An earlier passage in the preface indicates that the ‘blessed Fathers’ whom Theodoret especially
* Although Migne’s edition was not published till 1864, it does not seem to have taken any account of this volume.
+ This MS is not improbably a direct copy of a Venice MS of Theodoret on St. Paul, Marcianus 36, sec. x.
PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES 517
Oe ae et eee eee
followed were two in number: he might well, he says, be indicted for shameless audacity in setting his own hand to the ‘interpretation of the Apostle,’ Mera Tov Seiya Kal Tov deiva rods THs olkoumevns pworipas. That he is there referring to Chrysostom and Theo- dore is beyond question. It has been long recog- ‘nized of his commentary ‘que ce ne soit quun abrégé de Saint Chrysostome’ (Simon, Hist. Crit. des Commentateurs du NT, p. 314): and, now that part of Theodore’s work has been recovered, Simon’s further divination, ‘Je ne doute point qu’il n’ait aussi consulté les commentaires de Théodore de Mopsueste,’ is abundantly verified ; though at the same time it is to be remembered that Theodoret avoids carefully the less orthodox speculations of his predecessor, and indeed seldom, if ever, ver- bally reproduces him (Swete, Theodore, p. lxxvi). When, then, it is admitted that Theodoret’s com- mentary, ‘for appreciation, terseness of expres- sion, and good sense, is perhaps unsurpassed,’ and that ‘if the absence of faults were a just standard of merit, it would deserve the first place’ (Light- foot, Galatians ®, p. 230), all and more than all is conceded which Theodoret would have wished to claim.
To what period of Theodoret’s life the com- mentary on St. Paul belongs, is a question which four cross-references to it in his own writings enable us to answer within comparatively narrow limits.
a. Hp. 1 is addressed to an (unfortunately) un- named correspondent, to whom Theodoret had sent rv eis Tov Oeiov Améarodov avyypageicay BiBdor, and who had read it through and returned it without any expression of opinion about it. It would seem that the letter, if it did not even pre- cede, must have immediately followed the publi- cation of the commentary ; but there is nothing whatever to fix its date.
B. In Quest. 1 in Leviticwm Theodoret gives a brief summary of some of his writings, mention- ing those ‘ against the Greeks,’ ‘ against Heresies,’ ‘against the Magi,’ the ‘interpretation of the Pro- phets,’ and the ‘notes on the Apostolic epistles,’ Tv amocTtoNKey émicrokGy brouvyjpata. Of these Questiones on the Octateuch we know that they were earlier than the Questiones on the Books of Kings; but as they are not mentioned in the next two lists, it is probable that they are themselves posterior to A.D. 440.
y, 6. In two parallel and not far from contem- porary letters (Zpp. 82 ad Eusebium Ancyranum and 113 ad Leonem ep. Rome, A.D. 448-449), Theo- doret, under the stress of the early years of the Monophysite controversy, is appealing for assist- ance alike to East and West; and in both letters he reviews a number of his earlier works—books written ‘ either before the Synod of Ephesus, or at any rate not less than twelve years ago,’ ‘twenty years or eighteen years or fifteen years or twelve years ago’—as guarantees that the orthodox doc- trine he now professed was no new thing with him. To Eusebius he says: ‘I expounded all the Prophets, and the Psalter, and the Apostle ; and I wrote long ago against Arians and Macedonians and Apollinaris and Marcion ; and I composed a pvorixh BiBdos, and another on Providence, and yet another against the questions of the Magi, and the Life of the Saints, and many other books as well.’ The list given to Leo is the same in substance, though different in order and in detail: ‘I wrote against Arians and Eunomians ; against Jews and Greeks; against the Magi in Persia; on Uni- versal Providence; on Theology and the Divine évavOpwrnots: I interpreted, by the grace of God, both the Apostolic writings (ra dmocrodika ovy- ypdupara) and the Prophetic oracles.’ r.
In both these bare estimates of the writings
of a single decade the commentary on St. Paul finds a place, and it would be unreasonable to reject the evidence that thus fixes it between A.D. 429 and 438. But the internal characteristics of the commentary enable us to go a step further and reduce this interval by some years. For Theodoret closes his comment on Col 2° (ev att karoucet wav TO mANpwua THs OedrnTos cwuariKos) with the words deds ydp éore kal dvOpwros, Kal Td dpcuevor Toro Taoay exer vwpevyy TOO movoyevods Thy Oedryra, and he would hardly have thus expressed himself, until the progress of the Nestorian controversy had led the more moderate Antiochenes about A.D. 432 to adopt the terminology of the éwous as a definite guarantee of their orthodoxy.
19. Gennadius of Constantinople (commentaries on all the Epistles).—
Gennadius, patriarch of Constantinople from 458 till 471 A.D., was not only a supporter of the Council of Chalcedon and an opponent of the Mono- physites, but had even in earlier life—during the interval between the Council of Ephesus in 431 and the Reunion in 433—written against the Twelve Articles of St. Cyril. Facundus, to whom we owe this information (pro Defens. Triwm. Capit. ii. 4, ed. Sirmond, pp. 76-81), renders into Latin some specimens of Gennadius’ controversial style (such as ‘quales Cyrilli Aegyptii et quantas blasphemias incurri . . . anathematizaturus est te Deus, paries dealbate’), in order to contrast the censures meted out, for no stronger language about Cyril, to Theo- doret and Ibas with the immunity enjoyed by ‘sanctus Gennadius,’ ‘ beatee memorize Gennadius.’ The theological tendencies of Gennadius being thus obviously Antiochene, it is natural to conclude that his affinities as an exegete would be of the same type; and it was in the domain of exegesis rather than of dogmatic theology that his special interests lay. Such at least is the impression left on us by the account of him in Gennadius of Marseilles, de Viris Ii. 90 : ‘Gennadius Constanti- nopolitanee ecclesiz episcopus, vir lingua nitidus et ingenio acer, tam dives ex lectione antiquorum fuit ut Danielem prophetam ex integro ad verbum commentatus exponeret ; homilias etiam multas composuit.’ The expression ‘ ex integro ad verbum ’ seems to imply that Gennadius found something to say on every word of his text ; in any case, what was regarded as his most marked characteristic was his ‘reading of the ancients,’ that is, appar- ently, his knowledge of the works of earlier com- mentators. Gennadius in fact, like Isidore and Theodoret, belongs to the generation of exegetes intermediate between the more original writers on the one hand and mere catenists on the other, —to those who, either out of the whole bulk of existing commentaries, or from the one or two predecessors to whom they specially attached themselves, selected and abbreviated material which they combined in varying degrees with what was properly their own. .