9. Didymus of Alexandria (commentaries on 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians).—
By far the most striking figure among the heads of the catechetical school of Alexandria in the 4th cent. is the blind presbyter Didymus.
* Cramer gives only the introductory words ; the Benedictines give a passage of some ten lines.
+ A tract by Gregory of Nyssa on 1 Co 1523 ‘Then shall the Son also himself. . .,’ is printed in vol. i. pp. 838-853 of the Paris 1615 edition. Its genuineness has been contested, per- haps without reason.
Born about the end of the first decade of the century, he became head of the school under Athanasius, was still living when Jerome wrote his catalogue of ‘illustrious men’ in 392, and only died, according to the Lawsiac History of Pal- ladius, about the year 399. In spite of total loss of sight in early childhood, he mastered all the secular and sacred science of the time, and poured out the wealth of his knowledge, ‘ night and day,’ for the benefit of visitors and correspondents, among whom were numbered Antony, Jerome and Rufinus, Palladius and Isidore. His special streneth lay in the exegesis of Holy Scripture. It was with the object of learning his views on points of doubt ranging over the whole Bible that Jerome visited him in 386. Palladius tells us that he dictated explanations of the whole of Scripture. Jerome, de Vir. Jil. 109, after enumerating some ten works, nearly all of them exegetical, adds that there were countless others, ‘que digerere proprii indicis est’; and, in fact, besides the commentaries there mentioned on St. Matthew and St. John, we know from Cassiodorus that he wrote on the Catholic epistles, and from Jerome himself that he commented on the 1st Corinthian, Galatian, and Ephesian epistles (Epp. xlix. 3, exix. 2 [Val- larsi, i. 233, 794], Pref. ad Comm. in Gal. [id. vii. 369], Pref. ad Comm. in Eph. [ib. vii. 543)). The volumes of Cramer’s Catena on the Pauline epistles contain only a single citation from Didymus, on Ro 7”. But Mai in his Nova Patruwm Bibliotheca, iv. (1847) part 3, 115-146, published from a Vatican Catena * more than fifty excerpts upon 2 Corinthians: many of these are of considerable length, and at several places they form so continuous an exposition that there can be no doubt whatever they were taken from a commentary. Thus the question naturally arises whether the commentaries on these four epistles were independent of one another, like Origen’s, or were parts of a complete and homo- geneous Pauline commentary. It is not in itself decisive that Jerome speaks of the commentarioli of Didymus on the Ephesian epistle,+ while he includes him among those who had interpreted ‘Jatissime’ the First Epistle to Corinth. Yet neither the long explanation which Jerome trans- lates from Didymus on 1 Co 15°) (Hp. exix. 5: i. 795 D-798 A), nor yet the Mai fragments on 2 Corinthians, seem quite to suit the diminutive applied to the commentary on Ephesians. And since Didymus was in almost all respects a close follower of Origen,—with regard to his exegesis Jerome mentions this expressly in introducing the fragment on 1 Cor., ‘non pedibus sed verbis in Origenis transiens sententiam,’—the evidence as a whole appears to be best satisfied if we suppose that he also imitated Origen in treating the dif- ferent epistles separately and not always on a uniform scale. In that case there will be no reason left for postulating lost commentaries by this author on the remaining nine epistles. He may easily have written on more than the four of which we have definite information, but it is not necessary to suppose that he wrote on all; and which of the others, if any, he expounded besides land 2 Cor., Gal., and Eph., we shall be able to
* Cardinal Mai gave no sort of indication of the number of the MS: but (@) he noted the folio on which each Didymus citation is found—the first is on fol. 340, the last on fol. 411; (b) he mentioned that he had already printed some Cyril of Alexandria from the same MS. It is, in fact, the already often cited MS, Vat. gr. 762.
+ The verses at which the different oles begin are as follows: 2 Co 11. 2 3. 6. 7. 11. 12, 13, 15. 23 93.10.12, 15.17 gl. 4.7.17 44.5. 7.8, 11.18 G1. 2.13, 14. 16.17. 21 G3. 7.10. 11. 14 72. 6. 12.13 13. 20. 22 101. 3.17 411. 7. 12. 13. 21 192. 7.19 1311,
t In the case of the Galatian epistle the MSS of Jerome(Pref. ad Comm. in Gal.: Vallarsi, vii. 369) appear to vary between ‘commentarii’ and ‘ commentarioli.’
mms
500 PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
wee a ee eS Ee oe
say only if further and fuller knowledge comes to our assistance. *
10. Apollinaris (or Apollinarius) + the younger of Laodicea (commentaries on all the Epistles ?).—
The problem in the case of Apollinaris is not unlike that for Didymus, but the balance of evi- dence inclines perhaps the other way. Itis certain that he commented on five of the Pauline epistles, and it seems likely that he commented onall. St. Jerome mentions him among those who interpreted ‘latissime’ the Ist Epistle to the Corinthians, and among the authors of ‘commentarii’ or ‘commen- tarioli’ on the Galatian and Ephesian epistles. On 1 Co 154 he notes that Apollinaris’ exposition agreed in substance though not in language with that of Theodore of Heraclea, and on 1 Th 4% that Theodore, Apollinaris, and Diodore all adopted the same interpretation (Vallarsi, i. 233, 795, 802; vil. 369, 543). Thus on every epistle where Jerome has occasion to refer to older commentators, he in- cludes Apollinaris among them ; while in the de Viris Illustribus, 104, he speaks of him as ‘in sanctas scripturas innumerabilia scribensvolumina.’ The Catenz enable us to add yet another epistle ; for Cramer’s Bodleian Catena on the Romans con- tains 36 citations from Apollinaris, of which 21 belong to the first two chapters, and are therefore sufficiently numerous to imply a continuous ex- position. It would not then appear to be rash to suppose that Apollinaris, like the writers of the school of Antioch with which he stood geographi- cally in such close contact, commented on the whole of St. Paul. That the Catenze for most of the Epistles do not quote from him is sufliciently accounted for by his equivocal reputation as a theologian. Apollinarianism was the special béte nowre of the 5th cent. Antiochenes, and Apollinaris was so far in a worse position than either Origen or Theodore of Mopsuestia, as he may be said to have died out of communion with the Church, though apparently still in possession of his bishop- ric. That Jerome on the other hand, in spite of his heresy, used him extensively and spoke of him with respect, —he calls him nothing worse than ‘the Laodicene who lately left the Church,’—is due partly to his admiration for a man who had been a powerful champion of Catholic Christianity against Arianism and paganism, partly also to the loyalty he always retained (and it is one of the most pleasing features of Jerome’s character) for his old teachers.t Of the residuum of Jerome’s commentary on the Ephesians, after the Origen matter has been subtracted, much certainly came from Apollinaris. In the cases which he discusses in detail (cf. p. 495%, above), wherever he had given three interpretations, the first was his own, the second that of Origen, the third that of Apollinaris. And though the amount which can at the present stage of our knowledge be definitely recovered out of St. Jerome’s writings for Apollinaris is small,§ yet Jerome’s evidence is singularly clear in respect to his general character and relationships as an exegete. On the Ephesians A pollinaris habitually differed, according to Jerome’s express statement