Ode xxix. 1 : 'The Lord is my hope : in Him I shall not be confounded ' (cf. Ps 711).
Ode xiv. 1 : ' As the eyes of a son to his father, so are my eyes, O Lord, at all times towards thee ' (cf. Ps 1232).
Ode xvii. 8 : ' 1 opened the doors that were closed, and brake in pieces the bars of iron ' (cf. Is 45-, Ps 10716).
Ode xxii. 9; 'Thou didst take dead bones and didst cover them with bodies; they were motionless, and thou didst give them (energy) for life ' (cf. Ezk 371-11)-
Ode ,\xii. 12 : ' That the foundation for everything might be thy Rock : and on it thou didst build thy Kingdom ' (cf. Mt 1618).
Ode xxix. 8 : 'That I might subdue the imaginations of the peoples; and the power of the men of might to bring them Iow'(cf. Lkl6i-62).
Ode iii. 3 : ' I should not have known how to love the Lord, if He had not loved me ' (cf. 1 Jn 4i9).
Ode xvi. 20 : 'The worlds were made by His word ' (cf. Jn 13).
See, further. Ode xli. 16, and cf. 1 P 1™ ; Ode xii. 6, and cf. He 412 ; Ode xxiii. 17, and cf. He 1^; Ode iv. 12, and cf. Ro 11=9 ; Ode xxxi. 4, 5, and cf. Jn 176- " ; Ode xxi. 1, and cf. Lk 169-73 ; Ode vi. 7, and cf. Ezk 471 ; Ode xxviii. 11, and cf . Ps 2216 ; Ode xlii. 10, and Mt 1129, etc.
5. Probable date of their composition. — It ia
very dillicult to fix a precise date for the composi- tion of the Odes. The absence from them of definite historical data gives critics some 130 years within whicli to exercise their historical and geo- graphical skill. The Odes are merely devotional hymns, and safe criteria found in hymns of this kind for the fixing and delimitation of a definite period of time are naturally scanty, and those that
are available do not generally justify a categorical conclusion. If we exclude Ilarnack s theory of in- terpolation, and assume that the Odes are either wholly Christian or else Judteo-Christian, they would fall within the period A.D. 80-210. The point of divergence amongst critics is how near to the earlier or to the later date they seem likely to belong.
Lactantius {Div. Inst. iv. 12) has the following clear quotation from Ode xix. : ' Salomon [in ode undevicesima] ita dicit : Infirmatus est uterus virginis et accepit fetum et gravata est, et facta est in multa nii.seratione mater vfrgo.' This im- portant quotation, noted by Harris, shows that before 310 (see H. J. Lawlor, ' Notes on Lactan- tius,' in Hcrnuithcna, xxix. [1903] 459) not only was the existence of the Odes known to Lactantius, but at his time, at least in the district of Nico- media, they even had the same order as that ex- hibited by our MSS. The citation does not appear to be due to hearsay, but to be drawn from a book before the writer. From it we cannot positively prove that a Latin version of the Odes was current in Western Churches, but we are not at liberty to assume the contrary.
Between 250 and 295 larger quotations from the Odes are found in the Gnostic book called Pistis Sophia, which contains live complete Odes of the collection, as we have stated above. It is, on the whole, difficult to ascertain the inter-connexion between the Coptic and the Syriac texts ; but the present writer thinks that, apart from a short verse that seems to be lost in Syriac, tliere is a certain literary ascendancy which establishes the superiority of this last version over the Coptic. The words which have disappeared from tlie Syriac text come in the middle of v.* of Ode v. : 'And they are overcome, although they are powerful.' The lack of some words due to the carelessness of copyists cannot a priori point to the dependence of one composition upon another. On the contrary, the Coptic is generally inferior to the Syriac, and seems to be a translation of it ; e.g. Ode vi. 9 .says : ' And the restrainments of men could not restrain it, nor the arts of those who restrain water.' The repetition of the verb is, as we have seen, in accordance with the usage of Syriac and Arabic poetry ; the Coptic substituted ' loca ajdificata ' for the word ' restrainments.' This curious variant could not have occurred if the Coptic translator was not translating from a language in which these words resemble each other in writing ; and this language is Syriac.
The existence of these five Odes in the Gnostic book involves their priority to it by several years ; and consequently it becomes almost certain that they cannot be ascribed to a period later than the first quarter of the 3rd century. We may, there- fore, assume as highly probable that the extreme limits of our whole collection are, as stated above, A.D. 80-210. Of these 130 years, it is historically impossible, in the present state of our knowledge, to fix upon a definite date, and no probable hypo- thesis has so far been put forward. We shall set forth briefly the reasons which suggest a date nearer to 80, and those wliic4i appear to postulate one not far from the end of the 2nd or the begin- ning of the 3rd century.