According to Leontius of Byzantium, Diodore commented on the whole of Scripture. In the list iven by Suidas, and derived by him apparently ee the ’ExxAnovaorixh Ioropia of Theodorus Lector, commentaries on many books of the Old Testament are mentioned by name, and, of the New, ‘On the Four Gospels,’ ‘On the Acts of the Apostles,’ ‘On the Epistle of John the Evangelist’; besides a treatise on the principles of exegesis, ‘What is the difference between Oewpia and dddyyopla?’? It is curious that, while there is no notice of any commentary on the Pauline epistles in this list of Suidas, Jerome mentions such commentaries specifically, ‘extant eius in Apostolum commen. tarii’; indeed, as he mentions no other work of Diodore’s by name, but dismisses the rest under the general description ‘et multa alia,’ it may fairly be inferred that he attached particular im- portance to them. Whether these ‘commentaries on the Apostle’ extended to all the Pauline epistles is not certain, though Jerome’s language and the analogy of other Antiochene commentaries per- haps suggest it. Jerome himself (Hp. exix., A.D. 406 : see pp. 484, 485 above) includes Diodore among the commentators on 1 Corinthians, and quotes in full his exposition of 1 Th 4%”: that he omits to name him in the prefaces to his commentaries on Galatians and Ephesians (before 392 A.D.) may only mean that Diodore’s commentaries had not at that time come into his hands. Of Cramer’s Catenz only those on the Roman epistle cite him—the Bodleian Catena on the earlier half of the epistle 32 times, the Munich Catena on the later half only thrice (10° 112%), Even in the Bodleian Catena the comments are not scattered evenly over the eight chapters, but begin only at EN.
* Harnack’s attribution to Diodore of a group of four treatises that pass under the name of Justin Martyr (‘Diodor von Tarsus’ in Teate und Untersuchungen, N. F. vi. 4, 1901) has not yet secured general assent,
being fairly constant from that point as far as 81; the references are 5 16.18.20 gl. 5. 12. 19, 22 71. 5. 7. 9. 13. 14s 15, 18, 21. 23, 24 Ql. 2 3.9. 15. 16. 19. 21 * A reference to previous expositors should be noted (Cramer, 48. 22), évvoe wev oy . . . @HOnoav.
‘The exegesis of Diodore is concise, clear, in- telligent ; but an Antiochene expositor — and Diodore’s theology in respect of the doctrine. of erace does not appear to be substantially different from his pupil Theodore’s |—was perhaps hardly qualified to sound in these particular chapters the full depth of the Apostle’s thought. With one exception the catenist’s citations from Diodore are short, but a passage of six pages (108. 4-114. 12), which ranges over the whole of Ro 7°-8?, follows on the name of Diodore; and there seems no valid reason for denying it to him. It would, therefore, form the natural starting-point for further investi- gation into the exegetical principles and methods in which Chrysostom and Theodore were trained, and from which, in opposite directions, they de- veloped.
13. Chrysostom (commentary on the Galatians ; homilies on the rest of the Epistles).—
John, surnamed Chrysostom,—born at Antioch about 347, ordained priest there in 386, consecrated bishop of Constantinople early in 398, driven into final exile in 404,—is the earliest of the Greek Fathers whose exposition of all the Pauline epistles has come down tous. With the single exception of the Galatians, which is represented by a con- tinuous commentary (and even this was perhaps prepared for oral delivery, see below on _ that epistle, p. 503), the method of treatment is, in every case, by a series of homilies actually preached in church, The benefit of his hearers, says the patriarch Photius at the close of an interesting criticism of the most illustrious of his predecessors (codd. 172-174), was the one great object of Chry- sostom, in comparison with which all else was neglected; and he accounts in this way for the absence in the Homilies of any attempt to penetrate into the ‘deeper’ sense (7a Babirepa, 7 Badurépa Mewpia). And while it is certainly true that Chry- sostom was in full agreement (fuller than Photius would perhaps have liked to admit) with the exe- getical principles of Diodore, his master, and Theo- dore, his friend,—witness, for instance, his general introduction on the chronology of the Epistles, which he defends on the ground that ouvredet huly mpos Ta Snrovweva ov puxpdy 6 Ty emioToN@y xpévos (Hom. in ep. Rom., ed. Field, p. 4),—it is also true that the warm moral interest and direct purpose of edification animating the Homilies raises him above the arid intellectualism which was the danger of the literalist school of Antioch. To each homily is appended, at the end of the exposition proper, an ‘ethical’ application of the lessons to be learnt from the passage expounded ; and this is sometimes given the separate heading Aoucév in the MSS. Of the homiletic expositors of ‘the Apostle,’ St. Chrysostom ranks as indubitably the greatest, and subsequent commentators and compilers bear testimony to his popularity as an exegete by the extensive use they make of his work; indeed his Homilies, shorn of the ‘ethical’ or directly hortatory passages, form the ground- work of most of the extant Catense on the Mpistles.
In what manner and by what methods the Homilies of Chrysostom were preserved for pos- terity there is little direct evidence to show. Writing at Constantinople a generation after his death, the historian Socrates excuses himself from