Hypatius of Gaxgra, a distinguished member of the Council of Nice, of whose life but little is known, was stoned to death ilarch 31, 327, in a pass near Gan- gra, by a gang of Novatian ruffians, in all probability on account of the opposition which he had manifested to- wards the Novatians (q. v.) at the council. See Stan- ley, History of the Eastern Church, p. 2GG.
Hyperbole. Any one who carefully examines the Bible must be siu^^rised at the verj' few hyperboUc ex- pressions which it contains, considering that it is an Oriental book. In Eastern Asia the tone of composi- tion is pitched so high as to be scarcely intelligible to the sober intellect of Europe, Avhile in Western Asia a medium seems to have been struck between the ultra- extravagance of the far East and the frigid exactness of the far West. But, even regarded as a book of West- ern Asia, the Bible is, as compared with almost any other Western Asiatic book, so singularly free from hy- perbolic expressions as might well excite our surjjrise, did not our knowledge of its divine origin permit ns to
suppose that even the style and mode of expression of the writers were so far controlled as to exclude from their writings what, in other ages and countries, might excite pain and offence, and prove an obstacle to the reception of divine truth. See Inspiration. Nor is it to be said that the usage of hj-perbole is of modem growth. We find it in the oldest Eastern writings which now exist ; and the earlier Eabbinical -sA-ritings attest that, in times approaching near to those in which the \ATiters of the New Testament flourished, the Jew- ish imagination had run riot in this direction, and has left hyperboles as frequent and outrageous as any which Persia or India can produce. See Taljiud.
The strongest hyperbole in all Scriptm-e is that with which the Gospel of John concludes : " There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that the world itself coidd not contain all the books that shoidd be written." This has so much pained many commenta- tors that they have been disposed to regard it as an un- authorized addition to the sacred text, and to reject it accordingly — a process always dangerous, and not to be adopted but on such overwhelming authority of collated manuscripts as does not exist in the present case. Nor is it necessary, for as a hj^ierbole it may be illustrated by many examples in sacred and profane authors. In Numb, xiii, 33, the spies who had returned from search- ing the land of Canaan say that they saw giants there of such a prodigious size that they were in their own sight but as grasshoppers. In Deut. i, 28, cities with high walls about them are said to be "walled up to heaven." In Dan. iv, 7, mention is made of a tree where- of "the height reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof wnto the end of all the earth :" and the author of Ecclesiasticus (xlvii, 15), speaking of Solomon's wis- dom, says, " Thy soid covered the whole earth, and thou filledst "it with parables." In Josejihus {Ant. xiv, 22) God is mentioned as promising to Jacob that he would give the land of Canaan to him and his seed ; and then it is added, " they shall fill the whole sea and land which the sun shines ui)on." Wetstein, in his note on the text in John, and Basnage, in his Histoire des Jitifs (iii, 1-9 ; V, 7), have cited from the ancient Eabbinical vrrit- ers such passages as the following : " If all the seas were ink, and •every reed was a pen, and the whole heaven and earth were parchment, and all the sons of men v.-ere wTiters, they would not be sufficient to v.-rite all the les- sons which Jochanan composed;" and concerning one Eliezer, it is said that " if the heavens were parchment, and all the sons of men writers, and all the trees of the forest pens, they would not be sufficient for writuig all the wisdom which he was possessed of." Homer, who, if not born in Asia ]\linor, had undoubtedly lived there, has sometimes followed the hyperbolic manner of speak- ing which prevailed so much in the East : thus, in the Iliad (xx, 246, 247) , he makes ^Eneas say to Achilles, "Let us have done with reproaching one another, for we may throw out so many reproachful words on one another that a ship of a hundred oars woidd not be able to carry the load." Few instances of this are to be found in Oc- cidental -WTiters ; yet it is observed that Cicero (Phil, ii, 44) has "PrjBsertim quum illi eam gloriam consecuti sint, quai vix ccelo capi posse videatur," and that Livy (vii, 25) says, " Ha- vires populi Eomani, quas vix ter- rarum capit orbis." See bishop Pearce's Commentate on the four Ecanyelists, 1777, etc. Modern examples of equal hj^perbole may be found cited in almost any work on rhetoric.^— Kitto.
Hypercalvinism. See CALAaNisji ; Ultra-Cvl-
AaNISM.
Hyperdulia {vit'tp, above; covMa, worship, ser- vice), the worship of the Virgin Mary in the Boman Church. The Koraanists speak of three kinds of adora- tion, namely, latria, hyjKrdidia, and dnlia. " The ado- ration ofla'tria,'" they say, "is that which is due to God alone, and is given on account of his supremacy ; hyper- dulia is worship paid to the Virgm on account of what