2. A commentator on St. Paul is perhaps referred to by Origen on Eph 1° (Cramer’s Catena in Eph. p. 119; Journal of Theological Studies, iii. 242), where, commenting on the grammatically super- fluous repetition of év ¢ (év 76 Xpo7Gev @... & @), he explains its presence by the ‘saying of one of those who were before us, that, from his great love to Jesus, Paul continually, and as it might seem redundantly, makes mention of Him’: é\eye 67 Tus Tov mpd nuwy awd THs woNAHs mepl Tov "Inoody ayamrns Tov Iad\ov ouwvexéorara atdrod meuvfobar Kal worepel mapedxovTws. The reference is, no doubt, not neces- sarily to technical exposition ; yet the words most naturally suggest a homilist or commentator who was examining the details of the Apostle’s style, and attention is therefore called to them in this place. It is tempting to identify this ‘ prede- cessor’ with Pantsnus. The testimony, indeed, of Jerome (de Viris Illustribus, 36), that many commentaries by Panteenus were extant when he wrote; is possibly nothing but an amplification of the vaguer words of Eusebius, HE vy. 10, 64 ovyypapparwy rods Tay Oelwy doyudrwy Onoavpovs brournuarreouevos. Still, Eusebius himself seems to imply that Pantenus did write commentaries (though he says nothing about their surviving to his time), and these would naturally have been accessible to Origen; but whether they included expositions of St. Paul, there is nothing to show.*
3. Heraclitus.— Eusebius in his Hist. Hecl. (v. 27), just after he has brought matters down to the death of the emperor Commodus and the suc- cession of Pertinax (A.D. 192-193), mentions at the head of a number of books belonging to about that time, which he had himself read, the writings of Heraclitus on ‘the Apostle’ (ra “Hpaxdelrov eis rov’Ambcrorov). Nothing is known of these com- mentaries or of their author; possibly he may be identical with the expositor alluded to by Origen. Nor have we any means of knowing whether Eusebius’ dating was based on adequate grounds.
4% Alexander ‘the ancient heretic.’—Among the works on the Epistle to the Galatians which Jerome had consulted before he wrote his own commentary (see p. 484°, above) was one by Alexander, ‘ veterem hereticum.’ Apparently, the only known Alexander with whom we could identify the commentator is the Valentinian whom Tertullian combats in his de carne Christi (after A.D. 200), 16, 17. But there is nothing in Ter- tullian’s words that suggests any connexion of his Alexander with St. Paul, and the name was one of the commonest. At the same time, just as the Valentinian Heracleon was the earliest com- mentator on St. John, the Valentinian Alexander may have been one of the first commentators on St. Paul.
* A still more probable source is perhaps the Hypotyposes of Clement of Alexandria, which ought to have been mentioned in the text at this place; the missing section will be found below, p. 520. 3
490 PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
5. Origen.—The most important and most prolific of early exegetes of St. Paul was Origen, although even he did not write any uniform exposition of the Pauline epistles as a whole; it was not, as has been said (p. 484°), till a century later that any com- plete commentary on ‘the Apostle’ was published. The list of his works preserved to us in Jerome’s Ep. xxxiii. ad Paulam (see Harnack-Preuschen,* Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur, i. 334; E. Klostermann gaye an improved text in Sit- zungsberichte der k. preuss. Akademie der Wissen- schaften, 1897, p. 855) shows that the bulk of his exegetical writings on St. Paul must have exceeded that of any subsequent expositor in the Patristic period: the following commentaries and homilies are there enumerated :—
Romans: commentary in 15 books.
2 Corinthians: 11 homilies.
Galatians: commentary in 15 books; 7 homilies.
Ephesians : commentary in 3 books,
Philippians : commentary in 1 book.
Colossians : commentary in 2 books.
1 Thessalonians: commentary in 3 books; 2
homilies. |
2 Thessalonians: commentary in 1 book [not in
Preuschen’s text].
Titus: commentary in 1 book; 1 homily.
Philemon ; commentary in 1 book.
Hebrews: 18 homilies.
The only epistles left unrepresented in this cata- logue are 1 Corinthians and 1 and 2Timothy; yet, strangely enough, Jerome himself with regard to 1 Corinthians bears witness, as we have seen, to the fact that Origen was among those who ‘ latis- sime hane epistolam interpretati sunt.’ And the list is altogether silent as to the third department of Origen’s exegetical labours on the Bible, that of scholia or ‘notes,’ though reference will be found below to these in connexion with Rom., 1 Cor,, and Galatians. The explanation of the discrepancy appears to be that the list in Jerome, Ep. Xxxiii., is simply transcribed from the list given by Eusebius in his Life of Pamphilus, and therefore represents the collection as known to Eusebius. Jerome himself, while he knew books of Origen’s that were not in the list, may very probably not have known many books that were init. But the range of knowledge of either Euse- bius or Jerome, partial and mutually exclusive though it be, contrasts painfully with the scattered débris which are all that time and theological ani- mosity have spared to us of the vast labours which the father of Christian exegesis devoted to St. Paul. Much of his matter, indeed, remains acces- sible to us in the pages of later expositors, par- ticularly of St. Jerome; but the direct tradition of his work, apart from fragments, is practically limited to a Latin version of the commentary on Romans, and to Catenz notes on Romans, 1 Co- rinthians, and Ephesians.