the Collectanea of Sedulius Scotus; see Swete’s Theodore, pp. Xlvi-li, and vol. ii. p. 346,
PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
Latin of the Corbie MS ; and the only possible con- clusion was that in the latter we possessed a com- plete version of Theodore’s commentary on these epistles. The comparison was made, and the con- clusion drawn, by J. L. Jacobi in 1854 (Deutsche Zeitschrift fir christliche Wissenschaft und christ- liches Leben), and, independently, by Dr. Hort in 1859 (Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, iv. 302-308). Dr. Hort afterwards discovered a second and slightly earlier MS in Brit. Mus. Harley 3063, from Cusa on the Moselle; and an edition of the Latin version, with a re-collation of Cramer’s Greek fragments for the ten epistles covered by it, was published in 1880 by Dr. H. B. Swete (Theodore of Mopsuestia on the minor Epistles of St. Paul: Theodort Mopsuesteni in epistolas B. Pauli commentarii, 2 vols., Cambridge)—a book of the rare kind for which praise is superfluous.
The Latin supplies us on the one hand with some sort of representation of Theodore’s meaning over long pages where the Greek entirely fails us, and on the other with a test for the verifica- tion of what really in the Catena belongs to Theo- dore. It is satisfactory to find that the net result has been to add to the number of fragments admitted as genuine by Fritzsche ; for whereas only seven of his passages have to be struck out, there are nearly 40 others in the Catena of which Theodore had wrongly been deprived (Swete, p. xvii, n. 3 and 4). That the catenist can now be shown to have often abridged and occasionally paraphrased his author (Swete, p. xxxv), isno more than the parallel experience of other writers in the Catenz might have led us to expect.
The translator may be credited on the whole with faithfulness and conscientiousness ; but neither his knowledge of Greek (at any rate of Theodore’s Greek) nor his command of his own tongue was sufficient to produce what could be called, from a literary point of view, a successful version. As to his date, it is natural to bring the attempt to introduce Theodore to Western readers into connexion with the circle of Facundus and Junilius, and to place him conjecturally at or soon after the middle of the 6th cent.; and the con- jecture is in harmony with the evidence of his Biblical text, which (when it is not simply a literal rendering of Theodore’s) displays some- times reminiscences of the Vulgate, but more often reminiscences of the Old Latin (see, for fuller details on all these points, Swete, pp. xxxv— lviii). It is a less easy question to answer, whether his translation included also the longer epistles. The evidence of Rabanus Maurus sug- gests that there were MSS which gave Ambrosi- aster for Rom.—Ephesians, Theodore for the rest ; the existing MSS with Lanfranc (and, presum- ably, Sedulius) make the change from Ambrosi- aster to Theodore between 2 Cor. and Gal. ; possibly, therefore, it may be argued, other MSS may have existed which supplanted Ambrosiaster by Theodore at a still earlier point or even from the beginning. Yet we have seen (p. 509) that Theodore’s Greek commentaries on the epistles did not circulate in a single volume ; and in the absence of definite indications to the contrary it is safest to suppose that the translator had access to only a portion of them, and that the whole of his work has now been recovered. As an imperfect commentary, there was an obvious reason for com- pleting it by borrowing the missing epistles from some other commentary, such as Ambrosiaster’s ; and the accident that the missing epistles hap- pened to be the first in the series explains also how it was that the name already attached to them came to be attached to the rest of the series
| as well, so that Carolingian scribes and scholars
PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES 511
read Theodore of Mopsuestia under the pseudonym of Ambrose of Milan.
(v.) Order and date of Theodore’s commentaries on the Epistles.—Of the order in which Theodore commented on the different epistles of St. Paul he gives several indications by cross-references from one commentary to another (Swete, p. Ixiii).— (a) Galatians after Romans: on Gal 3° (Swete, i. p. 51, 1. 6) he refers to Ro 11”: ‘si nostram decurrere voluerit interpretationem in qua latius id explicasse videmur.’—(8) Galatians after He- brews : on Gal 4% (i. 76, 1. 10) he says, ‘in epistola illa que ad Hebreos est interpretantes ostendimus evidentius.’ *—(y) Galatians after several (?) other epistles: on Gal 24 (i. 16, 1. 20) he alludes to pre- vious notes on many passages, ‘multis enim in locis coniunctiones a beato Paulo non cum debita sequentia positas esse ostendimus.’—(6) Ephesians after Galatians: on Eph 1¢ (i, 123, 1. 4) he refers to his comment on Gal 3”: ‘dixi [‘dixit’ MSS, wrongly] namque et in epistola Galatarum.’—(e) Colossians after Philippians: on Col 1" (i. 272, 1, 12) he refers to Ph 2%8: ‘hoc enim ostendimus ‘ostendemus’ MSS, but the confusion of i and e is very common] fecisse apostolum et Philippensibus scribentem.’—({¢) 1 Timothy after Philippians : on 1 Ti 38 (ii. 118, 1. 18) he refers to Ph 1: kat robro éreonunvaweda kat év TH mpods Piiummyotovs. —(n) 1 Timothy after most of the other Epistles: on 1 Ti 1-4 (ii. 71, 1. 12) he mentions ‘interpretationem nostram quam propemodum per omnes epistolas explicasse videmur,’—(0) Titus after 1 T amothy : on Tit 16 (ii. 237, 1. 20) he refers to 1 Ti3?: ‘ dictum est nobis hoc idem latius in ila epistola quam ad Timotheum inprimis dudum scripseramus.’