(6) Though these Oecumenian MSS would be the principal means of the reconstruction of the com- mentaries of Photius, yet for the longer epistles considerable assistance would be given by other Catenz. The Catena of Vat. gr. 762, so far as we can restore it from Cramer’s texts, should contain something from Photius on Romans, and a good deal on 1 Corinthians. Cramer’s Munich Catena on Ro 77-16 has about 25 quotations from him. Karo and Lietzmann’s Vienna Catena (g on p. 489, above) cites him ‘seepius,’ but apparently from an earlier Catena rather than direct from the text of his commentary, and perhaps only through the Photian recension of Oecumenius.
Since Photius’ literary activity falls in the second half of the 9th cent., and five out of the Catena MSS just enumerated belong to the 10th or 11th cent., there is a fair presumption that his text could be restored from them with tolerable correctness ; and the attempt would be worth the making. But it is not possible to say, without further analysis of the quotations from him than has yet been undertaken, whether the result would contribute—in the measure in which an edition of John of Damascus, for instance, ought to contribute—to our knowledge of that exegetical tradition of the earlier centuries which it is the purpose of this article to illustrate.
23. ADDENDUM (to p. 489°, above). Clement of Alexandria (notes on all the Epistles ?).—
The series of commentators on the Pauline epistles should have included the name of Clement ; for the express evidence of Photius makes certain, what is indeed already implied by Eusebius, that the lost ‘Yroruréces or Outlines included notes on the Epistles.+ Eusebius tells us (HE vi. 14, § 1) that ‘in the Hypotyposes Clement gave concise accounts (émirerunuévas memolnrae Sinyjoes) of the whole of canonical Scripture, including such doubt- ful books as Jude and the other Catholic epistles and Barnabas and the so-called Apocalypse of Peter’; and he adds some few details about Clement’s treatment of the Epistle to the Hebrews and of the Gospels. Photius testifies more clearly (cod. 109) to the exegetical side of the work: of the three writings of Clement, presbyter of Alex- andria, Hypotyposes, Stromateus (sic), and Peda- gogus, the Hypotyposes ‘contain discussions on
* The second half of the Magdalen College MS is in the Cam- bridge University Library, Ff i. 30; and the arrangement of it is the same.
t On this subject the indispensable monograph is Th. Zahn’s Forschungen zur Geschichte des NTlichen Kanons und der
altkirchlichen Literatur, iii. : ‘Supplementum Clementinum,’ pp. 64-103, 130-156.
PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES a ee
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selected verses (diakauBdvovcr mepl pyrav Ttwaev) up and down both Testaments, in the form of a summary exposition and interpretation’ (@y xal KeparawdGs ws Ondev ebjynoly re Kal Epunvetavy tot- e?rat). Photius proceeds to criticise the theology of the Hypotyposes from the standpoint of Byzan- tine orthodoxy, and concludes thus: ‘All these things he attempts to establish from phrases found here and there in Scripture; and there are count- less other follies and plaspienmiad committed either by Clement himself or by some one who has usurped his name. This blasphemous nonsense occupies eight volumes: the author continually repeats himself, and distorts his texts (mapdye ra pyrd) promiscuously and indiscriminately like a lunatic. Speaking roughly, the general scheme of the work consists of explanations (6 6¢ édos cKxords doavel Epunvetar Tuyxdvovot) of Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms, the epistles of Saint Paul, the Catholic epistles, and Ecclesiastes.’ *
Though both Eusebius and Photius have some- thing to say about the Hypotyposes, neither of them has preserved much of its actual words: it is toa Western scholar that we owe the only considerable portion which survives. We have already seen (in connexion with Cyril of Alexandria, p. 515%) that Cassiodorus named Clement—no doubt with refer- ence to the Hypotyposes —at the head of those Greek commentators who had explained the whole of both Testaments: and when he comes to deal with the Catholic epistles (Inst. Div. Litt. 8) he tells us that Clement ‘quedam Attico sermone declaravit’ about 1 Peter, 1 and 2 John, and James; that in expounding them he said many things that were acute, but a few that were over-hasty ; and that therefore he himself had arranged for the commentary to be rendered into Latin in such a way that Clement’s teaching, strained free of some small causes of offence, might be fearlessly absorbed. About the identity of this translation with the extant Adumbrationes Clementis Alex- andrini in epistolas canonicas—although the four epistles actually expounded there are 1 Peter, 1 and 2 John, and (not James but) Jude—there can be as little real doubt as about the intended equivalence of Adumbrationes to ‘Yroruréces.
Zahn’s text of these Adumbrationes covers only fourteen pages in all; and though it must be borne in mind that Cassiodorus ordered the omission of certain passages of the original, it would seem that Photius was abundantly justified in speaking of the exegesis as ‘summary’ and ‘select’ (ce@ada- Was, pyrd twa). A commentary which ranged over the whole Bible in eight ‘books’ must needs have been of the nature of an epitome. In fact it be- comes clear that, side by side with the tradition of lengthy and detailed exposition, which had its rise among the Gnostics (Basilides, as we know, devoted twenty-four books of Exegetica to ‘the Gospel’) and was taken up and developed in the commentaries of Origen, another and very different method, modelled possibly on Papias’ ‘ Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord,’ can claim an equal or almost equal antiquity. Origen himself was no stranger to the system of interpretation by ‘scholia’ or notes : see above, in connexion with the Roman, Corinthian, and Galatian epistles, pp. 492, 493. Among early commentaries on the canonical Gos- pels, that of Victorinus on St. Matthew is described by Cassiodorus in the phrase ‘de quo [sc Mattheo] et Victorinus . . . nonnulla disseruit’ (Inst. Div. Litt. 7): nor does the work of Hippolytus on the same Gospel appear to have contained anything like a continuous exposition.t