Eriugena’s Greek Variant Readings of the Fourth Gospel 85 Unfortunately, they are altogether too little material to assess either the textual relationships to the manuscripts they have parallels with, or their relevance for the larger history of the transmission of the text of John, even when parallels exist in Patristic authors, manuscripts, and lectionaries. If Eriugena’s Greek text is to be regarded as related to the three manuscripts that also have the ἄνωθεν interpolation in Jn 3:27, this might seem to place an ancestor of 13, 69, and 124 in 8th century Francia; but, as shown, there is little to ascertain that connection.40 And even if it could be made, both the geographic and the temporal coordinates remain problematic: we know next to nothing of Eriugena’s whereabouts before arriving at the court of Charles the Bald (other than that he might be from Ireland, as his name indicates), and he never says whether the Greek codices are from his time or radically older.41 I would suggest nonetheless that all these should be added to the evidence on variant readings of John, as explicit evidence provided by Eriugena. Two of them are singular readings: αὐτὸς in Jn 1:2, and the short version of Jn 1:13. While they remain unparalleled in other witnesses, I believe it was shown, at least, that they can be seen as genuine Eriugenian readings containing an explicit reference to a Greek Johannine variant. The plural εἰς τοῖς κόλποῖς in Jn 1:18 is paralled in 565 and GrNy and should join them in the apparatus, as should the interpolation of ἄνωθεν in Jn 3:27 join 13, 69, and 124. Dan BATOVICI KU Leuven Sint-Michielsstraat 4 Box 3101  3000 Leuven BELGIUM dan.batovici@yahoo.com 40 The same goes for the rest of the manuscripts mentioned by Aland et al., Text und Textwert V. 1,2, 61: 788, 826, 828, 852, 1410C1, 2106, 2511. 41 See further discussion of such difficulties in assessing the Patristic evidence for NT textual matters in Donaldson, “Limitations,” 88-90.