[Eusebius of Czsarea].— From Alexandria we pass to the second centre of the influence of Origen—the school and church of Palestinian Cesarea. Among the extraordinarily diverse writings of its bishop Eusebius (c. 270-340 A.D.) were certainly included commentaries, and those not exclusively on the Old Testament. But once more the evidence for ranking him with the ex- positors of St. Paul rests on the first of Jerome’s two lists for the 1st Corinthian epistle, supported this time by a single quotation in Cramer’s Catena (pp. 75, 477; 1 Co 4**). That, somewhere in the vast array of the works of Eusebius, Jerome should have found a discussion of 1 Co 7, and the catenist an explanation of a single passage in another chapter, seems much more probable than that a commentary by so well-known a writer should have left no other trace behind, If conjecture may be allowed, it would seem not unlikely that, as Pierius appears to have treated of 1 Co 7 in connexion with the Book of Hosea, and as Jerome in the preface to his commentary on Hosea places in immediate juxtaposition with the homily of Pierius a discussion by Eusebius in the (lost) 18th book of the Demonstratio Evangelica, the latter was also the occasion of Eusebius’ exposition of the marriage teaching of St. Paul.
6. Theodore of Heraclea (commentaries on all the Epistles ?)—
The results in the case of Dionysius, Pierius, and Eusebius have been almost wholly negative. Nothing more has been established than that somewhere or other in their writings they found occasion to expound one or two passages from ‘the Apostle.’ Of continuous commentaries or homilies, even on a single epistle, there is no real trace. But for Theodore, bishop of Heraclea-Perinthus in Thrace (from before 341 till between 355 and 358), the evidence is conclusive that, however little can be recovered of his work, he did publish commentaries on several, probably on all, of St. Paul’s epistles. In Theodore we first come in contact with the great school of Antiochene inter- preters. He is said to have been a pupil of the
498 PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
first founder of that school, Lucian the martyr ; and all that we know of his method shows that he worked on Antiochene rather than on Alexandrine lines. No interpreter of St. Paul in the first half of the 4th cent. could in his matter be wholly independent of Origen; but in his clear and literalist style of comment Theodore was not the follower of Origen so much as the predecessor of Chrysostom and Theodoret.
Theodore was perhaps the first commentator whose work was devoted mainly to the New Testa- ment. Jerome (de Vir. Jil. 90) tells us that under the emperor Constantius he published commen- taries on St. Matthew and St. John and on ‘the Apostle,’ distinguished by historical feeling and by clearness and elegance of style. Theodoret (HH ii. 3) speaks of his ‘remarkable learning’ and of his ‘interpretation of the Divine Gospels’ in im- mediate connexion with, and apparently as ac- counting for, his influence over the emperor. Yet, in spite of these testimonies to his importance, no single fragment of his work on St. Paul appears to have come down to us in the original. His merits as an expositor were unable to weigh down the balance against his faults as a theologian. Though he belonged to the more moderate section of the party, he was undoubtedly an Arian; and the whole of the Arian literature of the 4th cent. has perished, with such minute exceptions, that it requires some effort both of will and of imagina- tion to reconstruct the vast stores of learning in chronicle, history, and commentary, which shared the fate of more strictly dogmatic writings.
The epistles on which we know for certain from St. Jerome’s references that Theodore commented are 1 Thessalonians (Zp. exix. § 8: Vallarsi, i. 802), 1 Corinthians (2b. § 2: i. 794), and Galatians (Pref. ad Comm.: vii. 369). For the latter epistle the reference is general; with regard to 1 Th 4°” we are told that Theodore’s view agreed with that of Diodore, which is given at length (see below under No. 12); only in the third case—on 1 Co 15%-3— are we given an actual version of an exposition contained in® Theodore’s ‘commentarioli.’ The diminutive form implies (what the Catena frag- ments on the Gospels amply bear out) that Theo- dore’s comments were brief and succinct. The passage translated is for the most part a para- phrase, in clear and straightforward language, of the text, helped out by the parallel verses in 1 Th 4. It is to be noted that Theodore gives the Syrian reading, ‘omnes quidem non dormiemus, omnes autem immutabimur,’ without notice of any variant ; from which it may perhaps be concluded that he was not interested in textual questions.
7. Eusebius of Emesa (on the Galatians).—
Born at Edessa, Eusebius studied in succession at the chief centres of Christian learning in the East —at Edessa, at Caesarea, at Alexandria, and at Antioch. But it was with Antioch, and with its successive Arian bishops, that his connexion was specially close. It was from Antioch that he was sent to the bishopric of Emesa or Hemesa in Syria, which he occupied till his death; and it was at Antioch that he was buried. The years of his episcopate roughly coincided with Theodore’s: he did not become bishop till after 339, and he died under Constantius, .c. not later than 360. Like Theodore, he was a leader of the Arian party, and like him a trusted adviser of the Arian emperor, Like Theodore, again, whom he immediately fol- lows in Jerome’s list of ‘illustrious men’ (de Vir. Ill. 91), he wrote largely on the New Testament. ‘ad Galatas libri decem, et in Evangelia homilie breves sed plurime’—with the same _ historical method, and with similar elegance of style.*