The epistles

{i.) The first complete list.—The fullest information about Theodore’s commen- taries, and the first quite definite statement that he expounded the whole series of Pauline epistles, ‘| come to us from the great catalogue of Syriac writers drawn up for the Nestorians by their metropolitan Ebed-jesu (died A.D. 1318), and printed in vol. iii. pp. 1-362 of J.S. Assemani’s Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana (Rome, A.D. 1725: for Theodore, see pp. 30-35, ch. xix.)

The bulk of Theodore’s works, Ebed-jesu begins by telling us, amounted to 150 times that of the Prophets: as they were arranged in 41 [it is possible that we ought to read 51] ‘divisions’ or ‘ parts,’ each part must have been thrice the size of the sixteen Prophets put together. Of these parts, the com- mentaries on the Old Testament appear to have occupied 18; St. Matthew, St. Luke, St. John, and the Acts, one each ; and the Pauline epistles 5.

The latter are enumerated as follows (Assemani pres, in parallel columns, the Syriac text and a iteral translation into Latin) :— ‘epistolam quoque ad Romanos ad Eusebium exposuit, binas ad Corinthios epistolas tomis duobus dilucidavit et illustravit rogatu Theodori. Eustratius postulavit expositionem quattuor epistolarum quas sum commemoraturus : epistole ad Galatas et ad Ephesios et ad ilippenses et ad Colossenses.

1 PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES 5069 binas autem ad Thessalonicenses Iacobo efflagi- tante exposuit. epistolam ad Timotheum utramque explicavit ad Petrum. Cyrino etiam eee exposuit epistolam ad Titum et ad Philemonem. item epistolam ad Hebrzeos ad eundem Cyrinum dilucidavit. quinque autem tomis finem imposuit commen- tarlis suis in totum Apostolum.

’ If we may assume, as appears probable, that the words pelga (‘division’) and pengiata (rivak, ‘volume’) are, for the purpose ah the catalogue, identical,—Assemani translates both by ‘tomus’ —then, of the five parts into which the commentary on St. Paul was distributed, the Ist, 2nd, and 3rd must have contained respectively Romans, 1 Co- rinthians, and 2 Corinthians; the 4th, Galatians— Colossians, with perhaps 1 and 2 Thessalonians ; the 5th, the Pastoral Epistles, Philemon, and He- brews.

This, however, was probably no more than a mere library arrangement of the Syriac volumes : what takes us back nearer to the original com- position of the commentaries is the grouping according to their various addressees—Eusebius, Theodore, Eustratius, James, Peter, Cyrinus. Theodore’s exposition of St.

Paul was therefore not a book carried through continuously and pub- lished as a single whole, but a series of at least six arts, which, so far, may or may not have be- onged to the same period of his long literary activity, and may or may not have been written after the same method and on the same scale.

Like Chrysostom’s homilies on the Epistles, Theo- dore’s commentaries must have been too bulky to be com preeied within a single binding; and they must therefore have circulated separately or in groups, with the result that one writer would naturally have acquaintance only with some of them, another only with others; exactly as the evidence now to be described shows to have been the case. : (ii.) Harliest isolated references.

—Ebed-jesu bears witness to the knowledge of Theodore’s commen- taries on the epistles, and the position held by them, among the Nestorians of ie Middle Ages: we have now to turn back to the earlier but more fragmentary references which can be picked out from the controversial writings of the reign of Justinian. 3 a. The first specific mention of any of Theo- dore’s commentaries on the Epistles is in Leontius of Byzantium, contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos, between 529 and 544 (see above, p.

504%). ‘T'o each of the three books into which that work is divided a Catena is appended of xpices or pieces justificatives, those of Book iii. being taken from Theodore, Diodore, and Paul of Samosata. Mai (Script. Vet. Nov. Coll. vi.

299-312) has printed the Theodore passages, with the prologue to them: Leontius there complains bitterly that Theodore’s followers were so carefully on their guard against commit- ting any of his writings to the uninitiated, that his own selections had been perforce restricted to the single work epi (he intentionally miscalls it cata) rijs évavOpwricews.

From the exegetical books he consequently quotes nothing beyond a single passage on the Psalms; but he gives a list of those which were known to him by name, and compounds for ignorance of their contents by ingeniously vituperative mis-statements of their titles. In this list he includes (besides the books on Genesis, Job, Psalms, St. Matthew, St. John, St. Luke) ‘the false interpretation’ (riy mapety- ynotv) of the Epistles to the Hebrews, Corinthians, and Galatians. ‘B.

The Acts of the Council of Constantinople in 553, which anathematized Theodore, are extant in 510 PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES Latin. The 32nd of the series of quotations from his works, which were read at the fourth ‘ collatio’ or session, is taken ‘ex commento epistole ad Hebreos’ (Labbe-Coleti, Concilia, vi. 55; Mansi, Concilia, ix. 216); Theodore there deduces from Ac 10% and Ps 44 (45)8 that the unction or Messiahship of Jesus was a ‘reward.

’ The Con- stitutum ad Imperatorem of pope Vigilius in the same year examines the Conteil’s quotations one by one, and condemns, under the same heading ‘ex commento epistole ad Hebreos,’ the passage just mentioned (Labbe-Col:ti, v. 13836 ; Mansi, ix. 82): the Latin of the quotation is identical (save for transcriptional errors) in the Acts and in the Constitutum, so that probably an official Latin version was ordered by the Council and supplied to the pope. A later pope, Pelagius 1.

, writing to the bishops of Istria in 585,* quotes (from one or other of the above sources) the same passage under the same title (Labbe-Coleti, vi. 269 ; Mansi, ix. 443), y. Facundus of Hermiana (iii. 6; ed. Sirmond, p.

127) quotes in defence of Theodore a passage on Ro 1° ‘in commento epistole ad Romanos,’ as showing that he admitted both Messianic pro- phecy and the unity of Person in the two natures: ‘et prophetas de domino Christo locutos et ipsum dominum Christum hominem confitetur et Deum.’ (iii.) Printed collections of fragments on the epistles from Catene.—a. The first considerable contribution was that of Mai’s Spicilegiwm Ro- manum, iv. (1840) pp.

499-573, consisting of pas- sages from a Vatican Catena on Romans: the number of the MS is not there given, but it is supplied in Nov. Patr. Bibl. vii. 407 as Vat. gr. 762 (on which see Karo and Lietzmann’s list of Catenz above, p. 488, e). In his Nova Patrum Bibliotheca, vii. (1854) 1, pp. 407-408, Mai adds (i.) one more fragment from the same MS on Ro 18; (ii.) 14 or 15 fragments from the same MS on 2 Cor. ; (iil.) two small fragments from Vat. gr. 765 (sec. x.)

on Gal 3% %—which, however, as Lightfoot (Galatians®, p. 229n.) points out, really belong to Theodoret. 8. Between the earlier and the later publication of Mai, Cramer was issuing the successive volumes of his Catenz on the Epistles, and thereby adding largely to our stock of fragments from Theodore. The first or Bodleian Catena on Romans (chs.

1-8) contains 54 quotations from Theodore; but since this Catena is beyond doubt descended, directly or indirectly, from the Vatican Catena on which Mai had already drawn (see above, p. 488»), no real addition to our knowledge was thereby made. The second or Munich Catena on Romans contains no more than 10 pieces from Theodore, and those quite brief, so that it, too, hardly comes into account. But for 1 Corinthians [the Catena is taken from Paris gr.

227] there are 58 passages from Theodore ; and in the same way the Catena on the lesser epistles from Galatians to Philemon [taken from Paris coislin 204] supplied Cramer with no inconsiderable number (see just below, in connexion with the Latin version of the commen- tary on those epistles). y. Of A. F, v. von Wegnern’s Theodori Antio- cheni Mopsuestie episcopt que supersunt omnia, only the first part, embracing the commentary on the Minor Prophets (Berlin, 1834), ever appeared.

But in 1847 the scattered fragments of Theodore’s work on the New Testament, as they had appeared in Mai’s Spicilegiwm and Cramer’s Catena, were put together and arranged in order by O. F. Fritzsche, Theodori episcopi Mopsuesteni in Novum Testa- mentum commentariorum que reperiri potucrunt (Ziirich). Of this useful valuue, pp. 45-107 belong * The letter was really written by Pelagius’ deacon, Gregory, , afterwards pope Gregory the Great.

4 PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES to Romans (Facundus’ fragment, and the Catena fragments of Mai and Cramer combined); pp. | 108-119 to 1 Cor. (Cramer, with corrections); p, | 120 to 2 Cor. (one fragment on 6° from Cramer; | Mai’s Nova Patrum Bibliotheca, vii., had not then been published) ; pp. 121-172 to Galatians-Hebrews (Cramer, with corrections).

Fritzsche detected some cases of incorrect attribution to Theodore made by either Cramer’s co yet or his MS; but he did not examine the Ms S himself, and he worked without the help of the criterion now put into our hands by the discovery of the Latin version. Of his preface, the most interesting part is the disquisition on the unknown writer ‘ Theo- dorus monachus.

’ Cramer’s Munich Catena on — Romans assigns to this author 39 pieces, but | Theodore of Mopsuestia (on the authority of Mai’s | Vatican Catena) claims 16 out of the 39, and Diodore (on the authority of Cramer’s Bodleian Catena) 4, while 2 are Theodoret’s. Among his- torical personages known as ‘ Theodore the Monk,’ the easiest to identify with the exegete of the Catenz would be, Fritzsche thinks, the Severianist monk Theodore of Alexandria at the beginning of the 6th cent.

; but the result of Fritzsche’s analysis — of the 39 fragments on Romans points rather in the direction of some unknown compiler of the Antiochene school (see below, p. 519). 4 5. The edition of Theodore in Migne’s Patrologia — Greca, tom. 66, is, so far as concerns the Pauline epistles (cc. 787, 968), reprinted direct from Fritzsche, with the addition of a Latin transla- tion and of the fragments from Mai’s Nov. Paér. Bibl. vii. (iv.)

The Latin version of the commentaries on Galatians-Philemon. — More important for our knowledge of Theodore than even the discoveries — of Mai and Cramer was the identification of a Latin version of the commentary on the ten shorter epistles. The Benedictine editors of St. Ambrose noticed that, of two sister MSS of an exposition of St.

Paul belonging to the great library of the abbey of Corbie, near Amiens, the first contained on Romans and on 1 and 2 Corinthians the well- known commentary of Ambrosiaster, the second | contained on the remaining epistles (Hebrews not being included) a commentary wholly unknown to them save that Rabanus Maurus had obviously | made large use of it (Ambrosii Opera, ii., Paris, — 1690, App. p. 21).

The next scholar to concern — himself with the Corbie commentary (which mean- | while, since the time of the Revolution, had | become Nos. 87 and 88 in the public library at Amiens) was another Benedictine, dom, afterwards cardinal, J. B. Pitra. Pitra saw that the unknown | commentary was a genuine and unadulterated — survival from the Patristic period, far older than — the 9th cent.

—the date both of Rabanus and of — the Corbie MS ; and believing that he had found ~ the true author in the person of St. Hilary of Poitiers, he published in 1852, under that Father’s name, the full commentary on Galatians, Ephesians, and Philemon, with brief notes on the rest (Spici- | legium Solesmense, Paris, i. pp. XXVI-xxxv, 49-159).

But a comparison of Pitra’s text with Cramer’s lately published Catena on the same epistles pyesiel the fact that in the Greek fragments which bore the name of Theodore was to be found the equivalent, so far as they went, of the *E. Sachau’s Theodori Mopsuesteni sragmenta Syriaca é codicibus Muset Britannict Nitriacis (Leipzig, 1869) appears to contain nothing from any of the commentaries on the Epistles. + Besides Rabanus (who, however, for Gal. and Eph.

used the real Ambrosiaster, and only began his use of the unknown authority with Philippians), we can now add Amalarius, de — Ecclesiasticis Oficiis (Philippians and 1 Timothy), and arch- bishop Lanfranc’s commentary on St. Paul (Galatians to — Philemon), as well as an isolated reference on Galatians in — the Collectanea of Sedulius Scotus; see Swete’s Theodore, pp. xlvi-li, and vol. ii. p. 346.

PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES Latin of the Corbie MS ; and the only possible con- clusion was that in the latter we possessed a com- plete version of Theodore’s commentary on these epistles. The comparison was made, and the con- clusion drawn, by J. L. Jacobi in 1854 (Deutsche Zeitschrift fiir christliche Wissenschaft und christ- liches Leben), and, independently, by Dr. Hort in 1859 (Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, iv. 302-308).

Hort afterwards discovered a second and slightly earlier MS in Brit. Mus. Harley 3063, from Cusa on the Moselle; and an edition of the Latin version, with a re-collation of Cramer’s Greek fragments for the ten epistles covered by it, was published in 1880 by Dr. H. B. Swete (Theodore of Mopsuestia on the minor Epistles of St. Paul: Theodort Mopsuesteni in epistolas B. auli commentarti, 2 vols., Cambridge)—a book of the rare kind for which praise is superfluous.

The Latin supplies us on the one hand with some sort of representation of Theodore’s meaning over long pages where the Greek entirely fails us, and on the other with a test for the verifica- tion of what really in the Catena belongs to Theo- dore.

It is satisfactors to find that the net result has been to add to the number of fragments admitted as pcan by Fritzsche ; for whereas only seven of his passages have to be struck out, there are nearly 40 others in the Catena of which Theodore had wrongly been deprived (Swete, p. xvii, n. 3 and 4). That the catenist can now be shown to have often abridged and occasionally paraphrased his author (Swete, p.

XXxv), is no more than the parallel experience of other writers in the Catenz might have led us to expect. he translator may be credited on the whole with faithfuliiess and conscientiousness; but neither his knowledge of Greek (at any rate of Theodore’s Greek) nor his command of his own tongue was sufficient to produce what could be called, from a literary point of view, a successful version.

As to his date, it is natural to bring the attempt to introduce Theodore to Western readers into connexion with the circle of Facundus and Junilius, and to place him conjecturally at or soon after the middle of the 6th cent.

; and the con- jecture is in harmony with the evidence of his iblical text, which (when it is not simply a literal rendeving of Theodore’s) displays some- times reminiscences of the Vulgate, but more often reminiscences of the Old Latin (see, for fuller details on all these points, Swete, pp. xxxv- lviii).

It is a less easy question to answer, whether his translation included also the longer epistles, The evidence of Rabanus Maurus sug- gests that there were MSS which gave Ambrosi- aster for Rom.—Ephesians, Theodore for the rest; the etisting MSS with Lanfrane (and, presum- ably, Sedulius) make the change from Ambrosi- aster to Theodore between 2 Cor. and Gal.

; possil ly, therefore, it may be argued, other MSS may Lave existed which supplanted Ambrosiaster by Theodore at a still earlier point or even from the beginning. Yet we have seen (p. 509») that Theodore’s Greek commentaries on the epistles did not circulate in a single volume; and in the absence of definite indications to the contrary it is safes!, 10 suppose that the translator had access to only », portion of them, and that the whole of his wor); has now been recovered.

As an imperfect comme/tary, there was an obvious reason for com- pletiny it by borrowing the missing epistles from some vsher commentary, such as Ambrosiaster’s ; and the accident that the missing epistles hap- med to be the first in the series explains also ow it was that the name already attached to them came to be attached to the rest of the series as well, so that Carolingian scribes and scholars PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES 51) read Theodore of Mopsuestia under the pseudonym of Ambrose of Milan.

(v.) Order and date of Theodore’s commentaries on the Epistles.—Of the order in which Theodore commented on the different epistles of St. Paul he gives several indications by cross-references from one commentary to another (Swete, p. lxiii).— (a) Galatians after Romans: on Gal 3” (Swete, i. p. 51, 1. 6) he refers to Ro 11%: ‘si nostram decurrere voluerit interpretationem in qua latius id explicasse videmur.’—(8) Galatians after He- brews : on Gal 4% (i. 76, 1.

10) he says, ‘in epistola illa que ad Hebreos est interpretantes ostendimus evidentius.’ —(y) Galatians after several (?) other epistles: on Gal 2(i. 16, 1. 20) he alludes to pre- vious notes on many passages, ‘multis enim in locis coniunctiones a beato Paulo non cum debita sequentia positas esse ostendimus.’—(6) Ephesians after Galatians: on Eph 14 (i. 123, 1. 4) he refers to his comment on Gal 3%: ‘dixi [‘dixit’ MSS, wrongly] namque et in epistola Galatarum.

’—(e) Colossians after Philippians: on Col 1" (i. 272, 1, 12) he refers to Ph 258: ‘hoc enim ostendimus [‘ ostendemus’ MSS, but the confusion of i and e is very common] fecisse apostolum et Philippensibus scribentem.’—({) 1 Timothy after Philippians: on 1 Ti 3° (ii. 118, 1. 13) he refers to Ph 1: xal roidro éreonunvduela Kal év Ty mpds Pidurmnyolovs. — (7) 1 Timothy after most of the other Epistles: on 1Ti 1*# (ii. 71, 1.

12) he mentions ‘interpretationem nostram quam propemodum per omnes epistolas explicasse videmur.’—(0) Titus after 1 Timothy: on Tit 1$ (ii, 237, 1. 20) he refers to 1 Ti 3?: ‘dictum est nobis hoc idem latius in illa epistola quam ad Timotheum inprimis dudum scripseramus. Thus, with the exception that Hebrews came somewhere near the beginning of the list, Theo- dore appears, so far as we can judge, to have written on the Epistles in the order of our New Testament Canon.

But both the separate dedica- tions of the different groups recorded by Ebed-jesu (p. 509, above), and une interval between the com- mentary on Titus and that on 1 Timothy ‘quam dudum scripseramus,’+ suggest that the whole exposition may have been spread over some con- siderable number of years. The work on at least the later Epistles was posterior to the work on the Gospels: on Col 1” (i. 273, 1.

5) he refers to the explanation of Jn 5, ‘si interpretationem nostram decurrere voluerit in illam partem evangelii Iohannis’; on 1 Ti 14 (ii. 74, Il. 2-6) to the ex- planation of the genealogies, ‘ interpretationem nostram ... quam de evangeliis expressisse visi sumus’; and on ] Ti3'9(ii. 137, 1. 14) to his exegesis of the Epistles and Gospels as a whole, ‘ sicut non solum in apostolica interpretatione id ostendimus, sed et in evangeliorum interpretatione identidem id demonstravimus.

’ Seeing that Theodore’s prolonged span of exe- getical activity extended over the whole of the last quarter of the 4th cent. and of the first quarter of the 5th, the conclusion so far reached with regard to the date or dates of his commen- taries on the Epistles is not very precise. One line of argument, however, still remains to be examined which may bear upon the chronology, namely, the relation of his commentaries to those of other more or less contemporary exegetes.

+ * Note that the Epistle to the Hebrews comes next before Galatians in the Sahidic version (Scrivener, Introd. to the Criticism of the NT4, i. 57, ii. 188): next after Galatians in the system of chapters running through the Pauline epistles in the margin of B (op. cit. i, 56, 57). + Yet ‘dudum’ may only represent 47, as perhaps in Swete, i. 112, 1. 2. t Dr. Swete (p. lxi) emphasizes in this connexion the use apparently made by Theodore of the Euthalian ‘chapters’ as indicating a date after a.

p. 396. Some attempt will be made later on in this article (see p. 524) to deal in outline with the intricate questions that centre round the name of Exithalius. 512 PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES Ancient commentators were accustomed to study and copy earlier models, and were studied and copied oy later imitators in their turn.

Theodore, though he was of too independent a mind to copy his predecessors as much as others did, probably studied them quite as much, to judge from the frequency with which he records the views of ‘certain people’ and expresses disagreement with them. To Origen’s system of exegesis he, of course, stood in fundamental opposition.

The material is haidly sufficient to enable us to estimate the extent of his undoubted debt to Diodore; and even if it should be proved that he used also Chrysostom and Severian— both of them more nearly his contemporaries than was Diodore— yet even their expositions might have been in his hands before the year 400 A.D. Of his successors, Theodoret can be shown to have exploited him freely (below, p.

517"); but Theodoret probably wrote after Theodore’s death, and furnishes us therefore with no new terminus ad quem. But between Diodore and Chrysostom on the one hand, and Theodoret on the other, there is yet one other commentator whose evidence is crucial for the chronology of Theodore. The date of Pelagius’ Latin exposition of St. Paul falls within the years 401-409, and since his points of contact with Theodore appear to be unambiguous (Swete, pp.

Ixxiv-lxxvi), we get a new terminus ad quem or a quo for the latter, according as we make his share in the common matter original or derivative. The question can be fully answered only when the true text of Pelagius has been restored from a comparison of the various recensions in which he has come down to us.* Dr.

Swete inclines to the view that Theodore borrowed from Pelagius; but it would be unusual to find a Greek writer using a Latin authority, and in two at least of the paral- lels (Gal 3°, 2 Ti 2°), while Theodore states his own view and no other, Pelagius prefixes to the view that coincides with Theodore the formula ‘ut quidam putant.’+ If then Pelagius drew on Theodore, and that for the later as well as the earlier Epistles, it would follow that Theodore’s exposition of St.

Paul was completed very early in the 5th century: nor does there seem to be anything which seriously conflicts with such a conclusion. 4. THEODORE AS A COMMENTATOR ON ST. PAUL.

t—Theodore is the typical Antiochene exegete, not in the sense that he serves as a standard for judging other commentators of the school, or as a mean from which in one direction or another they diverge, but in the sense that the literal and historical method of interpretation, which (with whatever qualifications) is distinctive of them all, is in him carried out to its most rigorous extreme.

The present age is impatient of any form of allegorizing, and so is inclined to sympathize with Theodore; and yet it might be well to recollect that it was Origen’s allegorical interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis which, as much as anything else, aroused the opposition of the Antiochenes, and that Theo- dore’s literalist principles committed. him to the * With the appearance of H.

Zimmer’s book Pelagius in Irland (Berlin, 1901), all previous discussions of the subject of Pelagius’ commentary, and of the related commentaries of pseudo-Jerome and pseudo-Primasius (cf. Swete, p. xlv), were at once superseded ; see a review of Zimmer by the present writer in Journal of Theological Studies (October 1902), iv. 132-141.

+ Of course a common source for Theodore and Pelagius—in that case probably Diodore—is conceivable; but Theodore’s work is the more likely to have reached the West. t See Swete, pp. Ixv-lxxi, Ixxix-lxxxvii, and Kihn, Theodor von Mopsuestia und Junilius Africanus als Exegeten (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1880). The first 200 pages of Dr. Kihn’s admirable monograph are devoted to Theodore and his Biblical exegesis : unfortunately, he wrote before the publication of Dr.

Swete’s edition, and pays little or no attention to the commentaries on St. Paul, PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES acceptance of the story of Jonah as a record of actual historical fact.

No doubt, Messianic ae cations of the Old Testament had often led to exegesis that was arbitrary in the extreme, and Theodore voices the reaction of common-sense; no doubt also it can be urged, with show of truth, that at least in the New Testament there is no lace for allegory, and that Lheodore’s position is here inexpugnable.

And he would be a singu- larly unfair critic who failed to 1ecognize and appreciate the services of Theodore’s severely logical mind in expounding the often difficult con- nexion and concatenation of the Apostle’s thought; in this direction probably no ancient expositor either attempted or achieved as much; and for that alone, if all other merits were refused them, these commentaries of his would possess a real and permanent value.

But it is also just this relentless sense of logic which from another side sets a fatal limitation on Theodore’s powers of exegesis; for he appropoles the study of the Epistles, unconsciously no doubt to himself, with the expectation of finding in them, not merely a theological system as complete as his own, but the particular system at which he had himself arrived. St.

Paul’s thoughts do not always con- sent to be labelled and put in their proper place as parts of an organized and coherent body of doctrine; and so far as they do admit of it, it is not quite on Theodore’s lines. The contrast be- tween 7 mdpovea and % péAdovea Kardoraois, which dominates Theodore’s whole scheme of the uni- verse, is a fruitful one, but it does not exhaust, and in part it does not even correspond to, the theology of St. Paul.

To Theodore the ‘ present con- dition’ and ‘future condition’ are indeed those of sin and sinlessness, but they are also those of death and immortality, of change and changelessness ; and it is on this aspect of the contrast that Theo- dore’s optimistic thought habitually dwells. Re- demption tends to be predominantly the restora- tion of the gift of immortality, moral lapse a weakness of our mortal condition, Christ our human example in the successful struggle with it.

It would be rash to say that there is no room for Theodore’s conceptions in the wide cycle of Chris- tian theology ; but they are not the characteristic conceptions of St. Paul, and so far Theodore could not be his ideal ‘ Interpreter.’ ; 16. Isidore of Pelusium (letters on detailed points of exegesis).

— With Isidore a new chapter opens: we are on the threshold of the era when Greek exegesis ceases to be strictly original, and begins to reproduce what seemed most worthy of preservation in the great writers of the past ; and however great the loss in vigour and freshness which this change entailed, it carried with it at least the compensating advan- tage of expanded sympathies.

Allegorical and literalist systems could each claim the sanction of illustrious names : neither could be wholly rejected by those who wished to walk in the footsteps of the ‘Fathers.’ St. Isidore is the earliest expositor in whose case geographical position is not the decisive factor in determining exegetical affinities.

His nationality and ali the external circumstances of his life connected him exclusively with Alex- andria, while his literary studies and his ecclesi- astical hero-worship tended rather to make him a follower of the great homilist of Antioch.

The interest which attaches to him in these respects 18 sufficient excuse for finding a place in this article for a writer whose exegetical remains consist only of answers to correspondents about difficulties in the explanation of detached passages of the Sacred Text. Isidore, as his name suggests, was an Egy] tian; and his whole career, so far as we know, was spent PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES 515 in Egypt.

Of Alexandrine family (according to Ephraem of Antioch, in Photius cod. 228), and, to judge from his extensive learning, of Alexandrine training, he early embraced the monastic life and commenced the prolonged residence at Pelusium, the frontier-city between Egypt and Palestine, which has given him the title that distinguishes him from his namesake of Seville.

From Pelusium he earried on, during a period of which different critics extend the limits as far back as 395 and as far on as 450, the vast correspondence on which his fame mainly rests. It is enough for the present purpose to say that Isidore, when writing to Cyril of Alexandria during and after the Council of Ephesus in 431, employs towards she archbishop a familiarity and even authority of tone which imply either advanced age or long- established reputation.

The dogmatic interest was a much stronger one than the exegetical in the generations which succeeded Isidore; and it appears probable that his letters owe their survival as a collection to the use made of them in the Monophysite controversy.

Whether or no he survived till the outbreak under Dioscorus of the secular struggle, Isidore was sufficiently Antiochene, in theology as well as exegesis, to have spoken with no uncertain sound about the truth of Christ’s manhood: Qc0d mdéos ov Adyerat, Xpiorod yap 7d mdOos yéyove, capxwHévros Sndovdre Ocod kal Ty mpoodjee Tis capKds Td dos brouelvavtos (Ep. i. 124); ex ptoewv Svoty 6 els imdpxwy vids (Ep. i. 323, to Cyril); év éxarépas rats giceow els imdpxet vids Geod (Hp. i. 405).

Conse- quently we find the writers on the Chalcedonian side, Ephraem of Antioch, Leontius of Byzantium, Facundus of Hermiana, appealing to his authority ; while the great Monophysite writer Severus attempts (according to Stephen Gobar, in Photius cod, 232) to turn the edge of the appeal by accus- ing Isidore of Origenism.

The principal strong- hold at Constantinople of the Chalcedonians was the monastery of the Acwmete or ‘‘Sleepless ones’; and it was the Accemetz who, somewhere in the century 450-550 A.D., collected and pub- lished an edition of 2000 of Isidore’s letters.

Facundus apparently quotes from this collection ; and nearly fifty letters were excerpted from it and translated into Latin (together with a very numerous series of documents bearing on the Nestorian controversy) by a scholar of the time of Justinian, whose work is preserved to us in two MSS of the 12th cent., Casinensis 2 and Vaticanus 1319. From the same collection of 2000 letters, and from no other source, all our Greek MSS are derived.

The oldest of them (Grotta Ferrata B a I), written in 985, and never yet employed for the printed texts, contains 1600 letters, num- bered from 1 to 600, and from 1001 to 2000; another at Paris (gr. 832, of the 13th cent.) con- tains the first 1213 letters; while two 16th cent. MSS at the Vatican (Vat. gr. 649-650 and Vat. Ottob. gr. 341-383) contain the whole 2000, num- bered through continuously from the first to the last.

One or two more give some portion of the collection in its proper order ; but a much larger number give groups of letters selected out of the rest because of their connexion with some par- ticular topic. Thus Bodl. Laud. gr. 42, sec. xii., contains thirty-eight letters on the Psalter, arranged in the order of the Psalms with which they deal, though to each letter is still prefixed its proper number in the continuous series.

Within this class one MS distinguishes itself from the rest, both for the large bulk of letters which it contains and for the influence which it has exer- cised upon the printed texts,—Venice Marcianus 126, saec. xiv.: of its 1148 letters, the first division,