* It is worth noting that Didymus is not included among the commentators on 1 Thessalonians whom Jerome enumerates in Ep. cxix. 8-10,
_ | According to Zahn, Morschungen, v. 99 ff., the correct form is Apollinaris in Latin, ’Awoawépos in Greek. But Jerome seems most often to write Apollinarius.
} Jerome, Hyp. Ixxxiv. 3 (A.D. 400) : * Apollinarium Laodicenum Antiochie frequenter audivi et colui; et cum me in sanctis scripturis erudiret, numquam illius contentiosum [super sensu] dogma, suscepi.’
§ Two passages, however, can be identified by the help of Jerome, ¢. Rujinum, i. 24, 25: (a) ‘in tertia [expositione] quid Apollinarius simpliciter explanaret’ = Comm. in Eph. ii. 7 (Vallarsi, vii. 576 D-577 A), ‘alius vero... dici potest’: (6) ‘in tertia quid Apollinarius contra illius [sc. Origenis] vadens dogmata sentiret’= Comm. in Eph. iii. 1 (Vii. ‘687 B), ‘licet quidam . . . carnis acceperit,’
(p. 495%, above), from Origen on the one side, as on the other from Didymus; while in his exposition of the two passages from the Corinthian and Thessalonian epistles, discussed by Jerome in Lp. exix., he agreed with Theodore of Heraclea against Origen and Didymus in the one case, in the other with Diodore and with Theodore again against Origen. His exegetical position was therefore influenced more by his geographical connexion with the city of Antioch than by his opposition to the teaching of its school in the sphere of theology. Among Antiochene expositors there is no one whose loss, if we may judge by the frag- ments that remain, we have more reason to de- plore. The Catena quotations on St. Matthew's Gospel are often very striking, and betray a sin- gularly original and independent mind. Of the few on St. Paul, that on Ro 11 in Cramer may serve as an example: xexwpiopévos kal AcbwdPICMENOC EIC TOP evayyeNomby, ws 6 vouos dpbpioua Kal ddalpeua Aéyer TO xwpifouevov Tav Ouvpdrwv Oew Kal iepetow,
44. Eunomius the Anomcean (commentary on Romans).— ‘ ;
Eunomius, disciple of Aetius, and his successor in the leadership of the Anomcean or extreme Arian party, was believed by Jerome, when he was writing his ‘Catalogue of Hlustrious Men’ in 392, to be still alive (ch. 120), but is last heard of in history some years before that date. A prolific writer on theological questions, he drew forth answers from the principal theologians of his day —Apollinaris, Didymus, Basil of Cesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa. His con- tribution to exegesis was a commentary in seven tomes on the Epistle to the Romans, known to us only through the criticism of Socrates (HE iv. 7), who speaks of him as ‘ignorant of the Holy Scrip- tures, and unable to understand them, but copious in language and given to tautology’: his commen- tary on the Romans was an illustration of his defects as a writer and thinker, for, verbose as it was, it never really grasped the meaning (cxézros) of the epistle: many words and few ideas would be found in all his writings alike. No fragments of the commentary are extant, and it is possible to conjecture its method of exegesis only from the geographical and historical conditions of the writer’s career. Eunomius was by birth a Cappa- docian ; was educated at Constantinople and, under Aetius, at Alexandria ; accompanied his master to Antioch in 358 ; and was intruded bishop of Cyzicus in 360. Although he did not long retain the bishopric, he appears to have lived, with intervals of exile, in or near Constantinople for some twenty years, till he was finally banished to his native Cappadocia about 383. All the probabilities point to his exegesis being rather Antiochene than Alexandrine; but a more direct influence than that of the Antiochene school in general will, no doubt, have been the commentary of his Arian predecessor Asterius on the same epistle [No. 8, above, p. 498°].
12. Diodore of Tarsus (commentaries on all the Epistles ?),—
If Eunomius can be spoken of only loosely as an Antiochene exegete, there is no doubt that in Diodore we have a representative of the Antiochene school in its strictest sense; and indeed, both for his own writings, and as the teacher of its two most illustrious members, Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia, he may rightly be called its second and greater founder. Diodore was born at Antioch, perhaps circa 325-330, and, with the exception of a time spent in study at the university of Athens, lived wholly at Antioch until his elevation to the bishopric of Tarsus in A.D. 379. For twenty-five or thirty years before that date, as layman, as monk, and finally as priest and head of the theo-
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logical school, Diodore was standard-bearer of the Catholic cause in the capital of the East; and, important as was the see of Tarsus, Jerome (de Vir, Illust. 119) is no doubt right in saying that his greatest fame was as a mere presbyter of Antioch. When Jerome wrote, he was apparently still living; but he must have died soon after, for a new bishop signs for Tarsus at a Council in 394. If Jerome tells us that Diodore was an imitator of Eusebius of Emesa, and that, though he followed his ideas, he could not rival his elo- quence owing to his ignorance of secular literature, we must remember that Jerome would be bitterly, if naturally, prejudiced against him as the real author of the consecration of Flavian to the Antio- chene episcopate after the death of Meletius in 381. The West refused communion to the party of Flavian; and Jerome, for all his profound in- terest in Greek Christian learning, was a thorough- going Western in matters of party controversy. Of the ‘many’ books of Diodore, not enough has perhaps survived to test the soundness of the criticism ;* but whatever amount of truth it may have had, we cannot but regret the almost total loss of the exegetical writings of one who holds so important a place in the history and develop- ment of Christian exegesis. Photius (cod. 223) appears to have known him only through his book ‘on Fate’; and though he praises the clearness of Diodore’s language, he seems to imply that the book did not show any corresponding clearness of thought. From Socrates (HE vi. 3, followed by Sozomen, HF viii. 2) we learn that Diodore’s fame was that of an exegete, and an exegete of the literalist school : ‘he wrote many books, attending to the letter only of the Divine Scriptures, declin- ing to find recondite senses in them’ (ras Oewplas avray éxtpembuevos).