John, which is chiefly interesting as an indication of Nonnus' apparent conversion to Christianity in his later years. The style is not inferior to that of his epic. A team of Italian scholars is currently producing a full commentary of the poem, book by book, of which several parts have already been published. They have shown that Nonnus was as learned in Christian theology as in pagan myth. That a learned Christian poem and a synthesis of Greek myths could come from the same pen continues to intrigue.

Reviews

[Luca Ottavi]

Il mondo nonniano si estende alla rivelazione giovannea, informandola con le sue iuncturae, la polimorfica e polisemica aggettivazione, la capacità di attraversare e superare Omero. Il dettato di Nonno riesce a trarre da ogni singolo versetto di Giovanni un piccolo quadro ecfrastico, una nutrita esegesi teologica, frazionando l'essenzialita evangelica in una miriade di punti di vista, senza mai venir meno alla proverbiale ποικιλία dell'ultimo grande poeta tardoantico. Il denso contraltare che costituisce un dittico rispetto alle monumentali Dionisiache: la gioia terrena e la gioia celeste.