8B. The Athos MS contains at the end of the text of Ephesians a note to the effect that dd T&v eis Thy mpds’Edeclous pepouévwy eEyynrixav Tbuwy dvtaveyvwoov 7 émucto\j. The vow nihili dvrave- ywoov is, as von der Goltz points out, clearly a misreading of an uncial dvtaveyybc0n (ON for 9H). The ‘very ancient copy’ (see above, p. 491) had itself, therefore, been verified with the lem- mata in Origen’s commentary. The commence- ment of réuos a’ at 1! is marked ; unfortunately, no corresponding marks seem to have been pre- served for tom. 6’ and tom. y’.* In what remains of the marginal notes the ‘exposition’ is only mentioned twice: on 3'8 as reading BdOos kal twos (cf. Journal of Theol. Studies, iii. 411), where the lemma gave tyos cal Bddos : and on 22 as wlav Aéyouoa Thv oikodouny with the article, where the lemma gave maca oixodouy without the article (JTASt, iii. 407 ; Robinson, Ep. to the Ephesians, p. 297).
y. That Jerome’s commentary in 3 books on the Ephesian epistle (published between 386 and 392) follows Origen with extreme fidelity is estab- lished by several convergent lines of testimony. We have his own preface, where, out of the three predecessors whose work he used, he distinguishes Origen, as the one whom he in some degree followed, from Apollinaris and Didymus, of whom he had only made occasional use: ‘ex parte secuti sumus +. . pauca decerpsimus.’ We have the Catena quotations ; for—if the fragments extant for Eph 1 may be taken as a specimen of the whole—nearly three-fourths of the Catena Greek is represented by translation or paraphrase in Jerome’s Latin. We have, lastly, the documents of the controversy between Jerome and Rufinus. Their mutual polemics centred round the allegation of Jerome’s change of attitude towards Origen; and this in turn was argued out over the Ephesian commen- tary. In fact, in Jerome, Ep. lxxxiv. ad Pam- machiwm [A.D. 400], §2; Rufinus, Apologia, i. 22- 43, ii. 2, 42; Jerome, adv. Rujinum, i. 16, 21-29, ili. 11, 18, we have a series of statements and replies which throw an interesting sidelight both on the writings of Origen and on the methods of Jerome. We must be careful ‘to remember that it was Rutinus’ cue to show that Jerome expressed or implied approval of all the matter he took over from Origen ; just as it was Jerome’s cue to show that he borrowed from other writers than Origen, that he often placed two divergent interpretations in simple juxtaposition, that in these cases he could not be supposed to be expressing agreement with both, and that therefore the same negative attitude on his part ought to be assumed even in cases where he gives the view of Origen only.
Jerome had claimed that his commentaries on Ecclesiastes and on the Epistle to the Ephesians would prove that he had always gone counter to the doctrines of Origen. Rufinus tests his allega- tion with reference to the Ephesian commentary, and adduces seventeen passages one after another
* Both Jerome’s commentary and Cramer’s Catena are divided into 3 books; the former at Eph 31 431, the latter at 211 431, One or other of them is probably following Origen, whose Book iii, may therefore be fixed at 431,
PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
——a
as proving that Jerome, on several of the very points which he now charged against Origen and his followers as heresies, had used the words of Origen without in any way dissociating himself from them; indeed, while Origen had put forward his speculations cautiously and warily and with hesitation, his imitator had repeated them with curtness and decision ‘as though the angel were speaking by Daniel, or Christ by St. Paul’ (Apol. i. 43, ii. 42).
(a) Unum esse corpus totius creature rationabilis, id est angelorum et animarum. Rutfinus, Apol. i. 36-38, quotes from Jerome’s comments on Eph 1” 21-17 (Vallarsi, vii. 568 C, ‘potest ita responderi ... purgasse perhibetur’; 569 D, ‘non solum hominum . . . ecclesia intelligi potest’ ; 582 B, ‘et heee quidem iuxta vulgatam interpretationem . . . drachmis que salvee fuerant copulaverit’; 582 D, ‘quod autem ait, Ut duo conderet in semetipso . . . habitaturus est in novo mundo’): the Church in- cludes angels and heavenly powers, and the Saviour’s cross has cleansed them, and joined together things in earth and things in heaven, the near and the far, so that man will receive in the end the form of the angels.
() De diabolo atque angelis refugis. Rufinus, i. 34, quotes Jerome on Eph 2’ (vii. 576 A, ‘quod nos qui quondam lege tenebamur . . . iuxta sedentium voluntatem incipient gubernari’): the rebellious principalities and powers will begin to be ruled according to the will of Christ and the saints who shall sit above them.
(c) De_ anime statu. Rufinus, i. 25-30, 36, quotes Jerome on Eph 1%5-1-12.17 (yii, 548 ©, ‘alius vero qui Deum iustum conatur ostendere
- . antequam humiliarer ego peccavi, et his similia’; 551 C, ‘invadunt itaque in hoe loco occasionem . . . nisi cause preecesserint que ius- titiam Dei probent’; 558 C, ‘si speravimus tan- tum dixisset in Christo et non premisisset ante . . » benedicti sumus in celestibus’; 563 C, ‘quod vero ait In agnitione eius . . . et cetera his sim- ilia’”): God’s predestination of some to holiness— not to say also the inequality of human conditions —would conflict with God’s justice, if we did not think of antecedent causes, known to God alone, which would supply the justification; and Scrip- ture hints at a previous abode of the soul, which is contrasted with its present place of pilgrimage.