* The editio princeps of the Latin commentary, under the title ‘ Hieronymo interprete,’ was printed at Venice in 1506.
+ The rest of this MS consists of an earlier (6th cent.) copy of the commentary of Ambrosiaster
EEE E—E————E— EE na
492 PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
however, to the Roman epistle—possibly because this epistle, standing at the head of the older MS, had suffered more than the rest in legibility—he copied his text not from the ‘ancient copy, but directly from the lemmata (i.e. the sections of text prefixed to corresponding sections of exposition) im his own MS of Origen’s commentary on that epistle ; but as the 11th and 14th tomes of the commentary—roughly speaking, chapters 9 and 13, 14—were wanting in that MS, he was there thrown back on the ‘ancient copy,’ helped out, where it was specially difficult to read, by the further testimony to Origen’s text of the Romans contained in the notes on difficult passages in the third book of his Stromateis.* So far, we are dealing with the text only of the Origen com- mentary ; but the Athos MS preserves also a few marginal citations from the commentary itself, and would have preserved more had not some Greek monk later on, after the fashion of his kind, set himself to erase with care anything that follows the name of the arch-heretic. It may be hoped that chemical reagents will yet prove vic- torious over the monastic scalpel : meanwhile von der Goltz has printed such matter as has escaped. The notes do not come to much; but they are valuable as showing how late some of the writings of Origen survived in the original Greek, and with what devoted care they were still studied—perhaps in the circle of archbishop Arethas of Czesarea. Origen is cited in two cases (Ro 3 118) as being unable to identify the sources of quotations in St. Paul, but for the most part (as doubtless also in the notes that have perished) to establish some question of reading. In 1’ both demma and ex- position omitted the words év ‘Péun; in 5” the lemma had A\aBédrres, but the exposition AauBdvorres ; in 8“ the ‘ancient copy’ had 6 yap Bdére rls eAmiger, the text of the Athos MS has 6 yap Bdéret tis kat ehriger with vroudver in the margin, so that it would seem that the reading of the ‘ancient copy’ was (exceptionally) given a place in the text, and that taken from the commentary relegated on this occasion to the margin ; in 1514 hoth lemma and exposition apparently read xai avrot wecrol. On 1 Jn 4* it is noted that that verse is quoted by Origen in tom. 7’ on the Romans with the reading 6 \veu rév "Inoodr ; similarly, 2 Co 12” is said ad loc. to be adduced in tom. ¢ on the Romans in the form évdmiov Tob Kuplov kal évayrlov r00 Oeod ev XpioT@ NadNobwev.
¢. Cramer’s Catena on the Romans (Oxford, 1844) consists of two Catenz, both imperfect. Of these, the first, taken from a Bodleian MS, Auct. E. ii. 20, covers Ro 1-91, and makes considerable use of Origen in more than 50 quotations,+ belong- ing to the following verses: Ro JJ: 1. 11 98-9. 16. 37 32. 4. 10-12. 13-18. 19-20. 21. 25. 27, 28. 30. 31 43. 4, 7-8. 11, 12 (2). 15. 16a, 16, 17. 16, 18. 23-24 56 6°. 9b. 12, 11-14, 19-20, 21. 22, 23 71. 6. 7. 8. 9, 13. 14, 15. 28, 24 8°. 5-7. 24-25, 26a. 26b, 83. 87. 35-39 T¢ will be seen that for considerable sections of these chap- ters—3—4% 6-87 §%-49_an almost continuous exposition could be restored from this Catena. Unfortunately, we do not yet know how far Vatie. gr. 762, which appears to be a direct ancestor of the Bodleian MS (see above, ¢, p. 488"), would supply additional Origen matter for the later chapters of the epistle, or a corrected Origen text for the earlier ones.
m. Cramer’s second Catena, Munich cod. ores (now 412), saec. xiii., extends from Ro 77 to the end of the epistle (thus overlapping the Bodleian Catena for Ro 77-9'), but contains very few pas- sages from Origen: Ro 7% 1-12.14 28 g5-75 83. 98-39 1920 seem to exhaust the list. Besides these, it quotes
* On Origen’s Stromateis see also pp. 490%, 492b, 493a,
+ The list in Cramer’s index should be supplemented by the following references ; 22. 23; 78. 18; 74, 1; 105. 9.
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on 8” a long passage é« r#s BidoxaNlas Tod ‘Qpryévous (ed. Robinson, 226. 12-15 ; 227. 15-229. 29), which is really part of Origen’s comment on 1!; on 97 the still longer extract éx rs Exdoyfs Tod ’Opuyévous (Cramer, p. 340) is not from the commentary on the Romans, but from the de Principiis, and the brief paragraph ’Opvyévous éx r&v ’ExAoyéy (Cramer, p. 349) has the same source (Robinson, p. xxx). Since all these references came not directly from Origen, but from the Philocalia,* we should be prepared to expect that the eight other quotations are similarly derived from some mediate source ; and if we compare them with the Oxford Catena —seven out of the eight belong to the portion of the epistle, 77-91, common to the two Catenee—we shall find that, with the exception of the short passage on 71+ (Cr, 179. 13-18), all are already contained in the Oxford Catena. If we further consider that the last eight chapters are only represented by a single Origen quotation in the Munich Catena, it will scarcely seem over-bold to conjecture that the latter Catena drew its Origen, not of course from our actual Oxford MS, but from some similar MS, which was equally limited, whether by the original design or by accidental loss, to the first half of the epistle. The practical point of this conclusion, if correct, would be to reassure us that the loss of the earlier part of the Munich Catena has not seriously diminished our store of new matter from Origen.