(6) But, even if Rufinus possessed a complete Greek text, his own words reveal that he did not produce, or aim at producing, a complete Latin translation. Heraclius had begged him, he says, ‘ut omne hoc xv voluminum corpus, quod greecus sermo ad quadraginta fere aut eo amplius millia versuum produxit, abbreviem et ad media, si fieri potest, spatia coarctem.’ And if the figures are correct, it would seem to follow that this process of abbreviation was faithfully carried through ; for whereas a translation ordinarily covers some- what more space than its original, the translation of Rufinus occupies only 230 pages or about 25,000 half-lines (there being two columns to the page), while the 40,000 ‘verses’ of Origen, at the normal rate of 16 syllables to the verse, would come to fully half as much again. The few passages pre- served in the original Greek (see below) offer, of course, an obvious means of testing in individual instances the relation of the version to its ex- emplar.
ufinus’ translation of the commentary on the Romans was (as the list of extant MSS in Preuschen- Harnack, p. 400, amply demonstrates) by far the best known specimen in the West of Origen’s work on the New Testament. While the East was piling up its anathemas, and Justinian was aspers- ing the name and memory of Origen in the vain hope of reconciling the Nestorians, the West, as represented in the Gelasian decree de libris
* ©Bine textkritische Arbeit des zehnten bezw. sechsten J ahr- hunderts, herausgegeben nach einem Kodex des Athosklosters Lawra, von E. von der Goltz’ (Teate und Untersuchungen, Neue Folge, ii. 4, Leipzig, 1899). See further below, p. 491.
+The contents of the separate books of the Latin are as follows :—Book 1.=Ro 11-21; u.=22-34; m1.=3581; 1v.=41-511 ; v.= 512-611 ; v1. = 612-818 ; vir. = 814-933; vill. =101-1196; 1x.= 191-1415; x,=1416-1627, The tomes of the original Greek, as recovered by von der Goltz from the Athos MS, began as fol- lows: tom. «’ 11; tom. 6’ 18; tom. 7 16; tom. o” 2125 tom. ¢ 35; tom. «’ 41; tom. ¢58; tom. #’ 517; tom. 0” 616; tom. « 89; tom. ia’ (05 0d gépera:) 91; tom. iP’ is not marked; tom. s’ 1118; tom. 13’ (5; od géperos) 1216 ; tom. sé’ 1410,
recipiendis, approved of all such works of his as ‘the blessed Jerome does not repudiate,’ content- ing itself with the rejection of ‘the rest and their author.’ Thus, to render unassailable Rufinus’ translation of Origen on the Romans, nothing more was necessary than to make the substitution of the name ‘Jerome’ for the name ‘ Rufinus’ in title, preface, and peroration ; and this is what actually happened in the later MSS, and in the earlier editions before Erasmus.* The earliest extant MS of any part of the translation is a Lyons MS, cod. 483 (413); it contains, roughly speaking, the first five books (but without the beginning of Book 1., and therefore without the translator’s prologue and name), and is one of the oldest known specimens of the so-called semi- uncial writing — Delisle calls it 6th cent., but, in view of its habitual use of ‘dom’ for every case of dominus, and of the declension ‘is,’ ‘iu,’ ‘im,’ for Iesus, the present writer would prefer to call it 5th, so that it is perhaps the most ancient monument of Patristic exegesis that has come down to our times. Next in age would come a fragment (ascribed to about 700 A.D.) in a Monte Cassino MS, cod. 150, of which the first 64 pages contain our commentary, as far as 2}°, including the prologue and name of Rufinus. +}
Of the two fragments from Origen’s commentary on the Romans, preserved in Rufinus’ version of Pamphilus’ Apologia pro Origene (de la Rue, iv., Appendix, pp. 25, 33), the second does not appear at all in Rutinus’ version of the commentary itself (cf. de la Rue, iv. 466) ; the first appears only in an abbreviated and independent form (iv. 465).
The following authorities have preserved pas- sages from, or references to, the original Greek of the commentary on Romans.
a. The Philocalia of Basil and Gregory (ed. Robinson, Cambridge, 1893) contains two pas- sages: ch. xxv. 6rt 6 é€k mpoyvwcews dpopiopuds ovK dvatpet TO abretovotov. €K TOD a Tomou T&v els Thy mpos ‘Pwpuatous eEnynrikar, els TO’ Aduwpiopévos els evaryyeNov Geo0 (Ro 1!; Robinson, pp. 226-231): and ch. ix. rls 6 Néyos TOO Thy Oelay ypadhy Kara Sudgopa oypavo- peva TO abr@ dvdmare KexphoOat modddxus Kal év TH atte rorm. ék THs mpds Pwpyalous> rdmos évvaros, els TO Ti of ; 6 vdwos &uapria ; (Ro 7’; Robinson, pp. 54-58).
B. St. Basil, de Spiritu sancto, 73 (ed. C. F. Hi Johnston, Oxford, 1892, p. 144): [Origen] év rots eis Thy mpds ‘Pwyatous éerioro\ny eEnyntexots, At tepat, gnol, Suvdmers Xwpytixat Tod Movoyevods Kal rijs rob arylov Ivetuaros Gedrnros.
y. St. Jerome, Hp. xxxvi. ad Damaswm (A.D. 384; Vallarsi, i. 159), quotes no actual words: ‘Origenes in quarto Pauli ad Romanos ééyyijoewv [v.l. €&nynrixv] tomo de circumcisione magnifice disputavit.’
5. Socrates, Hist. Eccl. vii. 32 (ed. Bright, p. 316): Kat Opuyévns 5 €v TG mpwry Toum TeV els THY mpos ‘Payatovs Tod dmoordhou ETLTTOAHY Epnvevwv Tis Ocordkos Aéyera TAATEWS EENTATE. :
e. The Athos MS, whose discovery by von der Goltz has already been mentioned just above, em- bodies, as far as the Pauline epistles are con- cerned, an attempt at a critical edition according to the text used by Origen. The 10th cent. scholar to whom we owe the existing MS derived his text for the most part from an dytlypapov madabrarov, ‘a very ancient copy,’ representing a similar attempt on the part of an earlier (probably much earlier) scholar, the accuracy of which the later scholar tells us he verified by the help of such commentaries or homilies of Origen on ‘the Apostle’ as were accessible to him. With regard,