The published remains of Gennadius have been collected in Migne, Patr. Gr. 85, ce. 1611-1734 ; the department of exegesis is represented chiefl by Catena fragments on Genesis and on St. Paul. For the latter, Migne’s only Greek sources were ; (i.) the Catena of Oecumenius, which, in the printed text, ascribes to Gennadius five passages on Romans, four on 1 Corinthians, one on 2 Corin- thians, two on Galatians, one on 2 Thessalonians ; (ii.) the Catenee of Cramer, of which the Bodleian Catena on Romans has 57 Gennadius citations, the Munich Catena on Romans 64 citations,* the Catena on 1.Corinthians two citations. Another
* Since the two Catene overlap for Ro 77-91, some of these citations occur twice over, and the total is therefore consider- ably less than the sum of 57+64. It is curious that no citations from Gennadius occur before Ro 512,
518 PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
ee EE SE eee ae cere
PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
Catena can now be added to the list of those which use Gennadius, Karo and Lietzmann’s No. vii. (gy on p. 489", above), which appears to draw on him both directly and indirectly, i.e. both from the text of his commentary (é« ro tdovs) and from earlier Catenz. Since this Catena is also on the Romans (it breaks off at 1 Co 12), the mass of Gennadius material on that one epistle is so large compared with the mere fragments that have come down to us on the other twelve, that the question may arise whether, after all, Gennadius commented formally on any other epistle than the Romans. But there is more than one reason which makes any such suspicion untenable.
In the first place, the longer epistles are very much better represented in the known Catenee than the shorter ones; and, so far as printed material enables us to judge, the range of authors employed is decidedly larger on the Roman even than on the Corinthian epistles. No doubt, the explanation of this may lie partly in the fact that more commen- taries were actually accessible on the Romans than on the rest ; we have seen, for instance, that the two Arian writers, Asterius and Eunomius, com- mented on that epistle only (pp. 498%, 500°): but it may also well be that among the original com- pilers, of whose labours our existing Catena MSS are the ultimate result, were some who started working at the first of the Epistles on a scale and with a thoroughness which were never equalled by the scholars who dealt, then or later, with the rest. For theseven epistles, Philippians—Philemon, no Catena material (besides Oecumenius) has yet been described other than the unique MS, Paris coislin gr. 204, printed by Cramer; and that Ca- tena, since no name is cited in it later than Theo- dore of Mopsuestia, may actually have been put together in the first half of the 5th cent., before the commentaries of Gennadius, or even of Theo- doret, had passed into circulation. In face, then, of the quotations in Oecumenius, few and scattered though they be, the absence of Gennadius material on these epistles in other sources might probably be discounted.
In the second place, we have definite external evidence which would outweigh the argument from silence, even if that were stronger than itis. ‘The Chronicle of Marcellinus (a 6th century continua- tion, with special interest in Constantinople, of the Chronicle of Jerome), as printed in the earlier editions, concludes a notice of Gennadius, under the year 470, with the words ‘et Pauli epistolas omnes exposuit.’ It is true that these words are rejected by Mommsen (Mon. Germ. Hist., Chronica Minora, ii. 56) as not part of the original Marcel- linus ; but they are found in the Bodleian MS of Marcellinus, written about A.D. 600, and they belong, therefore, at least to a very early recen- sion. The correctness of the information is of course quite independent of the authorship of Marcellinus, and there is no reason at all for doubting it.
Gennadius, then, commented on all the Epistles. But it still remains true that our knowledge of his commentaries is practically confined to what Cramer’s two Catenze on the Romans have pre- served for us; and to Cramer’s volume we must turn if we are to get to closer quarters with the exegesis of Gennadius. The two characteristics which we have learnt so far to associate with him are Antiochene sympathies and wide reading in the literature of exegesis; and the Catena frag- ments bear ample testimony to both of them.
(a) The commentator’s erudition is apparent. The quotation of Aquila’s rendering of Is 8“ xara Thy Exdoow Tod ’Aktdov . . . Adrds PbBnua tudv Kal avros Oponots budy kal éora els dylacua Kal els Cov mpockoumaros Kal els mérpay cxavddAov, in illustration
of Ro 9 (Cramer, 367. 9-21), must be one of the latest instances of the use of the unauthorized Greek versions of the OT. And the references to previous expositors are quite unusually numerous, though unfortunately all anonymous; Ro 8 (Cramer, 152. 2) od ydp, ds twes wiOyoav...: Ro 8” (289. 31) 7d YTTEPNIK@MEN olTws dmédwKe TIS; Ro 9? 8 (161. 24) atirn mev ody 4 ris mpoexrebelons miaTews * axpuBys épunvelar Kkwrver de ovdev Kal ryv ddgacar érépous elrety (where there can be no doubt that the ‘others’ are right and Gennadius wrong). In the middle of one long exposition of an earlier commen- tator’s. view (on Ro 9!*-)—extending from 349. 30, érepos 6€ TovTo oUrws épujvevoev, aS far as 351. 1, Taira mpds ToUTO . . . dvrevrdy, éepunvever Nowmoy Kal Tov mporeecdy phrewv Tov okordy—occur the words addv\d ydp 6 rwav érl Tov mapdvros TefavmaKxa, TovTO kat mpos ce, piraré jor Ilérpe, BovAowar SredOciv : and this address to ‘dear Peter’ is therefore not Gennadius’ own, but is taken over with the rest of the passage from his source. What the source was, it would be interesting to know; the turn of the phrase suggests perhaps rather a letter than a formal commentary.