Agnès Lorrain: Fragments of Works or Working with Fragments? Towards a literary approach to the Pauline Chains

Until recently, exegetical chains were considered little more than a mine from which to extract otherwise lost patristic works. Since the 1970’s, however, scholars have come to view them as textual units in their own right and have made significant progress in studying the history of their composition and development. G. Dorival has done valuable work in establishing a system that classifies chains according to the kinds of sources used by the catenist and by tracing out filiations. Beyond statistical descriptions of the sources and the important (but binary) question of whether they are modified or not, a promising avenue of research lies in defining the literary practices exemplified in each chain. This would include not only a careful study of the methods and practices of excerption but also of the subsequent composition and structuring of the excerpted material. The emerging patterns could help determine what sort of exegetical agenda underpinned the formation of different chains and how the catenist conceptualized his ‘project’. Furthermore, from an intertextual perspective, what can be said about the ‘polyphony’ which arises from the joining of disparate fragments of texts and placing them in apposition to the biblical text? Is it possible to discern encyclopedic, hermeneutical and/or theological principles that govern the composition of such chains through the choice and arrangment of extracts? This presentation will offer some examples of this kind of analysis in the context of a wider study I intend to conduct on the Greek chains of the Pauline Epistles.