Diekamp somewhat hastily concludes that his discovery is fatal to the genuineness of the Oecu- menian Catena on St. Paul, in which he would see only the work of a later compiler excerpting Oecumenius in precisely the same way as he ex- cerpted other ancient authorities. But neither of his reasons will stand examination.
a. ‘Photius is used in the Oecumenian Catena ; but Photius lived in the 9th cent., and the real Oecumenius cannot therefore have quoted him.’ But it has been shown above (p. 488”), following Karo-Lietzmann, that it is not the original Oecu- menius, but a later recension only, which makes use of Photius.
g. ‘Oecumenius’ work on the Apocalypse is a commentary, not a Catena; but the so-called Oecumenius on St. Paul is a Catena, not a com- mentary.’ The argument is specious rather than sound. For, in the first place, Oecumenius on St. Paul is not quite a Catena on the ordinary model : see p. 485° above. sufficiently answers himself when he shows that Oecumenius is the earliest of the Greek commen- tators on the Apocalypse: if there were no com- mentators before him, it is difficult to see how he could have compiled a Catena. Of the two other ancient Greek commentators known to us, Arethas of Cappadocian Cwsarea wrote about A.D. 900, Andrew considerably earlier. That Arethas is found by Diekamp to make use of both Oecumenius and Andrew, is only what we should expect of a scholar as profoundly versed as Arethas in Patris- tic learning (cf. p. 492%, above) ; but Diekamp also makes it clear, first that Andrew and Oecumenius are not independent of one another, and secondly that it was Andrew who used Oecumenius, and not vice versd.. In his comments on 4° 6} ge 26 Andrew introduces the explanations of twés or Ts Tov mpd jwav ; and in every case the explanation so introduced is found in Oecumenus. Especially cogent is the case of uivas mévre in 9°, because there Oecumenius, after balancing the ‘ apocata- stasis’ doctrine of the Origenist Evagrius with the more rigid eschatology of other writers, compro- mises on a doctrine of punishment which should be eternal indeed in duration, but after the ‘ five months’ modified in intensity (specuévws). When,
In the second place, Diekamp-
then, we find Andrew quoting with the formula rwes épnoay the very conclusion at which Oeccu- menius had painfully arrived by way of compro- mise, it would be unreasonable to doubt that Oecu- menius is the source on which Andrew draws.
But if Oecumenius on the Apocalypse quotes no predecessors for the simple reason that he had no predecessors to quote, he does as a matter of fact approach the method of Oecumenius on St. Paul by not infrequent references to the Fathers gener- ally. Cyril is quoted four times ; Gregory Nazi- anzen and Eusebius, twice each ; Aquila, Josephus, Clement (the Stromateis), Gregory Nyssen, and Evagrius, once each. The commentator on the Apocalypse and the commentator on St. Paul are equally versed in Patristic literature, and employ it equally in the measure appropriate to the two works. It may be added that, while the former is, as has been seen, rather Cyrilline than Chal- cedonian in the expression of his Christology, the latter too appears to have worked on anti- Nestorian lines ; for the Catena on St. Paul never once cites Theodore of Mopsuestia, and, consider- ing the number of names adduced in it, this omission can hardly be accidental. On internal evidence, therefore, there is no reason at all to question their identity.
The external evidence to the commentary of Oecumenius on the Apocalypse is confined to a single quotation in a Syriac Catena Patrum of the ith cent. (Brit. Mus. Add. 17214= Wright cod. decelv., fol. 726). In this MS, which is a collec- tion of explanations of Bible passages, the prin- cipal authority employed is Severus of Antioch, and Theodore of Mopsuestia is cited as ‘ Theodore the heretic’: its Monophysite leanings are there- fore clear, and we are not surprised to find that Oecumenius, in the phrase with which the quota- tion from him is introduced, is brought into close connexion with Severus: ‘ Of Oecumenius, a dili- gent man, and one who is very orthodox, as the letters of the patriarch Mar Severus which are written to him show: From the sixth book of those composed by him about the Revelation of John the Evangelist.’ If the Syriac writer is correct, Oecumenius the commentator on the
Apocalypse was a favoured correspondent of the great Monophysite, and must therefore have been
of mature age before the death of Severus, circa A.D. 540: so that the internal evidence of the com- mentary, both as to date and as to the theological affinities of its author, would be carried somewhat further by the Syriac catenist. But among all the extant correspondence of Severus the only person bearing the name of Oecumenius is a Count to whom Severus addressed two dogmatic letters before A.D. 512: and it is probable, therefore, that the Syriac writer has naailexcd in identifying the commentator with the correspondent, for the interval of ‘more than 500 years’ since the vision of the Apocalypse is inconsistent with anything earlier than the second half of the 6th century. At the same time, the fact that the mistake could be made suggests that the commentary was not quite a new thing when the Syriac MS was written. We shall hardly err in placing the com- mentary on the Apocalypse about 600, and the Catena on St. Paul within the limits 560-640.