if it is unto death, the charadrius turns its face away from the sick man; but if the disease is unto life, the charadrius fixes its gaze upon the sick man, and the sick man upon it.
A Interpretation. Thus our Lord Christ is altogether white, having no blackness of the world; he turns his face away from those who are perishing, but looks upon the face of the holy. Come, you will say to me, that the charadrius is an unclean bird, so how does it bear the person of Christ? Yet even the serpent is unclean, and Christ bore witness to it, saying: As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up.
CHAPTER XXIV. On the woodpecker.
The woodpecker is a bird of many colors, just as the devil is many-sided. It travels through the thickets of the woods, strikes with its beak, and listens with its ears; and if the tree is hollow and heartless, it cuts into it and enters; but if it is sound of heart, it escapes, departing thence to another tree.B Interpretation. Not otherwise does the devil travel through the wood, that is, through the nature of men, and sits upon the trees, that is, upon men; turning their hearts toward impurity, he strikes and listens. And if the man is hollow and heartless, he enters and nests within him; but if he is sound of heart, he quickly escapes and returns to others.
CHAPTER XXV. De ciconia.
The stork is a most chaste bird; for the male does not entice the female to mating with allurements, nor does it use force upon her. Moreover, this bird feeds both its father and mother in their old age with marvelous piety.C Interpretation. So too must we fulfill two divine commandments, that is, to turn away from evil and do good, just as the royal Prophet has written. And likewise the Lord in the Decalogue commands in this way, saying: Honor your father and your mother, and again: You shall not commit adultery.
ON THE LITURGY OF THE PRESANCTIFIED OF SAINT EPIPHANIUS.
I. Recently, p. 95, I mentioned the explanation of the Mass of the Greeks by Saint Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, which I published in Greek some years ago from a Vatican codex; and I have used that booklet conveniently to illustrate certain noble pictures of the sacrosanct mystery. But now, after the aforementioned Sophronius, among those whom he names as authors of liturgies after apostolic times, the first one placed is Saint Epiphanius,
A a notice which, as I now treat of liturgical matters in these pages, I by no means judge should be neglected. But here is the context from Sophronius at the beginning of his book, which I shall now present in Latin from the Greek. The apostles performed the prayers of the mysteries of the divine sacrifice as each nation could bear, and according to the circumstances of the times and the snares of persecutors. And in prayers, indeed, and exclamations (as they are called in the liturgy) they perhaps differed among themselves; but the form of the tradition of the mysteries was performed among all without any variation, just as our Lord Jesus Christ had handed it down. But after the God-speaking apostles, some of the holy Fathers, each by himself, composed individual prayers and exclamations and the complete office of the sacred rite; such as the illustrious Saint Epiphanius, and the great Basil, and the divine Chrysostom. At the same time, however, they all drew their doctrines from the springs of the life-giving Paraclete: which the Church of the orthodox received as though spoken and done by Christ Himself. And now, above others, the liturgies of the divine Basil and John Chrysostom are frequently used, along with that of the Pre-sanctified, which some say is by James, who was called the brother of the Lord, others assign it to Peter the coryphaeus, and others to others.
II. But before we come to Epiphanius, we believe these final words of Sophronius concerning the liturgy or Mass of the Pre-sanctified of James or Peter are worthy of note—those who are thought to be the parents of some of the other liturgies that exist, but by no means of the Mass of the Pre-sanctified. Yet, behold, Mark the evangelist is said to be the author of the Mass of the Pre-sanctified in a fragment inserted into the Basilian liturgy, in Aloysius Assemani, *Cod. liturg.* vol. VII, p. 73, and likewise in Renaudot, *Liturg. or.* vol. I, p. 79, who marvels at this unexpected notice in his notes on page 341. Others, as is well known, have attributed this liturgy (which among the Latins is the Mass of Great Friday, Good Friday) to Pope Saint Gregory I, to which opinion Leo Allatius contradicts in his former dissertation *De præsanctif.*, after his work *De consensu*, p. 1531. Finally Smith, B a learned Englishman, in *De hod. stat. Eccl. Gr.*, London edition, p. 98, guessed that Saint Germanus of Constantinople was the author of this Mass. Yet the illustrious Cardinal Bona, *Rer. liturg.*, book 1, ch. 15, 6, with Allatius in dissertation 2, p. 1595, judges that this liturgy existed certainly before the middle of the fourth century, from the 49th canon of Laodicea, in which it is decreed that it is not permitted to offer bread during Lent, except on the Sabbath and the Lord's day only. And in truth, the Greeks, at least the ancients, did not consecrate during the Lenten period on the remaining days (besides the two mentioned), but used the Pre-sanctified [gifts] from the preceding Lord's day; which is, in fact, the very liturgy of the Pre-sanctified of which we are speaking. Now to the remaining disputed authors of this Mass there is added also Epiphanius the Cyprian: for the liturgy in the Vatican codex, as we shall soon say, inscribed to him, is in fact that of the Pre-sanctified.
III. Since, therefore, I had learned from my Sophronius that Epiphanius was a new author of a liturgy (whether common throughout the year, or at least of the Pre-sanctified), I was indeed astonished that his name appeared in no liturgies, neither in Al. Assemani’s liturgical codex, nor in Renaudot, nor in so many liturgies of the Orientals, generally derived from a Greek source, which Abr. Ecchellensis mentions in relation to Ebediesu, and Jos. Assemani mentions in passing in *Bibliotheca Orientalis*, to which add the catalogue of forty Chaldean liturgies drafted by Schulting in *Bibl. eccl.*, vol. III, p. 100. But not even I, in the catalogues of Arabic, Syriac, and Coptic Vatican codices edited by me, where many liturgies are recorded, could find the name of Epiphanius. Moreover, the editors of the works of the holy man, and most bibliographers, seem to be ignorant of this writing of Epiphanius, and indeed of its very memory. C Nevertheless, the aforementioned testimony of Sophronius is of the highest, most serious class. Since things stood thus, I turned myself to the Greek codices of the great Vatican library; and having made an inspection as best I could, I finally found a single Greek codex, absolutely Phoenician in its rarity, under number 1213, on whose page 53 I read this title with the greatest pleasure in capital letters: Η ΘΕΙΑ ΛΕΙΤΟΥΡΓΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΕΝ ΑΓΙΟΙΣ ΠΑΤΡΟΣ ΗΜΩΝ ΑΡΧΙΕΠΙΣΚΟΠΟΥ ΚΥΠΡΟΥ ΕΠΙΦΑΝΙΟΥ ΤΟΥ ΜΕΓΑΛΟΥ : DIVINA LITURGIA SANCTI PATRIS NOSTRI ARCHIEPISCOPI CYPRI EPIPHANI MAGNI. What could be more evident in itself, and what more in conformity with the testimony of Sophronius? Therefore, inflamed with desire for this work, of which I no longer had doubts, to assert it for Epiphanius, I further extended my efforts by searching, and read in Bona, *Rer. liturg.*, book 1, 9, 6, the notice which Renaudot later copied from him in vol. I, p. 498, namely that Job Ludolf, that great writer on Ethiopian affairs, in his preface to the *Ethiopic Lexicon*, had provided the notice of the liturgy of Saint Epiphanius the Orthodox kept among that nation. Soon, however, I inspected with my own eyes the commentary of the same Ludolf on the Ethiopian history, where on p. 340, ten liturgies of the Ethiopians are named: the third of which is [that] of Saint Epiphanius the Orthodox. We have, therefore, three legitimate witnesses of the Epiphanian writing: Saint Sophronius, the Ethiopian liturgy, and the Greek Vatican codex. (For concerning the text and the Ethiopian codices in our possession, more, as I hope, will be said elsewhere.) The Vatican codex begins, after the above-written title, thus: *Ὁ Θεὸς, ὁ Θεὸς ἡμῶν, ὁ ὑποδείξας ἡμῖν τὸ μέγα τοῦτο μυστήριον, σὺ ἱκάνωσον ἡμᾶς προσενεγκεῖν σοι θυσίαν προηγιασμένην, εἰς δόξαν σου, καὶ μονογενοῦς σου Υἱοῦ, καὶ Πνεύματός σου τοῦ ἁγίου* · Deus, Deus noster, qui hoc nobis magnum mysterium ostendisti, tu nos fac idoneos ad offerendum tibi præsanctificatum sacrificium, ob tui gloriam, et unigeniti Filii tui, et Spiritus tui sancti.
IV. What remained to be done, the title now having been confirmed, was to compare the little work of the liturgy of the Pre-sanctified itself with the editions which were in my possession, that is, the D Venetian from the Hellenic press of the year 1839; likewise with the Roman [edition] of the same year in Greek and Arabic; and again with another Roman in Greek of the year 1754; and finally with that one which
Goar has inserted this into the Euchologium: and I have discovered that, except for the order and minor parts, the Vatican codex agrees with the printed editions; this solemn concord of the liturgies was pointed out to us long ago by Allatius in his former dissertation, chap. 20, in these words: "But do all celebrate the liturgy with the same rite with which it was celebrated of old? If you consider the thing itself, and the substance of the sacrifice, it is certain that for all who celebrate in the Greek rite, the same one thing has been uniform: but as for the prayers and those things which are provided for the adornment of the sacrifice, just as happened in the complete Mass, it is not alien to what is likely that, not only in that same age but at various different times, many things were changed in accordance with the opportunity of the matter." And the same Allatius in chap. 4: "I also observe this, that the liturgy of the Presanctified was not one and the same among all, but varied according to the variety of the Churches and times." In the Epiphanian [liturgy], indeed, that beginning which we have ascribed differs from the published liturgies. The prayers also for kings, the army, the bishop, and the rest of the ministers of the Church seemed to vary somewhat. The prayer, however, which begins: *Ὁ Θεὸς ὁ ἐπισκεψάμενος* (O God who has visited), accords with the Nazianzen liturgy that we have in Assemani, *Cod. lit.*, vol. VII, p. 87. I shall say no more; for I believe I have sufficiently explained the contents of the Vatican codex.
V. It remains for us to see whether there is any argument from the known books of Epiphanius to vindicate this liturgy for him, or otherwise. In *Heresy* 79, 3, Epiphanius says that the apostles, among whom was James, were A *μυστηρίων ἀρχηγέτας*, that is, if it is rightly understood, the founders of the divine liturgy. What follows from this? Behold, Assemani, *Cod. lit.*, vol. V, pref., pp. 26, 55, 57, from this saying of Epiphanius, divines that the liturgy of St. James also pertained to Cyprus. Why? Because, forsooth, Cyprus, in Assemani's age, was subject partly to the Syrian patriarchs and partly also to the Franciscan custodian of the Holy Sepulchre; he, improperly transferring things of the present time to those of old, thought that the Jerusalem liturgy had flourished in Cyprus as well: an argument which would weaken the point that Epiphanius, the Cypriot archbishop, had instituted his own liturgy, whether complete or perhaps a particular one, of the sort that this Presanctified liturgy is. Yet Assemani was not ignorant that the province of Cyprus was formerly *ἀκέφαλον* (acephalous), that is, of its own right, not subject to the ordination of any foreign archbishop or patriarch. Therefore, Assemani seems to be foisting the Jerusalem liturgy onto the ancient Cypriots in vain. There is a narrative in his Greek *Life* (ed. Petav., vol. II, p. 351) chap. 38, not indeed about Epiphanius writing, but about his celebrating the liturgy, where the biographer says that Epiphanius was never accustomed to complete the oblation in the Mass until he had seen a vision, *ὀπτασίαν*. A thing truly B wondrous, and worthy of a holy man! A similar example is read concerning another bishop in John Moschus, chap. 150, and likewise in the *Lives of the Fathers* according to Rosweyd, book 1, p. 199, where St. Basil is said to have celebrated Mass surrounded by very bright light and angels, as is also to be seen in the paintings we have recently described. And indeed in the fifth icon, where an archangel drives the devil away from the mystery and temple of the Mass, although the inscription denotes nothing but the devil lying in wait for the pious bystanders, I nevertheless think the expulsion of the possessed is specifically signified, whom Dionysius, *Eccl. hierarch.*, chap. 3, narrates were accustomed to be removed from the sight of the sacrament and excluded from the church along with catechumens and penitents. Finally, I say that all those icons were painted according to a certain vision and mystical allegory, by which heaven is coupled with earth—that is, Christ is represented in the priest, and the lesser ministers are represented in the angels, or are mingled with them, by a happy phantasy of art and doctrine of theology. But let this be the end, especially since those paintings do not at all pertain to the codex or liturgy of Epiphanius; concerning which it C seems that enough of our words have already flowed; and we judge that the evidence of others should rather be awaited.
OF SAINT EPIPHANIUS: PRAYER AND EXORCISM FOR CASTING OUT AN UNCLEAN SPIRIT.
[Fragments.]
(Iriarte, *Catalog. cod. Græc. Matrit.*, p. 423.)
The prayer begins: *Ἐπικαλούμεθά σε, Θεὲ παντοκράτορ Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστὲ οὐράνιε βασιλεῦ· ἐπικαλούμεθά σε τὸν ποιήσαντα τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν.* (We call upon Thee, God almighty, Lord Jesus Christ, heavenly King; we call upon Thee who created the heaven and the earth.) The exorcism, however, begins: *Ἐξορκίζω σε, πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον, κατὰ τοῦ λόγου Θεοῦ τοῦ ποιήσαντος τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν.* (I exorcise thee, unclean spirit, by the word of God who created the heaven and the earth.) It ends: *φοβήθητι τὸν ἀναβαλλόμενον φῶς ὡς ἱμάτιον· τὸν μόνον ἔχοντα ἀθανασίαν καὶ φῶς ἀπρόσιτον· ᾧ ἡ δόξα καὶ τὸ κράτος εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας. Ἀμήν.* (Fear Him who covers Himself with light as with a garment; who alone possesses immortality and light inaccessible; to Him be the glory and the power unto the ages. Amen.)
This prayer and exorcism are absent both from the editions of the Works of St. Epiphanius and from Goar's *Euchologium*. Nevertheless, Fabricius, *Biblioth. Græc.*, vol. VIII, page 95, praises the Baroccian codex VIII, in which adjurations or exorcisms of this kind by Epiphanius and other Holy Fathers are read. Which is not a light argument that this one D of St. Epiphanius and others by other Fathers are still lurking in some manuscripts in the libraries.
APPENDIX OF DISSERTATIONS. ON THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE ROMAN EMPERORS.
(Cf. n. 57, on the book *De Mensuris*, col. 258.)A "Then the Emperors of the Romans." The list of Roman emperors which follows is more corrected than the other one which he published in the *Ancoratus*, no. 60; yet it is not sufficiently accurate in every respect. Wherefore we believe we shall be doing a useful work if we inquire more diligently into the individual years of the emperors, which indeed contain some matter for question. For this seems necessary both for illustrating Epiphanius and for establishing Roman history; especially since there are very many things in them that merit greater trust and study from chronologists.
"Augustus, 56 years." Concerning the years in which Augustus reigned, there has been very full discussion at *Haer.* 51. He enumerated only sixty-six here; beyond which Eusebius adds six months. The beginning is from the year of the City 711, that is, the next year after the murder of Julius. For Josephus, who reckoned from the very year of the Julian murder, gives Augustus 57 years, 6 months, 11 days.
"Of whom in the fortieth." In the 41st year of Caesar Augustus, Epiphanius, with Eusebius, believes Christ to have been brought into the light, of the Julian period 4712, the 44th year of the Julian [count], nearly two years before the common birth of Christ. For he reckons Him born on the 6th of January. On which [see] at *Haer.* 51.
"Tiberius, 23 years." Eusebius assigns 23 solid years to Tiberius, and our author follows him: not without error. I would say that here, and in Augustus, they sought a round number, were it not that in many other cases they had added months and days; which, therefore, ought not to have been omitted in the case of Tiberius. Augustus died in the consulship of the two Sexti, in the Dionysian year 14, of the Julian period 4727, on the 14th of the Kalends of September, as Suetonius says. But Tiberius died on the 16th of the Kalends of April, in the consulship of Cn. Acerronius Proculus and C. Pontius, in the Dionysian year 37, of the Julian period 4750. The interval is 22 years, 209 days, which is almost 7 months. That is the time of the Tiberian empire. Nor does Dio rightly write that he reigned more than 22 years, 6 months, and as many days. For 209 days, with those B current months and days, can be equaled neither in the Julian form, nor in the lunar, nor in the Egyptian.
"Claudius, 13 years." And yet Eusebius, besides 13 years, adds 9 months, 28 days. Dio assigns 13 years, 6 months, 20 days. Claudius died, as Suetonius is the authority, in the consulship of Asinius Marcellus and Acilius Aviola, on the Ides of October. From the 8th of the Kalends of February of the 41st Dionysian year, when Claudius began his reign, to the 13th of October of the year 54, into which the consulship of Asinius Marcellus and Aviola falls, the full years intervening are 12, with 262 days, or 8 Julian months and 20 days: which Dio correctly totals.
"Nero, 13 years." Eusebius attributes 13 years, 6 months, 28 days to Nero; Dio, 13 years, 8 months. The beginning of Nero is the 14th of October of the Dionysian year 54; from which, if thirteen years and eight months are reckoned, they end in approximately the 13th of June of the Dionysian year 68.
C "Caius, 3 years." Eusebius attributes three years to him, with 10 months; Dio, 2 years, 9 months, 28 days; Suetonius, 10 months, 6 days. From the 16th of the Kalends of April, when he began his reign, in the 36th Dionysian year, to the 10th of the Kalends of February of the 41st year, when Caius was killed, the years are 2 solid, with 314 days: or 10 Julian months with 8 days.
"Galba, 7 months." In the *Ancoratus*, he expunged three from the number of emperors, surely not deservedly. The first of whom, Galba, was slaughtered in the seventh month of his reign, as Suetonius and Eusebius report. Dio grants him 9 months and 10 days. Otho died on the 95th day of his reign, on the authority of Suetonius; or, as Dio [says], 90. Vitellius reigned for one year, ten days excepted, says Dio. From the death of Nero, there are gathered two years and five days: which end in the year of Christ 70, approximately the 18th of June. But Vitellius had already long died. It is therefore false that Galba and Vitellius reigned for so long. Suetonius says Vitellius was born in the consulship of Drusus and Norbanus, on the 7th or 24th of September. That is the year of the Julian form 60, of Christ 15. He perished in the 57th year of his age; which also Tacitus confirms. If this is true, his 57th year began in the Julian 116, [the year of] his Christ 72. But the beginning of Vespasian falls in Christ 69, Julian 114, as will be said a little later. Consequently, the history of Dio is truer, who writes that Vitellius died in the 54th year of his age. For in this way his death falls into the year of Christ 69, Julian 114. But the beginnings as well as the endings of those three emperors are very obscure, concerning which it will be treated more clearly elsewhere.
"Vespasian, 9 years." Eusebius, besides just that many years, attributes 11 months and 22 days; nor is Dio far off, who writes that he reigned 10 years, less 6 days. Suetonius reports Vespasian to have been born on the 15th of the Kalends of December, in the consulship of Q. Sulpitius Camerinus and C. Poppaeus Sabinus, five years before...
Augustus departed. This is the ninth year of the Dionysian era. He adds that he lived sixty-nine years, seven months, and seven days. These, calculated from the 17th day of November of the ninth year, end on the 9th of the Kalends of July—or the 23rd of June—the day on which he is said by the A same author to have passed away, in the year of Christ 79, and the 124th of the Julian era. Therefore, Vespasian died in the year of Christ 79. Now, since his first day of empire began to be counted from the Kalends of July, according to the same author, Suetonius, and he completed ten years, with the exception of a few days; if the eleventh year was to begin from the Kalends of July in the year of Christ 79, then the first year of Vespasian began in the year of Christ 69, the 114th of the Julian era, a year and several days after the death of Nero. But Vitellius spent several months after the beginning of Vespasian's reign.
*Titus, two years.* He reigned for two years and two months, and twenty days besides; for he died on the Ides of September, that is, the 13th day of the month; to which the seven remaining days of June of the year 79 being added, they make up twenty days over and above the two years and two months. He died, therefore, in the year of Christ 81, the 126th Julian year. From this the beginning of Domitian takes its rise. However, Eutropius, who calculates eight months and twenty days over the two years, must be corrected.
*Domitian, fifteen years.* This is erroneous, as in Eusebius, regarding the months, for which one should write "five days." For he reigned fifteen years and five days, says Dio. Suetonius and Eutropius narrate that he died in the fifteenth year of his reign. From the 14th of September, the day after Titus had departed, to the 14th of the Kalends of October—that is, to the 18th of September, the day on which Domitian was killed—there are six days, excluding the day of his death. It is necessary that it run over by just so many days beyond the solid years, not by more months or days. But Scaliger, in book V of *De emendatione temporum*, contrary to the common opinion of all, thinks that Domitian reigned only fourteen years and five days, and judges those who decide otherwise to be less than prudent. But he himself acts with little prudence indeed. For it cannot be denied that Domitian completed fifteen years and tasted a few days of the sixteenth; or even by Scaliger's own authority. For he was killed in the consulship of C. Valens and Antistius Vetus, by the testimony of Eutropius and Xiphilinus, as D even Scaliger asserts in his notes on Eusebius. The consulship of these men falls in the year of the City, by Varronian calculation, 849, of the Julian period 4809, of Christ 96, the 141st Julian year, in the cycle of the moon 11. From the year of Christ 81, and the 14th day of September, to the 18th of September of the year 96, there are fifteen years and five days.
Moreover, Scaliger errs when, on page 476, he accuses Josephus, who at the end of his *Antiquities* says he was born in the first year of Gaius; and that he completed his work in the twelfth year of Domitian, at the age of fifty-six. But he himself thinks that Josephus stated one year too few, and that he ought to have counted fifty-seven years. In this he is mistaken. For Gaius began his reign in the year of Christ 37, on the 24th of January; but the thirteenth year of Domitian began in the year of Christ 93, from the 14th day of September. Let us imagine Josephus to have been born in that same year of Christ 37, in the month of December, or A in the year 38, beginning in January, when Gaius was still in his first year, and his own 56th year would begin from the month of December of the year 92, after the beginning of the 13th year of Domitian. Wherefore, that he finished his writing in the month of October of the year 93, it happened in the 56th year of his life, and the 13th of Domitian. Let Scaliger go now with that epiphonema of his: *Thus, by daily endangering the reliability of our method, we detect the errors of others.*
B *At this time.* Epiphanius spoke very narrowly when he said that the destruction of Jerusalem happened in the time of Titus. Which can be excused in some way, if he meant it broadly, at this time—that is, under these emperors—that it happened, namely, under Vespasian; for it was in the second year of Vespasian that Jerusalem was ravaged by Titus, as among others Josephus clearly affirms in book VI, chapter 27. The other part, which follows, excludes all excuse: namely, that that disaster happened after the year of the Passion of the Lord 65, with several days added. But Eusebius in his *Chronicle* says that forty years had elapsed from the fifteenth year of Tiberius and the beginning of the evangelical preaching; though in book II of his *History*, chapter 7, he speaks of exactly forty years from the Passion of the Lord. Scaliger in his *Eusebian Annotations* interpolated this passage in vain; and after he intruded certain words into the Eusebian context, which might express a false opinion, he turned his style against Eusebius, as if he were the author of it. For writing in that book concerning the Jerusalem disaster, he says: *These things it would be right to add, which might serve as proof of the benevolence of the all-good providence, putting off the destruction that was to overtake them for forty full years after the crime committed against Christ.* These things are rightly to be added; from which the kindness of that most excellent providence appears, which delayed their destruction for forty whole years after the crime committed against Christ. Scaliger suspects there is a blunder here, and indeed a very ancient one, which is even recognized by Rufinus. For after *forty full years*, he wishes *is* (there are) to be missing, so that Eusebius might have written that forty-eight years had flowed by from the Passion. Then he says, *One must be a very novice in Hellenism not to see that a number is missing in that gap which we have left.* But I say he must be a very knave who would attribute his own errors to ancient writers against their will and protest, for what is the need of this depravation? He affirms that this disaster was delayed for forty full years from the Passion. In which he is most consistent with himself. In the *Chronicle*, and in book I of the *History*, chapter 10, Eusebius judges that Christ was baptized in the 15th year of Tiberius, and suffered in the 18th. The 32nd year of Christ is assigned to the 18th year of Tiberius. But the destruction of Jerusalem is compared in the Eusebian *Chronicle* to the 2nd year of Vespasian, with the year of Christ 71. Subtracting 32 years from 71, there remain 39. Therefore, in the 40th year from the Passion, according to the mind of Eusebius, Jerusalem was destroyed. And so Clement of Alexandria, in book I of the *Stromata*, who assigns the Passion to the 15th year of Tiberius, thinks that the capture occurred forty-two years and three months later. Epiphanius, as was shown in his 51st heresy, conferred the Passion to that year in which Tiberius...
V and Sejanus were consuls: who responds 31. Since, therefore, the city was destroyed in the 70th Dionysian year, the year of the Passion is the fortieth from the destruction. Epiphanius must therefore be corrected when he said that sixty-five years had elapsed: a number that can be obtained from neither the Nativity nor the Passion. As regards the month and day on which the temple and the city itself were destroyed: Scaliger, in book v of *De emendatione*, determined that the temple was burned on the 10th of August, and the city on the 6th of September, and furthermore, in that same year, the 14th of Nisan, or Passover, fell on the 14th of April; a fact over which he marvelously triumphs because it is accommodated to his method. But all these things are full of hallucinations and dreams. For in that he cites Josephus A as a witness to Nisan, he errs not inconsiderably. For in book v of the *Jewish War*, chapter 11, he writes thus: "When the war had ceased for a short time outside, the sedition was again stirred up within, and on the day of the feast of Unleavened Bread, on the fourteenth day of the month Xanthicus, on which the Jews believe they were first delivered from the Egyptians." He says the day of Unleavened Bread began on Nisan, the day on which they had once been delivered from Egyptian servitude. Rufinus, the corruptor of Josephus, in book vi, chapter 4, rendered it the 14th of April; and he imposed this on Scaliger, Calvisius, and others. But there is no one so dull as not to see that Josephus is speaking of a lunar month, not a Julian and fixed one, as he says it happened on the same day on which the Jews formerly migrated from Egypt. But this 14th of Nisan was lunar, or accurate, or civil. Furthermore, even if we imagine that Josephus understood a Julian month, it will by no means be April, but March. For the Macedonian months are used differently by Josephus than by the later Greeks—specifically, the Syromacedonians: there is indeed the same name for both; but the Macedonian months, when they are fixed, precede the Syromacedonian months by one month; as was declared at greater length in heresy 51. Xanthicus is by the usage of the Syromacedonians and Greeks the equivalent of April; Lous of August; but the Macedonian Xanthicus corresponds to March rather than April; Lous to July. Therefore B Nisan in Josephus is compared with Xanthicus, and Lous with Ab: of which the lunar Nisan occupies the greater part of March, and Lous of July. Whether Josephus translated the names of the Macedonian months to fixed and Julian ones is a question for another place and subject. We, however the matter stands, deny that the Xanthicus in Josephus is the Julian April. But the usage of the Greeks and Syromacedonians was a deception to Scaliger, and before him to Rufinus, who established the order of the months differently than the Macedonians. See what we have explained more fully on that place in heresy 51. Wherefore, when Josephus says in book vi, chapter 26, that the temple burned on the 10th day of the month of Lous, I think it pertains to July rather than August, just as when he relates in chapter 47 that the city was overthrown on the 8th of the month of Gorpiaeus, I suspect it corresponds to August rather than September.
The opinions of the Hebrews concerning the year of the destruction of the temple are divergent, which R. Issachar ben Mordecai recounts in his *Computus*. For he writes that he found in various synagogue tables the year noted as 5299 according to the Jewish reckoning, in other places the year of contracts 1849; from the destruction of the temple 1469; in other places the year of contracts 1850, of the destruction 1470; in other places the year of contracts 1851, of the destruction 1472. The author himself thinks the Jewish year 5299 is 1470 from the destruction. Then he adds that from Tishri, which immediately follows the devastation of the temple, the years of *Shemitah* and *Jubilees* are numbered: so that that year, whose Tishri followed the destruction, was the fifteenth of the ninth Jubilee. Subtracting 1470 from the Jewish year 5299 leaves 68. Wherefore, according to his opinion, the Tishri of that year in which the destruction of the city occurred began in the year of Christ 68, and in the following, 69, the temple was overturned, in a Sabbatic year: for the head of that era, from the destruction, matches the Tishri of the 69th Dionysian year, after the temple was demolished. Therefore he errs by one year. Those whom that author writes regarding the Jewish year 5299 as 1469 from the destruction feel more correctly. For having subtracted 1469 years from 5299, 3830 remains; the Tishri of which began in the year of Christ 69, in which year, already inclining toward the seventieth year of Christ, Jerusalem was devastated, in the first year of the *Shemitah*.
Nerva, year 1. Very poorly in the *Ancoratus* it says "four years." Eusebius thus, as in this place, assigns one year and four months; Dio adds nine days; Eutropius eight. From the 18th day of September in the year of Christ 96 to the 6th or 5th of the Kalends of February, or the 27th of January, in the year 98, that time of Nerva intervenes. He died therefore in the year of Christ 98, of the Julian period 4311, in the lunar cycle 4. For Scaliger is deceived, who, because he was hallucinating in consigning the beginning of Nerva and the death of Domitian, committed the same error at the exit of Nerva and the beginning of Trajan. For he writes in book v of *De emendatione temporum* that Nerva died in cycle 3, year of Nabonassar 844, on the new moon of Phamenoth. This is the year of the Julian period 4810; of Christ 97, in the lunar cycle 3. But we have just demonstrated that Domitian was killed in the year of Christ 96, during the consulship of Vetere and Valens, of the Julian period 4809, in the lunar cycle 2. Therefore, since Nerva ruled for no more than one year and four months and nine days, it is necessary that this time ended in the year of Christ 98, in the lunar cycle 4, of the Julian period 4711. C But most absurd is the correction of that same Scaliger, by which he disputes the Onufrian *Fasti*, because they attribute two pairs of consuls to the reign of Nerva: For he says only one pair of consuls is to be placed between the beginning of Nerva and those Kalends of January on which he died. But the *Fasti Siculi* correctly attribute only one pair. The *Fasti* must therefore be corrected. But he himself should surely be corrected instead. Since Nerva began at the end of the year of Christ 96, and died at the beginning of 98, that is, on the 6th of the Kalends of February; two pairs of consuls belong to his reign: namely in the year 97, in which, according to Onufrius and in the *Fasti Siculi*, the consuls are recorded as Nerva III and Virginius Rufus II. Likewise in the year 98, Nerva IV and Trajan II; which year Nerva partook of. Nor do the *Fasti Siculi* dissent, or do anything other than Onufrius, except that... D
A they render Trajan alone as consul for this year: which is to say, since Nerva had held the consulship for a few days, Trajan was left alone in it. Therefore, Scaliger’s *alogistia* is wonderful, as he betrayed himself in such a gross error. But there is a certain observation of Menelaus in Ptolemy, book VII, p. 170, who noted that in the first year of Trajan, the moon at Rome was in conjunction with the Spike (Spica), in the year of Nabonassar 845, Mechir 15, on the following 16th. The time corresponds to the year of the Lord 98, Julian period 4711, January 10, with the 11th following. Since Nerva, therefore, died about January 25; if we say he died in the year of Christ 98, the first year of Trajan had not yet begun at the time of that observation. Wherefore it seems that Trajan began in the year of Christ 97: in the first year of his reign, at its conclusion, January 11, fourteen days before the beginning of the second; for Menelaus observed the conjunction of the moon. Thus Scaliger. Which is a very slight point indeed. For Menelaus reckoned the first year of Trajan from the preceding Kalends of January in the Roman manner, not from the epoch itself precisely.
*Trajanus, 19 years.* Eusebius adds 6 months; Dio 6 months and 15 days: Eutropius concurs. Victor gives almost twenty years. Therefore, since he began in the year of Christ 98, on the VI day before the Kalends of February: he died in the year 117, with the 20th year already begun: of which 6 months and 15 days, from the VI day before the Kalends of February to the IV day before the Ides of August, had already elapsed. For on the next day Hadrian began his reign. Altogether, therefore, Trajan died in the year of Christ 117, of the Julian period 4850, if he reigned for as many years as are commonly counted; not 4829, as Scaliger thinks—in whose work, wrongly and through the fault of the copyists, I believe, the year of Christ 117 is set for 116. For this corresponds to year 4829 of the Julian period.
*After Trajan, Hadrian, 21 years.* It is very strange that chronologists should have dealt so lightly with the explanation of the years and the start of the Emperor Hadrian. Yet I do not know if any emperor’s time presents a greater and more difficult question. Wherefore we must necessarily apply ourselves to it so that, if we cannot remove all controversy, we may at least point it out, while most people either ignore it or are unobservant of it. Therefore Spartianus in *Hadrian* assigns him 21 years and 11 months. Eutropius, 21 years, 10 months, 20 days. But Victor, 20 years, 11 months; Dio the same. Which is truer, and is believed by Casaubon in his Notes on Spartianus. Scaliger, as much in his book V *De emendatione temporum* as in his *Animadversiones* on Eusebius, mixes and perturbs everything. For he considers that Hadrian reigned for 22 years, one month less; in book V *De emendatione temporum*, p. 459, he says he entered his reign in the year of the Julian period 4829 and reigned 21 years and 11 months. These, counted from the Ides of August of the year 4829, end on the VI day before the Ides of July of the year 4850. The year 4829 is Dionysius’s year of Christ 116. But 4850 is 137. Wherefore the B *aprosophia* (incongruity) is clear. For if you count 21 years and 11 months from the 11th day of August of the year of Christ 116, they end on the 10th day of July of the year 138, or the Julian period 4851. In the Eusebian *Animadversiones*, p. 191, the hallucination is greater C as he attempts to establish that Hadrian reigned 21 years, 11 months, according to Xiphilinus. Wherefore, he says, without error we can impute 22 years to him. That about Xiphilinus is false. For he does not attribute 21 years, but only 20. Furthermore, he compares the death of Trajan and the beginning of Hadrian to the year of Christ 117, with Niger and Apronianus as consuls, and the death of Hadrian and the beginning of Antoninus to the year of Christ 137; which he repeats on page 200. In those two years his calculation is entirely adrift. For in the same Julian year in which Hadrian died, he was to start his 20th year after a month: since he reigned 11 months over 21 years. Let us grant, therefore, that he began to reign in the year of Christ 117, in the 11th month, August; the 22nd year, with 21 completed, began in the year of Christ 138, whose 11th month ended on July 10, 139, when Hadrian died, when one month was still lacking to complete 22 years; so that the 23rd, August 11, that is, the Ides, would begin. Wrongly, therefore, is Hadrian’s exit conjectured in the year 137. But he removes greater mockery from such an argument. The year, he says, of Christ 137 is the first of Antoninus, and 138 up to the month of August is the same current year of Antoninus; from which if we subtract 22 years, there will remain the year of Trajan's death, 117 of Christ, with Niger and Apronianus as consuls. In the year of Christ 138 the second year of Antoninus began; but Hadrian died in the year 137: and yet to investigate the beginning of Hadrian, he subtracts twenty-two from the year 138; which should have been done from 157, or rather 356, when his last year is said to have begun. Subtract twenty-three from the years 137 (for Hadrian’s 25th was to be begun in the year 137), 114 will remain. Therefore in the year of Christ 115 Hadrian’s first year began, three years before Trajan's death, which Scaliger himself assigns to the year 117, with Niger and Apronianus as consuls. Than which nothing is more inept. Wherefore Hadrian cannot have reached twenty-three years, less one month: nor did he reign for more than 20 years and 11 months, as Dio and Eutropius affirm: from which all others must be corrected. Moreover, Trajan, with Niger and Apronianus as consuls, departed from the living in the year of Christ 117, in the month of August. Whence the beginning of Hadrian arises from the 11th day before the Ides of August. From which day the estimated 20 years and 11 months end on the 6th day before the Ides of July of the year 138, of the Julian period 4851, in the 6th cycle of the moon. Which itself is also deduced from the years Hadrian lived. For he was born, according to Spartianus, in the consulship of Vespasian VII and Titus V, in the year of the City 829, Julian 121, of Christ 76, of the Julian period 4789, on the 9th day before the Kalends of February. But he lived 62 years, 5 months, and 19 days, as Xiphilinus says. For Spartianus must be corrected, who counts 72 years, when Eutropius and Victor record that he died older than sixty. The 62 years, 5 months, and 19 days, counted from the 9th day before the Kalends of February of the year of Christ 76, fall on the 12th or 10th of July (for Spartianus arrogates only 17 days) of the year 138. Wherefore it is the common opinion of almost everyone that the death of Hadrian falls in the year of Christ 138, of the City 891, in the consulship of Camerinus and Magnus. But to this, in 𝒟
A February, with the year of Christ 158, it is compared. The beginning of this year, therefore, corresponds to the year 137, and thus the first year began in 137. The remaining observations are consistent with these. Wherefore, if the notes of the years are rendered in good faith by Ptolemy or the scribes—of which it is hardly possible to doubt prudently—since he is consistent with himself in so many observations, it is necessary that the beginning of Hadrian be pushed back by one year and cast into the year of Christ 116; and his death, and the beginning of Antoninus, into the year 137. This being established, one year must be deducted from the years of Trajan or Domitian: so that either the former completed only fourteen years, or the latter eighteen full years with the remaining months, while Hadrian completed twenty with eleven months. B It is not that we think something should be taken away from the years of Domitian, but that all should agree remarkably well among themselves, not only regarding his years, but also the consuls under whom he died. Furthermore, it must be seen whether eighteen years with nine months should be ascribed to Trajan: and thus Trajan did not die in the consulship of Niger and Apronianus, in the year of Christ 117, but in that of Aelianus and Vetus, in the year 116. Whence also, in the number of years that Hadrian is said to have lived, one must be cut away; or certainly he was not born in that consulship of Vespasian VII and Titus V, that is, in the year of Christ 76, but in the year preceding: unless perhaps some disturbance occurred in the series of consuls, which is the last resort. On this matter, we appeal to the judgments of learned men and those expert in antiquity.
“From Augustus, then, until Hadrian.” If you subtract the numbers conceived by Epiphanius, you will find 180 years, C with 6 months and 21 days from Augustus; if you set the months at thirty days, even unto the end of Hadrian. We have already determined that the beginning of Augustus, according to the mind of Epiphanius, falls in the third Julian year, 711 of the City by the Varronian calculation, or the second after the slaughter of Julius. This is in the Julian period 4671. The death of Hadrian is commonly conjectured to be in the year of Christ 138, Julian period 4851. From the year 4671 to 4851, therefore, the solid years are reckoned at 180 and some months, such that the hundred and eighty-first year begins in that very year 4851. I wish Epiphanius had indicated from what day he reckoned the beginning of Augustus, so that we might know why he imputed 180 solid years and four months, minus 9 days. Hadrian died D on the 6th day before the Ides of July (July 10th), from which day if you count back three months and 21 days, you will arrive at March 21st; on which day the Council of Nicaea fixed the equinox according to nature (πολιτικῶς) : and this day is the new moon of the first paschal month, which, as is evident from the paschal terms and the mind of Anatolius and other ancients, as we said in *Haer.* LI, is the case. Therefore, it is likely that Epiphanius places the epoch of the empire of Augustus on that day, when he attributes to it more than 180 years and four months minus 9 days.
“So that from the time of the interpretation.” From the seventh year of Ptolemy Philadelphus to the last year of Cleopatra, Epiphanius counted 249 years; although, according to him, they are in truth 259. Again, from Augustus...
to the twelfth year of Hadrian, there are 171 years, 6 months, and 21 days. If you join these to the 259, there will result 430 years, 6 months, and 21 days, provided you count the months of 30 days from the remaining days. It appears, therefore, that from the seventh year of Ptolemy Philadelphus to the end of Cleopatra, not 249, but 259 years are to be imputed. But that calculation A of Epiphanius is wonderful and deeply ignorant, if we wish to accept it as it presents itself; for there are two *emades* [sums/periods], from which the total of 430 years is compiled: the first is from the seventh year of Philadelphus to the last of Cleopatra, of 259 years; the second from the beginning of Augustus to the twelfth of Hadrian, of nearly 171 years. By this reasoning, it is necessary that the first year of Augustus be counted after the last of Cleopatra. Yet the last year of Cleopatra corresponds to the year of the City 724, the sixteenth of the Julian calendar, but the fourteenth of the Emperor Augustus. The Epiphanian calculation in this part, as Lucilius says, is perverse, with the era improperly subtracted. These things should indeed be restored thus: the seventh year of Philadelphus, as we demonstrated above, corresponds to the year of the Julian period 4435; but the twelfth year of Hadrian, 128 of Christ, is year 4841 of the Julian period. From the seventh year of Philadelphus to the twelfth of Hadrian, 406 years are collected. Thus, the calculation of Epiphanius errs by 24 solid years.
*Οὗτος δὲ ὁ Ἀδριανός*. Athanasius says the same of Aquila: "Under the Emperor Hadrian, the *leptothentos* [wasted away]." For this, Scaliger very absurdly corrects it to *leptothentos* [thinning], although *leptotheis* could barely be said with any elegance for *leptyntheis*. For, as Victor says, Hadrian perished consumed by a wasting disease. See Spartian.
*Οἱ δὲ πολλὰ κεκμηκότες*. Xiphilinus: "He died saying and crying out the common saying, that many physicians have destroyed the king."
*Στέλλεται τὴν πορείαν*. These things are subjoined too abruptly concerning the journey, as if Hadrian undertook it after he fell ill. Therefore, *στέλλεται δέ* [but he sets out] must be added. Hadrian traveled much and for a long time, as is evident from B Spartian, Xiphilinus, and others, and he frequently traversed the East and Syria. This expedition, however, about which Epiphanius here speaks, happened at that time when he restored Jerusalem. When this was done is not easy to discern. For the Jews were not compressed and subdued only once by Hadrian. In the second year of his reign, he crushed them as they were rebelling, as Eusebius writes in his *Chronicle*. The *Alexandrine Chronicle* refers this to year twelve; and adds that at that time Hadrian came to Jerusalem, and having captured the Jews, came to the terebinth, and there established their market; finally, having overthrown the temple, he restored the city and called it Aelia after his own name. These things are partly false, and partly placed at the wrong time. It is false that Hadrian demolished the temple of the Jews, which did not exist anywhere at that time. But the restoration of the city happened long afterwards. The first slaughter of the Jews under Hadrian happened at the beginning of his reign, as Scaliger rightly observes in his *Animadversiones* for the year 2124, when they stirred up the sedition that seems to have been repressed by Turbo. The later, longer, and more horrible movement is referred to the sixteenth year of Hadrian in the Eusebian *Chronicle*. Its author was Cochebas, or Barcochebas, who was a certain brigand. Spartianus says the cause of the war was that they were forbidden to mutilate their genitals; Xiphilinus, following Dio, says it was because when he had restored Jerusalem and named it Aelia, he built a temple of Jupiter in the same place where the temple had once stood. Whence the Jews, gravely moved, stirred up a fierce war under the leader, as has been said, Barcocheba, which Justin C testifies in his *Apology*. Eusebius, however, writes that an end was put to this in the eighteenth year of Hadrian, which he also narrates in Book IV of his *Ecclesiastical History*, chapter 6, from Aristo of Pella. Yet Aristo had written that the war *akmasai* [flourished/was at its peak] in that eighteenth year of Hadrian’s reign. Therefore, Scaliger thinks it ceased at the end of Hadrian’s reign, and could not have been terminated in the eighteenth year. But that reasoning is futile and very weak; for the force of the war could have pressed into the final year when Hadrian besieged Bether: which, having been brought into his power, and the leaders of the faction having been killed, the whole war was extinguished. I said that the restoration of Jerusalem, in the opinion of some, was later than that Jewish sedition, but that Dio wrote it happened before. If it happened before the Jews were compressed and defeated, this is under the sixteenth year of Hadrian, when it is the year of Christ 132 or 133; from the destruction of the city, which happened in the second year of Vespasian, year of Christ 70, there are nearly 63 years. And there will be two or three more if Hadrian rebuilt the city after the war had ended. Wherefore the number of Epiphanius, who collects 47 years from that destruction, is not sufficiently accurate. Although he thinks it was not in the second year of Vespasian, but of Titus, that the city was stormed, and from him to that time when Hadrian rebuilt it, or when he came to the place itself—which could have preceded the sixteenth year by some years—there can be found more or less 46 years.
*Ἦν κατέστρεψε Τίτος*. False, that it happened under Titus, for that happened while D Vespasian was reigning.
*Καὶ εὗρε τὴν πόλιν πᾶσαν*. Most of the ancient Fathers deny that Jerusalem was utterly destroyed by Titus; but they say that the middle part of the city survived the destruction, which Hadrian later leveled to the ground. Therefore, they assert that it was destroyed twice. Thus Eusebius in Book VIII of *Demonstratio Evangelica*, chapter 18, Jerome, and others, whom Scaliger cites and refutes at the year 2140 of Eusebius. These same men narrate that this second calamity of the city fell upon it after that Jewish sedition stirred up by Cocheba, and he himself having been killed, and that only then was the city utterly destroyed, and Aelia raised from its ruins. For my part, I wholly assent to Dio, who affirms that Aelia was founded by Hadrian before that Jewish movement, and on whose occasion he reports that the Jews rebelled when he had built a temple of Jupiter Capitolinus there. Nor can I approve of the assertion that the middle part of the city survived that former destruction. It cannot, however, be denied that some small remnants persisted until Hadrian’s time; which is too much...
A rigidly asserted by Scaliger. He also refutes Epiphanius, who says that some buildings and synagogues remained along with the temples of the Christians. For he opposes that prophecy of Christ the Lord: *There shall not be left one stone upon another* (Matt. xxiv, 2). Indeed Josephus himself, in book vi, chapter 18, writes that three towers were left by Titus along with the western part of the wall, so that they might serve as a camp for the guards. Hence, those words of Christ do not seem to be taken so rigidly that not even a small part of the city remained, but that it was for the most part razed to the ground and leveled, or at any rate that the outcome of that prophecy also embraces the times of Hadrian. Therefore it happened little by little that, in part, the Jews and, in part, the Christians established homes either in that surviving part of the city or in some nearby place. All these things, together with the remains of the ancient Jerusalem, were demolished by Hadrian, and he built a new city from the foundations: not, however, on the same footprint where the former had stood, but, as often happens in the restoration of cities, not far from the old site. Hence it is that Hilary, on Ps. cxxxi and cxlvi, Athanasius in his book *On the Incarnation of the Word*, and certain others say that Jerusalem did not exist at their own time: for because the new city was built by Hadrian not in the same spot where the former had been situated, they denied that Jerusalem survived. The words of Hilary must be carefully attended to: *But that the faith of events teaches that it is the same today.* It is not the same, he says, because it was situated at some distance from the old site. Gregory the Great favors this interpretation in homily 39, where he explains these same words of the Lord in this way: "This also which is added: *'They shall not leave in thee a stone upon stone'* (Luke xix, 44), is testified to by the very migration of the city itself. For since it is now built in that place where the Lord had been crucified outside the gate, that former Jerusalem, it is said, has been utterly destroyed."
C *And having taken this Aquila.* All these things seem fabulous and fabricated by idle Jews. Especially because he says Aquila was the D *pentheros* (father-in-law) of Hadrian. Since this word has not been read by me elsewhere, it signifies either *pentheron* (father-in-law) or a son of a *pentherou*, certainly a relative by marriage. We have rendered it "father-in-law," as if *pentheron* were read, just as I suspect the writer of the Alexandrian Chronicle read it here. For on page 598, referring to the history of Aquila to the Pontiff from this passage of Epiphanius, he says: *'Akulas* was known, who was the *pentheros* of Hadrian the King. Jerome mentions Aquila in various places, especially against Rufinus, apol. 2, and elsewhere he calls him a contentious proselyte, and one who chases after etymologies of names, otherwise a diligent and curious translator. And in chapter viii of Isaiah, he writes in the opinion of some that this man was a disciple of Akiba, yet he does not signify that he preceded the times of Christ, as some assert from that passage of Jerome.
*And seven synagogues.* Optatus of Milevis seems to speak of these in book iii, where he deals with Sion: On whose summit, he says, is a not-large plain; where there were seven synagogues; where the Jewish people could gather and learn the law given through Moses.
Antoninus nicknamed Pius. Eusebius assigns 22 years and 3 months; Victor 23, Eutropius and Cassiodorus 21, Onufrius 22, 7 months, 26 days. He lived, however, to the year of the City 914, M. Aurelius Verus being consul for the third time, and L. Verus for the first, as Onufrius gathers from inscriptions and ancient coins. This is the year of Christ 161, in which indeed, on the Nones of March, as the same man proves, Antoninus Pius passed away. If, therefore, you have drawn the beginning of Antoninus from the year 158, as is commonly done, to the year we have said, 161, on the 7th of March; there are 21 complete years, 6 months, and about 28 days. But from the observations of Ptolemy it must necessarily be confessed that Antoninus began in the year of Christ 137, December 16. If he counts the second year of Antoninus in the year of Christ 138, December 16, and carried it through to May 17, of the year 139. Yet in September of the year 139 he counts the third year of Antoninus. Therefore it cannot be that the first year of Christ began in 137, contrary to the faith of all chronologists. Other observations, to which he has appended the years of Hadrian, also agree, so that a fair suspicion can exist for no one concerning the fault of the librarians, or the hallucination of Ptolemy himself. Who would not be moved by the authority of so great a man and so excellent a writer, who, when he was putting forth these things, could not have been ignorant of what year of Hadrian or Antoninus it was: especially with his death still recent, and that of the latter being at the beginning, namely in the year 158, which they commonly predicate as the beginning of Antoninus, in which indeed, December 16, Ptolemy counts the second of Antoninus. Thus Pius ruled for 23 years, 7 months, 28 days. Which is perhaps true: for Xiphilinus also assigns him 24 years. Antoninus was born, as Capitolinus says, when Domitian was consul for the 10th time and Dolabella for the 1st, on the 13th day before the Kalends of October; this year is 86 of Christ. But how many he lived the disagreement of the writers makes doubtful. Capitolinus attributes 70, Victor 72, Eutropius one more: Cassiodorus 77. From the year of Christ 86 and the 12th day before the Kalends of October to the Nones of March of the year 161, 74 years, 5 months, and 19 days intervene. Antoninus Pius lived just as long, if, as it seems, he died in the year of Christ 161. If it were a matter for us only of the years of Antoninus, Ptolemy's observations could somehow be reconciled with the common opinion, so that we might say that the beginning of the years was computed by him from the preceding new moon, Thoth. For just as the Hebrews teach in the Treatise *Rosh Hashanah*, when any king enters upon his empire in the last month, and thus on the last day of Adar, he is considered to be in the second year of his empire upon the new moon of Nisan; to which this opinion of theirs pertains, which Aben Ezra refers to in chapter 1 of Dan. *A day for a year is reckoned*; since the beginning of the previous years is derived from the preceding Nisan. Thus, it might perhaps not be absurdly thought that Ptolemy reckoned the year, for example, the second of Antoninus, and thus the first, from the new moon of Thoth, which is the epoch of that year.
A Indeed, it begins on the 6th of the Ides of July, or July 10, in the year 138, as is commonly thought. The new moon of Thoth in the same year began on July 20, being 11 days from the epoch of Antoninus. Since those 11 days precede the new moon of Thoth, they are considered as a full year. Hence, the second year of Antoninus will begin to be reckoned at the beginning of Thoth on July 20. Wherefore it would not be a wonder that it is compared by Ptolemy with that year, which is the year of Christ 158, December 16, as the second of Antoninus. But this conjecture, that it in no way disagrees with the years of Antoninus, cannot accommodate the times of Hadrian. For the epoch of his new moon of Thoth is later, from the 4th of the Ides of August, or August 10, in the 117th year of the Dionysian era, in which the first year of Hadrian is believed to have begun. The new moon of Thoth corresponds to July 24, being 16 days before the beginning of Hadrian. And yet, in the year of Christ 152, September 26, it is placed in the 17th year of Hadrian, and continues to the following May 6. Therefore, the first year, whether reckoned from the new moon of Thoth or from the epoch itself, began in the year of Christ 116; and all chronologies that have hitherto brought it to 117 must be corrected. I would say this not so much for the sake of affirming it, as to stimulate the studies of learned men, that if anything more suitable occurs to them, they may impart it to us candidly and kindly. Scaliger, in *Animadversiones in Eusebium* at the year 2154, brings the first year of Antoninus, on the authority of Censorinus, to that year B which had as consuls Antoninus Pius II and Bruttius Praesens; which he says is the year of Christ 158; a part of which, he says, with a part of the preceding, completes the first year of Antoninus. Hence he criticizes Onuphrius, because he composes that year with the year of Christ 140, a metachronism of two years. But in those few words Scaliger makes many errors. First, Censorinus nowhere said that the first year of Antoninus falls in those consulships. For these are his words on page 48: "When, 100 years ago from the imperator Antoninus Pius II and Bruttius Praesens as consuls, there were at Rome the same days on the 12th of the Kalends of August, etc." By which he signifies the 100th year from that when he was writing, namely, it is the year of Christ 258, of the building of the City 991, with Ulpius and Pontianus as consuls, having had Antoninus and Praesens as consuls. But this year was the year of Christ 139, from which the other 100th year of Censorinus is the year of Christ 238. This is Scaliger's second error; for the consulship of Antoninus and Praesens is brought to the year of the City according to the Varronian reckoning, which Onuphrius expressed, as 892; from the Capitoline Fasti, 891. Scaliger professes to follow the Varronian, according to which the first Palilia are conjectured to be in the year of the Julian period 3961. Whence that year of the City is 4852 of the Julian period, in the cycle of the moon 8, of the sun 8. Which characteristics apply to no other year than the year of Christ 139. That year 139 is therefore the one in which Antoninus II and Bruttius Praesens were consuls. Moreover, Onuphrius, who unwittingly advances the Dionysian era by one year in the years of Christ (for he attributes the birth of Christ to the consulship of Augustus XIII and Silanus), counts that same year as 140, which is only 139 from the Dionysian epoch. But in the *Annales*, he errs by a two-year prochronism, 141 of Christ it is considered. Of which perturbation of years we have said enough ad *haer*. 51. Concerning the third fallacy of Scaliger, we have warned above, when he attributes to Hadrian 21 years and 11 months, and yet brings his death to the year of Christ 137, in which he also records the first of Antoninus to have begun. For in this way, the first of Antoninus will correspond to the year of Christ 115. Which is a huge [παρεγχείρημα]. *He is followed by Caracallus.* These things are very corrupted. Nor do I know whether these words, "Caracallus, who is also Geta," should be rejected, so that the text may proceed: *He is followed by Marcus Aurelius, who was also called Verus.* On page 174, a slightly clearer and more sincere succession of emperors is proposed: where we also set forth another conjecture regarding this place; for what is read here, that M. Aurelius reigned for seven years, is most false; and yet, lest the fault be transferred to the librarian, the error is immediately confirmed when it is said that Lucius Aurelius Commodus reigned for seven years as well. *In his times, also Lucius.* He does not mean Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius, who succeeded his parent, but Lucius Ceionius Aelius Commodus. But Antoninus, the son of Lucius Aelius Verus, who being adopted by Hadrian, was called the first Caesar, and died before Hadrian. His son was the first elevated by Hadrian to the hope of the empire with M. Aurelius, and reigned after Antoninus for 11 years. This Capitolinus (writes). Wrongly, therefore, are seven years attributed to him as well as to M. Aurelius. Hence it is that on page 174, in the series of the other emperors, two Commodi are placed. Which matter, as will be said shortly, gave Epiphanius the occasion for the error. C *In the times of Severus.* Of which Severus, finally? Of him whom he shortly before subjected to Pertinax? But Theodotio, whom he thinks posterior to Symmachus, wrote his edition under Commodus. But Commodus is prior to Severus. How, then, did Symmachus precede Theodotio? This has deservedly seemed wonderful and inextricable to many; nor must we so much seek a defense or cloak for the error of Epiphanius, as we must extract and investigate that very thing. For no one heretofore, of the many writers whom this passage of Epiphanius has vehemently exercised, has touched the very lair of the error: which, unless we are mistaken, we have finally sniffed out. It was agreed for Epiphanius that Symmachus existed before Theodotio; and likewise that Theodotio wrote under Severus, and Symmachus under Commodus. Since these things are incongruous and conflict with history, he observed that there were first two Commodi, one the colleague of M. Aurelius, who reigned commonly with him; the other the son, who succeeded his father Aurelius. Of these Commodi, he knew the latter to be the one under whom the edition of Theodotion had appeared. Therefore, he did not doubt that Severus had existed before him. Accordingly, he believed there were two Severi. And therefore on page 174, "After him," he says, that is M. Aurelius, "another Commodus reigns." Then of Severus: "He is followed by D
A a second." And at no. 17 it says that Theodotion published his work during the reign of the second Commodus, who succeeded the prior Commodus. Since, according to the mind of Epiphanius, there are two Commodi and an equal number of Severi, the former of these preceded the latter Commodus. Therefore, it is either M. Aurelius Verus or Lucius Commodus Verus. It cannot be the latter, because Severus the former is distinguished as much from both Commodi as from the later Severus. There is, therefore, no other than M. Aurelius Verus. Σοῦρος, I say, instead of Οὐῆρος, by which name this philosopher is called by Epiphanius. Indeed, traces of a corrupt reading demonstrate this a little earlier: "who was also called Marcus Aurelius Sourus." For which, at the margin, we have written to read Oueros. But now I would prefer Seueros: nor will he who has attentively weighed what I have said think that Epiphanius intended anything else. Nor did Epiphanius alone commit this error, of taking Severus for Verus; but others did as well, both Greeks B and Latins: many Greeks, indeed. Of the Latins, truly, Cassiodorus, under the consulship of Severus and Herennianus, adds these things: "In the eleventh year of the reign of these consuls, Lucius Annius Antoninus Severus perished by apoplexy between Concordia and Altinum." Since the former Severus, according to the opinion of Epiphanius, is M. Aurelius, and not he who succeeded Pertinax and Julian, it is apparent that Symmachus, who is placed by Epiphanius under that former Severus, is by no means to be referred to the times of the later Severus—which is what everyone hitherto has thought, who have also said that Epiphanius speaks inconsistently, and have thought that Symmachus was later than Theodotion for no other reason than that Epiphanius had reported that Theodotion interpreted under Commodus, and Symmachus under Severus. But I indeed cannot deny that Epiphanius errs, who has wrongly used Severus for Verus: but I defend that he is consistent with himself, and constant in his error: having erred, however, in one thing besides, namely that on page 172, when after Pertinax and Severus he added these words: "In the times of Severus, a certain Symmachus, etc.," he did not sufficiently express which Severus he was speaking of, since he had commemorated two, and he appeared not undeservedly to have understood the later one, to whom he subjoined these things immediately.
Let us recall our mind from this hallucination of Epiphanius to the common opinion concerning the age of both interpreters. For this opinion has already become inveterate among all the moderns: that Symmachus existed after Theodotion. Concerning which, it is a long time that I have been doubting: for I see no other argument for this presumption than that testimony of Epiphanius, by which he taught that Symmachus wrote under Severus, and Theodotion under Commodus. But with this now extorted, on what finally, relying on C what, will they fight that Theodotion is more ancient? But on the contrary, more things persuade me that the edition of Symmachus is earlier. In the first place, that order which Origen established in the codices: in which after Aquila, Symmachus is perpetually placed before Theodotion. Which, unless he were older, Origen would have no cause to arrange thus. For concerning the LXX Elders, whom it is agreed were the most ancient of all, the reason is provided by Epiphanius why they were cast into a strange place: that their interpretation, as being the rule for the others, occupied the middle place by right, so that the others could be more conveniently compared with it. Why, therefore, Symmachus was placed before Theodotion, no other cause can even be imagined, except that the latter preceded in age. For that which pleases some, that the seat was given to the later one after Theodotion, so that he might be near to the LXX Elders in order just as in the manner of interpreting, is trifling, nay, it is ridiculous. For since both of them surrounded the principal edition of the LXX Elders like guards and attendants, it made no difference at all to their proximity as to which side the edition of Theodotion was conferred upon. D The ancients seem to have noticed this, who in commemorating those interpreters place Symmachus before Theodotion, and rarely Theodotion before Symmachus. Nor do they call them by that order only when they use their testimonies taken from the codices of Origen, but then also when they explain the narrated events of each one individually. For in the first place, they set down the LXX Interpreters, under whom they add Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. Thus Athanasius in his *Synopsis* affirms that Symmachus was earlier: whose edition he relates to have existed 56 years after the version of Aquila. If, as is the statement of Epiphanius, the interpretation of Aquila came forth in the 12th year of Hadrian, which is the year of Christ 128, or close to it, the 56th year from that falls in the year approximately 184, the fourth or fifth year of Commodus. But the same author of the *Synopsis* wrongly reports that it was edited under Severus. For immediately subjoining Theodotion, he says, "He also interpreted under the king Commodus in the same time." At the same time, he too interpreted under Commodus. Therefore, not one under Severus. Thus, on account of the neglect of exotic history, the most holy Fathers generally entangle themselves in inextricable snares: Epiphanius, finally, from whom the Alexandrian *Chronicon* and the moderns have drawn the sole and singular cornerstone of the contrary opinion, openly and without ambiguity confirms that Symmachus existed *prior* to Theodotion, and that the latter wrote under Commodus, the former under Verus, that is, M. Aurelius: whom he calls Severus in vain, and who led the author of that *Synopsis*, or the appendix of the *Synopsis*, which is attributed to Athanasius, to do the same. For this fragment is by no means, as I opine, of Athanasius, but of another writer, who, describing these things from Epiphanius, just as he did, used Severus for Verus. Wherefore, that which they commonly report—that Symmachus published under Severus, the successor of Pertinax—insofar as they assert that from Epiphanius, let all from now on change their opinion, and, if they desire to follow this author, let them move it back to the times of Marcus Aurelius Verus. Cedrenus writes that Symmachus, by the faith of Eusebius, was in the time of Pertinax. Which I have not yet found in Eusebius; for in
book VI of his History, chapter 12, and in book VII of his Demonstration, chapter 2, he explains who Symmachus was, but says not a word about his era. There is, however, to speak candidly, something that causes a difficulty in asserting the antiquity of Symmachus: namely, that Irenæus, who flourished in the time of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, and also at the beginning of Severus, in book III, chapter 24, when he discourses against the Jews concerning that place in Isaiah, chapter VII, 14, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive," makes mention of the interpretations of Theodotion and Aquila, who had interpreted it differently, but not of Symmachus. Yet he, no less than those two, had rendered it "young woman" instead of "virgin," as Eusebius testifies in book VII of his Demonstration. Therefore, if his edition had existed at that time, it was used by the Ebionites, among whose sect Symmachus was, and it ought to have been refuted by Irenæus. Let the learned consider this. For we cannot yet settle on a consensus.
A "The thing more grievous than these" (Τὸ δὲ ἔτι τούτων χαλεπώτερον). See Cornelius Celsus, book V, chapter 25. In the book of Maccabees, chapter 1, Menelaus and Tobias brought foreskins upon themselves, which Jerome, in chapter LII of Isaiah, did not believe could be done.
"And having been encompassed with adhesives" (Καὶ κολλητικοῖς περιοδευθέντες). Perhaps it should be "circumscribed/bound" (περιδεθέντες). Though the other may be tolerated, it speaks of plasters with which that part is glued. See Celsus.
"After this, close upon his heels" (Μετὰ τοῦτον δὲ κατὰ πόδας). Indeed, Theodotion existed before him, not a Pontic but an Ephesian, as he is called by Athanasius, and what is the main point, by Irenæus, book I, chapter 24.
"Which afterwards in the voices/languages" (Ἅτινα εἰς ὕστερον ἐν τοῖς φωνῶν). Origen mixed the translation of Theodotion into the edition of the LXX Elders, distinguishing the whole work with an asterisk and an obelus, while either making those things shine forth which were previously lacking, or slaying and stabbing those things which were superfluous. So writes Jerome, Preface to the Pentateuch. See also epistle 89 to Augustine.
B "As many as indeed from the Jews" (Ὅσοι γὰρ ἀπὸ τῶν Ἰουδαίων). Augustine reports the contrary in book I against Cresconius, chapter 31: "Could a circumcised man among the Samaritans, if he then wished to become a Jew, be circumcised again? Would not the error of that man be corrected, but the seal of faith be approved as having been recognized? And now there are some heretics who call themselves Nazarenes, but are called by some Symmachians, and they have the circumcision of the Jews and the baptism of the Christians; and by this, just as if any of them comes to the Jews, he cannot be circumcised again, so when he comes to us, he ought not to be re-baptized." Philastrius also makes mention of the Symmachians. But I think they were named by someone other than this interpreter. Indeed, it is not unworthy of observation that, as far as circumcision pertains, it had been permitted by the laws of the old emperors only to the Jews, and forbidden to others, even to the Samaritans. Regarding which matter, there is a remarkable passage in Origen, book II against Celsus, page 69: "But perhaps someone may say that the Samaritans are also persecuted on account of their own piety. To such people we shall reply: The Sicarii are put to death on account of circumcision, as mutilators against the laws and the license granted only to the Jews." Let someone say: Even the Samaritans endure persecution for their own religion. To whom we reply thus: Sicarii are subjected to the penalty of death on account of circumcision, as though mutilators contrary to the laws and the privilege granted only to the Jews. C Accordingly, the Samaritans are subjected to punishment as sicarii, as are also the mutilators of males. Modestinus, the jurist: It is permitted to Jews by the rescript of the divine Pius to circumcise only their sons; if anyone not of the same religion does this, the penalty for castration is imposed. That it was not lawful even for physicians to castrate is declared by Justin Martyr, Apology 2, by the example of a Christian who, in order to refute the rumor of promiscuous intercourse spread by the Gentiles against the Christians, offered a petition to Felix, the prefect of Egypt, by which he might be granted the power to be castrated: "For the physicians there said that it was forbidden to do this without the permission of the governor." Indeed, the Jews were also sometimes forbidden to mutilate the genitals. Spartianus, on Hadrian: "They set in motion at that time both the Jews' war, because they were forbidden to mutilate their genitals."
D "After Antoninus Pius" (Μετὰ Ἀντωνῖνον τὸν Πίον). We saw above that Epiphanius calls this man Severus instead of Verus. Hence on page 172 he is called M. Aurelius Souros: that is, Seuros, as I suppose. Although he is often rightly named Verus by Epiphanius. Eusebius assigns to him, besides nineteen years, a month: Eutropius and Victor assign eighteen years. He was born in the year of the consulship of Verus II and Augur, 5th of the Kalends of March, as Capitolinus says. That year is the year 121 of Christ. He lived 68 years, 8 months, 20 days, as Xiphilinus says. For he died on the 16th of the Kalends of April, by the same author, in the consulship of Præsens and Gordianus, in the Dionysian year 180. He reigned, therefore, for 19 full years, and 11 days besides.
"After him, another Commodus" (Μετὰ τοῦτον Κόμμοδος ἄλλος). He said "another" to distinguish him from the former, who was Marcus Aurelius's colleague; under whom he erroneously thinks Theodotion's edition appeared. Xiphilinus gives Commodus 12 years, 9 months, 14 days. Victor and Eutropius 12 years, 7 months. He was killed on the day before the Kalends of January, in the consulship of Commodus VII and Pertinax, in the Dionysian year 192. He reigned, therefore, 12 years, 8 months, 14 days.
"Him this Commodus succeeds" (Κόμμοδον τοῦτον διαδέχεται). It is false that he reigned for 6 months. For he did not complete even the third. Eutropius [gives him] 80 days, Dio 87: Victor attributes two fewer.
"This man is succeeded by another Severus" (Τοῦτον διαδέχεται Σενῆρος ἄλλος). He bypassed Julian. We have explained the reason why he calls him another Severus. Dio defines the time of his reign [as] 17 years, 8 months, 3 days. But Epiphanius shares this time with his son Antoninus Caracalla. In this, the logic escapes him: for Caracalla was named Augustus by his father in the consulship of Saturninus and Gallus, in about the 6th year of Severus. Severus died in the consulship of Gentianus and Bassus, in the year of Christ 211.
"After the death of Severus" (Τελευτήσαντος δὲ Σευήρου). Severus had two sons, Antoninus Caracalla and Geta. Epiphanius believes the former completed 18 years with his father; [and] the latter succeeded both. Which is most false: for neither did Geta have the name Caracalla, and the next year after his father's death, by his brother...
[to be read in the sense of Geta, the brother of Caracalla, who was killed by him]. Caracalla indeed, following the testimony of Dio, reigned A six years, eleven months, and five days. He died during the consulship of Praesens and Extricatus, in the Dionysian year 217. *In his seventh year.* See Eusebius, Book VI. The interpreter of Athanasius believed *pithois* [lit. "in the jars"] to be the proper name of a town. *Caracalla is succeeded by.* He omitted Macrinus, whom he had placed in the *Ancoratus*. He [Macrinus] reigned after Caracalla for one year and nearly eleven months. The pseudo-Antoninus Alagabalus succeeded him. Eusebius assigns four years to him; Eutropius assigns eleven years and eight months; Victor, in the *Caesares*, assigns thirty months; in the *Epitome* [he assigns] the same as Eutropius. But Lampridius writes that he reigned for nearly three years. Herodian, most liberal of all, assigns six years to him. *After him, Alexander reigned.* B He was killed on the 6th of the Ides of March by the soldiers, during the consulship of Alagabalus himself (the fourth time) and Alexander Caesar. Nor can there be any doubt about the year. For it is noble for its significant mark: namely, that on the first year of Alexander, as Hippolytus testifies in his *Paschal Canon*, the fourteenth of the Paschal cycle fell on the Ides of April, a Saturday: therefore, it was the seventh year of the solar cycle, the 14th of the lunar, in the Dionysian year 222, with F as the Sunday letter. Onufrius makes this the year 223 of Christ, on account of the Dionysian epoch being anticipated by one year; others say 224. Their metachronism, detected by this mark, deserves correction. Alexander reigned 13 years and 9 days, says Lampridius; Eutropius and also Victor agree. Herodian alone assigns 14 years; which indicates that the fourteenth year had already begun to be counted. He died therefore in the year of Christ 235, during the consulship of Severus and Quintianus. *At Nicopolis by Actium.* Incorrectly in Athanasius, *by the northern [Nicopolis]*. Whence the interpreter [wrote]: Northern Nicopolis. Read *by Actium*. C 1001 from the foundation of the City, in the consulship of Philippus III and Philippus the son II, not in the consulship of Aemilianus and Aquilinus, as Cassiodorus writes. That year is 248 of Christ, not 249, as it is in the *Annales*. Where a double error is made. First, that the secular games are said to have been celebrated while the thousandth year was passing; [whereas] they were performed when Philippus father and son were consuls, with the thousandth year already completed—that is, at the beginning of 1001; [which was] the consulship of Philippus father (III) and son (II), as ancient coins bear witness, which Onufrius—and indeed the *Annales* themselves, which is surprising—represent. Next, because they think that the thousandth year of the City itself coincides with the year of Christ 249. For if the discourse is about the Dionysian years of Christ, as it truly is, they confuse the accounts with that customary two-year metachronism. For the thousandth year of the City, according to the Varronian calculation, which the *Annales* follow, corresponds to the Dionysian year of Christ 247. This is manifest from those things which have been annotated sporadically in these *Animadversiones*: and among other things, from that excellent passage of Censorinus on page 47, where he writes that that year, in which Ulpius and Pontianus were consuls, and in which the one thousand and fourteenth year from the first Olympiad had begun from the summer days, was the nine hundred and ninety-first from the foundation of the City by the Parilia; but [the] Julian [year] was 283. D That cannot be any other year than 238 Dionysian, with an 11-year lunar cycle and a 23-year solar cycle, as is gathered from the comparison of the Olympiad, Julian, Nabonassar, and other years. Therefore, since the year of the City 991 has an 11-year lunar cycle, the first Varronian year of the City, which Censorinus embraces, falls into the 10-year lunar cycle and the 11-year solar [cycle]. Consequently, the thousandth year from the foundation of the City requires the 1st lunar cycle and 4th solar: which correspond to Christ's year 247. Therefore, that is the thousandth from the foundation of the City according to the opinion of Varro. For the year 249 obtains the [blank in original] lunar and 6th solar cycles. These things being thus established, those who attribute 5 years to the Philippi, since their beginning is marked by the consulship of Peregrinus and Aemilianus, which is the Dionysian year of Christ 244, attribute their death to [the time of] the consuls Aemilianus and Aquilinus, which is 1002 of the City, 249 of Christ. So Onufrius: who counts this same [event] as 250 of Christ, on account of the established anticipation of the years of Christ, about which we have often spoken. But those seven years that it pleased [the historians] to say he reigned... they think these Philippi died when the Decii were both consuls, as is in Cassiodorus, who calls the son Decius Etruscus. And that is the year of the City 1004, as Orosius recorded, 251 of Christ Dionysian. But the ancient inscription, which asserts that the Philippi were killed in the year of Christ 253, and which is referred to in the *Annales*, is without doubt vain and supposititious, and therefore deservedly omitted by Onufrius, if he even saw it. For the method of counting years derived from the Nativity of Christ is not so ancient that I should omit the fact that that inscription differs from the Dionysian method by two full years. *Decius succeeded him.* Eutropius assigns two full years to Decius, as does Victor in the *Caesares*.
In the *Epitome*, however, he says he reigned for thirty months; Cassiodorus says two years and four months; Epiphanius, following the *Chronicon* of Eusebius, says one year and three months.
"In the times of Decius." Under the Emperor Gallus, Origen died, being in his sixty-ninth year; this is the account of Eusebius (Book VII, ch. 1) and of Jerome in the *Catalogus*. Wherefore, what Epiphanius says, that he flourished from the time of Decius to Gallus and Volusianus, describes too narrow a space, since those emperors reigned for no more than two years and four months. For this reason, he should have said "Severus" instead of Decius, for it was under that emperor that Origen was held in high esteem. See Eusebius, Book VII, ch. 3. But as to Epiphanius’s writing that Origen outlived the reign of Gallus and Volusianus, Eusebius protests against this, for he expressly testifies that Origen departed this life during the reign of Gallus. Concerning this matter, we have spoken in *Heresy* 64.
"And Fabian at Rome." Concerning Fabian and Alexander, see Eusebius, Book VI, ch. 22.
"And Origen himself." Origen suffered many things for the name of Christ at various times. First under Severus, when, being sought for death many times, he escaped with difficulty. Regarding this, see Eusebius, Book VI, ch. 3. Then under Alexander; and thereafter under Decius: in which persecution we rightfully conjecture his lapse occurred.
"Having found [the books] of the fifth and sixth." No one has handed down more accurately than Epiphanius what the *Tetrapla*, *Hexapla*, and *Octapla* of Origen were. Because of this, all who have explained the nature of those volumes have drawn from his fountain; and yet, the majority of them have blundered greatly in this very clear passage of Epiphanius. Especially, however, Marianus Victorinus, who edited Jerome. In his annotations to Book I of the *Apology against Rufinus* (no. 63), he believes that Origen’s *Hexapla* was composed of six Greek editions, namely: the Seventy Elders, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, the Fifth, and the Sixth. He argues against Erasmus, who held a different view, by the authority—as he asserts—of Epiphanius. At this I am greatly surprised. For Epiphanius does not obscurely indicate what kind of editions these were, both here and in the *Heresy* of the Origenists (which is 64, no. 3), but here most especially. From this passage, we have proposed the order of the individual editions in a three-fold classification of codices in the following diagram.
ORIGEN’S TETRAPLA
[Table omitted: includes Aquila, Symmachus, Septuaginta, Theodotio]HEXAPLA
[Table omitted: includes Hebraica propriis litteris, Hebraica Graecis litteris conscripta, Aquila, Symmachus, Septuaginta, Theodotio]OCTAPLA
[Table omitted: includes Hebraica propriis litteris, Hebraica Graecis litteris conscripta, Aquila, Symmachus, Septuaginta, Theodotio, V editio, VI editio]Hence, the error of those is further refuted who, in the *Tetrapla*, attribute the first column to the Seventy Elders, whom Epiphanius so expressly states were placed in the third position. But Eusebius (Book VI, ch. 17), concerning the *Hexapla* of the Psalms, after the well-known and standard four editions, says: "Not only the fifth, but also the sixth and seventh translation having been set alongside, it was noted once again that they were found in Jericho in a jar during the times of Antoninus, the son of Severus." Therefore, there were seven editions in the *Hexapla*, so that they were not *Hexapla* but *Heptapla*. But what was that seventh? Was it Greek, or Hebrew? There were no Greek editions in the *Octapla* beyond six. If he means Hebrew, then Origen did not join *heptaplam* (the seventh) there, but rather an eighth, namely, that same Hebrew rendered in Greek letters. In the *Hexapla*, however, he did not exhibit six Greek editions, but only four. Therefore, the passage of Eusebius is strange, and if I am not mistaken, faulty. I judge, therefore, that this "and the seventh" must be deleted. Although I even find it translated from Eusebius in the Greek manuscript of the Imperial Library of Vienna, according to Nicephorus. Furthermore, I would believe that "in the fifth" is also faulty; for it, I suggest restoring: "In the fifth." For the fifth edition was found in a jar at Jericho, to which only that title had been prefixed. B Furthermore, it is worthy of consideration what Eusebius adds after those words: "Gathering all these into one, and dividing them into columns, and setting them opposite one another, along with the Hebrew itself as a clarification, he left behind for us the copies of what we call the *Hexapla*." From these words, it might be conjectured that if the reading "the seventh" is indeed sound, it is the Hebrew written in its own letters, to which the *semeiōsis*—that is, the same Hebrew expressed in Greek letters—was added. But the *Octapla* already existed, not the *Hexapla*. Or was the name of the *Hexapla* applied to the *Octapla* themselves, in so far as they consisted of six Greek editions? Indeed, Epiphanius (Heresy 64 of the Origenists, no. 3) seems to teach this very thing, besides Eusebius. C For he says that besides the six Greek editions, the *Hexapla* held two Hebrew ones, "so that the entire Old Testament would be called *Hexapla*, on account of the two Hebrew renderings." Read this passage more attentively. For he seems to accommodate the name of *Hexapla* even to the *Octapla* themselves, and indeed in the whole of the Old Testament, whereas Eusebius testifies to this only regarding the Psalter.
"After Gallus and Volusianus." Others generally assign them two years. Eutropius, Victor, etc. Eusebius adds four months in the *Chronicon*. In the *Historia*, however, not even two full years. But in the *Annals*—
A of A. 256, n. 35, four years are imputed, from old coins: on which is read "tribunician power IV" of Trebonianus Gallus. This tribunician power used to be multiplied as many times as the years since he succeeded to the empire, as Dio testifies. But if a biennium must be added to Gallus and Volusianus, this must be shared with Valerian and Gallienus: which it is strange that historians have concealed. Nor am I unaware how fallacious that conjecture usually is which is taken from the number of imperial years based on tribunician power, which are displayed on marbles or coins, as will be shown below regarding Tacitus and Carus. Decius was extinguished in the year of Christ 252, from which the beginning of Gallus and Volusianus arises.
*He reigned as Valerian*. Eusebius attributes fifteen years in the *Chronicon* and in the *Historia*: in which he has nearly all others as supporters; for they grant six or seven years to Valerian, and six or nine to Gallienus alone. The beginning of Valerian and Gallienus corresponds to the year of Christ 254; the end to the year 268. For Gallienus reached the fifteenth year. Epiphanius says three years less.
*In the ninth year then of this one*. Old chronologers assign the Manichaean infestation to various years. Our author here indeed writes that the collation of Archelaus with Manes occurred in the ninth year of Gallienus. But in the heresy of the Manichaeans, in about the fourth year of Aurelian. Commonly [dated to] the consulship of Probus and Paulinus, as we have argued more broadly in the same place.
*After Valerian and Gallienus*. These are from Eusebius. Most [assign] two years: which Baronius demonstrates to have been completed, such that he entered the third. Nor would I strongly disagree. Claudius began in the year of Christ 268, around the 10th of the Kalends of April, as Trebellius indicates. He ceased in the year 270.
*After this one, Probus reigned*. The years of the emperor Probus must be weighed a little more accurately. For in them, as it were, a certain axis of Christian chronology turns; and thus, having been reached at last in the books of the *Annals*, the series of years is brought back from error into the path after a long interval. It has been understood up to now from those things, especially which we proposed concerning the year of the Nativity of Christ to heresy 51, that many authors of *Annals*, in comparing the years of Christ with Roman or Greek history, have slipped by a biennium; others by only one year. Which happened to them for this reason, because they thought the Christian era, which corresponds to the year 4 of the 194th Olympiad, and indeed to the year 753 of the City by [Varro’s] calculation, ought to be drawn back to the second or third year of that same Olympiad, or the year 751 or 752 of the City. Hence, a metachronism B of one or two years befell these imprudent men; which is detected without any difficulty from the method of celestial observations and cycles. But since some are partly ignorant of this teaching, and partly even despise it, and the Fasti of the Consuls of those times—which are greatly uncertain and corrupted, and dissent from one another—provide a most convenient hiding place for either error or ignorance, the error was not recognized until some notable and illustrious epoch was reached, which would close a certain and defined interval. Of such a kind is the beginning of Diocletian, which corresponds to the 284th year of the Dionysian era. Then of Valentinian; whom it is established started in a bissextile year, that is, 364. Since, therefore, from that beginning which they had set for themselves, namely from the second year of the 194th Olympiad—lunar cycle XVIII, solar VII—the beginning of Diocletian, to which lunar cycle XIX, solar XII corresponds, should have had 286 years between them, or one fewer, from the third year of the same Olympiad—lunar cycle XIX, solar VII—so that they could reconcile their chronology with the Dionysian era, so that indeed the first year of Diocletian would fall in the 284th year of his Christian era; they removed one or another year, and as many pairs of consulships; which, as we said, in that dregs of the Roman empire they were able to do with impunity on account of the perturbations of the *Annals*. And the emperor Probus easily sustained this loss D and defect of years; concerning the time of whose reign there is some dissension among the primary authors: for Vopiscus attributes to him only five years; others six or seven; that is, six full years and four months. Thus Eutropius, Victor, Eusebius and from Eusebius our author; Julian in the *Caesars*, Cassiodorus, and nearly all others, except for Vopiscus alone. For which reason those who had hitherto advanced their *Annals* by one year or a biennium, by subtracting as many from the reign of Probus, henceforth made things equal with the Dionysian era. The emperor Augustus died in the consulship of the two Sexti, as Suetonius and Dio are witnesses. But the consulship of these, as well as the death of Augustus, corresponds to the 59th Julian year, the 14th of the Dionysian era: as the solar eclipse indicates, which happened at the time of his death.
*Aurelian succeeds this one*. Beyond Eusebius, Eutropius, Victor, Cassiodorus, etc., agree on this number of years. Only the author of the *Annals* attributes six years; because on an old coin the tribunician power VII is affixed. But nevertheless, I do not yet regret the common opinion. Aurelian began in the year 270, in the month of February, that is, the 10th of the Kalends of March, as Onuphrius reports from Vopiscus; he died in the year 275, at almost the same time; for after his death there was an interregnum of six months, on the authority of Vopiscus and Victor, until the 7th of the Kalends of October, at which time Tacitus was substituted by the senate. Thus he lightly touched the sixth year of his reign. Ancient inscriptions report no more than five tribunician powers.
*After this one, Tacitus reigned*. He began those six months from the 6th of the Kalends of October of the year 275, and extended them to April of the year 276. But in the inscriptions of Gruter, page 277, there exists one which arrogates two tribunician powers to Tacitus. Therefore, the time of the empire is not to be estimated from the number of the tribunician power. And it appears, unless Tacitus obtained the tribunician power before the empire, that this was doubled for him at the beginning of the Julian year, and in his ninth consulship, such that the earlier tribunician power occupied only three months; whether this was done in other cases, I do not yet dare to affirm. Indeed, the repetition of this power was not perpetually
A fixed, but by others sixty are posited. Wherefore, in this place two pairs of consuls, in that place only one are struck out. As this is very certainly established, so it is difficult to determine which consuls specifically are missing, given the vast discrepancy in the Fasti. For the sake of testing, however, we shall excerpt a series of some consuls from various Fasti. We shall lead their beginning from those consuls under whom, after Gallienus was killed,16 Claudius succeeded, as it seems to Onuphrius, namely the consuls Ovinius Paternus II and Marinianus. In the first and fourth columns we shall place the Onuphrian and Baronius consuls, and in the middle two, we shall append those excerpted from Cassiodorus and the Siculus Fasti.
A TABLE OF CERTAIN CONSULSHIPS EXCERPTED FROM VARIOUS FASTI.
[TABLE OMITTED]
B reached: where two pairs of consuls having been removed, they agree with the common era. And indeed, Onuphrius believes Probus and Paulinus were suffect consuls; Baronius, Probus and Lupus. Both pairs are exhibited partly by the Siculus [Fasti] and partly by Cassiodorus. Another pair seems to be that of the Emperor Probus and Scorpianus: which consulship most people distinguish from the others. But where it ought to be inserted, I do not believe should be anxiously inquired into in this place. This one thing I will warn: I by no means approve that which I see in certain Annals placing the consulship of Tacitus II and Aemilianus after the two of the Emperor Probus. More correctly, I opine, in the Siculus and Onuphrian Fasti all the consulships of Probus precede. For it is not credible that Probus held a consulship twice before the Emperor Tacitus.
A His authority is added, which Vopiscus signifies with these words: "Thus the empire of the whole world was delivered to him without any trouble by the judgment of both the soldiers and the senate." Then, that is an argument, which not far from Italy, namely in Illyricum, as Victor says, he was created by the soldiers. Wherefore in a few days this could be signified to the senate. B *After him reigned Carus.* Rightly do both he and Eusebius, as well as Orosius, impute two years to the three emperors: that is, from the beginning of Carus to the beginning of Diocletian. Yet these are not complete, but the second begins with a few months. In the *Ecclesiastical Annals* the death of the Emperor Probus is noted in the year of Christ 283, under the consuls Carus and Carinus; and in the same year Carus began with his sons Carinus and Numerianus. But the end of Carus is referred to the year of Christ 284, under the consuls Carinus II and Numerianus II. In which year also, Numerianus being slain, Diocletian was substituted by the soldiers, on the very Palilia, as is proved from the *Panegyric*. But it follows from this that Carus hardly reigned for three or four months; a fact which conflicts with history. The Emperor Probus, as was declared a little before, entered upon the empire about the month of July; and he died in the fourth month after his sixth year, in the month of November; whence Carus began, on the 4th of the Nones of November, as Onuphrius is the author. From the 4th of the Nones of November of the year 283 unto the 11th of the Kalends of May, or the Palilia of the following year, when Diocletian began, there are 5 months and almost 20 days. These must be taken from the reign of Carus and Numerianus. Thus Carus reigned for very few months. And yet even Numerianus himself, after the slaughter of Carus, for some time held the empire with his brother Carinus, as will be shown a little later.
It is necessary, therefore, to set the beginning of Carus in the year of Christ 282. Upon his death, in the year 283, uncertain in which month, and perhaps already declining, Numerianus and Carinus presided over the empire for several months. In an ancient inscription, the tribunician power is attributed twice to Carus, in Gruter, pages 277 and 278. For three [inscriptions] indicate the former tribunician power: IMP. CAES. AUG. CARO. PIO. FEL. INVICTO. PONT. MAX. TR. POT. P. P. PROCOS. Other [inscriptions] assign the second tribunician power to the same person. Which thing both restricts the observation of the *Annals* and confirms our conjecture, by which we have shown that the tribunician power was occasionally renewed on the Kalends of January. For D Carus did not obtain that [power] before his empire: since the prior tribunician power, as is evident from the stones, already fell to him as Augustus and emperor. And yet it is hardly the case that he reached a year. Nay, if there is any faith in the *Annals*, he reigned for very few months. There remains another knot, which Scaliger implies but does not untie, in *Animadvers. Euseb.* at the year 2299. For Numerianus is reported to have been slain a little after his father's death by the snares of his father-in-law. How therefore, he asks, will those things stand, which the same Vopiscus says of Carinus: "Most memorable, both of Carinus and of Numerianus, is that they held the empire, in that they gave the Roman games adorned with new spectacles"? How could both of them give those games, when Numerianus [was in the] Euphrates province...
could he have stayed on for a few days after his father’s death? Thus, I assume that A those games were given by Carinus alone. Moreover, Olympius Nemesianus says that his *Cynegetica* was written for Carinus when his father Carus was already dead, as he himself indicates in his verses. He also signifies that he wrote these same things while Numerianus was alive. Thus Scaliger. From these things I suspect that Numerianus survived for a few months after the death of Carus, up until April of the year 284, during which interval he held the empire with his brother; and so those very famous games were exhibited in the name of both, even if one was absent. Although even if Numerianus had lived only a very few days after the slaughter of Carus, it could have happened that both things occurred—that the games fell on those very days and were given by both, and that Nemesianus dedicated his *Cynegetica* to Carinus. Therefore, I do not see what room there could be for such great wonderment. Let the reader choose whichever he prefers: either that Carus began his second year of empire and extended his rule from November of the year 282 to January or February of the year 284, with the games actually being proclaimed in the approaching spring—say, in March—or that Carus was slain already in the passing year 283, and Numerianus ruled for several months. Finally, Carinus survived for a year or two after the death of his parent and brother; and he was killed by Diocletian, as Onufrio thinks, in the consulship of Diocletian and Aristobulus. Others assign this to the following year, in the consulship of Maximus and Aquilinus.
*After him, Diocletian.* There is nothing more illustrious, nothing more distinguished, than the era or beginning of Diocletian, from which the ancient Christians were accustomed to compute their times before the Dionysian era excluded it. And yet, it is incredible to say how much Scaliger struggled with it, and how perplexedly and confusedly he wrote about it, so much so that he does not even seem to have understood what he was saying. For in three places—that is, in Book V *De emendatione temporum*, in his *Eusebian Animadversions*, and finally in Book I of his *Isagoge canonica*—he designated three different times and brought forward things to illustrate that epoch which would leave a reader more uncertain than before.
For first, in book V *De emendatione*, page 466, he casts the beginning of Diocletian into the year of Christ 287. But he adds other things that seem to be B in agreement with this sentiment: the Julian period 3961, lunar cycle IX; but the year of Christ 287 is Julian period 5000, lunar cycle III. From the year 3961 to 5000 there are no more than 1040 years, so that the one thousand and fortieth began from the Parilia of the year of the Julian period 5000, Christ 287. Therefore this was not 1041. Furthermore, it is not true that the Varronian year of the City 1041 concurs with the second year of the 265th Olympiad. The year of the City 1041 is Julian period 5001, and it began in the year of Christ 288, in which the third year of the 266th Olympiad ended and the fourth began. Since, according to Scaliger’s opinion, the first year of Iphitus falls in the year of the Julian period 3958, 1062—that is, the second year of the 266th Olympiad—began in the year of the Julian period 4999. Eusebius, however, in the edition of Scaliger himself—both Latin and Greek—aligns the first year of Diocletian with the first year of the 266th Olympiad, not the second. Therefore, there are many errors of the man here. And those which he committed in his *Eusebian Animadversions* regarding the year 2301 are neither fewer nor lighter. For when Eusebius had fixed the beginning of Diocletian to the year of Abraham 2301, the first year of the 266th Olympiad, he writes that there is a metachronism of one year if we count from the Calends of January, and more if account is taken of the Diocletian era from the 19th of August, number 2500. For from there is the beginning of the year of the *paschalion* of the Egyptian Christians. But the Greek and Latin Churches began the years of Diocletian from March of the number 2301, in the consulship of Maximus II and Aquilinus. But the Egyptians [began] from the 29th of August of the Eusebian number 2300, in the consulship of Diocletian II and Aristobulus. Soon he subjoins these things: “Certainly according to Dionysius and the custom of the Latin Church, there are 284 completed years from the Incarnation to the first year of the Diocletian golden number; and the year 285 is the first of Diocletian from March.” These things are most confused. Eusebius apportions the first year of Diocletian to the year of Abraham 2501. “But,” he says, “there is a metachronism of one year if we count from the Calends of January, and more if from the 29th of August.” Therefore, according to the Romans, who begin from the Calends of January, the beginning of Diocletian would square with the Eusebian number 2300. But according to the Egyptians, who begin from Toth, or the 29th of August, it will C correspond to the number [1]299. Therefore, the Latin and Greek Churches, which began from March of the number 2301, do not seem to be contrary. Orosius, he says, writes that in the year of the City 1041, Diocletian was made emperor. This is to say, the year of the City 1041 began from those Varronian Parilia from which Diocletian began his empire. Therefore, that Varronian year falls on the 20th day of April, of the year of Christ 287, of the Julian period 5000, and of the second year of the 266th Olympiad, lunar cycle III, solar cycle XVI. Wherefore Eusebius writes things consistent with this, alongside the second year of the same, in the 266th Olympiad, and Bede in Book I of his *Ecclesiastical History*, chapter 6, where he says that Diocletian was elected by the army in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 286. These are roughly the things Scaliger says. Which, regarding the beginning of Diocletian, are not only false, as will be said a little later, but even contrary to themselves. For the first year of the founding of the city, from the opinion of Varro and Scaliger, is Julian period 3961, lunar cycle IX; the year of Christ 287 is Julian period 5000, lunar cycle III. From the year 3961 to 5000 there are not more than 1040 years, so that the 1040th year began from the Parilia of the year of the Julian period 5000, Christ 287. Thus it was not 1041. Furthermore, it is not true that the Varronian year of the City 1041 coincides with the second year of the 265th Olympiad. The year of the City 1041 is Julian period 5001, and it began in the year of Christ 288, in which the third year of the 266th Olympiad ended and the fourth began. Since, from Scaliger’s opinion, the first year of Iphitus fell in the year of the Julian period 3958, 1062—that is, the second year of the 266th Olympiad—began in the year of the Julian period 4999. But Eusebius aligns the first year of Diocletian with the first year of the 266th Olympiad, not the second, in the edition of Scaliger itself, both Latin and Greek. Here, therefore, there are many errors of the man. Nor are the things which he committed in the *Eusebian Animadversions* to the year 2301 fewer or lighter. For when Eusebius had fixed the beginning of Diocletian to the year of Abraham 2301, the first year of the 266th Olympiad, he writes that there is a metachronism of one year if we calculate from the Calends of January, and more, if regard is had for the ratio of the Diocletian era, from the 19th of August, number 2500. For from there is the beginning of the year of the *paschalion* of the Egyptian Christians. But the Greek and Latin Churches began the years of Diocletian from March of the number 2301, in the consulship of Maximus II and Aquilinus. But the Egyptians from the 29th of August of the Eusebian number 2300, when Diocletian was a second time consul with Aristobulus. Soon he appends these things: "Certainly according to Dionysius and the custom of the Latin Church, there are 284 absolute years from the Incarnation to the first year of the Diocletian golden number; and the year 285 is the first of Diocletian from March." These things are most disturbed. Eusebius compares the first year of Diocletian to the year of Abraham 2501. "There is, however," he says, "a metachronism of one year if we count from the Calends of January: and more, if from the 29th of August. Therefore, according to the Romans, who begin from the Calends of January, the beginning of Diocletian would coincide with the Eusebian number 2300. But according to the Egyptians, who begin from Toth, or the 29th of August, it will agree with the number 1299. Therefore the Latin and Greek Churches from March of the number 2301 do not seem to be contrary: [others] follow, D which Scaliger does not think; but on the contrary, he corrects this very metachronism from the epoch of the Greeks and Latins. Then to the number 2301 in Eusebius is ascribed the year of Christ 286, with the first year of the 266th Olympiad, and in the consulships of Maximus II and Aquilinus. Where in the year of the Olympiad there is no metachronism, if indeed Eusebius repeats the head of the year from Nisan and the Passover. However, the Eusebian year of Christ is 286, of the Dionysian era 285; since Eusebius confers the Nativity of the Lord into the third year of the 19th Olympiad, and anticipates the Dionysian era by one year. Fourthly, the beginning of Diocletian is correctly attributed to the year 286, that is 285 common: of which the Latins' beginning of Diocletian [is] from January or March
A — because the Egyptians began [their year] several months earlier, that is on August 29, of the Dionysian year 274, or the Eusebian 285. In that same year 285, the first year of the 266th Olympiad began. Errors have been made in the consuls by those who added the consuls (for the books of Jerome do not show the consuls): since the consulship of Mamurinus and Aquilinus corresponds to the Dionysian year 286, which is the Eusebian 287, number 2302, not 2501. But the consulship of Diocletian and Aristobulus corresponds to the Dionysian year of Christ 285, Eusebian 285, and hence number 2501. Finally, the consulship of Carinus II and Numerian is to be attributed to the Dionysian year 284, number 2300: in which year Diocletian began [his reign], with the 19th cycle passing. The Egyptians fixed the epoch of Diocletian at the new moon of Thoth, or the following August 29, at which they began the golden number 1. Wherefore Scaliger teaches things manifestly contrary to himself, when he says both that the Latins count the years of Diocletian from March, number 2301, in the consulship of Maximus and Aquilinus; and a little later asserts that they begin in March of the Dionysian 285, the consulship of Diocletian II and Aristobulus, which is number 2300. The latter is true; the former is false. Just as is that which he added in the same *Animadversio*, that the fourth indiction began in the month of September in the consulship of Diocletian II and Aristobulus, in the year that the new moon fell on the new moon of Thoth of Diocletian, on August 29. This year must be of the Dionysian era 284, Roman cycle 19, in which year the third indiction, not the fourth, began in September. The *Chronicon Alexandrinum* must be corrected, in which it is written that in the consulship of Diocletian II and Aristobulus, the years of Diocletian were arranged in the Paschal cycle according to the fourth indiction. This is B *asystaton* (incoherent). For according to the Egyptians, who begin from August 29 of the year 284, this occurred at the beginning of the third indiction. According to the Latins, from March of the year 285, it is likewise the third. The fourth, however, only began to be counted from the following September. Therefore, the *Chronicon* seems to retract the indiction from September to the preceding March, or else it reckons one year too late: for Diocletian and Aristobulus entered their consulship in the third indiction, in the year of Christ 285, not 286, as the *Chronicon* has it.
Scaliger cites this passage of Ammianus in his *Animadversiones*; and says that the fourth indiction began in the month of September under these consuls, and that the new moon fell on August 29. Which two characteristics cannot fit into the same Julian year. For the third indiction corresponds to September of the year 285, but the new moon of August 29 [corresponds to] the year 284, cycle 19, as we warned a little earlier. But whether he locates those consuls in the year 284 or 285, it is obvious how much he is in error when he later wished in the *Canones Isagogici* to place the beginning of Diocletian in the year 288; that is, the fourth, or truly the fifth year after he was made emperor: for before he held the ordinary consulship with Aristobulus, he had already been acclaimed emperor by the soldiers from the Kalends of January, and that from the Palilia, as Scaliger collects from the Panegyrist, and therefore in the year 284; for Diocletian and Aristobulus fall in the year 285. And then the same is confirmed from an old inscription which is in Gruter, p. 279, in which is read: "Diocletian, twice counsel, and second tribunician power." Wherefore if he entered the consulship in the year of Christ 285, with Aristobulus as colleague, he had already obtained the tribunician power in the previous year. But old inscriptions confuse the common calculation somewhat in the arrangement of these consulships. Of these, the one produced by Baronius joins the second consulship of Diocletian with the tribunician power. The other, which is read in Gruter p. 280, is of this sort: MAXIM. AUG.... N. DIOCLETIANO II COSS. SUB FELICE PROC. AUG. N. THERM. ANTONIANARUM. Commonly, the second consulship of Diocletian is joined with Aristobulus as colleague, as it is in the *Fasti Siculi*. But on the stone, it is with Maximian Augustus. The Siculi, however, compare Diocletian's third consulship with Maximian. Cassiodorus counts the first consulship of Diocletian as the one he held with Aristobulus; the second with Maximian. But according to the view of Cassiodorus, he held both while still a private citizen. In the *Fasti Siculi*, he entered the first consulship with Bassus while still a private citizen. Furthermore, they wish for Maximian to have been made a partner in the empire in the consulship of Maximus and Aquilinus, in the year of Christ 286. C Contradictory to this are those things which are gathered from the stones: for the latter inscription persuades us that Diocletian had Maximian as Augustus already as his colleague in his second consulship. But since in the other inscription it is said that Diocletian was consul for the second time, and [held] tribunician power, these things can only be reconciled if the consulship of Diocletian II and Maximian is placed before D the consulship of Maximus and Aquilinus, in the year of Christ 286; in which year the second year of the tribunician power, just as of the imperial power, was elapsing; and thus Maximian would have obtained the empire in the previous year, or in that same year in which he was made consul. Or certainly in the same year in which Maximus and Aquilinus began the consulship from the Kalends of January; when Diocletian had taken Maximian as his colleague, he entered the consulship equally with him as a suffect consul. And indeed, that must also be considered which the panegyric addressed to the Augusti Maximian and Constantine asserts, that Maximian [was]...
A in the twentieth year, being eight times consul, was held by Rome herself in a kind of embrace. And straightway it adds: "You could not resist the command of that holy parent, and though unwilling, you submitted, and you returned to those vigils and those cares which you had experienced for twenty years."
But the year in which Diocletian and Maximian laid down their empire was 304 of Christ, as Zosimus indicates, B under the consulship of Diocletian IX and Maximian VIII, which the panegyrist also signifies, when Diocletian had barely completed his twentieth year. I ask, therefore, since Maximian began to reign in the third year after Diocletian, and ceased in the same year as he, how it is possible that he reigned for twenty years? They claim that under Maximus and Aquilinus as consuls, that is, in the year of Christ 286, Maximian was adopted by Diocletian as a colleague. From that time to the year 304, when they shed the empire in the month of April, Maximian’s sixteenth year was running, nor are more years attributed to him in the Alexandrian chronicle. But if he began his twentieth year, he must have been co-opted in the year immediately after Diocletian, so that by some anticipation from the Kalends of January of the year 304, his twentieth year is reckoned by the orator. But why do we hem and haw? Behold to you Aurelius Victor, published by our Schottus, who reveals that Diocletian laid aside the care of the state upon completing the twentieth year of his reign, and reluctantly compelled Herculius to do likewise, to whom there was less power in that year. Therefore, Maximian completed nineteen years, just as Diocletian completed twenty; and therefore, he began in the year 285. Yet in the *Epitome* he is said to have reigned for twenty years. It must therefore be examined again and again whether Maximian was adopted in the year of Diocletian and Aristobulus, that is, in the year 285 itself, and entered upon the consulship with Diocletian in the following year. For thus it can be true which ancient stones suggest, that the first consulship of Maximian corresponds with the second of Diocletian, and the second tribunician power of Maximian corresponds with that same consulship; and finally, that the second consulship and the second tribunician power of Diocletian will agree. Indeed, at the beginning of the year of Christ 286, with the second tribunician power of Diocletian running, one of the stones could have been inscribed; the other, however, after the Palilia, when Maximian had already entered his second year of empire and tribunician power, and both were holding the consulship. C We shall adhere to this conjecture for so long, until learned men have thought out something more exploratory and certain, which, as it is difficult in those most turbulent times, so the liberty of conjecturing must be much greater and certainly less offensive. From all these things, the faulty number of Epiphanius is to be corrected, who attributes thirteen years to Diocletian and Maximian. This cannot be ascribed to the fault of the copyists at all; for he partitions the years distinctly in such a way that, after the twelve during which the persecution raged, he reigned for one year before his abdication. But he reigned for twenty whole years; namely, from the Palilia of the year 284 to the Palilia of the year 304. For at the same time that he began, Diocletian laid down his empire, as Onuphrius records. Zosimus D writes in Book II that from the consulship of Chilo and Libo, under whom Severus restored the secular games, and the consulship of Diocletian IX and Maximian VIII, 101 years had flowed. Regarding which games Censorinus writes thus: "The eighth emperors were Septimius and M. Aurelius Antonius, in the year of Chilo and Libo, year 857." Correct this to 957. For they occurred in the year of the City 957, in the twelfth year of Severus, as is evident from an ancient inscription; and thus per Julian epoch 4917, or 204 of the Dionysian era. Wherefore, to the year 304, in which Diocletian and Maximian resigned, there are 101 years. From which it appears sufficiently, as we have often said, that the *Ecclesiastical Annals* have been truncated by two years; for they insert no more than 99 consulships. Whence Zosimus is also wrongly accused of error there. From this point, moreover, the error of Scaliger, refuted above by us, is more validly rebutted: he who fixed the beginning of Diocletian in the year of Christ 287 or 288. Whence his twentieth year ends in 307 or 308, to which year from the twelfth of Severus, or 204 of Christ, there are 104 or 105 years, not 101, as Zosimus wrote, with Scaliger himself approving.
"During which, a mighty persecution." A grave sin has been committed here against the trustworthiness of history. For that persecution which was begun by Diocletian and Maximian, which indeed deserves to be called a "mighty persecution," neither lasted for twelve years, nor was it brought to an end by those emperors: for although for almost their entire reign Christians were treated with cruelty, as Baronius gathers from the Acts of various martyrs, this was, however, a certain skirmish and a rudiment of cruelty, which flared up toward the destruction of the whole Christian name through the death of a few martyrs and especially those from the military order. But the beginning of the more atrocious persecution is attributed in the nineteenth year of Diocletian by Eusebius, *Hist.* Book VIII, ch. 3, when in the month of March an edict was proposed concerning the subversion of the churches. Then another followed concerning the seizing of prelates and forcing them by all machines and tortures to the worship of idols; and thus, little by little, that force of a most foul tempest fell upon all Christians. The reason for all these things was, to Eusebius and other writers, not so hindered that men of even mediocre sharpness could not discern it. But Josephus Scaliger mixed and confused everything in a greater degree, while, connecting errors with errors, he gathers more absurd things from absurd principles. For since, as we have seen, opinion deceived him greatly regarding the epoch of Diocletian, a huge crop of hallucinations overflowed from it into the rest of the intervals which are joined with it. Which the reader will easily understand from us in this place.
In Book V *De emend. temp.*, page 467, chapter *On the persecution of Diocletian*, he placed this as the foundation of his argument: "In the nineteenth year of Diocletian, in the month of March, during the days of Easter, the churches were subverted by the edict of the emperors, according to the witness of Eusebius." From which he argues in this manner: "For Easter to fall in March, it could not happen unless the paschal limit...">
A had been in March. It could not therefore have happened in the first cycle, nor the third; it happened therefore in the second cycle." The paschal limit is March 25 in the year of Christ 305, the first feria, cycle of the sun 6. Wherefore on the same day they celebrated both the fourteenth and the Passover: which did not rarely happen in that time, before the Nicene decree. There is therefore an illustrious passage, by which we prove that before the Nicene canon the A *Pascha anastasimon* coincided with the limit. Then he says there is an error in Eusebius. For it did not happen in the first year of Olymp. 271, which indeed began from the second cycle, but in the same Julian year, from whose summer days the first year of Olymp. 271 began. And so the nineteenth year of Diocletian had not yet begun. For the month was lacking for the *Palilia*, whence comes the beginning of Diocletian. But in the *Animadversiones* for the year 2319, from the fact that the Antiochene year 251 in Eusebius’ *Chronicon* is B placed at the nineteenth of Diocletian, he concludes the year to be the Dionysian year of Christ 303, with golden number 19, cycle of the sun 4. But soon wavering and agitated, because Eusebius writes that this happened in the month of March, and at Easter, he seems to refer it to 304; indeed even to 305. But here, as in most other things, it happened to Scaliger that, by falsely attributing certain things to Eusebius, he might thus fabricate a kind of ghost with which he might join battle; for what he affirms Eusebius to say—that that edict was published in the month of March on the solemn day of Easter—Eusebius never wrote. For his words are these, lib. VIII, cap. 3: "This year was the nineteenth of the reign of Diocletian; the month of Dystrus. This might be called C March according to the Romans, in which, as the feast of the saving Passion was approaching, imperial edicts were published everywhere," etc. That year was the nineteenth of Diocletian, the month of Dystrus, which corresponds to the Romans' March. In which, as the feast of the saving Passion was approaching, imperial edicts had been posted everywhere.
False, therefore, is it that he says in lib. V *De emend.* that Eusebius wrote *tēs heortēs tou Pascha eiselaunousēs* ("as the feast of the Passover was approaching"), as if the Passover must necessarily have fallen in March. For he speaks of the solemn days of the Passion, or the paschal week, which is sometimes called "Passover," as we noted in the Profession of the faith, which exists at the end of the first volume. Whence, although Eusebius mentioned the name of Passover, it could not therefore necessarily be concluded that the feast itself occurred in the month of March, D especially since he wrote *eiselaunousēs*, that is, approaching, drawing near. In the fragments which were appended at the end of lib. VIII, in the edition of Rob. Steph., fol. 91, page 2, that same passage is conceived thus: "This year was the nineteenth of the reign of Diocletian, the month of Xanthicus, which might be called April according to the Romans." Here he asserts that that event happened in the month of April: namely, that the holy week took up some part of either month. This year was the year of Christ 302, cycle of the moon 17, of the sun 3, letter D, the Nicene paschal new moon, March 16. But in the time of Diocletian it perhaps still stuck in 17. Therefore the fourteenth of the Paschal March was the 29th, a Sunday, or the 30th, a Monday. Hence the beginning of the feast of the saving Passion. Nor indeed is it necessary, A what Scaliger boasts, that the Passover was celebrated on the very limit. But the feast itself fell on April 5. You see how egregiously all things agree, and stand outside of Scaliger’s traps: for Eusebius anticipated the beginning of Diocletian, and took his nineteenth year from the new moon of Nisan, or the paschal month: which indeed began from the *Palilia* of the year that we might wish to say, we could attribute to the year 303: in which the cycle of the moon 19, of the sun 4, letter C, the new moon fell on March 6: the fourteenth moon, March 19, feria 6, the Pascha March 21, if indeed according to the Jewish custom this year had not been an intercalary one, B and so the Passover had been celebrated before the equinox, as sometimes happened in those times. But it is truer that it happened in the year of Christ 302. Moreover, Eusebius joined the nineteenth year of Diocletian with the fourth year of Olymp. 270, not with the first of the 271st, as Scaliger thinks, namely at the number 2319. The fourth year of Olymp. 270 began in the year of the Julian period 5017, the Dionysian year of Christ 304, the Eusebian 306, as it is in the oldest editions, and also that of Pontacus. In the Scaligerian, however, 304. But besides the prochronism of one year, by which the Dionysian era precedes the Eusebian, another year is inserted, so that this year would be 306, which ought to be 305, the Dionysian indeed 304. And otherwise Eusebius represents the epoch of Diocletian one year too late; for he ascribes his first year to the 266th Olympiad C the first year, which began in the year of the Julian period 4998, of the Dionysian era 285; while it corresponds to the earlier, the third year of Olymp. 265 passing, three months before the beginning of the fourth. Whence the nineteenth year of Diocletian is compared with the third year of Olymp. 270, which should rather have been joined with the second. For this began in the year of Christ 302, three months having passed from the beginning of the nineteenth year of Diocletian. But we struggle in vain with the Eusebian years of Christ; which learned men rightly persuade us were inserted by copyists, not by Eusebius himself.
There remains the Antiochene year, which so troubles Scaliger. The beginning of the Antiochene era precedes the Dionysian era by 46 solid years. For it falls in the year of the Julian period 4666, D according to the later opinion of Scaliger in *Animadvers.* and *Isag. can.* Wherefore in the year of the Julian period 5015, the Dionysian year 302, began the year of the Antiochenes 350 from October; but 351 in the Dionysian year 303. Therefore the error of Eusebius is manifest as much in the era of Diocletian as in the Antiochene. The nineteenth year of Diocletian began in the Antiochene year 349 still passing, and after almost 6 months the year of the Antiochenes 350 began. There is therefore a prochronism of one year in Eusebius, who connects the year 351 with the nineteenth year of Diocletian.
To sum up, that horrible persecution of Diocletian began in the 18th year of his reign ending, or the 19th beginning from the Kalends of January or March, the Dionysian year 302. Whence Diocletian did not exercise it for more than two years; although by Galerius Maximianus and others of Diocletian's
successors, it was propagated for many years, that is, until 311, as Baronius opines. From which it is evident that our author erred, who claims that, under the reign of Diocletian, [they] occupied all twelve years of that reign, save one.
A Καὶ παύεται τῆς βασιλείας ὁ οὐιτρανίσας. "And he who has 'veteranised' ceases from his reign." In the year of Christ 304, in the consulships of the ninth [of Diocletian] and the eighth of Maximianus. Although both are recorded to have been consuls again in the year 308, unless the *Fasti* are faulty, which—how it happened—is superfluous to ask. And there could be various interpretations, which we do not dwell upon. Moreover, the word which Epiphanius uses, οὐιτρανίσας, is to be noted; it signifies nothing other than to take upon oneself a calling like that of veterans, and to retire; which term is hitherto lacking in the mixed-barbarian Onomasticons.
Τούτους τελευτήσαντος διαδέχεται. "Upon the death of these he succeeds." Eusebius’s *Chronicon* gives Constantine thirty years and ten months. But the same Eusebius in his *Life of Constantine*, bk. iv, c. 55, says he reigned thirty-two years, minus a few months, and had lived double that time. Socrates and Sozomen define his reign as thirty-one years, and his life as sixty-four. Jerome, in his supplement to the reign, counts thirty-one years, and sixty-six of life, which he translated from Eutropius. His death is noted with an undoubted mark in the year of Christ 337, the eleventh of the Kalends of June, on the very day of Pentecost, in the solar cycle 10, letter B, in the consulship of Felicianus and Titianus. Scaliger, however, errs, in that he denies he completed his thirtieth year; but that he reigned only twenty-nine solid years, with seven months and twenty-eight days, from the 8th of the Kalends of October. He sets the beginning of this, however, in the year of Christ 307. From which error the others concerning the origin of the indictions and the time of the Council of Nicaea have sprung, which are most depraved in his account; for it is certain that the Nicene Council was held in the year of Christ 325, in the consulship of Paulinus and Julianus, and in the same year, upon the completion of his twentieth year, Constantius celebrated his Vicennalia. Which would by no means have happened if he had only begun in the year of Christ 307. Socrates says that Constantine died in the second year of the 278th Olympiad; but that Constantius Chlorus died in the first year of the 271st Olympiad, on July 25th. Since, therefore, Constantine began his reign at the onset of the 271st Olympiad, and died upon the conclusion of the second year of the 278th Olympiad, he had not yet completed thirty years. B Yet Socrates attributes thirty-one [years] to him. Therefore, he falsely assigns the year of his death to the second year of the 278th Olympiad. In the year of Christ 337, or the 5050th of the Julian period, the year 1113 of Iphitus began, or the 279th Olympiad, before which Constantine died, at the conclusion of the fourth year of the Olympiad. C Since it seems it must be yielded to the others, that Constantine completed thirty-one years, with a few months excepted, so that his twenty-third year would have begun in that year 337, in which he died, it follows that his first year falls in the year of Christ 305, in which, from the summer days, the first year of the 271st Olympiad began; to which Socrates assigns the death of Constantius Chlorus. A panegyric spoken by an uncertain author to the Augusti Maximianus and Constantine signifies that Constantine, when he had obtained the reign in Britain upon the death of his father, was content with the title of Caesar, and abstained from the name of Augustus and Emperor, until, adopted as a son-in-law by Maximianus, he obtained the name of Augustus as well. "Whose," he says, "maturity is such that, when your father had left the empire to you, you were content with the title of Caesar, and preferred to wait for the same [man] who had declared him Augustus, to declare you so." Which happened in the second year after the death of Constantius. From which arises a double beginning for Constantine. Wherefore it is probable that Constantius Chlorus passed away in the year of Christ 305, at the beginning of the first year of the 271st Olympiad, as Socrates writes; and then Constantine, having been acclaimed Augustus and Emperor by the soldiers, nevertheless abstained from the title of supreme empire, until in the following year from Maximianus...
D Μαξιμιανὸς δὲ κακῷ μόρῳ. "But Maximianus, by an evil fate." He thought he was speaking of Maximianus Herculius, the colleague of Diocletian, and indeed Epiphanius should have; but what he narrates in this place happened to neither Maximianus, but to Maximinus. Greek writers very often confuse the two Maximians with each other, and with Maximinus. Which thing can frustrate even the most attentive reader. Diocletian and Maximianus Herculius create Constantius Chlorus and Galerius Maximianus Armentarius [as] Caesars; who, after their secession, became Augusti from Caesars. Galerius Maximianus appointed as the two Caesars the sons of his sisters, C. Galerius Maximinus, whom he placed over the Orient, and M. Aurelius Severus, to whom he entrusted the Occident. Severus Caesar, having been sent by Galerius Maximianus against Maxentius, was slain at Ravenna, says Eusebius in his *Chronicon*, Victor in the *Caesars*, and others. Maximianus Herculius, having resumed the empire, when he was plotting treachery against his son-in-law Constantine, was killed at Massilia, not Tarsus, as Zosimus writes. Galerius Maximianus, having most cruelly persecuted Christians, died with his genitals consumed, says Victor. Eusebius, in his eighth book, ch. 18 and 19, details at greater length the most disastrous death of this man and the divinely inflicted tortures. Galerius Maximinus, defeated by Licinius and seized by a dire plague, perished at Tarsus. See Eusebius, bk. ix, ch. 8. Where, regarding what Epiphanius says, ἐξεβολβήθη τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς, he narrates it thus: "His eyes protrude, and falling out of their own sockets, leave him blind." There is therefore no doubt that it is a hallucination of Epiphanius, who attributes to Maximianus the colleague of Diocletian—that is, Herculius—what happened to Maximinus Daza, the son of the sister of Galerius Armentarius. These things we have gathered from Victor, Zosimus, Eutropius, Eusebius, and others.
Καταλείψας Λικίνιον καὶ Κωνστάντιον. "Leaving behind Licinius and Constantius." And yet he had said that Constantius had reigned for thirteen years with Diocletian and Maximianus. Which, just as it is hardly true, so it is false that those two, 'veteranising,' left behind as successors Licinius and Constantinus; for they substituted for themselves Constantius Chlorus and Galerius Maximianus: Licinius later, having been made Caesar by Galerius Maximianus, held the empire with Constantine, and with him was left by the dying Maximinus.
A of those emperors, who from Constantine the Great down to the slaughter of Valentinian the Younger, existed. In which our calculation errs in at least one year. For not 51 years, but 56 are counted from the death of Constantine. For that year, in which Valentinian was killed by Arbogastes, cannot be in doubt, since it is marked by such a distinguished character. For it was in that year that the Lord’s Pentecost was on May 16. Consequently, the Sunday letter was C. But Easter was on the fiftieth day preceding, March 27. Therefore, the lunar cycle was 13, in the year of Christ 392, with the solar cycle at 9. Now, however, Constantine dies in the year of Christ 337, as was established a little earlier. If you subtract 336 from the year 392, there will remain 56.
According to the Greeks of Artemisius. If the 21st day of Artemisius is May 16 in the Julian calendar, Artemisius began on April 24. And then a new and unheard-of arrangement of months will arise; for the "Greeks" are the Syromacedonians and the Antiochenes. Whose months are purely Julian, though called by Greek names. And for these, Artemisius is the same as May. Wherefore, May 16 is the 16th of Artemisius among the Greeks or Syrians; and this is supported by Epiphanius himself, as is evident from Haer. 51 of the Alogi. See what has been argued on that passage, p. 150. Here, therefore, for *the third and twentieth*, read *the sixteenth*. Regarding the death of Valentinian, consult the Annales of Baronius.
A DISSERTATION ON THE FOLLIS MILIARENSIS AND THE DETAILS OF COINAGE
(Cf. the book *On Weights and Measures*, col. 285, note 86.)*Follis*, or *talantion*. There is no passage in Epiphanius which learned men have more vehemently tortured, and which in turn has exercised them more bitterly; so variously has it been interpolated and explained. Not only did the obscurity of Epiphanius’s own words give birth to this variety of opinions, but also the difficulty of the subject itself: because things expressed quite differently regarding the *follis* are read in ancient monuments. And to me the nature of that term seems not to have been sufficiently explored by the common view; and when I had applied myself a little more accurately to investigating it, I found some things explained otherwise by learned and studious men than Truth herself and the testimonies of ancient authors would allow. Wherefore, so that my work might serve not only to illustrate this writer, but also spread more widely for the common good, it seemed not irrelevant if I were to expound more copiously and diligently what I had pondered in some studies regarding the *follis*, having been led to do so by the opportunity of this place; for this discussion will not be childishly sought out, nor appended for display like an ornament, but all things that will be proposed will be of such a kind that anyone who wishes to compare them with the words of Epiphanius will concede that we certainly ought not to have been more brief. As for us, in this very end of the work, this last labor to be overcome is the more eager since, having already finished as it were a long voyage, we now contemplate closer the land itself and the harbor. Whatever, therefore, has been handed down by the ancients and noted by more recent authors concerning the *follis* is recalled almost to two heads; for it signifies either *quantity*—that is, weight or sum—or a certain coin. We shall pursue both kinds in this short dissertation.
Of the *follis* as a certain collection and sum of money
C That I may not embrace in this first notion just the vulgar and trite view of the *follis*, I will enrich this significant discussion with a most insightful addition, that is, an interpretation of the same in a way I found in an old Glossary of the Basilica, which is in the possession of the Reverend Father Jacques Sirmond. From which I trust that some effort will be of value for explaining the passage of Epiphanius. Thus, therefore, these Glossae have set forth regarding the *follis*: "A *follis* was introduced under Theodosius the Younger as a tax on mules for the citizens of Constantine, of those providing the necessity of such beasts of burden in war. But another [type], called *follis*, seized [the houses of] the more notable families in the cities, because they had reached a status above the rank. And it was a misfortune that the superior [element] in the lineages was being judged by its quantity against the magnitude of its status. For those of the first class, eight pounds of gold; for those of the second,..."
four; for those of the third, two, as Hesychius the Illustrious says in the sixth chronological section of his *History*. A
OF THE FOLLIS MILIARENSIS
A *follis* is a weight, also called a purse. It holds two hundred and fifty denarii, that is, three hundred and twelve pounds and six ounces, seeing that each denarius contains one pound and three ounces. There is also another *follis* composed of small silver (coins) given to the soldiers, and for this reason called *militarenses*. Each of these small silver coins has one keration, a half, and a quarter. And the *follis* contains one hundred and twenty-five such silver coins, which make two hundred and eighteen keratia and nine nummi, or, according to the standard now prevailing, one hundred and nine miliarensia and nine nummi, resulting in nine coins in pieces, one miliarension, and nine nummi. Therefore, the one hundred and twenty-five silver coins were gathered into one bond; and this was called a *follis*. There is also another *follis* having different quantities. For beginning from two pounds of gold, it proceeded to eight according to the status and the ease of those taxed. Of this, Hesychius the Illustrious makes mention in the chronological section of his *History*. Thalelaeus also makes mention of it in the second ordinance of the second title of the twelfth book of the *Code*, of which title the first ordinance was retrieved in the sixth book of the *Basilica*, title seven, chapter four; but the second was omitted, as having long ago been abolished by the divine Marcian. He registered the estates of the most illustrious men, having applied the objective, to which he himself gave the name *follis*.
So far the Glosses. Which Alciatus praises: and from them Ludovicus Vives in his commentary on the *City of God*, book XXII, chapter 3. But there some things in Latin are not expressed accurately, as happens in corrupt copies, which one might correct from our Greek texts. From the same source, a threefold notion of the *follis* is deduced: for it is first a type of tribute and payment, and this is twofold: one relating to mules (erroneously appearing in Vives as "of many," for "of mules"), the other imposed on the families of the nobility, whose authority is Hesychius the Illustrious, book VI. That the latter was instituted by Constantine the Great is written by Zosimus, book II. The Glosses demonstrate that a *follis* of this kind, or a senatorial tax, proceeded gradually through a triple distinction: so that the first degree was liable for two *folles*, the second for four, the third for eight. Mention of these *folles* is in the Theodosian *Code*, book XVI, title 2, *De praediis*, when, distributing the senatorial order into three categories, it says some possess two *folles* for taxation, others four, others more. The Glosses assign one pound of gold to each *follis*. But for the sake of the poorer individuals, it was later reduced from the canon, and the minimum tax for senators was reduced to seven solidi; which is therefore distinguished from the *follis*. For in the Theodosian *Code*, book VI, title 4, law 1, when Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius had decreed thus: "The indiscriminate assessment of two *folles* shall remain for all, even if they perhaps do not possess property," later by Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius, the tax was diminished; and it is said to have been defined by the counsel of the most eminent men that seven solidi should be paid annually for each B by its own portion. Ubi septem solidorum functio a folle perspicue separatur, quamvis Hotomannus lib. De re numm. pag. 570, confundere ambo ista videatur. And that tax persisted for some time. Laws 12, of the same title, states that the payment of seven solidi obliges the poorest of the senators. But that burden was later removed, as is evident from the Code of Justinian, lib. XI: for in title 2, that same book, Valentinian and Marcian write back thus: "We command that the *gleba* or *follis*, or the payment of seven solidi, or any tax of this kind, whether concerning persons, things, or estates, be utterly abolished, so that every exaction of this kind may cease forever." Before this constitution, the condition of the senatorial order was very harsh, and imposed as a penalty on some; for others it was removed as a great benefit, as is evident from the epistles of Synesius, and also Ammianus, book XXII, Julian, epistle 25. Which the above Gloss also shows. The second meaning of the *follis* is that which is taken by weight, of three hundred and twelve pounds, and six ounces. Which are 250 denarii: of which each has one pound, three ounces; Alciatus renders them "donos." But what they are, I would gladly be taught; for even the manuscript codex seems to represent it. Thirdly, *follis* means ἄθροισμα, a sum of money, composed of small silver coins, namely, of one hundred and twenty-five miliarensia: of which each weighed a keration with a half and a quarter. Thus, that *follis* collects two hundred and eighteen keratia, nine nummi. Alciatus's codex was corrupt in this place. For he translates thus: "There is also another *follis* collected from small silver coins, which was given to the soldiers, whom they called miliares." But the *lepti* contain one keration and a half. Thus that *follis* has two hundred and seven silver keratia and nine nummi. Therefore, all these silver coins were thrown into one bag. Hence the derivation of the name *follis*. And from those one hundred and twenty-five silver coins, or miliarensia, nine coins, or gold solidi, are made. For if you divide two hundred and eighteen keratia by nine, twenty-four will belong to each, which was the weight of a solidus. Isidore, book XVI, chapter 24: "A siliqua is the twenty-fourth part of a solidus, taking its name from the seed of the carob tree." Yet it seems there is a difference between a siliqua and a *κerάτιον*. For it follows in Isidore: "A cerates is the middle part of an obol, having one and a half siliquas." This the Latins call a *semiobolus*. But *cerates* in Greek, in Latin is interpreted as the horn of the carob. An obol is weighed by three siliquas, having two cerates, four chalci. Therefore, a *κerάτιον* contains one and a half siliquas. Whence in a drachma there are sixteen siliquas, twenty-four ceratia. In a didrachmon there are thirty-six siliquas, twenty-four ceratia. Since, therefore, the stater, or aureus, in early times had the weight of two drachmas, so that only four were minted to the ounce: for that reason it then weighed twenty-four *κerάτια*, thirty-six siliquas. Afterward, a third part was deducted from the weight, so that six solidi were struck to the ounce: and then it was called a *sextula*. Isidore: *Solidus*
says the drachma consists of three scruples, that is, 18 siliquae. Therefore, there are 144 siliquae in an ounce. If these be divided by four, they yield 36 siliquae for each old solidus; if by six, they will yield 24 siliquae for the *sextula* or solidus, which they also called *keratia*. A It appears, therefore, that 218 *keratia* are rightly assessed as nine coins or solidi; these the Glossary says are 125 *miliarenses*. These, cast into one bag, made a *follis*. From these same bags, military pay or donatives were paid out in this species of *miliarenses*. Whence the Greeks commonly believe the name *miliarenses* was derived, according to these same Glossaries, as if it were a "military gift" [*miliarsion stratiotikon doron*], and elsewhere generally. Nor do I recall any other origin of this word being proposed by anyone; yet it is deservedly rejected by our scholars; for from *militia* or *miles*, the term should have been *militarensis*, not *miliarensis*. Wherefore, if I may be permitted a conjecture in an obscure matter—and I do not see why this should not be granted—I would more willingly believe *miliarensis* is derived from the "millenary" number, because, clearly, a pound of gold was valued at a thousand coins of this kind. For the number of solidi or gold coins in a pound, although it was sometimes different, finally arrived at 72. For six, as has been said, were struck in an ounce. Hence it was called a *sextula*, because it weighed a sixth part of an ounce. Zonaras, concerning Nicephorus Phocas: "He was, among other things, inferior in wealth, as it seems. For until that time every coin held the weight of a *hexagion*, but he invented the quarter-weight, having diminished it in weight." C If, therefore, 125 *miliarenses* equal nine solidi, and 250 equal eighteen, then 2,250 *miliarenses* will satisfy 1,000 solidi, which is a pound of gold. The true derivation of *miliarensis*, as it appears, has been found from those excellent Glossaries, which had remained hidden until now, and had been corrupted and obscured by the Greeks, as is their custom. But more will be said about these *miliarenses* when we arrive at the silver *follis*; before turning our discourse to which, we must discuss the gold ones, if there be any. For until now the first notion of the *follis* has been explained, insofar as it signifies a sum and collection of coins.
Concerning the *follis*, as it is reckoned among coins: and first, it is shown that there were no gold ones.
The *follis* is a type of gold coin, says Cujas on Law 12, Cod. Justiniani, tit. 2, law 2. And he confirms this by the authority of certain laws of the Theodosian Code: such as laws 2 and 3, *Quor. Ap. non rec.* Likewise law 3 *de suariis*, law 5 and 21 *de prætoribus*. Which also persuaded others. And so the learned man, [commenting on] that place in the Alexandrian Chronicle, pg. 742—"In the time of these same consuls, a shortage of bread occurred, such that [he] suggested D that each loaf should equal three *folles*..."—interpreted it as gold coins. But from the laws brought forward by the great jurisconsult, nothing at all can be inferred about any gold coin; rather, the contrary can be most manifestly concluded from most of them. The first law imposes a fine of thirty *folles* upon a mercantile summons; by which term one could easily understand either silver coins, or a certain collection or bag of coins. In the remaining laws, it is amazing how much the logic escaped him. In law 3 *de suariis*, a pound of pork is taxed at six *folles*. Who would think pork was worth six gold coins? Therefore, I do not believe it was even worth as many silver ones: I interpret these *folles* here as bronze and small coins. Follows law 5, *De prætoribus*, which defines the mode of expenditure in the praetorships. For the first praetorship, which is called Flavialis, it prescribes an expenditure of 25,000 *folles* and thirty pounds of silver; for the second, called Constantinian, 20,000 *folles* and forty pounds of silver; for the third, the Triumphal, 15,000 *folles* and thirty pounds of silver. Who, finally, could persuade anyone that these are truly gold coins? For it is not plausible that a much greater quantity of gold was spent or granted for public shows than of silver. But if 25,000 *folles* were gold coins, into whatever number of pounds they might be reduced, they would immeasurably exceed the number of silver ones. Therefore, those *folles* appear to be bronze coins or *follerales*, which Lampridius in *Elagabalus* calls *folles aeris*. Such small species, and bronze ones, are read in the writers of the *Historia Augusta* to have been stipulated by name in the salaries of commanders along with silver and gold coins. Thus, "one hundred bronze [coins] daily" in Vopiscus in *Aurelian*; "ten thousand bronze [coins] of Philip" in the same author in *Probus*. "HS ten decies in *Bonosus*." Lastly, in law 21 *De præt.*, the signification of *follis* is clearly different and alien from any type of coin. For there it distinguishes a triple grade of the senatorial order, according to the different profession, into which some had two *folles*, others four, others more. However, *follis* is taken not for a coin, but for a canon of tribute and payment, which was wont to be exacted from senators according to the means and dignity of each: *kata ten axian kai ten euporian* [according to worth and means], as the Glosses say. Wherefore I have seen nothing presented thus far that could be an argument that the *follis* was a type of gold coin, but rather a sum of gold and silver, or certainly a silver coin, or a bronze one.
Concerning the silver *miliarensis*, which seems to be a part of the *follis*.
Before anything certain can be elicited about the silver *follis*, it is necessary to premise a few things about the *miliarensis*, which Epiphanius calls silver, since he himself seems to affirm that the *follis* is composed of that type of coin. That the silver *miliarensis* was a coin, and not gold, is declared by Novella 105 of Justinian, in which he prescribes the mode of profligacy for magistrates, especially consuls, and forbids them to scatter gold coins, while permitting silver ones. *Ou me*
rely of a smaller one, or a larger one at all, or of a middle coinage, or weight, but only of silver (as we have already said). For the scattering of gold should be allowed to the sovereignty alone, to which the scale of fortune A grants the power to disregard gold. But silver, which is the most precious thing immediately after gold, could be a fitting generosity for other consuls as well. This we allow them to scatter in what are called miliarensia, and *mēla*, and *kaukia*, and *tetragōnia*, and such like.
That the miliarensis was the twelfth part of a solidus—that is, that a gold solidus was worth twelve miliarensia—learned men have long observed; and consequently, that two siliquae were valued as the estimation of one miliarensis, since a solidus consisted of twenty-four siliquae. And for this reason Cedrenus calls the miliarensis a *dikeraton*. But this could by no means remain constant. For the *Nomika Glossai* teach us that about nine solidi contained 125 miliarensia, to which correspond 218 siliquae. Therefore, to each individual miliarensis must be attributed one siliqua and a dodrans—that is, one-half and one-quarter; but a solidus is valued at 1 8/9 to a miliarensis, as was said above.
Scaliger, in his book *De re Nummaria*, says that the miliarensis is the twelfth part of the *nomisma*, and corrects Suidas, who had taught that it was the tenth. And he says that it was worth two siliquae of gold, and was a didrachm, for the reason I mentioned, because it was a *dikeraton* and had the value of two siliquae, B each of which was worth a silver drachma. But if anyone wishes to examine this diligently, he will find it false and absurd. It is false, I say, both that the siliquae of gold were worth individual silver drachmae, and that the solidus was valued at twenty-four drachmae. For both these cannot be true at the same time.
For simple as it is, as far as the present subject is concerned, the standard of the Roman gold coin—which was later called the solidus—is defined by the most learned jurists at least up to the time of Justinian. The first, which is older, is the one in which four were minted to the ounce of gold, amounting to forty-eight to the pound. The second is from around the age of Constantine, when solidi were struck at seven to the ounce, amounting to eighty-four to the pound, as is evident from Book 1 of the Theodosian Code, *De ponderibus*. The third was established by Valentinian, in which six were struck to the ounce, at seventy-two to the pound, which also seems to have been observed thereafter.
But in that triple system of the solidus, those two foundations of Scaliger cannot stand. To make this manifest, it is first necessary to recall to mind that a drachma contains six obols, and an obol three siliquae. Thus, there are eighteen siliquae in a drachma, and one hundred forty-four in an ounce, which comprises eight drachmae. A pound contains 1,728 siliquae.
Now, at the time when four gold coins were minted to the ounce, C making forty-eight to the pound, each gold coin was indeed valued at twenty-four drachmae, or denarii; although I know that Dio and others reckon twenty-five. But so that, limiting ourselves to a small calculation, we may pursue the most round number, the gold coin was twenty-four denarii: and there was then a ratio of twelve to one of gold to silver. Wherefore a pound of gold was worth 1,152 drachmae, or 576 didrachms or miliarensia. By these, if you divide 1,728 siliquae, which are numbered in a pound, you will get three siliquae for one didrachm, not two.
Afterwards, when solidi were struck at eighty-four to the pound, if anyone says that each one was nevertheless of the same value as the old and much heavier ones, an absurdity will follow from this. For if you multiply eighty-four by twenty-four, you will find the price of a pound of gold to be 2,016 drachmae, or 1,008 Scaligerian didrachms or miliarensia. Whence it follows that, since there are ninety-six drachmae in a Roman pound (for eight agree to an ounce), D and since the pounds claim twenty-one drachmae as much—that is, 2,016—the same proportion of gold existed in the century of Constantine, which is twenty-one to one. Which is monstrous and like a prodigy; for Hotoman makes it credible that a pound of gold was taxed at the most to only fourteen, and a little more, pounds of silver, and that in the time of Arcadius and Honorius.
Then, even if we concede that, that a pound of gold was valued at as many didrachms—that is, 1,008—it will be another falsehood that two siliquae of gold were taxed at the price of a didrachm: for if you distribute 1,728 siliquae by 1,008 miliarensia, each will count for only 1 5/7 siliquae.
There remains that third time, to which Scaliger seems to have paid the most attention; for he speaks of the solidus, of which type six go to an ounce, whence it is also called a *sextula*. And by this latest calculation, a solidus carries off twenty-four *sextulae*. Since in the first it consisted of thirty-six siliquae, in the second of 20 4/7 siliquae. Therefore, the last attributes twenty-four siliquae to the solidus. But neither can two siliquae then be valued at the price of a didrachm, nor is a miliarensis, or the twelfth part of a solidus, worth a didrachm. For if seventy-two are multiplied by twenty-four, 1,728 drachmae will be made per pound of gold, and 864 miliarensia: which are how many *dikerata* there are. For we know there are 1,728 siliquae in a pound; but the drachmae make as many pounds, namely eighteen. Thus a pound of gold will be worth eighteen silver ones, which is unheard of. For these reasons that definition of Scaliger is vain, that the miliarensis was a didrachm and at the same time was worth two siliquae of gold.
There is also added that most clear testimony of the Glosses, which we mentioned above, by which one siliqua and a dodrans, or three quadrants, is imputed to the miliarensia. Indeed, to the solid coins, almost nine, and 125 miliarensia; to which 218 *keratia* correspond, not 250, as the Scaligerian conjecture demanded.
May someone ask: what, in the end, was the weight and price of a silver miliarensis, and what was the proportion to the gold solidus and the parts of the solidus? Indeed, I can neither affirm anything certain on that matter myself, nor do I judge that it can be affirmed by any. For that matter depends first on the estimation of the solidus; then on the ratio of gold to silver: both of which were diverse, and almost arbitrary. Nevertheless, as in obscured
A matters and those of an ambiguous nature, there may be room for probable conjecture. I shall explain in a few words how such a conjecture has come to my mind: I believe that the *milliarenses* gradually took their origin from the silver didrachms; for in the beginning, when four gold coins were struck to the ounce, and each was worth twenty-four drachms, or twelve didrachms, three gold siliquae—which according to Isidore’s authority are two *keratia*—were valued at the price of a didrachm. For there were, as I showed above, thirty-six siliquae in a gold piece, and twenty-four *ceratia*: wherefore at that time a silver didrachm was a *dikeratos*. Afterward, something was taken away from the weight of the solidus or gold piece, and consequently also from its value or estimation. For although the weight of gold coins is commonly diminished to that end, and more are struck to the pound, so that some profit might redound to the treasury from that matter; yet the valuation of the lighter solidus could not be the same as that of the heavier one. Otherwise, the law would be excessively unjust, and the proportion of gold to silver monstrous, as we demonstrated a little earlier. Nor yet was the weight and price of the solidus diminished by an equal decrease, so that when, for example, a solidus weighed two silver drachms and was worth twenty-four drachms, after it was reduced to the weight of four *scrupula*, and curtailed by a third part, the price of the solidus, in my opinion, did not descend B from twenty-four to sixteen drachms in the same proportion. Otherwise, the prince would make no profit at all from it. But the gold coin was taxed at some just and moderate estimation, so that the proportion of gold to silver was nevertheless greater than before.
We have said that in the century of Constantine, the number of gold coins in a pound was heavily increased, so that it arrived at eighty-four, and thus the weight of the gold coins was diminished by almost a fourth part. Afterward, under Valentinian, they were taxed at six to the ounce, or seventy-two to the pound. At this time, therefore, when a solidus weighed twenty-four siliquae, as many *keratia* as the old definition of Isidore took away, I suspect that the price of one silver coin was set at two gold siliquae: which indeed would by no means be a didrachm, but would have succeeded to the place of the didrachm, and therefore would be *bisiliquus* (two-siliquae), just as among the ancients, the gold didrachm was a *dikeratos*, insofar as a *keration* is distinguished from a siliqua. But when afterward C *keratia* began to be used indiscriminately for siliquae, that silver coin was held to be a *dikeratos*, because it was worth two siliquae, or *keratia*. There were 864 of such in a pound: for there are 1,728 siliquae in a pound. But what weight each one had can be defined from no other source than the proportion of gold to silver. Let us assume that at that same time, a twelvefold proportion existed. Since, therefore, a pound of gold is valued at 864 silver coins, which are twelve pounds of silver; if you divide that number by twelve, there will result seventy-two silver coins for every pound of silver, as many as the gold coins that go into a pound; and then twelve silver coins equal the price of a solidus. The weight of each is gathered from a comparison with the silver pound. For a pound of weight has ninety-six drachms. Wherefore, since seventy-two silver coins exhaust the drachms, each one will have one drachm, and almost one and a third, that is, about eight obols, or twenty-four silver siliquae. Which ought to have been the price of two gold siliquae; but if this ratio of gold to silver had been in force, the treasury would gain nothing from the increase of *solidi* to the pound. For that reason, I judge that the weight of the individual silver coins was greater.
Hotomannus, in *De re Nummaria*, page 347, notes that in the times of the Emperors Arcadius and Honorius, a pound of gold was estimated at fourteen pounds of silver and almost a half-pound, from *lex 1, c. De arg. pret.* For a pound of silver is taxed at five gold *solidi*, but a pound of gold at two hundred and seventy-two gold *solidi*. But the glosses cited above seem to retain that proportion more accurately, which is one to fourteen; for *milliarenses* are exchanged for a gold *solidus* at about fourteen, when 125 *milliarenses* are worth nine *solidi*. Let the ratio of gold to silver, therefore, be as one to fourteen. Then, if 864 siliquae, as many as there are *dikerata* in a pound of gold, are divided by fourteen, there will result 61 5/7 for each pound of silver. Let us suppose it is 62. If they are measured against the legitimate number of drachms in a pound, each will have a weight of one drachm, three obols, and 9/31 of one obol, or one drachm and 10 siliquae; which are 28 siliquae. This standard, and a weight of this kind, could have been that of the silver coins around the times of Valentinian and Arcadius, in which we have already said that a pound of gold was reduced to the number of 72 *solidi*: at that time, namely, when each silver coin was worth two gold siliquae, and a solidus weighed twenty-four siliquae. Nor, however, did the weight of the silver coins remain at that. But again they were diminished by almost a sixth part, so that no longer 864 silver coins, but one thousand were subsequently counted to a pound of gold. Both of which are to be confirmed by some certain authority. The Basilica glosses, according to Meursius, write that a gold solidus is worth twelve *milliarenses*—that is, twenty-four *ceratia*—*ecl. XXIII*. It is necessary to know that 12 *phalleis* make one *keration*, or half a *miliarision*; therefore, 12 *keratia* are half a *nomisma*; for a complete *nomisma* has 12 *miliarsia*, that is, 16 *keratia*. Item: according to the *nomisma*, it obtains 12 *miliarsia*. Then the same is also confirmed by Cedrenus, who accepts *dikeratos* for a *miliarision*.
Therefore, since there are 1,728 siliquae in a pound, it is necessary that 864 *dikeratos* silver coins go into a pound of gold, of which each has a weight of one silver drachm, three obols, and one siliqua, or 28 siliquae. Whence, since two gold siliquae are worth 28 silver siliquae, 24 gold siliquae will be worth 336 silver siliquae. Which, divided by 28, give 12. Twelve silver coins, therefore, minted at the weight I said, were worth 24 gold siliquae, or a gold solidus, and were properly called *dikeratoi*, being less than didrachms by eight siliquae. Now, however, from the Glossary of R. P. Sismondi, which we brought forward above, it is clear that 125 silver *milliarenses* are worth almost nine *solidi*. By which ratio 72 *solidi* require 1,000 *milliarenses*.
A Since the calculation of the silver weight was reduced, *milliarenses* began to be so called after 1,000 were reckoned to a gold pound. Regarding these, it is permitted to inquire into the ratio of the silver pound and the weight in the same way we established above. 1,000 *milliarenses* are struck from fourteen pounds of silver, or 1344 drachmae. Thus, each one has one drachma, and in addition two obols, and 1/5 of a *siliqua*; this is 24 1/5 *siliquae*. But let 24 *siliquae* be taken. These same silver coins are smaller than the earlier *dixépata* by approximately a sixth part, and smaller than the larger ones by a seventh part. Therefore, if 28 *siliquae* are valued at two gold *siliquae*—in the fourteen-fold ratio of gold to silver—then 24 silver *siliquae* will be worth 1 5/6 *siliquae* of gold. And this same proportion is seen when the individual silver coins are compared with one another: which is the ratio of the sums themselves, which in both cases amount to fourteen pounds of silver. For as the number 1,000 is greater than 864 by almost a seventh part of itself (that is 136), while 136 is almost a sixth part of 864: so 28 *siliquae* exceed 24 by a seventh part of themselves, namely 4, which is the sixth part of 24. For this reason, since the individual silver coins do not equal the price of two gold *siliquae*, but are less by two-sevenths of one *siliqua*, a *solidus* will no longer be valued at 12 silver coins, but at approximately fourteen.
But that passage in the Glossary seems to need more accurate weighing and illustration. For the fraction of the small units there is scrupulous and anxious. They affirm, therefore, that the sum of the silver *milliarenses* is 125: each of which has one *siliqua* with a *dodrans* (that is, one half and, in addition, one quarter). B Ὁ δὲ φόλλις ἀργύρια τοιαῦτα ρκε'· ἃ ποιοῦσι κεράτια ση', καὶ νούμμους θ'· ἤτοι πρὸς τὸ νῦν κρατοῦν μιλιαρίσια ρθ', καὶ νούμμους θ', γινόμενα ἐν χαράγμασι νομίσματα θ' μιλιαρίσιον ἕν, νοῦμμοι θ'. Here he has taken the word *νούμμους* in an unusual sense, *ἀντὶ τοῦ νομίσματος* (instead of *nomisma*), that is, for a solidus and a gold piece, just as the same Glossaries interpret *νούμμους* as *νομίσματα*. But for minute weights or coins, which run at twelve to a *siliqua*, as I shall presently make clear: while *νόμισμα* is properly called a *solidus*, which was its customary meaning. The Glossary of Henri Estienne [defines it as]: *νόμισμα*, solidus; and, *solidus*, νόμισμα. It is also called *χάραγμα*, which is properly the form and likeness, which the word *τοῦ νομίσματος* also expresses, according to Suidas; 125 silver *milliarenses* collect 218 *ceratia* and 60 *nummi*, which are, according to the present usage, he says, 109 *milliarenses* and 60 *nummi solidi*, with one *milliarensis* and three *nummi*. Which I interpret as follows: the individual *milliarenses* have the price of one gold *siliqua* and three-quarters. Therefore 125 *milliarenses* are worth 218 gold *siliquae* and three-quarters. He defines these quarters as nine *nummi*. Therefore a *siliqua* has twelve *nummi*, of which the *dodrans*, or three-quarters, are nine. And the *nummi* are either weight units, as I said, or small C pieces, to the weight of a single pound or of ounces; or the very smallest coins, whose knots were valued at 10 *siliquae*, or a silver *dixépata*, to the standard of a *siliqua*. And since a *χάραγμα νόμισμα*, or *solidus*, consists of 24 *siliquae*, and nine *solidi* of 216 *siliquae*: 125 *milliarenses* are valued at a little more than nine *solidi*, namely two *siliquae* and a *dodrans* more. From which it follows that 1,000 silver *milliarenses* are worth 1750 gold *siliquae*, which are 72 *solidi* and 22 *siliquae*, by which number of *siliquae* they exceed the gold pound. For if you define a *solidus* by 24 *siliquae*, 72 *solidi* (as many as are coined to a pound) take away 1728 *siliquae*: to which accrue the 22 superfluous ones, which complete the thousand silver coins. For 1728 *siliquae* require only 987 and 3/7 *milliarenses*, since 1750 *siliquae* require 12 4/7 *milliarenses*: so that each one has two *siliquae* less one quadrant, or one and 3/4 *siliquae*. And by this compact, if the fourteen-fold proportion of gold to silver established in those times is retained, 987 divided by 14 will give approximately 70 1/2 *milliarenses* for each pound. Which, deducted from 96 drachmae, leaves for each *milliarensis* a weight of one drachma and approximately six *siliquae*, that is 24 *siliquae*. And yet at that time 1,000 *milliarenses* would make a little more than a gold pound. Wherefore it must be seen whether at that time a *solidus* weighed a little more than 24 *siliquae*, or certainly whether, besides 72 *solidi*, a seventy-third, lighter one, of only 22 *siliquae*, was struck; so that with 1,000 *milliarenses* the gold pound was fully equaled. The Glossary proceeds, and says that these 125 *milliarenses*, if they are measured by the new canon, are 109, and nine *nummi* in addition; whence nine *solidi* or *νομίσματα* are formed, with one *milliarensis* and those remaining nine *nummi*. Which words sufficiently indicate the later return to those *dixépata* *milliarenses*. For 218 *ceratia* if divided by 109, give two gold *siliquae* to each *milliarensis*: of which sort the *μιλιαρίσιον τὸ νῦν κρατοῦν* (the *milliarensis* that currently prevails), he says—that is, the one proper to the time in which he was writing—was greater than the former, by a little more than a seventh part. Wherefore if 109 of that kind exhibit nine D *solidi*, 72 *solidi* or a pound of gold will make 872 *milliarenses*.
We have examined these trifles and minutiae of the coins, perhaps not without some tedium to the readers. But it was of such importance to know the power, origin, and property of the *milliarensis* and the *follis*, about which Epiphanius treats here: then to refute that inveterate error, approved by Scaliger, about the *milliarensis* being a *didrachmon* and the *follis* being a *tetradrachmon*. Which will be taught a little later concerning the *follis*. But as far as the *milliarensis* concerns us, let the sum of what has been argued thus far be: that the silver *milliarensis* was a coin, not a *didrachmon*, but something smaller, which was sometimes exchanged for two gold *siliquae*, sometimes for a slightly smaller price, and likewise was sometimes lighter, sometimes heavier. And then when it was lighter, the *milliarensis* ...
A became, as clearly appears, a part of the gold pound, from which it began to be called *miliarensis* by the Latins, following the Greek *miliarision*. For this reason it was also called *lepton argyrion*, so that it might be distinguished from the didrachm or an silver coin of heavier weight. Moreover, that species of *miliarensis* appears to have been military, because a donative or stipend was paid out in that form, and also because distributions and handouts were made to the people in that same currency, as appears from the Novella of Justinian, which we brought forward above. Hence Epiphanius interprets it as *stratiōtikon doma* or *dōron*, as do almost all the Glossaries along with him. The Glossary of P. Sirmond: *Stipendium* or *tribouton*, that which is gathered from small silver coins. Item: *Stipendia* are called public funds, because they are gathered from small silver coins. The same are also called *tributa*, from the fact that they are broken up for those who pay, or partitioned B among the soldiers. Therefore *stipendium* comes from *stips*, that is, small coins, which are called *lepta argyria*. Even though the amount of the *miliarensis* seems quite large, it was nonetheless numbered among the *lepta*. We shall treat of the *lepta* more fully in the following chapter, where we discuss the *follis*. We have put forward these points concerning the *miliarensis*, relying partly on conjecture and partly on the most certain authority of the ancient Glossaries. There will perhaps be those who contribute more certain information: not only will we not begrudge them this, but if they do so without abuse or detraction—which is something you can hardly get from most people—we shall accept it most willingly; and if they teach us better things, we promise to agree.
The passage of Epiphanius concerning the *follis* is weighed and clarified.
*Follis*, says Epiphanius, C is called *talantion*; it is double, that is to say, fashioned from two silver pieces, which are 208 denarii. A short time before he had said, *to argyrion*, that it is a coin which by the Romans, that is to say the Constantinopolitans, is called *miliarensis*. Now he asserts that the *follis* consists of these two silver pieces. The very words of Epiphanius bear this out, unless they should be judged as needing correction, which has been attempted in various ways by many. Scaliger, in his posthumous booklet *De re Nummaria*, p. 56, corrects Epiphanius in such a way that he substitutes *balantion* for *talantion*; then for 208 denarii (*sn'*), he substitutes 288 (*cclxxxviii*). He therefore judges the *follis* to be double the *miliarensis*, and equivalent to a tetradrachm, since he established that the *miliarenses* were didrachms; and that they contain 288 denarii, that is, small coins. But that first point in Scaliger’s conjecture was most powerfully refuted by us in the previous chapter, in that he defends the view that *miliarenses* were didrachms; the second point, that he reads *balantion* instead of *talantion*, I fear cannot be maintained: for although a *follis* is the same thing as what is called *balantion* in Greek, nevertheless the word *balantion* is not applied by the Greeks to the *follis* as a single coin, but rather as a sum of money and a collection or weight of coins, as the Glossaries signify. They make no mention of it as a silver coin, nor do I think it was called *balantion*, although I would not strongly object if it were used in that way by a certain analogy. For when properly the *follis* signifies that certain collection of coins, and a sum gathered, and shut up into one purse, it afterward came to be the case that purses (*folles*) were also called individual parts of the collection, and the coins themselves. Finally, as to why he added the sum of eighty denarii to the account of Epiphanius, he either had no cause, or he did not show what cause he had. Hotoman, in the book *De re Numm.*, confesses that he does not grasp this specific location of Epiphanius without complexity. Others promise that they will someday say what they think about it. I notice nothing in the words of Epiphanius that can seem so tangled and inextricable that one should desert the suit on that account. For this can be gathered simply, and without any emendation or interpolation: that the silver *follis* is a coin, which has been called a small *talent*, composed of two silver pieces, in which 208 small denarii are counted, that is, 104 in each silver piece. Why such a coin was called a *talent*, I either say I do not know, since Epiphanius was silent about it, or I find a cause which anyone can no more prove than refute with certain reason. The same I would assert regarding those denarii, the use and valuation of which were varied among diverse nations. Since it is so easy to finish the interpretation of that passage, yet lest so many learned men seem to have labored and hesitated over it in vain, we ourselves, not content with that simple and obvious declaration, have devised others, which to recount and explain one by one will bring more weariness than utility to the readers. Therefore I will propose one or two, if I first give this warning: that in the manuscript of the Royal Library, that passage is conceived somewhat differently. For I found it written thus: [...] D which reading does not seem to be unworthy of note to me. For the coin of the *follis* in Epiphanius is composed of two silver pieces: these we understand as *miliarenses*, each of which contains ten denarii. But these denarii are not those old Roman ones, but some smaller coins; which for this reason seem to be called denarii, because as many would fit into a silver coin. But there are many reasons that can be given as to why the name of a "small talent" was imposed on that coin. Just as these denarii may have been divided again into six *chalci*: so that 120 would fit into a *miliarensis*; how many in the talent of Epiphanius, which is 125 pounds, correspond to the Attic *minae*. Either this, therefore, or some other such ratio, may have been the reason why the name "talent" remained with the silver *follis*. Indeed, when Epiphanius asserts that the *follis* comprises two silver pieces, it is permitted to understand "silver pieces" as not *miliarenses*, that is, smaller and not those legitimate ones, but didrachms, which would nonetheless be in use. For there were many kinds of silver coins, to one of which the name *miliarensis* was given; yet not all silver coins were called *miliarenses*. Therefore, the *follis* could be a tetradrachm, composed of two didrachms.
A Aristotle says, "twenty-four *nummi*," and later "twelve." Behold, a talent consisted of twenty-four *nummi*, each of which was like the minae of the smaller talent. For Suidas writes, among those same Sicilians, that the ancient [value] was twenty-four minae, but now twelve. Although, instead of "minae," Scaliger corrects it to "*nummi*." But there were as many *obols* in a tetradrachm. By the same right, therefore, the talent of some people—perhaps the Cypriots, according to custom—might be called a *follis* of four drachmas. Finally, since we have it from the *Nomical Glossary* that a *follis* is 125 silver *nummi*, which are worth 218 *keratia*, or gold siliquae, one must wonder whether Epiphanius' words should be brought into line with that authority of the Glosses; so that first, instead of "two silver [coins]," we might read 125. Then, instead of 208 denarii, we read 208 *keratia*, unless perhaps *keratia* are also called denarii. For then the *follis* would be called a "small talent," which contains 125 small silver pieces, as many as are attributed to the larger and weightier talent. But in all these things we allow ourselves nothing more than mere conjecture and divination, so that no one may suspect that these things are offered by us in good faith as being true and verified.
For that which also seemed so to Scaliger, but on a false basis, since he believed the price of a *solidus* to be twenty-four drachmas, and the drachmas of two gold siliquae to be two, or one *miliarensis*. But there were twenty-four siliquae in a *solidus*, and 36 in a didrachm. Therefore the proportion of gold to silver would be as 18 to 4, which has been abundantly refuted in the previous chapter. But if a *follis* consisted of two silver didrachms of that kind, it would contain twenty-four *obols*, which is exactly the number of siliquae in a *solidus*. Wherefore, since a *solidus* has been assigned the name of a talent, as will be said later, the same name could also be attributed to the *follis*, because as many *obols* were counted in it as there were siliquae in a *solidus*. And I do not know if those old Scholia of Matthew, which we cited earlier from the Budé codex, might persuade us, which say that the silver *stater* earned the name of tetradrachm B because, when the ounce is divided into two and placed in two scales, it makes an equilibrium: "Whence, by the balance of the rule, according to the equality of the scale, it was called a *stater*." For it also alludes to the word and notion of a *talent*; and we know that a *talent*, just like a *stater*, is a balance. Therefore, a *follis* could be called a *talent* if it was a tetradrachm. Suidas also, although his words are corrupt, writes some things tending to the same point under the word *Obolus*: "But the silver talent of the present [time is] four, and the *nomisma* eight and six." But Suidas' reliability is generally slippery; for sometimes, without naming sources, he copies the bare words of authors. Indeed, that same scholiast, as we taught earlier, indicates that a silver *stater* collects a hundred denarii; each of these contains sixty *asses*, as the other reading conceives. In this way, there are six thousand *asses* in a *stater*, just as there are drachmas in a talent. However, we know that the name of *talent* was used by certain peoples not only for large sums but even for smaller coins. Festus makes a Neapolitan talent equal to six denarii: a Syracusan one equal to three denarii: a Rhegian one to a *victoriatus*. Pollux, Book IX, Chapter 6: "The Sicilian talent, however, was of the least value. The ancient [one], as AriCstotle says..."
(a) I had written about the *miliarensis* coin, and I had already commented on the preceding [matters] from the ancient Glosses of P. Sirmond, which he had described at Rome as torn and mutilated, when the *Basilica* Glosses were unexpectedly offered to me, having been published by Charles Labbé some years before, of which I had not yet had a copy. When I had read these through avidly, and begun to compare them with those former ones, I encountered many other things in them that stood in our own (although in many respects one Glossary was more complete than the other), and then that very passage about the *follis* which I have copied in its entirety, and furthermore another one about the *miliarensis* that is certainly illuminating, which is missing from Sirmond's. But before I begin to treat that, the reader must be warned concerning the *follis* gloss, that some things are conceived erroneously in Labbé's Glosses, which are to be corrected from our own. Among these the principal one is that which is falsely written in them D: "or according to the current *miliarensis* 9." It should be read "69 *miliarensia*," as the sense demands: for the *miliarenses* of the later form contain 109, and 218 *keratia*. Likewise, a little earlier, I read incorrectly in the same [text], where it treats the weight-based *follis*, that its individual denarii have "1 pound and 13 ounces." [alt-version omitted] I come now to the *miliarensis*: concerning which I found these things in Labbé's [Glosses]: "*Miliarensia* is the thousandth part of the pound of the time; for the Romans call a thousand *mille*, and thus he broke down the amount of the pound so that by it the thousand *miliarensia* might be preserved, so that one obtains 14 *miliarensia* per *nomisma*." I must say I was greatly pleased that what I had asserted, without any author and from mere conjecture, concerning the origin of that word, I later found in those Glosses, namely that they were called *miliarenses* because a thousand of them were reckoned in a gold pound. For it must be corrected, and instead of "time's pound" (α'), read "gold." They add, moreover, that a gold *solidus* is valued at fourteen *miliarensia*. By this reasoning, in order that seventy-two might be struck into a pound of gold, and each one might contain fourteen full *miliarensia*, slightly more than a thousand will fall into the pound: for there will be 1008; for 72 multiplied by fourteen gives 1008. If, however, you reckon exactly a thousand to the 72 *solidi*, dividing 1000 by 72, each *miliarensis* will obtain 13 8/9, that is, almost 14; but we have discussed the estimation and weight of the *miliarenses* copiously in that place.
A Furthermore, the tenth part of old, and later the sixteenth part of a denarius—if it were a drachma—was an obol, and in a chalcus there were seven *lepta*, or minutes. And yet, among Isidore, one does not proceed beyond the chalci. The quadrans was the fourth part of a denarius, and formerly existed as three ounces. According to Hesychius, it is the fourth part of a follis, or even a *lepton*. Epiphanius calls the shekel a quadrans; Isidore writes that it weighs the fourth part of an ounce, that is, two drachmas. Hesychius, and from him Suidas, says that a *codrans* is the whole, or two *lepta*. The same Hesychius teaches that an *assarion* is one and the same thing as a *lepton*, and the six-thousandth part of a talent. You see how uncertain the ratio of all these coins is, and how nothing can be pronounced about these trifles and minutiae unless rashly. LEST I omit in the meantime what pertains greatly to the matter, those same designations of coins, measures, and weights did not have the same notions and powers among different peoples, but were endowed with a higher valuation in one place, and a lower one in another. There are infinite examples of this, upon which it is idle and tedious to dwell; for as to what pertains specifically to the *lepti*, which are mentioned here, who could affirm anything certain about that class? Epiphanius says that the *folles* *kata denarismon* are two *lepti*. If the same *lepti* are the same as *lepta*, there would be seven in a chalcus, in an obol, which has eight chalci, fifty-six *lepti*, and in a drachma three hundred and thirty-six. Thus there would be in a drachma one hundred and sixty-eight of Epiphanius’s *folles*, and in an obol twenty-six. But *lepta* among the same author are different things; for he mentioned *lepta* of a talent above, and others of the *assaria*. Scholia on Matthew from the Budé codex say that there are ten *lepti* in a denarius, which is the hundredth part of a tetradrachm stater—that is, twenty-five drachmas. In addition to this, in Mark XII, 42, that widow, *ptoche*, that is, a mendicant, cast into the treasury *lepta duo, ho esti kodrantes*. Therefore, a follis will be the same as a quadrans. Hilary on Psalm CXXVIII interprets those "minutes" of the widow as two denarii, by the same word by which those coins are reckoned which the Samaritan in Luke chapter X paid to the innkeeper for the sustenance of the sick and wounded man, which Luke calls *denaria duo*. But the same kind of coin is not signified by the word denarius in both places. For much less is what the mendicant woman cast into the chest from her poverty than what that pious Samaritan contributed for the nourishment and care of the sick man. But neither can I agree with Bede, who at that passage of Mark thinks the widow's two "minutes" are a quadrans of a shekel, that is, five obols; nay rather, six obols; for a shekel collects twenty-four obols, or six drachmas, of which each is *hexobolos*. But there is something much more absurd, which I have learned recently has pleased some: that the widow's two *lepta*, which Hilary calls denarii, are those old denarii, the eighth part of an ounce; two of which render a quadrans of a half-ounce. For he reasons thus: A quadrans, which is said to have two "minutes" in the Gospel, is defined as the fourth part of an ounce; if two "minutes" are in a quadrans, then a "minute" is the eighth part of an ounce.
A Eight "minutes," therefore, aggregate into a single ounce, just as eight denarii [aggregate into a larger sum]; and in this way, a "minute" and a drachma, or denarius, would be equivalents. If these things were true—if the *lepton*, of which sort the widow cast in two, were the same as the silver denarius or drachma—then that donation would certainly not be a negligible one; nor would it be praised solely because of the widow's poverty, but also for its own significant value: that is, if, as was stated just before, the beggar woman had donated as much as was spent by that kind Samaritan for the nourishment and care of the sick man. Wherefore, B there is no doubt about the *alogistia* (unreasonableness) which arises from the fact that it is falsely believed that *lepta* or *lepton* everywhere refers to denarii or drachmae, and [the author] claims for his own invention—which he even says the most learned men have ignored—an authority. I confess, however, that this has remained unknown up to now, and that it is of much greater concern to the commonality of letters than that it should be brought to light. For it is most false. Who would interpret those two *lepta* of the widow as anything other than two small copper coins, coins of minimal value, that is to say, *chalci*, eight of which are counted in an obol? Reason itself surely persuades us that it was the most insignificant type of coin. Cyril calls those *lepta* "obols." Are silver denarii then obols, because Hilary interprets the same word "lepta" as denarii? These are mere trifles. For Hilary used "denarii" for small copper coins, just as Epiphanius did when, *kata denarismon*, he opposes it to what is *kata ton argyrismon*: and our own idiom has also adopted this for itself. But as for the fact that Mark calls those two *lepta* a quadrans, why should we consider them a quadrant of an ounce rather than of an obol, or indeed even of a *chalcus*? There are eight *chalci* in a drachma; the same number of "minutes" are set by some in a *chalcus*. Therefore, just as two *chalci* make a quadrant of an obol, and two *lepta* make a *chalcus*, so two ounces make a quadrant of a denarius or drachma. Therefore I say that there are two *chalci*, that is, a quadrant of an obol, in those *lepta* of the widow. This is also acknowledged by the Latin translator, who in Luke xxi, where the same story is told, translates *lepta* as "two small copper coins," namely *chalkia*. Whence also *chalkologoi*, "copper-gatherers": for *chalkos* is used indiscriminately for every kind of coin.
But, he says, Epiphanius writes clearly: "The siclus, which is also called a quadrans, is the fourth part of an ounce, half of a stater, and contains two drachmae." "He said," [the author] says, "that the two drachmae are what others call 'minutes'." But Epiphanius never said that these two drachmae were of the same kind as those *lepta* of the beggar woman: which is absurd and unheard of. We know that the fourth part of an ounce is two drachmae: why Epiphanius confuses these with the siclus, we have explained in its proper place. But that these two drachmae are the two "minutes" that the widow put into the treasury is neither proven there nor can it be established by any argumentation. C But look, the author is Hesychius, [who says] that a *lepton* is the six-thousandth part of a talent. Therefore six thousand *lepta* are contained in a talent. Moreover, in a talent... D the same as a "minute" and a drachma. This is the head of the proof; and yet it is very light. For the talent in Hesychius signifies not that huge sum of money which comprises six thousand denarii, but a solid gold coin; as Scaliger observed in his book *De re Nummaria*. But the words of Hesychius must necessarily be written down here: *Kodrantēs*, he says, *to pan* (the whole), or the fourth part of a *phollis*, or a *lepton*. *To de lepton hexakischilioston talantou; ho esti nomisma hen, he kokkoi treis*. (And the *lepton* is the six-thousandth part of a talent; which is one *nomisma*, or three grains.) *To de talanton litrai hekaton eikosi pente*. (And the talent is one hundred and twenty-five pounds.) *Ho de kodrantēs nomismata tria*. (And the *kodrantēs* is three *nomismata*.) *Ho de eschatos kodrantēs to tetarton tes pholeōs*. (And the last *kodrantēs* is the fourth part of a *phollis*.) Soon after: *Kodrantēs, to pan, he lepta dyo, to de lepton hexakischilioston talantōn*. How perplexing these things are, and how empty of the authority of a new commentary, no one fails to see. He asserts that a quadrans is the fourth part of a *phollis*, or a "minute." Afterward, that a quadrans contains two *lepta*. According to the former reasoning, a quadrans will be the six-thousandth part of a talent; according to the latter, the three-thousandth, because a *lepton* is said to be the six-thousandth part of a talent. Then, what will that *nomisma* be? The same as the quadrans? Or rather as the *lepton*? But immediately he defines three *nomismata* as a quadrans. Therefore a quadrans is three *nomismata*, and one *nomisma*. The same quadrans will be one "minute," and two "minutes." All of which are fallacious, inextricable, and confusedly accumulated; nor can they serve as testimony for a new fabrication. For if, because Hesychius teaches that a *lepton* is the six-thousandth part of a talent, it is therefore true that a *lepton* is the same as a drachma (because an Attic talent contains six thousand drachmae, and since the same Hesychius defines a talent as 125 pounds, that is, 120 Attic minae; and since it is double the Attic [talent], and therefore gathers twelve thousand Attic drachmae; such as we said above the Alexandrian talent was), why do we not conclude by the same right that a *lepton* is a didrachma, since that talent of which Hesychius speaks contains six thousand didrachms? With what confidence, indeed, does he select from that authority what he thinks makes for his own case, while rejecting what most strongly opposes it? For why does he affirm that Hesychius speaks of an Attic talent, when he says a *lepton* is the six-thousandth part of a talent, rather than believing Hesychius who speaks clearly and testifies that he understands that talent which is double the Attic one, and consists of twelve thousand drachmae? I return, therefore, to what I had proposed a little while ago, and I say that the talent there is a solid gold coin, or *nomisma*. Since the word *nomisma* in the more recent century is generally restricted to the gold solidus. Of this, if it is divided *kata denarismon*, the six-thousandth part is the quadrans, which is also expressed by the names denarius, and "minute," and other words indiscriminately. For they are accustomed, as we have indicated before, to be mixed with one another, and those appellations of lowly coins are confused, and the property of each is not everywhere retained.
A Therefore, a quadrans sometimes comprises two *lepta*, or *milliarisia* that are diminished or descending, sometimes it is taken for one *lepton*. Although it is more likely that it should be written in the former place, as it is in the latter, *or two lepta*, rather than *or one lepton*. For he seems to have looked to the words of Mark. And then the *follis* of Epiphanius will be the *quadrans* of Hesychius: although this *follis* is larger than that one: because a *follis* according to Hesychius will contain eight *lepta*, and it will perhaps be the same as an *obol*. But what kind of *folles* or *lepta* they are on both sides is as difficult to ascertain as it is useless to know, and to pronounce on it is rash and ridiculous. But that a talent according to Hesychius is a *solidus* is not only probable because he says it is the same as *one nomisma*, but also because the same can be gathered from Cassiodorus. In his book 1, epistle 10, these words are: "They wished a *solidus* to be six thousand *denarii*." Where Hotoman vainly conjectures that "six thousand *milliarisia*" should be read instead of "*millia denariorum*"; for a *solidus* is commonly estimated at twelve *milliarisia*, not six. The vulgate reading should therefore be retained. From which we learn that six thousand *denarii* were imputed to a *solidus*, which are called *lepta* by Hesychius. In this way, if twelve *milliarenses* are attributed to a *solidus*, each will collect five hundred *minuta*, or *denarii*. Why this seemed strange to Hotoman, there was no cause: since many more little coins could accrue to our gold coin, which was almost twice as small as the Roman one, if they are reduced to the lowest dregs of coins *according to the denarius*, which are commonly called *maculae*, *oboli*, *pitae*, or denoted by other words of this kind. But from this, the reason is also clear why the name of a talent was imposed upon a *solidus*. Namely, because it comprised as many thousands of small coins and *denarioli* as an Attic or common talent comprised of drachms. The rest, which follow in Hesychius, are foreign, and collected rashly, as is customary in Glossaries, in which the varied and often contrary meanings of the same words, collected from diverse authors, are frequently hammered together under one lemma. B as I would say with Eustathius, have been propagated. The *dixératoi* were the former silver coins that made up a *solidus*. Therefore, one hundred and eight silver coins corresponded to nine *solidi*. Just as many *solidi* contain one hundred and twenty-five *argyria lepta*, or *milliarenses*. Wherefore that former silver coin, which is called *dikeratos* by its name, contains one *milliarensis*, or *argyrium lepton*, and in addition 1/108 of the same. Therefore it is called *dikeratos*. Thus the small silver coins of Philip in Vopiscus. But that *to lepton*, or *ho leptos* taken alone signify a silver coin in that author, and without the addition of a substantive noun, I would not dare to deny rashly. This I know, that from all those things which have been brought forward to show this, nothing of the kind can be persuaded: but rather the opposite of all things is gathered. Unless perhaps one may dream that in that very passage of Epiphanius which is being discussed, the *leptoi* are silver *denarii*. Which, according to that new doctrine, one must affirm on the same principles. For he does not merely urge that *ta lepta* or *tous leptous* are sometimes used for silver coins; which indeed ought to be supported by some authority. But he entirely denies that they were bronze coins, which is most false. For even this very passage of Epiphanius evidently argues that *tous leptous* are bronze coins. Since it is one thing to be divided *according to the silver standard (kata argyrismon)*, another *according to the denarius standard (kata denarismon)*: and this later is the same as being reduced to bronze, or distributed into bronze species. When therefore he says that the *follis* is divided *according to the silver standard* into silver coins, and *according to the denarius standard* into *leptoi*, indeed, if we have any sense, he denies that the *leptoi* are silver coins and admits they are bronze. C This reasoning, therefore, does not make more learned men more knowledgeable so that they henceforth understand *leptoi* to be silver *denarii* or drachms, which they were hitherto ignorant of. We do not indeed deny that *argyria lepta* are accepted as silver coins, as in the Glosses of the Basilics, which assign one hundred and twenty-five *argyria lepta* to nine *solidi*. But *lepta* are called so in the same way that Hesychius testifies there are other drachms which are *leptai* (thin) and others which are *pacheiai* (thick), in the entry *Leptaleon*: "The drachms, the *leptai* being those beyond the obols, the *pacheiai* being those having more." But it does not follow immediately that *lepta* are taken for drachms simply and without addition. Just as because one talent was the "convenient" one, which lacked nothing, and another was the "great" one, which exceeded it: the words "great" or "convenient" do not for that reason signify a talent when used simply. In the same way, the Glosses call *argyria lepta* smaller silver coins, so as to distinguish them from larger ones, such as were didrachms or larger silver coins; from which the thousand-coin pieces [are distinguished]. D But to return to the *follis*, whose parts are the *leptoi*, that earlier doctrine does not even prove what it greatly desires to appear to be, that the *follis* is the same as the bronze *sestertius*, insofar as the *sestertius* was uncial, and that in the age of Constantine and Epiphanius. For the calculation by which it thinks this is proved is vain and frivolous. Hesychius, he says, writes that the *quadrans* is *the fourth part of the follis*: a *quadrans* is called by him [the fourth part] of two drachms, [there being] eight drachms in an ounce. Thus two drachms are the fourth part of an ounce, or of a *follis*, or of a *sestertius*. But who concedes this to him, that Hesychius is speaking of the *quadrans* of an ounce rather than of an *obol* or something else? Furthermore, when a *lepton* is said to be the same as a drachm, and a *quadrans* contains two *lepta*, is not the *follis* using two *quadrantes*, by the same principles and by the same authority of Hesychius, shown to consist of eight drachms, or *denarii*? Therefore it will no longer be a bronze coin, but a silver one, indeed quite large, in which there will be thirty-two *sestertii*; much less will the same *follis* be the same as a bronze *sestertius*. Whether this is true per se or not, I affirm nothing here. I argue that the things brought forward to demonstrate this are for the most part hollow and empty, and effect everything other than that for which they were produced. Let us conclude, therefore, that the *follis* was, according to the mind of Epiphanius, the very thinnest bronze coin, which contained two
leptas, or two minutes, in such a way that it might also seem to be the A quadrans of the Evangelist Mark. Furthermore, that *lepta* are tiny copper coins, or chalci, of the kind of which eight are counted in an obol: so that for this reason the two *lepta* are called a *kodrantes* by both Mark and Hesychius.
*Of the homonymy and ambiguity of the follis.*
Since the meaning of *follis* is so diverse, that it expresses both a collection of coins, and silver coins, and copper coins, it happens sometimes that authors abuse the word in such a way that it is difficult to reach by conjecture of what kind they are meant to be understood. Sometimes, however, from the very nature of the matter being discussed, if one applies a little judgment, it is discerned with no difficulty. Of this matter, not a few examples are at hand. But most notable are those which, from the Theodosian code, we have brought forward against the prince of jurisconsults in previous B sections. In which, although the rest have a sufficiently explained rationale, that first passage concerning "rash appeals," in which a fine of xxx *folles* is mentioned, can be ambiguous. Which, however, ought to be judged from the usage of jurisconsults and the merit of the case itself. So that either the xxx are silver coins, or just as many, as we said, of the *athroismata* (collections) of coins. In the Alexandrian Chronicle, however, where in the greatest scarcity of provisions, bread is said to have been sold for three *folles*, I interpret the *folles* not as gold coins, which never existed in the nature of things, but as silver, that is, six *miliarenses*. Eusebius, *Hist.* lib. x, cap. 6, records that Constantine had sent three thousand *folles* to be distributed to the churches of the African provinces for Caecilian, the Bishop of Carthage. There, the *trischilioi folleis* are just as many purses, and coins. For I shall not agree with an otherwise most learned man who, when treating of the *follis*, C places that example indiscriminately among those in which a *follis* is said to be an obol or a copper coin, as is in Moschopulus and Suidas. Such, that is, copper ones, were those of which Augustine records in *De civit.* lib. xxii, cap. 8. In which place he recounts a certain miracle, and the story of Florentius the tailor, a most needy man, who, praying at the memorial of the xx martyrs, asked them for money to buy clothes, and, he says, as he was leaving, the youths who were present kept harassing him, as if he had asked the martyrs for fifty *folles* with which to buy a garment. Soon, departing, he finds a huge fish cast upon the shore, which he sold to a certain cook for three hundred *folles*. These are Augustine's words. Certainly those *folles* are not silver, as I think (for a single fish would not be redeemed for so much by a cook, namely, for six hundred *miliarenses*, or even larger silver coins, which if they were didrachms, yield one thousand two hundred silver denarii), but they seem to have been copper coins of a clearly different kind than those Constantinian ones, three thousand of which that emperor distributed through all the churches of Africa, Numidia, and Mauretania. Wherefore those two examples should by no means have been confused. The same is to be estimated concerning those four hundred *folles* which Lucilla, a most noble woman, gave for the ordination of Majorinus; mention of which occurs frequently in the cause of the Donatists, as in Aug. lib. i *contra Crescent.* For it is ridiculous to say that those *folles* were of the same kind as those three hundred with which that tailor exchanged the fish. Wherefore I believe they pertain to silver *folles*. The same caution must be applied in other examples that occur here and there, so that according to the rationale of the argument, and from the *akolouthia* (sequence) of the discourse, it may be guessed of what kind of *follis* the discussion is being instituted by the authors.
DIONYSIUS PETAVIUS OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS, DISPROVAL OF THE SMALL DISPUTATIONS OF MATHURIN SIMONIUS ON THE ANCIENT RITE OF PENANCE IN THE CHURCH.
(Cf. Petavius's *Diatribe on the ancient rite of penance in the Church*.)
*To the Most Reverend Father in Christ, Gabriel de l'Aubespine, Bishop of Orléans, Dionysius Petavius of the Society of Jesus, S.*
Because the old laws of the Church prescribe in the quarrels and controversies of clerics, most ample Prelate, that they should submit themselves to the judgment and decision of bishops: I come to you willingly in this certain dispute of ours and shall do so studiously. For, having been accused by your cleric—a cleric himself, once yours—and then falsely and undeservedly charged with committing injuries against you, I have sought no other than yourself as my judge, or rather, as my defender and patron. For a few months ago, a certain obscure booklet was published by Mathurin Simonius, Dean of the Church of Orléans: whose appearance and title indeed promises certain "disprovals" [dispunctiunculas] of the ancient rite of penance in the Church. But in the letter which he inscribed to you on the front of the work, after he adorned you with the most true praises—though far less than your merit deserves—he complains to me thus: "Since it is the sign of a noble mind to acknowledge those through whom you have progressed, you do not prove that same thing by your own deeds, Petavius; you who, what you say were read by you in your own drafts, have anticipated publishing them without ever praising you." This is the head of that accusation, and of our crime: then the end of the writing of the booklet.
A The entire remainder of the discussion, which comprises seven chapters, has a place of accession. B And so, the following speech of his concerning the rite of penance is languid and weak, and, that the rest might not be lacking, it is naked and relies on the simple authority of the speaker, not on proofs and arguments; so that it is an indication that he did not write these things primarily for that purpose, but as a pretext for instituting another matter. But for my part, after I had looked about attentively and diligently, and turned my thoughts in every direction, I cannot understand by what motive he was led—a man whom I have hitherto not known even by sight, nor had any dealings with, nor indeed the slightest exchange of conversation, and whose name, finally, I had learned from nowhere else than the inscription of his little "Dispunctiunculae"—that he could be so moved against me as to publish such incredible things about me in that letter of his. I truly consider the Dean of the Church of Orleans to be not only a Christian and a Catholic, but also a good and upright man, and one not oblivious to Christian law and divine and fraternal charity. And I marvel all the more that a man of such age, prudence, order, and dignity—I will not say, invented these things about me, but wherever he finally received them—should have believed them so easily that he wished to persuade others as well. For what is more vain than that accusation which he levels at us, or conjoined with a lesser semblance of truth? He says that you, most eminent Prelate, had read my drafts before I published my *Animadversiones*. That this is far otherwise, not only you yourself know, but you have also openly testified to this fact to our friends who were inquiring about it: although he does not indeed say openly that I read your drafts, he speaks obliquely and captiously, so that those who run through his words less attentively might think that very thing to be affirmed, and thus remove such a suspicion from us. C Again, if anyone should wish to refute him regarding such an obvious falsehood, he could take refuge in this: that he did not say my drafts had been read by us, but that I had anticipated publishing into the public domain what he himself had read in your drafts, concerning which I had often conversed with you. But I confess that I did often dispute with you, as with others, on matters pertaining to doctrine, as well as to ecclesiastical customs and antiquity; and that I inquired about some things which I had not sufficiently explained; nor did I derive, in truth, a mediocre profit from this experience and conversation with you, as I would partly agree deeply with those things which were answered by you, and partly, relying on your fairness and kindness, I would contradict them: for while today no one surpasses you in the knowledge and exercise of those matters, you are also so wonderfully excellent in that candor and facility that, unlike him who wrote against me, you do not extort faith by authority alone, but leave to each one free judgment and the complete parts of defending and disputing what he wishes. But in regard to those things which I have commented on concerning penance and the other rites of the Church in the *Epiphanian Animadversiones*, I know that I have brought them forth, by the aid and benefit of GOD, from no other source than my own labor and industry, the assiduous reading of the Ancients, and several years of use and meditation. I can show my critic and accuser, for each of the chapters I treated there, those same authorities that I used, and many more noted and transcribed in my books, which I had studiously observed for many years past, just as I read each author—from Tertullian, Cyprian, and other Fathers and ancient councils and canons. But I do not value such *chrestomatheia* (useful knowledge), nor whatever I may have deduced from them by ordinary reason or conjecture, so highly that I should consider them worthy of causing quarrels and altercations to defend their possession, much less so that I should, from an uncertain and false suspicion, procure certain infamy and hatred for another's name. And would that he at least, most eminent and learned Prelate, were willing to imitate your moderation: for when you published that most brilliant and laudable work of ecclesiastical observations after our *Animadversiones*, you did not complain even a letter about that plagiarism; which, as the matter was recent, was most fitting for him to whom these things belonged. D You, however, although you held contrary sentiments to mine on certain chapters, said nothing harshly or unkindly against us: and you explained your opinion, as a man no less prudent than learned, in such a way that you spared our reputation and friendship. As I have the right to thank you greatly for this lenity toward me, so I can be angry with my critic, who does not apply the same in a foreign cause which he deemed becoming and honest in yours toward me. Wherefore, regarding his wishing to write against me wherever he could and to correct my errors, I not only do not reproach him but, whatever his motive may have been, I take it in good part. For I see that this is in the interest of the common letters, and can be done honestly and laudably, since there is no one who does not either sin in some thing, or ought not to wish to be freed from his error as if from an evil and a certain disease. I therefore bear this attempt at refuting me not unwillingly: what I complain of is that, when he could have done so without injury and insult, he preferred not to do that very thing. For the one is tolerable, as I said, but as for the other—lest he think himself violated by me, I do not wish to express it in my words. Indeed, because I am with difficulty brought to write against Catholics, and especially against men of his order, even when provoked, I would have borne any unjust reproach of his not only patiently but even tacitly, if that attempt of his proceeded so far as to come against our opinion in a probable question—not against yours, most eminent Prelate, but rather against the common doctrine of the Church. For this one thing remained: that in most of the things he deemed sufficient to pronounce, he would not only depart from the very writings and authority of those whose defender and interpreter he makes himself, but dissent greatly from the common judgment of Catholics. The second chapter of his little "Dispunctiunculae," in which he sets forth what it is to "give penance," is clearly contrary to your and the Church's dogma, and he exposed it with reason whether prudent or imprudent. I omit now the rest, which I prefer you to read in the discussion which I wished to appear inscribed with your name, rather than to have it gathered from this brief and cursory letter.
whoever, moreover, receives this diatribe of ours attentively and patiently will judge it to have been, on the one hand, no less necessary and pious for the repelling of an unjust accusation—something honorable to us—than for the defense and illustration of your own doctrine and that of the Church. But from you, most illustrious Prelate, I ask this final thing, which I trust I shall obtain: that you preserve for me your whole heart and benevolence against my accusers; and then, that as I in turn promise to you that I am a supporter of your dignity, not like some, by criticizing the labors of others, but in a good and upright manner—by defending, as far as it is permitted, your own memorials—I may remain yours forever. Farewell.
INDEX OF THE DISPUNCTIONS OF MAT. SIMONIUS REGARDING THE ANCIENT RITE OF PENANCE IN THE CHURCH.
CAPUT I. Dispunctions discussed, regarding the names of Novatus and Novatian. It is shown that these ought not to be used indiscriminately. Why the Novatians were condemned as heretics; and regarding the conflict of the dispunctor (author) with himself and with the opinion of R. D. Albaspinaeus; which itself is also contested.
It is strange at the very opening of the chapter, and not a common A *parakindyneuma* (a venturesome undertaking): since Novatus and Novatian were two distinct persons, and were the same in neither country, customs, nor character; yet, he who has gathered one out of the two, does not consider that he is either erring himself, or mixing and confusing others. Who can solve this enigma? He states: It is agreed that there were two, of whom one was Roman, the other African. And yet, he says: "None have erred in this, that they mixed those two into one." I would not deem this mystery worth knowing for gold. Tell me, learned sir, what do you think it is to confuse two individuals with each other? Is it not to transfer to one of them those things which are so peculiar to the other that they cannot at all apply to him—to share their names, genus, sayings, deeds, and finally all other things indiscriminately? Compare those Greek and Latin writers whom I have either cited or omitted in my Diatriba: you will see the very thing. But observe the subtlety. "They did not mix them," he says, "because they only knew of one." Very ingenious. Indeed, "mixing" is of two. But what necessity is there to have known both individually? For if they were able to know and discern them, surely they would not have confused them. Therefore, so that any two may be said to be confused and mixed, will you offer a condition of such a kind that ensures they *do not* get confused? What could be more absurd? Did Gregory Nazianzen and others confuse two Cyprians between themselves, or was it necessary to have known the individuals first, before they could be considered to have confused them?
But who would grant you this: that it will be of no harm to anyone to have called the African Novatus and the Roman Novatian, "Novatian" and "Novatus" indiscriminately and indifferently? Surely it will not be of such harm that it pertains to the main cause; but from error and reprimand, no grammar of yours will clear you. "Words," you say, "being slightly altered, are reduced in various and manifold ways, by lengthening, adding, taking away, or changing letters or syllables." Therefore the same will be King, that is, *regulus, regillus, regillianus*; B just as one is said to be called a king from the surname, as in the Marcia family, so from other surnames, which are declined from the same source, he could have been called. Likewise, it will have been of no harm to anyone to call Victor the historian, Victorinus; or Cato, *Catus, Catium, Catienum*, to use them *adiaphoros* (indifferently). I omit the rest of the same kind and absurdity.
In my Diatriba (a) I wrote that the Novatians had once excluded the right of releasing sins from the Church: Indeed, that that single indulgence of sins resides in the judgment of the Church, which is obtained through baptism. You confess (b) that you do not understand this. What shall I do? That indeed I do not follow in your reasoning: that Novatus, or Novatian, were held as heretics and proscribed by the Catholic Church because they asserted that no right existed in the Church to reconcile the lapsed and to forgive sins, is a discourse of a tortuous question. You seem to wish to argue against what I said: *that Novatus and Novatian were held as heretics, and proscribed by the Church, because they said that no right existed in the Church to forgive crimes.* And yet, you approve of this with the authority and voice of the Council of Trent. This duty is welcome. But, you say, his words ring of nothing else than that, among the other errors of the Novatians, this was one. Do I say anything else? Page 227, our words are: *Because they took away from the Church and the priests the power of the keys, as they call it, to omit the rest of their errors, the Novatians were condemned as heretics.* It concerned him who would write a Dispunction to refute and deny this.
But also he C *maten pterygizei* (flutters in vain), and your disputation runs into itself and, even unwillingly, slides back into what it opposes. What is it that, from the fourth page and consecutively, you strive to prove until the end of the chapter? I suppose it is that Novatian was not held as a heretic for this one error alone—that he denied that the right and power of the keys to release crimes resided with the Church. I neither said this, nor was it at all necessary to demonstrate the contrary. But let us see, then, how you persuade others of that same thing. You bring forward a passage of Cyprian, who, when asked by Antonianus what heresy Novatian had introduced, responds thus: *You should know, in the first place, that we ought not even to be curious as to what he teaches, since he teaches outside. Whoever he is, and whatsoever he is, a Christian*...
A the passage from Cyprian is brought forward by you to the end that you might show that someone else was judged a heretic for an error other than that he detracted from the Church's right of the keys. For you wished to attack this as if it had been posited by me. But what, in truth, is more alien to that hypothesis and the design of your disputation than that testimony from Cyprian? For show me, even noted in writing within those words, any other error for which he deserved to be considered a heretic. Cyprian denies that one should inquire too curiously as to who that author of heresy is, who does not teach in the Church, that is, who has divided himself from it by schism. There is not a single word about the error or the heresy itself—what kind it is, or what it contains. For the other dogma as well, which is gathered from the commentary of Ambrose on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 6: "He who commits fornication sins also against the Holy Spirit," for which reason he was cut off from the Church, is not to be accepted in such a way that he was judged a heretic precisely for asserting that. Rather, because he thought that sins against the Holy Spirit were of such a kind that they could in no way be released; and because he believed this was concluded from the authority of the Gospel wrongly understood, he taught that the sin of fornication, among others, was in that sense and intent against the Spirit, so that it could not be released by ecclesiastical law and power. For which reason he first brought about a divorce; then, when the error was more fully recognized, he was condemned as a heretic for that very reason. Of these two things, that is, schism, not heresy, the author of the Commentaries indicates in those words: "for which reason he was cut off from the Church." But between us the controversy is not about schism, but about dogma and heresy. For which reason that passage does not assist your cause at all.
But behold: "Three," you say, "errors of the Novatians does the 8th canon of the Nicene synod touch upon." I ask, which ones? The first is that they called themselves Cathari. Is this, in your judgment, an error, or a heresy, for the sake of which Novatian was considered a heretic? Who would condemn, as a heretical dogma, any bare name—however stupid and tasteless—unless there were something else underlying it? Then I would have you note that the Novatians were considered heretics for this reason, that they called themselves Cathari—this has nothing to do with Novatus or the Novatianist [view]; for I do not think it is established whether he ever called himself a Catharus. But yet you speak of the author of the sect himself, Novatus or Novatian, not of his disciples and partisans (a); and indeed you ought to speak so, especially since you conclude at last in this way: "By steps, therefore, rather than by a precipitous course, did Novatus fall." The second error [is] that they departed from the decrees of the Catholic and Apostolic Church; the third, that they utterly rejected the communion of digamists and the lapsed. I am amazed that two different dogmas and errors are thrust upon me, which in that Nicene canon are held as one and the same. The words of the council:
PRO OMNIBUS AUTEM EOS SCRIPTIS PROFITERI OPORTET, QUOD CONSENTIANT, ET SEQUANTUR DOGMATA ECCLESIAE CATHOLICAE ET APOSTOLICAE: ID EST, ET CUM DIGAMIS COMMUNICARE, ET HIS QUI IN PERSECUTIONE LAPSI SUNT.
Which those decrees of the Church are, the word *toutesti* [that is to say] indicates; namely those things, from which you wished to concoct a third kind of error—a new one, of course, and not observed by us. Indeed, when some peculiar error of Novatian was being sought, so that you might show he was not condemned as a heretic for the reason that he judged the power of the keys to be taken away from the Church, I cannot but wonder again that such a thing was sculpted by you from those words of the canon, that he was failing the decrees of the Church. For that B embraces in its scope not one single error, but infinite heads of errors. Wherefore that assertion of ours—to which you, even unwillingly, give your support—is most true: that Novatus and the Novatians were judged heretics chiefly because they stubbornly denied the power of remitting [sins], to use the words of the Tridentine synod. Their first disjunction from the Church did indeed have its origin in schism, heresy not yet having been fully spread, as the passage of Cyprian brought forward by you indicates. Which, as in a very simple and not at all necessary matter, you could have summarized. But they were judged heretics chiefly for this reason, that they not only thought sinners should not be admitted to communion, but that they believed they could not even be admitted and absolved. Finally, since you say that you wrote your little investigations to this end, so that you might rescue the remarkable teaching and sentiment of the R.D. Albaspinæus, Bishop of Orléans—whom I name for the sake of honor—concerning the ancient practices of the Church from my "preposterous" opinion; see whether you have not C manifestly prevaricated in the matter. For that most learned prelate taught nothing other than what you criticize as being usurped by me. For in the second book of his *Ecclesiastical Observations*, chapter 21, page 312, he explains his opinion no less truly than learnedly: "But that they might emerge more easily from those difficulties, they ought to note that the error of the Novatians was not posited in the fact that they said that neither the lapsed nor the excommunicate were to be freed from sins in death, but that they were D considered heretics because they supposed that God himself had not granted to the Church the power and store of remitting or retaining capital sins." These are his words, and several things akin to these in the preceding chapter: which are both most certain and conformable to those of ours which you criticize, who, lest Novatian be seen to be held for a heretic on account of that one chief dogma alone (which I, alongside that most reverend prelate, was affirming), object to us that their errors were multiple (b). But you attack the teaching of the same prelate in the following chapter far more openly, and with a lesser show of truth.[ADVERSUS MAT. SIMONIUM.]
Chapter II
Explication of what it is to grant penance; Innocent’s passage, wrongly accepted in the *Dispunctiunculæ*, is elucidated. The conflict of the *dispunctor* with himself and with Catholic doctrine. And also with the Reverend Lord Albaspinaeus, whose teaching is defended. Concerning the fourth degree of penance. It is shown that penitents sometimes remained in it permanently. That communion was once represented as being at the point of death: this from the mind of the Council of Nicaea.
Lemma of the second chapter: Concerning what kinds of sins, and to what extent, communion was denied in the early Church. What weight this inscription has, or why it was prefixed, I cannot divine. For it is either the subject matter for the following disputation, and a summary of those things which are treated in this chapter, or it is the argument of the chapter which he undertakes to oppose, or the *krinomenon*. The *dispunctor* has provided neither of these there. Read the chapter itself, and if you can, extract even the smallest part of it that aligns with the inscription itself. He brings nothing here concerning the kinds of sins for which communion was either represented or denied—*oikothen* [from his own resources]; he refutes nothing proposed by us on that matter, not even in the slightest degree. He harasses a few things, and those certainly not *kairia* [opportune]. Peace, he says, or reconciliation with the Church, which is called absolution, is separated from the Eucharist by a long interval. I suppose there was a danger that someone might confuse absolution with the Eucharist, just as if one were to fancy that a medicine is the same thing as health, or conflate the right to receive the annual fruits of a benefit with the fruits themselves and the grain. No one has been so dull as to believe that absolution is the Eucharist. Therefore, there was no need to labor [the point], neither so that we might understand more easily, nor that we might understand at all. It follows: We must know that in Innocent’s Epistle to Exuperius, penance, absolution, the reconciliation of communion, does not signify the Eucharist. Who is unaware of this? But still, it is helpful to learn what penance is. Penance, he says—that is, the desire to repent—when the blood of the Savior was still warm, was a gift of God which fell upon the souls of the faithful. What now, after that blood has grown cold? Has it ceased to be a gift of God? Or are we to be Pelagians today, so that we would wish the desire to repent to come from somewhere other than the gift of God? It was, he says, a gift of God when the blood of the Savior was still warm. Therefore, it is no longer a gift of God at this time? There follows an A *apodeixis* [demonstration] from Leo and Augustine that the Eucharist differs from penance. It was a matter of such great effort to assert or persuade that penance is a gift of God and obtainable without absolution! Beginners in the schools of theology know this, for they have learned that penance is otherwise a feeling of the mind and a duty of a certain virtue; concerning what kind it is, they still argue among themselves today. But that with Innocent penance is nothing other than that sorrow of heart and gift of God, perhaps I shall believe tomorrow, not today; I return yours to you.
Innocent to Exuperius in Epistle 3, chapter 2: And this has been inquired into, he says, what must be observed concerning those who, having been given over to incontinence and pleasures at every time since their baptism, request at the extreme end of their life both penance and the reconciliation of communion. Regarding these, the B former observance is harsher, the latter, with the intervention of mercy, is more inclined to indulgence. For the former custom held that penance should be granted to them, but communion should be denied, etc.
Here, penance seems to be something completely different than that interior feeling and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For it can neither be granted nor denied by men; and as for that which, unless they had already received it, they would never ask for from men—whatever it may be—that is what must be provided by men. Therefore, penance, of which the pontiff speaks, is something else: namely, the right and power of undergoing penance, provided that they might be snatched from the jaws of death and recover; which power was undoubtedly conferred by some rite unknown to us, and by a blessing. This is what I say it is to grant penance; to enroll someone among the penitents, with that rite and ceremony and formula by which it was permissible to be received into the flock of penitents. You hold a different view. Truly, I do not envy you, nor do I attack you. But nevertheless, let us proceed to dispute concerning Innocent’s passage. It was asked by Exuperius what should be established concerning those who, having been given over to incontinence at every time since their baptism, ask for penance and communion at the extreme end of their life. Innocent replies that the custom of previous times was harsher, so that penance was granted to them, but communion was denied. The C *dispunctor* interprets this as follows (b): For when the storm of persecutions was raging, to those who were moved by penance, as it was a gift of God, penance was granted; that is, the Church approved of that penance: but without the absolution of sins. But when peace was restored to the Church, it pleased that communion—that is, pardon or the absolution of sins—should be given to the dying; and therein was condemned, though only after a long interval, the heresy of the Novatians, because they did not relax pardon for the dying. What kind of thing is that first one, to grant penance, that is, to approve that gift of God by which sinners have been moved? Who speaks in this way? For to grant is to bestow something which lies in the power of him who grants. Here, he who approaches the Church or the priests D to obtain penance, what need does he have to ask that it be granted to him, which he has already received from Him who is able to give it? Furthermore, why did he not say "to admit to penance," or "to approve," but "to grant"? But let that contention over words be omitted, if you like. The rest of the whole interpretation is too ambiguous. I want you to answer me, what do these things mean: "while the storm of persecutions was raging"? Whether you understand that whole period during which the Church was tossed at intervals, and repeatedly shaken by intermittent storms of persecutions, which lasted until about the year 310, and even longer. For these are the times of the persecutions; not because it was afflicted with perpetual and continuous storms of this kind—
A but because this hostile oppression weighed upon parts of those times. Do you believe, then, that during that whole time, namely those two or three centuries, the discipline of the Church was such that communion was denied to any penitents whatsoever, and that no absolution of sins being granted, only penance was conceded? That is, as you explain it, that the inner sense, divinely instilled into the minds of men, was approved. Your words provide no other interpretation, which teach generally that to those affected by that gift of God, the absolution of sins was by no means granted, but merely that penance was approved.
From this it follows that to no one after a fall was communion—that is, absolution—restored. Was no penitent reconciled to the Church during all that time? Was no one restored to his former state? For those who had once sinned, were they excluded forever from the Church and from the usage of the sacraments? B At the very least, you should state that those who had committed certain most grievous crimes were specifically excepted from such severity, which we have shown in the chapter marked by the enumerator was something instituted in the Church only in ancient times for a triple category of crimes. But that all penitents, and those punished with penance for any kind of crime whatsoever, were forever bereft of absolution and communion, is neither true, nor, to say the least, can it be persuaded by any reason or authority. I will repeat again: this reasoning of yours seems to define what you have proven to no one: that in those ancient times, when persecution raged, no one who had sinned more grievously—that is, who performed public penance—could be absolved, reconciled, or restored to communion and the sacraments. For you teach, indefinitely and without limit, that while the storm of persecutions raged, for those who were moved by the gift of penance—that is, by an inward sense of sorrow—that penance was indeed approved, but without the absolution of sins. You add that once peace was restored to the Church, it pleased [the Church] that forgiveness, or the absolution of sins, be given to those who were dying; and that in this, though at a long interval, the heresy of the Novatians was condemned, because they did not relax forgiveness to those who were dying. Thus, so late and at length, was that custom introduced into the Church, that communion was restored to penitents; and not even then at any time, but only in danger of death. C You therefore argue thus: In the first times of the Christians, which were infested by persecutions, absolution was utterly denied to those who were moved and were penitent, even in danger of death; but when tranquility was restored, it was conceded only to the dying; and that it was for this sole reason—that peace and reconciliation were at least granted to the dying—that the Novatians were condemned. Your speech and intention are demonstrated not only by that which I cited from page 2, where you write that while the storm of persecution raged, penitents were admitted only to penance without hope of reconciliation; which you take to apply as much to those who were healthy and strong as to those who were dying. For you add that a different and milder custom was subsequently received, which only relaxed it for those who were dying, and in that you condemned the heresy of the Novatians. These things therefore not only argue that in those ancient times absolution was permitted to no penitents at all, and later only to the dying, but also [they argue] those things which you discuss on page 13, when you explain these words of Innocent: "Communion was rightly denied, penance was granted, lest it be denied altogether," into this meaning: "By the approval of penance by the Church, the bond of excommunication was loosened, although absolution was not conceded." Which you think should be understood universally and of the whole class of penitents. For Innocent speaks of those times in which, while the storm of persecutions raged, you said that absolution was conceded to no one at all.
Since, therefore, your mind and opinion are evident, I deny that this mind and this opinion of yours are in agreement with the truth, with the authority of the ancients, and with the customs of the Church, to say nothing more severe. For this being established, no reason appears why the Novatians would have made a divorce with the Catholic Church. For what is it that this heretical faction was principally fighting? I suppose it did not want the lapsed and other sinners to be admitted to the peace and communion of the Church. It did not exclude them from the hope of forgiveness and salvation; it did not reject from sinners that inward gift of God, that is, the intimate sorrow of the soul and penance. On the contrary, they encouraged them to penance, and to that extent conceded—that is, approved—penance. Socrates, in his account of the author of the faction, Novatus (Lib. IV, cap. 13), relates that he himself wrote to the churches everywhere: "Not to receive those who have lapsed into the mysteries; but rather to urge them to penance, and to leave the forgiveness to God, who is able and has the power to forgive D sins." That is, [the Novatians taught] all the Churches not to receive the lapsed to the mysteries, but to urge them to penance, while leaving the absolution to God, who has the power and the faculty to pardon sins. Therefore, the Novatians conceded—that is, they approved—penance. This is also signified by those words of Ambrose (Lib. I, De pœnit., cap. 2): "But what is harsher than to indicate penance, which they do not relax?" etc. Whoever thinks that to concede penance is nothing other than that gift of God, and to approve of the sorrow that has fallen into the sinner's soul, will admit that the Novatians granted penance, and thus in this respect did not differ from the Catholics; for the fact that the Novatians further denied that the right of remitting sins resided with the Church, while the Catholics affirmed it, has nothing to do with the matter: first, because in the previous chapter you seemed to deny that the Novatians taught this at the beginning, and that they arrived at it only through certain stages. Wherefore, at that first stage of error, I would like you to respond why Novatus then separated himself from the Catholics because he did not believe that peace should be granted to the lapsed for their forgiveness, if the same thing had been done by the Church. Furthermore, because the controversy was moved by them regarding matters of fact before it was regarding matters of right. I now show that what you discuss is most false;
A that proof is not of the kind which he confirms; but he pronounces after the Pythagorean manner, that penitence is granted to sinners only without absolution. I believe Tertullian flourished in those very times when the storm of persecution was raging, and when he asserts that peace was entirely denied to penitents. But in his book *De praescript.*, he teaches that Marcion the Pontic—who he said had been cast out of the communion of the Church because of the seduction of a certain virgin—was about to be admitted to peace, had he not been forestalled by death. Therefore, that man, though covered in so many crimes and an infamous heresiarch and sacrilegious, would have obtained peace had death not prevented it. Tertullian's words are in chapter 30: "Marcion later, having confessed his penitence, was about to receive peace as he met the condition laid upon him, if he also restored to the Church the others whom he had instructed in perdition, but he was forestalled by death."
To these things, who does not know that in the same century, though Tertullian, now a heretic, clamored in vain, peace was granted to adulterers after penitence by Pope Zephyrinus and the Catholics? Peace had not yet been restored to the Church, and the storm of persecutions was still raging, when the Church showed that indulgence, or the absolution of sins, was for the living just as for the dying; nor did it only approve of penitence, but it also granted peace and the reconciliation of communion. Cyprian also lived while the storm of persecutions was raging, before peace had been restored to the Church, in the same times as the heresy of the Novatians arose. He writes a letter to Antonianus, which is the 2nd of book IV: "For to adulterers," he says, "a time for penitence is granted by us, and peace is given." Also: "I wonder, however, that some are so obstinate as to think that penitence should not be granted to the lapsed, or that pardon should be denied to the penitent." Furthermore, in the book *De lapsis*, he complains only of this: that they think there is peace—which some sell with fallacious words—before sins are expiated, before an *exhomologesis* of the crime has been made, before the conscience has been purged by the sacrifice and hand of the priest, before the offended Lord has been appeased in His indignation and threats. Regarding which he also complains elsewhere B commonly, especially in epistle 10 to the clergy, and epistles 12 and 15 of book II. And epistle 41: he permits raped virgins to return to the Church after full penitence once *exhomologesis* has been made. Indeed, he even decides in epistle 54 that, because of the impending persecutions, the periods of penitence should be shortened and peace should be represented to the lapsed. But I fear that to accumulate Cyprian's authorities might be too long and superfluous. For his letters are full of very certain and most evident testimonies, from which it appears that, with the storm of persecution raging, the absolution of sins was granted to penitents, to the living as equally as to the dying; and it is not true, as you write, that the heresy of the Novatians was condemned only after a long interval, because they did not relax pardon for the dying. That this was done in the Church while Novatian was still alive—nay, even before Novatian—has been sufficiently shown. Let the penitential canons of Gregory Thaumaturgus and others be added, C published while the storm of persecution still raged; in which a time of penitence is described, and in the end communion and absolution are proposed. That confessor Serapion, whom Eusebius mentions in book VI, chapter 26 of *Eccl. Hist.*, because he had sacrificed to idols, having been rejected for a long time, was admitted to the communion of the Lord's body at the very time of death: which Dionysius of Alexandria reports in Eusebius as being commanded by him: "A command having been issued by me," he says, "'that those departing this life, if they should ask, and especially if they had previously petitioned, should be absolved.'" By a mandate issued by me, that the dying, if they asked for it, especially if they had previously supplicated, should be absolved. Therefore, there is no doubt that before peace was restored to the Church, and not long after the rise of the Novatians, peace and communion were restored to the dying, which Cyprian also testifies was used by him in his letters.
How much more, then, do I marvel that you write these things, knowing full well that they so openly contradict the authority of Tertullian, Cyprian, and all other writers and canons, so that their falsity is evident to anyone even moderately knowledgeable in these matters. What of the fact that this same doctrine of yours most manifestly fights with those things which you taught in your first chapter? For in that chapter, page 6, you bring forth from Eusebius that decree of the Roman council, which was celebrated in the time of Novatian, D which bids that Novatus and his supporters, puffed up with such pride, and as many as assented to that most inhuman opinion of his, so alien to fraternal charity, be held in the same number as those who were excluded from the Church. What is this sentence full of inhumanity, for which Novatus was condemned? I suppose it is that which Eusebius reports in the same chapter 55, book VI, from where you drew these things: that he took away all hope of pardon from the lapsed. Therefore, Novatian having been condemned, it was established that the same lapsed could be cured by the medicines of penitence and restored to health. Even then, therefore, as is apparent, the lapsed obtained absolution of sins from the Catholic Church. And yet, in this very second chapter of dispunctions, page 2, you assert that while the storm of the persecutions was raging, absolution was denied to the penitent, that is, to those touched by that gift of God, and that it pleased the Church to give absolution—that is, pardon or the absolution of sins—to the dying only when peace was restored to the Church; and that in this the heresy of the Novatians was condemned, because they did not relax pardon for the dying. White is no more contrary to black than the sentiment of the latter chapter is to the doctrine of the former. If the heresy of Novatian was condemned long after the time of Novatian and when the persecution was finished; by this very fact, that pardon was permitted only to the dying, how is it true, as you were just now bringing forth from Eusebius and that Roman council (which was certainly held in the time of persecution), that the most inhuman opinion of Novatus, and that most alien to fraternal charity, had been condemned while he himself was still alive? For Novatian only to that extent allowed hope of pardon to the lapsed
whereby he drew them away from the Catholic Church; yet he approved of that affection of penitence, or gift of God and sorrow, or whatever it may be, which penitents obtained without absolution, as we have demonstrated from Socrates, bk. IV, ch. 13, and Ambrose, bk. I, *De poenitentia*, ch. 2, in *Animadv.*, ch. 1. A Wherefore, the fact that you confess the dogma of Novatian was condemned in the Roman council on the authority of Eusebius, ch. 1, is the very thing which you demonstrate in your second chapter was rejected and proscribed only at a long interval after him; and that in the very time when you said it was condemned in your first chapter, it was approved in the Catholic Church by custom and usage. These are self-contradictions. As long as the fury of persecution raged—that is, in the age of the council of Novatian, Cyprian, and the Romans, of which Eusebius makes mention—absolution of sins was not granted even at the point of death, as you assert on page 2 of that chapter: and that discipline of the Catholic Church, by your own authority, existed. It is false, therefore, what you posited in the first chapter, page 6: that the most inhuman opinion of Novatian, and one most alien to fraternal charity, was condemned in the Roman council. For you will not say that another opinion was condemned there than that which denied communion and pardon to those who had lapsed in danger of death, B since you confess on page 2 that the error of such a sect was that very thing. But if this, which you write in your first chapter, is true—that it was decreed by a council, as no prudent man would deny—then you must retract that other statement of your second chapter: that not even to the dying was pardon accustomed to be granted before the peace of the Church was restored.
Now I shall show that which I prescribed for myself in the very heading of this chapter: that in the disputation of your second chapter you fight against the most certain doctrine of the Reverend Lord Albaspinaeus, Bishop of Orléans, which is consonant with ecclesiastical faith and piety. You write on page eleven, as has been said: "Only after peace was restored to the Church, and a long interval after Novatian, was pardon granted to the dying, and then at last the heresy of the Novatians was condemned, because they denied pardon to the dying." The most reverend bishop, on the contrary, in bk. II, *Obs.*, ch. 20, writes that Cornelius, who lived during the time of Novatian and the persecution, convened a council in which it was decreed and predetermined that when they had extended penance even to the day of death, they should be made partakers of communion. Therefore, the bishop thinks that even during the time of persecution, and before peace was restored to the Church, while Novatian was still alive, pardon was granted to the dying: a thing which you think was granted only much later and not until peace was established, and at a long interval, as you say. Whose opinion, then, shall be approved? I believe that not even you yourself would doubt that the most learned bishop is more true—nay rather, that he alone says what is true, and that you have not written even what is probable in that entire chapter.
Behold another of your dogmas regarding penance C in agreement with the opinion of the same, how can it exist? You teach us, on page 8, that the penance about which Innocentius instituted his discourse—when he says that it was granted when communion was once denied—is the desire for penance, or the gift of God, which flowed into the hearts of the faithful. The Reverend Lord Albaspinaeus, in bk. II, *Observ.*, ch. 3, p. 228, judges that this gift of God and inspiration is a fruit and effect which redounded into the hearts from the blessing of penance. He proceeds then, and among other things which he argues concerning the use of penance, which is truly recondite and exquisite, he proves that penance—that is, the state and profession of public penance, which he defines by labors and torments—was a certain kind of religion into which men bound themselves by a solemn vow; by the religion of which vow no one was bound unless it had been accepted and ratified by the Church. And that was done by that imposition of hands and blessing by which it commanded and granted penance. I omit the rest, lest I be too long. I marvel that you, when you were observing this, could either write these things: that to grant penance is the same as that gift, and to approve the inward affection of the penitent, or that when you held and wrote such things, you had professed that you wished to illustrate and defend the doctrine of such a great prelate. For he demonstrates most broadly that that very penance of which Innocentius treats was produced by that gift of God with His blessing, not that the gift itself was penance. Teach us, therefore, what recondite and secret sense lies hidden in those words and opinions of yours; and excuse your discourse from the suspicion of such an error—not to say anything else, which you certainly see can be said—if you are able. For I confess that, having pondered those things often and turning them over in interpretation in every direction, I have hitherto been able to extract nothing by which the odium of so clear a falsehood can be avoided: for the one thing that remained, that you seemed to have held that in the very heat and fervor of persecution, the approach to peace and reconciliation was closed to the lapsed, so that they might repeat the struggle with greater impetuosity of mind and ardor; but afterwards, once peace was restored to the Church for a time, they were treated more mildly—which Cyprian testified in his 52nd epistle was instituted by him—this, I say, which you could have said most truly, you have neither said nor thought, D as is manifest from what you append: "Peace having been restored to the Church, it was decided that communion, that is, pardon, be given to the dying; and in that was condemned—but at a long interval—the heresy of the Novatians, because they did not grant pardon to the dying." You defend this restoration of peace to the Church, and the heresy of the Novatians condemned by a contrary and milder custom, eventually at a long interval. But that alternation of severity and lenity of which I was speaking was not after a long interval, but at the very birth of the Novatian heresy, having been received in the Church, it condemned its ferocity and cruelty. [alt-version omitted] The things which you explain in those words are therefore wonderful, and in my judgment false; and they are altogether alien to the mind of Innocentius and to that use of the ancient Church which he sets forth.
A Petavius, he says, is stuck here. Nay, truly he has brought forward a much more probable and expeditious interpretation of Innocentius. Custom, he says, previously held that penance should be granted to them, but communion should be denied. To whom, finally? Indeed to those about whom he says he is asking Exuperius: "And this was also asked, what should be observed concerning those who, after baptism, given over at all times to incontinence and pleasures, at the final end of their life seek both penance and the reconciliation of communion." To this Innocentius says: "Concerning these, the prior observation is harder," etc. Then, "that it might be granted to them," etc., namely, to those who had delayed penance until the final time of life. Who does not see that it was concerning that kind of penitent that Innocentius wrote these things? Therefore the "piercer" orders the words of Innocentius to be referred to all penitents, and that first, harder observation. I shall never listen. For from that, that absurdity follows: that no penitents were received to peace, that is, to absolution and communion, during those times of persecution, not even in the very danger of death. How false this is, we have sufficiently shown thus far; those whose office it is to judge in this matter will see how it squares with piety and the Catholic faith. You will never persuade me, nor, I think, will you prove to any Catholic, that in those first centuries, absolution and communion were denied to any sinners whatsoever after the performance of penance. And therefore, I do not yet regret our opinion, which we expound in our *Animadversiones* (pp. 230, 231, and following); and it began to please us more, from the time we learned yours.
Another chapter of our disputation is criticized by our censor, because on p. 232 I doubted whether the final degree, which they called *systasis*, was open to those condemned to perpetual penance: in which they enjoyed only the communion of prayers, not yet having become participants of the Eucharist. Although I have inclined the more to believe that they did not at all reach that fourth degree. The censor asserts that I felt rightly about this later. For to those advanced to the fourth degree, absolution had been granted, which was denied to those condemned to perpetual penance. Whether absolution, that is, peace and reconciliation, was granted in the third degree, or only in the fourth and in the *systasis*, was asked by us in the final chapter of our Dissertation, and the arguments on both sides were weighed, by which this could be affirmed or denied. This I did not wish to define in either direction, and I appealed to the judgments of learned men and those consulted on ecclesiastical antiquity. If you are of that class of men, I would have you resolve this doubt for me, and meet those conjectures which are partly proposed there by me, and partly can be brought from other authors. For my part, I think that after sacramental absolution, that is, perfect peace and reconciliation, the penitents were rightfully admitted; and that they had nothing left which would exclude them from the communion of the Lord’s body. For I see that for peace B and reconciliation to be subjected in the canons to the participation of the mysteries or the *teleion*: then the part and degree of penance called *systasis* is held, and is specifically imposed. Unless you have diverted me from that opinion by other considerations, I fear you cannot persuade me. But, nevertheless, that matter having been left in the middle, as we have done: (for you will forgive me, I think, if, when I was applying myself to the treatment of those things which, as far as I know, no one had touched before, I preferred to remain stuck in these and similar questions, rather than to judge rashly about such great matters.) But with that part of the controversy passed over, that you assert without any doubt that the final degree was not open to perpetual penitents, that can not undeservedly be denied to you. And so that I might meanwhile concede regarding those who were admitted to public penance, which we taught as having been granted only once during those times: I can show that some, who after completing penance and reconciliation had sinned again, were reduced to the *systasis* alone for their whole life; so that, joined with the faithful in prayer alone, they might receive peace and communion at the end of life. Regarding which matter there exists a clear passage from Pope Siricius, epist. 1, can. 5, concerning those who, having performed penance, return to their vomit: "Concerning whom," he says, "because they no longer have a place for penance, we have judged that he must decide that they be joined to the faithful in prayer alone within the Church," etc. He adds that at the hour of death communion is to be rendered. You have here those condemned to the fourth degree of penance, that is, to *systasis*, in perpetuity, C without absolution and communion, which they might obtain only at death. It is not, therefore, likely, as you boast, that those who were in the *systasis* had been granted absolution beforehand. Unless, perhaps, those who had returned to their vomit bore it so with impunity that they received absolution at once without penance, and were treated far more comfortably than those who had sinned once, which surpasses every absurdity.
But he also pities our [(c)] assertion; because we think that peace and absolution were denied to those showing sorrow for their sin and penance, because the Synod of Nicaea, can. 13, calls it "the ancient and canonical law," by which it is prescribed that peace must be given to the dying. O merciful man, who so easily pities the error of another, as he thinks, why is he so harsh and cruel to sinners and penitents that he prohibits them from being reconciled with the Church? Indeed, on p. 231, after I had proved that in certain crimes communion was sometimes denied, I doubted a little whether it was granted even in danger of death. That I might not assert this entirely, I said that I was prohibited by that 13th Nicene canon, where the Fathers decreed concerning the dying that they should not be deprived of their last and necessary viaticum, and that in this the old and canonical law should be maintained. These words of the council, "old and canonical law," signify not "yesterday and the day before," but long ago established in the Church D
and it is A permitted to dying penitents to receive communion; should it not have carried on for seventy years? Therefore, in the flourishing time of Cyprian, it was already accepted by usage. Thus, in many ways, it is a fabrication that, in the time of the persecutions, and for a long interval before Novatian, communion was denied even to dying penitents.
The respondent objects to these things: B that the Synod of Sardica, which is later than the Nicene, denies communion in danger of death. What then? Can you therefore deny that this very thing was decreed by the Nicene Council, since its canon speaks so openly? You do not know that general rules, when the state of the times or the custom of discipline demands it, sometimes override private laws; so that the equity of the Church, in its power and the discretion of its use of canons, often decrees something contrary to the strict letter, while maintaining the authority of the canons themselves. For even that Synod of Side in Pamphylia, held against the Massalians—which is later than the Sardican, and which we mention from Photius, page 18—does not grant communion even at the point of death to those who, after that heresy was anathematized, subsequently gave some suspicion of it, however much they may have been prepared to confess their penitence with a changed mind. You see the acuteness of that reasoning! The eleventh Nicene canon set C twelve years of penance for those who fell under the tyranny of Licinius without force or necessity. Will you use a similar argument there to prove that it was never sanctioned by the council? Since the Council of Valentinus, later than the Nicene, decreed in canon 3 that those who have been polluted by the profane rites of demons after baptism should undergo penance until death. But your reasoning does not hold up at all. Nor, therefore, does the one you apply to a similar matter.
You continue, and refute this, arguing about that most difficult passage of Cyprian from Epistle 13, page 234, where the holy pontiff orders that those who have received certificates from the martyrs should make a confession of their fault before a priest, or—if there is a lack of him—before a deacon, so that, with the hand imposed upon them for penance, they may come to the Lord with peace. I interpreted these things—probably, if I am not mistaken—in such a way that there was a twofold fruit of absolution: that one might be absolved D from the sins themselves (that is, the guilt itself after penance); and that, having been restored to integrity, they might be admitted to the communion of the Lord’s body and the Church. Both were to be obtained through bishops or priests; the latter, however, when there was no priest available, through a deacon; so that, although sacramental absolution had not yet been received, when necessity required it, they could obtain peace and reconciliation, and become partakers of the Eucharist.
To this reasoning, so open, so consistent with modern usage and customs, what do you oppose? "It sufficiently," he says, "openly insinuates that the Eucharist could be received without absolution."
have been able to be perceived therein. Why should I not openly profess what is not obscurely gathered from that passage of Cyprian? For that deacon did indeed confer peace by the laying on of hands. Moreover, peace is the same thing as reconciliation or communion. Furthermore, it was not that "sacramental" peace, as they call it, which only a priest can confer. It remains that what I have said is beyond controversy, which you do not overturn by any contrary arguments at all. But as for your insinuation A that deacons in fact administered the Eucharist, but nevertheless had no right to confer the reception of the Eucharist (for if they could confer that, they could also grant what is less, namely absolution), this is not at all a clever argument. For all priests, by virtue of their order and power, were able to absolve penitents—that is, to impart what they call "sacramental" absolution—but by usage and jurisdiction only the bishop, or in his absence or by his permission, the other priests, could do so. Thus the ancient canons teach, of which the Council of Carthage II, can. 3, 4, and Carthage III, can. 32 occur to me. But deacons could by no means confer this kind of absolution. However, in the absence of a priest, by the bishop's mandate, they could absolve from excommunication and censures, and thus make one capable of the Eucharist, just as is the custom today. For when the means of confession is lacking, one who has a cause for doing so can, without sacramental absolution, receive the right to celebrate or participate in the mysteries, a right which, having been lost through excommunication or other penalty, is revoked solely by the relaxation of this. I do not see what therein can displease you in our opinion. If anything occurs to you otherwise, express it in plain Latin words.
Finally, you vex B that which I had written on page 230: "Clinics were accustomed to be barred from the priesthood," that is, those who had postponed their baptism until the point of death, and had thus been baptized while in sickness. Here, indeed, you wished to jest at our expense: "If they postponed it," you say, "until death, they were certainly not being barred from the priesthood; unless perhaps they could be initiated into the priesthood after death." But to postpone baptism until the point of death, and to be baptized while in sickness, are very different things. But who does not know that when it is said that those who had delayed baptism until the point of death were removed from priestly dignity, it carries the sense that they are to be struck with that mark of infamy only if, beyond hope and expectation, they recovered from their sickness? But that those who had been baptized in sickness were rejected from the priesthood is taught by the canon of Neocaesarea XII, and by Pope Cornelius in his Epistle to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, which is extant in Eusebius, book VI, chapter 35, where he writes about Novatus, that he was initiated into the priesthood contrary to the canons: "Since it was not lawful that one who had been baptized in bed due to sickness, as he had been, should be admitted into the clergy." Since it was forbidden that one who had been poured over in bed on account of illness, as that man had been, should be co-opted into the clergy. Our checker here invents I know not what regarding the catechumenate; as if only those who were catechumens, and in that state C were baptized in sickness, were held by that law. But the sacred canons universally exclude all those who, whether they were catechumens or not, had been baptized in sickness. Why then do these words mean: Invert that saying of the comedian: "What you wish to compel me to, they do not obtain by their own will"; and you will discover the reason for this canon: then we shall know, when you interpret yourself.
Chapter III
The accusation of the "Dispunctor" against the illustrious Cardinal Perron is purged. The very difficult question concerning his opinion is reconsidered. [It is argued] that public penance was offered even to the unwilling, not sought after by the common people and everywhere. Concerning perjury, incidentally.
You try in vain to stir up resentment against us regarding the most illustrious Cardinal Perron. For he is not even mentioned by name by me, nor has anything been detracted from his reputation. I explained what I felt about the opinion itself in such a way as to spare his name. If it is a crime to depart from the opinion of great men, then you will surely be involved in the same cause, you who have written things about penance and absolution that differ greatly from what those three cardinals, Bellarmine, Baronius, and Perron, teach; nay rather, they are entirely alien to the sense of the supreme pontiffs, of all doctors, and of the Church; some of which we discussed in the previous chapter. But these words D: "And there will be no one so witless as to think that those who had committed the same crimes repeatedly, and indeed horrific crimes, were treated more humanely than those who had committed them once; which follows from that opinion"; were said more bitterly against such a great man than the reasoning of a modest person would require. Here, indeed, is that ink of the cuttlefish. Imagine me complaining just now about your unfair accusation: Who will be so witless as to say that one who has stated that something absurd and false follows from someone's opinion is calling that person, whose opinion it is, a liar and absurd? Will you therefore drag me into court with a twisted neck because I called you witless, and wounded you with a word? And yet, as I seem to be about to say the former truly and deservedly, so I neither wish to usurp that other, nor can I be thought to have done so because I said the former. For it is one thing to call someone witless; it is another to argue that what can be concluded from his opinion is absurd, which he himself has not noticed, to declare that he holds [that absurdity] is the mark of a witless person.
Behold, you write on page 14 that you pity me because I gather from the Nicene canon that in former times, in danger of death for penitents, and thus while persecution was raging, communion was granted. Since you mock this opinion of mine in jest, are you unaware that it has hitherto been the opinion of the three cardinals whom I named for the sake of honor, and of all the faithful? You pity these men, therefore, just as you pity us: since this word has proceeded from contempt and rebuke, you understand, surely, to whom that cavil of your mercy pertains. And so, with the most illustrious and...
A worthy personages, I shall dispute with you regarding the matter itself, as I have proposed it clearly and lucidly. I had written in my *Animadversiones*, p. 256: that public penance is customarily granted by the Church only once, without which, however, no one who had committed those crimes for which that type of penance was imposed, could be admitted to communion. From this truly, I said, a very difficult question arises: what happened to those men who, after their first penance, fell back into the same crimes? Is it true that they were entirely cast out by the Church, and had obtained no admission to any private [penance] by the benefit of which they could be restored to integrity? This was the state of the controversy. Regarding what could be deduced from the words and opinion of a certain recent writer, I thought it should be submitted, with his name hushed. You, whom I had prudently and intentionally kept silent, because I did not approve of his opinion, named [him]—in order to bring invidiousness upon me among the supporters of his dignity and doctrine—rather inopportunely. A deed which no prudent man would praise. Since, therefore, against our will and reclamations, you have brought forth the author of the opinion which we oppose; come, let us see, whosever it may be, why it has been deservedly disapproved by us.
B He distinguishes three types of penance: for one is public, for public sins; another is private, on account of hidden sins; the third is on account of the same hidden [sins], openly undertaken. This last was not granted to anyone and promiscuously; nor more than once in one’s whole life. But it wiped away the guilt of sin equally with the punishment. Furthermore, to moderate this, that penitentiary presbyter was appointed, whom Nectarius later removed; and Nectarius's successor, Chrysostom, confirmed its abrogation. For he, having first heard the case of the penitents, and having known their crimes through secret confession, would decree what they ought to confess publicly, and what they ought to keep silent. Which, indeed, pertains nothing to judicial—that is, sacramental—confession, but to that which is called satisfactory. For that prior secret and auricular [confession] was never abrogated, but has persisted perpetually in the Church, and persists to this day. This is the sum of the author of that opinion. From whom we have therefore dissented, because it follows from that doctrine: that those who had frequently repeated graver sins are in a more tolerable condition than those who had sinned but once in their entire life. For public penance, for public as well as hidden crimes, was permitted in the Church only once; which is so true that it does not require proof. Let us imagine, therefore, that someone, after public penance performed for public or hidden sins, falls back again into more atrocious [crimes]; what will happen to such a one? If we follow that opinion: he will surely have recourse to the secret and auricular, or sacramental [confession]; which, never having been abolished, and indeed *is* repeated more often: through which, by a shorter shortcut, without that public vexation, he will be reconciled with the Church. This, therefore, was what I said I could not approve; I think that [this point] must be C presented more clearly, making the way to peace and reconciliation more accessible to those who had sinned more often than to those who had sinned but once in total. Nor was that public penance, whose authority is cited from Tertullian, Ambrose, and other Fathers, of such a kind that it should be sought after by penitents and coaxed as a great benefit; as if its faculty were granted by the bishops with difficulty. For it is clearer than light that those very persons, to whom Tertullian, Cyprian, and others propose this type of penance, had to be almost compelled to public penance by force and severity, when they strove with all their power and reason to ward it off and beg out of it: so far is it from being granted as a substitute for grace to those who were begging for it much.
It does not escape me that some have sometimes been found who, out of an abundance of piety and divine love—which you said was given by the Church, that is, approved [by it]—would voluntarily desire for themselves such punishments and torments: and who had more need of a bridle than of spurs. But just as that was rare and by no means a daily occurrence, so it is certain that most of the penitents were driven to public penance for their sins against their will, and that the Fathers urged them to it with prayers, threats, exhortations, and frequent and vehement oration. Here I do not use Cyprian as a witness; than whom no one confirms more gravely and clearly that which I say. For his writings are full of exhortations and complaints of such a kind, with which he does not soothe those wretched people with flatteries and gentleness to embrace and undergo penance, but compels them with authority and necessity; then he rebukes their various delays and tergiversations, and chastises them most severely. But with this and others omitted, I will bring forth that one [writer] by whose voice and suffrage the author of that contrary opinion and patron relies; and indeed I will cite that passage above the others, in which he is believed to have made comments concerning public penance for hidden crimes. That will be Tertullian, from whose book, which is inscribed *De poenitentia*, he has brought forward a few sententiae, which he affirms to pertain to that [third] type: from whence you yourself have also taken some things. His words are from chap. 9: *For this second and only one, the less the matter is, the more laborious is the proof, so that it is not held in the conscience only, but managed by some act as well.* Item: *And by temporal affliction, I will not say he frustrates, but wipes out eternal punishment, etc.* In these and other places of the same writer, you think that public penance for secret sins spontaneously undertaken is understood; and you do not disclose the reason why you think so. Yet you will never be able to prove that Tertullian speaks of public penance for hidden crimes more than for public ones. For his oration, as also that of Cyprian, proceeds concerning *any* public penance; and it is of mere choice, not of reason, nor of even the lightest conjecture, that you restrict those passages of Tertullian to that third of the three types of penance which we proposed above. I pray you, teach us, relying on what arguments you understand not every type of public penance, but that D...
625 ADVERSUS MAT. SIMONIUM. 626
of those crimes specifically. But come, let it be granted to you, what you affirm gratis, and I will convict you by your own words and reasoning. You do not rashly say that that penitence, of which Tertullian speaks there, was granted. I ask you, could those who had not sinned publicly be compelled to that public penitence for secret matters, and were they truly so compelled? Choose whichever you prefer. If you say they were compelled, in such a way that they could in no wise be reconciled without that public satisfaction: how do you not rashly say it was granted, when it would affect the penitents with such a benefit that it would restore them to the same degree of integrity and innocence they had attained at baptism? By these words of the author and your own, it is sufficiently shown that it was to be sought of their own accord by the penitents and obtained as a favor, and yet not easily granted to those very petitioners. Therefore, the higher question returns: what happened to them afterward, if after public penitence they committed the same secret things for which they had been condemned for the former, which was not to be repeated.
If, in fact, it were permitted to perform penitence by auricular and secret confession, which is undertaken for hidden sins and is the second of the three, would not those who had frequently committed those dreadful yet secret crimes have been in a more tolerable condition than those who had incurred the same but once? For since these latter had not attained peace and reconciliation without the torture and suffering of many years, nor otherwise than by public penitence, while those others, after they had gone through this, had that easy and obtainable benefit of secret penitence. But if it is that they could not be compelled to public penitence, but rather obtained the power of it by request, why did Tertullian in that very book *De Poenitentia* exhort them so intensely to undertake it? Why does he complain that many procrastinate and flee from it? Why does he persuade them so earnestly with examples and reasons that they should want to use it? For after the things I cited earlier, he immediately adds: *Yet I see that most men either avoid this work, such as the publication of themselves, or put it off from day to day, mindful more of shame than of salvation.* The passage which the author brought from the twelfth chapter also contributes to the same point: *Therefore, since you know that against hell, after those first remnants of the Lord’s baptism, there are still second subsidies in exomologesis, why do you abandon your salvation? Why do you cease to approach what you know cures you?* It is apparent from this, if the discourse is about the public penitence of secret matters, that it was not granted heavily and with difficulty like a benefit, but rather offered even to the unwilling, if indeed they were to be reconciled with the Church. For if they could have done so otherwise and by private penitence, they were not to be accused if they preferred to be finished with that easier remedy than to use the other, not in a more laborious way, but also because they knew it could not be obtained from bishops and priests rashly or easily. I said that the man did not commit these A *parádoxa* and *átopa*, a man who perhaps had not noticed this; thus he is worthy of an excuse. You, who are prudent and knowledgeable in these same matters, if you will pay attention, I can scarcely excuse. Nor yet will I treat you uncivilly and inhumanely, or call you witless, so that you might think this itself—what modesty it is—what you detract from me, when I, not having been provoked and examined by you even beyond all justice and propriety, have been unwilling to strike back and return abuse and insult.
Regarding perjury B I had not fully affirmed that no punishments were constituted for it by the canons, but I only wanted to imply those which bound the laity; for whom public penitence, not that of clerics, was prescribed. Then I was speaking of the first times of the Church, to which that discipline of which the discussion was held properly pertains. And so that Tiburian canon is alien to this business, not only because it prescribes only for clerics, whose public penitence did not exist, but also because it is more recent than those times. Certainly, among the ancient canons, none that was of proven faith appeared that would specifically decree punishments for perjury; nor did I say this with certainty and affirmation, but I only brought it up as an example of grave sins for which no canonical punishments seem to have been established. You could have brought forward the Ilerda canon as more appropriate to your purpose than the Tiburian one; for those that are commemorated from Gratian and Ivo, such as those of the Eutychian or Fabian popes, etc., seem to be of a much later antiquity. But, as I said, I do not wish to argue much about that matter. And it is possible that some canon older than that might appear, which neither of us has noticed.
C CAPUT IV. *Two errors of the Dispunctor are corrected. A capital question is sometimes delegated by the senate to the consul.*
Your fourth chapter is distinguished by two hallucinations: the first is on page 26, where after you mocked my argument, you misinterpreted those words of Socrates: *Ἡ δὲ γυνὴ προβαίνουσα καὶ ἄλλο πταῖσμα ἑαυτῆς κατηγόρει.* But it is better to hear your words: "These words," you say, "are interpreted (to be sure, by Petavius): This woman, when she proceeded too far in undergoing penitence, committed another sin in the meantime, and declared it immediately." But on the contrary, it behooved us (if we wish to be faithful translators rendering word for word): *This woman, going forth or overstepping, accuses also her other sin; for she says how a deacon of the Church had been sleeping with her.* Is it so that the word *προβαίνειν*, if you wish to render word for word, signifies to overstep and transgress; or is it the same thing as *παραβαίνειν*? Who could bear this new grammar? *Προβαίνειν* is correctly accepted both by translators and by us as meaning to advance and proceed. One thing alone displeased me rightly in Christophorson, that he added from his own the word "in confessing." He thought the woman had blurted out in public confession what ought to have been kept silent, and had confessed that infamous crime among others; which is neither true, nor is it in the Greek D contained. This is the first grammatical *sphálma*.
is contained. This is the first grammatical error.
Another error of yours: on page 29 you criticize the fact that I had said that cognizance of capital cases was entrusted by the senate to the consuls, either one or both, before the public inquiry was instituted. "The matter is not so," you say. "The senate never entrusted the cognizance of capital matters to the consuls." This you subsequently attempt to prove until the end of the chapter. And here, if indeed I knew how to use irony and quibble, or if I were not more modest and restrained than you wish me to be, you have provided me with excellent subject matter for jesting. Cicero alone will teach you how correctly you have written these things. In that book which is inscribed *On Famous Orators*, where he discusses the orators Laelius and Galba, he relates what was done at Rome under the consulship of Publius Scipio and Decimus Brutus, in these words: "For when a murder had been committed in her wood (or Scantia), and well-known men had been killed and the family was accused, and partly even the freemen of her society, which had contracted for the pitch-works in the consulship of Publius Cornelius and Lucius Mummius, the senate decreed that the consuls should inquire into and decide that matter." When I brought up that example of the Roman senate and consuls regarding ecclesiastical custom, I had that passage of Cicero in mind; nor had I convinced myself that it had been entrusted to the consuls by the senate perpetually or without the order of the Roman people, but I thought it sufficient to use as an example that it had happened at some time. But you have fallen headlong into the other extreme, so as to dare to pronounce generally: that the senate never entrusted the cognizance of capital matters to the consuls.
But to return to that Nectarian history, I beg of you, upon what argument, upon what conjecture, do you rely to defend the fact that this woman divulged that unspeakable crime in public confession? What author do you name? For Socrates and Sozomen, from whom this history flowed, mention nothing of the kind. Why should it be permitted for you thus to interpret them, so that from your own mind you invent and append that which they do not expressly relate; while for us it is an impiety to accept and explain the words of those same men simply and according to their natural force? Therefore, we shall not linger longer in refuting these things. Regarding the canon, the matter is contentious, and you will not obtain it against our will, whatever you wish (a). For he repeatedly used *kanona* for law and sanction, when he adds: "This canon holds until now in other heresies."
CHAPTER V. On public confession, which is not received by common custom. The authority of Pope Leo wrongly taken in the disjointed comments (b).
In our *Diatribe* we deny that public confession of sins was so received by the customs of the Church that it was established by any ecclesiastical law or by that custom which had passed into law. Regarding which I shall not repeat here what has been discussed more fully and copiously there. But our reviewer, when he protests that to him it is not thought to be established in the Church (c) (for he does not think that any law ordered sins to be brought forth publicly), yet he maintains that such a custom was praised by the tacit and unwritten consent of the bishops. And he does not notice, first, that this does nothing against us, who have spoken of law whether express or tacit; and then, that the same thing which he asserts no less conflicts with the words and authority of Saint Leo and the Council of Trent. Pope Leo, in Epistle 80, calls that public profession of sins, which he had heard was being practiced in a certain corner of Italy, a "presumption contrary to the apostolic rule," which he had recently acknowledged to be committed by some through an illicit usurpation. I would like to know by what reasoning you contend that any "presumption" — by which an illicit act has been committed against the apostolic rule — is praised by the consent of bishops, that is, approved by the authority of the Church. Then, if public confession of sins, even secret ones, could not have been prescribed by any law consultedly enough, as we gather from the words of the Council of Trent, with your approval, will it not appear to be of equal and the same imprudence not only to tolerate that very custom of confessing publicly—which is not even tolerable against the apostolic rule and prudence—but also to adopt and praise it? Whatever authorities you accumulate to build up the case for public confession of sins, it accomplishes nothing. For of these, some indeed speak of that public profession which consists not so much in voice as in the deeds themselves, and the habit of penitents, and mournful squalor, as we know *exhomologesis* to be used; others show what was occasionally and rarely done, not what was sanctioned by law or by common and praised custom. Add also that there was some public confession by which sinners confessed that they were sinners generally and universally: the type of which is that confession which the people recite at the very beginning of the Mass, according to a solemn and legitimate formula, led by the priest. If these few things are observed diligently, they are sufficiently suitable for interpreting those authorities which you accumulate in vain, and for diluting all your arguments. In Leo's testimony, that collection does not please. Since so great a pontiff calls public confession a "presumption against the apostolic rule," and indeed an "illicit" one, you conclude from this that penitents were accustomed to confess even secret sins, and that this is plain even from this passage. Have I not said often that public confession is not denied by me in such a way that it was never practiced, but so that it was never received and imposed upon penitents by any law, whether tacit or express? Then, if you were to read and consider Leo's words more attentively: he does not write that that presumption was once so received that it passed into a custom, but he says that he has "recently acknowledged" that it was being committed by some through an illicit usurpation. Which words, "recently," D
by some, do not persuade [one] that the custom was ancient and unknown for many years, or hidden. And it is entirely an idle quibble to seek A to prove from this passage of Leo the rite of public confession, even for hidden sins: for [to defend] that which one might claim was lauded by the silent consensus of the bishops, seems to me to defer little to the Council of Trent and to the judgment and authority of Leo the Great; who acts contrary to apostolic tradition in defense of an illicit presumption, as Leo calls it, and defines it—as the Council of Trent calls it, a little-considered action—as having been approved by praised consensus.
CHAPTER VI
An insignificant refutation, a false charge, regarding the history of Origen; then, a hallucination concerning a passage of Augustine. That the Panarion of Epiphanius was not read by Augustine at all.
What the fable of Origen has to do with the rite of penance, which is the theme and subject of the work, I do not see. But that was, clearly, a supplement and an addition to the refutation. In which, one might wonder, for the sake of dignity, how it was done so negligently—a thing you paraded before yourself, so that when you were criticizing me, you did not even understand this, what I had said? We proved with solid arguments—in our *Animadversiones*, page 258—that that history of Origen which Epiphanius recorded is true, and that it has not been rightly considered adulterous and false by some pious and learned men. One thing that was opposed by them, which seemed to have more moment and weight than the others, was that Augustine had supposedly recorded nothing about that fall of Origen, even though he testified that he had borrowed from Epiphanius the things he had written against Origen. To these objections we responded thus: that it does not appear that Augustine read that great work of Epiphanius on heresies, or *Panarion*, but his *Breviary* and a certain *Epitome*; and we said that this had been proven by certain and indubitable arguments in the epistle which is prefixed to the beginning of the work, to the most illustrious Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld. You struggle much to persuade [us] that the sun shines at noon. You copy out the passages of Augustine from which it is evident that the books of Epiphanius B *Against Heresies* were known to him. You could have saved this labor and these pages—if you had wished to consult that place where I had treated that matter more accurately, and to which I had pointed with my finger in the *Animadversiones* on Origen's heresy, page 259. For I neither denied nor doubted that some work of Epiphanius on heresies had been read by Augustine, but I said [it was not] that clear and most abundant work which is inscribed *Panarion*. For it is all too certain that he had seen and read some [work]; and we proposed and discussed those same passages which you describe in the dedicatory epistle.
But no one can be amazed enough that, from the very words of Augustine, while you were writing or dictating them, you did not notice how just the suspicion is that it was not the *Panarion* of Epiphanius that was read by Augustine, but the *Epitome* and *Anacephalaeosis*, divided into as many books. For why, pray, would you interpret these things as belonging to that other work of his? Our Epiphanius wrote six books as well, recording everything in a historical narrative, defending the truth without any disputation against falsehood. These booklets are truly brief; and if they were gathered into a single volume, it would not be comparable in length to our books, or to certain books of others. If I had imitated this brevity in recording the heresies, would you not have anything you could demand or expect from me that is shorter? And in the heresy of the Massalians, he calls those six books most brief. I believe that if Augustine had read those very long commentaries of Epiphanius against the heresies; if he had seen those most ample disputations on every single one, and their refutations and the confutations of their arguments, he would either have called those booklets most brief, and would have judged his own [work], which he was writing to Quodvultdeus, to be longer, or he would deny that the heresies had been refuted by Epiphanius, and would say they were merely recounted simply and briefly. But re-read, I beg you, what was argued in the epistle on that matter. And that you might understand our fairness, see whether, from the same passages of Augustine that you cite, you could and should have recognized what I say. Writing about the Origenists, he records these things from Epiphanius: "About whom," he says, "Epiphanius speaks: The Origenists, he says, are disciples of a certain Origen; but they are of a foul practice; these are they who do abominable things, handing their own bodies over to corruption." And immediately adding others [as] Origenians: "The Origenians, he says, are others, who are also followers of that teacher Adamantius; who also deny the resurrection of the dead, and say that Christ and the Holy Spirit are a creature; but they do not believe paradise and the heavens, and other things, according to the letter, but in allegory." These things, indeed, Epiphanius records concerning Origen. Thus far Augustine translated from that work of Epiphanius which he was able to see. And yet, those very things are read in the *Anacephalaeosis*, or *Breviary* and *Epitome*, conceived in the very same words in Greek, and not in that great work of the *Panarion*. See page 146 of volume II of our edition, and the Synopsis of volume I, book II, page 398 of the same edition. There is, therefore, no doubt that Augustine speaks only of the *Anacephalaeosis* of Epiphanius, and that the 6th chapter of the disputation is idle and empty; for as regards Decius, under whom he thinks Origen flourished, one must by all means see what we observed in the *Animadversiones* concerning the error of that passage in the name of the emperor. But that that patch concerning the fall of Origen was woven into the writings of Epiphanius by the calumniators of Origen—as it is easily said, so it is easily denied by us. Anyone who has become accustomed to the style of Epiphanius will judge these to be his most genuine words, not interpolated. But neither does the matter concerning the other patch, which the author of the same epistle thinks was added by the Iconoclasts, seem sufficiently explored. But this is a matter for another undertaking and dispute.
CAPUT VII. Concerning the decree of Theophilus of Alexandria.
That rites were not the same everywhere, and that one should not rashly or universally pronounce upon them—for instance, as to whether the Mass was ever celebrated on days of fasting, a point which *Dispunctor* affirms—cannot be so stated. Regarding the decree of Theophilus on the day of the Theophany, there was some cause for doubt (a): which the inscription itself increases. For it reads: *The address of Theophilus, Archbishop of Alexandria, concerning those who celebrate the Theophany on a Sunday.* Indeed, these words, *who celebrate on a Sunday*, do not seem to be explained in a way that supports your opinion. Moreover, the rest of the canon may cast doubt. But I do not contend over a very trivial matter out of love of strife; let the truth prevail. If not, then at least what is likely.
Regarding fasting and the *statio*, you have inserted these things in passing, but they are beside the point and out of place. Indeed, we must be diligent to avoid precipitating a judgment—especially a universal and infinite one—on ecclesiastical rites; and we must be careful not to transfer so easily to everyone those things which may have been the customs of certain times or Churches. Your prohibition, in which you lay down that never on any day of fasting, even outside of Lent, were the solemnities of the Mass celebrated, seems to be of this kind: a claim you assert too boldly and too generally. For even if it were observed in certain Churches, who taught you that it was observed everywhere and perpetually? For you couch your decree in an indefinite and universal manner. What, then, will you do with Augustine, who, in Epistle 118, when he explains the various rites throughout the different parts of the Christian world, speaks thus: "Elsewhere no day is skipped upon which the sacrifice is not offered; elsewhere, it is only on the Sabbath and the Lord's Day"? We also read in Ambrose, in Sermon 34, that even in Lent, the sacrifice was offered every day, and was received by some. Thus, the usage of all the Churches in ancient times was so varied, and not to be constrained by the same or a general law. The same is appropriately said regarding the participation in the Eucharist: which you assert too confidently, and clearly support only by your own authority, was never practiced on fast days, not even outside of Lent.
These are the points which, for the sake of our *Animadversiones*, we thought we ought to oppose against your *Dispunctiunculae*, lest, if I were to remain entirely silent—as some authors advised I should—you might complain that they were too much despised by us and held as nothing. Furthermore, in this clearing or refutation of ours, I trust that I have maintained such a regard for Christian modesty and charity that you may understand that you could have spent your efforts more happily on other matters than in refuting these *Animadversiones*.
ADVERSUS CLAUDIUM SALMASIUM. CHAPTER I. (Cf. hær. XIX, p. 40.)
On the sect and distinction of the Essenes. The ridiculous observation of Salmasius concerning these, and his corruption of Hesiod. Philo Judaeus is illustrated.
Julian frequently loves to call the sun "God" simply and without any addition, especially in the oration which he wrote in praise of it. Josephus is also believed to have designated it in the same way (Book 2, Chapter 7, *De excidio*), where he treats of the Essenes. For he relates that when they relieved their bowels, they were accustomed to sit in an excavated trench, having first wrapped themselves in a cloak, *as if they would not do injury to the rays of God*, that is, so as not to do injury to the rays of God. For many understand "God" to mean the sun, just as Scaliger does in *Elenchus Trihaeresii* ch. 27, and Drusius in Book IV *De tribus sectis*, p. 241. Although it is not entirely certain whether Josephus here applied the name of God to the sun, especially since the Essenes were Jews, who do not appear to have thought that the sun was God. However, what the same Josephus narrates—that the Essenes sang certain ancestral hymns to the sun, by which they prayed for its rising—does not make their conjecture absurd: *They sang certain ancestral prayers to it, as if beseeching it to rise.* Then that superstition, such as it was, follows: that they considered natural excretion to be an injury to the solar light. Salmasius, when he was discussing that passage of Josephus and the Essenes in his *Solinian Exercises*, was so forgetful of his own modesty and reputation that you might know he had no concern for what he was writing when he penned it. We will briefly examine his argument here, since the opportunity has presented itself to us. He writes in his notes on Pliny, p. 612, that the Essenes (who, as was said before, when they relieved their bowels, were careful not to admit the sun's splendor to such acts) did so in the same way that Hesiod forbids one to urinate standing against the sun, but only at night, in these verses:
*Do not urinate standing, turned toward the sun,* *But when it sets, be mindful of it until it rises.*
These are the words of Salmasius, in which you may recognize a genuine "critic," that is, a grammarian of airy and exquisite judgment. He thinks that Hesiod, in those verses, forbade one to urinate against the sun at night. What kind of monster is this, I ask? Can one...
[... and so] can he urinate facing the sun? Was Hesiod so delirious as to write such things? The acute man did not see that those two verses are separated by their meaning and by their punctuation. They should therefore be read as follows:
Μηδ' ἄντ' ηελίοιο τετραμμένος ὀρθὸς ὀμιχεῖν. Αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ κε δύῃ μεμνημένος ἔστ᾽ ἀνιόντα, Μήτ' ἐν ὁδῷ, μήτ' ἐκτὸς ὁδοῦ προβάδην οὐρήσης, Μηδ' ἀπογυμνωθείς. Μακάρων τοι νύκτες B ἐάσσιν.
That is: Do not urinate standing, turned towards the sun. But when it has set, mindful of its rising, Urinate not on the road, nor off the road in passing, Nor unclothed: for the nights belong to the blessed.
There are two warnings in these verses. In the first verse, he enjoins that no one should urinate facing the sun, that is, by day and while the sun is shining. In the latter three, he exhorts one not to urinate while walking after the sun has set and at night, nor while unclothed: because a certain reverence should be applied even to the night. Although he is confident and scorns all mortals before him, I suspect that a man would be differently disposed when he reads these things, for he would surely be vehemently ashamed, and would show himself more equitable regarding the light faults of others when he realizes that such grave and intolerable things have proceeded from himself. But let us proceed. The same man C writes falsely (a), as noted in the remarks on Epiphanius, p. 37, that it was a characteristic of the Essenes that they poured forth prayers as the sun was rising. Here indeed the man’s Ἀκρισία (lack of judgment) is clearly held in check. For he has committed two things which he will be able to disguise with no quibble. The first is that what he thinks is false is in fact most true, and published by Philo in clear and plain words in the book *On the Contemplative Life*, page 612, where he writes at great length about the Essenes. His words are: "They are accustomed to pray each day, at dawn and at evening; when the sun is rising, seeking for the true prosperity of that day, that their thoughts might be filled with heavenly light." They are accustomed to pray twice every day, at dawn and evening: indeed, seeking true prosperity from the rising sun, no doubt so that their minds might be filled with celestial light. We thus interpret εὐημερίας εὐημερίαν, so that the former signifies a happy course of the day, while the latter signifies prosperity and happiness in an absolute sense. Is Salmasius ashamed of his levity, or is it false that the Essenes were accustomed to pray as the sun was rising? Although, in my *Epiphanian Animadversions*, I had not stated this on my own authority, but was D reporting the opinion of Joseph Scaliger, who, to prove that the Ossenes and Essenes were the same, compared the customs of each sect among themselves, and showed that this which I mentioned was a custom of the Essenes according to Philo. The passage is in *Trihaeresius*, ch. 27, p. 215, so that even from this it is clear that that blind man was carried away in his criticism, secure from neither the truth nor the public judgment of himself. But let us weave the rest of this kind: among which the palm belongs to this, that concerning the Essenes and their question he was utterly ignorant. There were two kinds of Essenes, one of the practical, the other of the contemplative. These were again divided in two ways; for some were unmarried and celibate, others involved in marriage. Philo alone remembers the Theoretics, in the book which is inscribed *On the Contemplative Life or the Suppliant Virtues*, while he speaks of the others briefly in the book *That Every Virtuous Man is Free*, and in the *Apology for the Jews*, the fragment of which survives in Eusebius, *Preparation for the Gospel*, bk. 8, ch. 12; but then Josephus in several places, but primarily in the *Discourse on the End*, ch. 6, and from him Porphyry in *On Abstinence*, bk. 4. It has been asked by learned men whether the Essenes were Christians: not indeed those practical ones of Josephus, but those contemplative ones, and those mentioned only by Philo. Eusebius, in *Ecclesiastical History*, bk. 2, ch. 17, believed they were Christians, and persuaded many, especially Jerome in his book *On Ecclesiastical Writers*, under Mark and Philo. Others denied it, such as Philastrius. It is not our business here to settle this quarrel. Our friend Serrarius tried it long ago, against Joseph Scaliger and Drusius; whose huge books published on this sole controversy are in everyone's hands: so that to no one, unless he is unlearned in all literature, who knows anything about the Essenes, is it permitted to be ignorant of this; that what is in question, when asking whether the Essenes were Christians or not, concerns the Philonian Essenes and the Theoretics, not the others described by Josephus. But that man (Salmasius) had regard only for the Essenes as described by Josephus in his writings: he did not even remember a letter of Philo or the Theoretical Essenes: whom he had not even heard of by hearsay. Hence it is that he believed it was falsely written by me that the Essenes poured forth prayers as the sun was rising, because he says, "This is not the meaning of Josephus." But Josephus is mentioned nowhere there by us, but, as I said, he never read Philo, whom he did not even praise once in that great work of his. And yet, after he discoursed much about the Practical Essenes from Josephus, he thinks those who dare to assert that they were totally Christian are talking nonsense. As if they were asserting that of the Essenes of Josephus, and not rather of the Philonian and Theoretical ones, who differ most from those of Josephus.
CAPUT II
*On the Theoretical and Practical Essenes. The error of Salmasius. The opinion about the term dead is ridiculous. Pliny, misinterpreted by the same, is explained. Patronymic names are also derived from cities, contrary to what seemed good to Salmasius.*Concerning the same Essenes, Pliny writes in bk. 5, ch. 17, as follows: "The Essenes flee from the shore from the west, as far as they are harmful, a solitary race, and wonderful in all the world beyond all others, without any woman, having renounced all lust, without money, a companion of the palm trees, etc." To which kind of Essenes these things are to be understood, it may justly be asked, but it persuades me that they are the Theoretics, because...
what denotes the letter hardly implies that it is of one work. For they exercised various arts; A for at daybreak, "by those arts which each person knows, they are sent by the overseers," up to the fifth hour, by which they met together for a meal; from which again they were kept at work until evening. From these things it is evident either that these men did not have leisure for agriculture, or that they did not institute this single kind of art. But neither did they repudiate all commerce; for those who exercised the various arts, which each one knew, certainly made a profit, and either sold their own services or the products of their arts. Finally, Josephus does not write that the Essenes bought and sold nothing, but rather "nothing among themselves, neither do they buy nor sell." Among themselves, he says, not at all. Let him go now, and say that we are false conjecturers, when we have taught with Kerkoetius that the ancient writers, whom he cites, were read by him only in a hurried manner, and through indices or in the commentaries of others. This passage of Pliny is of such great value for increasing this suspicion: the meaning of which, indeed, is easy and explained, if one possesses a little taste in these letters. "From the west," says Pliny, "the Essenes avoid the shores, in as far as they are harmful." This must be understood concerning the Asphaltite Lake or the Dead Sea, which exhales lethal vapors and infects the surrounding air. "Pestiferous to the inhabitants by the weight of its odor," says Tacitus, lib. v, Hist., cap. 6, "neither is it moved by the wind, nor does it suffer fish or birds swimming in its waters." C These things are most apt for the mind of Pliny. For they contain the reason why those Essenes, inhabitants of the [δρυμῶν/deserts], and living among the palm groves, did not fix their dwellings closer to the Asphaltite Lake; but retreated from it only as far as the evil influence of that tract reached. This is that squalor of the Dead Sea and its surrounding land, and the pestilential habit, which Tertullian elegantly and concisely described in his book *De pallio*: "Thus far," he says (c), "Sodom, and no Gomorrah, and all is ash, and the proximity of the sea creates death with the soil." The sea, he says, being near, along with the whole coast, drinks in death and pestilence. This is the true meaning of this passage: in which Salmasius (d) was ridiculously struggling. He, who dared to write at "mortuum" [the dead], or "mortum," in his new edition, page 105, as if it were permitted to derive "mortum" from that which is "morior," or "mortuum" from "mortuu"; and so that "mortuum ire" is said, just as "reditum ire," and other things of this kind. A laughable crime; nay, rather a piacular crime of a grammarian; who certainly ought to have known this, that "mortuum" is a noun, not a verb, nor a supine or participle of a verb; just as "fatuus," "arduus," "conspicuus." St. Augustine teaches this accurately in lib. XIII, *De civit. Dei*, cap. 11, whose words might also well be read here: "Whence," he says, "I think it has happened not inopportunely nor incongruously, although not through human industry..."
stria, by divine judgment perhaps, so that this verb, which is *moritur* [dies], could not be declined in the Latin language by grammarians according to the rule by which other such things are declined. For from that which is *oritur* [arises], the verb of the past time *ortus est* is formed; and if there are any similar ones, they are declined through the participles of the past time. But from that which is *moritur*, if we seek a verb of the past time, it is customary to answer *mortuus est*, with a double letter: for thus *mortuus* is said, just like *fatuus*, *arduus*, *conspicuus*; and if there are any similar ones, which are not of the past time, but because they are nouns, they are declined without time. But that thing, as if it were being declined, which cannot be declined, the noun is placed in the stead of the participle of the past time. A Foolish, therefore, and contrary to grammatical rules, is the Salmasian correction: especially since in the principal edition of Rhenanus, just as in the common ones, *mortem bibit* exists. That edition, he himself confesses, was diligently exacted according to the faith of ancient codices, and corresponds precisely to the manuscript which it displayed.
But I return to Pliny (a): whose other correction, used by the same Salmasius, is worthy of laughter. Instead of *socia palmarum*, he bids *esu palmarum* to be written. Ignorantly, who would deny it? For thus an abrupt and unpolished reading is made, *sine pecunia, esu palmarum*. But the vulgate carries authority both from written codices and from the meaning. They lived in palm groves far from the noise and crowd of men: therefore, the tribe is called B *socia palmarum*. He who does not grasp this, or who otherwise strives to interpolate Pliny, I scarcely judge worthy of the name of grammarian. Which he so little deserves, that he violently dragged me by the neck for this reason, because I wrote concerning the formation of nouns in -ηνος, as is *'Eσσηνός*, *agens*, that such inflexions were peculiar to the Arabs and Asians, as if I should call them ethnic, not patronymic. Well done, man; worn out in grammar, you do not know that a patronymic may be called not only from fathers but also from places and cities. Cledonius, an ancient grammarian, says that there is this distinction between gentilic and patronymic names (b), that gentilic names come from provinces, patronymic also from cities. Therefore, by the authority of Cledonius, I ought not to have called this gentilic name of the Essenes, unless it were established that there was some province of the Essenes, C which I have not yet learned existed. While you conjecture that their town was in interior Judea, from which *'Eσσαῖοι* and *'Eσσηνοί* were called; although you do this absurdly and contrary to the express testimonies of Josephus and Philo, nevertheless you prove by your own judgment this very thing, for which you so atrociously attack me. For Cledonius teaches that patronymics are formed from cities, not gentilics. Consentius, another grammarian, says (d): that feminine patronymic names are made in *-is*, as *Lucanus* from *Hibera Hiberis*. But *Hiberis*, I think, is a name bestowed from a region. Thomas D Linacer, a learned grammarian, in book II: Patronymics of the Greeks, he says, are led from the form of places, *Sicelides*. Finally, the prince and master of your art, Despauterius, in the Preface to his art of versification, teaches (e) that patronymics are formed from the fatherland. And elsewhere, he calls *Pisidem*, which is a gentilic name, patronymic. These are unworthy, I confess, of the things we are wasting time on. But what are you to do? As a man is, so you must bear his manner.
CHAPTER III.
The passage of Epiphanius is illustrated, having been badly vexed by Salmasius. His unjust criticism is discussed. His error concerning the preposition *ὑπέρ* is noted.Now, to the passage of Epiphanius, which alone almost gave occasion for this debate, let us transfer the pen and the mind. Concerning the Ossenes, hær. 19, page 40, he writes thus: *They have set out, as the tradition that has come down to us contains, from the Nabataean region, and Ituraea, and Moabitis, and Arelitis, the parts beyond the valley of salt, thus called in the divine Scripture the "region above." It is this which is called the Dead Sea.* Which we have rendered into Latin in our edition thus: *They report that these drew their origin from Nabataea, Ituraea, Moabitis and Arelitis; which regions are situated beyond the valley of salt.* For by this name that upper tract is called in the sacred Letters, which is the same as the Dead sea. Upon this passage, the Plinian exercitator suddenly raises his ears with a great shout with all his might, so that nowhere else is he agitated by greater intemperance. But what has been observed in other places to be fatal to this man, that where he is most busy and striving, there he falls headlong in a most foul ruin and with his whole body, this happened to him in this place almost beyond belief. His first criticism is vain. For that all those skilled in Greek may bring their heads together into one, I dare to assert this: that they would not have expressed through their interpretation any other meaning of this passage than that which has been returned by us. Whether Epiphanius thought correctly or otherwise, it pertains nothing to the interpreter. But I return to Pliny (a): of whom also another correction used by the same Salmasius is worthy of laughter. He bids *esu palmarum* to be written for *socia palmarum*. Ignorantly, who would deny it? For thus an abrupt and unpolished reading would be made, *sine pecunia, esu palmarum*. But the vulgate carries authority both from written codices and from the meaning. In palm groves far from the noise and crowd of men they lived: therefore, the tribe is called *socia palmarum*. He who does not grasp this, or who otherwise strives to interpolate Pliny, I scarcely judge worthy of the name of grammarian. Which he so little deserves, that he violently dragged me by the neck for this reason, because I wrote concerning the formation of nouns in -ηνος, as is *'Eσσηνός*, *agens*, that such inflexions were peculiar to the Arabs and Asians, as if I should call them ethnic, not patronymic. Well done, man; worn out in grammar, you do not know that a patronymic may be called not only from fathers but also from places and cities. Cledonius, an ancient grammarian, says that there is this distinction between gentilic and patronymic names (b), that gentilic names come from provinces, patronymic also from cities. Therefore, by the authority of Cledonius, I ought not to have called this gentilic name of the Essenes, unless it were established that there was some province of the Essenes, which I have not yet learned existed. While you conjecture that their town was in interior Judea, from which *'Eσσαῖοι* and *'Eσσηνοί* were called; although you do this absurdly and contrary to the express testimonies of Josephus and Philo, nevertheless you prove by your own judgment this very thing, for which you so atrociously attack me. For Cledonius teaches that patronymics are formed from cities, not gentilics. Consentius, another grammarian, says (d): that feminine patronymic names are made in *-is*, as *Lucanus* from *Hibera Hiberis*. But *Hiberis*, I think, is a name bestowed from a region. Thomas
I will show shortly that the most holy Father is outside blame and the suspicion of error: and that he who affixed his own most stupid invention to him has acted quite shamelessly and most foolishly. Now, concerning the Latin interpretation, I will first join battle with him over a goat's wool. He asks where in the sacred Scripture that upper tract is called that region in the sacred Letters. Which is most alien. Epiphanius does not say this, O man, but he says that *κοιλάδα τὴν ἀλυχὴν* is called *τὴν ὑπερκειμένην χώραν*; which is also true; for *φάραγξ ἁλυκή* is called the valley of salt, Gen. xiv, 3, where the Asphaltite lake was later made. But indeed, *ὑπερκειμένη χώρα* is not rightly said of the Dead Sea, or the Asphaltite lake. Let him see who thus wrote in Greek: what is this to the interpreter? *ὑπερκειμένη χώρα*, whether you like it or not, is the "upper tract." Nor is Epiphanius in fault: nor you...
Strabo, lib. XII, speaking of Celaenae, a city and hill, says: *ὑπέρκειται δὲ καὶ λίμνη φύουσα κάλαμον*, "and above there is also a lake producing reeds." Does a swamp loom above a hill? Again, Strabo lib. XVI, speaking of this same tract with which we are concerned, says: *Ὑπέρκειται δὲ τῆς Ἰουδαίας, καὶ τῆς Κοίλης Συρίας, μέχρι Βαβυλωνίας, καὶ τῆς τοῦ Εὐφράτου ποταμίας, πρὸς νότον Ἀραβία πᾶσα, χωρὶς τῶν ἐν τῇ Μεσοποταμίᾳ Σκηνιτῶν*· "Above Judea and Coelesyria, as far as Babylonia and the river-region of the Euphrates, toward the south, lies all Arabia, except for the Scenitae who are in Mesopotamia." You see how he locates those regions *above* Judea, and says *ὑπερκειμένας* [are situated above], which is to say they are *superior* [upper]; which is the same as saying they are *ulterior* [further/beyond]. Therefore, in the same way, Epiphanius called that upper tract *τὴν ὑπερκειμένην χώραν* [the upper/lying-above region], which is the furthest part of Judea to the east and south, and *above* the rest of Palestine: which land was once the *κοιλὰς ἁλυκή* [the salt valley], but afterwards became a lake, after God overturned Sodom and Gomorrah.
As, therefore, Arabia is said by Strabo to be the *ὑπερκειμένη χώρα* of all Judea, because it is turned toward it on the south: so the rest of Judea is said to be *ὑπερκειμένη* [lying above/beyond] of that which was once a *χώρα* [land/region], but today is a lake. Indeed, that lake is often established in the Scriptures as the extreme border of Palestine to the east, as in Num. xxxiv, 3; Deut. iii, 17; Josue xv, 2. Nothing is more true. All of Salmasius’s effort in interpolating and vexing that passage is vain and empty. He commands Epiphanius’s words to be so arranged, as if it were written: C *τῶν ἐπέκεινα ὑπερκειμένης χώρας τῆς κοιλάδος τῆς ἁλυκῆς*, "of the regions situated beyond the region lying above the salt valley." For beyond the region of the Dead Sea adjacent to the shores was Nabatæa, Ituræa, and Moabitis. This correction is neither necessary, nor is it absurd and unlearned. That it is not necessary is proven by what has been argued for the received reading. The absurdity is evident from the fact that Epiphanius calls the Dead Sea the *salt valley*. Indeed, in Heresy 53, which is that of the Sampsaei, he says that those who are also called Escesaei dwell in Peraea: *Οὕτω καλουμένη χώρα, πέραν τῆς Ἁλυκῆς, ἤτοι Νεκρᾶς καλουμένης θαλάσσης ἐν τῇ Μοαβίτιδι χώρᾳ περὶ τὸν χειμάῤῥουν Ἀρνῶν, καὶ ἐπέκεινα ἐν τῇ Ἰτουραίᾳ καὶ Ναβαταίᾳ*· "Which is called Peraea; which is beyond the salt, or, as it is called, the Dead Sea, in the country of Moab about the torrent Arnon, and beyond in Ituraea and Nabatæa." D But Salmasius himself even confesses this, that *τὴν κοιλάδα τὴν Ἀλυκήν* [the salt valley] is taken by Epiphanius for the Dead Sea. From which that ludicrous reasoning of his correction is formed: that Moabitis, Ituræa, and the others are beyond the Dead Sea, which same Dead Sea is "above" the Dead Sea. For the *salt valley* is the Dead Sea, as Epiphanius pointedly writes, with the grammarian agreeing; furthermore, *ὑπερκειμένη χώρα* [the region lying above] to the same Epiphanius is nothing other than the Dead Sea itself. For he adds: *ἔστι δὲ αὕτη Νεκρὰ καλου- μένη θάλασσα*. Where the pronoun *αὕτη* refers to the closely preceding...
sea." Where the pronoun *this* refers to the "overlying land" placed immediately before it. Salmasius assumes it must be structured as if it were "the overlying land of the valley of the Salt [Alukē]." From this, that barbarian of whom I spoke creates a wretched and insipid sense: that these regions are situated beyond the Dead Sea, which is above the Dead Sea. For Epiphanius indeed wrote in the same way in *Heresy* 19, that the Essenes are "beyond the *Alukē*, so-called, the overlying land," which is the Dead Sea; whereby in *Heresy* 53 he said it is "beyond the *Alukē*, or the sea called Dead," and in *Heresy* 20: "beyond the Dead sea." Therefore, the "surrounding land" is the *Alukē*, or the Dead Sea.
These three passages of Epiphanius, when compared together regarding the same subject, refute the inanity of that invention; then they also strike at another capital piece of negligence. For he writes on page 615 that Epiphanius does not say that the Moabites live B "beyond the Dead sea," but "beyond the overlying land of the Dead sea," that is, beyond the region looming over the Dead Sea. That this is false is demonstrated from *Heresy* 20 and 53. For there it is "[beyond] the *Alukē*, or the sea called Dead," that the Moabites are, omitting the word "land," which that same critic asserts must be tacitly understood—than which nothing more stupid can be imagined.
CAPUT IV
*Concerning the Asphaltite lake. Epiphanius is defended from the calumny of Salmasius. What the Valley of Salt is. The manifold and most grave sins of Salmasius.*It seemed too little for this importunate censor of crimes to corrupt the opinion and words of Epiphanius, unless he also dragged the innocent and unwilling Father into the fellowship of his own error. Epiphanius interprets "the valley of the *Alukē*," that is, the salt-marsh valley, as the Dead Sea; Salmasius thinks it is confused by him with the Valley of Salt, mention of which is made in 2 Kings, chap. viii, 13, and 1 Chronicles, chap. xviii. Under the name of David, when he was returning, having captured Syria, in the Valley of Salt, after eighteen thousand were slain. "And he put garrisons in Edom and established a guard." In Hebrew, *bēne melach* in the Valley of Salt. The LXX retained the Hebrew term, *en Gemelech*, as if it were a proper name; not, as Salmasius hallucinates, "the valley of the salts," by which name the LXX call it in the book of 2 Chronicles, when in Hebrew it is the same as the name in 2 Kings, "the Valley of Salt." In the title of Psalm C lix, the Septuagint render it: "the valley of the salts." That this is not the same valley of Salt as the Dead Sea does not even need proof; but that the blessed Epiphanius thought so is most false. Epiphanius consistently names it "the *Alukē* valley," or simply the "*Alukē*," or the "*Alukē* sea." If he had meant the Valley of Salt, he would have used the word which the LXX placed, *Gemelech*, or at least [the word] which the LXX used when they said "of the salts." In Genesis, chap. xiv, 8, the valley that was turned into the Dead Sea, where the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and the others entered into battle against four others, is called by the LXX *koilada tēn Alukēn*: and above in verse 3, "the *Alukē* ravine." There is no doubt that Epiphanius looked to this when he wrote: "The valley of the *Alukē*, as it is called in divine Scripture." For the "valley of the *Alukē*" is nowhere named except in this place. Yet it does not signify the valley of the Salts of Idumaea closest to it, but the region in which the Asphaltite lake later existed, at that very place. Therefore Salmasius slanders [him], while he attributes to Epiphanius that which is most insipid. For he brought forward no reason to show that Epiphanius had so thought: as if it were permitted to castigate and traduce the ancient Fathers with impunity according to one's whim. The valley which is called *melach* in Hebrew is called "The Woodland" [Silvestris] by our interpreter in Greek as *Alukē*. But Jerome in his *Traditions* calls it the Valley of Salt; Aquila, however, [calls it] *tōn Peripedinōn*, that is, "of the Plains": for he reads *melach*. Theodotion [calls it] *tōn Alsōn*, that is, of the "Groves": which approaches the Vulgate interpreter. The name *melach* is taken as much from cultivated land as from pasture and woodland: which the authority of Theodotion and the ancient interpreter confirms. The Greeks translated *Alukē* from the salts, as did Jerome in his *Traditions*. If anyone thinks that these men were so ignorant that they confused this valley with the other, of similar name, situated toward Idumaea, he acts not very prudently, nay, rather, rashly. For this latter seems to have been placed in the borders of Idumaea. Nor indeed is it necessary that it be located in Idumaea itself: which Salmasius divines (a), being led by a very slight argument, since the Idumaeans were also routed D there, in their own region. Excellent! As if the battle must have been fought in Idumaea itself. With the same manner of arguing you could conclude that Italy is in Africa, since the Africans, under Hannibal as leader, fought with the Romans in Italy. The other argument of Salmasius, because a garrison is mentioned as having been placed there, namely in Idumaea itself. Where do you read this, that the garrison was placed there, i.e., in the Valley of Salt? And I am debating this, not so that I may determine something certain about its location, but so that the *alogia* [irrationality] of the man may be chastised; who believed that it was necessarily proven from the sacred Scriptures, and as in most things, he is entirely inexperienced in the syllogistic method.
From the same inexperience in reasoning proceeded also that which follows immediately: he proves that this valley of Salt was further removed from the Dead Sea by the fact that it is in Idumaea. But Idumaea, he says (b), is far removed from the Dead Sea. Nor is that true. Yet let us see how beautifully he demonstrates it. For it began from the Egyptian Casius, and the emergence of the Sirbonian lake. Acute, indeed! Since Idumaea began from the borders of Egypt, therefore it was further away from the Dead Sea. Is this to reason, nay, rather to use reason? For he does the same as if someone were proving...
that Gallia is not contiguous to the Pyrenees, because it begins from the Rhine or the Alps. The lynx, a beast that is, is one which, having obtained its prey, even though it consumes it in hunger, if it looks elsewhere, it forgets the present prey and departs to seek another. Our same grammarian did this. When he was in the process of proving that Idumea is further away from the Dead Sea, and had come to that point where he was saying that it begins from Lake Sirbonis, the recollection of Strabo diverted his mind; for Strabo, deceived by Lake Sirbonis, took it for the Asphaltite [Lake]. Wherefore, presently forgetting the argument he had begun, he turned himself to Strabo and fixed his teeth into him.
A Before I withdraw from the Asphaltite Lake and this entire discussion, it is pleasing to note the threefold error of this critic. He denies (a) that this lake, which is also called the Dead Sea, is salty. Most absurdly! First, in Genesis xiv, 3, it is called ἡ θάλασσα τῶν Ἁλῶν, the Sea of Salts, that is, the Salty Sea. Salt is not salt if that sea is not salty. Then Josephus, who both saw it and was able to taste it, in Book 5 of the *War*, chap. 27, says it is ἁλμυρώδη, that is, salty. But he objects: "Every sea is salty by its own nature, which everyone knows; nor would there need to be a true sea to be so named." Lead-weighted sagacity! It would be a wonder if he did not contend that Moses erred, who called it both sea and salty. But, my good man, it is established that every true sea is salty; however, this lake was not a true sea, but, as is the custom of the Hebrews to call every collection of waters thus, Scripture calls it the Salty Sea, so that we may understand it to differ from the other, the Lake of Gennesaret, C which, as Josephus narrates in the same place, is sweet. Furthermore, who does not know that one sea is saltier than another? The Euxine Sea is a true sea; yet it is nonetheless пóτιμος, fit for drinking, and has sweet waters, or is less salty than the other seas, so that cattle are even wont to be watered by it, as Arrian reports in his *Periplus*, and Aristotle affirms in *Hist. animal.*, book 11, ch. 13, regarding its sweetness. Wherefore, because the Asphaltite Lake is saltier than the rest, it is therefore called by our interpreter the Saltiest Sea everywhere, Num. xxxiv, 3; Deut. iii; Joshua xv. Tacitus, in *Hist.* book 5, makes this lake more corrupt in flavor than any sea. What then came into Salmasius's mind, that he should deny it to be salty? Assuredly, Bede, in his book *On the Holy Sites*, ch. 13, reports that this most salty lake casts out salt, and that this, dried by the sun, is taken up and would be useful to many nations everywhere.
The second head of his ignorance is that he says (b) that the Asphaltite lake is called "salty" in the same sense in which the same Hebrews name "land of salt" that which is desert and desolate. "Land of salt," or "salsuginous," is called ungrateful and unfruitful and unhappy for crops, since saltness is hostile to crops. It is the proper cause of sterility and unfruitfulness. In the sea, there is no fecundity of those things which, as on land, are harmed by the nature of salt. But those things which arise from there, or crawl, are helped by the saltness. Wherefore, salt sea cannot be said to stand for unfruitful and sterile, since fecundity itself D from the salt-brine is not. But why does the Asphaltite Lake produce nothing or give life, if not from the ἁλμυρώδει, which Josephus attributes to it, but from the ἀσφαλτώδει, to which its waters are corrupted, and to which it is deservedly attributed as from the salt-brine of the sea? Why, however, does the Asphaltite lake produce nothing or give life? It is not from the salt-brine B which Josephus attributes to it, but from the bitumen, to which its waters are corrupted, and to which it is deservedly attributed.
The third error of the critic is on the same page. He proves therefrom that it is not a salt lake, because bitumen is not salty, nor has it the nature of salt. But that lake is from sheer bitumen. Therefore, there are no waters in the Asphaltite lake, but as much as there is, it is nothing but bitumen. Josephus, in Book 5 of the *War*, chap. 5, describing the Asphaltite lake—such as he had often seen it, not such as he had learned from dictionaries—says: "By reason of its lightness, it bears up the heaviest things thrown into it; nor is it easy for one to dive to the bottom, even if he tries." "By excessive lightness," he says, "even what is most heavy, when cast into it, floats: and one cannot easily reach the bottom, even with intent." He adds that Vespasian, for the sake of experimenting, ordered some who were ignorant of swimming, with their hands bound behind their backs, to be thrown into the depths; and it happened for them all, as if by the power of some spirit, that they were repulsed and floated upwards. This Josephus [says] according to the interpretation of Rufinus. He adds that in many places the same lake casts up black clods of bitumen, but they float, similar in figure and size to bulls with their heads severed: "The bitumen, in truth, casts up black clods in many parts, and they float; and both in shape and size they are like decapitated bulls." Pliny, book xxxv, cap. 15, says the nature of bitumen is in one place silt, in another earth. The silt is coming forth from the lake of Judea, as we have said; the earth is in Syria around Sidon, a maritime town. If the Asphaltite lake is pure bitumen—that is, if it has no waters—how can anything be submerged in it, or, from the bottom, be repulsed upward by a hidden force of spirit? But how can it float and fluctuate in a perpetual clod, or in most thick mud? The passage of Strabo, book xvi, more clearly refutes the absurdity, where he treats of the Asphaltite lake under the name of Serbonis, wrongly, as Ortelius and Casaubon, and many others besides, noticed before Salmasius. Therefore, Strabo reports this lake to be ἀγχιβαθῆ, having most deep water, such that there is no place there for divers, but whoever proceeds into it as far as the navel, immediately begins to well up; for the gathering of which they have ready-made reed rafts: "Bitumen is a clod of earth moistened and dissolved, but again changing into a strong mass by the cold water, such as is the water of the lake, so that it needs cutting and hewing." That is, "Bitumen is a clod of earth, which, liquefied and flowing apart, coalesces again into a solid body, constricted by the coldness of the water; such is the water of that lake, so that it requires the knife and the axe." Tacitus, book v *Hist.*, ch. 6: "Uncertain waves are carried upon the solid [as if] it were solid. Skilled and unskilled swimmers are lifted up in the same way. At a certain time of year it casts up bitumen." Soon he says, "billowing with bitumen"
to be drawn by hand to the shore. A The Asphaltite [lake] then possesses waters, and it is not pure bitumen, but it spews this out at certain times—that is, annually, as Diodorus Siculus, Pliny (Book VII, chap. 15), and Tacitus relate; or, as others say, every three years. Whence the quibble is frivolous: that it is therefore not salty because it is pure bitumen, which is not salty. One should also read Vitruvius, who (Book VIII, chap. 3) says that this lake emits huge masses of bitumen, which those who live nearby carry away. That the saltiness of this lake is not impeded by bitumen is because it does not flow with pure bitumen; it has its own waters, upon the surface of which bitumen boils up at certain times. Thus, the reason why bodies immersed [in it] are repelled and float should not be attributed to the same bitumen, but rather to the nature of the water and that place; for a huge force of vapors and spirits is exhaled from hidden vents and occupies those waters, by which, as Josephus says, bodies are pushed back and carried upward. This is also the case elsewhere. For instance, in Sicily near Agrigentum there is a certain lake into which even those completely unskilled in swimming cannot sink, as Strabo (Book VI) and Aristotle (in his book *On Marvelous Things*) report. This cannot be attributed to bitumen, which they do not report to be bubbling up in that lake, although there is a certain spring in that region upon which liquid bitumen flows; concerning this, see Dioscorides (Book I) and Pliny (Book XXXV, chap. 15). See Cluverius (Book II, *Sicily*, chap. 2), from whom Salmasius transferred everything he argues about this spring and the Agrigentine lake into his *Exercitationes* on Solinus, with his name—as is his habit—suppressed, though this is where he had scraped it together. And yet, in that very place, he ignorantly appended that bodies immersed in that lake are repelled and float because bitumen floats upon it, since the same thing happens in the Asphaltite lake of Judea. This is not true. For both Greeks and Latins teach us otherwise about the Asphaltite lake, as we showed a little earlier, and in the Agrigentine lake there is no bitumen, as far as can be proven by qualified authors. For Solinus inscribed "lake" instead of "spring" out of carelessness, which its own commentator does not deny. See by all means Aristotle’s passage about the Agrigentine lake. You will truly understand that this power cannot be attributed simply to oil floating on the waters, so that it lifts up bodies pressed into the depths.
CHAPTER V Epiphanian remarks vindicated from the censure of Salmasius. What *hypethesis* and *superpositio* mean. The error of Salmasius. *Bios* for secular life and marriage-bound, as also *bioun*. The slip of Casaubon.
With no better success did he exercise the venom of his style against us in another place. Epiphanius, in his *Exposition of the Faith*, speaking of the fasting of Holy Week, says that some Christians pass two days, three days, or four days during that time without food: *and the zealous ones [pass] double, triple, and quadruple* B 363 We observe current usage of the verb *hypertithenai* and *hypertithesthai*, which is to defer food; for this is the proper and genuine meaning of the vocabulary, so that it means to postpone, to drag out, to defer. Thus, *hyperthesis* is a postponement, at least of the customary taking of food. Hesychius [defines] *hypertheseis* [as] delays, interruptions. Graeco-Latin glossaries [define] *hyperthesis* [as] delay, procrastination, frustration, waiting, lingering, hesitation. And *hypertheticos* [as] superlative, procrastinator, deferring. Likewise *hyperthou*, to postpone. For this reason, this verb is provided with two accusatives in its construction, of which one is expressed, another is tacitly understood. As if I should say, "he defers for two days" (*dyo hemeras hypertithetai*), besides the accusative of space and time, another is conceived referring to the matter or business which is deferred; for this "defers for two days" (*biduo prorogat*) is the meaning. This is evident in the passage of Dionysius of Alexandria which we adduced there: "Since not even the six days of the fast do all endure equally or in the same way, but some defer all of them, continuing without food; others two, others three, others four, others not one." Here the verb *hypertithenai* signifies to prolong and to defer; and in the same way it is said *hypertithenai* all, or two, or three days, meaning to endure the days. For in both cases *kata* is understood. Instead of "two, three, or four," Epiphanius preferred to say "double, triple, quadruple" days. We could also understand a second accusative, namely *hypertheseis*; for *hyperthesis* is taken for a fast and a superposition: thus it will be *hypertithenai hypertheseis*, just as if you were to say in Latin "to superimpose superpositions" (*superponere superpositiones*). Thus "to fight a fight" (*pugnare pugnam*) and other things of that kind. In Evagrius (Book I, *Hist. Eccl.*, chap. 21) there is a significant passage where he speaks about the institution of the monks who were living in Palestine, and especially about their marvelous abstinence: "Often they perform even the so-called *hyperthesmous*, completing their fasts for two or three days; and there are some who [do so] for five, or even more." There he used *hyperthesmous* in the same sense as he used *hypertheseis*; and I do not know if it is truly better to read *hypertheseis*. Nor would I change it rashly; for it is possible that they called, as *hyperthesmous*, fasts [extended] beyond the common law and custom, or the usual time for taking food. This interpretation of this verb and phrase is not worthy of having us look back on it with regret today. But besides this one, there are two others available, which I judge to be no less probable. First, that the verb *hypertithenai* may mean to transcend, to surpass. For the Greeks call the superlative degree *hyperthetikon*, and *hyperthesis* to Hesychius is *hyperbasis*. Whence *hypertithenai* is to go beyond (*hyperbainein*), to surpass (*hyperballein*). The second is that *hypertithenai* means to add, to impose, and to decree beyond common practice, which the Latins call *superponere*. Cassianus (*Collat.* I, chap. 21), regarding the Abbot John who, tricked by a demon, had destroyed himself with two days of fasting: In-
-Atending to impose upon his exhausted body a fast so long that it brought about useless fatigue—or rather, a fatigue even harmful to the spirit—he added it to his exhaustion. The word *superponere* in this passage signifies nothing other than to impose or to add. Thus, in the Council of Aurelians (V, can. 12): "Let no bishop be superimposed or superordinated over a living bishop." In this way, fasts are said to be *superimposed*, because when the common life of men is passed in daily sustenance and food, certain laws of abstinence are imposed by which men are, as it were, burdened. Thus Tertullian (*Adv. Psych.*, chap. 2): "Thus also the apostles observed, imposing no other yoke of fasts to be observed commonly by all." This will be the *superimposing* of that yoke, and the ordaining of a law of fasts; whence the *superposition* of fasts is the same as imposition and injunction. Solinus (chap. 27) says that lions take drink on alternate days and food on alternate days; and frequently, if they have not yet digested, they *superimpose* a day onto their usual feeding. To *superimpose* is to add.
Since, therefore, they are accustomed to taking food every other day, when they are raw, they add one day to the one which it is their custom to intercalate. Thus they pass a full two days without food. I do not think that the word here is used in the same sense as it is by ecclesiastical authors when they call fasts *superpositions* or *superpositions of fasts*, which Greek Fathers have called B *hyperthesmous* or *hypertheseis*, in the sense which we have explained thus far. But whether the Greeks have brought this term into the matter of fasting by imitation of the Latins, or the Latins by imitation of the Greeks, can justly be doubted. And if the former alternative—which we embraced in our *Animadversions*—is preferred, and the former of the two interpretations given in this chapter is more pleasing, namely that *hyperthesis* means a delay or postponement, or *hyperbasis* (a passing over), it is credible that the Latins called it *superposition* after the example of the Greeks. For in this sense, its own native propriety is clear in the Greek word; whereas in Latin it is less clear, so that you recognize it as a translated and foreign word. But if it is preferred to speak of *superposition* as meaning an imposition or injunction, then indeed the words *hypertithenai* or *hypertithesthai* will appear less Greek in concept and thus to have flowed from the use and example of the Latins. In the *Lives of the Fathers*, book 5, libellus 10, numbers 33 and 44, there is a certain strange affectation of Greek in this or a similar word; number 33: "Another thought of mine is to fast by *levando* (removing/lifting) two days"; number 44: "Therefore, when you were young, you did not fast by *levando* two days." And the old man said to him: "Believe me, that I did so both for three days and for a week." He said *levare* for two days, just as Epiphanius says *triplas hypertithesthai*. I think that *levare* here corresponds to the third meaning: to impose or to ordain: a metaphor drawn from burdens, which, in order to be imposed, must be lifted. For it does not seem that *levare* two days means to break the fast with food, so that one must supply "abstinences," which cannot be supplied in the case of a week. C A word like *alpsein* could also have a place in such expressions, meaning to carry or to lift. However, although the Greeks, just like the Latins, use *hypertithenai* and *hyperthesis* for *superponere* and *superpositio*, the construction is not the same in both. For although in Latin one can say *superponere alicui biduanum vel triduanum jejunium* (to superimpose a two-day or three-day fast upon someone), or, as Solinus speaks, *solitæ cibationi diem unum superponere* (to superimpose a day upon the usual feeding), yet in Greek one is not permitted to use *hypertithesthai te trophe mian hemeran* in this way. For *hypertithesthai* is not joined with the dative. D In which matter the Plinian critic is greatly deceived (a); he who Hellenizes this Solinian locution as follows: *te synethe trophe hemeran hypertitheasin*. Yet *hypertithenai*, like the preposition *hyper*, is not accustomed to be joined with the dative. Away, then, with those dregs of speech, *hypertithenai tivi*, to superimpose upon someone. He should have said rather *epitithenai* or *prostitithenai*. The remainder of his exercise is entangled in even greater absurdities. Among which, the singular thing is that, while he set out to harass and revile our opinion, he falls into the very thing he reprehends: we said *hyperthesis* is a delay, and *hypertithenai* to defer; Salmasius likewise maintains just as we do that *superposition* and *hyperthesis* mean a delay. Whose delay, then, is it? Or what finally is said to be deferred? He denies it is food; he refers it to the day: For he says: "They did not say *hypertithesthai trophen*, but *hypertithesthai hemeran*." Therefore the day of the fast is deferred. But it is not deferred; rather, it is represented, since whoever passes it in fasting is dwelling within it. What could be more humorous than what follows from that, when Epiphanius writes that Christians *diplas* or *triplas hypertithesthai*, that this means to defer two or three days, not food, but these very two or three days themselves? What kind of speech is this, I ask: "He defers one, or two, or three days; or he undergoes a two or three-day delay," in place of saying, "he fasts for two or three days"? Unless, as we intended, and as Salmasius ignorantly denies, you understand "food" and *trophe*, a certain intolerable slovenliness of speech is created. Which he drinks in so deeply that he reasons from it thus: since *hyperthesis* signifies a delay, and *hypertithenai* to defer: the *superposition* of fasts cannot be said, as it is found in the common reading of the Council of Elvira; lest the delay of fasts be understood. Therefore, the absurdity of speech follows his interpretation, who accepts *hypertithenai* in the same sense and asserts that it pertains to the "day." But that he combats the idea that the *superposition* of fasts and *hyperthesis* should be said, because it would follow that the fasts were being deferred, is illiterate. Or when we speak like this: "The sacrifices or expiations of the Jews," do we understand that the Jews themselves are being sacrificed or expiated on those festival days? The *superpositions* of fasts, O you, are the delays of food which are undergone during fasts; just as if I were to call the feasts of certain days, I would signify those things which are [done] on those days.
affixed and bound, not as if festive banquets were being served upon them. A
Therefore, he was just as unfortunate in this place of Epiphanius, and in explaining this Epiphanian word, as he was in the other one that just came to mind. In the *Heresy of the Dositheans*, page 30, Epiphanius writes that they [text in Greek script] "must practice continence after having lived." We explained *biōsō* [having lived] as implying "in marriage." Salmasius, writing against Kerkoetius, calls this ridiculous (a) and reads *huiōsō* [having fathered sons]; it is a conjecture of Casaubon in his *Exercitationes I* on the *Annals of Baronius*. But that reading is quite false: neither of them noticed what *biōsō* meant in Epiphanius. In *Heresy 59*, number 4, page 496, the same Epiphanius, arguing against the Cathari (b)—whom Salmasius cleverly guessed wore rings on their feet and stockings and trousers on their hands—refers to the custom of the Catholic Church, which admits no one entangled in marriage to holy orders unless he refrains from his wife: "But even one who is still living and fathering children, and who is the husband of one wife, he does not accept, unless he has practiced continence from one wife." Who could convert *biōnta* [living] in this place into *huionta* [fathering sons]? For he immediately added "fathering children." This passage, therefore, demonstrates both the critic’s lack of insight and our detractor's rashness. Indeed, *bios* simply means to live in marriage and in the secular life, as they call it. Thus, Chrysostom everywhere uses *bios* for this way of life, and *biōtikos* for secular and married [life]. From an infinite abundance, here is one notable passage at hand from Vol. VI of the Savilian edition, homily 7, page 801, verse 35: *On Repentance and Prayer*. For be speaks as follows: "This discourse of mine is not only to those who are occupied in the *bios* (secular life), but also to those who have set up their huts in the mountains." Nor should the passage of Achilles Tatius regarding the Dog Star be omitted for the same matter: "We call the Dog Star, which is in the *bios* (life of men), a star." He says that the star known as Canicula is properly named an "astrum" in the *bios*, that is, in common and popular parlance. In other fragments which I believe are by the same Tatius: "But indeed, in the *bios* we say that Jove rains." By the common usage of men in speaking, we say that Jove rains. B C
CHAPTER VI.
*Salmasius’s unjust slander is refuted; his multiple errors. Regarding the peacock's neck, the conchylium, and purple. What "Cataclita" are; and that this word is used as an adjective. What "pinos" is; it is declared in the discourse.*So that you may perceive that not only judgment and erudition, but even fairness and civility, are absent from Salmasius’s writings, I will gather certain proofs of this malady in this chapter. He carps at our edition of Epiphanius in several places (c) in his book *On Gems*, such as in the chapter *On the Emerald*. There, because he found a variant reading in the margin, in which *micros* [small] was substituted for *picros* [bitter] by conjecture, he crushes us and reviles us impudently. Likewise in the chapter *On the Lyncurium*, because he found *lygkourion* [lynx-stone] noted in the margin instead of *lygourion* [amber], he pursues the same with the same modesty: which he also proceeds to do in other places. And yet, it was the duty of one who possessed any prudence to notice that these conjectures did not originate from the editor, but that the author was Conrad Gesner, who, sixty-two years ago, published that little book with a Latin translation and marginal notes, all of which the printer transferred to our edition in the very same words as they were. This I myself pointed out to the reader in the Preface to the second (now the third) volume. Let him consult, if he likes, the Tigurine edition of Gesner of the year 1568. There he will find all those things which he so bitterly criticizes, with that very caution prefixed at the beginning of the work: "In the margins (these are Gesner’s words, not ours) we have written certain things by way of conjecture; and we warn that no one should think this is a different reading of other manuscripts." Therefore, he heaps curses not on us, but on Gesner, from whose edition those things were translated. D
But he also briefly strikes at Kerkoetius regarding the emerald, whom he says (d) attributes a conchylian color to that stone. But this is a calumny. This writing is nowhere from him: but your error is justly rebuked by the same man, who interpreted the peacock so deftly, as described graphically by Tertullian in his book *De Pallio*, that you said its neck was tinted in purple—and, indeed, a saturated and pure purple, of the kind that is Tyrian and twice-dyed. Recall, my dear sir, what Kerkoetius replied to you in his third *Mastigophorus* (e); against which last book you have not yet dared to hiss a word. From it, you will know how sinisterly you interpreted Tertullian in your *Notes on his Pallium*, and these are his words: "Although also the peacock is a garment of feathers, and indeed of *cataclita*: nay, more refined than any conchylium, where the necks flourish and are more gilded than any embroidery, where the backs shine." Which you explain in the notes on page 450 in such a way that you assign a pure purple color and brilliance to the neck of the peacock. Your words are (f): "The *conchylium* in this place is rather to be taken as a *conchylia* or *conchyliata* garment, or *conchyliated* color, which authors always distinguished from purple. For *conchylium* is a type of color much paler and more diluted than purple." So that it is no wonder if Tertullian said that the necks of peacocks, which flourish with the light of pure purple, are more lively than any *conchylium*; since all *conchylia* do not have that saturation of flower and light, which purple has. Therefore, you feel that there is on the peacock’s neck not a conchyliated—that is, a diluted and paler—color, but a purple one from that pure and saturated purple. Nay, indeed, you demonstrate elsewhere (pag. 126, 127) (g) that this very purple is Tyrian and twice-dyed, when you argue that this flower, more pressed than the conchylium, is of the same color on the peacock’s neck.
A Babylonic in dining-room couch-covers or cushions, which you indicate are Tyrian twice-dyed, according to Cornelius Nepos in Pliny, Book IX, ch. 39. In that interpretation there is a twofold stupidity. First, if for that reason Tertullian says the peacock’s neck is more lively than any conchylium, because pure purple, which is certainly more lively than the conchylium, excels it in this luster, you make him speak as if he were saying that Helen was whiter than snow, indeed than chalk or gypsum. For what is marvelous about pure and saturated purple being more brilliant and lively than the conchylium, which is of itself lighter and paler? Truly, a particle like "indeed" ought to increase a thing, and imply something greater and more vehement in the same genus. But in the very genus of conchylium, purple is far more vivid, and thus you think the peacock’s neck is stained with it. This collection is therefore most inept: just as if someone praising some poet were to assert that he is superior to Virgil, indeed even to Lucan. Second, that you wish the peacock’s neck to be tinted either with pure, saturated purple, or with the same Tyrian twice-dyed color, you err childishly. Who has ever seen a peacock with a purple neck, red like scarlet? The peacock's neck is conchyliate, and at the same time tempered with a green and emerald color, as that *Mastigophorus* taught from Phaedrus and Phile. Indeed, whoever has eyes and, for using them, has common sense, will judge so. Wherefore Kerkoetius did not say as you trifle that the emerald color is conchyliate, but that it is conchyliate mixed with an emerald green: which the authority of writers and the sense itself distinguishes.
In the same passage of Tertullian there is another trace of Salmasian rashness B. He denies that *cataclita* is used of dining-room coverings, and says that those who interpret it so display a great ignorance of the Greek language: namely, that *kataklita* are nothing other than *accubita*, or the couches themselves, and by no means the covers which are accustomed to be spread upon them. But that this is false is confirmed by the Greek reading of the Septuagint Interpreters, and by the authority of St. Basil. In Isaiah III, 23, *peristra kataklita* are spoken of; where *kataklita* must be taken as an adjective, and they are bedding. So Basil explains, who was not a little more skilled in Greek than Salmasius. "He calls *kataklita* now those things which, through excess of luxury, are spread upon the couches while reclining": he calls them *cataclita* which, because of excessive luxury, are spread on the beds in reclining. Let Salmasius see now how deservingly he boasts of his skill in the Greek language, and criticizes the interpreters of Tertullian, who took *cataclita* in the same sense as Basil.
It would have concerned a man more to bury the memory of that old dispute, and not to make his own blame more distinguished by an untimely recollection of it. But he cannot: for behold, he again refreshes the memory of his other error C, while he still D struggles to vex Kerkoetius. Most truly he writes that he was the first to reveal the significance of the word *pinos*, whatever others might bark against it. Come now, let us see how he can purge those things which Kerkoetius objects to him concerning this word in *Mastigophorus* 3. For Salmasius, in his *Confutation of the Animadversions of Kerkoetius*, judges that *pinos archaïkon*—or *chneous*—as used by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, is contrasted with the feeble and strengthless rhetoric of his own times. The latter, he says, he distinguishes from that *pinos* of ancient rhetoric, which was strong and masculine and owed much to art and practice, whereas the recent manner of speaking, which flourished in the time of Dionysius, consisted of no art, but of impulse alone; for they rejoiced most in the temporality of the moment, and thus they poured forth, they did not speak; *emountes, ouk akribountes*. When Salmasius wrote this, he certainly neither understood what he was writing, nor had he read Dionysius of Halicarnassus carefully enough. For nothing could be brought forward more contrary to the mind of that writer than what he discussed in that chapter. For Dionysius posits a threefold character of speaking: the first is *austeros*, austere, and archaic, which is also rough and unpolished: to which *pinos*, or the *chneous* of *archaiotetos*, that distinct quality of antiquity, is proper; the second is *glaphuros* or *anthēros*, polished and florid, from which *pinos* shrinks; the third is *koinos*, which contains the gifts of both in itself. To the first genus belong, of the poets, Pindar, Aeschylus; of the historians, Thucydides. To the second, Hesiod, Sappho, Anacreon, Simonides, Euripides of the poets; of the historians, Ephorus and Theopompus; of the orators, Isocrates; the third genus is occupied by poets such as Homer, Stesichorus, Alcaeus, Sophocles; of the historians, Herodotus; of the orators, Demosthenes. Writers of the second kind, from whom *pinos* is absent, are more ancient than the former, yet to them *pinos* is proper. For Hesiod long preceded the age of Pindar and Aeschylus. But Salmasius says that Dionysius attributes *pinos* to those much more ancient than those of the second kind, and affirms that these same ones were of Dionysius's own time. And so, in the age of Dionysius—that is, of Augustus—lived Hesiod, Sappho, Anacreon, Euripides. Furthermore, those who are considered in the latter group, and who lack *pinos*, he asserts to have spoken with no art, but by impulse alone and *ex tempore*. Wherefore Isocrates or Euripides contributed nothing of art, nor culture, nor time to their writing; to say nothing of the others, who it is agreed wrote most laboriously and diligently.
These are the portents of one writing not meditatively, but *emountes*, vomiting forth, Salmasius, of which he himself ought now to be ashamed; but to restore the memory, and to thrust it upon those who are unwilling and occupied with other things, is truly improper. But the Armoric Kerkoetius exposed these things more copiously in his third *Mastigophorus*: which were passed over and dissembled by Salmasius in a gentlemanly way.
EXCERPT FROM THE ECCLESIASTICAL DISSERTATIONS OF DIONYSIUS PETAVIUS. BOOK II, CHAPTER III.
ADe Epiphanii loco falsa trapezitæ (Salmasii, qui de trapezitico fenore tres libros anno 1640 emiserat) conjectura refellitur: idemque declaratur: Negotiatores haud recte dici ab eodem damnatos ab Ecclesia. Bíos matrimonium interdum significat; contra quam trapezita credidit.
To the rite of penance in the ancient Church are to be referred certain errors of our money-changer (Salmasius). In the preface to the reader prefixed to his books *De trapezitico fenore* [On Money-lending], p. 57, he touches upon a certain passage of Epiphanius, and while he strives to be too acute, he has interpreted it very poorly. At the end of the great work which Epiphanius wrote on heresies, he has comprised in a brief disputation the sum of the Catholic faith, and the morals and institutions of the Church, so that by these marks, as it were, he might distinguish the true bride of Christ from the heretical conventicles, which it considers in the place of concubines. And toward the end he collects certain main headings of crimes which are condemned by the customs and usage of the same Catholic Church. "It refrains from communion," he says, "with all heresies [perhaps 'heretics'], it publicly renounces fornication, adultery, licentiousness, idolatry, murder, and every transgression," etc. Shortly after: "And covetousness, and the taking of usury; it does not receive those who are traders, but considers them lower than all others. It receives offerings from those who do wrong to no one, nor perpetrate any crime, but live justly." Here Epiphanius recounts the principal, as I have said, crimes and flagrant acts from which the Church shrinks and which it condemns by its own authority. Where the word ἀποκηρύττει does not precisely signify to excommunicate, or to restrain and segregate from communion: as if it rejected from ecclesiastical communion all who should fall into those things which he enumerates in the same place, as the money-changer thinks. From which he also collects that Epiphanius writes that not only those who receive usury are punished by abdication from the Church, but also all traders, πραγματευτάς. But he is by no means to be listened to. For ἀποκηρύττειν signifies not so much the abdication and condemnation of those who have perpetrated such crimes, as the abdication and condemnation of the crimes themselves. Otherwise, there would be no one who would not have to be excommunicated and proscribed from the Church. For who is there who does not sometimes fall into slander, detraction, contention, or avarice? B To these he condemns theaters, horse races, hunts, musical spectacles. *Ἀποκηρύττει θέατρα, καὶ ἱππικούς, καὶ κυνήγια, μουσικούς τε καὶ πᾶσαν κακολογίαν καὶ καταλαλιὰν, καὶ πᾶσαν μάχην καὶ βλασφημίαν.* He condemns, he says, theaters, equestrian contests, hunts, musical spectacles, and every act of slander and detraction, and every struggle and blasphemy. Was he who had been present at theatrical spectacles or circus games, or hunts, forthwith liable to excommunication? If this had been the custom, then surely no Christian in most cities would have been admitted to the church and to the use of the sacraments, or very few indeed. Complaints are frequent in John Chrysostom, when he was still a presbyter at Antioch, teaching the people concerning the paucity of those coming to the church and the sacred C synaxes of those attending; on which days, most especially, games and spectacles were presented. How often, when the people were intemperately poured out into these things, did he strive both to deter them from those things and to allure them to the church and to celebrate the gatherings of the faithful? When he even exhorts his hearers that they should bring with them to the church as many as they could from those spectacles. It is not therefore likely that the faithful were deprived of the communion of the Church on account of those things—especially when those solemn arrangements and games were presented to the people by Christian emperors and magistrates as if by official duty. Furthermore, on account of light and venial sins, no one was punished with the loss of communion. But among those things which Epiphanius has reviewed, some can be light, such as some slander uttered rashly and easily. For Augustine, in Sermon 41 *De sanctis*, where he distinguishes grave sins from light ones, numbers among light ones the occasions when we slander with all facility and temerity. Other things of this kind can be commemorated, which Tertullian calls "sins of daily incursion," which yet are contained among those things which have been named by Epiphanius. For he does not comprehend in that class only those things which are lethal and atrocious, but also light ones, when, for example, he said that *πᾶσαν κακολογίαν καὶ καταλαλιὰν, πᾶσαν μάχην καὶ πλεονεξίαν* are "publicly renounced" [ἀποκηρύττεσθαι] by the Church. Whence, if *ἀποκηρύττεσθαι* were to be excommunicated, as it pleases the money-changer, and not merely to be condemned and disapproved, as the matter itself teaches, it would be necessary that they be excommunicated—that is, from the communion of the Church—on account of every light crime.
Yet this word signifies those who are altogether of a lower order. For since, a little before, he had commemorated certain states and institutions of life among the faithful in the Church—all of which, being accepted by custom and approved, maintained their place in the Christian republic—he assigned the first rank of all to the priesthood, which is chosen from virgins or the continent; next to which the other clergy hold place; then virgins, then widows, and lastly those who live in matrimony, whom they call A *biōtikous*. Whence also *bios* signifies the same as *gamos*, which is marriage. *Bios*, I say, sometimes signifies marriage; and Epiphanius, in Heresy 59, number 4, page 496, said *biōsai* for that which is "living in matrimony." Concerning this, contrary to the banker—by whom we were undeservedly rebuked—we have demonstrated elsewhere. And so that he may learn to be less rash and precipitous in carping at others, we will add a luminous passage from a certain Greek writer, to prove the same thing, which I know not whether it has yet seen the light. He is Theophilus the philosopher, who wrote commentaries on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, which we have in our possession. Here, therefore, regarding those words of the first Aphorism, *ho bios brachys*, enumerating the various significations of *bios*, among others he brings forth this: *bios* is also the *zeuxis* [union] of marriage. It is, he says, *bios* and the society of marriage. But this by the way. Among the *biōtikous* and the "faithful of common life," Epiphanius numbers the *pragmateutai*—that is, merchants—in the lowest place: not because that state in the Church is forbidden and illicit, or entangled with sin, and marked with any punishment and censure; but because it is of all things the furthest removed from B evangelical perfection. This is the true and genuine mind of Epiphanius; that which indeed the banker (Salmasius) has invented is *adokimos* and to be repudiated. C
TO THE READER.
Many more excerpts could still be added, drawn from the writings published by Petavius under the fictitious name of Antonius Kerkoetius (or Cercoetius); but since it pleased the author himself to hide his true name in these, we shall not be solicitous about investigating those passages which serve to liberate his *Animadversiones* from the objections of Salmasius. Let him who has the good fortune to procure those booklets—which Petavius and Salmasius opposed to each other, prepared with satirical wit and gall, yet with exquisite erudition at the same time—search them out. But so that it may be clear to you, benevolent Reader, we shall provide an Index. Namely, after Claudius Salmasius had published Tertullian’s book *De Pallio* and his notes on it in the year 1622, Petavius published his *Animadversiones* on those same notes in the same year; which Salmasius, taking indignation, in the following year, 1623, issued a *Confutation* of them under the name of Franciscus Francus, printed at Paris, but bearing the title "Middelburg." To this, the *Mastigophori*—three *Elenchi*—were opposed by him who had assumed the name of Antonius Kerkoetius (or Cercoetius), Petavius, in the year 1624. To these, the masked Franciscus Francus objected with a *Refutation*: and this dispute was carried out with long and bitter, yet erudite, contentions, which Salmasius broke off, declaring to Grotius that he was unwilling to commit himself further to this ocean of quarreling. And death, overwhelming both in the same year, the fifty-second of this (the seventeenth) century, put an end to their lives and their litigations: and took Petavius from the living in Paris on the 11th of December, and Salmasius in Spa on the 3rd of September.
ANALYTICAL INDEX
In the genuine writings of St. Epiphanius, which this volume comprises from column 9 to column 392.A Abraham, the Son of God appeared to, 44. Absalom, how many ounces his hair weighed, 183. Accents, which are found in the sacred scriptures, 158. Achates, a gem not unlike the hyacinth, where it is found, to what it provides a cure, 229. Adamas (diamond), which the high priest wore three times a year when entering the Holy of Holies, 230. Where he wore it, at what time, and on which feast days, 230. How many times he changed its colors and what that indicated; it reflects a bronze color, 231. Adam. Adam’s origin, the status of his nature and birth, 61. It establishes the stock of his successors, 61. Adam and Eve in paradise, what kind of knowledge of themselves they had before the fall, 25. When they began to know each other by action, 25. Adrianus, having tried physicians in vain, mocks them, 170. The same man restores Jerusalem and calls it Aelia after his own name, 170. Egyptians, their superstition is greater than all others, 106. Era, invented by the Egyptians, and of what weight they were, 183. Aggaeus the prophet, his life and the location of his sepulcher, 248. Alabastrum, what kind of measure it is, 182. Amethyst, a gem, whence named, where it is born, 229. Ancoratus. Whence this book received its name, 1. What it contains, to whom it was written, under which emperors, and at what time, 1. Angels who were sent by God to overthrow Sodom, [and] Mamre, 34. Angels are ignorant of the day of judgment, being destitute of both kinds of knowledge: of intellect and action, 27. Why the angel appeared to Christ while He was laboring, 42. Things said or done by Christ in a human manner are explained, 43. Soul is taken for the whole man, 83. Souls, when counting persons, are understood to be joined to bodies as well, 61. Antinous, buried by Hadrian in the city named after him and declared a god, 109. Apis, the Egyptian calf, wounded by Cambyses in mockery, 107. Apollinarists, who believe there is a mind [in Him], 82. Aporrima, what kind of measure [it is] among the Thebans, 182. Apostles' calling, and that of the seventy-two disciples, likewise the institution of the seven deacons and the whole economy of the Gospel, 138. Apostles and prophets are to be preferred over all heretics, 66. Aquila, interpreter of the Scriptures, is appointed by Hadrian to repair Jerusalem, 170. Converted by the miracles of the Christians, he becomes a Christian from a Jew, 171. Again, he professes Judaism, an apostate from the Christian faith, 171. Arians, blasphemers against the Son, are convicted by the Son's own testimony as if He were unequal to the Father, 120. Arians' objection and craftiness against the Son of God, 53. The solution to their quibbling, 55. Ariomanites, whose error surpasses all others, 120. Aristaeus, composed a work concerning the seventy-two interpreters, 166. Artaba, a word of the Egyptians, is the name of a measure, 181. It is the same as the metreta, 182. Asterisk, and its power among the Hebrews, 159. Audiani, heretics of Mesopotamia, why they separate themselves from other believers, 19.
B Babylonian children, delivered from the burning furnace, 28. The canticle of those three children, 29. They worshiped one God and the only divinity in the Trinity, 29. Those three children acknowledged the Trinity, 30. Bacchi, many [individuals] distinguished by this name, 109. Baptism is more excellent than circumcision, 120. Barjonas, whence Peter was so called, and what Bar and Jonas signify in Hebrew, 7. Beryl, of what color it is, where it is born, its species, 230. Bibliorum (Bibles), the fifth and sixth editions have uncertain authors, 174. Library of Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, 166. Library, the minor one of Ptolemy, which was called the daughter of the former, in which the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion were stored, 168. Bith, or bathos, what measure of the Hebrews it is, 178. Good, the adjunct [of goodness] is attributed to many others besides God, 23.
C Sandals, which Moses was commanded to remove, what kind they were, 104. Campsaces, a measure of water, how many sextarii it contains, 182. Camus, a measure of the Hebrews, and what kind, 181. Baskets, three of the Chondritae, what measure [they are], 182. Head, the ornament of the body, and the assumption [of it] is the glory of the feasts, 283. Carbuncle, where it is born, how it is found; similar to this are the Ceraunias and the Carchedonius, 227. Catinus, what kind of vessel [it is] and how much it contains, 182. Cham’s posterity was divided into thirty-two nations and as many languages, 117. Canaan, why it was granted by God to the Israelites, 118. Chanix and Ephi, one and the same measure, and what kind, 181. Cherubim and Seraphim, the thrice-repeated "Holy," etc., designates the Trinity, 15. Christ’s struggle with the devil, B is explained by an elegant comparison to a most powerful king warring against a lesser one, 59. Where His death was received, 40. In what way, from the fact that it is said the Word was made flesh, soul and body are also understood, 40. That His body suffered and not His divinity, 41. That it is demonstrated by an elegant similitude from stained garments, 42. Christ is compared to emptied ointment, 45. A brief commemoration of His acts in the flesh, 45. He is said to be like a great mountain in the book of Daniel, 45. How God made Him high priest, 47. Christ introduced the law of justice, faith, and the spirit, 68. The similitude by which His nativity is explained, 69. He is called bread, vine, oil, living water, etc., 70. How Christ is called C mediator, 49. By what reasoning He is said to have emptied Himself and to have taken the form of a servant, 50. Things explained concerning Christi-
s body, how it is to be adored, illustrated by a clear comparison, 54. How Christ could have been immune from sin, 65. How Christ in various places asks questions as if He were ignorant, which are explained by Epiphanius, 111. What attributes are said to be proper to Christ, the Son of God, in the sacred Scriptures, 24. Why Christ retained scars in His body, 95. He entered with doors closed, 95. Why Christ is called the firstfruits of those who have died, 96. How Christ as man bore our infirmities and suffered all human things in His body, 36. The birth of Christ from the Virgin Mary without male seed, by the Holy Spirit, 62. In what year of the reign of Augustus He was brought into the light, 63. In what sense Christ is to be understood as perfect man, 81. Against the Apollinarians concerning the mind and soul of Christ, 81. A Chronology of Israelite times, 114. Chrysolite; what gem it is, of what color, where it is found, and what remedy it confers, 229. How circumcision was performed again, and the prepuce was again drawn forward, 172. "Knowledge" in Scripture is taken for mutual union, 25. Knowledge in Scripture is twofold, one of action, the other of science, 25. *Collathum* among the Syrians is a measure of liquids, 181. *Congiarium* is a measure of liquids among the Hebrews, 184. How many *sextarii* a *congius* holds, and it is called *sacer*, 182. The force of the word "consubstantial," by which the error of Sabellius is refuted, 11. The heart of man is the seat of the mind and of discretion, 82. Whether corruption that happens by persuasion is worse than that which happens by force, 223. What a *corus* is and what its measure was among the Hebrews, 177. What measure a *cotyla* is and whence it is so called, 182. What portion of a *sextarius* a *cyathus* is, 182. What kind of measure a *cyprus* is among the Pontics, 181.
B D. God. It is one thing to investigate the deep things of God, and another to attain them, 2. The image of God, in what it consists, 58. Whether it is to be restricted to baptism, 59. Nothing of those things which have been created can be compared to God, 16. The difference between God and the creature, 17. No one knows God except the Spirit, and the place of St. Paul is explained, 17. What befits God the Father is attributed to the Son and the Holy Spirit, 21. Only those who live under the Law acknowledge God, 15. By conceiving God, the whole Trinity is conceived, 15. God moved toward the generation of the Son by no affection, 52. Many are sons of God by grace, but one is Son by nature, 53. From whom God is said to turn away His face and whom He is said to regard, 221. How God is said to be seen by the prophets, although He cannot be seen, 56. There is one God from whom Jesus Christ was sent, 7, 6. Fornication brought forth a multitude of gods and idolatry, 7. God and Christ ask what they know, and for what reason, 41. "My God" is never said by the Son according to His divinity, 54. God of the ancient Law is defended against the objection of heretics, 114. God sometimes asks questions as if ignorant, 110. Diagoras the Atheist, and his jesting remark about the wooden image of Hercules, 106. Many Dianas are called by this name, 109. What kind of silver coin the *dichryson* is, 181. In the Divinity there are three hypostases in one substance, 87. C Division of the world, why it contains the same places attributed to different regions, 117.
E. The Church is the strong woman of whom the Wise Man speaks in Proverbs; she gives daily, 152. The firmness of the Church is always the same, but heresies overturn and destroy themselves, 88. Four times of the Church are designated: through the synagogue, the prophets, John, and finally through the Savior, 119. And this is shadowed forth by four insignia: the sandals laid down in Moses, the outer tunic in the prophets, the haircloth in John, and the neglect of all worldly culture by Christ and the apostles, 119. A brief compendium of the life of Epiphanius, 1. The modesty of Epiphanius in the extenuation of his own powers, 6. By whose impulse he wrote the *Ancoratus*, 6. A summary of his *Ancoratus*, 6. D An epistle written from the town of Suedra in Pamphylia by the new presbyters to St. Epiphanius, 2. Esau was the inventor of drawing forward the prepuce, 172. Eucharist. That the Lord’s body and His presence are contained in it is proven in a notable place, 63. Eudaemon’s impious opinion about the gods, 106.
F. A comparison of the feasts dedicated to Christ, 286. Profession of the catholic faith from the Nicene synod, 122. Another, fuller profession of faith, 123. The firmament of our faith and salvation is in the Divine Incarnation, 79. An elegant comparison of the faithful who waver in faith with those who are sailing, 3. Perverse faith is worse than infidelity, 13. That golden saying of Epiphanius whence it appears that heretics are worse than any infidels, 13. The Son knows the day of judgment, since He Himself will be the judge, 26. How God is visible and invisible, how He can be known and not be known, 37. The Son is older than time, because through Him it was made, 80. The Son and the Holy Spirit are worthy of equal honor with the Father, 16. The Son knows the day of judgment, against the objection of infidels, 22. That the Son is not greater than the Father, 25. The Son is to be adored because He is in no way created, 54. How the Son is generated from the Father, 51. He is not a creature, but generated spiritually from the Father, 51. And in an incomprehensible manner, 51. The divine generation of the Word is declared by a similitude, 51. That the Son made all things, and nevertheless all things were made through Him, 33. How many silver coins a *follis* or small talent consists of, 181.
G. The twelve gems which the high priest wore on the ephod, or pectoral, or rational, 223. What measure a *gomon* is among the Hebrews, 182. What measure a *gomor* is among the Hebrews and how many are its species, 178. Whence Greeks are called Hellenes, 131. Why they are called Iones, and also Meropes, 131. How many sects or heresies of the Greeks there have been, 131. Greeks and gentiles were accustomed to bring feasts to graves, shadowing forth in a way the resurrection itself, 91. The most empty superstition of the Greeks in worshipping gods, 107.
H. Hellenism is the third heresy; whence it received its name, 131. Heraclitus’s saying about the Egyptian gods, 106. One chief story told of Hercules: that he deflowered one hundred virgins in one night, 109. An enumeration of heresies according to the order of each, 18. A new heresy in Egypt around Thebais, 88. The arguments of heretics objected against Catholics are weighed, 37. History of the distribution of the world by Noah, 116. What kind of weight a *holce* is, and it corresponds to the shekel, 183. Man is defined by his parts, soul, body, and mind, 81. The hyacinth stone: what forms it has, what color, how many of its species, what powers it has, and what remedies, 228 and 220. The form of the *hypolemnisci* and what its power and use was, 167.
I. The origin of idolatry and idols, and whence there are such various idols, 105. The series of Roman emperors up to Valentinian, 169 et seq. up to p. 177. *In*, a kind of measure; what it is like and how many *sextarii* it contains, 182. The commendation of the seventy-two translators, 173. The seventy translators were inspired by the Holy Spirit, 160. Their history, 161. The fidelity of the seventy translators in translating, changing, or correcting the sacred Books, 163.
A
Onyx, or Onychium: of what color it is, what use it provides, and why it is called Alabastrites, 230. Isis: the vain worship and baseness of it among the Egyptians, 107. Israelites: why they were permitted by God to plunder the Egyptians, 115.
J Japheth: his posterity divided into fifteen regions and as many languages, 117. Jasper: of what color it is, where it may be found, and why it is called Amathusius; its many kinds, and what powers it has for various remedies, 227-228. Jesus: by whom he is acknowledged, but not as God, 7. John: how the passage, "All things were made by him," is to be understood, 80. Job: the passage concerning the resurrection of the dead is explained, 102. Joseph: he had six children by a previous wife before he espoused the virgin Mary, 62. Jupiter: his shameful deeds and base embraces, 108. His sepulcher on Mount Lasius, 108. Three Jupiters: Saturnius, Latiaris, and Tragoedus, 108. B Jews: how they, as impious men, stumbled at the stone of stumbling, 52. Jews: their sects are shown to be seven in number, 133.
L Lapides (the twelve stones): which the high priest wore on his breastplate, are separately adapted to the twelve tribes, 231, 232. Another interpretation by Turrianus regarding the twelve stones added to the high priest's rational, 233, 234. Lazarus: where he was placed, and why Christ asks about him, 45. Lemniscus: its form and whence it was taken, 164. Lancurius: a stone, 228. Lethec: what this Hebrew measure is, 178. Libri (canonical books) among the Hebrews according to their order, 180. The number of sacred books according to the number of the Hebrew alphabet, 161. Littera (the letter): whom it kills, and whom the Spirit vivifies, 27. Luke: the passage concerning the bloody sweat of Christ is explained, 12.
M Manes: the prince of the Manichaeans and his ridiculous opinion concerning the origin of souls, 52. The history of Manes and the death by which he perished, 176. Manichaeans, Arians, and Lucianists: their error is refuted by the true humanity of Christ, 38. Mares: what measure this is among the Pontians, 184. Maximinus: his most cruel death brought about by God the avenger, 176. Mensurae (Hebrew measures): thirty-one species distinguished by their names, 177. Minerva: there are many, and by what names they are distinguished, 109. Mua: called Mane by the Hebrews, and Mina by the Italians, 183. Mnasis: or Medimnus, what kind of measure it is, 178. Modius: explained by the Hebrews as "confession," and why, 181. Modius: a measure of twenty-two sextarii, according to the number of the twenty-two letters among the Hebrews, 180. The same is called Gnomon, 181. And it is called by the Hebrews the "sanctuary of measure," 181. Modius: what measure this is among the Cyprians, 178. Monachi (monks): they are condemned who rebaptize heretics, even Arians, 151. Monachi: the various institutes of certain monks are disapproved, 151. C Monastica (monastic life): the institute is praised, 110. Moses: his saying concerning Reuben, that he should not die, is explained, 100. Mus Alpinus (marmot): it hides for six months, an example of the resurrection, 89.
N Nebel: of wine, what measure and how many sextarii it holds, 182. Nummus (coin): invented by King Numa of the Romans, and it took its name from him, 183. Nummus: the silver coin called a miliarium by the Romans, and whence, 181.
0 Obelus: what it is, and in what form it is drawn, 160. Obolus: what coin it is, and of what material it was minted, 183. Origen: he is refuted, and his ridiculous opinion about the tunics of skins stitched together by God, 63. Other mad errors of his concerning the Son of God, the Holy Spirit, and the angels, 66. Origen: his institution in placing the obelus, 160. Origen: his error concerning paradise, through an allegory feigned by himself, 57. Origen: his study in comparing the editions, 160. Origen: the Hexapla, or the editions, are explained, 175. Osanna: it signifies nothing else than "Save us, O God," 152.
P Palladius: the magistrate of the Suedrians, his letter to St. Epiphanius, 3. Paradisus (paradise): the description of the four rivers, 60. Petrus (Peter): prince of the apostles, upon whom the Church was founded, 14. His denial, 14. To him was given the custody of the Lord's flock, 15. Phoenicis (of the phoenix): its history, 89. Phison: the river, the same as the Ganges or Indus, named differently by different peoples, 60. Pneumatomachi: the descendants of the Arians, 120. Prophetae (prophets): into how many species of meaning their writings are divided, 158. Proverbia (proverbs) and Parables: how they are to be received, 47. Psalterium (the psalter): or the books of the Psalms, how they were divided by the Hebrews, 162. Ptolemaeus Philadelphus: his care and study in gathering books from everywhere, under the advocacy of Demetrius Phalereus, 166. Ptolemaeus Philadelphus: his letter to the doctors of Jerusalem, 167. Pugillus: a handful of flour, a known measure, 181.
R Regum (kings) of the Egyptians: the series up to Cleopatra, 168. Resurrectio (resurrection): strictly proved from the Holy Scriptures, 98. It happens in a moment, unlike the generation of an offspring in the mother's womb, which consumes nine or twelve months, 99. Resurrectio: why the resurrection of the whole man is to be, 92. The power of the resurrection for the raising up of men, 95. That the same body which died will rise again, 93. Resurrectio: the resurrection of the same flesh which had died is asserted against Origen and certain Christians, 92. Resurrectio: it is adumbrated by various examples, 88, 89. That by the resurrection the whole body is raised from the dead, they admit, 99. D Resurrectio: the faith of the resurrection is built up even by the fables of the gentiles, 90.
S Sabellians: they are refuted against the Son by the insulting use of the word "God," 120. Sabitha: what word this is and what kind of measure, 182. Salomon (Solomon): the ambiguous passage, how it is to be understood concerning the incarnation, 48. Sapphirus (sapphire): of what color it is, what remedies it brings, where it originates; in it was the vision made to Moses on the mountain, and the law given, expressed on a sapphire gem, 227. Saree (Sarah): her modesty is praised, keeping herself at home and hidden from the sight of men, 44. Sardius (sardius): the Babylonian stone, what its form is, what its color, what powers it has, 225. There is another which is called Sardonyx, and Molochites, and what that is, 225, 226. Statum (the Hebrew statum): its definition and measure, 178. Statum: how many sextarii it contains, 182. Saturnus (Saturn): the fable concerning his children being devoured by him, 180. Sem, Cham, Japheth: the three sons of Noah, they divided the three parts of the world among them, 116. Semi or Sei: the sons of Noah's children and all their posterity, 116, 117. Servi (servants): called by the Greeks douloi, and are called somata, that is, bodies, 61. Siclus: or the fourth part of an ounce, 183. Smaragdus (emerald): a gem, also called prasinus; how many species it has, and where it is born, 226. Sol (Solomon): "tacens" (the silent one), he instructed everyone everywhere in the world, 110. Spiritus sanctus (the Holy Spirit): arises from the Father and the Son, 75. Spiritus sanctus: is God, 74. Spiritus sanctus: differs from creatures, proceeds from the Father and the Son, 78. Spiritus sanctus: impiously violated by heretics, 3. Spiritus sanctus: equal to Christ, revealing himself equally to all, 31. Stater: how many drachmas it contains, 183.
Symmachus, the third interpreter of the Bibles under Severus, 172. Συνούσιος (Sunousios), how it differs from ὁμοουσίῳ (homoousiō), 10.
T
Talents: how great a sum six minae make, 183. Talent: the greatest of all measures, 183. Testimony: consists of two or three witnesses, 15. That this is demonstrated in Peter, Barnabas, and Paul, three united to proclaim the faith, 15. Tetrapla, Hexapla, and Octapla: how they are to be understood, 175. Theodotion: the fourth interpreter of the Bibles under the Emperor Commodus, 172. Topaz: what kind of gem it is, how it differs from the Carbuncle, where it is found, and what diseases it cures, 226. Trinity: consists in unity, and God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one God, 7. But it is not recognized except by those who are partakers of the Holy Spirit, 7, 8. How the Trinity is to be conceived, 7, 8. What things are attributed to one person of the Trinity pertain to the others, 8, 9. In the same, neither the Father can be understood without the Son, nor the Son without the Father, 10. The faith of the Trinity and what attributes belong to it from Sacred Scripture, 71. The Trinity: announced diversely at various times, 78. The truth of the Trinity: cannot be known from any other source than from the prophets and apostles, 67. The various names of the persons of the Trinity, 74.
U
Ounce: how many staters it contains, and how many ounces are in a pound, and how many pounds in a talent, 183.
V
Divine Word: how those things which befit man are attributed to it, 97. The Word of God: proved to have possessed true human flesh and soul from Sacred Scripture, 39. The Word so assumed flesh that it admitted no sin, 85.
Z
Zacchaeus: a certain imposter of the monastic profession, 150.
EXPLICIT EPIPHANIUS.
ANNO SAECULI V CONTROVERSO NONNUS PANOPOLITANUS NOTITIA
(Fabr., *Bibliotheca Græca*, ed. Harles, vol. VIII, p. 601.)
Nonnus A, an Egyptian from Panopolis, seems to have been a different person from Nonnus of Palestine B, a follower of Origen’s dogmas, whose mention is made by Cyril of Scythopolis and Simeon Metaphrastes in the *Lives of the Holy Saints Sabas and Cyriacus* (vol. III and IV of Cotelier’s *Monumenta*). It is uncertain whether he is the same as the Nonnus whose son, Sosena C, Synesius commends to his friends Anastasius and Pylæmenes; though it is credible that he was not much inferior in age to Synesius, since he is cited by Agathias D as one of the "new poets," which I interpret as meaning not that they were contemporaries of Agathias, but that they were famous at some time not long before his own age.
That other Nonnus was also different from ours, he whom Damascius in the *Life of Isidorus*, according to Suidas in the entry *Saloustios*, relates to have read through the entirety of Demosthenes six times, yet to have been unable to open his mouth to produce any fitting speech. Indeed, these two things do not conflict—to excel in poetry and to be destitute of the faculty of oratory—so that there is nothing rarer than for the same man to be both a good poet and a good orator, nor does the consideration of the times greatly conflict with this. But many things persuade us that the Nonnus of Damascius was a stranger to the sacred rites of Christ, whereas no one doubts that this Nonnus of ours was a Christian.
I omit that much younger Nonnus, a physician and likewise a Christian, whose *Iatrika Theōrēmata* (Medical Theories) addressed to Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus is extant. However, we must not pass over Nonnus the deacon, who is commemorated among the notaries at the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, nor Nonnus, Bishop of Edessa, whose mention occurs in Nicephorus, book XIV, 30, *Historia*; he is the same one who, at the Robber Synod of Ephesus in A.D. 449, was appointed in place of Ibas of Edessa, by...
the Eutychians, after he had been deposed. To Nonnus, Bishop of Heliopolis and eventually of Edessa, is also attributed the conversion of thirty thousand Saracens, which Nicolaus Abramus, beside the point, refers to our Nonnus, the Panopolitan.
Regarding his poems (for Agathias implies that he composed many, when, in citing the *Dionysiaca*, he praises Nonnus in one of his own poems), there exist forty-eight books in heroic verse, the *Dionysiaca*, or *Concerning the Affairs of Bacchus* A; I doubt whether it is necessary to affirm that these were written while he was still a pagan, nor would I assert that they were composed to the mockery and shame of pagan theology, since a poet, even though a Christian, could have undertaken to adorn a pagan subject for the sake of his own talent, just as we see happening every day in our theaters. Some express doubt whether this poem is the same as that *On the Giants*, in which these lines are read in the *Anthology*, book I, p. 140:
I, Nonnus, my city is Panopolis. In Pharia With a bloody spear I mowed down the offspring of the Giants.
But it certainly seems that these words refer to a part of the *Dionysiaca*, or, as it is called by some, the *Bassarica* B, which in the first and second books pursues the history of Typhoeus and his battle with Jupiter. For although the title of the work promises the affairs of Bacchus, yet the poet describes many other things quite diffusely and at length. "Wherefore he has left us not a work, but a chaos," says Heinsius C. For in order that Bacchus might conquer the Indians, Jupiter ravishes Europa: and he is transformed into a bull; Typhoeus assaults heaven; Cadmus seeks out and woos Harmonia, founds Thebes, and marries off his daughters; Actaeon is torn to pieces by dogs; Proserpina is loved by the gods; Zagreus is born; the world perishes in a flood. After all these things, Bacchus is finally born. Such a great task it was to give to the world a god who would dwell in an amphora. Wherefore, before he was born, whose deeds he was describing, he dissipated and consumed the subject matter of six or seven immense volumes, none of which has the same theme as the rest, but as many works as there are, they could be entire works themselves. The first would be *The Rape of Europa* or *Europa*, the second *The Battle of Typhoeus* or the *Gigantomachia*. The third, *The Wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia*. The fourth, *Cadmeia* or *The Deeds of Cadmus*. The fifth, *The Wooing or Wedding of Deo*. The sixth, *The Births of Zagreus*. The seventh, *The Births of Dionysus*. The following parts are no less intricate, so that in the twenty-third book he undertakes the Indian campaign, although in the thirteenth he had proposed a catalogue. Wherefore the whole work is an episode and lacks episodes: for there is nothing primary, no *katastasis* of the work, nothing redundant that holds together in such a way that, were it removed, the next part would necessarily follow. There is nothing of that sort which, if removed by the poet, could be added for the sake of extending and adorning the work while remaining suited to what preceded. Deceived by this, the ancients, because he did not treat one subject but mingled many, ascribed different works to him. Hence that remark of some ancient, as if he had written a *Gigantomachia*, a part of the work that deals with Typhoeus. Unless he meant the *Indica*, which seems to be the view of Falkenburg. Nonnus's *Dionysiaca* is cited by Eustathius to Homer more than once, and by the author of the *Etymologicum Magnum* at the word *Dionysus*. Politian also used his testimony quite often, before it was printed, in *Miscellanea* ch. 11, 12, 28, 80, and once by Natalis Comes in *Mythologia* V, 13, who through Demarchus seems to denote the author of the *Etymologicum Magnum* D. Tumid and almost
A dithyrambic style of writing, certainly befitting Bacchus, has been noted by many in this work, by most in blame, by few in praise, or in such a way as to offer an excuse. Certainly, even those who more bitterly censure his thyrsi, his faults, and his ἁκυρολογία B grant him genius and store, erudition, and an abundance and affluence of epithets that are, at times, overly bold.
*Codices and editions of the Dionysiaca.*
[According to Nessel’s *Catalogue of the Imperial Viennese Codices*, part IV, there are 48 books of the *Dionysiaca* in codex XXVIII. In codex XLV, which Falkenburgius used when he first published the *Dionysiaca*, there is a second volume. In codex LII, [derived] from the Fugger codex at Augsburg, transcribed by Georg Wurffel in 1561, there are codices 206 and 209 in the Electoral Library at Munich, though not without lacunae, says the compiler of the *Catalogue of the Greek Codices of the Bavarian Library*, p. 76. At Venice, among the codices of Cardinal Grimani, witness Montfaucon in *Diarium Italicum*, p. 40. At Florence, in the Laurentian codices, XVI, n. 2, plut. 31. Cf. Bandini, *Catalogus codicum graecorum Bibliothecae Laurentianae*, I, p. 141. At Rome, in the Alexandrine Library, Petavius; in the Vatican, Nonnus’ collection of Greek histories and the *Dionysiaca*. In the Escorial library, there are two codices, of which one contains 48 books of the *Dionysiaca*, while the other contains 24 books. Cf. Montfaucon, *Bibliotheca bibliothecarum manuscriptorum*, I, p. 86 A, and p. 622 B. The same, vol. I, p. 287 E, thus records the Ottobonian codex at Rome: "Nonnus Panopolitanus, Greek codex, recent," but he does not add whether it contains the *Dionysiaca* or not. Regarding the Escorial codices, see also Plüer, *Itinerarium per Hispaniam*, p. 184. HARL.]
Since neither Aldus, to whom it had been recommended by Janus Lascaris, nor J. Oporinus, who had received a copy of them from Italy, had brought Nonnus’ *Dionysiaca* to light, Gerard Falkenburgius of Nijmegen was the first to publish them in Antwerp in 1569 (d), in the beautiful Greek type of Christophe Plantin, with his own learned corrections and a very copious index, along with the emendations of Willem Canter, all contained in a single folio volume. He worked from the manuscript codex of Joannes Sambucus, the Pannonian, which formerly belonged to Arsenius, Archbishop of Monemvasia, and had been purchased by Sambucus at Tarentum for 45 gold pieces; today, indeed, it is kept along with two or three other codices of the same work in the Imperial Library at Vienna. Meanwhile, at Paris, Carolus Utenhovius, son of Carolus, using four manuscript codices, undertook the task of correcting and translating Nonnus’ *Dionysiaca* into Latin; and Joannes Forestius, in letters sent to Elias Putchius on July 12, 1605, wrote to this effect: "We too, if it pleases the gods, while "γόνυ χλωρόν ἐστι" ("the knee is still green/strong"), attempt great things from modest ones: we translate Nonnus’ *Dionysiaca* into the Latin tongue, and we shall add certain brief annotations and our own conjectures; for it teems with a most foul flood of errors." In that very year, 1605, this work was printed in Hanau in Greek and Latin by the Wechel press, in the house of Claudius Marnius and the heirs of Joannes Aubrius, with a prose Latin version by Eilhard Lubinus and the index and corrections of Falkenburgius. To this edition, in 1610, a new title was prefixed, the name of the Latin translator was omitted, a preface by Petrus Cunaeus (e) was added, and a book of *Animadversiones* on Nonnus’ *Dionysiaca* by this same Cunaeus was appended, together with a dissertation by Daniel Heinsius and conjectures by Joseph Scaliger, from the Leiden edition of 1610 (f). There also exist the *Dionysiaca* of Nonnus with Lubinus’ version in the *Corpus poetarum Graecorum*...
of heroic verse, which Jacobus Lectius published at Geneva in 1606, in folio, after he had recensioned it with various readings and marginal notes. In the library of Petrus Francius there were the *Dionysiaca* of Nonnus with manuscript corrections by Joseph Scaliger, Daniel Heinsius, Claudius Salmasius, and Matthaeus Sladus.
Epic paraphrase of the Gospel of St. John
A *Metaphrasis of the holy Gospel according to John* (a).That the same Nonnus of Panopolis who composed the *Dionysiaca* also composed this *Metaphrasis*, the testimony of Suidas and Agathias, when compared, does not allow us to doubt; nor does the genius of the poet, which is identical in both works. Learned men admire the same virtues in this work and censure the same faults, noting other things besides, for which it has pleased them to subject this poet to their very sharp judgment and censure. I, however, would not deem those worthy of being heard who write that Nonnus in this *Metaphrasis* supported the heresies of the Manichaeans, Origenists, or Arians, or I know not whom else, since, for any such accusations to be cast at anyone, clearer and more manifest arguments are required. Having dismissed those, therefore, it is better to set forth the codes and editions of his Johannine *Metaphrasis*.
Greek Manuscripts and Editions
(Rome, in the Vatican Library: *Paraphrasis in Joannem*, according to Montfaucon in *Bibl. bibl. mss.* I, p. 133 C. — Oudin, ibid., p. 929, reports that the work exists in Greek in the Vatican Library from the Heidelberg codex, no. 90. — Florence, in the Laurentian Library: codex VII, no. 145, shelf 7, regarding which Bandini writes in *Cat. codd. Gr. Laur.* I, p. 225, that the Paraphrase of Nonnus matches the Sylburg edition of 1596 from the first verse up to verse 1469, but that the rest is missing; yet the codex differs from the edition from time to time, and from it is supplied the lacuna on page 80—of one verse: *Ζωῆς γὰρ πέλεν εἶδαρ ἐτήτυμον ἡμετέρη σάρξ*. Paris, in the public library: codex MCCXX, no. 9, *Paraphrasis*, etc. Moscow, in the Synodal library: *Nonnus in Joan. Commentaria*, according to Schiada in *Cat. codd. Mosq.*, p. 52. HARL.)The first by Aldus Manutius, Venice, 1501, 8vo. FABR. — It is necessary that this year be indicated erroneously. For at the end of the poems of Gregory of Nazianzus, which he published in 1504, 8vo, Aldus finally promises an edition of Nonnus, as I myself have seen with my own eyes. HEUM. — Both the Venetian and the Roman editions seem doubtful and truly spurious. In Harwood’s *Prospetto di varie ediz. degli autori classici*, edited by Pinelli, Venice, 1780, 8vo, p. 158, there is no mention of either the Venetian or the Roman edition; but in the most recent edition of that book, inscribed *Degli autori classici—Bibliotheca portatile*, part 1, Venice, 1793, 8vo, both are mentioned thus: *Paraphrasis in Joannem, Gr. 4, Venet. Ald. sine anno.* B "Asserting that Aldus, in the index of the Greek verses of St. Gregory of Nazianzus printed by him in 1504, says he published Nonnus three years earlier, therefore the edition must be from 1501." And another: "Greek 4to. Aldus 1508. Fabricius cites another edition from Rome of this same year, but some believe he made an error with the Aldine." In *Serie dell' edizioni Aldine*, Padua, 1790, only one Aldine edition is commemorated; in the index indeed thus: *Nonni Paraphrasis, sine anno 1508*, and at *b. a.* or p. 29, simply indeed, but on p. 152 in the index of Aldine books without chronological notation, it is also referred to the Aldine index, with the added observation: "therefore this edition is known from 1501." Nor have I found the memory of those two raised by Maittaire and Panzer in *A. T.*, nor by Denis, nor by de Bure, and by Audiffredi, nor by Lair, nor in those library catalogues which I have indeed consulted, except the catalogue of the Leiden library, in which it is mentioned on p. 60 thus: *Ejusdem (Nonni) versio poetica Evangelii Joannis, Graece*; but it is added, expressed in letters commonly called italics: *Venetiis 1501*, as it was ascribed by Franciscus Nansius, who, as it seems, restored it in some places. Since these things are so, the Roman edition cited by Cave and Possevinus in the *Apparatus h. v.* seems indeed to be spurious, or confused with another Roman one, added to Harwood’s index by Pinelli, p. 158. And cited by Hamberger from the catalogue of the former Royal library of Paris, *Belles-Lettres*, vol. 1, p. 269, and *Theol.*, pp. 312 and 335: *Paraphrasis Evangelii secundum Joannem, Graeco carmine, studio Demetrii Ducae, Cretensis, edita Roma 1526, 4to*. And Hamberger judges that edition to be rightly the first. HARL.
Roman 1508, remembered by Cave. Haguenau, by Joannes Secerius, 1527, 8vo. FABR. With an epistle of Phil. Melanchthon, dedicated, from which it is evident that many places were corrected by him. In the copy which is in the public library at Leiden, a learned man wrote many things, according to the catalogue of that library, p. 60. HARL. Frankfurt, 1541, by Petrus Brubachius, 8vo. FABR. Paris, 1541, by Jacobus Bogardus. — Prefixed are the *Homerocentra*. C Paris, 1556, another by Martinus Juvenis, in some places more correct, but as Nansius notes, in not a few places more corrupt.
*Les Voyages, les Amours et les Conquestes de Bacchus aux Indes. Traduites du grec de Nonnus Panopol.* Paris, 1625, 8vo, was published. HARL. — The *Dionysiaca* were published anew in the year 1856, at Paris, by Firmin Didot brothers, in 4to, from the recension of the most famous man, the Count de Marcellus. The title is this: *Nonnos Les Dionysiaques, ou Bachus. Poëme en XLVIII chants, grec et français, rétabli, traduit et commenté par le comte de Marcellus, ancien ministre plénipotentiaire.* EDIT. PATA.
(a) Dan. Heinsius delivers a judgment on Nonnus in his *Prolegomena* to his *Aristarchus*, pp. 669-697, where he is copious regarding the faults of his poems and attributes to him the Arian heresy, and endeavors to prove it with many arguments. HEUM.
A Coloniensis (a) 1566, at Maternus Cholinus, from the enlarged edition of Joan. Bordatus, and 1588, from the edition of Martin Juvenis. Goslariensis, in larger type with a copious Greek index of words, following the traces of Sylburg, 1616, in large octavo format.
*Latin Editions.* Christopher Hegendorph’s prose interpretation (a very unfortunate one) with Chrysostom’s homily on magistrates and powers, Hagenau, from the press of Joan. Secerius 1528, 8vo, and Paris 1542, at Jacob Bogardus. (Hall. Suev. 1540, 4to, in the Zurich library catalogue, vol. II, p. 186.) Erhard Hedeneccius, physician, an interpretation likewise in prose, in the *Bibliotheca Patrum*, vol. VI, part 1, Cologne edition, and the most recent Lyons edition, vol. IX, corrected in very many places from the interpretation of Joannes Bordatus and Hedeneccius by Franciscus Nansius. Ulrich Bollinger’s metrical paraphrase, from the review of Paul Melissus, Schedius, Speyer 1596, 8vo.
*Greek-Latin Editions.* 1. With the prose version of Jacob Bordatus, of Bourges, who in the MS codex of Jacob Salomon Interaquas testifies that he restored many verses previously omitted (b). Paris, 1561, 4to, from the press of Charles Perier, with a few various readings added at the end. To chapter 16, in particular, he added 38 verses, which, however, Frid. Sylburg denies he found in the Palatine [MS], nor does it seem to him that they refer to the style of Nonnus: Nansius himself, in his second annotations, also testified that many things therein were suspicious to him and did not sufficiently agree with the genius of Nonnus. 2. With the version likewise in prose of Erhard Hedeneccius, Basel, 1571 and 1577, at Petrus Perna and 1588. But also Paris, 1578, 8vo, at H. Stephanus, who corrected the version in several places. Then at Commelin, 1596, 8vo, with the addition of the notes and Greek index of Fridericus Sylburg (who collated the Palatine MS). This edition of Sylburg was reprinted at Leipzig [first at Leipzig, 1613, 8vo, which edition Baumgarten reviews briefly in *Nachrichten von merkw. Buch.*, vol. VII, p. 118 sqq., 1618, 8vo, in Menken. cat. I, p. 53 H.]—Leipzig 1629, 8vo, Fabr.—Sylburg, so as not to lose anything from the labors of Nansius, followed the edition as it was expressed by Perna and Stephanus, and entitled his own: *Nonni Panopolitani metaphrasis Evangelii secundum Joannem versibus heroicis cum ms. cod. Pal. collata; brevibus notis illustrata; verborum indice aucta; rectius aliquot in locis versa. Opera Frid. Sylburgii*, Veter. He placed among the notes both the various readings of the codex and his own conjectures, as well as those 38 verses which Bordatus had inserted into chapter VI, but Sylburg asserts that the Palatine codex does not have them, nor do they refer to the style of Nonnus. — Stephan. edition, by Maittaire A. III, p. 775, records it more fully by the title: *Homerici Centones et Probæ Falconiæ Centones Virgiliani, utrique in quædam historiæ sacræ capita scripti; Nonni paraphrasis Evangelii Joannis Græce et Latine; excud. Henr. Stephanus*, 1578, 12mo. In the dedicatory epistle, a part of which the same Maittaire had printed, in note d, Stephanus says that he had appended to the poem of Nonnus the interpretation of Erhard Ædeneccius (sic), perhaps made slightly better in some places. HARL.
3. With the version of Bordatus and Hedeneccius, but corrected by Franciscus Nansius, and B by a very useful plan adding, in the margin, the Greek words of the Evangelist John and the numbering of the verses, Leiden, 1589, 8vo, at Franciscus Raphelengius. Here Nansius, besides the 68 verses added by Bordatus, himself inserted by his own genius 369 verses, enclosed in brackets or expressed in smaller type. He also added learned notes and strictures, and in these, a few corrections of Hadrianus Junius, which he had inscribed with his own hand into the Hagenau edition in the year 1627. Nansius published his second thoughts on Nonnus when more than sixty years old, in 1593, 8vo. In the library of Petrus Francius, Esq., was the edition of Nansius with the manuscript corrections of Sop’ngius. Fabr. Nansius passed judgment in his preface on the antecedent editions, and prefixed a peculiar title to his own notes. Though he boasts in the title that the paraphrase, hitherto very corrupt and mutilated, now appears for the first time most correctly, perfectly, and integrally, and that many things not vulgar are treated in the notes and various passages of authors are corrected or illustrated, and vindicated from the *paradiorthoseis* of certain ones, and the edition itself is to be esteemed as of no small value: nevertheless, other critics found many things to be desired in it, and Nansius himself left many things in his second thoughts, in which, he says, some things unnoticed by anyone hitherto are noted regarding other authors as well (see Baumgart. *Nachricht. l. c.*, p. 115, sqq.) and left them in his desks. For in the Leiden library there is not only a copy of the 1589 edition complete with manuscripts—
(a) Sylburg, who in his dedicatory epistle was a great admirer of the genius and style of Nonnus, in his Preface diligently reviewed the previous editions, and noted that Martin Cholinus had in the prior edition expressed the edition of Bordatus, but had transmitted the Greek so negligently that he even left uncorrected the typographical errors which Bordatus had indicated in his own edition: however, in the year 1588, having dismissed the edition of Bordatus, he followed the Paris edition of 1556, having omitted up to chapter 16 all those verses which Bordatus had added, but had inserted the single verse added by Bordatus to the sixteenth chapter; see the following note. HARL. (b) Namely 80 verses: but, as Nansius and Sylburg note, if the total is computed more accurately, only 67 verses were added by Bordatus instead of 80. For to the sixth chapter, in one and the same place, 58 verses were added by him; to the seventh, one, namely the last; to the twelfth, ten; to the thirteenth, one; to the fourteenth, six; to the fifteenth, four; to the eighteenth, three; to the remaining ones absolutely nothing was added. HARL.
A with the annotations of Ant. Æmilius, see the catalog, page 60, but also page 336; among the manuscripts, and compared with the Greek manuscripts, no. LIII, is enumerated a work consisting of eight volumes, in which are included: *The poetic version of the Gospel according to John by Nonnus of Panopolis*, in Greek and Latin, by J. Bordatus, Paris, 1561, which Fr. Nansius compared with other editions, corrected, and vehemently expanded. Another copy of the same edition and in the same handwriting. Likewise, the same paraphrase written by Fr. Nansius; notes of the same edited upon it, Leiden, 1589, but corrected and expanded by his own hand. Furthermore, another volume containing the *Second Cares* of Nansius, which he had printed. Likewise, things to be corrected, changed, and added in like manner. The same index in N. and notes in Greek and Latin. Likewise, Thomas Peotisius of Viana’s *Rhapsodies* on the first three chapters of the same Nonnus. Finally, a very thick volume, which is inscribed: *Fr. Nansius on the Paraphrase of the Gospel of John by Nonnus, now for the first time restored to its splendor and expanded by 369 verses.* — In the catalog of the Bern Library, volume I, it is cited; is this correct? I do not know, edition of the paraphrase in Greek and Latin, edited by Fr. Nansius, Plantin, 1599, 8. HARL. — [Paraphrase by Erh. Hedeneccius, Greek and Latin, Leipzig, 1604, 8. — The same in Greek and Latin, Lyon, 1620, 12, in the Pinelli catalog, II, p. 288, nos. 4305 and 4306. In the Askew catalog, p. 96, occurs: *Nonnus’ Paraphrase of the Gospel of John*, Greek and Latin, with the observations of P. Cunæus, D. Heinsius’ dissertation on the *Dionysiaca* of Nonnus, and J. Scaliger’s conjectures (sic), Hanau, 1610, 8. But I fear that the title has been confused with the edition of the *Dionysiaca* of that same year. HARL.]
B ...videtur, acerbiori submisit. Leiden, 1627, 8. *Aristarchus sacer*, the Nonnus Metaphrase itself being omitted, is also found subject to the *Exercitations on the New Testament* of Heinsius, ibid., 1639, fol., from the Elzevir press. Caspar Ursinus, an Islebian, wrote an *Apology for the Nonnian Metaphrase against Heinsius* and attempted to briefly refute each point raised against it in his *Nonnus Redivivus*, Hamburg, 1667, 8, addition Baumgart. *Nachricht*, l. c., p. 119, ff. HARL.]
IX. That John the Grammarian of Gaza, in his *Ekphrasis* of the map of the universe, follows the footsteps of Nonnus, is observed by Janus Rutgersius, who edited it in Greek [from the Scaliger codex, which exists in the Leiden Library], lib. II, cap. 7, *Var. lect.* However, at what time he lived, I could divine by no arguments, unless the fact that he was later than Nonnus, whom it is established flourished not long after Theodosius, is proven by the very opening of the poem. For not only is the diction in it, and that which the Greeks call *ennoia*, entirely Nonnus’, but he could not even refrain from the actual familiar vocabulary of the same. Indeed, he sometimes takes whole verses from him, such as the one: *Puknon akontizōn autosyton ombron erōtōn.* Which Phalereus calls *metastasis*, a most graceful *hypokorismos* for too familiar a license. He is, however, more chaste and concise than Nonnus.
XV. There is also usually referred to this same Nonnus, as if he were the author, the *Commentary or collection and exposition of histories and fables* (Συναγωγὴ καὶ ἐξήγησις ἱστοριῶν) on the *Orations* or *Steliteutics* of Gregory of Nazianzus, two against Julian the Emperor, *ton parabolatēn*, already deceased (b). Rich. Montagu edited it in Greek from a codex of the Vienna Library, Eton, 1610, 4, as mentioned above regarding Gregory Nazianzen. In Latin, only from the version of Jac. Billius, who used a codex of the Library of Reims, it appeared in the *Latin Paris*, 1570, fol., and in the Greek-Latin editions of the works of Nazianzen, Paris, 1609 and 1630, and Leipzig, 1690, fol. Suidas frequently brings forward certain things verbatim from it, although he is not named, as in *Mageia*, *Mithrou*, and elsewhere, which Neocorus has aptly noted. Moreover, the most learned man Rich. Bentley judges that this commentary [is] by the father of Nonnus...
as Billius edited it, or by the Abbot Nonnus, as the Catalogue of the Escorial Library manuscripts displays in the appendix of the *Apparatus Sacri* of Possinus. Possinus, having fallen into error, owing to some hallucinations concerning matters which he teaches were most familiar to the poet Nonnus, [decides] it to be unworthy of him; especially since in the Vienna codex, as appears from the edition of Montacutius (p. 127) and Lambecius (Vol. III, *De biblioth. Vindob.*, p. 207; cf. p. 452 ff. and Kollar there), no name of the author exists, and this commentary seems to be referred to a certain Maximus by John Tzetzes in his *Chiliads* 15, v. 865:
Concerning the oracle mentioning the Thessalian mares, Maximus also makes mention in his stories, The histories of which Gregory the Great wrote. But he has not spoken a single word, nor even a syllable, of the oracle.
See the dissertation of the aforementioned Bentley on the Epistles of Phalaris, published in English in London in a.d. 1699, pp. 24, 26. As for the rest, in the commentary of Nonnus, I find indeed some mention of the Thessalian mares, but no mention of that oracle remembered by Tzetzes. And it is clear that, besides Nonnus, Maximus the Confessor took upon himself the task of illustrating the difficult passages of Nazianzen, as also did Elias of Crete, Basil of Caesarea (the younger, not that great one), Nicetas Serronius, Michael Psellus, and others. The scholia of Maximus on the difficult passages of Nazianzen were published with the Latin version of John Scotus Eriugena (Oxford, 1631, folio), and they are entirely different from the commentaries of Nonnus. Moreover, whoever that Nonnus may have been, whether he is our own or someone else distinct from our Panopolitan—a point I willingly concede to a most learned man—it will appear to fair-minded judges that he has annotated things worthy of note and not unpleasant to read for the sake of illustrating Nazianzen. He cites Dion, the commentator, the *hypomnematographos*, in *Hist.* 37. He mentions Aristaenetus, the rhetorician, in *Hist.* 32, on Oration 2. He testifies that he was in Alexandria in *Hist.* 33.
FROM THE PREFACE OF THE MOST DISTINGUISHED COUNT A MARCELLO
PREFIXED TO THE LATEST EDITION OF NONNUS' DIONYSIACA, PREPARED BY HIMSELF, WHICH HE KINDLY GRANTED US PERMISSION TO TRANSCRIBE.
I The Life and Contemporaries of Nonnus (a).
What can be said of the life of Nonnus, when we barely know his name? For him, as for most of the Greek epigrammatists who contributed to the anthology of the third period, when the collector Agathias, adding his *Circle* (kyklos) to the *Garlands* of Meleager and the *Crowns* of Philip of Thessalonica, recorded their short verses without concerning himself with their biographies, everything is reduced to very few certainties mingled with many conjectures.
Nonnus was born at Panos, or Panopolis, the city of Pan, in Egypt: this is something that is doubtful to no one, and which his poem, the *Dionysiaca*, would indirectly confirm if necessary. This city of Pan (today Akhmin) bore in the first place, say the ancient geographers, the name Chemmis; and although Stephanus of Byzantium makes them two cities, or rather places them in two distinct locations in his alphabetical Catalogue, where geographical notions seem only an accessory to grammatical instruction, there is reason here to reunite the two cities and to conflate them to make them the common homeland of Nonnus. For the city of Chemmis, which Herodotus says was the only one where the natives, even in his time, showed no aversion to Greek customs, is indeed the city of Pan, of which Diodorus Siculus has handed down to us the Egyptian etymology, Chemmo. Hence, no doubt, the important role the god Pan plays in the *Dionysiaca*, where we always see him as an acolyte of Bacchus, the Egyptian Osiris. Thus, when Nonnus chose the triumphs of Bacchus for his epic, it was, we must not forget, a national subject he was treating, or at the very least the ancient origin of the favorite cult of his native city. Who knows even if Nonnus was not led to celebrate the progress of Bacchus, civilizing god, or the conquests of the Greek spirit over Indian barbarism, by the spectacle of the religion which was then altering the face of the world, and if the future neophyte did not draw the mother-idea of the *Dionysiaca* from his own meditations on the Christian philosophy, also civilizing, whose empire he saw grow and develop each day? The singer of Cymodoce did well to ask of the homeland of Homer the brilliant colors with which he clothed the Martyrs.
Panopolis was situated in the Thebaid, on the eastern bank of the Nile, near Antaeopolis, opposite Crocodilopolis; and one can, upon reading all the names enumerated under Greek appellations by Pliny the Naturalist, rightly marvel to see the language of the Hellenes carry its influence so far, to extend to the line of the desert the perfect knowledge of its dialects, and to bring to birth almost at the limit of Ethiopia this Greek poet whom Suidas and the Empress Eudocia, author of the *Violarium* (*Ionia*), both of them echoes of the literary judgments of the times that preceded them, agree to designate under the envied epithet of *Logiotatos*. Now this expression, at the epoch when it is employed, signified "very skilled in fine speech." Would he, then, be a writer without value whose name saved from oblivion the very name of his homeland? For this same Suidas and Stephanus of Byzantium do not seem to attach any other importance to Panopolis than that for which it is indebted to its illustrious citizen.
Panopolis nevertheless had more than one inhabitant worthy of being marked for the memory of posterity. And I cannot help but note here a true analogy between Nonnus and one of his fellow countrymen, whom one might believe to be his disciple: it is Cyrus of Panopolis that I mean. In the few verses he has bequeathed to us, Cyrus, following the example of the author of the *Dionysiaca*, seems to have, above all, aspired to the beauty of rhythm and, at the same time, the imitation of Homer. This search for form and the Homeric meter was moreover of a nature to please his august protectress, another Eudocia, who brought to the throne of the second Theodosius the love of the arts and of Attic elegance; Eudocia, a woman philosopher, which, among the Greeks, signified now a friend of letters, now quite simply a virtuous woman; for this title did not have...
A entirely the pride that it carried at a certain epoch of the previous century. I am, I admit, keenly struck by the encounter, in the same epoch, or rather by the conformity of destinies that binds these three eminent minds. This pagan empress in Athens, under the name of Athenais, who became Christian in Constantinople, employs the heroic verse to translate the beginning of Genesis, the prophecies of Daniel, and constructs, with the help of hemistichs from the Iliad and the Odyssey, Centos destined to celebrate the mysteries of our faith: Nonnos, on the other hand, the singer of Bacchus, who paraphrases, a few years earlier, the Gospel of Saint John with the idiom and rhythm of Homer, as if he sought to poetize Christianity; finally Cyrus, a poet himself, who, disgusted with honors and political functions, becomes a priest and receives the charge of the episcopate. History has not remained silent for this latter neophyte; it tells us that his noble qualities, his talents, and the Attic elegance of his erudition having won the confidence of Eudocia, Theodosius had raised him to the rank of Prefect of the Praetorium of the East. Soon, jealous of his merit and of his favor with the people, the emperor dismissed him; and it was then no doubt that Cyrus, abandoning the capital of the oriental world for solitude, exclaimed in beautiful verses (1): ‹ Why did my father not teach me the art of tending to the thick-fleeced sheep? Seated under the elms or under a rock, I would dissipate my sorrows to the sound of my pipes! Muses, let us flee the city with the pompous edifices, let us seek a new fatherland; I am going to teach the world how much the pernicious drones B harm the bees. › (Anth. Jacobs, ix, Ep. 136.) And here, it must be remarked, the Homeric epithet εὐκτιμένην (well-built) takes, in the mouth of Cyrus, a quite personal acceptation. In the course of his skillful administration, the poet had rebuilt the ramparts of Constantinople, embellished the city, and earned that popular cry which was one of the causes of his disgrace: ‹ Constantine founded our city; but Cyrus has renewed it. › Now, if these first conjectures do not lead me astray, I would wish to draw from them some chronological light, not doubt to determine in a precise manner the dates of the birth or the death of Nonnos, but at least to fix more exactly the time when he wrote. And now that the identity of the singers of the Dionysiaca and of the Gospel is recognized; when the clouds spread over this question, so to speak bibliographic, by the first investigators of Greek poetry at their renaissance, find themselves completely dissipated; when the similarity of qualities or shortcomings of the two works, although in subject so diverse, leaves no doubt remaining, I am led to believe that the poem of Bacchus, an epic and national subject, which must have preceded by several years in the life of Nonnos his Christian poems, was composed, since one cannot say "appeared," toward the end of the fourth century, no doubt before the decrees of 391, where the great Theodosius declared pagan sacrifices criminal, and ordered the closing of the temples of the false gods. I would willingly think, on the other hand, that the paraphrase of the Gospel dates from the last years of this same century or from the beginning of the following century, and must have preceded by a short time the end of Nonnos, since such an abundant versifier has not left another production, even in the Anthology, though it was swelled with so many verses from that epoch. Would Nonnos be that same grammarian to whom a certain Ausonius the Sophist addressed epistles and verses, as Suidas says without other explanation? Now this Ausonius, if one must give to the title of Sophist the favorable sense that the scholiast of Pindar (2) indicates, would be no other than the Latin poet of my country. Undoubtedly he was a contemporary of Nonnos; but his verses, even in his many dedications, offer no trace of the poet of Panopolis. Or perhaps it would be a question of another Ausonius, one of those orators and subtle philosophers to whom the glossator of Aristophanes confers also the name of sophist (3), but this time under the unfavorable acceptation that it retains still in our language? That is, in effect, much more probable. Was Nonnos the father of that young Sosenna whom Synesius, also an African, recommends to his friends, and represents as nourished and raised in the art of speaking well? Διὰ λόγων τραφέντα καὶ αὐξηθέντα. (Syn. Epistle 102.) One may suppose so, without giving to this testimony an exaggerated authority, and recognize here that same Sosenna of Epistle 43. Now, in such a silence of history, it might not be straining conjecture too much to find again, in the misfortunes of which Synesius makes a title of recommendation for the son of Nonnos, the spoliation of the goods of the pagans, ordered by Theodosius. One could then understand our poet among those missionaries of philosophy, καὶ μάλιστα οἱ φιλοσοφεῖν ἐπαγγελλόμενοι, whom Socrates the Scholasticus, their contemporary, tells us had redeemed their life by their conversion to Christianity. (`Socrates, Hist. eccl., v, ch. 16, p. 274.) Another argument in favor of the approximate date that I assign to the life of Nonnos, from 360 to 420 of our era. Is it Nonnos, bishop of Edessa, to whom Nice-
Nicephorus applies the epithet of divine (1)? I am far from believing so.
Nor is he that Theophane Nonnos, a physician who, living under Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the encyclopedic scholar born in the imperial purple, dedicated to him the collection of his precepts on the art of healing.
Still less is he that other physician, Ludovicus Nonnus, with an incontestably Latin ending this time, whose Latin treatises on dietetics and ichthyophagy were published in the seventeenth century.
He cannot be the deacon Nonnos, appearing in 451 among the secretaries of the Council of Chalcedon, nor a certain Nonnos of Palestine, a partisan of Origen, whom Simeon the Metaphrast mentions in the Lives of Saint Sabas and Saint Cyriacus. On the other hand, Bentley has maintained that the Nonnos who was the author of the explanatory accounts of the mythological allusions in Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, within his panegyric of Saint Basil, had nothing in common with our poet; and these extracts, of which some trace will be found in my notes when they treat of certain subjects recalled in the *Dionysiaca*, have served me much less than they served the Empress Eudocia. "It is from these little streams," says the learned Creuzer, "that she very often drew the water with which she waters her Violets (2)."
I find just as vainly a Nonnos, Bishop of Raphanæa (Apamea of Media), among the signatories of the petition presented to Emperor Justinian, during the Council of Constantinople, by the bishops of White Syria, to complain of their tax collectors.
We shall remark in this regard that the Egyptians gave the name of *Nonnos*, which signifies saint, to the solitaries of the Thebaid and to spiritual chiefs, just as they gave the name of saint, *Nonnai* or *Nonides*, to aged virgins and to matrons consecrated to God (3). It is a respectful appellation that children still apply in Italy to their elders: *il Nonno, la Nonna*. And, to say it in passing, it is for this reason that martyrologies designate by the name of *Nonnus* Saint Hippolytus, the famous and learned martyr, whose work, which the Chevalier Bunsen, both philologist and diplomat, has attempted to rediscover in the *Philosophumena* of Origen, remains lost. Saint Hippolytus was Bishop of Portus, a deserted village at the mouth of the Tiber, now reunited to the diocese of Ostia, which is even more deserted, the vast solitudes of which I have so often traversed, and which serves as a suburbicarian title for one of the principal dignitaries of the sacred college; this learned saint, martyred in the year 240, certainly cannot be confused with the poet of Panopolis; and besides, Suidas has settled the question, for he states formally that *Nonnos* was the personal name of the author of the *Dionysiaca*, and had consequently never been either an adjective or a nickname.
Nonnos is incontestably, for example, that personage whom the historian Agathias, in his habit of saying everything without going into anything deeply, designates thus (and certainly he could have spoken to us of him at greater length, if he had seen fit, following the excellent method of our own day, to have the works of the poets whose names and verses he has preserved for us in his *Anthology* be preceded by a biographical notice): "Behold," he says, "the fables that the primitive poets sing, and that, in receiving from them, the recent poets also celebrate, among whom I will cite Nonnos, born in the city of Pan in Egypt, in I know not which of the patriotic compositions he has entitled: *Dionysiaca* (4)."
At the end of this all-too-long review of all the *Nonnoses* known or named in history, why then not recognize here the Nonnos of whom Suidas speaks, who, after having learned all of Demosthenes by heart sixteen times, could not bring forth from his mouth the slightest tolerable harangue? And this singular obstinacy inspires the learned lexicographer to a reflection quite appropriate to our century, which I have heard repeated more than once by M. Châteaubriand: "It is quite another thing to improvise for the multitude, or to write with elegance (5)."
As we see, all this is vague and conjectural, as Heinsius says; and as for the conclusions he draws for the profit of his *Aristarchus sacer*—that because Nonnos, in his *Paraphrase of the Gospel*, appears, from a theological point of view, to be imbued with the writings of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and seems to ignore the commentaries of Saint John Chrysostom...
This indication, more ingenious than precise, would not assign to the Panopolitan a date other than the one I have just assigned to him.
II. Education of Nonnos. State of Letters in Egypt. Paraphrase of the Gospel according to Saint John.
Nonnos, one might suspect from his vast erudition, was most probably raised in Alexandria, in the shadow of the primitive Museum, within the heart of that library of the Serapeum, founded by Mark Antony, which barbarian hands were soon to outrage. "Nowhere," says M. Villemain eloquently, "was polytheism more tenacious and more inexhaustible than on this land of the Pharaohs, where nothing perished, neither reality nor falsehood; where the mysterious antiquity of the monuments preserved the antiquity of the beliefs; where life was so strong that it seemed a divine emanation spread everywhere, and where the superstitious imagination of the people made new gods incessantly swarm, just as the warmed mud of the Nile multiplies reptiles."
On this soil generating so many confused divinities, from which Nonnos caused the master-idea of his poem to spring, classes of philosophy and literature, which they then called grammar (it is almost still the same word, whether it comes from Greek or Latin), and of those mathematics which always dominate in times of decadence, were constantly open. One would still discern the student familiar with the observatory of Alexandria, erected by the Ptolemies, in his penchant for astronomy revealed at every turn in the *Dionysiaca*: a science or contemplation carried so far among the Egyptians, the first observers of the sky, that it soon produced astrology, as if to lead our less enlightened centuries further astray. A multitude of grammarians also explained, under the public vaults of the Museum or in private schools, the beauties of the great classical writers, as well as the myths of paganism. Talents were formed according to the rules of poetic discipline, softening language to the forms of refined manners; but, alas! genius cannot be taught, and the sublime simplicity of the ancient poems gave way to the labor of thought and the science of words. The style, polished in its affectation, was overloaded with the memory of preceding centuries and erudite allusions; but it poorly disguised, under the harmony and roundness of the phrases, the absence of imagination; taste and judgment were corrupted by these pedantic studies; the mass of figures, plays on words, and subtleties weakened the diction; in the end, everything was for the ear, nothing for the heart. "An era as corrupted as our own," M. de Bonald said to me, "where they put intellect above reason, and grace above virtue."
However, the darkness was approaching; ignorance, outside of Christianity, was spreading its dark wings over the fourth century, where the crumbling empire covered both Romans and Greeks with its debris. Already the Latin language had, like the Greek language, received the influence of the literary sects that were departing from Egypt to invade Europe; and nonetheless this same era, which saw the Roman idiom degenerate and the genius of Athens be veiled, also saw Christian eloquence and polemics take their greatest flight. The century, as it was dying, was still illuminated by some poetic glimmers. While Claudian was reproducing in Rome several of the qualities and many of the defects of this school of Alexandria which had been his homeland and his nurse, while Ausonius in Aquitaine, with his lively and spiritual sallies, and later Boethius in Milan, supported by his consoling and generous philosophy, were to draw still another spark of Latin verse in the Western empire, the sweet and dream-like melancholy of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Synesius and his meditations of a sublime metaphysics, Palladas and some elegant epigrammatists of Alexandria and Constantinople, and finally Nonnos in the depths of Egypt, with the help of his graceful imitations and the perfection of his rhythm, made the beautiful language of Anacreon and Euripides shine once more with some happy reflection in the Eastern empire.
Let us remark here, as a general thesis, that writers, in verse as in prose, of the second epoch of a literature, are almost always, in terms of diction, superior to the secondary writers of the flourishing epoch. The reason is quite simple: they did not receive, to direct them in its first steps, the language barely escaped its cradle; it arrived to them fully grown, developed, and, so to speak, entirely fashioned by the hands of their predecessors. It is thus that Lucian and Plutarch have a phraseology much more artistic than Herodotus. But, if the instrument is more perfect, the inspiration that makes it resound has weakened. As for Nonnos in particular, in an era where enthusiastic genius held so little place, he had to, in order to make a name for himself, write very correctly and seek, through the charm and harmony of the meter, to elevate the poetic style; it must be remarked, indeed, the care he takes to distance himself from vulgar expressions, from turns of phrase hostile to Atticism, from the trivial and incorrect phrases that were introducing themselves into the Greek idiom in Alexandria, and of which Lycophron and the Orphic hymns offer us more than one trace. Placed furthermore on the boundary of paganism which is dying, and of rising Christianity, he inherits the ideas and expressions of these two regimes which have successively chan
changed the face of the world, and he gathers the traditions or the customs of peoples before and during this great transition, like the knowledge scattered throughout all the precious writings that time has hidden from us.
Encouraged by these reflections, I persuaded myself that by introducing this poet, almost a stranger to the republic of letters, into that small fraction of European society which casts a glance toward past generations in order to study their customs, my work might not remain without some utility—if only, and I insist on this point, to profit from the lights, extinguished long ago, that then surrounded Nonnus, as well as to illuminate the literary history of a time so little known, and to serve as an initiation for the minds of our epoch when, in order to arrive at a complete understanding of the modern genius, they believe they must still ask for some lights from the genius of antiquity.
Thus, I confess, I have followed Nonnus with true curiosity, in the revolutions of his mind, as much as in the varieties of his style, always imbued with Homer, even when he paraphrases the Bible. I have studied, in the diverse application of his talent, this poet who moves from the tableaux of mythology, without veiling their nudity, to the images so pure of the disciple whom the Greeks nicknamed the Virgin, and whom the scholars of the sixteenth century also call *sanctissimus Parthenias*. I hasten to say that this contrast of the ornaments or figures of profane poetry applied to Christian morality—this sort of anachronism of expression, which would be of a nature to offend us like the worldly parody of an evangelical subject—disappears totally from the pagan poem. There, at least, by reason of its title, the imagination of Nonnus can give itself free rein, and even wander, without too much scandalizing our own.
And, on this subject, it is, in my opinion, to his theme—too exclusively mythological—and to the scruples of the scholars of the sixteenth century, that we must attribute the oblivion in which the *Dionysiaca* languish, while commentators flock to the *Paraphrase* and have multiplied its translations. These prejudices, whose motives one certainly cannot reprove, but which one may regret in a purely literary interest, have been carried so far that one has sought to establish the poetic superiority of this latter work over the former. This judgment, I must say, would seem to me sovereignly unjust, and I readily adjourn the debate until after the reading of the translation, or rather of the text as I have reconstituted it. One will then understand more easily how much the contrary proposition is more natural and more true. There is more invention, that goes without saying, but also, I maintain, much more poetry and real talent in the episodes of the life of Bacchus, even including his ancestors, than in the gloss of the evangelical narratives, however artistically regular it may present itself. And although the pace of the rhythm, the prodigality, and the neologism of the epithets are the same on both sides, one cannot help but notice that the poet is much more at ease in the forty-eight books of the *Dionysiaca*, open to the caprices of even the most contradictory legends, than in the twenty-three chapters of the holy Gospel, where he had to remain subservient to a uniform progress and a rigorous theme. Let us agree on this, moreover, with Despréaux:
*Of a Christian’s faith the terrible mysteries* *Are not susceptible to gilded ornaments.*
I rely on this sentence to observe that, in the entire course of my work, I have concerned myself but little with this second work of Nonnus, and that I have wished neither to defend it against Heinsius nor to judge it myself. I have not, however, deprived myself of the lights that could spring from the confrontation of the two texts, the similarities that the poet may have sought, and the locutions that he caused to pass from his great work into the latter. One will find some vestiges of my efforts on the *Paraphrase* in the commentaries, where I have compared the epithets and certain hexameters. It is only too true; it is especially toward this long amplification of the Gospel according to Saint John that the zeal of philologists and grammarians has turned until now, when they have wished to fix the place that Nonnus should occupy in the Greek literature of the fourth century; it is this diction and these images that they have submitted by predilection to their censure and to their crucible, while neglecting the original composition of which they were the copy. And yet Nansius, the most famous of his translators, said in a preliminary notice: “I would have wished to give the partisans of Greek poetry some taste for another work of Nonnus: and I cannot urge and exhort them enough, after having read attentively Homer, Hesiod, Callimachus, Theocritus, Apollonius, and the other ancient poets, to study with care the *Dionysiaca*: they will find there many excellent things (*praeclara*) that one does not encounter elsewhere.”
Everything has long since been said regarding the *Paraphrase* of the Gospel. Editions abound as do translations and commentaries; and it seemed to me that by weighing myself down on a subject so little analogous to my own, I could have incurred, in the eyes of my readers, the blame of a heterogeneous mixture and of a kind of profanation.
III.
Why I do not judge Nonnus here.
Not being able to do anything, or almost anything, to dissipate D
A the shadows accumulated over the existence of Nonnus, it would have been, perhaps, the case here, to compensate myself for it, to expand in a special chapter on the merits or faults of his works, or at least of the poem to which I have devoted my vigils; but it seemed more natural to me to yield my turn to speak to those who, in one sense or another, reproach or praise, have preceded me; and, in this double matter, before drawing from myself, I had much to choose from among others. Almost all the critics who have followed the *Dionysiaca* to the end, upon their reappearance in the first editions which were so incorrect, or, strictly speaking, in the primitive and unique edition simply repeated at a later epoch, or even most of the scholars to whom, in our own day, the text of Graefe, still quite defective, has allowed the traversing of certain detached episodes—as if to compensate for this labor or to boast of their patience—have thought they must publish a judgment sometimes indulgent, but much more often severe. As for me, who have prescribed to myself the task of restoring to his verses, as much as I have been able, their primitive luster, of freeing them from the obscurities or repetitions due to clumsy copyists, and finally of translating them in their entirety, I shall content myself with reporting in prose here, and in detail in the corpus of the work, the sentiment of my learned predecessors, reserving to myself the right to confirm or combat it as the occasion arises. I wish above all to let the reader judge for himself; and, to this end, I have referred my own appreciations to the special notes. It is there only, and not in this preface which is not near B to an end, that I shall attempt to make effective or rather to underline the text, so to speak. My remarks will also concern style or composition, when my translation has not signaled them sufficiently by itself; and here I must apologize in advance for not being able, in a prose that is always a little dragging when it interprets poetry, to make one taste the whole charm of this elegant versification even under its inflation, and of this idiom that is always melodious in its abundance. Are not all translations, and here I speak of the best ones, like those flowers that the hand of an ingenious woman copies after the most perfect model? Exactly similar in form and color to those same flowers that nature created, they always lack, not only the perfume, but also that delicate freshness that the native dew gives it, in short I know not what charm for the one who is going to gather it, to see it brilliant upon the stem that nourished it and attached it still to the ground where it lived.
IV. History of the editions: Sambucus, purchaser of the *editio princeps*, Archbishop Arsenios, copyist or owner of this manuscript.
Now, to make up for a serious biography of Nonnus which I have just pursued gropingly without being able to attain it, I leap over the twelve centuries that he passed himself, sleeping in the dust of manuscripts; and I arrive at the days of his renaissance. These days were slower to dawn for him than for the other Greek poets, and they throw, even today, only very faint glimmers upon the literary horizon. About a century after the discovery of the printing press had vivified letters and rapidly propagated the taste for antique masterpieces, there was born in Hungary a man who distinguished himself among all others by his penchant for old manuscripts, as well as by his assiduous researches into the monuments of the Greek and Latin centuries. John Sambucus, born of a patrician family at Tyrnau, in the heart of the provinces where Latin is still spoken, and where in 1820 a few phrases borrowed unkindly from Cicero helped me have eight horses harnessed to my thin coach to cross the lakes of mud that were then called the imperial road—John Sambucus, I say, in the shadow of his Latin name, and prepared for his intellectual excavations by laborious studies, set out across Europe in search of old papyri, the object of his unique ambition. He stopped little before the meagerness of his fortune, but never in the face of difficulties or even the danger of travels. Witty, even eccentric, like all those amateurs of old books C of whom Charles Nodier was for us the most brilliant type, he did not content himself, like them and him, with pursuing them on the parapets of bridges, and on the shelves spread out in the open air on the quays of a single city; he wanted to hunt them down in their most mysterious retreats, and he ran through the world, sometimes on horseback, sometimes descending the course of rivers in a boat, alone, followed by two faithful dogs, of whose names he has preserved for us, as if the presence of Madel and of Bombo, sagacious and D this image is dedicated to fidelity. One reads at the bottom some iambs in the Latin language, the work of Sambucus, from which I have extracted these verses just as bad as his own: They have followed me everywhere, over sea as on land. They often came to Paris, They have known Neapolis, They have seen Rome and had little suspicion of it. Through Belgium they take their way; And, thanks to their faithful instinct, Toward my sweet country that calls me They will bring me back tomorrow.
A infatigable investigators of the hosts of woods and plains, was surely meant to serve him as an encouragement and an emblem in his literary hunts. His wanderings lasted twenty-two years, no doubt much longer than the life of those quadrupeds, his assiduous companions. Thus it was that, in the course of his patient searches, he came to Taranto, a city as destitute then as it is today of European communications, but whose situation, closer to Greece, had made it, even better than the other Italian cities of the Adriatic coast, the refuge of learned Greeks after the fall of Constantinople.
It was there that Arsenios lived, or rather it was there that he died, the author or compiler of the Scholia on Euripides, an unfinished work, for nothing concerning this learned personage was destined to remain complete or certain. He had been deposed from the see of Monembasia, in the Morea, by a decree of the synod of Constantinople around 1509, and was not named Archbishop of Monembasia by Leo X, as his biographer Clavier has asserted with a lightness not habitual to him (Biog. univ., art. Arsenios), as if this vain title were not of a nature to revive the prelate’s regrets rather than to console him for his lost homeland. It is not even certain that he ever appeared in Rome; we only learn from his dedication of the Scholia, addressed in 1534 to Pope Paul III, that he complained bitterly of the abandonment in which the Holy See left the Greek Church. Arsenios had escaped the barbarian invasion with his father, Apostolios; and both, according to the custom of the time, received or adopted, upon reaching Italy, that Latin ending "-us" in place of "-os," which they have kept ever since.
Apostolios composed in his exile, to relieve his misery, that species of lexicon of Greek proverbs (Paroimiai) which helped Erasmus immensely in the gigantic work of his Adages. Now, incidentally, this taste for proverbs and popular sayings has not yet ceased among the Hellenes, and I possess a collection of the idioms and maxims of the wisdom of the modern Greeks, which was printed at Arta, under the very shadow of the fortress of Ali Pasha, tyrant of Epirus.
Apostolios could not resolve to live far from Greece, and he left his two sons in Italy; the second, Aristobulus Arsenios, author of the poem on the War of the Cats and the Mice (the Galeomyomachia), was no less versed than the first in ancient literature. His father returned to die on the island of Crete, from where he sent, to provide for his old age, copies of ancient manuscripts, executed by himself. To this end, he had gathered a great number of them; I cannot, however, believe that the copy of the *Dionysiaca* that was found among the papers of his son, Archbishop Arsenios, was a copy in his own hand. I have as many motives for doubting this as there are errors in the faithful printing of Falkenburg; and certainly Arsenios would not have let them remain in the condition and number in which they are revealed to us. I must even believe that this copy of Nonnus was rarely consulted by the father or the son in their philological lucubrations, for one and the other scarcely mention it. The learned archbishop, in dedicating to Charles V the Venetian edition of the zoological iambics of Philes, of which he possessed the unique copy, explains all the trouble that this manuscript caused him, trodden underfoot, torn into numerous pieces, without sequence, with loose and unstitched leaves: it is, in short, he says, another Pelias whom only another Medea could rejuvenate. B Certainly Nonnus was hardly less in need of assistance; and, passing under the pen of Archbishop Arsenios, he would not have emerged as Falkenburg or even Graefe have presented him to us. Will I be forgiven for adding that the superscription of this letter from Arsenios to Charles V, written thirty-eight years before the battle of Lepanto, is worthy of remark at a time when, after having, like the great emperor, driven the barbarians back into Africa, Western Europe is stifling Greece for their benefit? “To King Charles. May he always erect the trophies of his victories over the barbarians!”
However, I hasten to repeat after this long digression, it was at Taranto that our bibliophile traveler met this manuscript of Nonnus, sold with the cast-offs of the indigent archbishop, and that he managed to acquire it for the price of forty-five gold crowns. Here I could, just like another, make the equivalent sum in current French currency shine, for the satisfaction of the bibliophiles of our day, if I were quite sure of the value of the gold crown as it was understood in Tyrnau or Taranto in 1560, and if this point deserved to be cleared up. The sum, in any case, was quite considerable, since it was a matter of gold, given the quite limited fortune of Sambucus.
V. The manuscripts of Fr. Filelfo and of Hurtado de Mendoza
It is not, however, that this manuscript was unique, but there is every reason to think that it was one of those on which were successively executed the first copies destined to cross the Alps: these copies, very few in number, after having C
A traveled into Europe, finally took refuge in public libraries, where they sleep today, alongside the edition princeps, also very rare, under a common dust.
Imperfect as it was, this copy was nevertheless consistent with the thirteenth-century manuscript that Francesco Filelfo purchased in 1424, in Constantinople, from the wife of John Chrysoloras. In this voluminous Codex, Nonnus finds himself in good company, and admitted in advance, as he was to be later, into the corpus of Greek poets. He occupies under this honorable cover, on the in-4° parchment transcribed in two columns, 164 pages, which will appear quite small when it is a question of more than twenty thousand verses. One sees him thus side by side with Theocritus, Apollonius of Rhodes, Oppian, Moschus, Nicander, Tryphiodorus, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, the Oracles of Apollo, the Riddles, the Epigrams on the Hippodrome of Constantinople, all poems which would seem to belong to the Alexandrian school, if one did not also remark there Phocylides and Hesiod, the second or perhaps the first in date of the Greek poets.
Before going further, I owe it to this precious manuscript, and to all those who have the kindness to read me, to come to the aid of the embarrassments of the bibliographer Bandini, in his exact description of this so mixed Codex. "One reads at the end of the Dionysiaca," says he, "in the handwriting of Fr. Filelfo, these words: 'Bought in Constantinople, from the wife of the famous John Chrysoloras, in 1423 (ἀπὸ τῆς γυναικός).'" And, he continues in a note, there is above this last Greek word another word, *methison*, which he is very careful not to translate, for it is unintelligible; it is *mētēras*, mother, that must be read, since Filelfo, having married, shortly after the acquisition of the manuscript, the daughter of Chrysoloras, added with his own hand to his purchase the title of mother; which he gave quite naturally thus to Manfredina Auria, the wife of his Greek master, Chrysoloras; a noble and virtuous matron, of whom he has made for us, in prose as in verse, a pompous eulogy.
Be that as it may, the last line of the 164th page, which terminates this heavy manuscript of the Dionysiaca, is not the final verse of the poem, but indeed an exclamation of the copyist, happy to have reached the end of his task, and which I tremble to hear repeated by my readers: Glory to you, Lord, who have delivered me from it!
Now, if, on the occasion of this Codex of the Laurentian Library, I dwell with too much complacency on some details of the intimate life of its original purchaser, it is first of all because this manuscript of the Dionysiaca seems to me to be the first B that left Greece for Italy; it is then, must I admit? because Filelfo was for me for a long time a type and a model. Secretary of legation in Constantinople, he brought back numerous Greek manuscripts from there. Thus, four hundred years later, being a secretary of embassy myself, I was to bring back, manuscripts also, the Popular Songs of Modern Greece: but there, unfortunately for my literary renown, the parallel stops; and these high faculties of writing in Greek verse and prose, of which he was so proud, this vast and piquant erudition which earned him alternately the hatred and the esteem, the rewards and the persecutions, the crowns and the daggers of the petty Italian princes, friends of letters as much as they were jealous, could not find their pendant in my obscure existence.
One might also believe, it seems to me, that the copy of Sambucus which he had paid for so dearly, and which had belonged to Arsenius, was a sister copy of those of Hurtado de Mendoza. The learned Spaniard, model of the great lords, himself a remarkable poet and historian, first had transcribed, at great expense, numerous manuscripts from the Greek collection of Cardinal Bessarion, then had recopied those which the Sultan Soliman sent him, in recognition of the liberty returned to one of his sons, of the imperial race of Osman, whom he had ransomed. In this case, would not Arsenius, Archbishop of Monembasia, have been taken by Falkenburg for his homonym Arnold Arsenius, whom the famous Castellan, honor of diplomacy, employed in the capacity of copyist? or better still, for his brother Aristobulus Arsenius; for this Arnold, cited by M. Abel Rémusat, is suspect to me, seeing his name so little Hellenic. The archbishop would thus have kept or had redone for himself the copy of the Dionysiaca in question.
Be that as it may regarding my fastidious conjectures, it is the manuscript of Arsenius, read lightly and not at all corrected by the prelate, which this theme, too little analogous to his habitual meditations, no doubt repelled; it is, I say, this copy which served for the first Antwerp printing, and which rests today under the imperial locks of the Vienna library.
VI. Utenhove, first reader of Nonnus.
Charged with the manuscript bought in Tarentum, from an unknown and illiterate holder, as D'Ansse de Villoison says, Sambucus still further increased the burden with several precious acquisitions, also Greek, such as Eunapius, Aristaenetus, Stobaeus,
and subsequently by a great number of letters from Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint John Chrysostom, which had remained unpublished until then. Finally, he returned to Hungary, but only after having directed his steps toward Belgium and Holland, the homelands or meeting places of the most skilled and studious philologists. The first man of letters who, in these provinces—approximated to each other less by their geographical position than by a taste for scholarship—concerned himself with Nonnus, whether to profit from him or to facilitate the reading of him for others, was a patrician from Ghent, Charles Utenhove, a "Sambucus in miniature," about whom little is known; and it is undoubtedly as a result of the obscurity of this figure that, in a very short article, the *Biographie universelle* makes him born around 1536 to a father whom, ten lines later, it kills in 1527. Charles Utenhove dedicated his leisure and his fortune to the honorable labors of letters. He planned a Latin translation of the *Dionysiaca*; and with this aim, he had leafed through them so much that he had worn out the pages, made of papyrus, perhaps cotton, and not parchment: a fate quite similar to that of the copy of the Leipzig edition that I myself have used for a similar task; for the German paper of the year of grace 1819 did not have much trouble succumbing to the iron beak of my correcting pens. "And no one," adds Falkenburg, who had had dealings with Utenhove in Paris and England, "was more suited to the task of translator than a man so versed in the assiduous reading of all the poets, and who, moreover, possessed several manuscripts of the *Dionysiaca*."
These manuscripts, so carefully examined by Utenhove—and which he had probably acquired or brought together in the course of his travels—were four in number. And if this figure, at which I was surprised, given the rarity of the copies that have circulated in Europe, is accurate, I am only the more disposed to regret the loss of the works of this zealous amateur of philology. Nevertheless, their comparison could not have brought notable improvements to the text, for they must all have been from the same period and, like those of the Escorial, belonged to the sixteenth century. Moreover, Guillaume Canter, having addressed Falkenburg in order to calm his impatience and to appease his hunger [with] an excerpt that he had transcribed himself from Utenhove’s favorite copy, namely the exordium of the first book, a year before the manuscript of Sambucus was placed into the hands of the original editor, the latter later found very little difference in the texts of this partial copy from the other, and no serious matter for rectification.
VII. Falkenburg, first editor of Nonnus
It is therefore, I repeat, the manuscript of the *Dionysiaca* belonging to Sambucus the Hungarian that the Dutchman Falkenburg undertook to give to the public. There prevailed then in Germany, among the scholars, a sort of communicative fraternity that this learned editor complains of not encountering either in Italy or in France. "Your liberality," he said to Sambucus, "is all the more magnificent, in that many Frenchmen and Italians especially, when they possess old manuscripts, reserve them for themselves, as if they alone knew how to appreciate them, or at the very least they do not abandon them to the printers until after having sold them at a high price."
Falkenburg declares further that he only made use of the manuscript of Sambucus, and that he put all his care into having it reproduced as accurately as possible. Now, perhaps one must regret the overly conscientious scruples of this first editor of the *Dionysiaca*, even though he has wittily justified them. "If everyone acted thus," he says, "the ancient authors would be better known to us. For, in all these corrections of text, one cannot believe how much our own judgment leads us astray, and exposes us to rejecting today what we adopted yesterday. I strongly approve, for my part, the answer of that man to whom one asked what was the best edition of Homer: 'The least corrected,' he replied."
As for the rest, this timid protector of the integrity of texts has himself traced for us the path that leads to their revision. "It was easy for me," he adds, "to perceive, in the original that belongs to you, many injuries that a mediocre Grecian himself might have healed; but I preferred to gather my conjectures on the suspect passages separately, rather than risk letting my rash ideas slide into the text. I only wanted to make the reading of Nonnus easier, until others come who, on the authority of old manuscripts, will fill the lacunae and mend the tears."
I sometimes imagine that these last words were written with my intention in mind; that Falkenburg was thus glimpsing me in the future, through the clouds of three centuries; and, although it was impossible for me to encounter, together or separately, the four *Codices* that Utenhove had gathered, or even to find myself face to face with those that the foreign libraries contain, I persuade myself that my Dutch predecessor would forgive me, if he still lived, the scratches to which I have subjected his text, and would approve of me, in the absence of those lights that can burst forth from manuscripts.
A when they date back through the ages, and are not themselves modern copies, to have used simple common sense, or my familiarity with his favorite poet, to rehabilitate his memory, and to establish the *Dionysiaca* in a greater purity.
VIII. *Plantin, the first printer of Nonnus, at Antwerp. — S. Cramoisy, in Paris, Oporinus, at Basel, Aldus Manutius, at Rome, were equally occupied with it.*
Plantin took charge of the printing; Plantin, the man from Tours, established in Belgium, one of the most famous printers of the era; this same Plantin, whose epitaph I read and whose funereal marble I contemplated on August 15, 1853, far from the banks of the Loire, under the vaults of that superb cathedral of Antwerp, while a holy crowd of people flooded the porticos. Our compatriot added, of his own initiative, to his publication the corrections of Canter, but separated them, to conform to the meticulous method of Falkenburg; and it is this same Guillaume Canter, a passionate lover of archaeology, an imperturbable reviser of Greek manuscripts, who became a master in the art of corrections, the process of which he revealed and the system of which he drew up, who, at the age of thirty-three, died at his toil, a bachelor, so much did he dread the forced distractions that a wife and children might have brought into his studies. Plantin, by inserting the very limited readings of Canter, which moreover extend only to the first twenty-four books, announced them at the end of the edition in a few Latin lines; for, at that era, printers knew and wrote Latin like the critics; and I could name, in our own day, some just as famous who faithfully preserve in their families these precious traditions of the noble craft.
The *Dionysiaca* therefore appeared, printed for the first time in 1569; and, without resorting to the varied arsenal of weapons with which the modern art of publishing covers itself, they made a great noise, right from the start. This appearance stirred the learned world, much more numerous than today, and especially much more sensitive to ancient discoveries, if one judges by the little effect that the manuscripts recently escaped from Mount Athos have produced upon us. And yet, news of the republic of letters did not then circulate coupled with political news. The dedicatory epistle or the preface of a book was at once its prospectus or its announcement; and for effective advertising, a paradox, or even novelty, sufficed.
For these various reasons, Falkenburg deserved general attention; since, in his dedication to Sambucus, B with that ardor and that impetuosity he brought to all his tastes, he declares, quite simply, Nonnus to be the happiest imitator and the rival of Homer, and denies him almost none of the virtues of poetic style that certain critics were already beginning to contest. Great was the astonishment, and consequently the anger of the scholars at this ridiculous pretension: following the fashion of the time, insults were opposed to praise; and, personal attacks ensuing, it was made known to posterity that this Falkenburg, a heresiarch in philology, a former student of Cujas, had first left the study of the Justinian Code for ancient poetry, subsequently that he had modestly practiced the Hellenic hexameter and iambic himself, in some essays preserved by Douza; finally, that he had left no other testimony of his expertise than this same edition of the *Dionysiaca*, adorned with such a presumptuous panegyric. They added also, as a final stroke of satire, that being too steeped in his subject, he had pushed his admiration and zeal for Bacchus to its ultimate limits, since he had just died from a fall from a horse, caused by drunkenness.
And nevertheless, this infatuation of Falkenburg for Nonnus was to be surpassed even further. A little time later, the first director of the Royal Printing House, established by Cardinal Richelieu at the Louvre, Sébastien Cramoisy, exclaimed in Paris: "Nothing is more abundant than his speech, more elegant than his composition. For the thread and method of his discourses, nothing is more magnificent, more elevated, more august. He equals the majesty of Homer, the sublimity of Pindar, the gravity of Sophocles, the sententious wisdom of Euripides, the sweetness of Callimachus, the ornaments of Musaeus, the harmony of Nicander, the simplicity of Hesiod, the sagacity of Theognis, the tenderness of Anacreon, the salt of Aristophanes, the urbanity of Menander. The philosophers find in him the genius of nature; and this is the poet whom Plato sought without finding."
To reduce the praises of Sébastien Cramoisy to more just proportions, and to calm his effervescence, I must say at once that the *Dionysiaca* present, by turns, imitations of almost all the great poets of Greece, and some fortunate trials in very diverse genres of poetry. It is thus that they seek to draw closer to Homer in the painting of battles; to Hesiod in the genealogical details of his *Theogony*; to Theocritus in the varied tones of his *Idylls*; to Callimachus and Orpheus through his hymns; to Aeschylus and Euripides in their religious dramas, such as *Prometheus* and the *Bacchae*; to the harangues of the rhetorician Aristides.
the elegy of Sappho and Mimnermus in the plaints of lovers and widows. Finally, Lucretius and Virgil have lent Nonnus their physical or rustic tableaus, and Ovid his fables; but he followed them by inaugurating, so to speak, in the last age of Hellenic decadence, the descriptive genre such as we reproduced it at the end of the eighteenth century, and such as we practice it in the nineteenth by exaggerating it; so that he seems to have married the use of the epic machinery of antiquity to the resources of our didactic and picturesque poetry.
The fiery printer of Louis XIII, who nonetheless did not understand the *Dionysiaca* in his editions of ancient authors, ends this apotheosis with an assertion no less glorious, which I must relegate, along with all his exaggerations, among the dreams of his thought. “It is Nonnus,” he says, “who converted Saint Pelagia and brought back from the gates of hell to heaven thirty thousand Saracens.”
Be that as it may, the Baron of Baufremont celebrated these various miracles in a few couplets; and at that same epoch, when gentlemen held it an honor to know Latin, or even Greek, Alexandre de Cossé addressed to the memory of Nonnus this epigram more worthy of the Cavalier Marini than of Martial: “After having celebrated Bacchus in a heroic poem, Nonnus has chained John with his melodious words. Why be astonished when he launches thunder, or shines with the softer fire of lightning? If lightning snatched Bacchus from his mother’s womb, Nonnus must also be the son of a divine thunder.”
Sometimes a single critic, taking on both roles, attacks and defends Nonnus at the same time. This is how Tristan, the most learned of the ordinary gentlemen of Louis XIII, declared that there is much extravagance in his imaginations, “more impiety and hypocrisy than rectitude in his belief”; and the boiling numismatist, who cannot suffer any contradictor other than himself, says however, a few pages away: “The truth is that he is very learned, exalted, and very ingenious, full of poetic fire and curious; he teaches us many things that he alone finds he has remarked.”
Finally, one last critic, erecting a literary heresy into a system, has made the defects of late-period style and of Nonnus into so many virtues, or at least into so many titles to curiosity:
“Can one be ignorant,” he says, “that, just as there is more than one plague in the world, there is also more than one form in style?” (What a beginning and what a connection!) Style varies according to the epoch, the century, and the age of the writer. In the times of Augustus himself, speech was sometimes dignified and chastened like a matron, sometimes free and extended like the dressing of a young girl. Maecenas, Tiberius, and before them Antony, each spoke in his own fashion; and their diction was full of boldness, of hollow pomp, of ambition and inequality. Who then would not make much of Pindar, who would not love Nonnus? And yet, if you compare the indefatigable metaphors of the one, the swelling and redundancy of the other, with the simplicity and modest economy of Hesiod and Aeschylus, you will say, like the judicious Scaliger for Thucydides and Livy, that these are winged horses, and that their vessel sails with full sails, when the others enjoy a calm sea timidly. The imperfections, fruit of boldness, do not wound; for roses that come rare and out of season are only the more appreciated, and Ovid affirms that a blemish further enhances the beauty of a face.
Let us say at once, so as not to have to return to it, that the works of Plantin and of Falkenburg had been preceded by the attempts of Oporin; who, furnished for many long years with a manuscript of the *Dionysiaca* encountered in Italy, had prepared or rather announced its printing, which he never began.
A half-century earlier, the famous Aldus Manutius had likewise recoiled before the same task, distracted as he was constantly by so many other important works; and, for lack of time, he had not been able to do honor to the recommendation of Janus Lascaris, who had signaled the *Dionysiaca* to his typographic solicitude.
IX. Daniel Heinsius, premier critic of Nonnus. Canter, Joseph Scaliger, Saumaise.
Here presents itself, in the order of the times, in the first rank of the partisans and critics of Nonnus, the illustrious Daniel Heinsius, translator of the *Paraphrase of the Gospel according to Saint John*. He has accompanied this work with the most developed and theological commentaries on the text of Nonnus, under the title of *Sacred Exercises*; and it would seem that after having occupied himself with the prefaces of the *Dionysiaca* with all the heat of youth, he no longer considered them, as if to adorn himself with a second finery. In his passion for antique letters, he thus borrowed something of his name from the two most beautiful languages that men have ever spoken, according to the noble expressions of the swan of Orléans, those languages “which were being formed to recount one day to the earth the things of heaven.” (M. Dupanloup, reception speech pronounced, Dec. 9, 1854, to the French Academy.)
in his old age, as a compulsory study to better arrive at an understanding of the poet, and as an approach to his pious labors. But let us let him speak for himself.
“I still remember with pleasure,” he says, in elegant Latin interspersed with Greek, “the inclination, the training, even the ardor that carried me toward Nonnus. The first time I came to Leyden, eleven years ago, as I was reading with very great attention most of the Greek poets, he alone seemed to be missing from the full enjoyment that I derived from this genre of writing. Thus, when I finally found him, I seized upon him greedily, and did not leave him until I had devoured him from one end to the other. I was not even content to read him: through a fervor of my age, I was already exercising my critical faculties there, and I considered myself very fortunate when, after Falkenburg, a man much more versed in the reading of Greek poets than the common run of scholars believes, I encountered a few very small corrections (*emendatiunculas*), or a few probable conjectures to add to it. I felt no less joy from this than from a uniquely gifted daughter whom I had kept in my house to offer to a husband of excellent character. It is thus that I admired my author, and that I sang his praises everywhere and always. Now, they seemed all the more natural to me at that epoch of my life, as I had to support me in my judgment Angelo Poliziano and Marc-Antoine Muret. The first qualified Nonnus as a wondrous poet (*mirificum*), the second boasted of his erudition and the nobility of his style (*eruditum et grandiloquum*), and both affirm that he is of rare value among the ancient authors who have reached our hands. It was the famous Joseph Scaliger who, first, dampened my ardor or my intemperance. His admirable and almost celestial taste in these matters taught us in his letters the estimation we should hold for Nonnus.”
I ask Heinsius here for permission to interrupt him, to intercalate in his narrative the very text of the letters of Scaliger which he recalls. In the first, addressed from Leyden to Saumaise in 1607, the French professor of belles-lettres in Holland expresses himself thus, with the arrogance that is habitual to him: “The poets of the following epoch, in seeking abundance, could find only the vain sound of words and a bombastic style. Among those who have ventured furthest in this genre, Nonnus of Panopolis occupies without a doubt the first rank; and, in the *Dionysiaca*, the nature of his subject could serve as an excuse for his diffusion, if, in the *Paraphrase of the Gospel*, he had not, in some sort, abjured all modesty. I read him with the same sentiment that makes us look at comedians, and only be amused by them in so far as they are ridiculous.”
In a second letter, which the critic from Agen writes on the same subject, and in almost the same tone, to the adolescent Heinsius (*admodum adolescenti*), he tells him: “If you were near me, I could show you monstrous (*immanes*) transpositions that have slipped into the verses of this poet. I would also show you the defects, the improprieties of his style, and how one must read it or make use of it, for I would make a whole enormous volume (*encore immane*) of my criticisms. I have, however, rendered him a service in a thousand places: for, if one must not imitate him, one must at least read him.”
One will easily recognize here the exaggeration familiar to the inhabitants of the banks of the southern river who — must I warn the reader? — saw my own birth as well. This enormous volume, these infinite corrections of Scaliger, were to be limited to two or three hundred mutations of words, some very contestable, which barely fill thirteen small in-12 pages at the end of the pamphlet by Cunaeus.
I return the word to Heinsius:
“And yet, the advice of the divine old man had not yet extinguished in me the ardor to ‘Nonnise.’ Each time I amused myself by making Greek verses, I expressed my thoughts there in imitation of Nonnus, and assimilated myself to him so much that, if my self-esteem or my memory do not deceive me, I could have inserted my verses into the middle of his, and thus imposed upon readers who were not mediocerally experienced. Insensibly, nevertheless, taste came with age. I drew a sounder judgment from the reading of other writings. I reconciled myself little by little with reason and with myself. I managed to shake off this Bacchic fury; and as we are in a poor and miserable century, where we regret the majority of their works, we owe it, in my opinion, to the writers of antiquity to welcome the little that God has preserved for us of them with joy; we must study them to draw profit from them, much rather than to strive out of season for the vainglory of laying bare their I-know-not-what stains, or certain pedantic negligences; and yet there is nothing more worthy, in my sense, of a scholar than to use the fullness of his judgment in the very heart of this antiquity, and to weigh, which is given to few persons, the forms of the Hellenic language, so as to discern its qualities and defects easily. This is the highest point that happy natural faculties can reach, united to solid erudition; for, when style possesses such a great affinity with the mind and the word, that the Greeks expressed these three things by one and the same word (*λόγος*): to judge the style of a man is to judge the man himself; and style is not the distinctive sign of men only; it is also of
A a whole epoch. This is what makes a century recognizable by its way of expressing itself. Might one not say here that Heinsius submitted to Buffon the immortal axiom of his discourse before the Academy, and that the critic from Leiden said, one hundred and fifty years before the great French naturalist: "The style is the man himself"?
I return for a moment to that literary perversity of his youth, which Heinsius ingenuously confesses, to say that I truly believed I glimpsed more than one trace of it in the copy of the original 1569 edition which belonged to him. It is preserved very preciously at Leiden, alongside another copy of the same date, which Falkenburg burdened with notes or corrections that he undoubtedly intended to use to enlarge a second edition; but the reproductions of 1608 and 1610 did not benefit from either, any more than did that of Geneva in 1606.
These two copies, undoubtedly very carefully examined by M. Graëfe for the benefit of his 1819 edition, had nothing to teach me. I read nevertheless, in the one that was the property of Heinsius, in the midst of multiplied and confused marginal notes, alongside a small index of the witty traits of Nonnus (*Dicta Nonni ingeniosa*) and of his sentences, *γνῶμαι*, indicated by the very hand of Heinsius on the blank leaves at the end (*scriptus et in tergo*); I read, I say, a Latin epistle where his admiration for Nonnus overflows. Now, I have not been able to find it in the printed collection of his poetic works. Could it be, then, that his son Nicolas Heinsius, less of a friend to Greek letters, did not judge this enthusiastic inspiration worthy of appearing there, by reason of its subject—the praise of Nonnus, always disdained by scholars?
I have retained these four verses from it: *Jurarunt numeros eripuisse suos:* *Quemque ego Pimplai de montibus orta putarim* *Numina cuncta suo continuisse sinu.*
The light choruses of the Aegipans, the dryads, and the satyrs swore that this poet had stolen their songs; and it seems to me myself that all the divinities, born on the mountains dear to the Muses, reside in his bosom.
Will one not find, as I do, that for having been such a fanatical partisan of Nonnus, Daniel Heinsius pushed his spirit of quibbling too far when he reproached his former favorite with the very title of his poem? It is *Dionysiade* (2), he claims, that one should have said, and not *Dionysiaca*; just as one calls the *Iliad* the account of the exploits of the armies around or in Ilium; and that B if Nonnus wished to title his book *Dionysiaca*, implying *πράγματα*, the deeds and actions of Bacchus, it is one more absurdity, which grammar and common sense reprove... I do not go any further, and the only thing that surprises me in all of this is that Heinsius should heap blame upon Nonnus for a pretended crime of which many other writers had rendered themselves guilty before the fourth century, and that he did not think, among others, of Apollonius of Rhodes, whose memory should have presented itself spontaneously. Now, without treating it more particularly here, I propose to bring out in my notes, by some citations, the borrowings or the dissemblances of the two epics.
I recall, meanwhile, that the poet—also an Alexandrian, against whom Nonnus struggled, sometimes successfully—named his poem of the exploits of the Argonauts, *Argonautica*, and no one, so far as I know, has sought to find fault with it to this day. It is the same with as many other ancient or modern poems, lost or recovered, under the same ending—*Troica*, *Bassarica*, etc.—precursors or contemporaries of the *Dionysiaca*, upon which there is so much to comment that, moreover, it would have been in better taste to spare their irreproachable title.
And yet Heinsius did not stop there: as in great passions, his love turned to hate, and his declarations into insults, although they were addressed more particularly to the *Paraphrase of the Gospel*. Saumaise was moved by this. "One did not expect," he says, "the wickedness and virulence of the insults that Heinsius has accumulated against Nonnus, whom he calls, on every occasion, absurd, foolish, tainted with Arianism, and whom he accuses of ignorance of the Greek language! But what of it? Nonnus will have his defenders. *Sed reperiet suos vindices.*"
X. Cuneus, Zoilus of Nonnus, and other critics.
Alongside Heinsius, or rather far above him—if unjust bitterness, when it is exercised against Nonnus, constituted true merit—comes Cuneus (Van der Kuhn), who, latinizing his Dutch name, directed against the *Dionysiaca*, which had scarcely been printed, the fits of his atrabiliar verve. Stung by the favor that greeted Nonnus at its renaissance, he sought to demonstrate that this author, whom the princes of genius and science—Politian, Muret, and almost all the rest—thought nothing less than a great and superior writer, was much less understood than they said in his knowledge of things, and that he lacked at once the usage of style and the skill in imitation. Then, mingling with the excesses of satire the principles of enlightened criticism, he attacked minutely the grammatical imperfections of the first books and spared the latter, whether because he had, from the start, exhausted all the traits of his [sharpness].
anger, or because irony and insult manage to weary even the mind that lavishes them. In his animadversions, interspersed with rare praise, he emended, despite the injunctions of Falkenburg, in his own fashion and not always appropriately, some Greek verses, under the pretext of clarifying obscurities, deflating swelling, or even supplying supposed lacunae of the original. He was hardly concerned, like Canter and Scaliger, with correcting readings and purifying the words: thus, more than once, his indignation, taking to task a fault of the copyists or a lacuna in the manuscripts, falls wide of the mark, when it suffices to give more serious attention to the text, or to have a more intimate familiarity with the ways of Nonnos, in order to rectify the vicious sense and repair all the damage. Now, this is what I have not failed to practice carefully in my edition, when Graefe, in his own, had not done it before me. It would nevertheless be unjust toward Cunaeus not to recognize in him, in the midst of his most bitter assaults, a judgment formed on the study of the great models, and on those principles of taste in epic poetry that Vida and Boileau were about, in imitation of Horace, to proclaim in such beautiful verses. I say no more about this principal Zoilus of Nonnos, who did not, however, disdain to announce and recommend him to the public in the preface of the 1610 reprint; but I reserve the right to point out successively in my notes what is most remarkable in his frequent blame as in his rare praise.
XI. Character of the epoch when Nonnos was first printed.
One could also justly contend that the reputation of Nonnos has not only suffered from the outrages of time against his manuscripts, but also from the era in which they were entrusted to the press. It was the moment when high Greek studies were beginning to go out of fashion, and the Latin language to predominate. Certainly, Julius Caesar Scaliger, who compared Nicander to Lucan, if he had known the *Dionysiaca*, which were not yet printed at his death, would not have failed to give them a place in his *Poetics* and to signal some beauties in them. Joseph Scaliger, less versed than his father in Hellenic letters, was content, as we have just seen, to correct the text imperfectly, and Heinsius, the student of the latter, who occupied himself with it the most, and who took the title of "sacred Aristarchus of the *Paraphrase according to Saint John*," did not seek to counterbalance the severe critique of his friend Cunaeus. A
B Furthermore, this diversity of appreciation, I say it at once, was destined to reproduce itself with less brilliance in the centuries that were to follow. If Pierson (1) reproaches the Dutch philologists with anger for not having rejected Nonnos from the start, Bentley, the most famous critic of England, seeks him out for the varied erudition and the talent of a writer displayed in the *Dionysiaca* (2). When P. Francius attacks him (3), J. Schrader defends him (4); and all agree on this one point, that it becomes almost impossible to establish a certain judgment on this author, as he presents himself, and that there is cause above all, as Ruhnkenius wishes, to occupy oneself with washing him of the heap of defilements that he owes to his copyists (5).
In summary, Nonnos is tedious, said then, and still say today, almost all the scholars who have not read him, or who have not known how to read him, and their number is great. As for those who have pushed to the end of the *Dionysiaca*, or who have only exploited one half, if they have applied themselves to understand this Nonnian poetry, which had its difficulties no doubt, but whose enigmas I hope to have uncovered, they can still, and that is very simple, prefer true masterpieces to it; but they have learned to disdain it less, for even the most recalcitrant spirits in forming a new judgment on ancient authors agree that it amply compensates for the curiosity—little contagious until now—that makes one turn an attentive look toward him; finally, in the man who dares to leaf through him at the risk of the reputation of a bizarre or frivolous reader, there remains at least a profound knowledge of the Greek language, poetry, and mythology. I dare add, for having made the experiment, that he makes the reading of all other poets easier, whether by familiarizing one with the elegance and harmony of the beautiful idiom, or by the preliminary studies and the abundance of words with which he enriches the memory, *copia verborum*, or finally, if one wishes, by comparison.
XII. The translators: Lubinus Eilhartus, Boitet.
After these principal critics, neglecting the testimonies of the numerous philologists of the same epoch who, all, at his appearance, paid some tribute to Nonnos, I come to his translators. The number is much more restricted; and as I cannot take into account attempts at partial translation, whether in verse or in prose, which do not extend, in any language, beyond a page or two, I cannot take note of any but Lubinus Eilhartus, translator
A of the primitive Latin and until now unique, and of Boitet, the French translator of Lubinus more than of Nonnus, himself remaining until now without a rival in our language.
I must nevertheless add that at the moment when Eilhart, plastered with the name of Lubinus, was deforming Nonnus, another translator announced himself to the republic of letters, disguised himself under the name of Forestius. "We too," he said, "if it pleases the gods" (why not God? has Nonnus ceased, all by himself, to be a pagan?) "are attempting, despite our weakness, great things, while we are yet green. We are translating the Dionysiaca of Nonnus into Latin, and we will add to it some slight annotations with our conjectures; for it is inundated with a torrent of the most disgusting errors." Did Jean Forest later become frightened by the competition, so little formidable, of Lubin Eilhart? I do not know; but his translation never saw the light of day, any more than his corrections and his notes.
Bah! I shall be told, if Nonnus is not translated, it is because he is not worth the trouble! It is because no one, I would respond (let me be forgiven this parody of the objection), has yet taken the trouble; for it is a true labor, of long breath, bristling with incessantly recurring difficulties. Many passionate Hellenists have recoiled before the enterprise; some have lost courage after having resolutely begun, and we are going to see that the unintelligible Latin of Eilhartus, like the aged and distorted Gaulish of Boitet, left the work still to be attempted and to be finished.
It was therefore the B Antwerp princeps edition that Lubinus Eilhartus, professor at the University of Rostock, a mediocre man of letters but a very prolific translator, undertook to interpret at the same time as the two thousand epigrams known then from the Anthology, and the epistles of the philosophers Democritus, Heraclitus, Diogenes, and Crates, surmounted by some letters of Hippocrates. Whether by the overload of so many labors, or by precipitation, or perhaps by respect for the Greek text, Lubinus did not seek, after the example of Scaliger, Canter, and even Cunæus, to pierce the obscurities of the Dionysiaca, to readjust its lacunae, to make its innumerable inaccuracies disappear, finally to give a meaning to the places where the formless manuscript had left none: he limited himself to hitting, in the same line, with great blows of the dictionary, the Latin word, corresponding well or ill, with the Greek word in the same place C that it occupies in the hexameter, without worrying about the form or even the sense of the phrase. I will give in my notes some samples of this procedure, but here I spare the reader. I ask him only to consider what this bastard and quasi-interlinear translation of such a corrupt Greek text can be: he will then easily understand that Lubinus Eilhartus has not a little contributed to thicken the shadows cast as if by pleasure upon the poet of Panopolis, and he will remember this reflection of such pure taste, which escapes Saint Jerome as a profane souvenir of his penchant for literature: "Let one try," he says, "to translate word for word Homer into Latin." I will go further, let one translate it into prose in its own language: here I interrupt Saint Jerome, to say that I possess in effect in modern Greek two translations, one of the Iliad in verse, the other in prose of the Odyssey, but both very prosaic. "You will have there," continues Saint Jerome, "only a ridiculous work; and the most eloquent of poets will appear barely to stammer." What the holy and judicious doctor of the Church said so aptly for Homer, would it therefore be less true for Nonnus?
Well! there is the version foreign to all poetic sentiment, subversive of all elegance, extinguisher of the epic, in a word, that Boitet judged suitable to follow D almost step by step in his work; if it is permitted to call it that, which is only a series of detours to avoid all work. He attached himself almost always to translate much rather the literal Latin of Lubinus than the harmonious Greek of Nonnus: an accident more common in Greek versions than one generally believes, for it is of those who never admit it. Sometimes, also, he has drawn from himself his misinterpretations and abbreviations in such a way that he seems to have stolen his own wings only to shorten those of Nonnus. Finally, what shocks me the most in this interpretation, it is without doubt the trivial and the burlesque returning incessantly under his pen, and this language of the beginning of the reign of Louis XIII, which has lost the naivety of Amyot in his Greek translations, and has not yet gained the precision and the clarity of Boileau, the interpreter of Longinus. I am going to provide two or three examples only; and I will use as much reserve in my notes out of regard for my only predecessor, without doubt, but above all not to overwhelm the reader under the number and the mass of my demonstrations, much too justificatory. Thus in the twenty-fourth chant, and I take it at random, Boitet disfigures the plaints of the young Indian, which remind one of Racine and the
tenderness of the gentle Iphigenia; here is the text: “Ah! your son whom I shall have brought into the world, if one day he asks me for his father, how shall I be able to point him out when he lisps your name?” Let us listen to Boitet: “I am at my term. But when I have been delivered, and my son wishes to look for his father, by shouting papa, one would point him out to him.”
Then, instead of the “new Protesilaus of another Laodamia,” he spins out in this fashion this mythological memory comprised in three words in the Greek text: “As Laodamia regretted the death of Protesilaus, dying in the arms of her husband whose shade appeared to her, by the means of the favor of the gods.”
Here, right alongside, is a sample of his habitual narration: “But as Bacchus was crossing the river, Deriades, who had declared war on him (if he wished to usurp his country and bring his vines there, and bring his shoots there, as he threatened him by the satyr that Bacchus had sent on an embassy), prepared to support him, and to this effect he assembled all the regiments of the Indians, and gave them order to camp near the river to prevent the army from crossing.”
I pass on my turn, in this twenty-fourth chant, one of the most graceful of the poem, many accumulated contradictions, so as not to exhaust, by drawing from it, a single source. One will see in the second book how Boitet expresses himself, even when he is the most exact interpreter of the thought. I choose the beautiful verses which present the great image of the Olympian struggle, and which are praised without restriction even by Cunæus:
“This is what Typhon uttered in a threatening voice, Jupiter mocked these rodomontades. The combat astonished the two enemies: Typhon had the goddess of Discord who assisted him; and Jupiter was accompanied by Victory. The subject of their war was not for a flock of sheep or oxen: nor for the beauty of some goddess; nor for the usurpation of a city; but it was a question of the whole empire of the heaven and of absolute command over the earth. That is why Jupiter did not forget to defend himself well.”
Now, as I do not want to leave the reader under the impression of a prose so humiliating for Nonnus, I take the liberty of repeating mine here:
“Such were his clamors. The son of Saturn smiles at them; their courage bubbles over. Discord leads Typhoeus to battle. Victory guides the king of the gods. It is not a question here of a herd of oxen or of sheep, nor of the beauty of a nymph, nor of a wretched city, but indeed of the Olympus itself. The prize that Victory will award, and which she holds upon her knees, is the throne and the scepter of Jupiter.”
XIII. Pierre de Marcassus, imitator.
A short time after these *Voyages, loves and conquests of Bacchus in the Indies*, the second explicative title of the first, which Claude Boitet de Frauville, translator of Homer, of Quintus of Smyrna, historian, and lawyer at the parliament of Orléans, had imagined to attract the reader, appeared a sort of counterfeit of the first eight chants of the Dionysiaca, due to the abundant pen of Pierre de Marcassus. Here the style is as swollen and precious as that of Boitet is prosaic and trivial. While seeking to heap ridicule upon the author from whom he makes his borrowings, Marcassus seems to have taken pleasure in exaggerating its defects; he outdoes the wit, the confusions of thought, the antitheses which he redoubles in his own manner. And although this boastful man of letters, who took the title of Principal Historiographer to the King, defends himself, in a notice to the reader, for having copied Nonnus, “who,” he says, “in the liberty he gave himself to write verses, has for the most part made bankruptcy of judgment,” the first two books of these adventures, inspired by the Dionysiaca, are distant imitations of them, if one wishes; and the last six present chimerical paraphrases. These episodes, foreign to the subject, are much closer to the novels of Scudéry than to the Greek historians with whom, however, Marcassus pretended to rival.
One will judge of it by the use he made of a charming comparison, and I do not fear to signal it in advance, for it is destined to rest pleasantly our imagination, weary of the celestial combats of the first chant:
“As a lover to whom fortune presents the possession of the beauties for which he has long sighed, loses the memory of so many evils that he has suffered, so much do the present goods possess him. Sometimes he admires the soul of the two suns which made his days happy or unhappy.” (Need I say that it is a question here of the eyes of the beauty?) “Sometimes, as if to reproach her for the harm they have done him, he opposes his mouth to their clarity and prevents them from seeing. Sometimes, casting his imagination upon everything he sees that is lovable, he wanders his desire and his passion wherever one and the other can find their contentment; finally, to be entirely to that which he adores, he is in no way to himself.”
Must one not also apply to Pierre de Marcassus, who challenged his successors to do better, these words of Graefe:
“The hallucinations and the fantasies of Lubinus in Latin, and of Boitet in French, have pushed so far the omissions, abbreviations and interpolations of the text of Nonnus, that there remains of it hardly a shadow.”
XIV. Muret, Balzac, Caspar Barth, critics.
At the same time that clumsy interpreters and imitators were parodying Nonnus, the Lord of Balzac, the first of that name, was attacking him with great bitterness. I transcribe the entire passage from his *Critical Dissertations*, to distract the reader for a moment.
A "Muret... had his sorrows and his fancies... like others... I would wish at least that he were constant in his ill-humors. And in truth I cannot understand how, having so thoroughly despised the epigrams of Martial, he could have made so much of the *Dionysiaca* of Nonnus. This Nonnus was an Egyptian whose style is savage and monstrous. He was a painter of chimeras and hippocentaurs. His images, I say even the most regulated and sober ones, go far beyond ordinary extravagance. In certain places, one would take him for a demoniac rather than a poet; he appears much less inspired by the Muses than agitated by the Furies. The poets of Clérac and of Bergerac were less extravagant, even before they had crossed the Dordogne, and had said of the eloquence of Queen Marguerite:
*I hear a precious torrent* *Which pours all the heavens onto the earth.*
The beautiful spectacle, my reverend Father, of seeing the heavens melted and liquid rolling over the face of the earth, of seeing these great globes in such a small space, is something more than the sea, in something less than is the basin of a fountain. B These poets, nevertheless, wrote more reasonably than Nonnus, and I do not doubt at all that he would have admired what they wrote, and that some courtiers found it so beautiful, that monarchs should be interpreted only by the mouth of cannons. Not even, says the commentary, when they give audience to ambassadors; when they are seated in their *lit de justice*, and make their will heard to their peoples; not even when they pray to God in their oratory. These poets from Gascony and Périgord were wise and modest, in comparison to this poet of Egypt, whom my neighbor Muret esteems so highly."
Oh! my God, no, dear rival of the elegant Voiture, what one might reproach Nonnus for is not this fury of imagination, which would be, however, quite conformable to the nature of his subject. And it is very wrongfully, I swear to you, that you represent him as carried away, like Horace, by the god with whom he is filled. *Quo me, Bacche, rapis tui plenum!* C Barth, a great critic, your contemporary, has taken care to avenge him of your accusations. "Nonnus," says he, "would be a happy writer, if a temperate style were sufficient for writing the triumphs of Bacchus." Alas! quite on the contrary, this gait of Nonnus, too level and always uniform, is accompanied, even in the episodes and in the features of sentiment, by a diction much more moderate than the movements of passion. And to say everything to you, O honor of the city of Angoulême, forgive me if I believe, in my turn, that I recognize a little of the chagrin and fancy in your *Dissertation*, and if I see there a critic more jealous of the neighbor Muret than a serious reader of the poet of Egypt. Doubt it no longer; if he has deserved blame, it is that which posterity has already addressed to a certain writer of another D epoch, who is known to you, too praised by his century, too disdained since; and to whom, you have already guessed, Voltaire also reproaches having sometimes sacrificed the justness of thoughts to the arrangement of words.
XV. Silence of a hundred and fifty years. No good translators in the century of Louis XIV.
After these two unintelligent translators, this ridiculous paraphrast, this too severe critic, and all the glossators who had grouped themselves around the *Dionysiaca* at their appearance, Nonnus rested for one hundred and fifty years in a sleep hardly interrupted by the light stings of the hornets who buzzed in small numbers around his works without penetrating them. Let us say rather that the seventeenth century forgot him; whether because, too naturally occupied with the masterpieces of ancient Greece, the arbiters of our Parnassus paid no attention to writers of contested merit and secondary value, or because the precious and convoluted style of periphrases strayed from their elegant simplicity. In effect, the mania for antitheses and word games, bequeathed by the poetic school of Alexandria to the Italy of the *Seicentisti*, as they are called beyond the Alps, and to the France of Henry III, faded for a time under satire, and was not to reappear until later.
Moreover, it must be said, the best writers of the great literary epochs did not translate the immortal singers of ancient Greece, still less the poets of the decadence. They contented themselves with studying their spirit, and drawing inspiration from their beauties to rival their genius. Thus Homer created Virgil, who did not dream of translating the *Iliad*; Pindar, Horace, who did not make the echoes of Tibur repeat the *Nemeans*; Euripides, Racine, who raised the criminal passion of Phaedra on the banks of the Seine higher than the chaste virtue of the Hippolytus of the Ilissus. In short, never the *Bacchica potuissent*. (Barth. Advers., lib. VII, cap. 21.)
A the century of Augustus has transmitted to the century of Louis XIV, nor has the latter to us, a faithful interpretation of those primitive masterpieces; and when their imitations are excellent, their translations disfigure them.
After a long silence, towards the end of the last century, that intrepid pioneer of the dark mines where some vein of Hellenic gold might still shine, d'Ansse de Villoison, reopened the lists and drew curiosity back to Nonnus. It was nonetheless through many reservations and much abuse that the laborious investigator of the treasures buried in Weimar and Venice acknowledged himself that there was room to draw from the little-frequented sources of the *Dionysiaca* certain lessons, vainly sought in other writings, and that their reading initiated one into the mysteries of mythology, at the same time as it provided a more complete knowledge of antiquity (1).
At this announcement, Germany awakened—that Germany which was itself then being born to philosophical studies and was inheriting that leaning toward ancient literature which its neighbor, Holland, saw fading away. Let us add that it has faithfully kept the preeminence, if I may dare to borrow that old word from Henri Estienne, our master to all humble Grecists.
And, may I be permitted to remark, these laborious meditations on the Greek writers have remained the domain of the scholars beyond the Rhine; today even, with the exception of two or three learned commentators whom Paris still praises, and who alone worthily sustain the comparison, it is in Germany that they multiply; it is there that the art is practiced and reigns of gathering fragments, of studying texts, of sewing back together the tatters, and finally of repairing the damage of time and relighting the almost extinguished torch of the Hellenic genius.
B XVI. Godefroi Hermann, Avenger of Nonnus. Sweet epithets; — descriptive; — compound.
What d'Ansse de Villoison stammered barely about the importance of the *Dionysiaca*, while making all his reservations, Godefroi Hermann—bolder, Hermann, the most learned and the most perspicacious explorer of rhythmic art—extended and amplified.
"Epic poetry, among the Greeks," he says, "was departing from its ancient elegance, in such a way that it required nothing less than a notable change in its manner to preserve it from death; and this happy innovation, I do not hesitate to attribute to Nonnus. Indeed, he who pointed out the path where one followed him like another Homer must have opened it by way of a great and famous composition. And the imitation of Nonnus is so evident in the poets who submitted themselves to the new form of heroic verse that he had most certainly preceded them in this career.
"The *Dionysiaca*, if I am not mistaken," continues Hermann, "must have acquired such renown that they became the subject of contemporary studies. I believe I can cite as proof the hymns of Proclus, whose metrical process leaves no doubt that he lived in the epoch of Nonnus and studied his works attentively. Now, the lyric poets were not alone in seizing upon the new hexameter of Nonnus; one must also add the epigrammatists, Paul the Silentiary, Leontius the Macedonian, etc. To this school also belong Musaeus, Tryphiodorus, Coluthus, Gazeuos, and many anonymous poems of the *Anthology*.
"Yes, it is Nonnus, or at the very least it is the author of this perfected method; but, in my opinion, it is Nonnus who exchanged the heaviness of spondees for the rapidity of dactyls (2), who introduced the caesura at the third foot, by chasing out the trochee from the fourth, who delivered the hexameter from Attic abbreviations, curtailed the apostrophe as best he could, and pursued the hiatus to excess, tolerating it—and then very rarely—only in expressions borrowed from Homer. It is Nonnus who totally banned the abuse of short syllables becoming long in favor of the caesura; in such a way that if heroic verse had lost its original dignity, it recovered at least its elegant and numerous rhythm; and from then on it was subjected to such strict rules that one had to, from then on, seriously study the science before attacking the epic."
Truly, if I am not mistaken, Nonnus is definitively placed as the true reformer of poetry; and let no one be fooled, this school—of which Nonnus is the chief proclaimed by the most experienced arbiter of ancient rhythm—this school, I say, has not only extended its empire over prosody. To the regular purity of his hexameter, Nonnus has added a sustained elegance and an imperturbable harmony. Pushing aside the systematic obscurities of thought or diction, like the C *pollet Siculæ telluris alumnus*. (Terent. Maurus, de Metris.) I believe and maintain, in opposition to some of his commentators, that Theocritus consulted his natural genius on this point, his ear above all, and that he did not observe this metrical process as an absolute rule, as it is contradicted more than once, even in the first verses of his first Idyll. Now, it is for me a hereditary opinion. (See the preface to the Idylls of the Count of Marcellus. Paris, 1820.) D
natural or sought-after enigmas, of which Lycophron was the propagator and the unhappy model; rejecting these subtle A productions arranged in the form of an altar, a hatchet, or a panpipe, where the poet, a misshapen painter, wishes to strike the eyes without touching the heart; rejecting finally that Egyptian frenzy of lipogrammatic poems, where the composer deprives himself alternately, to no purpose, of the help of a consonant or a vowel, and chains his inspiration to a mutilated alphabet, he disdains these abuses of style which nonetheless were to reappear long after him; for I have myself, on the banks of the Bosphorus, in a circle of certain idle literati of modern Greece, traced a few vestiges; but no doubt the rays of the sun which illuminates the Parthenon anew will have chased away these backward clouds from the banks of the liberated Cephisus. It is true that, to replace these tours de force which were never ornaments, Nonnus has sometimes given too much space to wordplay, to their etymological clatter, or even to the pun, and that he has run with too much haste toward B antithesis, the honor of style when it is sparsely sown, a fatigue to the intelligence when it is lavished. "That," M. de Chateaubriand told me, "is in every language the sign of the decline of polite letters; and it is also the hallmark of our eighteenth century." Now, has the aging author of the *Vie de Rancé* and the *Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe* always avoided this pitfall, and has he not himself too often sacrificed to the false divinity?
But what! Nonnus, overbidding this excess of the eighteenth century, has approached the nineteenth even more closely, when he has stamped, so to speak, his phrases one after the other with the mark of a convoluted turn of phrase, a bizarrely imaged term, or a too scholarly acceptation, and principally when he has overloaded his verses with a C multitude of epithets that no writer before him had deployed so richly? To this objection, which I build with the help of the objections of others, and which I address to myself, I stop to treat thoroughly this characteristic point of the talent of Nonnus: the prodigality of the epithet; a virtue, if one believes Conrad Dinner, the most patient collector of Greek adjectives, who represents Nonnus as another Midas converting everything he touches into epithets (*Midam alterum*); a vice, if one must rely on certain critics of a more severe taste, among others the rigorous Cunæus.
And to begin with sacred epithets, which I place almost outside the question, it is very true, as Heinsius and other expert philologists observe, that the abundance of adjectives or attributes of the Divinity is a special property of the holy books: one might say, to glorify it, or at least to excuse it, that God himself has given the example, and that he has designated the form of style which is most pleasing to him when he seizes, through the mouth of Moses (1), upon his numerous attributes: *Misericors, verax*, etc., finally *tardus ad iram*, slow to punish, a sublime prerogative of Providence which Saint Jerome has weakly rendered, in my sense, by the word *patiens*.
Among the Greeks, certain hymns are also nothing but necklaces of epithets whose pearls touch one another; and certainly, if it were not too profane a comparison, and if the holy melodies of our churches could soften us even here in these pages, such invocations would recall the litanies that I have heard with such vivid emotion in Bethlehem, resounding beneath the vaults raised by Saint Helena over the cradle of a God. But these hymns themselves, and the chants overloaded with pious adjectives by Onomacritus, hidden under the name of Orpheus, are from an era neighboring that of Nonnus, like that of the decadence, and can without anachronism carry some trace of the poetry, or even of the history, of the Hebrews. Homer, one must admit, in the lesser poems attributed to him in honor of his favorite gods, as his anonymous imitators or the disciples of the true Orpheus in the others, did not have recourse to the pile of epithets any more than Callimachus, and they did not admit the surnames of the inhabitants of Olympus, or the distinctive signs of their power, except with a certain sobriety.
I arrive at Nonnus, author of a long epic, and not of a short dithyramb; for his part, he has not brought the sacred epithets into play in the same manner as his predecessors. Instead of chaining, without order and following the demand of the prosody, the titles won by his hero to the adoration of humans, he has disseminated them at random, and, in the course of his work, he has brought in almost without exception the ninety-six attributes of Bacchus; a symmetric battalion that the Anthology presents to us, in close column, four deep, on twenty-four lines, each commanded by a letter of the alphabet. But he only made them appear to our eyes after having broken their ranks, at the moment and at the place where his narratives were most naturally to bring them.
As for the descriptive or purely poetic epithets which certainly abound in our author, I do not know if, on this point, he does not deserve more praise than blame; apart from one or two idle adjectives whose very meaning has remained vague and enigmatic by reason of the incorrectness of the text, if one leaves aside certain favorite expressions that one could call the idioms of the Nonnian language, all the others are significant, energetic, and do not present themselves anywhere as the most terrible enemies of the substantive. His Aristarchs,
it is true, have painfully noted in him certain verses formed entirely of four epithets, and, as they went along, they have rounded them into snowballs to throw in his face and insult his reputation: this is indeed, I do not hide it from myself, that which Aristotle so justly reproaches in Alcidamas when he says, by a sort of play on words that is here well placed, that “this orator uses the epithet not as a seasoning that pleases, but as a perpetual food that palls”(1). Now, this fault of Alcidamas, Nonnus would seem to have aspired to; he would even have pushed it so far, says one of his most severe critics, that he gives epithets even to his epithets. I concede, if one wishes, that he sometimes doubles them, although such a misdeed is quite uncommon, and I can find the example and at the same time the excuse for it in Homer (2). But I ask to observe in my turn that, when Nonnus triples the epithets, it is that, almost always, he has elevated one of his adjectives to the dignity of a verb, and the attribute has become active. Now it is upon this knowledge, acquired for me, of his manner that I have partly constructed my method of correction; and I believe I have owed to it a few quite plausible encounters. I do not deny, however, that in more than one instance this crowd of epithets arrives at obscuring the image it ought to clarify; but most of the time it casts upon it only an antithetical light. My notes will cite a few examples of it; but they will not be able to tell all the embarrassments into which these new terms have thrown the translator. How many times have I not cried out with Ronsard? How much I am saddened that the French tongue Does not make words as the Greek one does: Ocymore, Dispotme, Oligochronien.
I pretend here only, and in advance, at the risk of contradicting on this point again learned critics, that if the epithets, in Nonnus, are sometimes superabundant, they are never improper; and this observation, I repeat, has also guided me many times in my revision. A There remain the compound epithets, with double words; and Nonnus in this genre is, in effect, a very powerful, and sometimes a very happy creator. When they present thus from time to time several pleasant images fused into a single expression, they give at once color and amplitude to the style; but, when one multiplies them, this amplitude touches very closely upon turgidity. “However,” adds another critic, “the readers most shocked by the faults of Nonnus cannot help but do justice to the ingenious turn, to the fertility and to the erudition of his epithets, even the most hazardous (3).” It must be said, moreover, to the discharge of Nonnus, these words where two images are reunited, these compound epithets, belonged above all to the style consecrated to Bacchus, because they denoted inspiration and added to the vivacity of the dithyramb, a tumultuous accessory of the orgies. “The graces,” according to Demetrius of Phalerum, “are often born from a compound and dithyrambic term (4).” And no language lends itself to these alliances of words as much as the Greek language, an immense source which, similar to the ocean of Homer (5), has caused the waves of its riches to flow back upon the most remote idioms. As for me, who places all opinions in presence, pressed as I am to conclude after so long a digression thrown across my historical narrative, I rejoin myself again to Aristotle, to whom one must return without ceasing to learn to discern the true from the false, as to regulate taste, and I maintain with him that in this matter poets have liberties or even licenses denied to other writers.
XVII. Dupuis and his astronomical system drawn from Nonnus. Fréret.
Scarcely had Hermann, this judge so fine and so exercised in antiquity, this philosopher of erudition, in his metrical meditations, dressed a throne or rather a chair for the Egyptian poet, scarcely had he thus in the art of versification crowned him chief of a school, than immediately the enthusiast Dupuis erected him into a professor of transcendent astronomy. Already Nonnus is no longer uniquely this arranger of dactyls, skilled in making the Greek rhythm render all that it contains of harmony; he is also the contemplator of the stars, the scrutineer of the sphere, the interpreter of the constellations; it is in the *Dionysiaca* that Dupuis goes to draw the original idea of his system: a monstrous system, which he had from its beginning supported upon these impious aphorisms, as upon two indestructible columns. — “It is the earth that made the heaven. The education that degrades us delivers us all to imposture.” And certainly, of these two propositions which, I hasten to affirm, are not even to be found in germ in the *Dionysiaca*, Dupuis would not have liked without doubt to see the latter retorted against that own exuberant education to which he owes such a vain erudition. It is nevertheless, for a great part, from the poem of Nonnus, leafed through and leafed through again with a patience which, I fear, will find very few imitators, and, for the other part, from his brain en-
encompassed, that Dupuis has brought forth the confused heap of his sidereal observations. It seems that, like the witches of Macbeth, causing to boil in a vast cauldron where he saw them melt together, with his reason, the heterogeneous ingredients of all cults, he has expressed from it I know not what universal religion without a name, another Babel built by his immense incredulity.
A ‹ Greece, › says the blasphemer, ‹ was too little instructed to preserve for us the traces that ancient fiction had with places and with the march of the sun, the true and only Bacchus whose benefits antiquity had ever celebrated. It is in Egypt that we must seek the sources of this history, and in an old Egyptian poem that Nonnus, born in Panopolis, warmed up in Greek in the first centuries of our era, › (T. II, p. 27).
‹ This warmed-up old poem is not a body of works of the mind, › he adds, ‹ it is but a heap of legends scattered in the night of time, › and Dupuis cites for us in a note some primitive collectors of these legends: Linus, Orpheus, Musaeus, Pronopides, whom he makes a preceptor of Homer, little enough known until now. Certainly it would have been easy for him to enlarge his nomenclature; and, without speaking of the tragedians among whom figure in the first rank Aeschylus for a lost tragedy, Euripides for his admirable Bacchae, without taking into account the numerous comic writers among whom one notes Eubulus, Epicharmus, Timocles and even Aristophanes, all singers of the exploits of Bacchus, whose works have disappeared from our eyes, but which the library of Alexandria had placed under the eyes of Nonnus; he could have named more than one epic, the *Dionysus* of Euphorion, the *Facts and Deeds of Bacchus* by Theolyte, and finally the *Bassarics* of a certain Dionysus, whose fragments have been gathered lately, and which it is said were lent to the Egyptian poet for some hemistichs.
But these titles of poems, exhumed for the most part from the vast catacombs constantly open in Athenaeus or Stobaeus, do not seem to me to take away any merit from the work of Nonnus, a work which he founded upon a national subject already treated no doubt by a great number of writers; for, far from letting himself go to invention in a subject so favorable to deviations, he took it upon himself to follow the mystical traditions step by step, to connect them with one another, and to draw up a sort of code of the cult of Bacchus. I continue.
‹ This poem, › says Dupuis, ‹ little known, although infinitely worthy of being so, if not for its poetic qualities, at least for its mythological traits, its sustained relations with the march of nature, and especially with that of the sun, which are there in great part preserved › (there begins to point the dream), ‹ is composed of forty-eight chants, which contain in themselves almost all ancient mythology; it is in this poem that we will follow the march of the sun or of Bacchus in his conquests and his voyages around the world. We will find there also a complete proof that Bacchus is the sun, since it is only in the heavens and in the zodiac that one can follow his traces, just as it is in the zodiac that we have followed those of Hercules, of Osiris, of Isis, of Theseus and of Jason. ›
This program, written all in one breath like an oracle of the Sibyl, is followed by a dry, cold analysis, separate for each of the forty-eight chants, containing (he counted them) 21,895 verses. Dupuis has accompanied this prosy summary of the *Dionysiaca* with so many allegories and astronomical allusions that, apart from some ingenious ideas that I have taken care to note in my annotations, his work on Nonnus cannot be of any utility for the translator. It is furthermore sown with direct epigrams, or even sly traits shot in the manner of Voltaire against the Christian religion; and, in effect, the author set such store by the prince of incredulity that he had erected him in his mind as a favorite divinity, no doubt in place and stead of the God he was trying to dethrone; one cannot read without stupefaction, in his dedicatory epistle to his beloved spouse, this phrase: B ‹ The greatest praise that one can give to your taste is your esteem for Voltaire, to whom you devote all the time that the economic cares of your house leave to you. ›
This reminds me of what a Levantine confided to me in Constantinople concerning the requirements of Muslims in their domestic life; they disapprove of devotion in their wives, and I no longer know which Oriental poet, a predecessor of Parny, required of his Iris that she make no account of the Koran.
What would one say today of this proof of the virtues of a housewife and of the gallantry of Dupuis, who, at the end of this amorous and philosophical declaration of a few lines at the head of his three voluminous in-quarto volumes, adds in a madrigal, as in the final couplet of our vaudevilles: *I care more for this epistle than for all the rest of the work.*
After such bizarre ideas on the education or at least on the reading of women, I cannot help, however, admiring the marvelous erudition of Dupuis, acquired and increased during our civil troubles; he was present there, however, and took an active part in them, sometimes deputy of the province, sometimes representative of the capital. And as there is not, in our time especially, a question so literary, nor even a dissertation so poetic, where politics does not make its appearance and where the opinion of the writer does not agitate his pen for a moment, one will forgive me for saying that we must honor Dupuis for his courageous role in the horrible drama of 1793 and for his negative vote in the great regicide trial. Europe and posterity, he exclaimed
will judge the king and his judges. And it is to his systems, already disdained by the public, and to the mental distractions that were believed to be their consequence, that he owed the fact of not having paid with his blood for his noble temerity.
And yet these fictions which place the sun and the moon at the head of all the divinities of paganism are not the creation of Dupuis; he drew them from ancient sources. But as for his system of extending and prolonging the empire of the two stars even over our consciences, as for his hypotheses—metamorphosed into theological rules and axioms regarding the influence of the simultaneous appearance or disappearance of the constellations—he alone is the responsible creator, and one would be wrong to cast any part of it upon Nonnos.
On the other hand, the citations so numerous that Dupuis made from him to prop up his scaffolding would seem to be of a nature to establish the astronomical reputation of Nonnos: his knowledge, in effect, in his capacity as an Egyptian and a student of the school of Alexandria, must have been great on this subject; but it does nothing for his poetic fame. The fiery demonstrator invokes him almost always as an authority, but he does not endeavor in the least to highlight or reproduce the elegance of the writer, not even in the thirty-eight verses (for I count them too) that were published by the *Nouvel Almanach des Muses* of 1803. I have searched, not without difficulty, in this collection of ephemeral poetry for those alexandrines which, on the word of M. Auguis, biographer and editor of Dupuis, I was to believe were a translation or at the very least an imitation of a fragment of the *Dionysiaca*; and it has been impossible for me to recognize them as anything other than an invocation to Hercules regarding his twelve labors, perhaps the beginning of that *Heracleid* which holds such a great place in the first volume of Dupuis—a sacred poem on the Calendar which he was meditating and for which he had borrowed the title in advance from Panyasis, Pisander, and Cleophilus, chanters of Hercules in the Greek centuries; or else, finally, a rhymed and detached inspiration, the flow of which the indefatigable scholar interrupted amidst his incessant compilations.
Among the critics who have refused to see with Dupuis, in the fabric of the *Dionysiaca*, a series of purely astronomical facts, Fréret (and this name, without announcing an infallibility that is not the share of anyone, especially in ancient conjectures, must nevertheless cause any judicious reader to pause before contradicting such a scholar), Fréret, I say, did not think that this was precisely the source from which Nonnos had drawn the fundamental matter of his epic. He believed rather that the traditions followed by the Egyptian poet established Bacchus as a truly historical personage who had really existed. He thus attached him to A the system of Euhemerus, in which "all the divinities of paganism were, without exception, men raised by apotheosis to the rank of gods, and all the fables were events of an ancient history, which the partisans of Euhemerism place as best they can, either as to time or place (1)."
XVIII. Schow, Fuessli, Gottlob Weichert, Moser, Creuzer and other German critics.
Soon, while France—even in its bouts of impiety or religious indifference—was rejecting the strange theory of Bacchus as universal god, the worship of whom people were trying to rejuvenate, learned Germany directed, once again, its gaze toward this poem of the *Dionysiaca* which had provided Dupuis with the first idea, if not the developments, of his system. Following his example, but without having them follow the same extravagances, Schow, Fuessli, and some philologists published short abridgments of the *Dionysiaca*, rather to try to draw from it a body of doctrine and establish its scientific importance than to have its literary merit or diction appreciated.
One can also cite from among the partisans that Nonnos enrolled, at long intervals, under his disdained banner, Gaspard Ursini, at the end of the seventeenth century, and Weichert at the beginning of this one. The sentiment of this latter philologist was signaled by the famous Harles in his edition of the *Greek Library* of Fabricius as the most enlightened sentence that criticism has yet passed on the merit of Nonnos. By this title, it has the right to appear in this introduction, and here is an extract:
"Some readers," says Weichert, "frightened by the thickness of the book, have persuaded themselves that it is surcharged with superfluous narrations arranged without any order. We must forgive these men who find pleasure only in writings of short duration (*libellorum brevitati*), and who are terrified by a work of some length, even when it has been applauded by its own century. I declare that none of those who read the *Dionysiaca* attentively will accuse the author of confusion. The unity of action, and, to use the words of Aristotle, the composition, which consists in a beginning, a middle, and an end, is perfectly observed there. Everything is so skillfully attached to a single thread that the art of the poet shines there as much as his wit; and it is clear that before writing, Nonnos had his whole plan in his head. On the other hand, if several conditions that aesthetics, as they say, requires of an epic were found omitted or used poorly, it is not Nonnos one should blame for this as a crime. Entirely occupied with drawing from his reservoirs the erudition that he had there…
in such a pile, and taking pride in it, without worrying about the time and the men who might later see in it only trivia, it was enough for him that a circumstance belonging to his subject could cast some charm upon his poem for him to seize it and put it to work; and if we consider the *Dionysiaca* from this point of view, it must be admitted that the poet completely executed the plan he set for himself, and that, by the breadth of his knowledge, as by the fertility of his imagination, he deserves the praise and admiration of all. But, although Nonnos found in his theme the occasion to open all the sources of his erudition, it must also be admitted that, by the grace of the narrative, the harmony of the rhythm, as well as the variety of the episodes and the brilliance of the images, he charms the reader equally. Here I pause to declare that, far from exactly translating the Latin praises of Weichert, I temper his enthusiasm, and I hasten to say with him: "I confess nevertheless, so as not to be accused of blindness or of connivance with the defects of this poem, that I would have liked to excise some details, and that I have not always found therein the perfume of Athens."
Since I have begun to temper the Nonnian ardor of Gottlob Weichert myself, I must continue and draw a reasonable conclusion from so many controversies. Yes, undoubtedly, among all these men who, in an exhausted century, have sought to imitate the inspirations of the chanters of heroes and of primitive nature, and who asked for erudition and the art of words from the works of the schools and the vaults of libraries, among all these writers who came after the geniuses disappeared under the empire of Rome and under the domination of a single master, as Tacitus says (1), among those talents whom Alexandria, asylum of the Greek muses, returned to Athens and to Constantinople in the fourth century, nourished by its sciences, but enervated under the vices of its decrepitude—finally, among those witty versifiers who gave the epic style not, surely, its original energy, but a constant elegance—Nonnos is certainly the least known poet and yet the most worthy of being so.
One sees in my reviews of ultra-Rhenish criticism that I passed over some expressions of mood that the famous Heyne seems to launch against Nonnos, merely as the echo of a whim of Hemsterhuis; the latter, after having declared that the authority of Nonnos should count for nothing in archaeological matters, admits nevertheless that one cannot impartially judge him in the state so informal in which it has come down to us. And M. Creuzer has reproached, in my stead and place, this avenger of the Greek muses—put to flight by the school of Justus Lipsius—for not having appreciated and meditated as much as it deserved this subject of the *Dionysiaca*, the most magnificent canvas of the fabulous world (2). As for Heyne, through certain insults that derive more from the habitual impetuosity of his character than from reflection, he displays an erudition too sagacious and too speculative not to have guessed, beneath the imperfection of the manuscripts, the true value of the poet, and he pronounced these words which have been for me a powerful encouragement: "He would have well deserved of letters and would be the worthy object of great gratitude, who would reunite all that is best in the *Dionysiaca*, and, suppressing the inanities, would make a single body of all the rest (3)."
Here appears, more than he shines, M. Moser, whom Graefe later stigmatized with the title of "scourge of Nonnos," coupling him with Lubinus Eilhartus, A"a couple well worthy of allying themselves," he said.
M. Moser, annotator of six books of the *Dionysiaca* (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13), disdained to translate them into Latin or even into German, as if he had looked there only for a theme for a commentary to exercise his youthful erudition. For undoubtedly M. Fred. Creuzer, the most learned and most perspicacious of the mythologists of our day, did nothing, by signing the preface of this essay, but encourage the efforts of one of his students; and he could not in advance, for this single attempt, assign him a rank among distinguished philologists.
M. Moser does not appear to me to have sufficiently valued the works of his predecessors; and among other inaccuracies—for I do not enter into the substance of the quarrel and stick to the peccadillos—he signals, among the manuscripts of the *Dionysiaca* which must be consulted, a Parisian manuscript, which, as I have assured myself by many researches, has never existed in our capital. This is an opinion that I would like to transmit in passing to M. Louis Dindorf; for I saw him last autumn in Leipzig, very disposed, on the faith of M. Moser, to make a trip to Paris to consult the unfindable manuscript. Now, that would be a pity, and M. L. Dindorf demonstrates to us every day that he can make much better use of his time. On this subject, I will observe that one must sometimes be wary of that German gravity that Madame de Staël, in more serious matters, calls the pedantry of levity; it sometimes covers very conjectural propositions with a heap of knowledge, and lays down upon
a thick bed of Greek and Latin citations assertions half-fanciful, when they are not entirely erroneous, so that truth and good sense remain smothered under the weight of the erudition. All these apprentice-doctors, suddenly smitten with the Bacchic cult, following the example of the master, the learned Fréd. Creuzer, illustrious author of *Dionysos*, and better still of the *Symbolik*, took it upon themselves to demonstrate the qualities of the god far more than those of his poet; they explained one by one the epithets and surnames of Bacchus with great archaeological exactitude, without any concern for style; and, in their technical and colorless enumeration, they remind me of those followers of Mahomet I have seen, huddled on their soft sofas, rolling in their phlegmatic hands the oriental toy (the *komboloi*), by way of diversion from the slowness of their conversations, as if they were counting off, one after the other, the virtues of their prophet.
XIX. *Graefe and M. Ouvaroff.*
Finally Graefe appeared; or, to speak more accurately, we saw arise in 1819, from the presses of Leipzig, a Greek volume, corrected under his care, containing the first twenty-four books of the *Dionysiaca*, without preface, translation, or commentary. Graefe, in 1815, had caused this first volume to be preceded by an exercise in German translation, undertaken on a detached portion of the fifteenth book, in verses similar in intent to those of Voss's marvelous translation of the *Iliad*. This attempt at poetic interpretation had no other result than certain fragments scattered in literary analysis, and always in the German language, which M. Ouvaroff—to whom I am coming—provided on a more extensive plan; one reads this in the short foreword of that work, which Graefe has entitled *Hymnos et Nicée*:
“A prejudice credited for centuries holds that Nonnus is not a poet, but only a curious collector of fables and archaeology. It is sad to see the great poet smothered under the learned mythographer. No doubt, when Nonnus, to conform to his century, accumulates excessive expenses of erudition in expressions loaded with antitheses, his poetry becomes bombastic, cold, and tiresome; but when he uses mythology like Ariosto uses history, then his verses take on a rapid and powerful flight. His rhythm, more correct and richer, sometimes attains lyrical enthusiasm, and rises to the most brilliant imagery; in a word, his inflation and his affectation in the epic are of his time; to him alone” belong his laughing imagination and this singular abundance of thoughts and of sentiments which give a new life even to extinguished traditions.
This was to open a wide road to the rehabilitation of Nonnus, and the philologists of the North hastened to walk it. Among them, and before all others, eager to bring to this almost new proposition a second series of arguments, and to the poet another tribute of support, M. Ouvaroff, today president of the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, published in 1817, under the title *Nonnus of Panopolis, Poet, or Supplement to the History of Greek Poetry*, a study as learned as it is honorable to the memory of the chanter of Bacchus. I shall extract from it, in my notes, some fragments, to admire them, rarely to oppose them. Although the learned correspondent of the Institut de France has proven to us, by more than one dissertation printed in Paris, his facility in wielding our language, it is in German, and at St. Petersburg, that he published this work, which reviews the forty-eight books of the *Dionysiaca*: I am going to transcribe some lines from the beginning and the end:
“My goal,” says M. Ouvaroff in what he calls his *Nonnian Anthology*, “has been to facilitate, as much as in me lies, the study of the *Dionysiaca*, and to defend the poet of Panopolis and his talent against the prejudices of the learned world; despite being universal, they are nonetheless sovereignly unjust... The poem of Nonnus has been condemned, for centuries, to be but a garret full of rust and dust, where only the most intrepid mythographers enter from time to time... And yet,” concludes M. Ouvaroff, “perhaps the friends of Greek poetry will find a new motive to judge the chanter of Panopolis less severely in the reflection that with his final verses also resound the final accents of ancient poetry. It is the touching farewell of a friend who is about to disappear forever. His supreme words are then doubly precious and sweet. We must therefore retain them.”
XX. *The Greek edition of 1819-1826. Wakefield in England. Bernhardy in Germany.*
These preliminary praises, such public reclamations in favor of Nonnus, seemed an announcement of the edition of Graefe, and served as happy forerunners. He, seven years after having published the first twenty-four books of the Greek text, produced the final twenty-four, and this time with a notice which explained quite rather all that one promised to do.
that he did not account for what had been done. The two complete volumes now presented at the bottom of the pages only the versions corrected from or chosen among the conjectures, whether of the early commentators Falkenburg, Canter, Cunaeus, and Scaliger, or of the latest ones, such as d’Ansse de Villoison in France, Hermann in Germany, and even in England the fiery Wakefield, in his *Silva critica* of bilious philology. Certainly, it is not erudition that Graefe lacked in giving more perfection to his Greek text; it is solely the fact of not having himself translated the poet he was editing: the inaccuracies that escape the reader and that are misunderstood by the glossator should necessarily have yielded before the research and efforts of the translator.
Graefe was preparing a general commentary, no doubt similar to the fragment that he had given in 1813, following two hundred and fifty-two verses of the detached episode of *Hymnos and Nicaea*. He spoke of dissertations on the era and writings of Nonnos, on the mythological sources from which the poet was supposed to have drawn his legends, on the virtues and vices of his style, on his idioms; he announced a historical notice of the editions, an overview of the metrical system, and finally a summary of grammatical notes, all things which I have tried to treat in my turn in my preface as well as in the remarks that I have appended to each separate canto. And it is with great confidence in this work already begun that he provokes the curiosity of future glossators and refers them to his universal *Lexicon of Nonnos*. Why must it be that, thirty years later, we still have to regret its absence; that these lights, which no doubt would have guided us happily through more than one dark corner, were extinguished at the moment of shining, and that finally Graefe himself disappeared before fulfilling his promise? It is to Graefe, however, it must be recognized, that this return so marked of learned Germany toward Nonnos is primarily due; for, with Hermann his master, he enthroned him irrevocably as a true pontiff of the cult of the hexameter. Yes, Nonnos established a school; and this event of the poetic annals of the world, which I try to note in my turn, has just been proclaimed recently by the famous Bernhardy; not in one of those ephemeral or capricious theses that the students of Germany, jealous of exercising their erudition, give to themselves to make themselves better known to their colleagues in the Universities, but in one of those books destined to live, which the conscientious philologists of the Rhine combine and ripen for twenty years, and which, by perpetuating the merit of the stubborn scrutineer, signal doubly the progress of the great history of the human spirit.
« Soon, » says Mr. Bernhardy, « came the dominating influence of a man gifted with a rare talent who drew toward him the studies of his neighbors, and chained them to his rules, this Nonnos who, for his honor, gives his name to the last poetic epoch of the Egyptian school. His work is a premeditated reform of the epic meter, united with a marvelous hue and linked to a plan so firm that nothing disconcerts it, and that the poet himself could not, without great art and stubborn labor, support and weld together all the materials of his edifice. Few Greek poets can boast of an imagination so creative and yet always subservient to the subject. It unfolds during forty-eight cantos without wandering, without languishing, and is enriched with brilliant traits, expressive turns, and a prodigious surfeit of images. With such qualities, one should not be surprised if, despite the constant application of the fruit of his studies, Nonnos remained original. »
Be that as it may regarding this enthusiasm, it is the edition of Graefe, the second in date—for the reproductions of 1606 and 1610 are not a new edition, they are its two volumes printed at Leipzig, removed by two hundred and eighty years from the primitive edition—which I would not want to make on my own person the double experience of this verb..., etc. Oh Heinsius! what has become of that good taste one preaches to others? Well! it is I who will try to answer the Dutch Aristarchus. Instead of *ἀνέρα νικήσαντα κατηφεῖ χειρὶ πατάξας*, read *ἀνέρι νικήσαντι κατηφέα χεῖρα πετάσσας* (Homeric expression), and you will have reasonable verses, even elegant ones, and above all very conformable to the ancient custom which they recall while confirming it. That is most certainly a correction that would not have escaped Graefe if, instead of editing, he had translated.
Few months before the interruption of all political relations with Russia caused the cessation, or at least rendered the literary commerce very difficult, I learned, through a note emanating from the University of Saint Petersburg, that the commentary which the late Mr. Graefe had promised to follow his edition of the *Dionysiaca* has never appeared, and is not even found entirely finished in the literary succession of the learned philologist.
Leipsic, B removed by two hundred and eighty years from the primitive edition of Antwerp, which I took as the base for my own, without however forbidding myself the right to admit into it the readings of the sixteenth-century annotators, even when Graefe thought it appropriate to reject them. Nor have I permitted myself to forgo the efforts of modern critics who came after him, such as M. Riegler in his *Grammatical Studies on Nonnus* (1), and especially M. Koehler in his scholarly analysis of the *Dionysiaca* (2). Their corrections, which almost always agree with mine, impose upon me the obligation to speak of them with modesty, perhaps, but always with gratitude. It is especially in my system of reconstruction—a scaffold erected to repair the cracks in the edifice—that I have separated myself from Graefe, by taking on the task of filling the numerous lacunae that he signals, establishes, or leaves to persist. I would not wish to appear too presumptuous in asserting that my method gives the poem of Nonnus an entirely different character, or at least a regularity and cohesion which it lacked; one will judge of that. But it is time to explain in what my methods consist.
XXI. My methods of correction.
It must be the same with the *Dionysiaca*, I shall easily be granted, relative to the material preservation of the text, as with the *Paraphrase of the Gospel*. The two manuscripts, coming from the same epoch, from the same country, from the same city, from the same author, and perhaps also from the same copyists, must have had the same destiny. Now, if the *Paraphrase*, commented upon and interpreted so many times during the Italian Renaissance of Greek letters—an epoch more naturally avid for writings inspired by the Christian religion at its dawn than for the final gasps of its dying rival—if, I say, this *Paraphrase*, so often corrected, is nonetheless still in need of correction, what is there to be astonished at if a production by the same author, rejected at first by reason of its purely mythological theme, has remained in that formless or neglected costume from which its twin sister, despite so much assistance, has not been able to emerge entirely?
Certainly, if I were the scholar I would wish to be, I should have had, before providing an edition of a poet as mistreated as Nonnus, to consult all his manuscripts myself; here are my excuses for having dispensed in part with this work: will they be enough to soften the ire of the critics, to which, through this forced negligence, I have imprudently exposed myself?
First, there is no trace of these manuscripts in our largest Paris libraries, even less in our provincial collections. At Florence, distracted by the Pitti Palace, the gallery, and perhaps also by the Cascine, not then foreseeing my late-blooming passion for the *Dionysiaca*, I did not think to ask at the Laurentian Library for the manuscript that I have already described. Might I have forgotten, perhaps, to mention that it bore on its last page, in three very incorrect Greek iambics, this:
*By great fortune this manuscript* *Has just finished being transcribed:* *Manuel began it; Maximus, by his hand,* *Thanks to heaven, has brought it to the end.*
Now, in this final inscription I have not been able to see, as Bandini did, the names of the owners of the manuscript; I maintain that it concerns copyists, and bad copyists at that, who, despite their imperial appellations, deserve, for their honor, nothing but oblivion. Furthermore, Bandini affirms that this copy accords with the edition where Lectius himself reproduced, in his *Corpus of Greek Poets*, the voluminous 12mo of 1605. Thus the folio of Geneva supplied that codex for me (5).
When I was at Rome, I was occupied there much less with Nonnus than with the ambassador of France, who was called Chateaubriand at that time; and I only passed through the Vatican to go and see, in that cabinet which overlooks the eternal city—resplendent for all adornment with a crucifix—the pope, so pious, so spiritual, and such a skillful reformer, who had taken the title of Leo XII. Since then, to supply my own neglect, I have had to see, through the enlightened eyes of another, the manuscripts from the libraries of the Holy City and of Naples. A friend, a practiced hellenist—for in our own days still, as in the time of Louis XIII, the gentleman, after having wielded the sword, knows how to hold also the pen of the traveler and the pencil of the archaeologist—M. the Count Adolphe de Caraman, the ingenious restorer of Anet, kindly consented to collate from the Italian copies certain passages, the most mutilated, which I had signaled to his zeal for letters, and he gathered no new version there.
The copies of Venice, of Milan, and of Munich replicate the Palatine exactly; and the researches of d'Ansse de Villoison at Weimar revealed to him only a very small number of variants, from which Graefe, before me, had been unable to draw any profit.
I have only been able to consult myself the Palatine copy restored at Heidelberg. It is therefore on this manuscript that I stop for a moment; an *in quarto* traveler, bound in old morocco with gilt edges, written on cotton paper, quite neatly, and still bearing the stamps of the Vatican and of Paris, where it resided. I read it very attentively, despite the method that places each distich on a single line in the two columns, the second verse opposite the first, which renders the reading quite frustrating. I have scrupulously collated it.
A I have collated it scrupulously with the text of Graefe—who says he had only indirect communications of it—as well as with the *editio princeps* of Antwerp, and the two reproductions given of it, either by Lubinus Eilhartus in 1605-10 or by Lectius at Geneva in 1606. This long and difficult operation, which I regret not having been able to apply to the nine or ten copies merely catalogued in Europe—for I understand their full utility—has nevertheless demonstrated to me that, similar to the others and bearing the same date, this one was a very exact tracing of the manuscripts of Sambucus and Philelphus; the calligrapher, when he found himself embarrassed or when he perpetuated erasures, far from having to resort to another copy or to innovate, took care to say in the margin, in poor Latin: *sic erat in exemplari mihi communicato*. I noted therein only one or two traits that escaped the perspicacity of Graefe or his correspondents. The eyes of M. E. Miller, librarian of the Palais Bourbon, clearer than my own, extracted from it also some marginal notes of which he has allowed me to profit. Furthermore, without foreseeing that his kindly expertise would come to my aid, did he not leaf through, in Spain, the four sixteenth-century copies, partial or total, that the Greek Lascaris bequeathed from Messina to the Escorial, or that Hurtado de Mendoza sent there from Venice? Did Falkenburg not also give me, in his primitive edition (alas! much too faithful), the manuscript of Sambucus, now useless in Vienna? And does it not result from his investigations and my own that the rare copies dispersed throughout Europe all bear almost the same imperfections, for having been taken from one and the same original? In the absence of the insights that cannot spring from these primitive copies, the only ones found until now, Graefe later allowed me to enjoy at my leisure the summary of the work on grammar that, up to 1826, had accumulated around Nonnus. B Undoubtedly, the very painful reform of the Greek text—even though I have given it all the completion of which I was capable—is not yet perfect, and when there has been so much to rectify after men such as Falkenburg, Scaliger, and Graefe, I could not flatter myself that after me nothing remains to be done: but if my new readings, so numerous that they amount to no less than fifteen hundred, have not erased all the stains, I have at least indicated to my successors the base or rule that can serve them in this difficult operation.
I proceed from this principle: although he is fond of two or three epithets whose meaning is from time to time obscure to us, Nonnus has not knowingly admitted into his verses a proposition devoid of meaning, rarely a repetition of the expression when it is not indispensable for clarity, and never—let us speak plainly—a triviality or an ineptitude, as Heyne says. I could even affirm, and here I would not be the only one of my opinion, that never has a fault of quantity voluntarily made the strings of his lyre grate. Also, if, in a hexameter submitted to my preliminary meditations, I happened to encounter:
*A vowel, to run too hastily, Which was by a vowel in its path struck;*
or, to speak less well but more positively than Boileau’s imitative periphrasis, as soon as I glimpsed the shadow of a hiatus, I almost always stopped short, and did not leave the suspect verse until I had recovered or ventured the version that was to make the stain disappear—let us say rather, the irregularity unnoticed by the primitive poets, but become a stain in the centuries of decadence. For I knew that the pupil was a much more scrupulous observer of prosody than his own masters, and that, in this almost insignificant respect, Nonnus surpassed Hesiod as well as Homer. C On the other hand, if the elision came to shock my eyes or my ear, I put the poorly forged verse back on the anvil, according to the precept of Horace; finally, when the hexameter seemed to me to sin by a lack of elegance or euphony, or when the same terms were found in the same phrase brought together without necessity one to another; and if there was insignificance in the thought, unfitness, or a contradiction in the epithet, I made it a rule to seek a new lesson. For I knew also that my poet, imbued with the precepts of the school of Alexandria, and son of a century where the form of the language was particularly polished and enriched, avoided the repetitions that mar the style even more than abundance and periphrases render it languid.
Thus, to cite at once only three examples of these thousand inaccuracies: when the reader sees the nymph, discoverer of garlands and of many other mystical rites that have caused more serious disturbances among the learned, as one will judge by my notes; when he D
will see, I say, Mystis (Book XIII, v. 14) suddenly qualified by the unintelligible name of "mother of Corinth," instead of "mother of the garland" (*Korinthou* for *korymbou*); when Silenus, far from defying Apollo, begins to celebrate Bacchus (*Melizomenou Dionyso* for *Erizetai Argyrotoxo*, ch. XIX, v. 325); then, when a flute dances on the ground instead of a shepherd (ch. XIV, v. 290); finally, when I take at random these three absurdities (an expression used toward me by certain Essenes in a similar occurrence, but which is hardly more polite among them than among us), and that these absurdities of the primitive text are scrupulously preserved in the latest edition by Graëfe, is it the fault of Nonnus, and must his reputation suffer forever, and without a defender, from the carelessness of glossators or the negligence of the copyists?
If I myself, more obstinate than my predecessors, perhaps because I have profited from their first labors, but nevertheless weary like them of seeking uselessly the key to an enigma that is the fruit of a scribal error, have admitted one or two times only, if my memory serves, a half-satisfactory equivalent, shall we accuse one of the most witty writers of the fourth century—too much escorted perhaps by epithets, yet by epithets always significant—of abuse of language, of confusion, or of imbecility?
If, therefore, I have gone further than the corrections of the Leipzig edition, and if, far from the manuscripts, I repeat it, I have overloaded with a great number of rectifications the verbs, substantives, and adjectives, principally of the Greek text, it is because, to raise to its summit this edifice of which one had barely built the first floor, I have been almost always directed by a certain habit of the ways of Nonnus, which the meditations inseparable from an exact translation must have made familiar to me; then by common sense, for I could not suppose that the poet of so witty an era would have frequently and lightheartedly, so to speak, sinned against the rules; sometimes also, shall I confess it? I have let myself be guided in these corrections by a sort of instinct and sentiment, of which I would have difficulty in giving myself the reason.
XXII. Lacunae. Interversions.
I do not believe either that Nonnus is guilty of the lacunae that Graëfe has frequently introduced to resolve his own difficulties; and I have not been able to resolve myself to leave a single one subsist in my text. I can well believe sometimes that there has been disorder, transversion, if one wills, but never a lacuna, nor verses left unfinished, as in the Aeneid. The clumsy copyist blurred the text, but he did not omit; and those verses that Graëfe has replaced with dots or with asterisks, I have always found them before or after, in the same chant or in neighboring chants, without recurring to the insufficient resource of supplementary verses or hemistichs.
The lacunae, no doubt, are not always improbable in Greek manuscripts, and it requires in the proofreader almost as much perspicacity to discover them as art to remedy them. But here they have appeared to me out of season; and the first three books, like the last two, not having signaled a single one, one could conclude that Graëfe and Falkenburg have taken for lacunae the carelessness of copyists less trained than those of the beginning and the end. Moreover, this lacuna, assuming a connection between the alleged fragment and the thought of the critic, more than with that of the poet, cannot be put forward except in desperation; and one must be wary of the too natural penchant to cut the knot of difficulties without resolving them, and of substituting one's own manner for that of the author.
For the rest, the character of Nonnian poetry, or rather the memory of the poet, seems to me to have suffered even more from the interversions of the manuscript than from its other corrections—as numerous as they are, however; it is principally, I am more convinced than ever, to the transpositions of a poorly transcribed text, so common in the intermediate chants, that Nonnus owes his reputation as a "repeater" (*ressasseur*), an expressive term invented by d'Alembert, but by no means for the occasion of our poet, whom he had not read. One will understand me.
When, for example, the final trait of one of the harangues is found placed in the center of the address, the series—always so prolonged in Nonnus—of images and mythological allusions, which seemed finished when it is only clumsily interrupted, seems to recommence; and the reasoning remains in the air, deprived of all conclusion. Now these thoughtless errors of the copyist become, in the eyes of the Aristarchs, a habitual vice of style in an author of whom they have often, and with good right, blamed the abundance and the lack of sobriety.
Let one imagine the fourth book of the Aeneid interverted in the same way. The fragments of the chaste confessions of Dido mixed with her passionate outbursts or her touching farewells, the plaints of Iarbas confounded with the exhortations of Mercury; hence, one will agree, the admirable drama will deserve the most just criticisms; the taste of Virgil will appear suspect, and his genius will receive a first blow, which this same process, if it is renewed in the other chants, will soon have transformed into negligence of style and a disjointedness of composition.
A I ask, what masterpiece or what poet’s renown would withstand such outrages? And yet, upon the lower steps of the temple of which the prince of Latin poets occupies the sanctuary, this is what happens to Nonnus. Now, the Egyptian is all the more suspected of these bad habits because the returns and the superfluity of descriptive words fall into the defects familiar to the writers of his century. But let no one demand of me a categorical demonstration of how the inversion must have occurred, nor that I explain by what kind of negligence the verses went astray under the hand of the copyist. When distichs and even entire paragraphs, once re-established in the place I assigned to them without ever altering them, present a natural meaning, a continuous and satisfying order of ideas, that satisfies me; I want nothing more, and I look for nothing beyond that.
Thus, when in a long narration, I say it once again to better manifest my thought, the reflection or the idea that the poet wished to mark and seal at the end is encountered at the exordium; when, moreover, the lively part of the speech or the interrogative paragraph finds itself split into two sections by another sequence of reasoning, it is evident that this babbling, as J.-J. Rousseau used to say, can weary the patience; and that then the author, already burdened by the load of his own weaknesses, succumbs under the weight of the scribe’s faults, for which he becomes responsible to the readers.
I have therefore had to devote a large portion of the time which I dedicated to the *Dionysiaca* to this classification of the text, for which my scruples as a conscientious translator were a true help. These two labors, moving at the same pace, walked side-by-side, so to speak; and, after having surrendered myself ardently to the profession of word-corrector and sentence-adjuster, I did not wish to leave for the Hellenists who will come after me this task to recommence. I therefore bravely determined to provide a Greek edition myself, having it followed by the complete table of my corrections and their principal motives, as well as the method which I followed. This dark and dense forest which the first editor had too scrupulously respected, of which the critics of the sixteenth century had cleared some approaches, and which in the nineteenth the last editor had cleansed of its brambles, I have applied the axe to it in my turn, and I have clarified it to attempt to bring light and life back to it. Now I had to struggle all the more obstinately B against this imperfection of the text, for it is the reef of which I fear the danger above all, and against which it is probably in my destiny to be shipwrecked; for it is also from there that this fatal prejudice against Nonnus comes, and this stigma of mediocrity which was inflicted upon him long ago, without ever seriously attempting to revise either his text or such a sentence. To combat these age-old prejudices, I do not demand that my readers be grateful to me for all my care in applying dressings to so many wounds, in repairing and coating with a new varnish these dusty paintings: I ask simply that, instead of leafing through verses unrecognizable in the first editions, and crushed under the disdain of three centuries, one reads them attentively in the text as I have reconstructed it with the help of its own materials, and as if it had just escaped in this new form from the heaps of worm-eaten parchments of Mount Athos.
XXIII.
Poets contemporary with Nonnus. Coluthus, Tryphiodorus, John of Gaza, Musaeus, Quintus of Smyrna. Poets of the Anthology, Claudian, Ausonius.But when, through a wholly natural distrust of myself, the inconvenience of which nevertheless should not rebound upon Nonnus, I decline the task of pronouncing, in a reasoned and distinct paragraph, my own sentence on the poet whom I translate; if I hide in the shadow of the judgments and the critique, of which the preceding pages sufficiently reflect the clarity; if finally I thus discharge myself onto the reader of this part of my obligations, I cannot hide so boldly from another usage better established. The custom which governs prefaces wants every serious translator to engage there in sustained comparisons between his author and the works of the same genre and the same age. But even here, it is easy to see, I could not submit entirely to these requirements: how to trace around a writer whose epoch is so little precise, an exact circle of contemporaneity? And must I not eliminate first of all Coluthus, who, without contest, lived a century after Nonnus, and Tryphiodorus, whose uncertain birth is also for him nonetheless, according to Hermann, very much later?
The one, Coluthus, born at Lycopolis, modern Siout, whose immense palm trees I have seen reflected in the waves of the Nile, starts from Egypt at the head of three hundred and eighty-five verses to carry off Helen; and he has conquered, even in the eyes of his purifiers, only the reputation of a weak imitator of Homer and a mediocre disciple of C (which remained very nebulous). Now, if I have resolutely placed it at the very end of the fourth century, despite my predecessors who fix it to the first years of the fifth, it is not only to bring myself closer to both and for the sake of chronological truth, but it is also to vindicate both opinions, without too much effort and at the same time.
A Nonnos. Or, if the scholarly efforts of M. Stanislas Julien have not been able to completely save the disciple from oblivion, I very much fear that the master will also disappear without leaving further traces, despite all my attempts to rejuvenate him.
The other, Tryphiodorus, having escaped from I know not what unknown region—though still an Egyptian—in overturning Ilion with the aid of six hundred and seventy-seven hexameters, has provided only a cold sketch of the marvelous paintings of the second book of the Aeneid; a faded analysis, which the merit of a harmonious diction alone has preserved from time.
I must put aside John of Gaza, printed for the first time at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a shameless plagiarist of Nonnos. His verses, which, numbering seven hundred and one, describe a cosmographical map of Antioch, were revealed to us by Rutgers, and have left very little trace in the memory of the most persistent Hellenists.
But if these three poets, semi-epics, who came long after Nonnos and his zealots, have taken it upon themselves to steal from him certain epithets, a greater number of turns of phrase, or even, from time to time, a hemistich, Musaeus, who appears to be his contemporary, has also borrowed from him some images and even complete lines. B Now this last consideration would suffice all by itself to settle the dispute that has arisen between commentators jealous to determine the respective and personal relationships of one with the other: for never did Nonnos, for his part, borrow an entire verse from anyone but Homer. The majority of philologists have made the poet of Panopolis the preceptor of the chanter of Hero, and Bernhardy explicitly entitles the latter the "happiest imitator of Nonnos." Only one has been encountered who, reversing this natural order, makes Musaeus the teacher, while another, even more daring, has wanted Musaeus to be Nonnos himself, but Nonnos, adds a third, cured of an unreflective superabundance of style, and returned to a better taste.
I will readily agree, for my part, that aided by the choice of a more restricted and more moving subject, Musaeus has deployed more sensitivity and grace under shades that are often true, sometimes exaggerated; but, in this poem, which at most equals the importance of one episode of the Dionysiaca, I cannot admit that he has surpassed Nonnos and the numerous cantos where the latter allows passion to dominate; and I maintain, in any state of the case, that the Egyptian C is always superior due to his harmonious flexibility. As for the talent of invention, this point is not doubtful for anyone: I have no need, it seems to me, to demonstrate the superiority of my author, to have recourse to his "thundering and sublime spirit," an expression under which I found it difficult to recognize the characteristic traits of Nonnos; and yet these terms are recorded and repeated without hesitation in the preface of a learned commentator on Musaeus, who, certainly, does not appear elsewhere to be a fanatical partisan of the Egyptian poet. Could it be, then, that he had read or appreciated only the first two cantos of the Dionysiaca, where the scene indeed passes in the midst of the air, in the middle of the bursts of lightning and the rumblings of thunder?
Be that as it may, the student was destined to be more fortunate than the master in the eyes of posterity. The most celebrated poets of the century that saw the renaissance of Musaeus received him with pomp and formed his retinue. Boscan, who had just overhauled the system of Spanish metrics, and created—or at least perfected—for the fatherland of the old romances, the hendecasyllabic verse, charmed the court of Charles V with it.
Ah! Could I forget Boscan? Is it not he who revealed to me the poem of Musaeus long before the Greek language had told me enough secrets to read it in its original form; this Boscan, who followed me along the banks of the brooks, always united with Garcilaso, when, in my youthful dreams, I invoked for all my future a voyage to the oriental lands. Initiated, almost as a child, into the sonorous idiom that reigns beyond the Pyrenees, and of which the Gascon dialect, the first I ever stammered, is the brother as well as the neighbor, I only left the pastoral laments of Nemoroso to cast into the echoes of my valley the sighs of the intrepid swimmer of Sestos. D Did I know then that my heart would soon beat on the shore where the tower of Hero stood, and that I would hear the splashing of the waves of the Hellespont, where Leander died?
Later, I was to rediscover the sad adventure on the banks of the Arno, when a little volume, spread out under the porticoes of the Florence gallery, showed it to me retraced in the Italian stanzas of Bernardo Tasso, the father of the divine chanter of Jerusalem.
Finally, Clément Marot, in his naive style, gave them the Gallic rhyme, and made Francis I and his gallant court shed tears over these imaginary loves.
Nothing was to be missing for Musaeus, not even
A the strange honor he shared with Virgil in the burlesque travesties of Scarron. This easy and bold rhymester, laughing at everything, even at his wife, whom a happy widowhood was about to raise to the highest destinies, also wanted to laugh at the sad Hero, just as he had laughed at the unfortunate Dido.
And, during these triumphs of his disciple, Nonnus, disdained and misunderstood, languished, gnawed by worms B under the dust; and even now, punished for my lack of genius (caret quia vate sacro), he waits sadly for my modest prose to try to push open for him the door of the literary world.
In this shortened view of the school of Nonnus, my readers will perhaps have noticed for themselves that most of the Greek heroic poets of the last epoch were Egyptians, and belonged to Upper Egypt, as if the ecstatic life of the ascetics of neighboring Thebais had communicated to them the exaltation of thought and the habit of meditation. They combined with it, it is true, everything that the education and knowledge acquired at Alexandria could add of reality. It is thus, no doubt, that interest was directed toward the deeds and actions of Bacchus, the dithyrambic god, the father of enthusiasm, because they recalled the conquests, so popular in Greece, and even in Egypt, of Alexander the Great.
I finally arrive at Quintus of Smyrna, who figures well here, and without a play on words, as the fifth among the poets whose crown I weave around the head of Nonnus. He was found in Calabria joined to Tryphiodorus and Coluthus, whether the nature of the subject or a whim of the copyist had cemented their alliance, much more than a chronological date or even an analogy of style. Quintus, more than his two colleagues, brought from the monastery where they lay buried the surname of Calaber, joined to his Latin designation, which was imagined in order to disguise the poorly determined appellation of Cointos, and because of the embarrassment one felt in inventing another. I add also, following that fierce war that the sixteenth century waged against Greek names in order to convert them into *-us*; hostilities declared across the board, from which Nonnus has had so much to suffer on his own account.
The fourteen books of the *Paralipomena* of Cointos, a supplement—if one does not prefer to say the dregs—of Homer, only resemble the *Dionysiaca* in their volume and the number of verses, which are however triple on our side. This second *Iliad* affects all the manners of the first, and even copies the irregularities of rhythm, such as the hiatus and the spondaic verse, which Nonnus, the declared protector of the dactyl, has always so scrupulously avoided. "Cointos," says M. Tourlet, "has nobility, fire, enthusiasm, and genius; there reigns in the work C a sound taste, a nervous touch, a truly epic tone (1)."
I shall certainly take care not to take anything away from this infatuation of a translator, for fear that one might come to accuse me later of a fault entirely similar in my own cause. But, vocational jealousy aside, Nonnus has always seemed to me more correct, more elegant, more melodious, and above all less a servile copyist of Homeric expressions than Cointos, whose simplicity, while working to make itself primitive, could not be exercised in the fourth century without often appearing hard, rough, and too imprinted with archaism. I do not, however, close my eyes, out of a sort of systematic opposition, to the special merit of this continuator of the *Iliad*, who, without preamble, without invocation to the Muse, without exposition of his subject—all necessary accompaniments of the epic—takes the narrative where Homer left it, just as Maffeo Vegio, the Italian, extended the *Aeneid*, and Th. May, the Englishman, the *Pharsalia*. I admit that the diction of Cointos is sometimes energetic, even ornate, and I recognize that he has at least a certain advantage over the poet whom I believe to be his predecessor, in the comparisons, the charm and diversion of the epic, which he lavishes, while the author of the *Dionysiaca* has spared them far too much, in my opinion.
Must it be confessed, and to risk the paradox? Of all the writers born from the poetic school of Alexandria in its second epoch, the one who seems to me most incontestably related to Nonnus in style, as well as in manners, the virtues or the vices of style, is Claudian: but, since the works of his that remain to us are almost exclusively Latin, I have little to say about them here, except to regret his descriptions in Greek verse of Nicaea and Berytus. If they had reached us, they might have been able, if only by comparison, to throw some light on the date of the *Dionysiaca*, where the same subjects are treated. I will only observe that the exotic adornments whose profusion some Aristarchuses reproach him for, little suited, they say, to the Latin dialect, are found better placed in the Hellenic idiom, for the oriental breadth lends itself to the full abundance of imagery. Claudian and Nonnus both sought to enhance, through the richness of colors and expressions too constantly elevated not to be sometimes exaggerated, the themes of politics or Fable. Both, too partisan to a false grandeur, under a diction that is easy and harmonious, but sometimes monotonous, have developed to excess the fantasy of an ornate, fertile mind, with more energy, verve, and pretension to the sublime in the Latin, with more sweetness, sentiment, and abuse of language in the Greek. I do not know what the future holds for Nonnus, if he ever manages to be read attentively
A by those who are able to appreciate the merit of having known how to handle a foreign language so as to make a name for himself among the heroic poets of Rome, three centuries after Statius, the last of them, and for having obtained that a statue erected in the Forum of Trajan, by a senate even as servile as that one, should have perpetuated his memory.
After Claudian, one could still cite Ausonius among the contemporaries of Nonnus, though rather so as not to omit anything than to compare them. Ausonius certainly has as much erudition and wit as the poet of Panopolis; but this wit owes much more to the sallies vulgarly attributed to the influence of the banks of the Garonne where he was born, than to the banks of the Nile where intelligence seemed to have taken refuge, fleeing before the invasion of the Visigoths. However, if my countryman was not sometimes obscure, I would like to pay him homage with this remark of Cicero: "The negligence of a writer who is laboring over things more than words, does not lack grace." His style is tormented, difficult, and from time to time as harsh as that of Nonnus is harmonious and flowing. They have this in common, that one can doubt of the one and the other whether they were Christians. As far as Ausonius is concerned, one would affirm it when one reads his Ephemerides, one could deny it when one peruses his epigrams and centos. But, on this point, for our two poets everything is conjecture; and when at that same epoch so much darkness covers for us the West where the light was arriving, must one be astonished that we are ignorant of what was happening at the border of Ethiopia from where it was going to withdraw? To reconcile everything, there would be reason to believe that, like Nonnus, Ausonius was, according to the expression of Saint Gregory of Nazianzen, "engaged at first in the paths of error, then a faithful and zealous disciple of Christ." And at that epoch, as in the revolutions that followed it, it was thus for many men of heart and talent, who asked the only consoling religion for a shelter against the disorders and the debasement of their century, and who, after having been pagans or strong spirits—terms that have become synonyms—ended by being sincerely Christian.
Following the recognized or contested contemporaries of Nonnus, one more word on a poet his friend, I almost said an emulator of his B literary researches and of his religious conversion, who outlived him, if I am not mistaken, and was his student. Yes, in this Synesius, the illustrious African descendant of Hercules, who, first enamored of mythological ideas and the beautiful geniuses of Greece, knew how to carry the truth to the foot of the throne of the weak Arcadius, then became bishop of Cyrene, his homeland, to defend it by his courage and honor it by his writings, I see again an image and a disciple of Nonnus, whom he admired and whose old age he must have known; for even in his hymns where the Platonic word expresses the sublime metaphysics of Christianity, where the Anacreontic iamb is consecrated to the praise of the One Being, the principle God, the pious bishop seems to have profited from the perfected method of Nonnus, and shows a sort of reflection of the elegance and the euphony of the hexameter, which the poet of Panopolis had just inaugurated.
One of the characteristic traits of this sort of Egyptian renaissance, which I would willingly call the fourth and last phase of ancient Greek literature, is its profound respect for its predecessors. And it is not only to the Homeric era or to the century of Pericles that it pays homage with its admiration and its borrowings; it is also to the poetic school that appeared before it at Alexandria. It seems, in fact, that the more it distances itself by the affectation of the idea and the exaggerated adornment of style from the heroic simplicity of the primitive age, or from the dignity of the grandeur of the civilized age, the more it venerates them and seeks its models there carefully. It is not to its own annals, dishonored by humiliating revolutions and soiled by so many servilities, that it goes to ask for its inspirations or light; it ascends ceaselessly towards its past, feeds on the fabulous or historical glory of Greece; and one must be grateful to it for not having blinded itself regarding its own merit, and for having known how to have recourse, even when it imitates them from so far away, to the true types of the beautiful. That was, if I am not mistaken, the symptom of a leaning to struggle against decadence and against the invasion of bad taste; for it belongs above all to superior spirits to distrust themselves and to confess nobly all that they owe to their predecessors. The most original of modern geniuses has said: "We cannot go further than the ancients; they have not left us in verse" C anymore than some Greek novels, without taste and without genius, deserve to be placed among the productions of art. One could be astonished at this severity of Lebeau, if one did not notice that he was writing in 1762, in the second epoch of the darkness that formed around Nonnus. And undoubtedly the historiographer had never read either the *Dionysiaca* or the Greek novels in verse that he places between the two Theodosii, when the only ones that remain to us belong to the twelfth century. D
left for our part that the glory of following them well (1). A
XXIV. Borrowings of Nonnos. His imitations. The Bassarica of Dionysos. The Indian poems.
As memory dominates invention in Nonnos, I shall not, in order to do honor to the second of these faculties at the expense of the first, deny that he has made use of the fabulous traditions of his predecessors. What fiction, a product of his own thought, could he have slipped with success or propriety into the mythology of the fourth century of the Christian era? I have judged it useless to follow in this the example of some German abridgers, and to search out, one by one, the archaeological sources from which he drew his legends; I shall indicate later only the principal ones. He is accused above all of having put under contribution the Bassarica of a certain Dionysos; but, since one knows neither the era, nor the homeland, nor even sufficiently the name of this author—confounded perhaps with that of his hero—it has not yet been well established which of these two bards of Bacchus inspired the other. Moreover, I would be quite inclined myself to yield to Dionysos, the Samian says, the honors of priority, and it would not be doing a great wrong to Nonnos; for the Bassarica have only reached us in the state of isolated verses, or even of broken hemistichs, escaped for the most part from citations by Stephen of Byzantium. Their merit is purely ethnographic, and could not give any precise idea of the plan or the execution of the work.
"These Bassarica," says Colonel Wilford (2), "contained the history of the great Indian war, the Maha-Barata, written in Greek verse. It is lost; but, at the sight of the small number of fragments that remain of it, it appears that this work was approximately similar to the poems of Nonnos; the Dionysiaca, he adds, replace the lacunae of the Sanskrit Maha-Barata."
Sir W. Jones thought otherwise concerning the Dionysiaca, although he was disposed to relate them to another Hindu composition, the Ramayana; he did not doubt that a sustained comparison of the two poems would establish the identity of Bacchus with one of the most ancient heroes of India, Rama.
This double system has been contested by H. Wilson. While blaming his adversaries for having read only half of the Dionysiaca, he confesses that he perused them in haste, only to form a general idea of the details: a convenient method, and one which has been perfected in our day, in that it dispenses even with leafing through pages; it consists now in reading carefully the table of contents or the chapter headings: after which, the book is judged. B
Despite his rapid examination, M. Wilson establishes victoriously, it seems to me, that there is, between the Hindu poems and the Dionysiaca, no resemblance, no more in the heroes, their names or their attributes, than in the course of events. He is less successful when he seeks to rediscover in modern geography the cities and tribes of the Indian census, in the twenty-sixth book; and this is due in part to the fact that the names cited by Nonnos have been almost all disfigured or Hellenized by the copyist of the Dionysiaca. C
I excuse myself entirely in the presence of this contentious point, and entrench myself behind my complete ignorance of Sanskrit; it is nonetheless difficult to believe that Greece, which knew the Indies so poorly both before and after the expedition of Alexander, or even Egypt, to which commerce brought only notions that were either imperfect or exaggerated, could have resolutely penetrated then into this mysterious Hindu literature, only recently unveiled to our gaze. Greece, it must not be forgotten, made its lineage go back to the Phoenicians and the Egyptians, and claimed to have spread, in its turn, light into the Indies, through the aid of the exploits of Hercules, and better still the triumphs of Bacchus, the civilizing genius par excellence; but it did not keep the primitive memory of the banks of the Ganges, and its historical traditions present very few distinct vestiges of an Indian origin.
On the other hand, the little that I have read of the ancient Indian poems, through French or English translations, persuades me that Sanskrit poetry, if it piles up facts and exaggerates images, nevertheless simplifies the style and spares the figures and the epithet. There is not in it the bizarre confusion and the luxury of color that radiates incessantly in Arabic or Persian poetry. Its boldness is in the imagination; but the expression is almost always clear and naive, even in the most fantastic tableaux; one would find it difficult to rediscover in Nonnos these characters of the old Hindu epics. D
Nonnos, in summary, is essentially an imitator, but an imitator in his own manner; he sometimes weakens his models, but it is in attempting to rejuvenate them. He is without doubt a great manufacturer of epithets: he forges them, it is true, from several metals, and his fusion extends even sometimes to the verb; but he never uses those filler adjectives, those ready-made surnames, or those invariable attributes consecrated and accepted in the poetic glossary: he borrows from Homer locutions or proverbial hemistichs; but, first, the fact occurs rarely; and as for the epithets, far from drawing them from the Iliad and the Odyssey, far even from adopting those of the other poets whom he also imitated, he
makes it a rule to avoid them everywhere, to produce an equivalent of his own, or rather to compose a new term to better express his thought: such is his habitual process, and it follows that the study of his poetry is an excellent exercise for a Hellenist. For my part, my translation has so initiated me into the secrets of Greek versification and has furnished my memory with so many epic expressions, that the reading of the great poets has become for me henceforth much less laborious, and consequently much sweeter.
XXV. Plan and character of the epic of Nonnos.
In general, the chanters of heroic acts and the wonders of an expiring cult, who, in this advanced decadence, sought to struggle with the weapons of mythology against Christianity—whether, like them, they attempted to exalt their decrepit theogony upon the ruins of their Olympus, while Synesius was already placing the seat of the new religion beyond all the heavens; or whether, like Palladas and Paul the Silentiary, they placed at the service of a morality already impressed with Christian dogma the erudition of the Fable and the last elegances of the Hellenic language—all these Greeks, I say, still pagans, skeptics, or already Christians, had emerged from the same schools that saw the birth of the naive and flowery verses of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, the elegant creator of the genre of poetic and religious meditations that Lamartine has brought so high in our days; and they hailed a guide and a model in this same Nonnus, who, in this great epoch of renovation, had led his Muse to Parnassus as to Calvary, and drawn from both sources: for, we cannot repeat it too much with his judges of modern Germany, he had in the *Dionysiaca*, as in the *Paraphrase of the Gospel*, carried the artistic form of rhythm to its perfection; and, if he sometimes marred the idea by an excessive emphasis, he owed at least to the melody and the polish of his style a true originality.
What pains taken for a poet of an inferior century after all! And what a pity that the twenty-six thousand verses of Nonnus have remained to us in two poems, when so many tragedies of Sophocles and all the comedies of Menander have disappeared! No doubt, the compensation is not satisfying and our regrets remain irreparable; but does it follow that, out of an exclusive respect for the masters of ancient art, we must let their too-late and their last imitator languish in oblivion? Must the author of so many harmonious hexameters, or, if one wishes, the collector of so many poetic myths, of so many elegant turns of phrase, perish unknown, because these turns and these phrases were sometimes charged with expressing researched thoughts—let us say better, the precious ridicule of his century? If one does not wish to consider the *Dionysiaca* as an epic, why not see in it, under a religious and mythological envelope, however, one of those primitive novels, contemporary with or predecessors of the *Erotica* of Heliodorus, more fertile in episodes and in digressions, perhaps similar to the rhymed novels that have for some years usurped the name of poems; in short, a long versified drama, departing by its sacred and national nature from the Milesian tales, and redeeming by the beautiful fabrication of the verses, and the sustained tone of the diction, the antiquated mythology of the subject?
No, there is not in Nonnus, as one might have said, several poems in one; he has an exact method, a well-conceived plan, traced without confusion, followed without disorder. He has put into action and into a preamble what elsewhere is in narrative, that is all. Before showing the beneficent God, it was necessary to explain from what chaos his power was going to bring forth the world. Hence, at the beginning, the struggle of good and evil, or of Jupiter against Typhoeus; then the trials of Cadmus, who, followed by Harmonia, brings into the heart of Greece the cult and the arts of Phoenicia and of Egypt. After Zagreus, who disappeared in the conjuration of the Titans, a second effort of the evil-doing element, there finally appears the great Bacchus, Bacchus the Theban, the civilizing genius begotten by the thunderbolt; he escapes from the dwelling of Athamas, from the jealousy of Juno, and grows up beside the universal mother, Rhea. Then the god tames the monster scourges of the earth, softens his body for the auxiliary exercises of combat, and creates the vine, a pacific and conquering weapon. Soon he gathers from all points of the globe and recruits in the ranks of the divine races an immense army; he departs at its head to enslave the Indies, by the same path that Alexander took. Then come the days of the Astacid lake and the defiles of Lebanon, which are for Bacchus the battles of Ipsus and of the Granicus: one follows slowly the invading march of the vine in this pompous itinerary from the bottom of the Gulf of Nicomedia to the banks of the Hydaspes through the enemy ambushes, or the hospitality of the cottage and the palace. In the Indies, the war develops with all its peripeties, the advantages, the defeats, the reverses, the surprises, and the stratagems. Finally, Bacchus prevails, and he establishes his cult and his empire among the peoples of the Indian Orient. From then on, he returns to the shores of the Mediterranean, where he has no other army than his usual retinue; he visits, along the way, Tyre, the homeland of his ancestor Cadmus, fills with his gifts the brilliant Berytus and the valleys of Lebanon; then, crossing Cilicia and Lydia, he carries into Europe his influence and his benefits, descends from Illyria and from
Macedonia towards Thebes, where he is born, and where his divinity and his power are manifested by the chastisement of an unbelieving king; he soon initiates Athens into his mysteries, consoles a forsaken lover at Naxos, for he possesses the art of drying tears and calming sorrows. Next, he struggles against his eternal enemy Juno in the heart of Argos, the earthly center of the power of the queen of the gods, tames the giants of Thrace or the infertile mountains, subdues Pallene, or its soil, rebellious to cultivation; having returned to Phrygia, the domain of his nurse Cybele, from whence he departed, he contends there against the insalubrious emanations of the air which he tempers, and finally leaves the earth to occupy a throne on Olympus, in the midst of the immortals.
All this assemblage, one will agree, lacks neither grandeur nor connection. It is not, without doubt, the unity of place or the short duration of the *Iliad*, the most perfect and best-ordered picture of the quarrels of gods and heroes. The *Dionysiaca* approach much more closely to the *Odyssey*, that painting so touching and so varied in its traverses of human life, or its immortal continuation, the *Telemachus*.
XXVI. Conclusion.
Thus, this translation, so long and sometimes so difficult, I cannot regret having undertaken. I acknowledge, and it is perhaps my excuse, that I did not have, to support and encourage me in my labor, the enthusiasm which excites and the fire which animates the interpreters of the epics of Homer. My principal stimulant was curiosity. In imitating these forms of a style almost always tempered and which offer little pretext for the strong emotions of the heart, in analyzing these witty, numerous verses, brilliant with images, such as the decadence or the exhaustion of an idiom produce, but at the same time devoid of the energy of the beginning or of the apogee, I had before my mind, instead of dazzling lights, only the reflection of the poetic coloring.
Well! I carry the stubbornness in my literary illusions so far that it would be enough for me to have pushed back on a single point the limits of our mythological knowledge, or diminished by a single assailant the number of the adversaries of Nonnus, to congratulate myself on having taken up arms in his favor, and brought to an end my perilous enterprise. After all, has the art of blackening the whiteness of paper been invented only to undo reputations, mislead judgments, perpetuate prejudices, or, if one wishes, to defend from every man reputed profane, even without examination, the approaches to the temple of letters and sciences? Can I not, in my turn, charge my pages with ink to rehabilitate a reputation, level the access to Parnassus, and set up again there an altar destroyed?
Finally, when, in the heart of this region of our noisy capital, where studies flourish in peace, I saw, on the facade of the library that shares with the Pantheon the name of the holy protectress of Paris, just as the Pantheon of false gods hides itself at Rome under the name of Saint Mary of the Rotunda; when I saw, I say, Nonnus gleaming in gold letters in the sun among the greatest writers of all centuries, I conceived the project of tearing him from the sleep in which he sleeps on dusty shelves still on the other side of this rejuvenated wall; and I attempted to disengage him from the rust of time. To save from the darkness a monument of this beautiful language which was the mother of civilization, and made heard, for twelve hundred years, the noblest accents of glory and liberty—it is, I believed at least, to contribute to honoring human thought and to emancipating the intelligence.
NONNUS OF PANOPOLIS: PARAPHRASE OF THE HOLY GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN
(From the edition of Daniel Heinsius, titled: *Aristarchus sacer*, or Exercises on Nonnus’ Metaphrase on John, in the first part of which the interpreter is examined, and in the latter his interpretation is compared with the sacred writer; in both, many passages of the Holy Evangelist are illustrated. - Added is the text of Nonnus and the Holy Evangelist: also three indices; one, the Greek of Sylburgius on Nonnus, two recent ones on the *Aristarchus*, the other Greek, the other Latin. - Leiden, from the press of Bonaventura and Abraham Elzevir, Academ. typogr., 1627.)
INTERPRETATION OF THE HOLY GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN BY NONNUS OF PANOPOLIS. CAPUT I.
A 1-21 Timeless was, beyond reach, in an ineffable beginning the Word, of equal nature, coeval with the Begetter, Son without mother, and the Word of the self-begotten God, light, light from light. From the Father he was undivided, sitting on an eternal throne. And the Word was God, born on high. This from the beginning shone together with God, the craftsman of the world, older than the world. And all things were made through him, both breathless and breathing; and without the laborious Word, nothing that existed came into being. And in him was implanted Life, precious to all, and the light of short-lived men. Life was the nourisher of all. In the murky world, however, an earthly-holding radiance shone with heavenly beams, and the darkness did not grasp it. In the forest which the bees have grazed, there was a certain mountain-wanderer, a dweller in the desolate rock, herald of the primordial B baptism; his name was divine John, who saves the people. He arose, a steadfast-speaking Messenger, so that he might utter testimony concerning the light, so that all, by the voice of one herald, might have the right faith, the infinite one, mother of the world. He was not, however, the intellectual light, but [was sent] so that he might only...
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST.
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of C men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came for testimony, that he might bear witness concerning the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not that light, but [came] that he might bear witness concerning the light.
A He would reveal to all the divinely-spoken jaw, B And appear as the precursor of the unutterable light, declaring a common testimony to the God-accepting people. For the Only-Begotten Word was truly the primordial light with His Father, He who purifies every man, illuminating with spiritual rays the nature of men coming upon the earth. But to the unbelieving world He was unperceived, and the infinite world existed through Him, and the wandering world did not know the approaching Word. He was near His own; but his own, in senseless madness, did not honor Him as a guest. But such as with prudent mind C received Him unswervingly, and did not have a wandering mind, He granted to all the one heavenly honor, that they should be called children of God the ever-living Father, those whom nature did not bring forth in childbirth, nor did the life of human will know [them as] fruit; nor did the nuptial bed, born of fleshly love, plow [them], but they were born children of God, non-plowed, of the Begetter. And the Word, existing by Himself, became flesh, God [made] man, late-born, yet before-born, joining in an ineffable bond the divine face to the mortal-like form. And God dwelt in a home with men, and we saw His glory with human eyes, as the honor of the Only-Begotten Son from the most high Begetter. And He was filled with grace and with the truth of the Begetter. D Regarding the flesh-bearing Word, the holy forerunner man, John, confirmed the testifying voice: "This is he of whom I spoke in blameless story: He has come before me, [who is] posterior, he who arrives, because He was before me." That we all have received from His fullness another grace, set against the former grace: because the Begetter gave the Book of the whole Law to the people through Moses, and grace and truth came to the world through Christ. And God, self-begotten, no one ever beheld with forward-walking eyes; He told [it] in His divine story, He who is cherished in the divine accustomed bosom, the Only-Begotten, walking together with the blameless Begetter. Such is the story of the testimony, which the faithful and truth-speaking herald John uttered with an immortal voice, when the people of the Hebrews sent forth Levites and wakeful priests to the back of the desert forest.
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
9 That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. 11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. 15 John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me. 16 And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. 17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. 18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. 19 And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou?
A The vigilant priests, where the fugitive exile of men dwelt, a dwelling constructed from the roots of its mountain house. The gathered sacrificers asked with swift speech: Who are you? Are you the Christ? And the herald answered with a responsive voice, and did not hide, and did not deny: I am not Christ the king. 21 And the band of Hebrew men, commissioned, interrogated the divine man again with a word: Tell us who then you are. Have you appeared as Elias, a citizen of the Thesbite land? And he answered: I am not the late, eccentric Elias returning to earth. And the bold band of unwashed-footed priests said: Are you to me the one whom they call a diviniloquent prophet, a messenger of things to come? And he answered in double speech: I am not Elias, I am not a divine prophet. B And again the crowd of divinely called priests said: Who are you, that we may announce to all, going back to the sacrificing men—us who were sent with swift foot to come hither—what word have you spoken concerning yourself to the questioning people? But he, from the divine book of the ancient man, sounded forth a voice impelled by God: "The voice of one crying in the desert, Prepare the due way of the King of all," and let a path be most ready for him: as the multiscious Esaias wrote in the divine book. 22 And another band, the incredulous sect of the erring Pharisees, was sent, and asked the wise theologizing man with a word: And why do you baptize? Whence do you wash man with water, if you are not the Christ existing on high, nor are you Elias, the charioteer of the rapid fire, nor a prophet burning with the Spirit, filled with divine utterance? C And to them the divine man sounded a word upon their questioning: I myself have come to you, baptizing with the water of a pure bath: but the one who comes after, who today stands in your midst; of whom I am not worthy, applying my human hand to the extreme foot, to loosen only the straps of his divine sandal. These things were happening at Bethabara near the divine land, across the flow of the Jordan river. But when dawn had brought another course from afar, the chaste John, stretching forth his eye to the opposite side, noticed Jesus, and as he was passing nearby, pointing with his finger, he showed him to the witnessing people: "Behold, the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world." D
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
20 And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ. 21 And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am not. Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No. 22 Then said they unto him, Who art thou? that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? 23 He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias. 24 And they which were sent were of the Pharisees. 25 And they asked him, and said unto him, Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet? 26 John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not; 27 He it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose. 28 These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. 29 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
A Behold, the prudent Lamb of God drawing near. This is he of whom I said: He who comes after me is a man who was before me. 51 I did not know him before with my eyes; but in order that he, having a face unknown to the sons of Israel, might be manifested to them, I came as a precursor of an unproclaimed way, baptizing an untaught, incredulous, wandering people.
52 And opening his divine mouth, he uttered testimony to all the inquiring people with a voice that soothed all: that he saw the Spirit of God descending from heavenly bosoms, borne by the intelligent vibration of wings, an exact imitation of a dove, until it came upon him, and remained there. 53 "I myself did not know him before," he said, "but he himself said to me in his significative voice—he who sent me to baptize with lavacers of water those who were to be regenerated, whereas they were without fire and spirit—'Upon whom you shall behold the Spirit of God descending and remaining firmly, this one shall bestow light upon men who were not illuminated, baptizing with fire and Spirit.' 54 And I saw him with my eyes, and spoke a true witnessing voice, that this is the Son of the ever-living God."
B 55 But when another dawn brought back the light, the divine man stood, and two disciples were near him, still ignorant of Christ’s divine form. Seeing Christ walking as a traveler on the earth, the chaste John, the sublime charioteer of a high-coursing chariot, again sounded in his accustomed voice: "This lamb of God, who speaks for God, is walking." C 57 And the two men, not wandering, hearing the divine voice of the truthful man, followed the traveling Christ as later wayfarers. 58 Turning his divinely-taught gaze toward the two men, he questioned the double train of followers: "Whither are you coming, and what are you seeking?" Both sounded a single, concordant voice to the questioning King: "Rabbi (which they call teacher), where do you live?" 59 And the King communicated a single voice to both: "Come and see." And they went as far as the house, and learned where he lived. And the domestic disciples spent that day within Christ’s house, close to God. The tenth hour ran swiftly by.
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST.
50 This is he of whom I said: After me comes a man who was before me; for he was before me. 51 And I knew him not; but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore came I baptizing with water. 52 And John bore witness, saying: I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. 53 And I knew him not; but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said to me: Upon whom you shall see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizes with the Holy Spirit. 54 And I saw, and bore record that this is the Son of God. D 55 The next day again John stood, and two of his disciples. 56 And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he said: Behold the Lamb of God. 57 And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. 58 Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and said to them: What seek you? They said to him: Rabbi (which is to say, being interpreted, Teacher), where do you live? 60 He said to them: Come and see. They came and saw where he lived, and stayed with him that day. And it was about the tenth hour.
A And there was one who came into the hall receiving God, Andreas, a fisher of men, after his marine catch, brother of Simon the fisherman: one, moreover, of those whom God took into his hospitality. As he heard the common voice of John, he was a companion to his associate, appearing near; both, however, with one faithful will followed Christ: the one, walking ahead, found his own brother, a searcher of the fertile sea, Simon: and he said in quick speech: "Brother, we have found the wise Messiah, who is God, a man whom the Jews call Christ in the Greek tongue." Having spoken thus, he led his brother, a swift traveler, to where Jesus lived: but with a friendly face Christ, seeing Simon, mollified him with wise speech: "You were the son of Joannes to me; but you are Simon, a worker of the sea: you shall be called Cephas to me." Receive a second, newer name, which other men call Peter; but the cognomen will veil the older, more excellent name of Simon, the sign of Peter, of a firm faith. B But when the rising dawn, appearing on high, had reddened with dewy rays, Jesus, after the dark night, wished to go to the fishy city of the long-haired Galileans: and nearby he found Philip; and the King ordered him to become his faithful helper, a traveler going behind: "Follow you also, Philip." And still fresh, hearing with his ears, he received the word, and with his footsteps he outstripped the voice. C Philip had Bethsaida as his common fatherland, where Andreas lived, where bold Simon dwelt. And Philip mollified Nathanael with his speech, finding him beneath a spreading tree: "Whom the wise man Moses of old described in [his] divine book, we have found, whom all the prophets, as heralds of the future, confirmed together in one concordant word: Jesus, called the holy son of Joseph, an inhabitant of Nazareth, the Son of God." And to the approaching one, Nathanael communicated a word of swift counsel to Philip: "Can any good be from Nazareth?" And to the one asking, D the companion Philip said to the one ignorant of evils: "Come and see." And the King showed Nathanael, the swift-footed traveler going nearby, to the people: "This is the true son of Israel, showing no changing deceit to anyone, nor manifesting crooked counsels." And Nathanael, hearing, set forth his voice in wonder.
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
41 Andreas, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who heard from John, and followed him. 42 He first finds his own brother Simon, and says to him: We have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. 43 And he brought him to Jesus. And Jesus looking upon him, said: You are Simon children of Jona; you shall be called Cephas, which is interpreted Peter. 44 On the morrow, Jesus wished to go forth into Galilee; and finds Philip, and says to him: Follow me. 45 And Philip was from Bethsaida, from the city of Andreas and Peter. 46 Philip finds Nathanael, and says to him: Him of whom Moses wrote in the law, and the prophets, we have found, Jesus the son of Joseph, from Nazareth. 47 And Nathanael said to him: Can any good thing be from Nazareth? Philip says to him: Come and see. 48 Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and says concerning him: Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile. 49 Nathanael says to him: Whence do you know me?
with admiration, the voice: How do you know me in your mind, whom you have not seen before with your eyes? Tell me, whence do you know me? And to the man the Lord uttered a divine voice from his chin [that is, mouth]: Before Philip called you, I saw you A lurking under the shady fig tree, among its high-foliaged branches, seeing you with eyes and mind when you were not present. Nathanael, however, cried out, having a ready-believing mind, striking his faithful brow with pious hand in wonder: Rabbi, sublime shepherd of the heavenly recesses, you are the king of Israel, you are Christ, the Word, the Son of the ever-living God. But I will call you both God and king of the sons of Israel, and I will declare you the true Son of the living God. And the King himself confirmed it, drawing him into a better hope: You have faith, having heard only one fearless word, that I said to you that I only saw you at the root of the fig tree; with more trusting eyes you shall see higher miracles. Testifying with firm-speaking words, let Amen Amen be a holy thing, you shall see heaven opened by divine impulse, with invisible spirits flying in the manner of a crown, and you shall see the winged company of the angelic host, a traveler descending by a heavenly way, brought down from heaven: and by a returning way ascending again into heaven, sublime, walking in the air, the minister of the Son of man.
CAP. II.
C But when the third nuptial dawn had marked its purple D rocks, in the Canaanite field of fertile Galilee, there was a wedding—the seed-bearing principle of the life of the child-bearing [race]; and the wedding was happy, because at the earthly banquet Christ was called a guest to the feasting people of long-haired men, and the disciples were reclining together, all in order: and to the banquet there came the very Virgin Mother of Christ, the Mother of God, touching the nuptial table with immaculate hand, she who brought forth the child [yet] shunned the marriage bed, always pursuing virginity. But all the sweet-smelling wine-jars were empty, with cups being replenished again and again for the drinkers; and the sad [guests], at the wine-loving banquet where wine rejoiced, the cupbearers, ministers for the table deprived of Bacchus, were reaching in vain with dry hands for the cups. But to the half-perfect drunkenness of the wedding and the table lacking wine, the mother, reclining with Christ who also knew, said: These weddings are in need, warding off the evil with your voice. For they do not have the moisture of sweet wine that rains down well. And Christ said to her: What is that to me, woman, or to you yourself? Not yet has my final course of the circling hour come.
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
50 Nathanael answered and says to him: Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel. 51 Jesus answered and said to him: Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, you believe; you shall see greater things than these. 52 And he says to him: Amen amen I say to you, From now on you shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.
CAP. II.
1 And on the third day a marriage was made in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 And Jesus also was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. 3 And the wine failing, the mother of Jesus says to him: They have no wine. 4 Jesus says to her: What is that to me and to you, woman? My hour is not yet come.
A And Mary bade the servants to accomplish whatever Christ might say. Six water-pots, joined together by the wall on which they leaned, were there, holding three measures in their wide bosom, or two; and each one, keeping the purifying water for the Jews in its rocky hollow, bubbled forth pure water. And Christ, urging the ministers of the thirsty feast, uttered a vine-bearing voice: "Fill me the water-pots, pregnant with newly poured water." And the servants filled them all, one after another, in turn, until the surface of the water crowned the lips of each. Suddenly the miracle occurred, and the water changed its nature, having been transformed into the color of black wine, with a reddening flux; and through the bosom of the water-pot, the joyful humor of pure water flowed as wine. And the King commanded the overseer with a significant voice: "Draw from the fountain of the interior tank, and bring the sweet water to the master of the feast." And they drew it forth in abundance, in returning cups. And when the steward of the feast had tasted with a testifying throat the water, which had been turned into wine by the reddening flux, the man did not know from where it was; but the crowd of water-carrying servants knew, who had drawn the water into the stone vessels from the fountains. Then the master of the feast, calling the newly wedded bridegroom into the house, addressed him with this word: "Every man, in the beginning, brings forth good wine, and when they are drunken, then he brings the lesser; but you have kept this better wine within the house until the last hour." This first-appearing miracle in the wine-loving bridal chamber Jesus performed, where he hears of the Cananean lodging, built high for the unshorn Galileans. And he manifested his glorious honor to the Hebrews at the thirsty feast; and the disciples confirmed the ambiguity of their mind with firm character. The King did not remain in the Cananean land, called the bridal feast, after the banquet of the wine-lacking nuptials, but going to the mansions of maritime Capernaum, he bent his returning steps, walking the downward path himself, together with his kindred who accompanied him; and the Virgin Mother, the God-bearer, followed her own born son, with whom the twelve-fold company of his disciples followed, walking one path in the rear. B C D
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
5 The mother of Jesus says to the servants: Whatever he says to you, do it. 6 Now there were set there six water-pots of stone, according to the purification of the Jews, containing two or three measures apiece. 7 Jesus says to them: Fill the water-pots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. 8 And he says to them: Draw out now, and bear to the master of the feast. And they brought it. 9 When the master of the feast had tasted the water becoming wine (and he knew not whence it was, but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast calls the bridegroom 10 and says to him: Every man at first sets forth the good wine, and when they have drunk freely, then that which is worse; you have kept the good wine until now. 11 This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him. 12 After this he went down to Capernaum, he and his mother and his brethren and his disciples; and there they stayed not many days.
A Nor did he remain there for many days, frequenting the place: for the Passover was then near. Honorably fulfilling the sacred observance, he went up to the seat of Jerusalem with his prudent disciples. 14 In the divine temple he found horned oxen, and the ranks of wool-bearing sheep, and doves of various limbs; and he found the seated company of money-changers of the rich table, and he saw a large throng trading above the seats, having a venal business. 15 And twisting complex strands of rope in his hands, he made a scourge, and he drove out the herd of oxen, and the ranks of sheep, outside the fragrant house; and frequently turning, he struck the overturned, profit-seeking seat B headlong from the sacred pavement; and with a sharp vibration he poured onto the ground the money of the much-turning table. And to the man selling doves he sounded the voice: "Carry these things outside the stony temple, and do not, burdened by the goad of a mind greedy for gain, make the holy house of my Father a market: for this is a house of prayer." 16 And the disciples remembered what was signed in the divinely inspired book: "Zeal for your divine house consumes me." 17 And the people vomited forth a threatening voice upon him: "What various signs among the Hebrews will you show, that you have accomplished these things?" To the contentious people, the King vomited forth an admirable, unknown voice: "Destroy this building, and I will raise it up myself in three days." 18 And the people exclaimed: "Which Solomon made with diverse ornament of stones, weaving back into a long beginning forty and six years of those greedy for building, will you raise up the house, loosened again by later buildings, after such a goal, after the course of the third dawn?" 19 He spoke of the temple of his body, which by a certain fearful word Christ was about to raise up on the third day. 20 But when indeed, after the bosom of the unreturnable abyss, the Returner from the underworld, by a certain life-giving fate, resumed his ancient, backward-turning heavenly honor, then only did the disciples remember that he had spoken of the house as his body; and they confirmed the divine word of the tongue-of-God book, and they believed the word which Jesus spoke. 21 And as he was in the divinely built temple, and passed through the seats of Jerusalem,
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
13 And the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. C 14 And he found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money-changers sitting. 15 And having made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the money of the changers, and overthrew the tables; 16 And to them that sold doves he said, "Take these things hence; make not my Father's house a house of merchandise." 17 And his disciples remembered that it is written, "The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up." 18 The Jews therefore answered and said unto him, "What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?" D 19 Jesus answered and said unto them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." 20 Then said the Jews, "Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou raise it up in three days?" 21 But he spake of the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the Scripture, and the word which Jesus had said. 23 Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover in the feast, many believed in his name, beholding the signs which he did.
[GREEK COLUMN] Εὐάζων ἔτι Πάσχα, καὶ ἀρνοφάγων ἱερήων A Ὄργια μυστιπόλευε φιλόκροτα θυιὰς ἑορτή· Πολλοὶ λύσσαν ἄπιστον ἐπετρέψαντο θυέλλαις, Χριστῷ πίστιν ἔχοντες ἐς οὔνομα. Πειθομένοις δὲ ᾿Ανδράσιν οὐ πίστευεν ἐὸν νέον. Οὐ γὰρ ἀκούειν "Αλλου φθεγγομένοιο νόθης ἐπεδεύετο φωνῆς, "Οφρα μάθῃ νέον ἀνδρὸς ἁμάρτυρον· ἔργα δὲ φωτῶν Ἤδεεν αὐτοδίδακτος, ὅσα φρενὸς ἔνδοθεν ἀνὴρ Εἶχεν, ἀκηρύκτῳ κεκαλυμμένα φάρει σιγῆς.
ΚΕΦ. Γ'.
B 1 Ἦν δέ τις ἱερὸν αἷμα γοοπλαγίων Φαρισαίων Ἀρχὸς Ἰουδαίων, πολυλήϊτος, ἔννομος ἀνήρ· Οὔνομα οἱ Νικόδημος. Ἀμάρτυρος οὗτος ὁδίτης Χριστῷ νυκτὸς ἔκανε· φυλασσομένῳ ποδὶ βαίνων, Ἔννυχος εἰς δόμον ἦλθεν, ὅπη φάος. Ἀνδρὶ δὲ πιστῷ Ἰησοῦς ἐνέπων βαπτίσματος ἔνθεον αἴγλην, Νυκτοφανῆ Νικόδημον ἐῷ φαιδρύνατο μύθῳ. Καί οἱ μῦθον ἔλεξε Θεῷ πειθήνιος ἀνήρ· ῾Ραβδὶν ποικιλόμυθε, θεοφραδές, ἴδμεν ὀπωπαῖς, Ὅττι Θεοῦ πομπῇσι διδάσκαλος ἴκεο κόσμου, Ἀνδρομέου βιότοιο βοηθόος· οὐ δύναται γὰρ Θνητὸς ἀνὴρ τάδε πάντα πολύτροπα θαύματα τεύχειν, "Οσσα σὺ θεσπεσίῳ τελέεις παιήονι μύθω, Εἰ μή οἱ συνάεθλος ἀλεξίκακος Θεὸς εἴη. C 3 Ἰησοῦς δ’ ἀγόρευεν ἀσημάντῳ τινὶ μύθῳ· Εἰ μή τις μετὰ κέντρα τελεσσιγόνοιο λοχείης Θνητὸς ἀνὴρ τίκτοιτο τὸ δεύτερον, αἰθέρος αὐλῆς Οὐ δύναται βροτὸς οὗτος ἔχειν αἰώνιον ἀρχήν. 4 Καὶ κεράσας Νικόδημος ἀνήρυγε θαύματι φωνήν· Πῶς δύναται μετὰ γῆρας ἀνήρ, μετὰ λευκάδα χαίτην, "Αλλην ἐψιτέλεστον ἔχειν ὠδῖνα γενέθλης; Μὴ δύναται δίχα πατρὸς, ἀεξιτόκου διὰ κόλπου Μητέρος ἀρχαίης ἐγκύμονα γαστέρα δύνων, Θεσμὸν ἰδεῖν γονόεντα παλλιννόστου τοκετοῖο; 5 Ἰησοῦς δ’ ἀπάμειπτο, διδάσκαλον ἄνδρα διδάσκων· Εἰ μή τις καθαροῖσι δέμας λουτροῖσι καθαίρων Πνεύματος ἐξ ἁγίοιο καὶ ὕδατος εὶν ἑνὶ θεσμῷ, Ὁπλοτέρην δέξοιτο γενέθλιον ἄσπορον ἀρχὴν, Ἀντίτυπον μίμημα γυναικείου τοκετοῖο, Οὐ δύναται βροτὸς οὗτος ἐπεσσομένοιο νοῆσαι Οὐρανίην αἰῶνος ἀτέρμονος ἥλικα τιμήν. 6 Καὶ γὰρ ὅπερ μερόπων χθονίη διεώσατο γαστήρ, Σαρκὸς ἀπὸ βροτέης μορφούμενον, ἀνδρομέη σὰρξ Τοῦτο πέλει· τὸ δὲ θεῖον, ὅπερ καθαροῖο λοετροῦ D
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST.
24 Αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς οὐκ ἐπίστευεν ἑαυτὸν αὐτοῖς, διὰ τὸ αὐτὸν γινώσκειν πάντας· 25 Καὶ ὅτι οὐ χρείαν εἶχεν ἵνα τις μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου· αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐγίνωσκε τί ἦν ἐν τῷ ἀν- θρώπῳ.
ΚΕΦ. Γ'.
1 Ἦν δὲ ἄνθρωπος ἐκ τῶν Φαρισαίων, Νικόδημος ὄνομα αὐτῷ, ἄρχων τῶν Ἰουδαίων. 2 Οὗτος ἦλθε πρὸς τὸν Ἰησοῦν νυκτὸς, καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ· ῾Ραββί, οἴδαμεν ὅτι ἀπὸ Θεοῦ ἐλήλυθας δι- δάσκαλος· οὐδεὶς γὰρ ταῦτα τὰ σημεῖα δύναται ποιεῖν ἃ σὺ ποιεῖς, ἐὰν μὴ ᾖ ὁ Θεὸς μετ' αὐτοῦ. 3 Ἀπεκρίθη ὁ Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ· Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω σοι, ἐὰν μή τις γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν, οὐ δύναται ἰδεῖν τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ Θεοῦ. 4 Λέγει πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ Νικόδημος· Πῶς δύναται ἄνθρωπος γεννηθῆναι γέρων ὤν; μὴ δύναται εἰς τὴν κοιλίαν τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ δεύτερον εἰσελθεῖν καὶ γεννηθῆναι; 5 Ἀπεκρίθη ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω σοι, ἐὰν μή τις γεννηθῇ ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ Πνεύματος, οὐ δύναται εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ Θεοῦ. 6 Τὸ γεγενημένον ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς, σάρξ ἐστι· καὶ τὸ γεγενημένον ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος, πνεῦμά ἐστι.
ἐστι. A The Spirit is life-originating, by an un-midwived law, an automatic sprout of a reborn birth. Pure of the Spirit, of the pure bath, it is, as far as the wide-spread, steadfast eternity revolves. 7 And do not be amazed at the God-inspired word, if I said to you that it is necessary to perceive another threshold of birth in water. The Spirit, revolving with a certain invisible vibration, knows how to blow wherever it wills; but you hear the God-whirling sound of the airy Voice, appearing close by, carried to your ears; but you cannot know with your eyelids whence it comes, or whither it goes. So of every man who is born of moist spirit, and not of the swirling dust, this is the likeness. 8 He spoke; and Nicodemus answered: How can these things be? And Christ uttered a divine pronouncement: In Israel you are indeed a teacher, and do you not understand? But do these things escape you, and do you not know my intention? 9 Testifying firmly, "Amen, amen," again it shall be, that which we know to be true, full with a divine voice, we speak, sowing into the resistant ears of men with unerring lips; and whatever my ears have learned from the Father who rules from on high, we teach with a knowledgeable voice as a herald of testimony: But the unteachable mind of intractable men does not receive our faithful testimony. 10 Truly, if I have spoken a certain word concerning earthly works, and your ears are so slow to believe: if I should preach the flying host or the works of heaven, how would you, being inexperienced, believe with your hearts, hearing of the nature of an invisible heavenly substance? 11 For never has another mortal, shaking B a swift foot, trodden the inaccessible circuit of the heavenly spheres, unless this divine one, who descended from heaven, clothing his immortal form in an unfamiliar flesh, the only Son of Man, who in the starry house having his ancestral soil, eternally dwells in the ether. 12 And just as Moses, near the rugged region of the desert, lifted up the serpent, the destroyer of men, having the formed shape of wooden thorn: so, completing the alleviations of the limb-consuming diseases, the Son of Man will be lifted up for mortals, a likeness of the serpent’s face to dissolve pain; that whoever receives him by the trusting law of the mind, may behold the tranquility of life, rendering men bright, until the wide-extended C eternal age [ends].
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
7 Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born from above. 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its voice, but do not know whence it comes and whither it goes: so is everyone who is born of the Spirit. 9 Nicodemus answered and said to him, How can these things be? 10 Jesus answered and said to him, You are the teacher of Israel, and do you not know these things? 11 Amen, amen, I say to you, that we speak what we know, and testify to what we have seen; and you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things, and you do not believe, how, if I tell you heavenly things, will you believe? 13 And no one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven. 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up: 15 That everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life.
A For thus the Ruler of the heights, who holds the scepter, loved the wandering world, in that he gave the Only-begotten Word, his Son, as a helper to the four-yoked world, that whosoever receives him, changing his fickle character, bending his neck voluntarily to the unwavering Faith, may come into the eternal choir of heavenly Life, inhabiting an incorruptible house in the tree-planted paradise. For God the Father did not give his Word, his Son, to the world so that he might judge the world before the appointed time, but that he might raise up the whole fallen human generation. He who has appeased him with the law of a steadfast heart, having cast aside his incredulous madness to the wandering winds, possessing the upright faith, is not judged; but if any man, directing his mind-blinded eye onto human flesh, has opened his audacious mouth, resisting God, this man is judged, because with a slowly believing mind he has not yet accepted the faith, and has not changed his purpose, believing in the name of the Only-beloved King, the Son of the most high God. And this is the judgment of the impious world. For from heaven light came onto the earth; and the race of unstable men loved the mist more than the gleaming light, and they do not desire the light as much as the darkness, for their works were crooked. And every man who does wicked things, possessing deeds worthy of the night, hates the light, and never comes near the light, lest the light should expose the works which he performs, covered in secret silence. But he who in piety keeps all things true, will come of his own accord where the light is, so that it may be made manifest that the works which he has done were performed by the will of God. Thus he spoke. And afterwards, leaving the Galilean plain, he entered the holy bosom of the land of the Jews. And God remained there with his divine disciples, dwelling in a strange lodging. And he was baptizing the various tribes of the neighboring land with a wise current, cleansing the filth of the human heart. And the divine John himself was also there, baptizing the wandering people who believed in God with water near the deep-flowing Salem. For there, by the currents of the ever-flowing river, which rolls along with a wide path, B abundant water surges, sufficient for all in one place. And the people surrounded the unique man of Piety, and washing away their errors with late-learned repentance, they were purified by the streams. For not yet, because of the marriage chamber of the king... C D
EVANGELIST’S TEXT
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. 22 After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judæa; and there he tarried with them, and baptized. 23 And John also was baptizing in Ænon near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came, and were baptized. 24 For John was not yet cast into prison.
A The divine man, grievously bound, underwent a custodian who guarded the king’s house, leading him to destruction. 25 There was a certain contention about purification, between the disciples of John and a Hebrew man. 26 Excited, they came on foot to the divine man and smoothed him with speech: “Rabbi, herald of the primary healing waters, he who was with you across the river's flow, whom you confirmed by wise word as born of God, this man, having an imitation of your pure bath, is baptizing much more; and with concordant spirit, all the citizens hasten like a promiscuous cloud, desiring to obtain his divine bath.” 27 And to them that truthful man said: “No one can take anything from the heavenly B bosoms unless this gift has been granted from God. 28 You yourselves are witnesses, knowing when I spoke openly to the people my true voice: I am not the King Christ, the savior of life; but God the High-Ruler sent me as the leader of his way. 29 He who has the bride is the bridegroom; he who is near, as he speaks, both stands and hears, and receiving the accustomed voice with delighted ears, the faithful friend exults with joy; and my own pleasure has been fulfilled, being very much to be desired. 30 For it is necessary that he, as God, immortal, always have increasing glory; but it is necessary for me, a man, to bear of lesser measure, because I am of a lesser generation. 31 He who comes from above from the heavenly bosoms has stepped high over all; but he who bears the blood of the earth, C speaking the works of the earth, is an earthly man. 32 But he who came from the ethereal bosom receiving God, speaks from heaven what he heard, and no one receives his divine testimony. 33 But he who has received the testifying word of the mouth that speaks of God, this truthful man has sealed with his word that God alone is true. 34 For he whom God sent from heaven as a helper of the world, produces through himself the naturally flowing rain of paternal wisdom. For the Word does not bear the measures of wisdom, but the Spirit always gives to him alone the stream of eternal speech. 35 Indeed, God the Father loves his Son, the High-Ruler, and gave him to bear all things in his hand.” D
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
25 There arose therefore a questioning from the disciples of John with the Jews about purification. 26 And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have borne witness, look, he is baptizing, and all are coming to him.” 27 John answered and said, “A man can receive nothing, unless it has been given to him from heaven. 28 You yourselves bear me witness that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but that ‘I have been sent before him.’ 29 He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices with joy because of the bridegroom’s voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease. 31 He who comes from above is above all; he who is of the earth is of the earth and speaks of the earth; he who comes from heaven is above all. 32 And what he has seen and heard, this he testifies; and no one receives his testimony. 33 He who has received his testimony has set his seal that God is true. 34 For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for God does not give the Spirit by measure. 35 The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand. 36 He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
[GREEK COLUMN] [LATIN COLUMN]
Increasing firm faith by morals that do not err, He will see life here, having sublime honor, Coeval with the regrowing age; but whoever, a man, Living, proud, has not believed in the Son of God, The avenging wrath of the highest God comes, Tormenting the foolish.
CHAP. IV.
A 4 And when the Lord knew that the foolish crowd of envious Pharisees had heard—inspired by God—that Jesus was baptizing with water, drawing erring men into the light, and had more disciples than John (2 and the rumor was not true: for the King was not baptizing with water, but his disciples), He left the high foundations of the Jews B alone, and came again into the field of the benevolent Galileans, fleeing the unbelieving rage of the intractable Pharisees.
4 And necessity also seized him to walk through watery Samaria, the region bordering the middle of the land: 5 And urging his divine meridian footprint, he came into the ancient city of the Samaritan land, Sychar, built on high: where the planter Jacob had a vineyard, and gave it to his son Joseph, 6 where there is a spring of deep gulf, whence once divine Jacob, having broken the moist foundations of the depressed cavities, drew out deep water from the muddy well. There, however, resting from a long journey, Christ, weary from his travels, rested from labor, sitting near the region where a spring, neighbor to the citizens of the city, poured forth moist water through a terrestrial gulf. The swift, thirsty sixth hour runs by, 7 Where a Samaritan woman, having the accustomed bucket lifted in her bosom, approached the nearby spring, and the King of waters asked for water from her bucket: Come, Samaritan woman, I who have approached your fatherland, give me, who am thirsty, hospitable water. For he was sitting alone then: for seeing the time for eating as the sun circled the sky toward the meridian line, the band of companions ascended into the nearby city. 9 But the woman, questioning with an inquiring word, said: How, being a Jew, did you, an incautious man, ask for unaccustomed water from a Samaritan woman who knows the voice, bearing the avoided blood of the Hebrew fatherland? What fellowship is there between a Samaritan and your D race, that you should drink from me? And, if your law forbids it, with a celebrated mouth I will call you a Jew. For the Jews do not [use things in common with Samaritans].
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST.
ΚΕΦ. Δ'.
1 When therefore the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus makes and baptizes more disciples than John, 2 (Although Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples,) 3 He left Judea, and went away again into Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 He comes therefore to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to Joseph his son. 6 And there was Jacob's well; Jesus therefore, having become weary from the journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. 7 A woman from Samaria comes to draw water. Jesus says to her: Give me to drink. 8 For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 9 The Samaritan woman therefore says to him: How is it that you, being a Jew, ask to drink from me, being a Samaritan woman? For Jews do not use things in common with Samaritans.Σαμαρείταις. A For neither were the Jews, who were mingled together, permitted by the common law to discourse with the Samaritans. And Christ said to her in a certain dark saying: If thou hadst known the grace of God the most high, if thou hadst known the gift, and who it is that said to thee: Give me to drink, who am thirsty, of the earthly fountain temporary water, thou wouldst have readily asked of him living water, and he could have provided this wise draught. But the woman, not understanding the life-giving water, said: O King, astonishment holds me; for with a circular movement thou bringest no bucket to draw, nor dost thou raise a rope, that thou mightest lower it into the depths from the subterranean gulfs, drawing forth strange water with alternating hands; and the well is very deep; from the earthly gulf, whence, drawing this vital, strange water, dost thou thyself have other drink? Art thou greater than our divine father Jacob, who has male children? Who provided this well as a gift to the Samaritan land, and drank from it the water nourished by the soil and sanctioned by the covenant, he himself at once, and his children, and the generation of mountain-dwellers, and the herds of four-footed beasts? Jesus taught the woman, who was aroused, drawing her from the darkness into the light: Whosoever drinks of the temporal water of the earthly caverns of a spring, or the sweet stream of a low-lying river, shall thirst again; but the water which I shall provide to him, he who drinks the heavenly water shall never thirst; but the stream shall remain in his breast, leaping with a prudent bound, flowing by the divine impulse of the depths of understanding, from the fountain hidden within, being born again as firm water of eternal life, and not of an earthly river. B The woman, with a credulous voice, asked Jesus: Give me, Lord, this vital water to drink, different from the earthly spring, that drinking I may never thirst, and no more come hither to draw the water constrained by deep caverns. He spoke. And with a certain responsive saying, Jesus tested the woman who had had many men: Come and call thy husband: and from the city hasten with swift feet to come hither again. He spoke. And the Samaritan woman, ignorant of the many-seeded unions, lying, uttered a true voice: I, not possessing a husband, whence shall I call a husband to thee? For I do not have a dear spouse. But God rebuked the woman: I know, woman, after five, thy sixth illegitimate bedfellow. C
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
And Jesus answered and said to her: If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. The woman saith to him: Lord, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and he himself drank thereof, and his sons, and his cattle? Jesus answered and said to her: Whosoever drinketh of this water, shall thirst again: but he that shall drink of the water that I will give him, shall not thirst for ever: but the water that I will give him, shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting. The woman saith to him: Lord, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come hither to draw. Jesus saith to her: Go, call thy husband, and come hither. The woman answered and said: I have no husband. Jesus saith to her: Thou hast said well, that I have no husband. For thou hast had five husbands: and he whom thou now hast, is not thy husband: this thou hast said truly. DA Then, astonished, the Vile Samaritan woman answered with a womanly voice: Lord, I perceive that thou art a prophet who speaks of God. Our fathers, indeed, ascending these mounts, bent their necks in much smoke by the rock, and propitiated God with pure sacrifices; but you have declared another place suitable under the summit of Jerusalem, being an object of care for the divine will, where it is necessary before the divinely-built altar of God, for a suppliant to bend the neck, and to kneel down, bowing the head. And the King answered with a word: Believe me, Samaritan woman, in an infallible word, that the time comes, the guide of piety, bearing a new life, when you shall no longer with the mystical art of your mountain at the divine altar, nor beneath the caves of the sprawling cliffs of Jerusalem, perform a libation drawn from the horns of a bull with B taurine blood, bending the suppliant knee against the rock. 22 You indeed, of an erring heart, by a different law, honor Him whom you have not known in your mind, but only by hearsay, performing an imitative image of the true word; but we ignite the mysteries on pure altars, sacrificing what we know with joyful voice, and we celebrate the self-begotten God with a wise sermon. But the time comes for the wise festivals, and now it has drawn near, when those experienced in the mysteries shall incline their suppliant neck to the earth, the neck bent down with the head drawn low, all in truth C and spirit. For God, who reigns on high, desires such sacrificers, who themselves bend their companion knees to the earth against the highest peaks, in divine spirit, and with a voice witnessing to the truth, with the face supported downward on the ground. God is true Spirit, whence time draws men, mixing truth and spirit in one desire, that they may honor the God, Father of the eternal world. He spake; and the ignorant woman, with a prophetic voice, spoke to Christ of Christ; and declared that the helper of the world would come late, whom she had near, approaching her: Lord, we have learned by the hearsay of the law-giving fathers, that the divine Messiah shall come, whom the people call Christ: and when he comes, D he will teach us ignorant ones all things truly. He spake; and Christ answered with a witnessing word, applying his vocal finger to his silent nose: Christ to—
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
19 The woman saith to him: Lord, I perceive that thou art a prophet. 20 Our fathers adored on this mountain; and you say that at Jerusalem is the place where men must adore. 21 Jesus saith to her: Woman, believe me, that the hour cometh, when you shall neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, adore the Father. 22 You adore that which you know not: we adore that which we know; for salvation is of the Jews. 23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeketh such to adore him. 24 God is a spirit; and they that adore him, must adore him in spirit and in truth. 25 The woman saith to him: I know that the Messiah cometh, who is called Christ; therefore, when he is come, he will tell us all things. 26 Jesus saith to her: I am he, who am speaking with thee.
A Christ myself I am who speak to thee; look upon me with thine eyes, O thou who always hearest me with thine ears. I am Christ, nor hath any second one come. 27 Neither did Peter ask him [anything], bold though he was; nor did anyone, daring [to do so], ask him what he seeks or why he speaks with her. 28 But the woman, moving with swifter foot, having left her water-jar at the God-receiving spring, bent her footsteps toward the city and said to all the citizens: Come and behold a God-inspired man, a prophet, who told me all things that I have done. Is this, perchance, the noble-born son of David who is come? 29 The Samaritans, hearing the message as companions, set out together on a swift journey, proceeding from the city to the approach of the divine spring, moved toward God by the goad of one mind, and by his soul-soothing speech. B 30 Meanwhile, before the dense waves of men, like a gathering cloud, had come out from the city, the disciples surrounded Christ and addressed him: Rabbi, take these things and eat. But his hand, moving in silent, intelligent witness, set aside the temporal food, saying these things: I bring another vital food, which you do not know in your heart. 31 And one said to another: Has some stranger-man brought him something else to eat? But the King, a lover of the Father, said in words that were felt differently: My food is the word; my drink is the works of the Father. My food is this alone, that I may fulfill the unchanging desire of my Father, and accomplish the divine work. C You all do not share in this one speech, you who are skilled in the seasons, [knowing] that there still remains only the fourfold quick path of the months, and that the summer bringing splendid fruits will come? Behold, lift the circle of your sight toward the opposite city, and [see] how the fields bristle with white crops, and how they lack the sickle of human language, and how the prudent ears of grain bloom. But if any man, with lips and not with hands, taking up the speaking sickle, should reap the pious crops of the neighboring earth, he has his reward; and keeping the living [fruit] for God the Father, he gathers an intelligent harvest in a time that does not cease, so that he who sows and he who reaps the divine meadows, may rejoice together, and offer faithful first-fruits to the Father, honoring the plowman and the reaper of piety. From this comes that true saying, D that one is the sower, and another is the reaper.
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST.
27 And upon this his disciples came, and they wondered that he was speaking with a woman; yet no one said: What seekest thou? or, Why speakest thou with her? 28 The woman therefore left her water-pot, and went away into the city, and saith to the men: 29 Come, see a man who told me all things that I have done: is this the Christ? 30 They went out therefore from the city, and were coming to him. 31 And in the meantime the disciples were asking him, saying: Rabbi, eat. 32 But he said to them: I have food to eat which you know not. 33 The disciples therefore said to one another: Has anyone brought him something to eat? 34 Jesus saith to them: My food is that I may do the will of him who sent me, and may accomplish his work. 35 Do not you say, that there is yet four months, and the harvest cometh? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes, and see the countries, for they are white already to harvest. 36 And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life everlasting: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. 37 For in this is the true saying: that one is the sower, and another is the reaper.
A
Another plows the corn-bearing seed, shedding it into the furrows, And another, a wreath-bearing reaper, shall harvest the grain. Others labored indeed, agricultural workers in the furrows of the voice, Until they sowed the fruit; but I send you, who have not labored, Into the labor of men, that with your mouths you may be most ready To harvest the ranks of fruits, you who have not sown the field, Nor irrigated the crops. Many dwellers have indeed built up B A wandering people, quick to believe, upon firm foundations of faith, Listening to the testimony of the woman who stirred their minds, Declaring that the prophet told her all that she had done. But when the Samaritans, of one mind, came near to him, They besought Christ with a certain affectionate discourse To stay there; and the King rested by the neighboring spring, And quickly went into the city, traveling a common road. And God remained there, until one journey after another Passed by in the swift rotation of the double-yoke dawn. C
43 And after the double day, the King, with hastening foot, Departed thence, leaving behind the word fixed in believing ears, And came back again into the field of the Christ-loving Galileans. He did not, however, enter his own envious fatherland alone, For knowing the customs of his fellow-countrymen, He spoke the true, attested word, that a prophet Cannot possess famous honor in his own country. 45 But when Jesus came into the Galilean land, Then, for his return by those paths, a company Of pious Galileans gladly received him, D Looking with their eyes upon all that he had done Within the precincts of Jerusalem, when the mothers Of piety, leaders of the dance, brought on the hours of the holy festival, For they themselves were also journeying to that festival. Jesus came, and remained dwelling there, Where the Cana-field is, where before, into a flow of wine, He made the yellow water, changing its snowy nature. 47 There was a certain kingly man, ruling an army, Whose son lay in the people of the maritime Capernaum, Bearing knees sluggishly bound by disease. And the father, loving his offspring, was tormented with an equal flame With the afflicted son, and perhaps even more. This man, hearing [of him], Ran to the Cana-field; and drawing near, he asked Jesus to save his young son.
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
38 I sent you to reap that whereon you bestowed no labor: other men have labored, and you are entered into their labors. 39 And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman, who testified, He told me all that ever I did. 40 So when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them: and he abode there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his own word; 42 And said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world. 43 Now after two days he departed thence, and went into Galilee. 44 For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country. 45 Then when he was come into Galilee, the Galilaeans received him, having seen all the things that he did at Jerusalem at the feast: for they also went unto the feast. 46 So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judaea into Galilee, he went unto him, and besought him that he would come down, and heal his son: for he was at the point of death.
in the region descending toward a neighboring city. A And the King addressed him with his reproving speech: "Unless you see the manifold miracles of my voice, you never believe me." And the man, drenched with warmer tears from a burning fever, cried out: "Hurry, King, descend, leaving the field of Cana, before my son dies, lacking your voice." And the King encouraged him with his life-giving word: "Go, and you shall find your beloved son living and sound; and he shall gladly feast at your table as a guest with his son." The King spoke; and the man, hastening, believed the speech which Jesus uttered; and he walked in the hope of persuasion. And to him, as he descended the long path, his eager servants ran; yet the man did not ask his servants, but recognized his son as living by the wise silence of his face. And all of them, coming together, spoke to him with joyful speech: "Your son lives, O lover of children, the traveler-boy is walking, now sounder than before." But he, rejoicing, asked his servants about the salvation-giving hour in which he had experienced a more lively tranquility of life. All the servants resounded with one voice: "The sickness left your son when, coming to yesterday's line, the seventh hour ran, preserving his life." The man, instructed, knew by himself the pain-dispelling hour in which the divine King spoke with his life-giving voice: "Go to your house, your child is unharmed." And with pure heart he received unshakeable faith, he himself, and all whom he reared, testifying to the word, they were joined by the defenses of faith, drawing the whole house into the way of blameless piety. C This, furthermore, was the second D miracle which Jesus performed with his life-giving voice, when he had walked from Judea to the field of Cana in the well-towered Galilee, into a city having famous children of the long-haired Galileans, after the earlier miracle of the wine desired at the wedding, with the water turned into a red-flowing stream.
CAP. V.
Jesus ascended to where the house, neighbor to heaven, shone with the columnar radiance of various stones. And there was a certain elegant, water-bearing pool by the sheep-gate, under five vast porches of the building, a wide bath joined together by skillfully fashioned stones in a highly vaulted cover: . . .
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
Jesus said therefore to him: "Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe." The royal official says to him: "Lord, descend before my child dies." Jesus says to him: "Go; your son lives." And the man believed the word which Jesus said to him; and he was going. And already as he was descending, his servants met him and reported, saying: "Your boy lives." He inquired therefore of them the hour in which he fared better; and they said to him: "That yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him." The father knew therefore that it was in that hour in which Jesus said to him: "Your son lives." And he believed, himself and his whole house. This second sign again Jesus did, having come out of Judea into Galilee.
CAP. V.
After these things there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And there is in Jerusalem by the sheep-gate a pool, called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a multitude of the sick...
of those who were blind, lame, and withered, waiting for the moving of the water. A For an angel would go down at certain times into the pool and trouble the water; then the first one to descend after the troubling of the water became whole, with whatever infirmity he was afflicted. There was a certain man there who had been thirty-eight years in his infirmity. Jesus, seeing him lying there and knowing that he had already been a long time in that state, says to him, "Do you want to become whole?" The infirm man answered Him, "Sir, I have no man to cast me into the pool when the water is troubled; and while I am coming, another descends before me." Jesus says to him, "Arise, take up your bed, and walk." And immediately the man became whole, and he took up his bed and was walking. And it was the sabbath on that day. The Jews therefore said to the one who had been healed, "It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to take up your bed." He answered them, "He who made me whole, that One said to me, 'Take up your bed, and walk.'" They asked him, "Who is the man who said to you, 'Take up your bed, and walk'?" But he who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away, a crowd being in the place. After these things, Jesus finds him in the temple and said to him, "Behold, you have been made whole; sin no more, lest something worse happen to you."
PARAPHRASE OF JOHN — CHAP. V.
4 Where a burning man, having seen the water leaping with spontaneous bounds, when he had cleansed his body in the undulating bath, had shaken off the hot waves of a long-standing disease, seeing the soothing water as more potent than a physician. 5 Now there was a certain man suffering with perennial toil beside the neighboring spring, having spent three decades in grievous disease, and again eight cycles of rolling years. 6 Seeing this man lying on his customary bed without agitation, Jesus perceived that he had knees bound by an incurable long-standing disease on his bed. 7 And the King questioned him, pouring forth a compassionate voice: "Do you wish to be sound again?" But the sufferer, drawing a breath constrained from his weak heart, the man said with difficulty in a slow, faint voice: "Lord, I lack a benevolent physician for the sick. For I have no man as a servant, so that, seeing the water of the rushing spring moved and elevated of its own accord, he might lift and let me down into the holy pool. For when I move my weak, infirm foot, then another, a younger man, B outstripping me with swift vibration, descends more lightly into the uplifting foam of the bubbling pool." 8 And the King confirmed him with His life-giving voice: "Arise, take up your bed, and go, a light traveler." 9 The valetudinarian sprang up, and having planted his footstep on the ground, he stood; and taking the bed and placing it upon his shoulder, he walked through the most spacious house, shaking his unaccustomed knees, and carrying the bed heavy with the weight of his toils upon his shoulder. And then it was the sabbath. 10 And in the stone temple, seeing the man whom the King, prompt in action, had healed with a word from his ancient, pain-bringing disease, they questioned him: "Who is it that ordered you with his telling voice to walk about, carrying your bed back?" 11 And to the envious ones he replied with a wise, God-persuaded word: "He who restored me, who had fallen (prostrate) from my bed, He Himself told me to lift it up and walk." 12 And the proud people of the Jews questioned him again: "Who is he who ordered you with some fearless voice, 'Go, taking your bed carried on your shoulder'?" 13 The man certainly did not know the physician of his disease. 14 And seeing him walking inside the stone temple, having recalled the former water, the avenger of his disease, Christ, restraining...
A Christ, standing still, commanded him with a testifying word: "See, you have been made whole, having had a disease; sin no more, lest you suffer something worse." And the bold messenger, returning to the Hebrews, stood and cried out to the jealous people who rejected the Word, that Jesus by his own authority had commanded him with a divine voice to travel on, and had made the late-arriving wayfarer a carrier of the bed that had carried his disease. For which reason the Hebrews, raging with a foolish mind, persecuted Jesus, because, when it was the Sabbath, he strove to perform this divine deed at the temple, alone not observing when all men had left off their works and committed themselves to idle thorns. 17 But Jesus spoke, pouring forth a glorious voice: "Even now the Begetter works in the accustomed world with established ways, and I, the Son, weave the work." B For which reason the Hebrews were seeking with deceitful destruction to kill Christ, not only because he wished to loosen the lawful splendor observed from the dawn, but because, after the course of the mystical dawn, he had called God, who is self-begotten, his Parent, making his own glory equal to the heavenly King. 19 Jesus said: "Amen, let it be testified: the Son will be able to accomplish nothing by his own will, unless he shall have looked upon his Parent accomplishing it. For all works in the universe, whatsoever my Father does, these the Son, imitating God the Parent, performs. For the Father loves his Son; and whatsoever he does, he shows to the beloved Son, and will show even greater things, that you may marvel for the sake of the more perfect works. 21 For just as the Father raises the dead after death, making alive the backward body of motionless men, so the Son also raises whom he wills, recreating the again-gathered bodies of corruptible men. 22 For my Father will judge no one; but he has given all human judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son as equal to his Parent, just as they also glorify the Father who rules on high. And if anyone has an unstable mind, neither does he glorify the Word-Son of the Parent, nor does he honor the Parent. 24 Let there be again a firm, testifiable ‘Amen’: whoever shall receive our words by the law of a believing mind, and shall believe in my Father, he does not enter into the judgment that is to come, but [is passed] unto that...
TEXTUS EVANGELISTÆ.
13 The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him whole. 16 And for this cause did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to kill him, because he did these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them: "My Father works even until now, and I work." 18 For this cause therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself equal to God. 19 Then Jesus answered and said to them: "Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself, unless he see the Father doing [it]; for what things soever he does, these also the Son does in like manner. 20 For the Father loves the Son, and shows him all things that he himself does; and he will show him greater works than these, that you may marvel. 21 For as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whom he wills. 22 For neither does the Father judge any man, but has given all judgment to the Son; 23 That all may honor the Son, as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son, does not honor the Father who sent him. 24 Amen, amen, I say to you, he who hears my word, and believes him who sent me, has life
A everlasting, and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death unto life. 25 Amen, amen, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has also given to the Son to have life in himself. 27 And he gave him power to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. 28 Do not wonder at this, for an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs shall hear his voice. 29 And they shall come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, but those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment. 30 I cannot do anything on my own authority. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will, but the will of him who sent me, the Father. 31 If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. 32 There is another who testifies about me, and I know that the testimony he bears about me is true. 33 You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. 34 But I do not receive human testimony; but I say these things that you may be saved. 35 He was the burning and shining lamp; and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.
PARAPHRASE ON JOHN - CHAP. V.
A and immortal life, which time knows not how to destroy, will come transformed from death. For the unforeseen B hour, the nurse of men reborn, shall come at last, when the speechless dead shall live again from their silent bosoms, all hearing the voice of my life, which drives away death, the voice of the only-begotten Son, who brings life from the Father. For just as the Creator grants life, the mother of all in the world, from whom he provides the vital spirit to all, so he gave to the Ruler of all and to the Son to carry Life; and he gave him divine authority and honor, and to execute judgment upon whom he wishes by an equal law, because he is called the life-giving Son of man. C And do not be astonished if I mentioned a divine voice that is to come, because the final hour is coming, and even now it has approached, when the dead, gathered together, hearing the divine sound of Christ speaking, shall arise from their tombs; and one after another they shall reach the ancient earth to join their new footprints. Those who have fought the irreprehensible and faithful fight, to a resurrection of immortal life; but those who have performed the works of a life full of wanderings with a perverse madness, to a resurrection of judgment. For I cannot do anything D of myself from the heavenly Father, but I shall be able to judge as I hear. And my judgment is infallible; for I do not come seeking to perform my own glory, but the Father’s. I do not speak of my own honor. For if I speak my own testimony, another who hears does not believe. For my word is not true, if I speak testimony about myself of myself. But there is another man who is a sufficient witness for me; and I know that his testimony is faithful and true. And those who asked pure John, filled with a divine voice, sent you to the mountain-wandering people, men of the sacred rites; and the divine man sealed the word of truth with an indissoluble statement, a witness firm of speech. But I do not receive the testimony of men from an earthly voice, but teaching the Hebrews, I hold to all these things, so that having learned, I may save you all together by my words. That John, casting intellectual sparks, was the true lamp of piety shining for men.
A You rejoiced in the testimony of him who appeared, exulting in the waters of the flickering lamp, in the divine waters. But I have a testimony greater than the voice of John, and a more excellent oracle. For the works which the Father has given me to accomplish, they speak out [for themselves], crying with the resonant trumpet of silence; these things preach me and pour forth an unwavering voice. Nor has the Father left me in any unproclaimed silence, he who sent me from the heavens; but he himself, through the mouths of those who speak, gave a living testimony to the divinely-tongued light in a reciprocal book, he who sent me; and you have never seen the divine form of the Father, nor have you heard his voice, nor do you keep his word in unerring ears. For the one whom my Father sent as a helper to the world, you do not receive as God the Son, nor do you receive the sending Father. B Search the writings of the divinely-spoken oracles, in which you hope to have—in the cycle of time that circles back—a life that does not wane; but in the Scriptures those very things cry out my testimony with an immortal, trumpet-interpreting word; and you do not hasten, having learned the vocal letters, to come to me with a ready will. I do not receive glory from men. But I have known you by your inhuman customs, nor do you keep the love of the Father, the heavenly King of all. I came crying the paternal name to the world, and you do not receive me as God, nor do you believe the Father. But if some other came, a spurious man falsely named, an anti-god, then you would immediately appease that hostile deceiver in your amazement, so that one might say: They have denied the legitimate one, but have received the spurious one who appeared. C But how, how can you honor the Word of God, the Son, while waiting for glory from one another; nor do you seek to know the honor of the only Begetter of all, God? D Truly you fear in vain, loosening your accusing lips, that I might report your madness to my Parent. Another accuser in the Scriptures convicts you, Moses the lawgiver, the first-throned, in whom alone your hopes are faithful. For if you had placed his firm word into your unerring ears, you would also believe me with confidence; for the divine man wrote truly about me.
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
36 But I have the testimony greater than that of John; for the works which the Father has given me to accomplish, these very works which I do, bear witness of me that the Father has sent me. 37 And the Father who sent me, he himself has borne witness of me. You have neither heard his voice at any time, nor have you seen his form. 38 And you do not have his word abiding in you; because whom he sent, him you do not believe. 39 Search the Scriptures, for you think in them to have eternal life; and they are those that bear witness of me. 40 And you are not willing to come to me, that you may have life. 41 I do not receive glory from men. 42 But I have known you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves. 43 I have come in the name of my Father, and you do not receive me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive. 44 How can you believe, receiving glory from one another, and the glory that is from the only God you do not seek? 45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you have hoped. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote about me.
divine man wrote truthfully. If, however, you do not believe his writings, which God bestowed upon the world, how will you receive with more intractable minds the unwritten voice of our mouths as you hear it? He said.
CHAPTER VI
1 And subsequently, having cut across the water facing [them] in a ship with many nails, he entered the neighboring land. 2 But the people were excited, seeing the miracles which he did according to his custom, delivering the heavy-laden bodies of afflicted men. 3 And traversing the deserted edge of the hilly ground, he ascended a high-peaked mountain; and the disciples surrounded him like a crown as he sat in the middle. 4 And near at hand was the festal season of the Hebrews, which they call the Passover. 5 Through the tree-filled thicket he lifted his eyes, and saw another countless, neighbor-coming crowd of traveler-people, one after another. He gently addressed Philip, who was sitting, with a word: Tell me, from where shall we buy a flood of many-seeded loaves for so many men? 6 But he concealed his intention, and tested the mind of Philip, who did not know; for he himself knew what he was about to do. 7 But anxious Philip mixed voice with wonder: Two hundred denarii-worth of loaves are not sufficient to satisfy a people equal to the sands in measure, so that each may have a small part. 8 But one of the divine companions raised a voice of good news—Andrew, pouring out a meal-nourishing voice to the King, the brother of Simon the fisherman who works in the waters: 9 There is a certain boy here having five barley loaves, and two neighboring fishes of the sea, double roasted fishes; but what will these accomplish, divided among so many-tongued and joined people? 10 But Jesus commanded his most ready companions: Make the mixed ranks of guests recline upon the earth. And there was infinite grass there; and a copious, folded crowd was a guest upon the earth. Five thousand of varying kind were in number of guests, and each was leaning against a neighboring wall, reclining in rows upon a green, long table. 11 And taking the five barley loaves—
D
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
A 47 If you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?
CHAPTER VI
1 After these things Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee of Tiberias. 2 And a great multitude followed him, because they saw his signs which he did on those who were sick. 3 And Jesus went up into the mountain, and there he sat with his disciples. 4 Now the passover, the feast of the Jews, was near. 5 Jesus therefore lifted up his eyes, and seeing that a great multitude comes to him, he says to Philip: From where shall we buy loaves, that these may eat? 6 (But this he said testing him; for he himself knew what he was about to do.) 7 Philip answered him: Two hundred denarii worth of loaves are not sufficient for them, that each of them may receive a little something. 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, says to him: 9 There is a young boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are these for so many? 10 And Jesus said: Make the people recline. Now there was much grass in the place. The men therefore reclined, in number about five thousand. 11 And Jesus took the loaves, and having given thanks he distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those who were reclining; likewise also from the fish as much as they wanted.
A Christ, rendering thanks to the ever-living Father, broke them with a curved motion of his clasped hand, and gave them to the guests, and offered food to all, and of the twin offspring as much as they desired. 12 But when satiety reached the hungry crowd from the abundant table, Jesus commanded the like-minded disciples: "Gather all the solid fragments of the overflowing table in one swift swirl, so that nothing may perish." 13 And one after another, the impulsive troop of companions was swept along, carrying the bulk of the gathered loaves in their cupped hands. From the green grass he gathered up the scattered remainder of the food that was left over; and searching round and about from the group of five loaves, until he filled twelve circles of baskets with his capacious bosom. 14 And many others from elsewhere resounded, perceiving the miracle which Christ had done for the whole feasting crowd, honoring the spontaneously regrowing feast of loaves: "This is truly the prophet whom they celebrate, who is rumored to come as the ruler of the eternal world." B 63 And the self-taught King, knowing the thought of the heart, that the people gathered there were about to come and seize him to make him king, withdrew again to the lonely rock of the woody mountain. 16 And when the shadowy cone of the approaching darkness ran up, the disciples were driven to the nearby sea. And having rushed into the sea-wandering ship, the chariot of the sea, the disciples were crossing to the opposite land, heading for the city of Capernaum. C And just appeared the black-bordered mist which covered the whole land, and having tightened her many-colored tunic about her body, the starry heaven shone. But Christ had not yet arrived for the desiring disciples. And as the storm pressed on, the curved surge of the salt sea rose up nearby, and the rowers marked the water with long oars, driven by contrary winds. And having cut through three decades of furlongs or twenty-five, they watched Christ walking upon the sea, having a dry footprint, a swift traveler of the passable salt sea. And being terrified they cried out. But Jesus spoke to the terrified disciples: "Leave your fear to the winds; I am Christ, the swift traveler of the sea." And they wanted to draw him into the ship, and the force of the salt sea.
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
12 And when they were filled, he says to his disciples: "Gather the fragments that are left over, so that nothing may be lost." 13 They gathered them, therefore, and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, which were left over for those who had eaten. 14 The men, therefore, having seen the sign which Jesus did, said: "This is truly the prophet who is coming into the world." D 15 Jesus therefore, knowing that they were about to come and seize him to make him king, withdrew again to the mountain, he himself alone. 16 And when evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17 And having entered into the boat, they were coming across the sea to Capernaum. And darkness had already come, and Jesus had not come to them. 18 And the sea was being stirred up by a great wind blowing. 19 Therefore, having rowed about twenty-five or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking upon the sea, and coming near the boat; and they were afraid. 20 But he says to them: "It is I, do not fear." 21 Therefore they wanted to take him into the boat; and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.
A It was then, and there was a harbor, when by divine agitation, like a winged mind and without winds or oars, the ship reached the distant harbor of its own accord. 22 But when the dawn, reddening the neighboring Tiberian rock, marked the shadowy mist on the summit, the people standing on the beautiful shore across the opposite sea looked around, because by the holy lake there were not anchored near the shore other ships joined together in order, except for one ship alone, unnavigated, and because Jesus himself was not then sailing in a sea-going ship with his divine companions, but because the disciples had sailed alone to the opposite land. Taking other ships where the shores of Tiberias are, they stirred the sea and came near the place where the numberless people ate the divine bread upon the grassy table, which the immortal hand of Christ broke, giving thanks to the Ruler of all, the Father. 23 And not finding Christ the life-bearing King, nor the disciples following, they whitened the sea-water with foam-bearing oars, sailing toward the city of Capernaum. 24 And finding Christ near across the restless sea, they surrounded him and said with a sweet speech: "Rabbi king, when did you sail hither?" 25 But Jesus, rebuking the B people who were mindful of the quick feast, drawing the men wandering from temporal food to a life-giving banquet, said: "I know what you come seeking; for you did not come because of those miracles which I did, with the customary word which you saw, but some desire draws you, gathering again the divine bread, which eating at an infinite feast you may be satisfied from my table. 26 But commit to the winds a companion, food quickly corruptible, for those wandering much, and rather accomplish that food remaining for an everlasting table, which the life-bearing Son of man alone will give, for this did God the Father seal." 27 And the people of the Jews asking, broke into an inquiring voice: "Tell us what we shall do, that we may accomplish the works of God with a rite pleasing to God?" 28 But the King answered with a speech: "Having right faith, that you may receive the one who has appeared, whom He sent." 29 And the people replied: "What sign will you perform for us who desire it?"
D 22 The next day the crowd that stood on the other side of the sea, seeing that there was no other boat there except one, that into which his disciples had entered, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but his disciples alone had gone away— 23 but other boats came from Tiberias near the place where they had eaten the bread, after the Lord had given thanks— 24 when therefore the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves entered into the boats, and came to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. 25 And finding him on the other side of the sea, they said to him: "Rabbi, when did you get here?" 26 Jesus answered them and said: "Amen, amen I say to you, you seek me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. 27 Labor not for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures unto life everlasting, which the Son of man will give you; for him the Father, even God, has sealed." 28 They said therefore to him: "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?" 29 Jesus answered and said to them: "This is the work of God, that you believe in whom he has sent." 30 They said therefore to him: "What sign then do you do, that we may see and believe you?"
A What will you do similar to the former works? Our fathers beheld the eternal food of heaven near the desert rock, which the many-worded writer records to have been granted by heaven to the immense people, to sustain the great multitude with bread."
32 Jesus answered, rebuking the proud people: "Moses did not previously grant to you, by the desert rock, the heavenly honey-flowing bread to eat: but it was my Father who granted it, who even now shall grant to you another, more excellent, true bread of wisdom from heaven. 33 For this is the bread which, descending from heaven, has given life to the whole world, precious to all." 34 And again the gathering of the men of the Jews said thus: "Lord of life, grant us that we may consume this true heavenly bread which you have said is enduring."
35 Jesus opened his divinely-speaking mouth, and from his lips he poured forth a voice filled with grace: B "I am the eternal bread of life: the mortal man who comes to me shall never hunger with black famine, and everyone who increases our unwavering faith shall never thirst, until, while still creeping in this bent age, he changes to the infinite goal of broad generation. 36 But I said to you that you have seen with your eyes the miracles of my voice, and you do not believe the Father. 37 Every man whom my Father gave to me shall bend his footsteps toward me, led by God; nor shall I cast out those men who come newly believing, C but I will receive them with a rejoicing mind. For I have not come from heaven fulfilling my own desire, but that of the Father. 38 This is the desire of the Father, the ruler of all, that I lose none of those whom my Father has given, but that I raise him up from the dark abyss, bringing him back from the dead, when the last hour comes. 39 For this is the will of my bright Father, that everyone who looks upon me, directing a placid eye, may come to the eternal assembly of future life: and I shall raise him up again, gathered, when the light of that last dawn arrives. (41 etc. up to 55.)
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
31 Our fathers ate the manna in the desert, as it is written: "He gave them bread from heaven to eat." 32 Jesus therefore said to them: "Amen, amen, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." 34 They said therefore D to him: "Lord, give us this bread always." 35 Jesus said to them: "I am the bread of life: he who comes to me shall not hunger; and he who believes in me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen me, and you do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives me shall come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out. 38 Because I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. 39 This is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all that he has given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up in the last day. 40 This is the will of my Father who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son, and believes in him, may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up in the last day." 41 The Jews therefore murmured about him, because he said: "I am the bread that came down from heaven."
42 And they said: "Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How then saith he: 'I came down from heaven'?" 43 Jesus therefore answered and said to them: "Murmur not among yourselves. 44 No man can come to me, except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him; and I will raise him up in the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets: 'And they shall all be taught of God.' Every one that hath heard of the Father, and hath learned, cometh to me. 46 Not that any man hath seen the Father, but he who is of God, he hath seen the Father. 47 Amen, amen I say unto you, he that believeth in me, hath everlasting life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers did eat manna in the desert, and are dead. 50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven; that if any man eat of it, he may not die. 51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven. 52 If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world." 53 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying: "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" 54 Then Jesus said to them: "Amen, amen I say unto you: except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. 55 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. 56 For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. 57 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him. 58 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eat
understanding? A The Spirit is what gives life, and it is superior; but the alien nature of the earthly flesh will profit nothing. The divine flow of our words, which I mean, is life and spirit combined, and a true utterance. B But some are incredulous with an insensate madness. For He knew who they were that had an erring mind, committing their faith to winds that wander upon the sea, and which man it was that was going to betray Him to the Jews, agitated by the stimulus of the silver disease. And the King said to them: Therefore I said to you: No one of mortal men can come to me of his own will, unless it be that a man beloved by our God should receive this gift as the Father grants it. On account of which, the weak man, walking with a backward step, departed far from the band of the coming pilgrims: no longer, as before, changing his mutable habit, did he follow Christ again. But the Lord, observing the people C of His companions who were of another mind and unstable, recalling the alien and wandering people, said to the twelve more faithful disciples: Are you also hastening to go away with the strangers? Are disciples like illegitimate ones? And Peter, called by his name Simon, said to Him: To whom, more excellent than you, shall we come? For you have the honey-sweet flows of the words of eternal Life: And knowing these things not from the silent books of the ancients, we believe with one and concordant will, that you alone are the holy one of God. But the King, D speaking sweetly, said an explicit word to the believing Peter: Have I not, knowing the entire mind of the men, chosen you out of many? And one has been numbered among you who is hostile, mutable, a member of the household of the disciples, a new devil as he shall be called by posterity? He said this, signifying the convicted Iscariot, Judas, the deceitful son of the wretched Simon. For he was about to deliver Him up to a vital fate, maddened by gold, caught in a treacherous hunting-net, being one of the twelve companions.
CAP. VII
And then the Lord dwelling remained there, traveling with endurant feet the land founded by the sea of Galilee. For He did not wish to walk on the holy soil of the Jews, because [index: entries preserved]
A they with deceit planned to destroy Him, the sons of the Jews, rejoicing in holy ruin. 2 Now there was a public annual festival near at hand for God, named for the tabernacles being fixed. B And close by, the false kinsmen, the fourfold sons of Joseph, urging Christ on, sounded a harmonious voice: "Depart from here, and when the celebration of the festival is, hasten to visit the land bordering Judæa, that having converted the unbelieving, wandering people, the disciples might recover the old faith in You, seeing Your works perfected by a wise word. For no one of men weaves a hidden work, a work covered in the invisible darkness of silence, but wishes to be bold openly; if You do these various miracles, show the miracles clearly to the world." Such things they said in vain, being unbelieving like others; though they were brothers of Christ, the ruler of all, they denied the firm custom of the faith themselves. 6 And to them the King answered with a replying word: "My time has not yet come; but yours is always spread ready and free. For the world, mad with its accustomed storm of rage, can never hate you; but it hates me and drives me away, because I alone, with a voice bearing witness without sparing, rebuke the world stuffed with habitual sin, crying out that the works it performs are alien to the law. Do you, sonorous, approach the celebration of the festival: I am not yet honoring the recently fixed tents, nor shall I ascend to the sacred festival; for the course of my time is not yet completed for me." So saying, He traversed the holy ground of the unshorn Galileans. C And as the kinsmen ascended to the temple, late also He Himself bent His divine foot toward the recently celebrated festival. And the Jews were searching for Him with dear necessity: "Where did He go? Where is He?" And to the muttering people, an infinite talk flowed from voices not silent. And many spoke a pious, testifying voice, that He is wise and performs excellent miracles. But others contended against it with voices agreeing from the throat: "He is not wise, not truly wise is this one; but he deceives the mind of the gathered people with deceitful words." Such things indeed they conferred among themselves. And then no one was bold enough to speak openly of Him with an intrepid voice, having freed their lips, avoiding the terror of the Jews.
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
2 Now the festival of the Jews, the Feast of Tabernacles, was near. 3 Therefore His brothers said to Him, "Depart from here, and go into Judæa, that Your disciples also may see the works which You are doing. 4 For no one does anything in secret while he himself seeks to be known openly; if You do these things, show Yourself to the world." 5 For even His brothers did not believe in Him. 6 Jesus therefore says to them, "My time has not yet come; but your time is always ready. 7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it that its works are evil. 8 You go up to this feast; I am not yet going up to this feast, for My time has not been fulfilled." 9 And saying these things to them, He stayed in Galilee. 10 But when His brothers had gone up, then He also went up to the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret. 11 The Jews therefore were seeking Him at the feast, and saying, "Where is He?" 12 And there was much murmuring concerning Him among the crowds. Some were saying, "He is good"; others were saying, "No; but He deceives the crowd." 13 Yet no one spoke openly of Him for fear of the Jews.
A When the festival was in its middle course, Jesus was ascending; and in the stony temple He taught the ranks of yoke-fellows of men. And the prudent crowd of Jews marveled at Him. They whispered one to another, turn by turn: "Whence does this man pour forth written speech? How does he know letters, which he has not learned with skilled art? How does he know letters, being untaught?" And to those asking, the King poured forth speech from divine lips: "My learning is not multiscient, but it is of the Father who sent Me. If any man wills to know the grace of My teaching, whether it is some divine gift of the Creator from heaven, or whether I speak from My own gifts, emitting a spontaneous voice. Every man who boasts of his own glorious honor, testifying from his own wisdom to himself, this man seeks his own glory; but he who performs the will of God who sent him, this man walks blameless in the path of truth, and there is nothing destructive in him."
And the King said to them in turn: "Did not Moses give you the law as an avenger of men's slaughter? And whence have you snatched the word of the most high God? Nor does any one of you perform the law, for you all seek to kill Me with a hidden death." And the people said to Him: "A goad of an aerial demon drives your mind; who seeks to tame you?"
And Jesus spoke a wise law, for which the people, in a circular manner, with hidden-faced mystery, cut off the summit of the procreative defense of shame: B "I have done one work, and you all marvel, rebuking me for the sake of a pious work. For whose sake Moses delivered to you the cutting of the law-bearing iron? Not because it was Moses' gift, but it was the donation of your fathers; and by a certain primeval law, when the light of the seventh dawn comes, you circumcise the newborn male with iron, that the lawful shackles of Moses not be broken without promise. But if a man receives the holy cutting with the accustomed iron, you all raise against me an offensive clamor of threats, if I have again restored to you, by my word of succor, a man entirely putrefied with a circular disease, when it was the Sabbath, having made him whole, and not with a cutting iron? Judge not by according favor to the eyes of mortals, but judging justice, cut with the true word, so that righteousness—"
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
14 Now when the festival was at its middle, Jesus went up into the temple and taught. D 15 And the Jews marveled, saying, "How does this man know letters, having not learned?" 16 Jesus answered them and said, "My teaching is not mine, but His who sent Me. 17 If any man wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the teaching, whether it is from God, or whether I speak from Myself. 18 He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but he who seeks the glory of Him who sent him, the same is true, and there is no unrighteousness in him. 19 Has not Moses given you the law, and no one of you keeps the law? Why do you seek to kill Me?" 20 The crowd answered and said, "You have a demon; who seeks to kill you?" 21 Jesus answered and said to them, "I did one work, and you all marvel. 22 For this cause Moses has given you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. 23 If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath, that the law of Moses should not be broken, are you angry with me because I made a man entirely whole on the Sabbath? 24 Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment."
A
lest you should esteem an ancient law above a person. And some of the holy city of Jerusalem said: Is this not he whom the common citizens seek to tame with pernicious iron? Behold how, without fear, he pours out his accustomed voice in the presence of the whole watching multitude. Does the voice of god-speaking men reach the princes of the city, that they know this is Christ? But when Christ the King comes, no man knows whence he is; yet you know this man. B But Jesus cried out in the silver-gleaming temple: You know me, and you are learned in my discourse; you know also whence I am, even if you hide this in silence. For I do not come here to you of my own accord, but my Father is true regarding this mission. But I know him well, because I have come from him, and he has sent me to come. And some, spurred on, were stirred up to seize Jesus with unsparing hands: yet no one of them laid his heavy hands upon him, because his bloody hour, willed by the Father, had not yet come. And many from the gathered multitude believed; and they honored Jesus with a unanimous discourse: When Christ the King who saves the people comes, will he do more excellent miracles with his pain-soothing mouth than the works this man has done? And the incredulous people, of the mind of the erring Pharisees, heard the querulous, unbridled voice of the wordy, muttering multitude. And the envious high priests sent forth officers to seize Jesus, who was unattainable to their cruel hand. C And the King spoke to them, in an obscure discourse prophesying the hour of his own voluntary and swift fate: For a little while yet I remain with you upon the earth, and soon I shall return to my Father who sent me; and you shall seek me: but you will not find me; and you cannot pass, following my footsteps, into the path that I shall travel. And the people spoke among themselves in groups there: Whither does this man intend to go after a little while, departing hence? Does the wanderer hasten to go to the neighboring cities, where the scattered ranks of the Gentiles are, to teach the sons of the Greeks the law of his own wisdom? What indeed is this speech which he addressed to the witnessing people? D
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
25 Then some of them of Jerusalem said: Is not this he whom they seek to kill? 26 And lo, he speaks openly, and they say nothing to him. Have the rulers known indeed that this is the very Christ? 27 But we know this man whence he is; but when Christ comes, no man knows whence he is. 28 Jesus therefore cried in the temple, teaching, and saying: You both know me, and you know whence I am: and I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom you know not. 29 But I know him, because I am from him, and he has sent me. 30 They sought therefore to take him: and no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come. 31 But many of the people believed in him, and said: When Christ comes, shall he do more miracles than these which this man has done? 32 The Pharisees heard the people murmuring these things concerning him: and the Pharisees and the chief priests sent officers to take him. 33 Jesus therefore said to them: Yet a little while I am with you, and I go to him that sent me. 34 You shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, you cannot come. 35 The Jews therefore said among themselves: Whither will this man go, that we shall not find him? will he go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles? 36 What is this saying that he said: You shall seek me,
and you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come?' A And you shall not find [me]; and is it permitted that you B should tread a path where I am going, which you desire but cannot enter? But when the final day of the festal chorus had arrived, Christ the King stood by the stone temple. He shouted to the Hebrews, pouring forth a voice that softens all things: "If anyone has a soul-corrupting thirst, let him come to me and drink of our Fountain the soul-saving water." For everyone who has faith will be safe; and as the ancient word of God declared, ever through his belly will Wisdom pour forth rivers in a living flow, again pouring out the hidden divine water. C He spoke, prophesying the coming late splendor of the Spirit, which every credulous generation of diverse mankind was to receive with a God-accepting mind. For not yet was Christ the King, the Son of the Father, established in human minds, having appeared seated on a throne near at hand. Many indeed of the people listening then with one accord, with faithful lips, murmured a manifold sound: "This man, whom the law described, is the true prophet." Others, however, unaware of the controversy, had a proclamation: "This is Christ the King." But with contentious speech, others, loosening the bars of the law-bearing mouths, spoke oracles inscribed in the wise book: "For is Christ the King to come from Galilee? The God-inspired utterance did not say this; but bearing the royal blood of ancient David, Christ will himself appear to the Jews, being called where the lyre-player David dwelt in the house of his fatherland, Bethlehem of the sheep-grazing fields." But the people were divided, and the contention of differing counsel was continuous. 44 But certain imprudent men, lacking foresight, attempted to seize Jesus through the unjust instinct of the elders; but no one seized him, for the final, fatal hour for him had not yet stood by to permit it. And the prudent ministers returned to the priests, who were opposed to God, being amazed; and they said to them: "Why did you not bring him?" And they replied with a prudent word, being ministers of a serious necessity, not erring: "Never did another man speak with such a voice." And the bold assembly of intractable Pharisees said: "Have you also been led astray with an erring mind, believing his words?" D *Text of the Evangelist.* ...and you shall not find [me]; and where I am, you cannot come? In the last day, the great [day] of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture said, 'Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.'" (This he said concerning the Spirit, which those who believe in him were about to receive; for not yet was the Holy Spirit [given], because Jesus was not yet glorified.) Many from the crowd, therefore, hearing the word, said, "This is truly the prophet." Others said, "This is the Christ." But others said, "For shall the Christ come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?" So there was a division in the crowd because of him. Some of them wanted to seize him; but no one laid hands on him. The officers came, therefore, to the chief priests and Pharisees; and they said to them, "Why did you not bring him?" The officers answered, "Never did a man speak as this man speaks." Therefore the Pharisees answered them, "Have you also been led astray?"
with their designs? A Num anyone of the Rulers, or of the discerning Pharisees, believed in him? Except for this popular, wicked troop of wanderers, who in their ignorance of the law run mad, filled with execrations. B But Nicodemus, near at hand, pouring out a reproving voice to the abundant throng, replied, refuting them all: Does the divine law of the Jews truly know how to condemn with such hasty spirit, unless the judge, having first heard the man speaking, renders judgment with a knowing voice, acknowledging the works which he performs through the testimony of his discourse? And the chorus of the law-knowing Pharisees resounded in opposition, reproaching the blameless Nicodemus: Do you yourself also bring the blood of a Galilean? Consulting the scroll in your seat, you shall learn that no eloquent prophet is ever raised from Galilee. [The remainder is missing.]
CHAPTER VIII
Verses 1-11 are lacking.C 12 Jesus then spoke, pouring out his voice to the assembled people: I am the light of the radiant world; and whoever, as a man, shall faithfully follow me with a believing mind, never treads with wandering feet through the shadowy cone of mist, but shall shine brightly, having as a companion within himself the unshakable light of never-wandering Life. But the slanderous People of the Jews clamored with raging voice: You speak your own testimony in a boastful word; your discourse is not true as a witness. 14 He said even this: As I pour forth the torrent from the eternal tongue, sent by God, even if I myself enhance my own glory with testimonies, true is my witnessing discourse; for I alone know whence I have come, and whither I go.
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
48 Has any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? 49 But this crowd that knows not the law, they are accursed. 50 Nicodemus says to them, he who came to him by night, being one of them: 51 Does our law judge a man, unless it first hears from him, and learns what he is doing? 52 They answered and said to him: Are you also from Galilee? Search and see that a prophet has not risen from Galilee. 53 And each went to his own house.
CHAPTER VIII
1 And Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 And at dawn he returned again to the temple, and all the people came to him; and he sat down and taught them. 3 And the Scribes and Pharisees bring to him a woman caught in adultery; and having placed her in the midst, 4 they say to him: Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 And in the law Moses commanded us that such should be stoned; what then do you say? 6 This they said, testing him, that they might have wherewith to accuse him. But Jesus, stooping down, wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 And as they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them: Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her. 8 And again stooping down, he wrote on the ground. 9 And they, hearing this and being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning from the elders even unto the last; and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. 10 And Jesus straightening up, and seeing no one but the woman, said to her: Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Did no one condemn you? 11 And she said: No one, Lord. And Jesus said to her: Neither do I condemn you; go, and sin no more. 12 Again therefore Jesus spoke to them, saying: I am the light of the world; he who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. 13 The Pharisees, therefore, said to him: You bear witness of yourself; your testimony is not true. 14 Jesus answered and said to them: Even if I bear witness of myself, my testimony is true; for I know whence I came, and whither I go; but you do not know whence I come, and whither I go.
A 90 15 You, looking upon my human form, judge according to the flesh with an ignorant speech. I judge no one, relaxing the mouth of a legislator; but if I should indeed judge, discerning true justice, my judgment is infallible and blameless; for I am not alone in reproving, but I have also the Father who reigns on high, my common fellow-worker. 17 And in your law it is marked in a book sacred to the prudent: The testimony of two men sounds otherwise. 18 I myself have become a true witness to myself, and my Begetter also speaks a common testimony. 19 The Hebrews questioned with a reciprocal speech: Who is the Father who planted you? And He himself said: You do not know either, with one incredulous purpose, neither me, the Son coming, nor the Father sending. If you had recognized me and fixed it in your mind, you would have also known our Parent. The Lord spoke these divine instructions to the people, where the place called the Treasury is spoken of; where many citizens walked, carrying various gifts. And no one seized him, for the divine final sign of the hour had not yet come upon him as a death-bringing one. And to them the King said: I myself will go my way, and you, all wanderers in insensate ways, shall look upon the end after a dreadful old age, having white hairs contemporary with sin. But whither I direct the many-wound footprint of my foot, you cannot come with searching foot. C 22 And the bold people of the Hebrews were troubled, hearing, pouring out a foolish sound with a reviling mouth: Does he wish to die by the death of a noose? Or drawing a sword, will he fall into death by self-slaughter through his belly? But Jesus opened his God-speaking mouth, pouring out an adversarial speech to the reviling people: 92 You are the low descenders of the abyss, you are from the lowest, and I am from on high; you are of this vile and harmful world, carrying blood from the earth; but I in eternal honor am a stranger in the world, and I do not know a mortal father; I am a stranger in the world, and I am a citizen of heaven; 24 But I said to you that, by a certain fate preoccupying you, you will still, being insane, fall into the abyss, having a sin contemporary with you; for truly, unless you recognize me,
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
15 You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. 16 And yet if I judge, my judgment is true: because I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent me. 17 And it is written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true. 18 I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me. 19 They said therefore unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also. 20 These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as he taught in the temple: and no man laid hands on him; for his hour was not yet come. 21 Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come. 22 Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself? because he saith, Whither I go, ye cannot come? 23 And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. 24 I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.
A If you shall not know me, who I am or of what Father, you shall die, pregnant with impiety. The noble people of the Jews broke out in a craving voice: "Who are you?" And Christ shouted back: "That which I have been telling you from the beginning; having infinite things to judge and to speak; but true is He who sent me to the human generation; and truly all things that I have heard from Him, I narrate as certain to the foolish world." The people did not understand that He told them of the Father. Jesus spoke in return, opening his divine lips: "When you have exalted in pure minds the wise Son of man, then you shall know yourselves that I weave nothing apart from God the Father; but what my Father commanded me, I still do; because the supreme Father also shines with me, and He has not left me alone, since I do all things well-pleasing to the Parent in the time of the firm cycle."
B While he was crying these things, ranks of various men relied upon the unbreakable bonds of faith. And Jesus said a word to the newly-believing people: "If you believe in me, and remain in our word as navigator, then you shall know yourselves the way of the truth that delights in God; and the truth shall grant you a free day."
But the Hebrews echoed with a single tongue: "We are the blood of Abraham, the noble and wealthy father, bringing forth free blood, bowing the neck to no man, we have never been slaves to the lash; and how have you said to us: 'You shall be free,' and 'You shall behold the unbridled tranquility of the truth'?"
C Jesus taught, rebuking the proud crowd: "Every man doing transgression with a foolish spirit is a slave of transgression; but in the immortal house the servant of iniquity never remains dwelling; but the blameless life-bearing Son remains, dwelling in the paternal house, until, passing beyond the temporal goal, the firm age revolves incomprehensibly. If, however, the Son, having driven out your servile necessity, crowns your hair with leaves of freedom, you shall cast off again the soluble bonds of transgression’s collar, having obtained at last the truly free day. You are the offspring of the prudent Abraham (I know it myself); but you seek to kill me with a hidden death. For my word has no place in you."
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
25 Then they said to him: "Who are you?" And Jesus said to them: "Even that which I also speak to you from the beginning. 26 I have many things to say and to judge concerning you; but he who sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things D which I have heard from him." They did not understand that he was speaking to them of the Father.
28 Then Jesus said to them: "When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you shall know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself, but as my Father has taught me, I speak these things. 29 And he who sent me is with me; the Father has not left me alone, because I always do those things that are pleasing to him."
30 As he was speaking these things, many believed in him. 31 Then Jesus said to those Jews who had believed him: "If you remain in my word, you are truly my disciples; 32 and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
33 They answered him: "We are the seed of Abraham, and have never been in bondage to anyone; how do you say: 'You shall be made free'?"
34 Jesus answered them: "Amen, amen, I say to you, that everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. 35 And the slave does not abide in the house forever; the son abides forever. 36 If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be truly free. 37 I know that you are the seed of Abraham; but you seek to kill me, because my word has no place in you.
And you seek to kill me with a hidden fate. For my word never enters into your mind. A [38] The Hebrews shouted in reply with a certain word: "Our forefather is Abraham." Jesus answered, pouring forth a resounding voice: "If Abraham the planter had begotten you as wise children, you would also have performed the pious works of your father, Abraham, the lover of strangers. You are a generation opposing God. If you stain your hands with murderous slaughter, by those manifest deeds you confirm your lineage. Abraham did not desire to subdue an innocent man; Abraham did not perform this deed hateful to God. But you desire to weave the works of a deceitful father." And the bold people of the Hebrews, hearing this, said again: "We were not born from a spurious, harlot's union, but we know God alone as the one living Father." And Jesus spoke again to the listening people: "If God were your Father, inhabiting the heavens, you all would have joined me—born of the one Father—in an indissoluble bond of firm friendship. For I came hither proceeding from God. And how is it that you do not know my divinely wise voice? You cannot hear my word. You are the hostile children of an abominable father, of the adversary daemon, and you desire to perform all the lovely cravings of that proud father. That one was always a man-slayer, from the moment the foundation of the world was first established. Nor did he remain in the law of truth, believing in God; for truth was not in him. And when, with the will of an iniquitous mind, he utters a deceitful word while coaxing with guile, he speaks from his own, B because he is a liar by nature, having pernicious habits, born of a lying father. I have spoken to you, and you do not believe [my] word. Which man among you will be able to convict me himself as a seeker of sin? And if I speak the truth, why do you not believe me, the prudent one? Every wise man, having his mind set on God who is self-begotten, hears with a sweet spirit the words of the living, heavenly God. But you do not hasten to hear the divine voice, [but seek to kill me]..."
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
38 I speak what I have seen with my Father, and you therefore do what you have seen with your father. 39 They answered and said to him: "Our father is Abraham." Jesus saith to them: "If you were the children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham. 40 But now you seek to kill me, a man who has spoken the truth to you, which I have heard from God: this did not Abraham. 41 You do the works of your father." They said therefore to him: "We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, God." 42 Jesus therefore said to them: "If God were your Father, you would love me; for I proceeded and came from God; for I came not of myself, but he sent me. 43 Why do you not know my speech? Because you cannot hear my word. 44 You are of the father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof. 45 But if I say the truth, you do not believe me. 46 Which of you shall convince me of sin? If I say the truth, why do you not believe me? 47 He that is of God, heareth the words of God. Therefore you hear them not, because you are not of God."
A For you are not children of the life-giving Parent. And the bold crowd of the Hebrews was seething as they heard, pouring forth mindless insults from their mouths: "Not unjustly do we judge you, knowing full well that, having become a God to the Samaritans, you bear the raging impulse of a demon’s lash." 49 But Jesus spoke again to the disobedient people: "I do not bear the sound of a dark-minded demon’s lash, but I honor God, my life-giving Generator, with pure honors; yet you, acting foolishly, reproach me with many-insulting, goading words. I do not seek my own honor; for there is One who seeks it, and who is always magnifying my glory, and who judges even more at that time. 51 Amen, amen, I say, whoever receives the sequence of my God-inspired words, and guards them within an inviolate heart, shall never behold bitter destruction so long as the revolving age endures." Then the people exclaimed: "Now, even now, we have truly learned that a wandering frenzy of an avenging demon drives you to madness. Did Abraham see such a fate, and were the prophets not able to escape the pains of unyielding B death? And do you, pouring forth your high-necked boasting with threats, dare to say that if a man keeps our sayings, he shall not taste of destruction? Are you, by any chance, greater than Abraham, our father, who believed in God and died by an immutable fate? And all the prophets have experienced death. Tell us, to whom of the ancients do you compare yourself?" 54 Jesus spoke, opening his lips moved by God: "If I glorify myself, and speak a boastful word, magnifying my own glory, my word will avail nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, whom you call God in your unjust discourse, who sent me to come to the human race as the guide of the world. But I know him well; for if I should say that I do not know him, I would clearly appear to you as a deceater, equal to yourselves in lying. But I know him, and I observe his commands with unshaken character. Your first-sown god-inspired forefather Abraham rejoiced in his spirit to see my day; he saw it, and entered into joy." 57 And the crowd C of the Jews was amazed, and roared back with a contrary sound, not yet having filled the fifty-year boundary of the revolving time.
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
48 The Jews therefore answered, and said to him: Do we not say well, that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil? 49 Jesus answered: I have not a devil: but I honour my Father, and you have dishonoured me. 50 But I seek not my own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth. 51 Amen, amen, I say to you: If any man keep my word, he shall not see death for ever. 52 The Jews therefore said: Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest: If any man keep my word, he shall not taste death for ever. 53 Art thou greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? And the prophets are dead. Whom dost thou make thyself? 54 Jesus answered: If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father that glorifieth me, of whom you say that he is your God. 55 And you have not known him, but I know him. And if I shall say that I know him not, I shall be like to you, a liar. But I do know him, and do keep his word. 56 Abraham your father rejoiced that he might see my day: he saw it, and was glad. 57 The Jews therefore said to him: Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?before Abraham was, I am. 59 Then they took up stones to cast at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.
CAPUT IX.
A Having accomplished fifty circuits of years, didst thou see the long-lived Abraham? He said also himself: Before Abraham had his being, I am. The mad, proud multitude, having heavy stones, thronged, thinking, even while he was yet speaking, to hide him with the sharp edge of the stone-cast B flurry. But Jesus, incomprehensible, was hidden under the folds of the temple; and walking with silent feet through the midst of them, he was borne along unseen, leaving the stoning multitude. Thus indeed he passed by.
1 And passing along the way, he perceived a man sitting, whom from his mother’s womb the hours of her delivery had seen yet palpitating, blind: who was wandering about, having his look-less face confused and indistinct, whom nature had not fashioned, and having the swollen, strange eye of one not possessing the circle, his natal darkness held; and the Guide of life, Parent of the world, never brought forth such an infant without eyes C into the coeval world. 2 His band of companions asked Jesus: Rabbi, tell the inquiring disciples, who sinned: did this one, sinning, trouble God, or his parents? Which from the womb of his mother the grave, dark, delivery-pains, coeval with darkness, brought forth. 3 But Jesus taught with a true, testifying voice: This one, acting wickedly, sinned not, neither his parents: but he has received this divinely-ordained affliction, so that through him the works of God, the Father who drives away evil, might be manifested. 4 It is necessary for us to accomplish the works of the Most High, the works of the living God, as long D as the dawn yet appears. A dark night shall come after a little while; and when it comes, no man will be able to weave his work during the night. 5 I shall act as long as the day increases. But I am the Light of the dark world, as long as I walk in the world. The King spoke, and from his divine mouth, onto the thirsty earth, he spat the white, pain-loosening foam of his teeth; and mixing the foam with the dust of the earth, by his spittle he made light-bringing clay. And, moistening the clay, having smeared it upon the light-lacking eye of the man, he fashioned the eye of the man, which nature could not provide, he fashioned the eye of the man, and upon his sightless face, having drawn double circles, he carved the middle sight, from the man-forming dust. And he said with a divine voice:
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST.
Jesus said to them: Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was made, I am. They took up stones therefore that they might cast them at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them; and so passed by.
CAPUT IX.
1 And as Jesus was passing by, he saw a man blind from his birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, saying: Rabbi, who hath sinned, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind? 3 Jesus answered: Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. 4 I must work the works of him that sent me, whilst it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. 6 When he had said these things, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and spread the clay upon his eyes. 7 And said to him: Go, wash in the pool of Siloe (which is interpreted, Sent). He went therefore, and washed, and came seeing.
A Come to me, and wash your face where the water of the nearby fount of Siloam flows, common to all, water named from your mission. Christ spoke; and the blind man hastened, and at the fountain with hollowed hands he drew up the light-bearing water, washing his blind eyes with the fountain's waters. Wiping away the circle of the eye, newly pressed into shape, he suddenly had light, which nature knew not how to bestow, beholding the late splendor of an unaccustomed sun. He washed; and he returned again, and stood seeing all things. And the strangers, the travelers, looking upon him as he sent forth brightness from his face—newly recovered of sight—the neighbors and men said to the knowing people: Is not this the blind traveler in the city, who formerly begged, stretching out his habitual hand, his right hand extended to the passers-by? B Others, however, sounded forth with a certain answering speech: It is not, it is not he; he is only like him. That man spoke: I am he. Hearing this, the people of the Jews broke out with an inquisitive voice: How indeed were your prominent eyes opened?
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
8 The neighbors therefore, and they who had seen him before that he was a blind man, said: Is not this he that sat and begged? 9 Some said: This is he. But others said: No, but he is like him. But he said: That I am he. 10 They said therefore to him: How were thy eyes opened? 11 He answered: That man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed my eyes, and said to me: Go to the pool of Siloe, and wash. And I went, I washed, and I see. 12 And they said to him: Where is he? He saith: I know not.
13 They bring him that had been blind to the Pharisees. 14 Now it was the sabbath, when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. 15 Again therefore the Pharisees asked him how he had received his sight. But he said to them: He put clay upon my eyes, and I washed, and I see. 16 Some therefore of the Pharisees said: This man is not of God, who keepeth not the sabbath. Others said: How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles?
A nor does he keep the course of the seventh dawn. But others answered from their throats with a single voice: How can a mortal man and a sinner do all these various miracles? But the contentious people were divided in two, a double sound roared, and there was much noisy debate. To the blind man everyone said: But as for you, what opinion do you have of him? What judgment will you offer? And the man who had newly received his sight, unshaken, spoke with a believing tongue, daring to say that he is a divine prophet. 107 But the people did not believe the true voice of the man who was once blind and had received light in his eyes, unless the incredulous high priests first called the parents who knew the man who had received his sight. 108 They asked both of them with a certain envious remark: Is this your son, whom the citizens said was born blind from his mother’s womb? And from where did he lately receive perfect light in his eyes? And the parents, giving birth to fear, and suppressing their own minds, hiding their speech, said: We know that this man who received the splendor of his eyes is truly our son; but we ourselves B also know that from his mother’s body, while yet an infant creeping into the light, he was blind, not yet tasting milk, still breathing from birth. But how his eyes were pierced and opened on both sides, and who dissipated the gloom of his darkened eyes, we, blameless, do not know: but ask the son himself, who knows of these things which the parents do not know. This is not an infant having childish immaturity: he has no need of another voice: for this young man, newly flourishing, will speak the true word, bearing the perfect measures of increasing puberty. Such things the parents said deceitfully out of fear, avoiding the terror of the Jews: for those who were mad against Christ, having zeal for his inimitable works, proclaimed a covenant to all the believing people, that whoever received him in his mind and called him Christ, should not reach the divine house in which God is invoked. C For which reason the parents said to the Jews: Ask the son who knows, and there is no need for the parents: but to you who are asking, he will be able to speak, having perfect measures and great maturity. And the father of the blind man mingled his voice with wonder, hiding his tongue, lest the hostile assembly might hear, seeing the new sight of his son with eyes of a beautiful face. 109 And the man who was a wandering blind traveler
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST.
17 And there was a division among them. They say to the blind man again: What say you of him, that he hath opened your eyes? And he said: That he is a prophet. 18 The Jews did not believe concerning him that he had been blind and had seen, until they called the parents of him that had received his sight. 19 And they asked them, saying: Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see? 20 His parents answered them and said: We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind. 21 But how he now sees, we do not know, or who opened his eyes, we do not know: he has age, ask him: he will speak for himself. 22 These things his parents said, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had already agreed, that if any man should confess him to be Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue. 23 Therefore did his parents say: He has age, ask him. 24 They called therefore the man who had been blind, and said to him: Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.
A The envious ones, having called him, addressed him: "Come, child, give thanks to the God who reigns on high, who, in saving you, took away the shadow from your eyes; but that man whom you honor, this man is a person given over to sins." The bold man said to the Hebrews: "Whether this one is a sinner I have B not known in truth; but I do know in my heart this one thing clearly, that I was born blind, a companion of the dawn, and I stand now seeing." 26 And the chorus of Hebrews broke out into a sorrowful voice: "Tell us, what did he do to you with his skillful clay? And how did he destroy the dark gloom?" And to them the undaunted man uttered a free voice: "I have told you once, and you did not hear my voice; why do you backward-turning men desire to hear him? Does God agitate your mind, so that you yourselves might also become bastard disciples of the divine Christ?" 28 They, however, immediately beset him with opposing words: "You are that man's disciple, the law-breaker. We are indeed companions of the ancient God-fearing man, the ministers of the law-bearing Moses; but this man we do not know." 30 The man answered with a speech: "This indeed is the greatest miracle, that to you this man is unknown, while he opened my eyes. We know that God the Father, who steers all things, does not know how to hear the voice of a sinful-minded man; but if a man is pleasing in his piety, and with pure understanding performs the commands of God, him God hears readily when he prays. Never is such a speech heard from the beginning, ever since the age that nourishes all things, that anyone gave light with C the allotted Oculi of a face much closed, whom the dawn had seen still blind while being brought forth through the womb. Unless this man were of the heavenly King, never could he alone have accomplished such a great miracle." And the priest-leaders pursued him with an envious voice: "You, little man, having been born entirely in sins from the midwife, do you teach these things to the wise priests, you reviler?" And having shouted at him, they drove him out from the temple. Jesus heard, having known by reputation about the blind man, that the proud priests had cast him out; and having found him, he said to him: "Do you believe in the Son, honoring the heavenly King?" The man poured forth a voice: D "Lord, who is he that I might believe in him?"
TEXTUS EVANGELISTÆ. 25 That man answered and said: Whether he is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. 26 They said to him again: What did he do to you? how did he open your eyes? 27 He answered them: I told you already, and you did not hear; why do you want to hear again? do you also want to become his disciples? 28 They reviled him therefore, and said: You are his disciple; but we are Moses' disciples. 29 We know that God spoke to Moses; but as for this man, we do not know where he is from. 30 The man answered and said to them: Why, in this is a marvelous thing, that you do not know where he is from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not hear sinners; but if any person is God-fearing, and does his will, him he hears. 32 Since the world began it has not been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. 34 They answered and said to him: You were born entirely in sins, and do you teach us? And they cast him out. 35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and having found him, he said to him: Do you believe in the Son of God? 36 That man answered and said: Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?
37 Jesus said to him: Both you have seen him, and he who is speaking with you is he. 38 And he said: I believe, Lord; and he worshiped him. 39 And Jesus said: For judgment I came into this world, that those not seeing may see, and those seeing may become blind. 40 And those of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things, and they said to him: Are we also blind? 41 Jesus said to them: If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, We see; therefore your sin remains.
CAPUT X.
1 Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. 2 But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 To him the gatekeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice. 5 Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. 6 Jesus spoke this proverb to them, but they did not understand what things they were which he spoke to them.
A O Ruler, who is this of whom you spoke, that I may honor him? B And Jesus replied: You have both seen him, and he who is speaking with you now is he. He said: Lord, I believe; and bowing his head to the earth, and bending his neck, which was curved toward his immortal feet, he embraced the shining tarsus of his sandals. Then Jesus replied, hearing his wise speech: I came into this foolish, wandering world for judgment; I came for a twofold and contrary judgment, so that both they who previously did not see the light of the invisible dawn, the blind, might recover sight, looking with their eyes; and those who appear sharply sighted might become blind. Then the crowd of his neighbors, following Christ, said to the Pharisees: Are we also blind, with wandering eyes? And Jesus discoursed, rebuking the unbelieving people: If the darkness of your eyes had obscured the light of sight, I would have said that you were ignorant of sin; but now, seeing the light, you yourselves are wanderers, and you are blind in mind even more than in eyes; for in the men in whom sins remain, they see in vain with their eyes.
CHAPTER X
1 A firm witness, I say to you, truly, truly: whoever shall creep through the door of a well-fortified sheepfold of hidden sheep, and crawls in from elsewhere, climbing up by a dark and winding path, this man is a robber with a predatory foot. 2 But he who comes straightforwardly into the fold is the shepherd, who feeds the sheep. 3 And to him who comes, the gatekeeper opens the open door of the stall. The sheep, recognizing their shepherd, leap around him, hearing his voice; and at the entrance, the shepherd calls the flocks to pasture with his accustomed voice. 4 And he leads the sheep forth, eager to be outside the fold. C But when he has gathered the whole order of the flock, the leader walks before the incoming sheep; and the multi-formed flock goes with a retrograding foot, following the shepherd to the dewy meadows. 5 They do not listen to a stranger, nor do they know how to hear the voice of an alien calling them—a voice not of the shepherd—but they flee from the spurious shepherd who passes by. 6 Such a proverbial word he recited; and the people hesitated over the discourse, and did not learn, though hearing Christ nearby, the obscure things which he said with a divine voice.
αὐτοῖς.
PARAPHRASE ON JOHN. – CHAPTER X.
Christ spoke these things with a divine voice, not obscurely. A 7 Jesus spoke in a clear story: I am the welcoming door of the fold that holds many sheep. 8 All those who came before me with stealthy step were deceitful thieves; and therefore the flocks did not listen to their predatory voices. 9 I am the welcoming door, the keeper of the sheep; and whoever of ours goes through me and enters the door of the fold, he walks in, and returns again, and will find pasture, and the man will live forever. 10 But the destructive robber never climbs into the fold, unless it is to steal without a witness, or to destroy, or to slaughter the sheep with an unsparing sword. But I, in order to save my sheep, came from the Father, so that they might obtain future life with an unceasing glory—which time does not know how to destroy—and have it more abundantly. B 11 I am the good shepherd; but the good shepherd watches over his sheep, and does not spare his own life, but will lay it down as a price of redemption for his own sheep. 12, 13 But the hireling is not the shepherd; seeing the hostile wolf, the robber of the sheep, near the path, he secretly flees and withdraws, quickly abandoning the flocks of sheep that are grazing unguarded and wandering far. He secretly flees and withdraws; he does not care about strange sheep, because he is called a hireling. And the cunning wolf comes with a predatory throat, scattering the sheep when the shepherd is not present. 14, 15 I am the good shepherd, and I pasture the good flocks. I know my sheep, and they know me, the familiar provider of sheep, by an equal and twofold law: just as the Father knows me, and as I know the Father. And I will immediately lay down our life for the sheep. 16 There are, indeed, other various flocks of the fold, not born from this one that receives God, but from outsiders; and it is necessary that I gather them, as they keenly hear our voice; and there shall be one flock from both sides, belonging to one shepherd. 17 For this reason my Father loves me, because I will lay down our life for the sheep, so that I may take it again, returning to me: 18 nor does any native law take it away from me, nor does passing time...
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST.
C 7 Then Jesus said to them again: Amen, amen I say to you, that I am the door of the sheep. 8 All those who came before me are thieves and robbers; but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the door; by me if any man enters, he shall be saved: and he shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture. 10 The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy: I came that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly. 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. 12 But the hireling, and he who is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees: and the wolf snatches them, and scatters the sheep. 13 And the hireling flees, because he is a hireling, and D he does not care about the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd, and I know my own, and am known by my own. 15 As the Father knows me, and I know the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice: and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. 17 Therefore the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. 18 No man takes it away from me: but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. This commandment I have received from my Father.
A All-subduing, untamable, or the steadfast necessity; but I will offer it, self-bidden, willing that it be offered, so that I may receive it back after a little while, having the power gathered within myself. This command I have from the Father who rules on high, to lay it down, and by a twofold law to take it up again. And again the people of the Hebrews were divided in their hearing: and many spoke with a clamorous sort of speech, saying, "Leave this man to speak with swift winds; he possesses a demon, and he is mad; leave this foolish man; why do you hasten to hear the speech of a madman?" But others answered in turn with harmony from their throats, "These are not the wise flows of words of one who is mad; these things are not of a fool. Can a darkened demon ever be able itself to open the eyes of a blind man?" B And again it was a public day, on which the people were celebrating an annual memorial, from the time when Solomon, building the supports of the temple, with divine art restored the ancient custom of the feast. And then the frosty season of winter was at hand; but Jesus was walking inside the holy temple, pacing upon the wondrous, intricately wrought floor of the portico, named after the ancient Solomon. But the envious Hebrews, joined in a circle in one place, surrounded Christ and said with foolish speech, "How long do you deceive our mind with your words? If you have truly come as the Christ, tell us openly; why do you hide your name?" But Jesus answered all of them at once: "Often I have told you, and you do not believe my word; the works which I do, calling upon the paternal might, these are witness, and they speak in prudent silence, a visible pattern speaking to men; but you see with your eyes, and do not believe with your minds. For you are not of the credulous generation of my sheep; C because you are delighted with the ears of the flocks of my sheep that hear my voice, and follow their leader. But I know my sheep, and to all alike I will give the life that is to come, eternal. Never will these flocks of the sheep perish, as long as the age remains, circling in spontaneous and arched revolutions. Nor shall anyone snatch my prudent flock from my hand; my Father, who gave the flocks to me to feed, is greater than all. I myself, and my ruling Father, are one."
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
D 19 There was a division therefore again among the Jews for these sayings. 20 And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him? 21 Others said, These are not the words of him that hath a devil. Can a devil open the eyes of the blind? 22 And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. 23 And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch. 24 Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly. 25 Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me. 26 But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: 28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. 29 My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. 30 I and my Father are one.A a race we are, ingrafted, rooted of itself, from whence are the infinite plants of the world. 31 The King spoke; but the people flowed together, and from the ground took up stones, that with the rage of stones seized, they might pelt Christ with missiles from the broken ground. 32 But Jesus answered, pouring forth an expostulatory voice: Many good works from my most high Father I have shown you, which I learned: yet for this divine work you pay a murderous retribution, and against me are you armed with stony missiles? 33 The people answered in turn: Not by reason of a Good work are the citizens gathered, having rage, that they may envelope you in a stony tunic; but for your blasphemous mouth, which, having the germ of earthly generation, being mortal, you say that you are God. 34 But Christ spoke an indisputable word to the opposing people: Does not your law bring forth these set marks? I said: Ye are gods? And if to earthly men, to whom then only the word of God came like a dream, the song of your law called them gods, 35 and the divine voice cannot be rescinded by the written book: concerning the Word whom the High-ruler gave to the world, and whom he sealed with the holy law of a pure hand, you have spoken an insensate word, being mad, because I am the Son of the living God. B 37 If I do not perform the works of my life-starting Father, never believe me: 38 and if as the giver of life by word, I do things worthy of our eternal Father, which the sight of witnesses has seen, that you may know by a certain God-inspired word, that my Father is in me; and that he himself, appearing near, is indivisible, I am equal to the Father. 39 But certain imprudent men tried to seize the incomprehensible Jesus: but he, escaping on swift foot from the hands of the impious, departed to the region opposite the Jordan river; and a vast gathering of men followed him as he went. 40 And one said to another, pouring forth a trustworthy opinion: John indeed showed no miracle to the people looking on; but concerning this man, with unerring eyes I see everything is true which he said. 41 And many men there believed in the Son of God, because of his inimitable works. C
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST. 31 Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. 32 Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? 33 The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. 34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? 35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; 36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? 37 If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. 38 But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him. 39 Therefore they sought again to take him: but he escaped out of their hand, 40 And went away again beyond Jordan into the place where John at first baptized; and there he abode. 41 And many resorted unto him, and said, John did no miracle: but all things that John spake of this man were true. 42 And many believed on him there. D
CAP. XI.
A 1 Now there was a certain Lazarus, a man infirm with a morbid fire, within Bethany, the famous village of Martha and Mary. 2 But that Mary was called the beautiful-haired receiver of God of Christ: who anointed both his feet with the dew of fragrant ointment, and wiped them with her hair; and striving through the heights from the divine feet, she watered the hair made wet with moisture, the beautiful-haired receiver of God of Christ, whose brother was then being tormented by a hot, morbid fever, having heavy knees. 3 But the sisters, when they both saw the infirm brother wasted away by a limb-eating plague, near to death, had sent a common word to the King who drives away evil: Lazarus whom you love is being tormented by a black disease; visit him whom you love. 4 And Christ the king, hearing the voice, sounded: This harm of the feverish hour has not brought the men to eternal morbid death, but this is the sublime glory of God, so that through him the dear Son of Man, the king, may be exalted with immortal honors. 5 But Jesus loved the hospitable women, Martha and Mary and Lazarus, by a certain friendly law. 6 But when he heard the message in the place that Lazarus was lying, tending toward death, bound by a morbid bond in his limbs, he passed over the double course of the death-bringing dawn.
122 7 And after the second day he said to his disciples: Let us go again to the clear soil of the Jewish men. 8 And the disciples, restraining him, addressed him: Master, the raging citizens of Judea were just now seeking to throw stones at you with arrows, and you wish to come where the hostile citizens are?
9 But Jesus answered, consoling the complaining mind of his common household companions with a certain speech: Are there not twelve circular hours of the day? A traveler at the rising of the day does not bend his foot, stumbling with slippery shoes; C 10 But he who walks as a companion of blind darkness with indulgent feet, he walks an erroneous path.
11 Thus he said; and then, having turned, he said to the disciples: Lazarus, our dearest host, sleeps a necessary and blameless sleep; but I will go over so that I may rouse him from his sleep in return.
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST.
1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany, from the village of Mary and Martha her sister. 2 (Now it was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair; whose brother Lazarus was ill.) 3 The sisters therefore sent to him, saying: Lord, behold, he whom you love is ill. 4 But Jesus, hearing, said: This illness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it. 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 When therefore he heard that he was ill, then indeed he remained in the place where he was for two days. 7 Then after this he says to the disciples: Let us go into Judea again. 8 The disciples say to him: Rabbi, just now the Jews were seeking to stone you, and are you going there again? 9 Jesus answered: Are there not twelve hours of the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble; because he sees the light of this world; 10 But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles; because the light is not in him. 11 He said these things; and after this he says to them: Lazarus our friend has fallen asleep; but I am going so that I may wake him up.
αὐτόν. A And the disciples, not understanding the saying, said: If Lazarus sleeps, he will be safe. For Jesus spoke of the newly dead as sleeping in a tearful tomb, dead, mute, and in the irrevocable sleep of destruction: but they hoped in vain that the dear dead man was sleeping a sweet, changeable sleep in his bed. B But the King openly said in a merciful discourse: Death, equal to all, has put Lazarus to sleep, bringing a different, cruel sleep; but I rejoice for your sakes, that I was not in that place when he was conversing with approaching death, so that you might have faith, seeing the traveler dead after his fate, living again and touching the table of Christ, his guest for a second time; but let us go to him. And Thomas, who is called Didymus, hearing this, spoke; and when the disciples were gathered, he gave vent to a mournful voice, weeping and grieving: Let us go where that lovely man is, so that we may die with him in love, in one common fate. And the King, coming late to the familiar village, found Lazarus dead, lying on the sepulchral dust, having been for the fourth day in the mournful tomb. Now Bethany was a distance of fifteen stadia from the city of Jerusalem. And a great crowd of Jews followed into the neighboring village, and there they approached the hospitable house of Martha and Mary, into the sleeping-chamber of their brother’s death, comforting them together, because with his accustomed word he shook off the bitter stings of their stifled care, resolving their wakeful mourning. And Martha, hearing the report spread abroad that the Lord had arrived, ran to meet him with hurried feet; but Mary was kept shut up in the house in sorrowful silence. And Martha, approaching Christ, said with much groaning: O Blessed One, if you had been here when Lazarus was suffering with sickness, my brother surely would not have died; but I know in my heart even now that the Father will grant you all things whatsoever you ask of him. C And the King answered with a word: Your brother shall rise again. And Martha, hearing the immortal voice, spoke again: I know, and the resurrection does not escape me, that he shall be raised up in the end, when the last course of the dawn shall arrive. And Christ said to her, a life-giving divine utterance:
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
12 The disciples therefore said: Lord, if he sleeps, he will be saved. 13 But Jesus had spoken of his death; but they thought that he was speaking of the rest of sleep. 14 Then Jesus therefore said to them plainly: Lazarus is dead. 15 And I rejoice for your sakes (that you may believe) that I was not there; but let us go to him. 16 Thomas therefore, who is called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples: Let us also go, that we may die with him. 17 Jesus therefore coming, found him already having four days in the tomb. 18 (Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, as about fifteen stadia off.) 19 And many of the Jews had come to those about Martha and Mary, that they might comfort them concerning their brother. 20 Martha therefore, as she heard that Jesus was coming, met him; but Mary was sitting in the house. 21 Martha therefore said to Jesus: Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that whatsoever you ask God, God will give you. 23 Jesus says to her: Your brother shall rise again. 24 Martha says to him: I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. 25 Jesus said to her: I am the resurrectionand the life. He that believeth in me, although he be dead, shall live. 26 And every one that liveth and believeth in me, shall not die for ever. Believest thou this? 27 She saith to him: Yea, Lord, I have believed that thou art Christ the Son of the living God, who art come into this world. 28 And when she had said these things, she went, and called her sister Mary secretly, saying: The teacher is come, and calleth for thee. 29 She, as soon as she heard this, riseth quickly, and cometh to him. (30 For Jesus was not yet come into the town: but he was still in that place where Martha had met him.) Then the Jews who were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary that she rose up speedily and went out, followed her, saying: That she goeth to the grave to weep there. Mary therefore, when she was come where Jesus was, seeing him, fell down at his feet, saying to him: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. Jesus therefore, when he saw her weeping, and the Jews that were come with her, groaning in the spirit, and troubled himself, and said: Where have you laid him? They say to him: Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. A
THE METRICAL PARAPHRASE BY NONNUS OF PANOPOLIS
I have become the life and the resurrection; and whoever among men B shall believe in me, even if he were a breathless corpse, shall live again; and whoever cherishes faith in his heart, this mortal shall not die, as long as time endures. Do you believe that this word is true? She herself answered: Lord, I know and I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who wards off evil, who comes into the world. Having spoken such a word, she departed with swift foot and called Mary, her sister in blood; and she whispered secretly in her ears: The Savior Teacher has come, and he calls you. And she was swifter than the word when she heard it; she hastened with quickened step, freed from mourning and filled with joy; and with impetuous speed she made her way to Christ who was near by. 30 The people who were within the mourning house, and were comforting her with some word that soothes pain—vigilant comforters in her grief—when they suddenly saw how Mary rose quickly and went out in silence, followed her with retreating feet, thinking that the tearful Mary, because she ran suddenly, intended to go to the familiar tomb, so that she might weep again beside the dead. For the King of the region had not yet entered the village, but remaining unmoved, he still kept the firm footprint of his foot in the sacred place where he had previously met Martha. And when the heavy-tearing Mary came near the place where Jesus remained with his unshaken footprint, as soon as she caught sight of him, with her mind struck by a goad, casting herself down, she fell upon the ground and leaned against his immortal feet; and weeping, she wetted his divine feet with mournful moisture, bringing forth a forced speech; but from her throat, overcome by tears, her voice barely made its way: O blessed one, if you had been here, Lazarus would not have yielded to fate. And seeing Mary lamenting, and the companions with her, the sons of the Jews who were lately mourning, whose cheeks were being rained upon by a great shower of tears, stirred by his Father’s Spirit, he uttered a voice: Show me where you have laid him. And they said to him: Come and see. And Jesus himself groaned, shedding unaccustomed tears from eyes that do not weep.
A And some of the people observing him said immediately: Look how he loved even him who is not present; others cried out in reply: Could he who opened the eyes of blind men by casting away their darkness with a little clay, not perform an equal work, so that this man might not meet a mortal end? Thus each one spoke. But Jesus moved onward with haste, drawing pity from his sorrowing heart, and had come near the tomb; and there was a subterranean cave within a hollowed house, and a stone, providing an imitation of a door, solid and of equal measure, leaned against the chasm of the grave. And Jesus, the King, commanded the believing people: Remove the stone from the household sepulcher. But Martha, sister of the dead man, cried out in a mourning voice: The one lying within is without a stone for a door. For when the earthly chasm is opened, a foul odor comes forth, because the dead man has been four days in the tomb. But Jesus answered and said to the mourning Martha: Did I not tell you this before? If you keep on your lips the wise seal of silence, having true faith and not being of double mind, will you not see the life-giving honor of the heavenly God? They took away the stone; but the King lifted up his eyes toward the stars and cried out to his Father: To you, Father, B be thanks, for you have heard me. I know in my mind that you always hear me, your Son, crying out; but I speak for the sake of the people standing around, that they may have a better faith to hear that you have sent me, looking with their eyes at the dead man quickly coming forth from the sepulcher, bound in grave-clothes, and not falling into dust. He spoke; and he resounded with a piercing voice: Come forth, Lazarus, outside. And the voice that revives the dead gave life to the breathless body of the dead man who was bereft of speech. He called the breathless man, and the dead man ran as a traveler, walking with his foot entangled, moving himself toward the earth; he called the breathless man, and hearing among the dead, C the dead man returned as a fugitive from Hades, seeing after the end of life another wonderful and newly-regained beginning. But Pluto, who tames all things, sought in vain near neighboring Lethe for the untamable wandering dead man. And dragging his unbending knees with his foot straightened, having a blind and forward-tending impulse, the dead man was shouting, and from foot even to head D bound with wrappings, he had his whole body tight.
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
36 The Jews therefore said: Behold how he loved him. 37 But some of them said: Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have made it so that this man should not die? 38 Jesus therefore again groaning in himself comes to the sepulcher. Now it was a cave, and a stone was laid upon it. 39 Jesus says: Take away the stone. Martha, the sister of the dead man, says to him: Lord, he now stinks: for he is four days dead. 40 Jesus says to her: Did I not say to you that if you believe, you shall see the glory of God? 41 They took therefore the stone where the dead man was laid. And Jesus lifting up his eyes, said: Father, I give you thanks that you have heard me. 42 And I knew that you always hear me; but because of the multitude who stand about I said it, that they may believe that you have sent me. 43 And when he had said these things, he cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth. 44 And the dead man came forth, bound feet and hands with grave-clothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus says to them: Loose him, and let him go.
A He had his whole body constrained with funerary bands, having the warm sweat of a covered face: and he was fortified with a linen veil about his circled head, a Sudarium, which the mouth of the Syrians calls out. But to the astonished people present like a cloud, the King gave orders: "Loose him for me and allow the light dead man to walk." As the King spoke, the companions immediately, [and] the people, broke the again-tied bonds of the wretched man and stripped away the heavy covering of the limbs’ chains; and the dead man came into the house a second time with accustomed foot, seeing the light on the fifth day. Many of the Jews, indeed, going to the mourning house of Martha and Mary, believed in the Son of God, beholding with their eyes the incredible work which the Lord did, raising the dead Lazarus, leaping forth from the dark abyss, returned from the dead with swift foot. And some of them turned their tracks into the city to the eminent priests, preaching to the multitude of the incredulous Pharisees the works of God the Christ. And the imprudent high priests were gathering into the multisonous forum, where the council of the elders of the primary seat was sitting, gathered together into one. And one said to another: "What shall we do? For this man, an adversary, shows sublime signs by appearing in various ways. But if we allow him to do similar signs, the people will no longer follow us, but the citizens, believing, will adhere to one man alone; all will follow him, and the Roman men will come and take away our whole nation, nation and place alike." Now there was a man among them, Caiaphas, nefarious, B versatile, who at that time was the High Priest of that year, the leader of the feast. He sounded a guileful word to the Jews: "You know nothing with an inexperienced, prudent mind, nor do you consider in your spirit what is more advantageous: that it is good for one citizen to die for the people, lest on his account our whole nation falls to ruin; with one man dying, the whole city shall be tranquil." But the man did not say this prophesying from himself; but set apart for sacrifice, as the priest of that year, he prophesied with the customary voice, that Christ was about to die, willing it by a life-bearing death, for the nation of the Jews: and not for the Nation alone, but that He might gather into one the sons of God scattered in the world. C But by the author of evils, in that hour, the impudent high priests wove a council, and the versatile assembly of the incredulous Pharisees, D while the High Priest of the year was the leader of the feast.
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
45 Many therefore of the Jews who had come to Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in Him. 46 But some of them went to the Pharisees, and told them what Jesus had done. 47 The chief priests and the Pharisees therefore gathered a council, and said: What are we doing? For this man does many signs. 48 If we let him alone, all will believe in him; and the Romans will come and take away both our place and the nation. 49 But one of them, Caiaphas, being the high priest of that year, said to them: You know nothing. 50 Nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish. 51 And this he did not say of himself; but being the high priest of that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation; 52 And not only for the nation, but that He should also gather together in one the children of God that were dispersed. 53 From that day therefore they devised that they might put him to death.
to the slaughter, that all might kill Jesus with one destruction. 54 No longer did Christ have an open way for saving the people among the Hebrews; but with silent foot, He crossed the holy bosom of the Judean land: He came to a place near the mountain, near the desert, to a city where He stayed with His divine disciples, which they call Ephraim. 55 And the feast of the Passover was near, much celebrated; and from the wide land, many Judean men from the desert of the holy ones were ascending to the seats of Jerusalem, that they might first purify their bodies with divine purifications before the celebrated day of the feast appeared. 56 And many in the fragrant temple were seeking the absent Jesus, the speaker of divine things; and standing, they were speaking among themselves. And the people said: "To you who are considering, what does it seem, that this man is not able to come to the recently celebrated feast?" 57 And the unbelieving chief priests and the crafty chorus of the haughty Pharisees had given orders to the inhabitants that whoever should see Him through the city, or hear of Him, should announce it to the multitude of the deceitful Pharisees, so that the hostile crowd might arrest and kill Him.
CAP. XII.
1 Leaving the desert edge of the wide land, Jesus, impossible to capture, entered His accustomed village; He entered Bethany, where He had raised Lazarus from the dead near the tomb, pouring forth a voice that moves the soul; He entered Bethany, when the neighbors had only six days remaining of the feast. 2 And they set a dinner for Him; and with loving intent, Martha held the administration of the capacious table. 3 And among the guests was also Lazarus, appearing to all like a dream. But Mary, taking three measures of fragrant Pistic nard, Mary of the beautiful hair, was holding a marble vessel filled with the dew [of the nard]; and she anointed the divine feet of the dining King with the ointment; and with her soft hair, she wiped away the rich moisture. And the divine odor, floating, filled the whole house. 4 And with envious mouth, the deceitful Judas said, he who was to betray Him to the impure Jews: "Why is this ointment not sold for three hundred measures of denarii, so that it might be given to the poor?"TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST 54 Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the desert, to a city called Ephraim; and there He stayed with His disciples. 55 And the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up to Jerusalem from the region before the Passover, to purify themselves. 56 Therefore they were seeking Jesus, and were saying to one another as they stood in the temple: "What do you think, that He will by no means come to the feast?" 57 Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given a command that if anyone knew where He was, he should report it, so that they might arrest Him.
CHAPTER XII.
1 Then Jesus, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany, where Lazarus was who had died, whom He had raised from the dead. 2 They made Him a dinner there, and Martha served; and Lazarus was one of those who reclined at the table with Him. 3 Then Mary, having taken a pound of ointment of costly Pistic nard, anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment. 4 Then one of His disciples says, Judas Iscariot of Simon, who was about to betray Him: 5 "Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii, and given to the poor?"A For the needy poor, and not to the swirling dust? But he, the deceitful one, said this, not because he, unmerciful, cared for needy men, but only because he was a thief, overcome by wealth; he had a purse in which the money lay; and whatever was collected, he, the wicked guardian, would take for himself. But Jesus restrained him with a word, and said to the murderer: Leave the gift of the blameless woman, so that she may guard the memorial of our Body, until the lethal, funereal hour of our burial comes. For the poor are always present, ever ready for you to seek; but you will not always find me present to see. B And the credulous people of the Jews, living near the city, heard the report with delighted ears, that Jesus had come back, having his divine footsteps in the familiar village, where the house of Martha was, and a vast crowd of travelers ran, one companion after another, not only that they might see Jesus, the giver of light, but also Lazarus himself, whom he had raised, bringing him back from the dead, breathing and alive, pouring forth a lifegiving sound. And the envious, shameless high priests were raging, and the whole furious gathering of the Pharisees, so that they might send Lazarus back into the dark abyss, killing him—returned from the dead—with a second slaughter, still breathing his former death, so that one might say: Lazarus escaped death, but did not escape the high priests. They plotted to kill this innocent man, because for his sake the people of the Jews, tending toward the walls of the village, believed in the Son of God, the King who wards off evil. C When the dawn, rising high, had parted the shadowless night, the people who had approached for the festive solemnities, hearing rumors that Jesus was coming from the holy village to the abode of Jerusalem, went to meet him in a crowd; and from the tree-planted garden they stripped the palm trees of their high-growing clusters. And the people, waving green branches in the air, shouted with praising mouths an echoing sound: May the King of Israel be praised in blessings, he who comes in the name of the immortal Creator. And Jesus moved along, having a two-fold procession here and there of the branch-bearing path, and a following crowd of travelers, carried through the middle of the men, guiding an unbridled ass, a hardworking traveler, sitting upon the back of an inexperienced bearer, just as Isaiah had said it would be fulfilled.
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
6 He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the money box, and used to take what was put into it. 7 Then Jesus said: Let her be; she has kept it for the day of my burial. 8 For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me. 9 A great crowd of the Jews therefore knew that He was there, and they came, not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead. 10 But the chief priests plotted to kill Lazarus also; 11 Because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus. 12 On the next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, having heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, 13 Took the branches of the palm trees and went out to meet Him, and were crying out: Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel. 14 And Jesus, having found a young donkey, sat upon it, as it is written:
A Daughter of the sublime mother, fear not, O Sion; Already the King, endowed with varied gifts, shall pass unto you, Having the swift foal following its mother. And these things the disciples did not consider beforehand; But when Christ the King reassumed his all-ruling form, Then all the disciples remembered That these things were all inscribed in the wise book, And they themselves had accomplished these things. It was the voice of the mingled multitude that bore witness, When Jesus called Lazarus from the tomb, And raised the four-day-dead from the dead, Pouring forth a sound that brings souls back. For whose sake a great throng of travelers came streaming, Celebrating Christ who saves the dead, the Son of David. B But the Pharisees, like-minded, argued among themselves: "What profit waxes for us? For the whole varied World is walking behind one man, And our murderous deceit shall aid us in nothing." And there were certain men of the Greeks, who at that time Were many of those ascending as spectators of the divine feast. Hearing of Jesus from the celebrated report, While approaching near, they spoke to Philip: "We have come, desiring to see Christ." Then Philip, the fellow-townsman, hastened And spoke to Andrew; and the sweet-speaking Andrew, Companion of the hastening Philip, Spoke the word to Christ. The King answered with a word: "The hour is now come, though late, when the time stands near, That the wise Son of Man might be exalted." Let the Amen, Amen, be a word as a witness of truth: "When a grain of wheat is fallen upon the thirsty earth, If it does not die, then it remains there alone, useless, Unsown, unprofitable, unploughed, without a sickle; But if it should die, it brings forth life-giving, abundant fruit. He who loves his fleeting soul loses it, Pursuing the deceptive hope of the pleasure-loving world; But he who hates his soul preserves it Unto the life of the unending age, firm and unblemished. Whoever might obey me, weaving the work of a servant, Him my Father, seated on high, knows how to honor; Whoever should serve, having trusted in my laws, He shall accompany me and shall be a fellow-traveler, That he may remain with me as a servant wherever I stay."
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
15 Fear not, daughter of Sion; behold, your King comes, sitting on a donkey's colt. 16 These things his disciples did not understand at the first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written concerning him, and that they did these things to him. 17 The crowd therefore that was with him testified, when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead. 18 For this reason also the crowd met him, when they heard that he had performed this miracle. 19 The Pharisees therefore said among themselves: See that you gain nothing? Behold, the world has gone after him. 20 Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the feast. 21 These therefore came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and asked him, saying: Lord, we desire to see Jesus. 22 Philip comes and tells Andrew; and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus. 23 And Jesus answered them, saying: The hour has come that the Son of man should be glorified. 24 Amen, amen, I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 He who loves his life will lose it; and he who hates his life in this world, shall keep it unto life eternal. 26 If any man serves me, let him follow me; and where I am, there also shall my servant be; and if any man serves me, the Father will honor him.
A Now my heart is agitated; but what shall I say? My soul troubles me; Father, save me from this hour of unwavering mind; yet it was for this, not forced but willing, that I came to this dreadful hour; glorify thy Son. B And there was a voice from heaven, And I have glorified thee before, and will glorify thee again. And the great crowd standing here and there and hearing the heavenly storm of the voice in trembling ears, the people clamored, because from divine coffers the thunderous, heavy-sounding, ethereal echo struck. Others, however, answered that an angel had spoken to him nearby with a wise muttering of voice. But Jesus spoke to the whole wonder-stricken people: This din does not strike on my account: but from heaven, like thunder, the voice has come for you. B 31 Now there is a judgment of the divine world; now also the Prince of sin is cast out of the world. 32 And when I shall be lifted up from the expanse of the earth, I will draw you all to me into the wide heaven. He said this, signifying by what life-giving death Jesus was about to die, saving the peoples. C The people in turn answered him with a concordant speech: We have heard from the written signs many times, that Christ, the ruler of all, remains forever. And why did you say to us in your obscure speech: From the earthly depths, when I am lifted up and come into heaven, I myself will draw you all from the earth, when the famous Son of Man shall have been lifted up? Tell us, indeed, who is this whom, by some unknown law, you have called the wise Son of Man with your voice? But Jesus answered them all at once: For a little time still the heavenly light will be among you. Do not wander, but walk in the light along the straight path, confident, as long as the light still shines, before darkness seizes you in a gloomy whirlwind. For he who walks as a traveler at night with an erring foot, goes astray, not knowing the twisted path on which he walks. As long as you see the light, believe in the wise word of the Light, that you may become sons of the light-bearing splendor. The Life-giver, the Son of Man, having cried out all these things, hid himself, leaving behind the crafty crowd of the Jews. And though he had performed so many various remedies for their diseases, while they watched, he was no longer heard, D *Now my soul is troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour; but for this cause I came to this hour. Father, glorify thy name. There came therefore a voice from heaven: I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. The crowd therefore that stood by and heard it, said that it had thundered. Others said: An angel has spoken to him. Jesus answered and said: This voice has not come for my sake, but for your sakes. Now is the judgment of this world; now will the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself. 33 (But he said this, signifying by what death he was about to die.) The crowd answered him: We have heard out of the law that the Christ remains forever; and how do you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man? Jesus therefore said to them: Yet a little while the light is with you; walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. And he who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light. These things Jesus spoke, and departing, he was hidden from them. And though he had performed so many signs before them, they did not believe in him.
A For no man believed, that there might be fulfilled what Isaiah said, pouring forth a prophetic voice: "Lord, who after so many things has believed your report? Or to whom has the arm of the God of all been bared?" 39 For this reason they could not increase their religious faith; 40 because Isaiah also said again in a prophetic voice: "He has blinded the eyes of the witnesses of my works, 145 and has made the upright mind blind and errant; so that they may not understand with the heart and see with their eyes, and turn to me, that I may save men suffering in their minds—men sinning—by my healing word, as a physician sprinkling fitting medicines without iron." Isaiah wrote all these things in a fatidic voice, because he saw the glory of God the Christ anticipating the time, with the eye of the heart seeing all things, and for that very reason he prophesied the divine voice hastening toward the future. 42 Yet certain firm men, in wise silence, of the principate of the Jews—the proud eye of the council—believed in the Son of God on account of his divine works; but avoiding the fear and zeal of the Pharisees, no one openly manifested his mind; but the faith at that time lying latent within the breast of each man's light, unseen and silent, was hidden in a sheltered silence. 43 For every man preferred the favor of earth-born men, B rather than the much-splendid honor of the great God alone. 44 Jesus, however, spoke aloud in the fragrant temple: "Whoever receives the orders of my divinely-spoken words, in believing in me, does not trust in me, but in the Father who sent me. 45 And every man seeing me with human eyes, sees also my Father. I, the light, have come from heaven into this darkened world; I have come as light from heaven, so that the man who honors me, having immovable faith, may never remain in darkness. 47 Whoever receives the streams of my words sent by God, and keeps the seal of an inviolate mind, I never judge this man; for I have not come to judge the world that is much errant, but to save it. 48 Whoever rejects me and, being a daring man, does not receive the living streams of my voice that preserve life, this man has a judge who judges him; for the word which I speak, this will rebuke this unbeliever." 147
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
38 "That the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he said: Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" D 43 "For they loved the glory of men more than the glory of God." 39 For this reason they were not able to believe, because Isaiah said again: 44 Jesus cried out and said: "He who believes in me, does not believe in me, but in him who sent me. 40 'He has blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart: that they should not see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.' 45 And he who sees me, sees him who sent me. 41 These things said Isaiah when he saw his glory and spoke of him. 46 I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. 42 Nevertheless, even from the rulers many believed in him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue: 47 And if any man hears my words and does not believe, I do not judge him. For I have not come to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 He who rejects me and does not receive my words, has one who judges him; the word which I have spoken, that will judge him in the last day."
A Judging, when the final course of the dawn is finished, when there is judgment for all who are awakened. For I have never learned from my own initiative to utter a speech, but I have a life-giving commandment from God the Father as to what I should speak or what I should cry out to the gathered men. And I know the injunction of the all-ruling Begetter, that everlasting life, which the running age has been allotted, is present with the eternal whirling; and whatever I teach you, as my Father has recounted to me, so I say.
CHAPTER XIII
B And before the Passover came upon the citizens, before the altars were scorched, Jesus, knowing that the timely hour had come, that having turned back from the world and ascending to the heaven, he might shine forth again together with the All-Ruling Father, having loved his own friends who were always present from the beginning, he loved them even unto the end. And when the evening meal of the kindly table was taking place, he performed a servile task, weaving it for his friends (for the antagonistic demon, having goaded Judas into a human madness with a certain greedy sting, so that that bold man might betray Christ, his own nurturer, to the Jews, having already received the price of his destruction). He himself, knowing in his heart that the All-Ruling God had given all things into his hand to distribute, and that he had come from the heavens and was returning to God by a double law and from God beforehand; and then, Jesus, weaving the servant's task for his guests, rose up in haste, leaving the supper, and laid aside his glorious tunics from his body, and girded his loins with a linen cloth—tightening the hard fabric, which the sepulchral voice called a towel, a defense for men against humid feet. And pouring underground water into a hollow basin, Christ began to wash the dear feet of his friends, moving from the first to one after another, beginning from Simon, even to his own murderer. C And he stood over the senior Simon, and both of his feet he took hold of; but Simon drew back quickly, and checked Jesus, showing his dear reverence with his eyes; and holding him back, he mollified him with a strong voice: "Dost thou, King, ruling over all, wash my feet with thine own hands, O minister?" D But the sweet-voiced one to the sitting Simon
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
"For I have not spoken from myself, but the Father who sent me, he has given me a commandment what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life eternal; therefore whatever I speak, just as the Father has said to me, so I speak."
CHAPTER XIII.
Before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that his hour had come that he should pass out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them unto the end. And when supper was made (the devil having already cast into the heart of Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, that he might betray him), Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he came from God and is going to God, he rose from supper, and lays aside his garments; and having taken a towel, he girded himself. Then he pours water into a basin, and began to wash the feet of the disciples, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded. He comes therefore to Simon Peter; and that one says to him, "Lord, dost thou wash my feet?" Jesus answered and said to him, "What I do, thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter."
ταῦτα·
Chapter XIII
To Simon who was asking, the God-inspired Jesus said: For now, as I weave this servile task being fulfilled, Thou canst not understand, but hereafter thou shalt know this. And Peter said to Him, pouring out sweet threats: Thou shalt never cleanse my feet, as long as the Much-revolving Age crawls along. The King answered with speech: Never shalt thou have a portion kept with Me, Unless I wash thee, pouring the ministering water. And Simon said to Him with a credulous mind: Yes, I beseech Thee, wash, O King, not only my feet, But both my hands, and my circular head A Again, if Thou willest, even my whole body. 10 Jesus said: A man who has been washed has no need of fresh water, Except for his feet alone with a pure bath for a wayfaring Journey; for the whole body is pure. As for you, being Free from human error, you are pure in mind yourselves; But not all at once. For before, He knew in His spirit Which man was to betray Him to the Jews As a thing for sale; which one was a merchant of destruction. On account of which, the King said to His god-near disciples: You know yourselves to be pure in mind, free from error, But not all at once. And according to the servile law, When He was passing through the circle of the twelve guests, The holy Jesus washed the pure feet of His companions B Who were reclining, and in turn He put on His tunics; And having braced His hands for the task again Around the final circle of the table joined in love, He said to His companions: Do you yourselves know What I have done for you, weaving a messenger’s work? You rightly call Me with a double clever word Lord, and your Teacher; and you, being wise, Speak this well, for I am both As you call Me. And with a kindly intent, If I, your Leader and skillful King, Have cleansed your feet with a pure bath, but also it is right For you, having learned my example, To wash one another's feet with water in turn. C For this became a lesson of a teacher, so that you also Might perform the wise work that I have done, All among yourselves by a certain reciprocal law, A peer-like imitation of a wise commander. A servant is not greater than his King, nor is any man Greater than the leader who sends him as an apostle. If, however, you have understood all these things by reason, And if the mind has contended with the work, You are truly the more blessed. 18 I have not spoken of all D
TEXTUS EVANGELISTÆ.
8 Peter says to Him: Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him: If I do not wash thee, thou hast no part with Me. 9 Simon Peter says to Him: Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. 10 Jesus says to Him: He who is bathed has no need except to wash his feet, but is clean all over; and you are clean, but not all. 11 For He knew him who was betraying Him; therefore He said: You are not all clean. 12 So when He had washed their feet, and received His garments, and reclined again, He said to them: Do you know what I have done to you? 13 You call Me the Teacher and the Lord; and you say well, for I am. 14 If then I, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. 15 For I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, you also should do. 16 Amen, amen I say to you, a slave is not greater than his lord, nor an apostle greater than he who sent him. 17 If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. 18 I do not speak of you all; I know whom I have ch-
chosen; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled, he who eats bread with me has lifted his heel against me. 19 Now I tell you before it comes to pass, that when it comes to pass, you may believe that I am he. 20 Truly, truly, I say to you, he who receives anyone I send receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me.
When Jesus had said these things, he was troubled in spirit, and testified and said, Truly, truly, I say to you that one of you will betray me. 22 The disciples looked at one another, being at a loss as to whom he spoke. 23 Now there was leaning on the bosom of Jesus one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved. 24 Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him to ask who it was of whom he spoke. 25 Then he, leaning back on Jesus' breast, says to him, Lord, who is it? 26 Jesus answers, It is he to whom I shall give the piece of bread when I have dipped it. And having dipped the piece of bread, he gives it to Judas the son of Simon Iscariot. 27 And after the piece of bread, then Satan entered into him. Jesus says therefore to him, What you do, do quickly. 28 But no one of those reclining knew for what purpose he said to him: 29 For some thought, since Judas had the money box, that Jesus said to him, Buy those things we need for the feast, or that he should give something to the poor.
A Having told you of the washing of the indigent; but the discourse is for the sake of one; I myself also know what kind of most faithful and blameless men I have chosen; but that the divine song which spoke may be fulfilled: An ungentle man, mad for gold, eating my bread, having raised his treacherous heel against me, an insolent guest, has insulted our table. With a pre-running tongue, I now predict what is to be, so that if the revolving time, creeping near, should bring it to pass, you may remember the ancient word, which my prophetic voice foretold to you would come to pass. Let the firm-speaking "Amen, Amen" be the witness, that whoever should receive my minister, whomsoever I send, bearing a gentle eye, receives me; and he who receives him who was sent by God, embracing me, receives my eternal Father who sent me.
B The King said to his companions, and opening his prophetic mouth, Christ, stirred by the intelligent vibration of the heavenly Spirit, was disturbed by the flame of his unsilent mind. Bringing forth his own testimony, he belched out his voice: One man among you, dear companions, will betray me; one fickle friend and table-mate will overcome me. Jesus indeed said this. But the gathered disciples looked at one another with sad faces, all equally perplexed; and they were troubled in silence as to whom he spoke. C But a certain man, who was reclining next to the bosom of the benevolent King: Peter beckoned to him; and he asked in speaking silence, for whose sake he had spoken. And he, the beloved man, falling with bold and sharp vibration upon the undefiled chest of the feasting King, whispered into his ear: Who is it? And Christ said: To whom, dipping in a wine-colored drop by hand, I shall offer prepared bread, he himself betrays me. And dipping the final bread into a cup full of wine, he gave it to the shameless Judas, the bread as a herald of his own greedy murderer. And after the divine bread, the leader of iniquity, sowing under the desire of riches, a demon entered into the whole man. And Christ said to him, sending signs to the knowing one: Do what you are doing more quickly. And none of the guests knew, hearing the hidden word in their ears; D for some thought, through a certain obscure word, because Judas carried the wooden chest, that the Lord said to his treasurer in a word, [to buy what was needed for the feast].
'Οφρα κεν ἐντύνειεν ὅσον χρέος εἶχεν ἑορτή, A Ἢ ἵνα τι πτωχοῖσι βιοπλανέεσσιν ὀπάσσῃ. Καὶ μεθύων μετὰ δόρπον ἀνὴρ φιλοκερδέϊ λύσσῃ Ἓνθεον ἄρτον ἔχων, ἀνεχάζετο νυκτὸς ὁδίτης. 'Αλλ' ὅτε νόσφι βέβηκε δυωδεκάριθμος Ἰούδας, 154 Ἕνδεκα δαιτυμόνεσσι θεηγόρος εἶπεν Ἰησοῦς· Νῦν Παῖς ἀνθρώπου φαεσίμβροτον ἔλλαχε τιμήν, Καὶ Θεὸς αὐτογένεθλος ἐδέξατο κῦδος ἐν αὐτῷ. Εἰ δὲ Θεὸς Γενέτης ὑψούμενος ἐστι δι’ αὐτοῦ, Καὶ Θεὸς ὑψώσει Πατὴρ Υἱέα γεραίρων. 33 Τέκνα, μεθ’ ὑμείων ὀλίγον χρόνον εἰσέτι μίμνω. Καὶ λόγον Ἑβραίοισιν ἂν ἔννεπον, ἄρτι καὶ ὑμῖν Φθέγγομαι ἡμετέρῃ παλινάγρετον ἠθάδι φωνῇ· Πολλά με μαστεύσητε παλίνδρομον ὀψὲ νοῆσαι· Ὑμέας δ’ οὐ θέμις ἐστὶ συνήλυδας ὁππόθι βαίνω Ἡμετέρης ἀκίχητον ἔχειν δρόμον ἀτραπιτοῖο. 34 Ὁπλοτέρην ἐν ἅπασιν ἐφημοσύνην ἐπιτέλλω, Ὑμέας ὡς ἀγάπαζον ἴσῳ καὶ ἀμεμφέϊ θεσμῷ, Ἀλλήλων φιλίην ὁσίῳ σφρηγίσατε θεσμῷ, Ἀρθμὸν ὁμοφροσύνης ἀλύτῳ δήσαντες ὀχῆϊ· 35 Ὑμέας εἰν ἑνὶ πάντες ἵνα γνώωσιν ἰδόντες Ἀλλήλους φιλέοντας, ὅτι ζαθέῳ τινὶ θυμῷ Παμφαέος Χριστοῖο θεουδέες ἐστὲ μαθηταί. 36 Χριστοῦ δ’ ὡς κλύε μῦθον ἐκὰς μέλλοντος ὁδεύειν, Μειλιχίοις δάροισι φιλήκοος ἔννεπε Σίμων· Κοίρανε, πῆ σπεύδεις; τίνα μοι τίνα χῶρον ἱκάνεις; Ἰησοῦς δ’ ἀπάμειπτο καὶ εἰρομένῳ φάτο Πέτρῳ· Οὐ δύνασαι προθέοντος ὅπη ποδὸς ἴχνος ἐπείγω Ξυνὸς ὀπισθοκέλευθος ἐμὴν ὁδὸν ἄρτι περῆσαι· Ἀλλὰ παλινδίνητος ὅτε χρόνος ὥριος ἔλθῃ, Αὐτὸς ὁμαρτήσειας ὑστερον. 37 Εἶπε δὲ Σίμων· Οὐ δύναμαι ταχύγουνος ὀπισθοπόρῳ ποδὶ βαίνων Ὑμετέρης ἀβάτοιο ταμεῖν κενεῶνα κελεύθου; Καὶ ψυχὴν ἐθέλουσαν ὑπὲρ σέθεν ἐγγυαλίξω. 38 Ἰησοῦς δ’ ἀδόκητον ἔπος μυθήσατο Πέτρῳ· Ψυχὴν ὑμετέρην ἐμέθεν χάριν αὐτίκα θήσεις; Τρὶς δὲ μόνης δασπλῆτι μιῆς ἐνὶ νυκτὸς ἀνάγκῃ Χριστὸν ἀπαρνήσαιο, πρὶν αὐχένα κυρτὸν ἀείρας Ὀξὺ μέλος κλάγξειεν ἐγερσιβόητος ἀλέκτωρ.
ΚΕΦ. ΙΔ'.
156 1 Μὴ νόος ὑμείων δεδονημένος ἄστατος εἴη, Ἀλλὰ Θεῷ καὶ ἐμοὶ πιστεύσατε· θεσπεσίην δὲ Υἱέϊ καὶ Γενετῆρι μίαν ξυνώσατε τιμήν.TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST.
30 Λαβὼν οὖν τὸ ψωμίον ἐκεῖνος, εὐθέως ἐξῆλθεν· D ἦν δὲ νύξ. 31 Ὅτε οὖν ἐξῆλθε, λέγει ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Νῦν ἐδοξάσθη ὁ Υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, καὶ ὁ Θεὸς ἐδοξάσθη ἐν αὐτῷ. 32 Εἰ ὁ Θεὸς ἐδοξάσθη ἐν αὐτῷ, καὶ ὁ Θεὸς δοξά- σει αὐτὸν ἐν ἑαυτῷ, καὶ εὐθὺς δοξάσει αὐτόν. 33 Τεκνία, ἔτι μικρὸν μεθ’ ὑμῶν εἰμι· ζητήσετέ με, καὶ καθὼς εἶπον τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις, Ὅτι ὅπου ὑπά- γω ἐγώ, ὑμεῖς οὐ δύνασθε ἐλθεῖν· καὶ ὑμῖν λέγω ἄρτι. 34 Ἐντολὴν καινὴν δίδωμι ὑμῖν, ἵνα ἀγαπᾶτε ἀλ- λήλους· καθὼς ἠγάπησα ὑμᾶς, ἵνα καὶ ὑμεῖς ἀγα- πᾶτε ἀλλήλους. 35 Ἐν τούτῳ γνώσονται πάντες ὅτι ἐμοὶ μαθηταί ἐστε, ἐὰν ἀγάπην ἔχητε ἐν ἀλλήλοις. 36 Λέγει αὐτῷ Σίμων Πέτρος· Κύριε, ποῦ ὑπά- γεις; Ἀπεκρίθη αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Ὅπου ὑπάγω, οὐ δύνασαί μοι νῦν ἀκολουθῆσαι, ὕστερον δὲ ἀκολουθή- σεις μοι. 37 Λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Πέτρος· Κύριε, διατί οὐ δύναμαί σοι ἀκολουθῆσαι ἄρτι; τὴν ψυχήν μου ὑπὲρ σοῦ θήσω. 38 Ἀπεκρίθη αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Τὴν ψυχήν σου ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ θήσεις; Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω σοι, οὐ μὴ ἀλέκτωρ φωνήσει ἕως οὗ ἀπαρνήσῃ με τρίς.ΚΕΦ. ΙΔ'.
1 Μὴ ταρασσέσθω ὑμῶν ἡ καρδία· πιστεύετε εἰς τὸν Θεὸν, καὶ εἰς ἐμὲ πιστεύετε.πιστεύετε. A In the house of the Father there are mansions equal in order; and if my hospitable hall were not endowed with a spacious courtyard, I would surely have told you that I was going as a forerunner, to prepare a dwelling in a roomier hall, weaving a place newly made and worthy of you; and after the divine floor of the most ready house, I shall return, bringing you to myself forever, that you may remain, as immortal inhabitants, where I remain: you know my way, and yourselves. He spoke. And hearing him, twin-named Thomas resounded, whom his parents called Didymus, from the time when the eighth day of the eager circumcision course of his childhood dawned: "Not yet, O King, do we know whither your foot urges its trace; from where can we learn the dimensions of an untraceable path?" But Jesus resounded, teaching the man eager to hear: "I am life, and truth, and the straight path: I am life, and the way of life; and no man of earth can come to God the Father, unless someone, through me, urges on the God-sent trace, traveling the straight path through the Son to the Father. But if you had known me with a god-spoken wise discourse, out of me you would have known even the Father who rules on high; but now you have known him, and have been taught the ruler on high." And Philip soothed Jesus with his word: "O King, show your Father to your disciples; show your Parent, and it suffices for us." But Jesus spoke, having the divine form B related to the invisible Father behind a human appearance: "For so long a time, Philip, have I been here, remaining as your companion, and have you not seen my face? Every man who has known me has also seen the eternal Father. C Do you not yet have faith that I am the peer of the Father, and that the Father contains me in one harmonious form? And whence do you ask of me, by some divided law, 'Show me the Father'? Whom you have seen, looking at me, from the heart when I belch forth the word. Remaining in me, my Father, as my helper, has woven the work for me as I speak. Not yet have you confirmed in your mind the word that testifies; and my Father is with me, because I myself am engrafted into the Father; I, speaking, but He, acting. If you do not believe me, believe solely in our works, that you may also know the undivided fellowship joined by one bolt; the Son in the Father.
TEXTUS EVANGELISTÆ. 2 In the house of my Father are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. 4 And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. 5 Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? 6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. 7 If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. D 8 Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. 9 Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? 10 Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake.
A of him who abides in the Father, and of the Father who exists in the Son.
12 Let the word "Amen, amen" be a firm witness. Every man who increases our unshakable faith shall himself accomplish the works that I perform, and shall perform miracles much greater than these, because I am hastening to come to the Father. 13 And whatsoever you ask of the supreme Father, invoking my name, I will perform all, that the pure Father may be glorious in the Son. 14 If you ask anything of the high-ruling Father, invoking my name, I will perform all. 15 If, however, you have bound yourselves to me by the law of most faithful friendship, keep every one of our commandments in your hearts; 16 and I will pray to God my Father, that he may send to you from heaven a Paraclete, a stranger, another con-genital to Christ, similar, a firm guide of Truth forever; B whom the multiform world cannot ever receive, because man shall never see with human eyes such a primal light, the Spirit of God the Father; but you alone shall behold the divine appearance of the invisible countenance. For he shall abide with you, and shall be a companion to you, possessing a spiritual home for all. I will not truly leave you as orphans, deprived of heavenly aid; but I come to you again swiftly. A little time yet remains, when the world, being faithless, shall no longer behold my divine form; but you alone shall see me, and because I abide living forever after the earth, you also shall all live through me. 20 That I am in the Father, you shall know in that [day], and that you are with me, and I am intertwined with you. 21 Whoever, having my commandments in his breast, shall fulfill them, this man loves me; and being a pure lover, he shall be a man beloved by my God the Father. Him I also shall embrace with a bond of equal affection, and I will immediately show him the divine appearance of my body. 22 Jesus was answered, and another Judas, the son of James, and not the bold Iscariot, said: Lord, how is it that you show your appearance only to your companions, and not to the world that does not look upon you? 23 Jesus, however, said, teaching the concordant light:
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
12 "Amen, amen, I say to you, he that believeth in me, the works that I do, he also shall do; and greater than these shall he do: because I go to the Father. 13 And whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name, that will I do: that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you shall ask me anything in my name, that I will do. 15 If you love me, keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever. 17 The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, nor knoweth him: but you shall know him; because he shall abide with you, and shall be in you. 18 I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while: and the world seeth me no more. But you see me: because I live, and you shall live. 20 In that day you shall know, that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them: he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth me, shall be loved of my Father: and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. 22 Judas saith to him, not the Iscariot: Lord, how is it, that thou wilt manifest thyself to us, and not to the world? 23 Jesus answered, and said to him: If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him."
A
He will grant my unshakable peace as a companion. B Whatever man, honoring me, loves me more, and guards my word within his inviolable heart, the Father of mine will love this wise man; and both of us, the Father and I, having come to one man, will erect a dwelling built within himself, remaining in a human, vocal home. But he who does not love me will vainly leave my word, neglected, to be carried away by winds of forgetfulness. And this word which I spoke is not mine, but the Father's, who sent me from heaven as a helper of the world. While I, your companion, still remain upon the earth, I have said all these things; but when the Paraclete shall come, He will teach you all things by his governing word; He Himself shall bring back to your memory all things that I said among you. I shall leave you peace that preserves life; I shall provide my own unmoved peace as a companion. Not as the wandering world gives a common gift to you, so will I guarantee you to have it. Let not turmoil shake your heart, nor fear disturb it. Now you have heard my voice when I cried out, that I, being returned to my Father who calls me, shall go to the celestial high-halls, the dwelling of the stars. But if you had applied the laws of unswerving friendship to me, you would have leaped with the sole of a joyous foot, bearing a common joy, that, having left the soil of the earth, I shall go, a late traveler, to the Father who sent me; because the Father, governor of all, is greater than I. But I have already told you this divine word beforehand, so that if the turning, unstable time of life should accomplish it, you might remember the word spoken long ago, which I prophesied to you, opening my lips to foretell it. C But to you I shall speak no more at length; for the arrogant prince of this world will appear unexpectedly. He comes, having nothing in me, but only that the world may know, through my prudent speech, that I love the Father, and that I do all things whatsoever the Father commanded by his governing word. Arise, and let us go hence.
CAP. XV.
I am the true vine of life in the world, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me not bearing fruit, He takes it away; and every one that bears fruit, He cleanses it, that it may bear more fruit.
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
24 He that loveth me not, keepeth not my words. And the word which you have heard, is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me. 29 And now I have told you before it come to pass: that when it shall come to pass, you may believe. 30 I will not now speak many things with you. For the prince of this world cometh, and in me he hath not any thing. 31 But that the world may know, that I love the Father: and as the Father hath given me commandment, so do I: Arise, let us go hence.
CAP. XV.
1 I am the true vine; and my Father is the husbandman. 2 Every branch in me, that beareth not fruit, he will take away: and every one that beareth fruit, he will purge it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
φέρῃ.
PARAPHRASE ON JOHN. – CHAPTER XV.
My Father, the tiller of life, knows how to prune with newly-grown leaves, so that he may gather a more abundant fruit. A Now you are clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. And you yourselves, remain grafted into my regrowing shrub; remain grafted into me, you sprouts of the world. As a branch of the vine can never bring forth fruit, unless it be grafted into the vine-plant and grow into a tree—an imitation of the clustered, multi-branched shoot—unless you remain similarly grafted into me, you cannot bring forth pious fruit. I am the speaking vine, and you are the vocal branches, weighed down with wise fruit. Every man of firm purpose who remains in me, he increases for God with greater measure fruit that is always flourishing, and not a temporary work. B But if anyone among our lambs no longer remains, he is cast out like a vine-branch upon the poured-out earth; like a branch of the vine he lies extended over the earth and dries up, parched like a cluster; and the heavenly ministers, gathering him up, cast him into the furnace; and he is burned by the flaming heat of fire, leaving my vine-bearing branches. But if you remain in me, and the stream of our voice irrigating you remains firm, entering the heart, whatever you desire to receive and ask the Father, all things will be fulfilled for you in one. C And in this our Father has obtained high-reaching honor, so that you may bear the prudent fruit of faith by the life-giving word of God; and you shall be my disciples, true in immutable character. But as the sublime Father loved me by a certain unending law, so I have loved you. Remain in the affection of my love, if indeed my law, entering into your watchful ears, shall always be kept in your hearts, always increasing the bond of my friendship in your mind; just as I, keeping the irreprehensible laws of the Father, remain yet inclined toward the Father’s love. And I say these things, thinking friendly thoughts, to you, so that there may be joy for you, and my joy, well-sealed, may be perfect in all of you. D This is the wise limit of my command: that you all should always love one another, keeping the bond of unbreakable friendship among yourselves, just as I have loved you. But I, for a greater one than this—
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST.
3 Now you are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. 5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. 6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. 7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. 8 Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. 9 As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. 10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. 11 These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. 12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. 13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
A I know no other love than this, that one should offer his own life, dear to all, as a savior for the life of his companions. 14 You are all my friends, if you perform our commands, which I, who hold command, enjoin upon you. 15 No longer will I call you all my servants; for a servant knows not what work the master weaves, a servant knows not; but I have called you my companions; for whatsoever things I myself heard from the heavenly voice of our benevolent Father, these I have manifested to you all. And it is not by human will that you chose me; but discerning you, the disciples, from among many with an intelligent mind, I received you all as more faithful and made you my companions, so that, coming, you might accumulate fruit, and your seed might be B fruitful forever; and by a certain supplicatory speech, "Whatever you ask from the most high King, calling upon my Name, I will perform it all." Proclaiming these things, I command you in a wise discourse to guard the bond of indissoluble friendship between you. If the proud world hates you with an erring mind, know this as witnesses of the works of the earth-born, that because it assailed you all the more with reproaches, it first hated me. And if you had held the form and customs of earthly men of the world that works sin, the wandering world would have associated with you as its own. But since you do not know the error of the human generation, and the twisted cares C of the world, I myself, understanding you, received you from the unwise world, so that because you are not of the bastard and illegitimate blood of man’s generation, the world hates you. In an unchanging mind, remember still the wise discourse of ours, which I told you before in assembly: A servant is not better than his king; nor is an envoy greater than the one who sent him. If the threatening human generation persecuted me, it will drive you out as well; but if it hides within it the discourse guarded in the depths of my heart, it will also guard your word within its heart. For the sake of my faithful Name, these men, sinners D and jealous, will do these things to you; for they know neither me nor the Father who sent me. If I had not come by the life-giving guidance of the Father, and declared to all the way of godliness, they would not have had a sin to be punished; but now, having learned, they have no excuse for their foolish ruin.
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
14 You are my friends, if you do what I command you. 15 I no longer call you servants, because the servant knows not what his master does; but I have called you friends, because all things that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give you. 17 These things I command you, that you love one another. 18 If the world hates you, know that it hated me before you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I spoke to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. 21 But all these things they will do to you for my name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.
(this is the first page of the chain)
Whoever hates me and our Parent, A This one, acting unjustly, full of wicked execration, hates the ruler of all, God, the artificer of the world. 24 If I had not done works which no other has learned to accomplish, while they themselves were spectators being eye-witnesses, they would not indeed have had the punishments that avenge impiety; but now they both see, and by one law they hate both me myself and the Father who rules on high. 25 But that the word written in their law might be fulfilled, which the divine voice said of the Man who has a beautiful lyre, that it might be fulfilled: They have hated me gratuitously. 26 But after the Spirit having been sent from God the Mind, proceeding from the Father, the Spirit whom I myself will send to you from the Father, comes, He will preach much of me among men. Much also will you speak of me with a prudent, testifying discourse. For truly, being present with me, you are harmonious disciples, having been from the beginning observers of all works.
CAP. XVI
1 To you, however, I say these things, predicting them firmly, lest a bold, faithless stimulus enter your mind. 2 They will drive you from the divine temple; but a swift time shall be when every mortal man, having killed you with a pernicious sword, shall hope to perform a service to God the beloved, sacrificing a man as if for the bovine kind, equating to the sacrifices of oxen a death-dealing libation for men. 3 And these things the Impious, incited by a certain senseless madness, will perform against you; for neither do they themselves know the Son and the Father who reigns on high. 4 But indeed I have predicted all these things, so that when the late, imminent, opportune time arrives, you may remember the prophetic, fateful proclamations of our words. These things, however, I did not declare from the beginning, while they were covered in the silence of my fertile heart, while I was still remaining your companion upon the earth: but now I, the Son, am going away toward the sky, having left the earth. C Nor does any one of you who sits by me ask: Master, whither are you hastening? into what place are you going for me? 6 But because I have related these things to you, behold, a great, sorrowful distress has filled your entire mind. 7 But I have told the truth, which is beyond reproach; but it is better for you that I should depart into the sky. For unless I return, having gone back into the sky, the Spirit of the living God will never come to you.
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
23 He who hates me hates my Father also. 24 If I had not done among them the works which no one else has done, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father. 25 But that the word which is written in their law might be fulfilled: D That they hated me without a cause. 26 But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of me. 27 And you also will testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.
CHAPTER XVI
1 These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be offended. 2 They will put you out of the synagogues; but the hour is coming that everyone who kills you will think that he offers a service to God. 3 And these things they will do to you, because they have not known the Father, nor me. 4 But these things I have told you, that when the hour comes, you may remember them, that I told you. And these things I did not say to you from the beginning, because I was with you. 5 But now I go away to Him who sent me, and none of you asks me: Where are you going? 6 But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. 7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.
A And when He has come, He will convince the world concerning sin, and concerning righteousness, and judgment—concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; but concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will no longer see me; and concerning judgment, because the proud and deceitful prince of the eternal world has been judged. Although I have many things to say, I refuse, for you are not yet able to hear more. But when the Helper, the Comforter, has come, He will govern all things; and He will lead you in all truth into the way. For He will say nothing of His own authority, nor will He be deaf to the voice, but whatever He hears, that He will speak; and He will predict to you all the end of future deeds. This One, going forth from the Father, will exalt me, honoring me; for receiving from the Father that which is ours, He will show you the preordained oracles through the intermingling of time, regarding all things that shall be for you. And by a certain original sanction, my lot is all that my Father possesses. For which reason I said to you that, receiving from the divine Father what is ours, He will announce the end of B works. A little time still remains, during which you will no longer see me as a companion of the world; but a near, little, fleeting time still remains, from which you will see me again alone, and I shall come through the celestial bosoms to the Father. And the disciples spoke, hiding the saying within their mind—a promisor of the voice, near to the tongue, an emulator of silence: "What is this word which He said, that a little time remains, and a little time remains, from which you will no longer see me as a companion of the world; but from which a near, little, fleeting time still remains, from which you will see me again alone, and I shall come to the Father?" C Jesus, truly perceiving the shifting heart of his companions, that they had conferred among themselves and wished to ask, anticipating them, said in discourse to his intelligent disciples: "Why do you inquire among yourselves with neighborly tongue, that which after a little...
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
8 And when He has come, He will convince the world concerning sin, and concerning righteousness, and concerning judgment. 9 Concerning sin, indeed, because they do not believe in me; 10 Concerning righteousness, because I go to my Father, and you see me no more; 11 And concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. 12 I still have many things to say to you, but you are not able to bear them now. 13 But when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. 14 He will glorify me, because He will take of what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All things that the Father has are mine. Therefore I said that He will take of mine and declare it to you. 16 A little while, and you will not see me; and again a little while, and you will see me, because I go to the Father." 17 Then some of His disciples said among themselves, "What is this that He says to us, 'A little while, and you will not see me; and again a little while, and you will see me'; and, 'because I go to the Father'?" 18 They said therefore, "What is this that He says, 'a little while'? We do not know what He is saying." 19 Jesus knew that they desired to ask Him, and He said to them, "Are you inquiring among yourselves concerning this, that I said, 'A little while, and you will not see me; and again a little while, and you will see me'?
'?
A I said "after a little while I move away from your eyes; And again after a little while you shall look upon me as I appear." 174 20 "I declare with a firm oath, Amen, amen: You shall weep and raise up laments; and the frenzied World shall rejoice in things not holy; but again the Sorrowful stimulus of your sadness shall pass away; Just as a woman big with child turns sadness in her mind, afflicted by the sharp arrows of birth: for she dreads the hour of grievous labor; but if she has brought forth, she casts off the sharp burden of the consumed sorrow, and does not remember the former pain, because another man has recently appeared and sprouted for the regrowing world. 22 Even like a woman near birth, you too shall first pierce your soul with wakeful sorrows; But I shall see you again; and your heart shall rejoice as it is gathered back; and no one shall take from you the sublime Joy that is forever unchangeable; and, as before, on that day you shall no longer ask me about anything by a previous wise word. For whatever you seek with a voice invoking God, all these shall be firm from the benevolent Father. 24 Up until now you have not yet asked for the dear gift to complete the vital work from the Father; but seek to complete it now again, and whatever delights you, you shall receive everything from my high-king Father, that your sweet Joy may be perfect. 25 Now I speak in curved words through a parable; but soon the perfect divine hour shall come, when hearing everything from God the Father I shall come, announcing the straight ways of C words with an open voice, and no longer an oblique utterance. 26 And on that day you shall pray to God as one to be invoked with many holy prayers; and I shall no longer call this a habitual speech as before; I shall soothe my living Father for your sake. For the High-ruler, keeping the exact holy desire of my love, loves you of his own accord, my Father: Because you have joined the Divine love in me to the Word of God the Son with a wise and concordant bond, and you too by ways that do not err; and you have known by my word that I come from God the Father bringing life. 28 I came from the Father, and have conversed in the world; And again I leave the world filled with sin; And [I go to the Father]."
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
20 Amen, amen I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. 21 A woman when she is in labor has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the tribulation, for the joy that a man has been born into the world. 22 Therefore you now also have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you. 23 And in that day you will ask me nothing. Amen, amen I say to you, that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He will give to you. 24 Until now you have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you shall receive, that your joy may be full. 25 These things I have spoken to you in proverbs; but the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in proverbs, but I will announce to you openly about the Father. 26 In that day you will ask in my name; and I do not say to you that I shall ask the Father concerning you; 27 For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from God. 28 I came forth from the Father, and have come into the world; again I leave the world, and go to the Father.
A And soon I shall return to my Father who sent me. 29 And the disciples, having learned all things, replied: Now you speak openly, and you do not speak the mysteries of words perverting them with bends, needing a different voice. Now, therefore, we know that you have no need of human voice, that anyone should forestall you and ask. On account of which we know for certain that you come into the world as Christ, the Son of God from heaven. 31 Jesus answered, pre-announcing the end of his works: Do you now, being converted, believe my word? 32 The time is near when you shall be scattered, fleeing each to his own house, departing one from another, leaving me alone; but when a hostile crowd comes, I am not alone, even if the disciples flee; 33 but my Father never ceases to remain with me. But all these things I have related to you, that you may hasten to keep peace unshaken for me into an endingless time. But in the loud-sounding world you are afflicted and tormented by cares; but, being patient, take courage, because I shall do greater things for people; I have conquered the world.
CHAPTER XVII
1 And straightway having spoken these things, he directed his eyes to heaven, and sounded to his Father: Glorify thy Son again, Father, that thy Son may honor thee, the celestial Father, just as thou hast given him to govern the reins of all human flesh. I wish that all whom thou hast previously granted me may together embrace divine eternal life, 3 (which is) that they may know thee, the only God, the hope of the world, and thy Christ Jesus whom thou didst send into the earth. 4 I myself have honored thee upon the earth, finishing the work which thou didst grant me to perform. 5 And do thou now glorify me, Father, with the accustomed honor which I had with thee before the foundations of the world were yet fastened by thy divine Word. 6 I have proclaimed thy name among the men whom thou didst give to the Son out of the world, blind eyes of the world; they are thine, but thou dost rule them: thou hast given them to me, and they have kept thy word with a certain faithful and immutable law: and they have known by the word that all things which thou hast granted me are from thee. 8 Because I have delivered to them thy vital words;
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
29 His disciples say to him: Lo, now you speak openly, and you speak no proverb. 30 Now we know that you know all things, and have no need that anyone should ask you; by this we believe that you came forth from God. 31 Jesus answered them: Do you now believe? 32 Behold, the hour comes, and has now come, that you shall be scattered, each to his own, and shall leave me alone; and I am not alone, because the Father is with me. 33 These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation; but take courage, I have overcome the world.
CHAPTER XVII
1 These things Jesus spoke, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said: Father, the hour has come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee; 2 as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he may give eternal life to all that thou hast given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ. 4 I have glorified thee upon the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. 5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was, with thee. 6 I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou hast given me out of the world; thine they were, and thou hast given them to me, and they have kept thy word. 7 Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are from thee; 8 For the words which thou hast given me, have I given to them;
are those who have received your words with a governing mind, and they have learned that I proceeded from you, and they have fixed your Word in their firm hearts, that you sent me forth into the earth. Now, for the sake of those not wandering, not for the sake of the whole wandering world, A O Father, I ask and entreat you: but for these whom you gave to your Son; they are yours. Both, however, whatever you have are all mine: and again, whatever I bring, are all yours; and I, among my companions on earth, possess all increasing glory. In the world they indeed are; but I, having left the earth, shall return to you, O Father: but guard our disciples concordant from the very scourge of the Demon, the adversary and defender. Holy Father, guard them concordant from it, that all may be one, B even as we are. When I was near, conversing with them in the world, I myself kept them all unharmed: nor did any of these, whom you gave (to me) to your Son, Savior of the human race, Perish, agitated by the deceitful gadfly of impiety, Unless the son of the destructive, pestilential demon; that the word of the written law might be fulfilled. Now, however, Father, having returned from earth, I shall pass to you. And I have run through all these things to you, that they may always bring commune joy to my completed works. And to them I have furnished your divine word; C but the envious world hates them, because they are children of the divine heavenly Parent, though spurious citizens of the world, just as I am a stranger in the world; for I am not of the earthly marriage-completing human race. Not by word, O Father, do I ask you to remove the company of companions far from the infinite world; But that you may guard them with vigilant eyes against the laws to be shunned of the Demon, the author of evils. 16. . . With your divine words sanctify my disciples, cleansing all with the intellectual rays of truth. Truth is your word. 18. . . . 19 . . . And for their sake I sanctify myself, D that they also may be cleansed by the sanctification of truth.
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
And they received, and knew truly that I came forth from you, and they believed that you sent me. 9 I pray for them: I do not pray for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 And all mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, and they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are. 12 When I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name; those whom you gave me I have guarded, and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in your truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
with the vital Word, and may they be pure by the sanctification of the truth, having washed their limbs in the spiritual fire. Not for them alone do I seek thy grace, but for all who, casting the rabid incredulity to the winds, hold the right faith because of the speech of my associates: A that all may be one, joined as we are; as thou art in me, and I, Father, am in thee, joined as equals together, so that they too may all be joined and born with us: that the cunning world may understand that thou hast sent me as the Redeemer of the whole human generation to the world. And to them I have granted the glory which thou gavest to me, that in us all may be joined and perfected, even as we are one, existing in one another; that they may become our born associates: that thou indeed mayest be in me, Father, and I may be brought as one common to all my associates. That the senseless world may know by the word of knowledge that thou didst send me as a defender to a world bearing witness, as the deliverer of human life: that thou hast loved them even as thou lovedst thy Son, B loving my associates. I will that those whom thou hast given me, Father, should also remain where I am, that all may behold with mortal eyes my sublime principality, which thou thyself gavest me, because thou, Father, didst love me before the deep foundations of the murky world were made. Human, just Father, savior of life, the world hath not known thee; but I, co-eternal, have known thee, and this wise assembly of my associates has learned thee through pious morals. Because I have manifested unto them the mysteries of thy words; and I will show them yet more fully, that they may know thee much more; that the bond of my love may be in them, and I may be brought [to them]. C
CHAPTER XVIII
Having spoken all these things, he crossed with prudent foot to the land situated in the region; where, by the cedars of beautiful branches, a wandering rain rolls with rabid heat, stirring up the impetuous flow of a torrential river; where a green garden is near: into which he entered.
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
20 I pray not for these only, but also for them that believe on me through their word; 21 that they all may be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me. 22 And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are one. 23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one; and that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, the world knew thee not, but I knew thee; and these knew that thou didst send me. 26 And I made known unto them thy name, and D will make it known; that the love wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them, and I in them.
CHAPTER XVIII
1 When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Kidron, where was a garden, into which he himself and his disciples entered.
A The Lord went in, as one accustomed to go into the fragrant garden of an ever-flourishing paradise. And that bold man, another Judas, knew that place planted with trees; for Christ, traversing the shadowed and deserted region, had often entered into that place; there, too, the band of his fellow-collectors—his group of companions—remained. 2 And having taken the shielded army of the high priests, and that much-raging crowd, running together from the authors of evil, the Pharisees, having another club-bearing troop of travelers, 3 Judas came, changeable, into the accustomed garden, having weapons and torches; and at the same time a man, having been sent with hands filled with many scattered things, lifted high one over another the lamps held within, raising up the wind-sheltered grove—a grove which, connecting with alternating reeds, B a builder, an old man, had encircled, divided frequently; like a star, and similar to the revolving world. In the middle appearing, where the lamp, joined through a fold, sending out sharp, multi-faced light through a multi-holed lid, appearing at the top, a variously divided, leaping light shone. 4 But Jesus, not taught by another, seeing the coming necessity, fearless and self-impelled, ran forward, leaving the garden. And he asked the shield-shaking army with a sharp word: "What manner of man do you come seeking to seize?" And the army of sword-bearing men answered Jesus: "We all seek Jesus, the inhabitant of Nazareth." And the bold guide Judas stood by his enemies, he who for the sake of the vilest temporal gain betrayed the Son of God, the hope of the infinite world, betrayed the Son of God. And when, clothed in soft garments and lacking iron, the King replied with a warlike voice, all the fighting warriors fell spontaneously one upon another, and were cast down into the dust, prone, C stimulated by the unarmed storm of his voice. 5 Jesus, however, asked a second time with a prudent word: "What manner of man do you, having gathered together, seek to seize?" And the enemies shouted with a responding word: "We seek Jesus the Nazarene, Christ." Jesus then spoke with a fearless voice: "I am Jesus, the inhabitant of Nazareth, the Galilean; I am Jesus the Galilean. But if you have come only seeking me, allow this people of my companions to go back home unharmed, so that the word might be fulfilled, unchanging, which Christ previously spoke to his living Father: 'Of those whom you have given me, I have lost none.'" D Now Simon Peter having a sword, drew it, and struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear. And the name of the servant was Malchus.
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
1 Judas also, who betrayed him, knew the place: for Jesus had often gathered there with his disciples. 2 Judas therefore, having taken the band and the servants from the high priests and the Pharisees, comes there with lanterns and torches and weapons. 3 Jesus therefore knowing all the things that were coming upon him, went forth and said to them: "Whom seek you?" 4 They answered him: "Jesus the Nazarene." Jesus says to them: "I am he." And Judas also, who betrayed him, stood with them. 5 As therefore he said to them: "I am he," they went backward, and fell to the ground. 6 He asked them again: "Whom seek you?" And they said: "Jesus the Nazarene." 7 Jesus answered: "I told you that I am he. If therefore you seek me, let these go their way." 8 That the word might be fulfilled which he said: "Of those whom you have given me, I have lost none of them." 9 Simon Peter therefore having a sword, drew it, and struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear. And the name of the servant was Malchus.
11 Jesus therefore said to Peter: Put up thy sword into the scabbard. The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? 12 The band and the tribune and the servants of the Jews took Jesus, and bound him: 13 And they led him away to Annas first, for he was father in law to Caiphas, who was the high priest of that year. 14 Now Caiphas was he who had given the counsel to the Jews: that it was expedient that one man should die for the people. A And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and another disciple. And that disciple was known to the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the court. But Peter stood at the door without. The other disciple therefore, who was known to the high priest, went out, and spoke to the portress, and brought in Peter. The maid therefore that was portress saith to Peter: Art not thou also one of this man's disciples? He saith: I am not. Now the servants and ministers stood at a fire of coals, because it was cold, and warmed themselves. And with them was Peter also standing, and warming himself. The high priest therefore asked Jesus concerning his disciples, and concerning his doctrine.
METRICAL PARAPHRASE OF THE GOSPEL BY NONNUS OF PANOPOLIS
A Holding a sword, he boldly drew it; and striking the man, the servant of the impetuous high priest, he cut off his right ear with the aid of the iron: and the name of the servant struck by the sword was Malchus. But Jesus repressed Peter with a loving voice: Cease from anger, and put the sword into the scabbard; shall I not drink with a willing spirit the dear cup of my Father, which He Himself gave to me? But the guardian of the sacred temple, the first warrior of the noble chiliarch's army, and he himself together with the commander of the heavy-armed troop of shield-bearers, having bound the blameless Christ with a cruel chain, made their way at evening, in silence, leading Christ to the house of the high priest. For the bold Caiaphas was the son-in-law [of Annas], who was the high priest of that year; who formerly, for the Hebrew people, having zeal against Christ, uttered a voice opposed to God: B It is good that one man should die for the people; lest sudden envy, creeping through the Jews, destroy the whole nation for the sake of one man. And the soldiers flowed together, leading Jesus. And Simon followed him from behind at a distance, and another young companion, who, by the art of the fisherman, being known and manifest to the accustomed high priest, came as a companion to Christ into the God-receiving court. And lingering there, Peter was left outside the door. But the other disciple of Christ, bending his knee within the house, sprang forth, and spoke to the maidservant portress, and led Peter inside the capacious court, holding him by the hand. And the maidservant, the portress, looking with an oblique eye, spoke to the neighbor Peter C such a word: Art thou not also a disciple of Christ? But Simon answered with a voice that betrayed his fear: O woman, I am not a disciple and companion of Christ. But the mixed crowd of the high priest's ministers stood there, laborers and servants together; and they were warming themselves in a circle, strewing [around] coals. And under a thin spark the fire they had kindled had a small, sparing flame. For the night was dark and tempestuous, and evening winds, cooling the earth, were blowing; whence the servants were warming themselves at the dear fire; and in the midst of them stood Peter in silence, having his face hidden. But Annas, the high priest with the ample beard, questioned Jesus with sharp speech, clutching the top of his beard with his accustomed motion of the hand, D [and not yet releasing it.][index: entries preserved]
To the companions whom the Lord had as disciples, and concerning His holy doctrine. But Jesus, unmoved, replied with a bold word: "I have spoken openly to the inquiring world, in pure houses, in the very intersections of the roads, and in the temple where God is invoked, where the generations of various peoples dwell; I speak nothing hidden with a timid and predatory speech. 21 Why do you ask me these things? Behold, all those who are around are witnesses of my voice: they all know the varied thoughts of my words, whatever I have said among the Jews to the people who believe in God." As He said these things, a rustic minister struck the divine cheek with a bold hand, saying: "Is this how you answer the great high priest?" But Jesus, rebuking the insolent servant, said: "If I have spoken boldly with a mad and foolish word, be a witness of the evil with your own condemning voice; but if I have spoken well, why do you smite me with blows?" B 19024 Annas, indeed, having kept Jesus bound with the murderous cord of a snare, His hands drawn behind His back in a double bond, sent Him to his own rabid son-in-law, the high priest, brought by a fellow priest.
But Simon, standing and mourning by the fire, was warming his chilled body with the fire made of coals. And as he was being warmed, the ministers of the high priest questioned the stranger Simon who had recently arrived: "Are you yourself also one of the companions of Christ?" And Peter, called by name, denied with a responding voice to the servants who were questioning him: "I am not Christ's," he said with a lying speech. And the servant of the priest answered, rebuking Peter, the kinsman of that night-wandering minister whose right ear Simon had cut off, striking with a sword, [saying]: "Are you not a minister of Christ? Did I not see you with Him in the garden planted with trees?" And for the third time, Peter, in his accustomed reciprocal voice, denied Jesus, and immediately the cock crowed. C But Caiaphas, leaving the house of the accusing throng, approached the house of the haughty governor, dragging Jesus, who was willing and bringing life, to death. Then indeed the immense Light dissipated the shadowy mist of the divine night with the rosy arms of the endowed dawn: He did not indeed enter the resounding house with cautious feet, lest He defile His limbs, wishing to eat the Pascha with a pure body; but far away stood the... D
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
20 Jesus answered him: "I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in the synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews gather, and I have said nothing in secret. 21 Why do you ask me? Ask those who have heard what I spoke to them: behold, they know what I said." 22 When He had said these things, one of the servants standing by gave Jesus a blow, saying: "Is this how you answer the high priest?" 23 Jesus answered him: "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why do you beat me?" 24 Annas then sent Him bound to Caiaphas the high priest. 25 And Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They said therefore to him: "Are you also one of His disciples?" He denied it, and said: "I am not." One of the servants of the high priest, a kinsman of him whose ear Peter had cut off, said: "Did I not see you in the garden with Him?" 26 Peter again denied it; and immediately the cock crowed. 28 Then they lead Jesus from Caiaphas to the praetorium. And it was morning: and they themselves did not enter the praetorium, that they might not be defiled, but that they might eat the Pascha.
A Thinking that he had thus quickly warded off some great slaughter, and had kept pure the house of the law-givers. 29 And Pilate, prompt to act, led them out of his hall: but he questioned the priests by a due law, seeking a token of the murderous charge, asking: "What word do you speak in accusation against this man? What is the cause of death? What so great wrong has the man committed? What word do you speak, accusing the man of being worthy of death?" 30 And with envious mouth the high priests answered: "If he had not done an unspeakable evil, surely we would not have dragged him to you with violence, bringing an innocent man to be subdued, handing him over to your hand." 31 But he, quickly perceiving their envy, refused to judge Christ, saying: "Take him yourselves; and judge him by the books of the law of your fathers, and by the accustomed penalty." And the bold assembly said: "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death; so that the word might be firm which Christ said, prophesying by what death he was to die." 33 And Pilate, having left the crafty crowd at the doors, returned and entered the accustomed hall, and called Jesus, and asked with testing voice: "Art thou the King of the Jews?" 34 But to him who questioned, Jesus, speaking divinely as if to one who did not know, asked, knowing with a divine mind: "Sayest thou this of thyself, calling me the scepter-bearer of the Jews; or has another told it thee?" 35 And the chief man sounded out: "Am I a Jew? Thy own nation, and the high priests, gave thee to me in their shamelessness; tell me thyself, what work hast thou done?" 36 The King answered with words: "No earthly hall is my royal seat. I am not of the temporal world; for if my empire were of earth, if it were mundane, my ministers would surely have waged an armed struggle, that I might not be handed over, to be handled by Jewish hands. But now my royal empire is not from hence." 37 And Pilate again said with a responsive voice: "Therefore art thou a king?" And Jesus answered: "And to this end was I born, and to this end came I into the world, that I might always be a witness of the truth, which softens all men; and everyone who prefers to draw the yoke of truth, hears the true word of my tongue."
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
29 Pilate went out therefore unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against this man? 30 They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee. 31 Pilate said therefore unto them, Take him yourselves, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death: 32 That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what manner of death he should die. 33 Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews? 34 Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me? 35 Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done? 36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. 37 Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.
38 And Pilate wondered, and asked again A with the word: What is truth? And quickly leaving his throne, he went outside the house, and spoke to the senseless people, and rebuked the priests with his manifold discourse: Judging, I see no cause in this man, I have found no certain ground. 39 But it is your ancient yearly ancestral custom that I should release to you one bound man calling from prison; do you wish, therefore, that I again offer to you, released, the King of the Jews bound in chains? 40 But the Jews shouted with an infinite, harmonious sound, crying: Not this man whom you have mentioned, but Barabbas: who was a death-dealing robber.
CAP. XIX.
1 Hearing the mad roar of the senseless mouths, the Prince delivered the robber to the people, not scourged, not bound, and not marked by rods; but with alternating blows, the shuddering body of Christ he had reddened with the scourge, and the hostile army, rejoicing in insults, held Jesus: and winding the branch of sharp-cutting thorn, they imposed a spurious crown of a King upon his head. And they clothed him, wrapping his body in a cloak, shining with the wise sparkle of the Sidonian sea: a mark of royalty even in sorrows. B And bending their solid knees to the ground with curved neck, they saluted the King with a lying name, with the herald of supplication: and one went after another, striking the top of the cheek with alternating hands. 4 C And Pilate of quick counsel ran outside the house with hasty feet, and sounded to the senseless people: Outside I now lead this man to you. But so that you may know, I have found no error of mind in him, judging with blameless heart. 5 And he walked outside the house with undefiled feet, and he had a crown of thorn, having sharp points woven, and a purple garment, flowing with the blood of the murex, and Pilate said again to the envious people: Behold, the sinless man stands with his back marked. 6 And looking upon him, the wicked high priests and cruel ministers roared an immense sound: May this man, hung on a cross, be raised up high, bearing iron goads on his feet and hands. And Pilate D laid them upon his head, and put a purple garment about him.
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
38 Pilate says to him: What is truth? And having said this, he went out again to the Jews, and says to them: I find no fault in him. 39 But it is a custom for you that I should release one to you at the Passover; do you wish, therefore, that I release to you the King of the Jews? 40 They cried out, therefore, all again, saying: Not this man, but Barabbas; and Barabbas was a robber.
CAP. XIX.
1 Then therefore Pilate took Jesus, and scourged him. 2 And they said: Hail, King of the Jews, and they gave him blows. 3 Pilate went out again therefore outside, and says to them: Behold, I bring him out to you, that you may know that I find no fault in him. 5 Jesus therefore went out, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple garment. And he says to them: Behold the man. 6 When therefore the high priests and the ministers saw him, they cried out, saying: Crucify, crucify. Pilate says to them: Take him yourselves, and crucify; for I find no fault in him.
A And Pilate uttered a prudent voice to the people: "Do you scourge this man with a fourfold destruction, for I have found no cause of death in him." And the maddened high priests spoke out to Pilate: "A hereditary law is current among the Hebrews, which the Lawgivers once wrote in a book; and as the sanction commands, this man ought to die by a retributive fate, because of his impiety, in that he has called himself the divine Son of the ever-living God the Father." And the wise judge, when he heard this, trembled: with hurrying feet he entered the capacious hall, and questioned Jesus again with his accustomed speech: "Who are you? Whence are you?" But the gentle Lord fixed his eyes upon the ground, and not opening his mouth to Pilate, he gave no answering voice to alternate with his words. And Pilate emitted a voice with a menacing sound: "Do you not answer me with your words? Do you not yet know that I carry a twofold power over you? For I have both, I can subdue you with the cross, and if I wish, I can release you." And Christ said to him, refuting his proud arrogance: "You would have no power gathered over me at all, if it were not given from above. For this reason the man who took and handed me over keeps a greater sin." Then, deciding, Pilate thought to release Jesus unharmed and sent away from destruction. But the people cried out against him with the noise of unceasing sound from B infinite mouths: "Leaving this man unharmed, you are not a friend of Caesar, the sole scepter-bearing king. For everyone saying he is himself king in lying speech, contends with Caesar Tiberius by this false name." And Pilate, hearing the speech with trembling ears, brought Jesus out of the high-roofed halls. He sat in a place made of a newly constructed lithostrotos—a name this bears, spoken in the Greek tongue, as one crafted of paved stones; but in the noisy Syriac dialect it is called Gabbatha. And the sixth hour, which they call the beginning of the Sabbath, was dawn: and the third death-dealing hour was stretched out. And Pilate, prompt from the stone seat, shouted to the Jews: "Behold, the man stands near, your Lord, wearing the royal garment." But the people answered with a consenting throat: C "Take this one and crucify him with some most ignominious death: let him perish raised up by iron-bearing nails."
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
The Jews answered him: "We have a law, and according to our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God." When therefore Pilate heard this saying, he was the more afraid. And he entered into the praetorium again, and said to Jesus: "Whence are you?" But Jesus gave him no answer. Pilate therefore says to him: "Do you not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to crucify you, and power to release you?" Jesus answered: "You would have no power against me, unless it were given you from above: therefore he who delivered me to you has the greater sin." Upon this Pilate sought to release him: but the Jews cried out, saying: "If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself king speaks against Caesar." Pilate therefore, when he heard this saying, brought Jesus out, and sat down on the judgment seat in a place called the Lithostrotos, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the Preparation of the Passover, and it was about the sixth hour; and he says to the Jews: "Behold your King!" But they cried out: "Away with him, away with him, crucify him." Pilate says to them: "Shall I crucify your King?" The high priests answered: "We have no king but Caesar."
extending him on the wood A in a death made by a four-yoked bond. And Pilate said again to the whole gazing people: "Shall I, having driven a nail into your King, who was bound by nails, destroy him with a retributive death?" And with deceitful mouths the high priests shouted: "We know no other, unaccustomed king, a king not commanded, whom Rome did not crown, except Caesar alone, the infinite shepherd of the world." And Pilate, hearing the inextinguishable cry of the people, willing or unwilling, handed Christ over to an unjust destruction. And in his death the shameless high priests rejoiced, having received Jesus readily; and quickly bringing destruction upon the Immortal Christ, all together they became mortal murderers. 17 And Jesus himself, bearing his cross, had an undaunted way toward voluntary death, until he came to the place named Skull, bearing the name of the first-born B Adam in the circumference of its head: the mouth of the Syrians called it Golgotha. 18 There the murderers, onto a four-sided wood raised high above the earth, stretched him upright, fastening with constraint his hands spread out on either side with a certain iron bond; and with a single nail driven through, piercing both together in one impulse, with feet tangled in an inflexible bond of destruction. And with retaliatory stings they joined two night-roaming thieves to the cross in death as his neighbors; but in the middle they placed Jesus. 19 And Pilate wrote an inscription for a witness with a noticeable nail C, which they call in the Latin tongue a title. It was expressed with a wise pen: "This is Jesus, this is the King of the Jews, Jesus the Galilean." 20 And a great crowd of the Jews, who were visiting, read the title, seeing that the place was a hill near to the city, where they had closed him off with the barrier of the cross. And it was marked with the stroke of one hand, knowing the Roman, Syriac, and Achaian tongue. 21 And the high priests, coming together, entreated Pilate: "Do not write, do not write this, 'King of the Jews,' but what he himself said with a lying voice: 'I am the King of the Jews, the scepter-bearer Jesus'." 22 And Pilate spoke a word, rebuking the cruel men: "What I have written, I have written." 23 And the ministers of death, having raised up Jesus on high, immovable D, having stretched him out and bound him to the cross, standing, divided the divine garment of the God-begotten King, and his shining tunic, which was whole...
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
16 Then he handed him over to them that he might be crucified. And they took Jesus and led him away. 17 And bearing his cross, he went out to the place called Skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha. 18 Where they crucified him, and with him two others, on this side and on that side, and Jesus in the middle. 19 And Pilate also wrote a title, and put it on the cross; and it was written: "Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews." 20 Many of the Jews read this title, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin. 21 Then the high priests of the Jews said to Pilate: "Do not write: 'The King of the Jews,' but that he said: 'I am the King of the Jews.'" 22 Pilate answered: "What I have written, I have written." 23 Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments (and made four parts, to each soldier a part) and also the tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven from the top throughout.A It was woven whole, both from above and below, seamless, ending from the neck to the ankles. They spoke among themselves with a harmonious word: "Let us not tear this true, purple tunic, which possesses a divine and foreign form; but for it, casting the fingers of our hands, let us all, by an undisputed lot, see whose it shall be—that that word may come true, the late word which the divine-voiced song, singing to the cithara, spoke: *My terrible slayers among themselves, common adversaries, divided my garments, and cast lots for the cloak by a covetous lot*, until they became the wearers of my clothing." And these deeds the army of wicked men performed. B Near the cross, however, there were companions and associates, and Mary the Mother of God, Christ’s parent; with whom also was that kin of hers, Mary of the same name; and there was also she herself, Mary Magdalene, gladly weeping. Now when Christ saw the mother who brought forth God and the disciple whom he loved, he spoke a word to the mother: "Woman, O mother rejoicing in virginity, behold the virgin-born son." And again he said to the disciple: "Behold the virgin, eager for virginity, your mother without delivery." And after the running of the swift hour, the disciple had the virgin, happy in her birth-giving, dwelling within his own house; and the Son who was born of the mother, the man not begotten, was not sated, the King who experienced no pain from birth. C But Jesus, understanding that all things had passed by, and that the end of what was beginning was quickly to be perfected, said to the people: "I thirst." And there was prepared in a nearby place a vessel full of vinegar; but a certain man, quickly hearing, having filled a sponge—the offspring of the sea’s submerged depths—with most sharp drink and thirst-inducing brine, fixing it to the lowest end of a straight-moving reed, offered the vinegar of destruction mixed with hyssop, as a compensation to the King for the honey-dropping snow of the divine Bread, lifting high through the air the tip of the raised reed and the roving sponge. But when he received the bitter drink and the thirsty brine, near to death, he said in his final speech: "It is finished"; and he bowed his head, and yielded to a willing death. D And the raging priests, since around the evening hour the day that was the harbinger of the lamb-eating feast was approaching, flowed into the house of the haughty governor.
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith: I thirst. 24 Then they said to one another: Let us not tear it, but let us cast lots for it, whose it shall be; that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saying: They divided my garments among themselves, and for my vesture they cast lots. And the soldiers indeed did these things. 25 And there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother and his mother's sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 Jesus therefore, when he had seen his mother and the disciple standing near whom he loved, saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. 27 After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother. And from that hour the disciple took her to his own. 29 There was a vessel set there, full of vinegar: and they, filling a sponge with vinegar, and putting it about hyssop, put it to his mouth. 30 Jesus therefore, when he had taken the vinegar, said: It is finished; and bowing his head, he gave up the ghost. 31 The Jews therefore, that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath day, because it was the Parasceve (for that was a great sabbath day), besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.
A And the gathered multitude came to Pilate, that the legs of them, of the divine Christ, and of the two men dying late, the three, might be cut with the many-toothed iron; that the bodies fixed to the cross might not remain when the seventh light should come; for it was that holy and lawful day for all the Jews until the light of the seventh day, which they have learned to honor. And the bloodthirsty army drew near; and one, raised on high, cut with penetrating iron the twofold feet of the gentle one; but of the other, the nocturnal robber bound to the cross, striking his twin feet with the sword, he cast down the slanderer to a swift death. But when they saw Jesus dead, as one who had already passed away, they did not strike his joined feet with the accustomed iron; but a man, swift and invisible, pierced with a light spear the side that was precious to all, sparing no sword. And from the stricken side, there flowed first blood, and afterward divine water. And the man who saw it confirmed with his word an unshakeable testimony; and we know that the voice of him who was endowed with an excellent mind is divine and true. B And all these things came to pass, that the saying might be firm which the melody, breathing sweetly on the divine lyre, spoke as a harbinger of the irreproachable body: "Not a bone of his distinct members shall be broken." And another saying is told, which the divine man spoke: "They shall look on him whom they pierced," who shall provide a late-perfected penalty as compensation for the goading spear.
And afterward Joseph, cautious through fear of the Jews—who was himself, in truth, an unexpected disciple, eager to hear Christ, milking the wise and faithful milk from the divine mouth—secretly besought Pilate. C This one went and prayed, bending his household knee, asking of the prince for the divine dead; but he, rejoicing, gave the ever-living dead to the religious bearer. And Joseph went, moving with silent foot, to take up the dead. And placing his support near the footprint fixed to the cross, he loosed the twofold iron held fast by the sharp bond, and the man, arriving in the evening, took down the dead man, lightening the burden resting upon his shoulder, receiving God. And Nicodemus also came, he who had come as a traveler by night into the house of Christ, walking with cautious foot, bringing fragrant myrrh, and the shoots of Indian aloes from the ruddy garden, growing in the reeds of the earth, in the weight which they call by a certain name up to the hundredth number. D With the fruit of these...
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
32 The soldiers therefore came, and broke the legs of the first, and of the other that was crucified with him. 33 But after they were come to Jesus, when they saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 But one of the soldiers with a spear opened his side, and immediately there came out blood and water. 35 And he that saw it hath given testimony, and his testimony is true. And he knoweth that he saith true; that you also may believe. 36 For these things were done, that the Scripture might be fulfilled: You shall not break a bone of him. 37 And again another Scripture saith: They shall look on him whom they pierced. 38 And after these things, Joseph of Arimathea (because he was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews) besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus. And Pilate gave leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus. 39 And Nicodemus also came (he who at the first came to Jesus by night), bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. 40 They took therefore the body of Jesus, and bound it
A in fine linen with sweet-smelling binding of many folds, as is the custom for the Jews to observe the rites of the tomb. 41 And there was a tomb there by the high crest of the hill, where the cruel, hostile crowd had enclosed Christ with the barrier of the cross; and in a neighboring garden was a tomb, entirely hewn and newly built from the deep-cutting stone. In the stony tomb no dead body had yet lain, having reached the burial earth; but the pure breeze of the garden’s plants blew through the place where the industrious Joseph carried Jesus, borne upon his shoulder. 42 And he did not place the dead body, which would not remain, upon a stony bed—the dead who is ever living, during his three days B in the tomb—weaving a work not testified to by the tomb resting on its own roots; for, as the course of the hour expected by the Jews was kept, the dawn ran bringing the neighboring night, the beginning of the Sabbath; and Joseph, invisible, went home again.
CAP. XX.
1 But at the dawn, anticipating the day after the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene with tearful eyes turned her step near the tomb, when on the shadowed earth the night-appearing, unmarked morning star had gone; and seeing the great stone moved from the threshold, rolled upon the floor, a burden of the earth, she saw the tomb naked, where the heavily-burdened C Joseph had placed Jesus upon the small, sandy, humble bed. There the woman laid down her nocturnal feet for rest; and in her bosom she held the mournful ointment; and she touched the desolate bed, seeking to anoint the fugitive dead. But she did not find him. 2 Departing with hastening foot, she came back to the house, and with a quiet voice communicated to Peter and the other disciple dwelling with him—whom the Lord loved—the news about the empty tomb. 3 And when Peter heard it, breathing with the swift-searching sole of his feet, he rushed out of the house; and the other disciple followed D likewise to the tomb; and both ran for the course. 4 And, getting ahead of Simon, the disciple went swift-footed, quicker than the hastening Peter. And standing close by, he leaned over and looked inside the tomb, and with searching eyes quickly beheld the empty monument, and the white linen cloths lying upon the ground. He did not indeed go inside, although he had arrived walking quickly. 6 But following after on foot, Simon came later; and he quickly came inside;
αὐτῷ καὶ ταχὺς ἔνδον ἔκανεν. Ὑπὲρ δαπέδοιο δὲ γυμνοῦ A συζύγους ἀλλήλοις λινέους ἐνόησε χιτῶνας· καὶ κεφαλῆς ζωστῆρα παλίλλυτον ἄμματι χαίτης, σουδάριον τόπερ εἶπε Σύρων ἐπιδήμιος αὐδή, οὐ ταφίαις ὀθόναις παρακείμενον, ἀμφιλαφῆ δὲ μουναδὸν αὐτοέλικτον, ὁμόπλοκον ἐν ἑνὶ χώρῳ.
8 Ἦλθε καὶ ὁ πρώτιστος ἰὼν ἐπὶ σῆμα μαθητὴς, καὶ βραδὺς ἔνδον ἔκανε λιθογλυφέος κενεῶνος· καὶ λίθον εὐδίνητον ἐοικότα χάσματι τύμβου, ἀντίτυπον στήριγμα χαραδραίου πυλεῶνος, καὶ πλοκάμων τελαμῶνα, καὶ εἵματα κείμενα γαίῃ εἶδε· καὶ πίστευεν ὅτι χθονίων ἀπὸ κόλπων οὐρανίην ἐπὶ πέζαν ὑπηνέμιος νέκυς ἔπτη. 9 Οὐ γάρ πω δεδάασι δύω Χριστοῖο μαθηταὶ ὅτι ταχὺς μετὰ πότμον ἀνόστιμον οὗδας ἐάσας, εἰς τρία φάεα μοῦνον ἐγέρσιμον ὕπνον ἰαύων, νόστιμος ἐκ νεκύων ἀναβήσεται εἰς πόλον ἄστρων, ἀκλινέος θανάτοιο παλίλλυτα δεσμὰ πατήσας.
10 Πυκνὰ δὲ θαμβήσαντες ἐπιπευτῆρες ἑταῖροι, ἀσταθέες σφετέροισιν ἐναυλίζοντο μελάθροις, B ἄψορα καλλείψαντες ἀπενθέος ἄντυγα τύμβου. 11 Μαγδαλινὴ δ' ἐλέλειπτο γυνὴ παρὰ σήματι μούνη, θερμὸν ἀναβλύζουσα γεήμονος ὄμβρον ἐπωπῆς, μυρομένη ζώοντα. Δι' εὐφαέος δὲ θυρέτρου ὡς ἔτι δακρυχέεσκε λάλον νέκυν ἐγγὺς ἐόντα, ἀγγελικὴν ἐνόησε συνωρίδα· τὸν μὲν, ἐπ' ἄκρου δεξιὸν ἀντικέλευθον ὑπὲρ Χριστοῖο καρήνου, μαρμαρυγὴν πέμποντα θεογλήνοιο προσώπου· τὸν δὲ, ποδῶν παρὰ πέζαν, ὅπη νέκυς ἔεν ἑχέφρων, χιονέους σπινθῆρας ἀκοντίζοντα χιτῶνος.
13 Ἀμφότεροι δ' ἐρέεινον ἔσω τύμβοιο γυναῖκα· Τίπτε, γύναι, στενάχεις; Μαρίη δ' ἠμείβετο μύθῳ· Ὡς τινὲς ἄρπαγες ἄνδρες ἐμὸν Βασιλῆα λαθόντες ἐννύχιοι σύλησαν· ἐγὼ δ' οὐκ οἶδα νοῆσαι ὁππόθι μιν μετέθηκαν. 14 Ὑποστρεφθεῖσα δ' ἐκείνη Ἰησοῦν ἐνόησεν ἐπ' ἔστενεν· ἱστάμενον δὲ εἶδε, καὶ οὐ γίνωσκεν, ὅτι ζαθέῳ παρὰ τύμβῳ Χριστὸς ἦεν. Καὶ ξεῖνος ἀνὴρ ἅτε κῆπον ὁδεύων, C Τίπτε, γύναι, στενάχεις; κινυρὴν ἐρέεινε γυναῖκα· Εἰπὲ, τί μαστεύεις; Μαρίη δ' ἐφθέγξατο φωνὴν, ἐλπομένη κήποιο φυτηκόμον ἄνδρα νοῆσαι· Εἰ σὺ νέκυν ζοφόεντος ἐκούφισας ἔνδοθι τύμβου, ἔννεπε ποῦ μετέθηκας· ἐγὼ δέ μιν ἔνθεν ἀείρω. Ἰησοῦς δ' ἀπάμειπτο, χέων ἀρίδηλον ἰωήν.
ΤΟΥ ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΣΤΟΥ ΚΕΙΜΕΝΟΝ
καὶ εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸ μνημεῖον, καὶ θεωρεῖ τὰ ὀθόνια κείμενα. 7 Καὶ τὸ σουδάριον ὅ ἦν ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς αὐτοῦ, οὐ μετὰ τῶν ὀθονίων κείμενον, ἀλλὰ χωρὶς ἐντετυλιγμένον εἰς ἕνα τόπον. 8 Τότε οὖν εἰσῆλθε καὶ ὁ ἄλλος μαθητὴς ὁ ἐλθὼν πρῶτος εἰς τὸ μνημεῖον, καὶ εἶδε, καὶ ἐπίστευσεν· 9 Οὐδέπω γὰρ ᾔδεισαν τὴν Γραφήν, ὅτι δεῖ αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν ἀναστῆναι. 10 Ἀπῆλθον οὖν πάλιν πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς οἱ μαθηταί.
11 Μαρία δὲ εἱστήκει πρὸς τὸ μνημεῖον κλαίουσα ἔξω. Ὡς οὖν ἔκλαιε, παρέκυψεν εἰς τὸ μνημεῖον, 12 Καὶ θεωρεῖ δύο ἀγγέλους ἐν λευκοῖς, καθεζομένους, ἕνα πρὸς τῇ κεφαλῇ, καὶ ἕνα πρὸς τοῖς ποσὶν, ὅπου ἔκειτο τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Ἰησοῦ. 13 Καὶ λέγουσιν αὐτῇ ἐκεῖνοι· Γύναι, τί κλαίεις; Λέγει αὐτοῖς· Ὅτι ἦραν τὸν Κύριόν μου, καὶ οὐκ οἶδα ποῦ ἔθηκαν αὐτόν. D 14 Καὶ ταῦτα εἰποῦσα, ἐστράφη εἰς τὰ ὀπίσω, καὶ θεωρεῖ τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἑστῶτα· καὶ οὐκ ᾔδει ὅτι ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐστι. 15 Λέγει αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Γύναι, τί κλαίεις; τίνα ζητεῖς; Ἐκείνη, δοκοῦσα ὅτι ὁ κηπουρός ἐστι, λέγει αὐτῷ· Κύριε, εἰ σὺ ἐβάστασας αὐτὸν, εἰπέ μοι ποῦ αὐτὸν ἔθηκας· κἀγὼ αὐτὸν ἀρῶ. 16 Λέγει αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Μαρία. Στραφεῖσα ἐκείνη λέγει αὐτῷ· Ῥαββουνί, ὃ λέγεται διδάσκαλε.
διδάσκαλε. A And Mary cried out loud with a very manifest voice, and she called out: Mary. But she, having turned, said to him: Rabboni. But God restrained the woman, who was willing to touch his immortal garment; and he spake a word to her: Do not touch my tunic. For not yet after death have I returned to my Father: but go, tell my brothers, the disciples, I am going to my Father, and your Father, and your God, and my God, and I shall come again. And Mary flew, and with a testimony-bearing voice she communicated the word to all the disciples, her companions, that she had seen Christ, stripped of the tunic of terrestrial limbs, shining in a garment fashioned by God. And she told him all these things, shedding a light that was before her. And when thick darkness had blackened the whole shadowy earth, and the bars had closed the immovable doors, where the disciples were lurking and staying, like a wing or a thought, he stood sublime in their midst, encompassed by his companions, and said: Peace be with you. And having shouted this short, unhoped-for word, he showed his feet and hands to the assembled disciples, pierced by the nail, and his side recently wounded; but seeing the Lord appearing late, his companions rejoiced again. B
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
And the King said to them again with swift speech: Peace again be with you: and just as my Father sent me into the four-yoked world, I myself also send you. He spoke, and extending the breath of his immortal mouth, opening his life-giving lips, he said to the disciples: Receive the Holy Spirit: and of those men whose impiety you shall remit on earth—the wandering burden of necessity—once the sin is forgotten, there shall be a heavenly release. But of those whom you shall again hold, the sinful harm remains bound by the bond of a wandering life. Thomas was absent, left alone from the companions hiding within, when Jesus came to all, walking through the air, C as Lord, moving through the breezes, not alternating a path that was testified: 25 And the disciples, the spectators, said to him what they had seen of the Lord; but he, opening his bold lip, spoke an incredulous word, because he was seeking a greater persuasion for the word of testimony that was unyielding to slow movement: Unless I see his hands, and fix the tip of my finger into the depth of the iron, into the mark of the sharply-pointed nails, and apply my hand to his hollow side. D
17 Jesus says to her, Do not hold me; for I have not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brothers, and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God. 18 Mary Magdalene comes, reporting to the disciples that she has seen the Lord, and that he said these things to her. 19 When therefore it was evening on that day, the first of the week, and the doors having been shut where the disciples were gathered together for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and says to them, Peace be with you. 20 And having said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples therefore rejoiced, having seen the Lord. 21 Jesus therefore said to them again, Peace be with you; as the Father has sent me, I also send you. 22 And having said this, he breathed on them, and says to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain those of any, they are retained. 24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 The other disciples therefore said to him, We have seen the Lord. But he said to them, Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and put my finger into the mark of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. 26 And after eight days his disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them; Jesus comes, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be with you.
I will not believe. A And the God-fearing disciples, on the eighth day after the light of the dawning day had come, were all together in order within the secret house, avoiding the terrible arrogance of the Jews’ threats. When they were gathered, Thomas, whom they called Didymus, the man of two names, was sitting among his companions. But Christ, unexpected, rushing into the house with swift foot without wings, appeared as divine in the midst of the disciples; and for the third time, he returned and sounded with his accustomed voice: Peace be to you again. And leaving all others in one place, he addressed the nearby Thomas with a testifying speech: Give me hither, friend, your finger, that I may attach an indubitable witness to the form of the sharp-pointed nails; and look upon my hands on both sides: and extend your right hand into the side, the spontaneous messenger of my scar; and renounce your incredulous character; but be more believing in me doubly, both seeing and touching. Thomas, wise too late, broke forth with a responsive voice: My Lord and my God. Jesus himself also spoke, rebuking the doubting mind of Didymus: Do you believe having seen me, and have you grasped persuasion with your eyes? Those are more blessed who, not seeing, have greater faith and do not stand in need of sight. B Other miracles, indeed, many Jesus performed before the wise companions, showing manifold signs; as a witness of truth which were not written in the divine book, he who signed all these things passed over others in silent will. But all these things are expressed in the testifying book, that you may have faith which saves your life, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the ever-living God the Father; and to you who believe, may the gift of the heavenly kingdom be an eternal reward of divine life.
CAPUT XXI.
C For the third time, Christ revealed his immortal form to his disciples, resounding beyond the salt Tiberias sea. And thus he showed the form: inside the secret house was Peter, previously called by the name Simon; and wise Andrew, who was the brother of Peter by the same womb; and the swift two sons of Zebedee, who lives by the sea, and Thomas with them, the man of two names: and there was also Nathanael himself, and other two men believing in God. And to them as they were gathering, Simon, folding his nets, said: I go to fish.
TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
D believing, may have life in his name.
CAPUT XXI.
1 After these things, Jesus showed himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way: 2 There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas who is called Didymus, and Nathanael from Cana of Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. 3 Simon Peter says to them: I go to fish. They say to him: We also are coming with you. They went out, and immediately they climbed into the boat, and in that night they caught nothing.
A I go to the fish-filled, habitual catch of the sea. And to him the companions of the fishing craft said in discourse: Together with you we also go to the fish-filled works of the salt-sea, being all companions. And from the house they rushed out in a throng, and toward the mouth of the near-reaching lake, climbing into the ship, they sailed; and in the night-time, no school at all could the toilers press into their hands; and often, repeatedly, Simon was distressed, pulling with both hands the light net against the wind. B And when the dawn with rosy rays had cleft the gloom, Christ stood by the fair-stoned shore of the sea, bringing an early footstep to the habitual lake, as one in need of food, one who rolls upon the sea; nor did the disciples, seeing him, know that Jesus was near. And he asked the water-dwelling, habituated fishers: "Do you bring, as a feast, the swimming gifts of the deep, O boys, ministers of the salt-sea?" And the disciples, answering, denied that they had anything. C But the King answered with a word: "Let down, for the fish-catcher, the far-flung nets into the deep, cast them along the right side of the ready ship." And having curved the lines into the falling nets, they hauled up an immense, self-rolling school of the sea, fish lurking within, dancers of the bright brine. But they no longer had the strength to drag the submerged net, with the deep-sea cargo of the multitude of the spawn. And to wet Simon, the deep-searcher of the sea, the disciple whom the Lord loved said: "This himself is the King." And he, leaping near by, girt his loins with a variegated garment, D and was covered with a many-holed linen robe, rolling the sea-covering around his buttocks skin, which fishers wear, hanging down to the hollows of the thighs, a protection for the hidden private parts. For he had his body naked, while dragging the net to the shore; and quick he leapt into the current, and crossing the habitual sea, rowing with his hands, lifting his head on high, with alternating feet he thrust the water behind him. And he came near to the shore, climbing the shore that received God, where Jesus remained waiting. But the others—all the companions were together in one boat—followed, dragging the net of the catch in the waters. For the voyage of the salt-sea was not far from the land, but at two hundred cubits, they were casting foam with the drag of the wave toward the shore, the raging winds, and the neighboring sea-coast that was sprinkled with dew. And when they had stepped onto the shore of the thirsty land, they saw a bonfire withering with flaming heat; and upon the coals, upon the brows, lay a fish,
GOSPEL TEXT
And when morning had now come, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus therefore says to them: "Children, have you any food?" They answered him: "No." And he said to them: "Cast the net into the right parts of the boat, and you will find." They cast therefore, and were no longer able to haul it in because of the multitude of the fish. That disciple therefore whom Jesus loved says to Peter: "It is the Lord." Simon Peter therefore, having heard that it is the Lord, girt his outer garment about him (for he was naked), and cast himself into the sea. But the other disciples came in the little boat (for they were not far from the land, but as it were two hundred cubits), dragging the net of fish. When therefore they had stepped onto the land, they see a charcoal fire laid, and a fish laid thereon, and bread.A And the King commanded the disciples: "Bring now the diverse catch of the deep-sea fish, which you have taken from the inlets of the teeming sea." B And Simon rushing with wet feet, with arms equally robust, dragged the net onto the land, filled with the agile vibration of oblong leaping fish, and Simon was afflicted with a curved back, dragging from every side a hundred-count of the damp flock; and to these were entwined as many other fish as, with three and fifty, made the net in the sea not tear, burdened by the haul of so many fish. 12, 13 Not then did any man, a companion among his fellows, dare, with eyes squarely upon him, to look at God appearing present. "Who are you?" he inquired; yet Simon did not daringly ask, knowing close at hand that the Sovereign was Jesus. And the King set before them, bringing an elongated fish, the fish and fresh bread; and he commanded his disciples: "Come, feast again under the circle of one table, having taken this unexpected shared meal of the sea." 14 This, again, was the third time that Jesus was manifested to all the disciples after his divine, wakeful sleep of death, returning from those who are dead, having left the subterranean depths, having crossed the fish-bearing ford of the Tiberian salt-water, he touched the feast; and leaving all together after the meal of the undivided table, he sounded a divine voice to the nearby Simon: "Simon, legitimate branch of father John, do you love me more than all your fellows?" And Peter said to him: "Yes, Sovereign; and you know in your heart how much I love you, and you are not in need of words." And with divine lips the King gave orders to Peter: "Feed for me with your staff the prudent lambs, never silent." 16 Jesus questioned Peter in turn with a shared word: "Simon, of the seed of the glorious-childed John, do you alone love me more than the joined companions?" And opening his mouth to the King for the second time, Simon, the fisherman of the human flock, answered: "Yes, King; and you are the witness of my mind, you know yourself how much sweet, unutterable* love I bear toward you." And in prudent response the King said to Peter: "Feed the intelligent flocks of our sheep." 17 And Jesus spoke again his accustomed voice: "Simon, child of pious father John, C
THE EVANGELIST’S TEXT.
10 Jesus says to them: "Bring of the fish which you have now caught." 11 Simon Peter went up, and dragged the net onto the land, full of great fish, one hundred and fifty-three; and being so many, the net was not broken. 12 Jesus says to them: "Come, breakfast." And none of the disciples dared to examine him, saying, "Who are you?" knowing that it is the Lord. 13 Jesus then comes, and takes the bread, and gives to them, and the fish likewise. 14 This is already the third time that Jesus was manifested to his disciples, having been raised from the dead. 15 When therefore they had breakfasted, Jesus says to Simon Peter: "Simon, son of Jona, do you love me more than these?" He says to him: "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." He says to him: "Feed my lambs." 16 He says to him again a second time: "Simon, son of Jona, do you love me?" He says to him: "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." He says to him: "Shepherd my sheep." 17 He says to him the third time: "Simon, son of Jona, do you love me?" Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time: "Do you love me?" and said to him: "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you." Jesus says to him: "Feed my sheep." D
A Are you surely seeking me much more than the others?” And bold Peter was grieved because Jesus said for the third time: “Do you love me more than my companions with a benevolent spirit?” But Peter answered Jesus with a sad voice: “You, prince of the world, know all things that I think, and you understand the immovable barrier of my love, in what manner I, having it, love you.” But God answered in speech: “With a heavenly pastoral staff feed the sheep and the lambs. While you were still young, Peter, you were girded with your sash, and you used to bend the trace of your foot wherever you desired to go; but late in life, growing old, you will stretch out your hands by compulsion: and other pitiless men will encircle you tightly, leading you into a certain place which your soul does not command.” He spoke, prophesying the end of death with a knowing voice, in which Peter was about to honor the King by dying. And God spoke again to Peter, full of wisdom: “Feed my sheep, prudent in the flowers of books.” And Christ said to him: “Follow.” B And then walking, Simon of shifting counsel directed the circle of his eyes backward; but the Lord saw the disciple following on foot, whom he loved, who even while the God-begotten King was dining, falling askew upon his breast, with a questioning speech had asked the knowing Jesus: “Who is the man who will betray you to the God-hated Jews?” Seeing him then, Peter asked: “And what will this fellow-soldier of mine do?” But the King reproved him with a speech: “If I desire him to remain here until I come, what does this signify to you? You follow me.” And this speech was proclaimed with a hidden voice to the kinsmen from the companions, glorious, because that insuperable disciple will not see the end of a common death. C Not indeed did Jesus say, “He will not be deprived of life”; but only this: “If I wish him to remain here until I come, what does this signify to you? Why do you ask?” This man, looking with his eyes, the companion outside the wandering rumor, is the disciple testifying to divine works; and understanding all these things, he wrote them in a divine book. But many other miracles, the witness of the truth, which Jesus himself performed, he has sealed with wise silence, which if a mortal man were to record in order, piece by piece, I do not believe the round world of splendid form could contain the such newly-made books.
THE TEXT OF THE EVANGELIST
18 “Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself, and walk where you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you, and will carry you where you do not wish.” 19 This he said, signifying by what death he will glorify God. And having said this, he says to him: “Follow me.” 20 Peter having turned about, sees the disciple whom Jesus loved, following, who also had leaned back at the supper upon his breast, and said: “Lord, who is it that is betraying you?” 21 Peter seeing him, says to Jesus: “Lord, and what of this man?” 22 Jesus says to him: “If I wish him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me.” 23 This word went out therefore to the brethren, that that disciple does not die; and Jesus did not say to him that he does not die; but: “If I wish him to remain until I come, what is that to you?” 24 This is the disciple who is testifying about these things, and who wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true. 25 There are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were to be written one by one, I do not think that even the world itself could contain the written books. Amen.
915 αμπαύσατο μόχθου 32. ἀμφαδὰ νῦν λαλέεις 176. ἀμφαδίην ἀγγέλλων 174. ἀμφαδίην…
INDEX TO THE PARAPHRASE OF NONNUS
The reader is directed to the larger numbers inserted in the text.A ἀβακχεύτοιο (un-Bacchic) table 14. ἀδίαστος (indivisible) I came 140. ἀβόητον (noiseless) journey 186. ἀβόητος (noiseless) faith 144. ἀδρέκτοις (un-spun/un-pliable) hands 16. ἀγαπάζει (he loves) me 100. ἀγαπάζει (he loves) you 176. ἀγάπαζε (love) with a loving ordinance 120. ἀγαπάζων (loving) companions 182. ἀγγύθι (near) for ἐγγύθι, ms. P. 28, 82. ἀγέροντο (they gathered) to the assembly 150. ἀγκυλόμητις (crooked-counseling) wolf 114. ἀγκυλόμητις (crooked-counseling) dance 132, 154. ἀγλαόκαρπον (bright-fruited) harvest 40. ἀγλαόμορφον (bright-formed) world 224. ἀγλαόπαιδος (bright-childed) birth 220. ἀερσιλόφῳ (high-crested) place 206. ἀερσινόου (high-minded) father 10. ἀερτιπόθητον (newly-desired) foam 48. ἀερτάζοντα (lifting up) bed 50. ἀεσίφρονι (fickle-minded) spirit 94. ἄζυγι (unyoked) bolt 200. ἀήθεα (unwonted) knees shaking 18. ἀθέσμιοι (lawless) high priests 196. ἀθεσμοδίων (lawless) men 202. ἀθηήτου (unlooked-at) cloak of modesty 218. ἀθηήτου (unlooked-at) matter 24. ἀθηήτοιο (unlooked-at) face 158. ἀθηήτοιο (unlooked-at) Son 156. ἀθηήτῳ (unlooked-at) mist 70. ἀθηήτων (unlooked-at) hollows 14. αἰγλήεντα (gleaming) garment 200. ἄΐδης (Hades), mors (death) 130. αἰδοῦς (of shame/modesty) for αἰδοίου, ms. 78. αἰδοῦς (of shame) unlooked-at cloak 218. ἀγνώστων (of the unknown) where he goes 142; ordinance 84. ἀγλήνοιο (eyeless/dim) face 102. ἀγνώστῳ (to the unknown) where he is 104. ἀγνώσσοντος (ignorant) 58. ἀγνώστοντες (ignorant) word 192. ἀγνώσσοντας (ignorant) he shall teach 38. ἄγναμπτον (unbending) persuasion 214. ἀγρομένου (gathered) people 76. ἀγρύπνοισιν (sleepless) distresses 174. ἀγχιθέοις (near-godlike) companions 64. ἀγχιθέοισι (near-godlike) disciples 148. ἀγρύπνοιο (sleepless) mourning 126; mourning 124. ἀγχιθέων (near-godlike) companions 214. ἀγχίθρονος (near-throned) seat 84. ἀγχικέλευθος (near-roaming) tongue 172. ἀγχικέλευθον (near-roaming) people 58. ἀγχικέλευθον (near-roaming) sea 62. ἀγχιπόρου (near-roaming) salt sea 60. ἀγχιπόρου (near-roaming) lake 216. ἀγχιπόροιο (near-roaming) spring 102. ἀγχιπόροιο (near-roaming) city 44. ἀγχίπτολις (near-city) spring 32. ἀγχίπτολις (near-city) people 150. ἀγχιτέλεστος (near-completed) time 170. ἀγχιτέλεστος (near-completed) hour 174. ἀγχιτόκου (near-child) mother in labor 174. ἀγχιφανής (near-appearing) seat of salt sea 62. ἀγχιφανῆ (near-appearing) boy 100. ἀγχιφανῆ (near-appearing) you look at me 58. ἀδαιτρεύτοιο (undivided) table 220. Ἀδὰμ (Adam) first-born 198. ἀδειμάντῳ (fearless) voice 50, 76. ἀδέσμιος (not bound, non ligatus) 194. ἀδόνητος (unmoving) man 104. ἀδουπήτῳ (noiseless) sandal 152. ἀδρανέοντος (weak, agrot.) 120. ἀδωμήτοιο (unbuilt) rock 200. ἀειδομένης (being sung) from report 158. ἀείδουσιν (they sing), from product (a producto) 60. ἀειζώοντος (ever-living) God 4. ἀειζώοντα (ever-living) dead 200. ἀειζώοιο (ever-living) God 14, 196; Son 8. ἀειλισέος (ever-rolling) stream of utterance 30. ἀεισέος (immortal) shall be the man 112. ἀελλήεντι (stormy) sandal 6. ἀελλήεσσα (stormy) journey 40. ἀελλοπὸν (storm-footed) he had a journey 126. ἀέξει (he increases) faith in heart 124. ἀεξήσητε (you may increase) fruit 166. ἀεξιφύτου (blessed) Galilee 14. ἀεργηλοῖσιν (idle) thorns 50. αἰεί (always) my voice 116. ἀίδεσκε (he regarded) the blind one 110. αἴθετο (he was kindled) with disease 124. αἰθομένου (kindled) fever 14. αἴθοπι (fiery) famine 66. αἴθοπι (fiery) disease 120. αἰθέριος (heavenly) one 140. αἴχε (if) he guards 98, 128; he carves 224. αἷχεν (if) you trust me 92. αἷμα (blood) bringing, born (orti) 92. αἱμύλα (wily) chatting 96. αἰνομανής (terribly-mad) people 100. αιολόμορφος (variously-formed) flock 112. αΐουσι (they hear) the stranger 112. αἰτίζεις (you beg) me 158. αἰτίζεσκε (he was begging, mendic.) 102. αἰτίζητε (you may beg) the Son 164. αἰτίζητε (you may beg) from the Son 158. ἀκαμπέα (unbending) knees 10. ἀκαμπέα (unbending) faith 30. ἀκερσεκόμων (unshorn) Galileans 70; P. ms. ἀκαχμένον (sharpened) with bronze 200. ἀκερσεκόμων (unshorn) Gal. Not. 18. ἀκερσικόμων (unshorn). ἀκετσιπόνῳ (healing-pain) story 120. ἀκηλήτων (unappeasable) Pharisees 84. ἀκίχητα (unreachable) measures 150. ἀκλαύτοις (tearless) eyes 198. ἀκλινέος (unbending) death 210. ἀκλινέες (unbending) ships 212. ἀκλινέας (unbending) ordinances 162. ἀκοιμήτοις (sleepless) eyelids 180. ἀκοιμήτοισι (sleepless) minds 104. ἀκοίτης (consort) not legitimate 50. ἀκοίτην (consort) base-born 36. ἀκουαῖς (to the hearing) unwavering 56, 58. ἀκούεις (you hear) from the child 128. ἀκούσας (having heard) hold 208. ἀκροπαγή (high-fixed) knees 58. ἀκροφανής (high-appearing) 150. ἀκροφανής (high-appearing) daybreak 62. ἀκροφανές (high-appearing) light 184. ἀκτεάνων (propertyless) men 136. ἀλάλαζον (they wailed) trembling 62. ἀλαλητὸν (cry) terribly-mad 194. ἀλαώπιδι (blind) darkness 100. ἀλαωπὸς (blind) traveler 108. ἁλαωπὸν (blind) mist 104. ἀλάωσεν (he blinded) the eye 144. ἀλέγει (he cares for) of the other’s sheep 114. ἀλέγιζεν (he cared for) of properties 136. ἀλεξήτειραν (warding off) he may grant 106. ἀλεξιμέρῳ (grief-warding) king/queen 156. ἀλήμονας (wandering) men 32. ἀλήτης (wandering) swarm 84. ἀλήτης (wandering) rain 182. ἀλήτης (wandering) world 162; accus. casu, 42, 74. ἀλήτης (wandering) world 166; accus. 110. ἀλήτην (wandering) mind they had 72. ἀλήτην (wandering) blind man 144. ἁλιδινέος (sea-tossed) food 210. ἁλικρήπιδα (sea-founded) earth 74. ἁλιπλανέεσσιν (sea-wandering) tempests 72. ἀλιτήριον (sinful) ruin 212. ἀλιτρονόοιο (sin-minded) man 108. ἀλιτρύτῃσι (sinning) hands 216. ἀλιτροβίοιο (sin-living) world 166. ἀλκτήριον (warding) of a stormy foot 146. ἀλκτήρια (warding off) of diseases 20. ἄλλος (other) for ἕτερος, alter 160. ἀλλότρια (alien) to the ordinance 76. ἀλλοφανῆ (strange-appearing) newcomer 190. ἀλλοφανῆ (strange-appearing) signs 152. ἀλοιητῆρι (pestle/crusher) with iron 80, 170, 204. ἀλόχευτος (unwedded) man 202. ἄλσος (grove), laterna spec. 184. ἄλτο (he leaped), saliebat 218. ἄλυξεν (he escaped) or fled, idem 136. ἀλυσκάζων (shrinking) he descends 114. ἀλυσκάζων (shrinking) fear 144. ἁλωεύς (threshing-floor worker) P. ms. 42, 162, et tamen. ἀλωαῖς (on the threshing-floors) tenui spir. p. 40 et 42. ἀλωομένοις (wandering) with feet 88. ἀλωφήτοιο (unceasing) eternity 140. ἀλωφήτῳ (unceasing) with some honor 112. ἅμα (together) with them he is a guest 214. ἀμαιμακέτοιο (irresistible) high priest 186. ἁμαρτάδα (sin) he ferments 190. ἁμαρτινόοισι (sin-minded) disciples 72. ἁμάρτυρον (unwitnessed) work weaving 200. ἁμάρτυρον (unwitnessed) path 214. ἀμείβεαί (you answer) me with your words 190. ἀμειδέῖ (unsmiling) countenance 152. ἀμεμφέϊ (blameless) ordinance 154. ἀμεμφέας (blameless) men 150. ἀμέρσει (he shall deprive) for ἀφαιρήσει 174. ἀμερσινόῳ (grief-minded) in some madness 72, 170. ἀμετάτροπον (unchanging) joy 174. ἀμετρήτῳ (immeasurable) people 60. ἀμηχανέεσκε (he was helpless) 112. ἁμιλλητήρι (rival) people 104. ἁμιλλητῆρι (rival) story 84. ἀμιλλητῆρα (rival) of silence 172. ἀμιμήτων (inimitable) works 106, 120. ἄμνηστος (unremembering) of sin 212. ἀμοιβάδα (alternate) book rolling 86. ἀμοιβάδα (alternate) she broke out a voice 214. ἀμοιβάδι (alternate) them 220. ἀμοιβάδι (alternate) voice 190. ἀμοιβαδὶς (alternately) they rang back 118. ἀμοιβαίῃ (alternate) he gave the tablet 56. ἀμοιβαίην (alternate) he gave a voice 196. ἀμοιβαίῳ (alternate) to some ordinance 150. ἀμοιβαίῳ (alternate) in some story 90. ἀμοιβαίοις (alternate) reeds 184. ἀμοιβαίοισι (alternate) with feet 218. ἀμοιβὴ (reward) eternal 216. ἀμοιβὴν (reward) murderous paying back 118.
A ἀμπαύσατο μόχθου 32. ἀμφαδὰ νῦν λαλέεις 176. ἀμφαδίην ἀγγέλλων 174. ἀμφαδίην ἀγόρευεν 122. ἀμφαδίην ἐρεύγεται 80. ἀμφαδὸν ἀγόρευε 116. ἀμφαδὸν ἔφηνε 144. ἀμφαφόων ἄκρον ὑπήνης 188. ἀμφήριστος κλόνος 104. ἀμφὶ πάντων εἰ ὑπὲρ πάντων, eadem signific. 180. ἀμφ' ἐμέθεν φθέγξεσθε, de me 168. ἀμφὶ τίνος κατέλεξε 152. ἀμφὶ τούτου, de hoc 120. ἀμφὶ τούτῳ, in hoc 164. ἀμφὶ μύθῳ ἀμηχανέεσκε 112. ἀμφίβλημα πόντιον 218. ἀμφιλαφὴς ἔρις 84. ἀμφιλαφὴς κόσμος 138. ἀμφιλαφὴς ζωστήρα 208. ἀμφιπαγὴς λίθος 128. ἀμφιλαφεῖς ῥώοντο 216. ἀμφιπαγῆ γούνατα 194. ἀμφιπολεύειν ζωὴν αἰώνιον 176. ἀμφιτρῆτες ὀπωπαὶ 100. ἀμωμήτοις πραπίδεσσι 194. ἀναβλύζουσα δάκρυ 210. ἀναδύομαι, detrecto 170. ἀνάειρεν ὀφθαλμούς 128. ἀναιδέες ἀρχιερῆες 198. ἀναίνεο τεὸν ἦθος 214. ἀναλδαίνει καρπόν 164. ἀναμφήριστον ἔπος 118. ἀναμφήριστον μάρτυρα 214. ἄναπτον πυρσόν 188. ἀναυδέϊ ῥινὶ 38. ἀναυδέες νεκροὶ 52. Ἀνδρέας οἱ Ἀνδρείας 140. ἀνδρογόνοιο χοὸς 102. ἀνδρομέης κραδίης 28. ἀνδρομέην γενέθλην 26. ἀνέγγυα δεσμὰ 80. ἀνέγνων, agnovi, cogn. 108. ἀνείρετό μιν 104, 222. ἀνειρομένοισι μαθηταῖς 100. ἀνείρυον ἄσπετον ἐσμόν 218. ἀνέμβατον ἄντυγα 26. ἀνέμβατον οἶμον 82. ἀνεμοσκεπὲς ἄλσος 184. ἀνέμπλοος νηῦς 62. ἀνεμώδεϊ λόγχῃ 204; ταρσῷ 214. ἀνένευον ἔχειν οὐδὲν 218. ἀνέπαλτο, ἀνεπάλλετο 48. ἀνεξικάκοισι πεδίλοις 74. ἀνεπάλλετο ταρσῷ 126. ἀνεῤῥίπιζον ἀῆται 188. ἀνευάζων με 160; Χριστόν 138. ἀνευάζοντες ἰωῇ μυστ. 38. ἀνεχλαίνωσαν μιν 194. ἀνήγρετον ὕπνον 122. ἀνηέρταζον λάας 118. ἀνήροτα τέκνα 4. ἀνήρυγε πενθάδα φωνὴν 122. ἀνήρυγε χείλεσι φωνὴν 66. ἀνθερεῶνι χέων ἔπεα 96, 190. ἄνθεσι βίβλων ποίμαινε 222. ἄνθορεν ἐκ μεγάροιο 208. ἀνθρακόεντι πυρσῷ 190. ἀνίαχεν ἠθάδι φωνὴ 214, 188. ἀνίαχε πᾶσιν 116; Πέτρῳ 188. ἀνίμαστος, non caesus loris 194. ἀνοιστρήσαντος Ἰούδαν 146. ἀνόμματον βρέφος 100. ἀνοστήτοιο βερέθρου 20. ἀνοστήτων ἀπὸ κόλπων 52. ἀνοστήτων ἀπὸ τύμβων 54. ἀνόστιμον οἶδας 210.
INDEX AD NONNI PARAPHRASIN
B ἀντερίδαινον 78. ἀντιάχησε 46. ἀντίθεος, impius 56. ἀντιθέους ἱερῆας 104, 130. ἀντιθέοισι μαθηταῖς 28, 130. ἀντίθετον χάριτος χάριν 4. ἀντίθροον ἠχὼ 100. ἀντιθύρετρον 128. ἀντικέλευθον ἄγγελον 210. ἀντικέλευθον γαῖαν 64. ἀντικέλευθον πόλιν 40. ἀντιπέραιαν γαῖαν 62. ἀντιπέραιαν ἐς πέζαν 182. ἀντιπόροις ἀνέμοις 62. ἀντιπόροισι μύθοις 108. ἀντίτυπος βροντῇσι φωνὴ 140. ἀντίτυπον μίμημα 150. ἀντίτυπον στήριγμα πυλεῶνος 210. ἀντιτύποιο θυρέτρου 128. ἀντιτύποις ἔργοις 94. ἀντιτύποισι κέντροις 200. ἀντώπιδος ἅλμης 62. ἀντώπιον αἴγλην 212. ἀντώπιον ὁρμὴν 130. ἀντώπιον ὕδωρ 58. ἀντώπιον αὐτῶν 142. ἀντωποῖς βλεφάροισι δοκεύων 208, 220. ἀντώπιος ἄστρων ὀφθ. ἀνάειρε 128. ἀνυψώσει με γεραίρων 172. ἀνώγει θεσμὸς 190. ἀνώγει θυμὸς 222. ἀνῷχθησαν ὀπωπαὶ 106. ἄξατε, ducite, afferte 218. ἄοινον ὀπώρην 16. ἀολλίσσειεν εἰς ἓν 132. ἀολλίσσῃ στίχα ποίμνης 112. ἄορ ἔχων 186. ἀόριζον pro ἑάριζον etiam P. ms. 92. ἄορι κόψας 204. ἀοσσητῆρα κόσμου 38. ἀοσσητῆρι σιδήρῳ 188. ἀπαιτίζων μῦθον 190. ἀπάμειπτο 92, 212. ἀπατήλιος ἀνὴρ 98. ἀπατήλιον ἐλπίδα 140. ἀπατήνορα μῦθον ἰάλλει 96. ἀπέειπεν Ἰησοῦν, negavit 190. ἀπειλήτειρα γενέθλη 168. ἀπείριτος χόρτος 60. ἀπειρήτοιο φορτος 138. ἀπειρήτῳ μενοινῇ 132. ἀπειρήτοισι μενοιναῖς 24. ἀπειρώδινος ἀνάσσης 202. ἀπενθέους τύμβου 210. ἀπεῤῥοίβδησεν ἰωὴν 196. ἀπημάλδυνεν ὁμίχλην 108. ἀπλανέεσσιν ἀκουαῖς 56, 58; ἤθεσιν 30. ἧς ἀπὸ 52. ἀπονεύμενος 164. ἀπόπροθεν γενετῆρος 54. ἀπόπροθεν Θεοῦ 92. ἀπόσσυτος ἄλλος ἀπ' ἄλλου 176. ἀπόσσυτος ἱκάνει 82. ἀπόστολος, legatus 150, 168. ἀποτμήγουσιν ἄκρον 78. ἄπρηκτος ἠὼς, sabbatum 104. ἀπρήκτοιο ἠοῦς, sabbati 50. ἀπροϊδεῖς ἄνδρες 84. ἀπιοπὴς λαὸς 88. ἁπτοίητος πορείη 198. ἀργυροφεγγεῖ νηῷ 80. ἀρηγόνα κόσμου 182. ἀρητὴρ, pontifex 132. ἀρθμὸν ὁμοφροσύνης 154. ἀρθμῷ ὁμοστόργῳ 100. C ἀριζήλῳ τινὶ μύθῳ 112. ἀριήκοα φθογγῆς ἡμ. 114. ἄρκιοί εἰσι κορέσσαι 58. ἅρμα θαλάσσης 62. ἄρνας καὶ μῆλα 222. ἄρνεσι, agnis 164. ἀροτῆρα εὐσεβίης 42. ἁρπαλέης ειλαπίνης 64. ἄῤῥαφος χιτὼν 200. ἀῤῥήτῳ ἀρχῇ 2. ἀρτεμέοντα κιχήσεις 44. ἄρτι, modo, nunc 154. ἀρτιδόμῳ λιθοστρώτῳ 198. ἀρτιθαλὴς κοῦρος 106. ἀρτιτόκου διὰ κόλπου 108. ἀρτιτύπου ὀπωπῆς 102. ἀρτιφαὴς ἀνὴρ 104, 194. ἀρτιφανῆς ὁμίχλη 62. ἀρτιφύτοις πετάλοις 102. ἀρτιχόρευτον ἑορτὴν 76. ἀρτιχύτων ὑδάτων 16. ἀρχέγονος μῦθος 82. ἀρχέγονον φῶς 2. ἀρχεκάκοιο δαίμονος 180. ἀρχὸς Ἰουδαίων 22. ἀσημάντῳ τινὶ μύθῳ 22, 82. ἆσθμα βεβιημένον 48, 52. P. ms. ἆσθμα. ἀσιγήτοιο θαλάσσης 64; ἑορτῆς 134. ἀσιγήτοιο νέου 152. ἀσιγήτῳ ῥάβδῳ, id est, pedo 220. ἀσιγήτων ἀπὸ λαιμῶν 76. ἀσίδηρος Ἰητὴς 144. ἀσπαλίζεις 210. ἄσπετον ἠχὼ 196. ἀσπιστῆρα στρατὸν 184. ἀστεμφέα πίστιν ἀέξων 66, 158. ἀστερόεντι μελάθρῳ 26. ἀστήρικτον πόδα 48. ἀστυφέλικτος λόγος 110. ἀστυφέλικτον ἔπος 186. ἀσυλήτοιο νόου 144. ἀσυλήτοις πραπίδεσσι φυλάσσει 160. ἀσφαλέως γινώσκομεν, certo nov. 176. ἀσχολάων, Not. ad 58. ἀτέρμονα ποιμένα κόσμου 198. ἀτέρμονα κόσμον 224. ἀτευχέϊ λαίλαπι 184. ἀτίνακτον εἰρήνην 176, 162, πίστιν 144. ἀτίνακτον ὀχῆα φιλότητος 242. ἀτρεκὲς adverb. 80. ἀτρέπτοιο ὀλέθρου 98. αὐτὴ ἐπιδήμιος 208. αὖθι μένειν 42. αὖραι θυιάδες 218. αὔρη ἐπικήπιος 206. D Αυσονίδες, Romani 152. αὐτάγγελον οὐλῆς 214. αὐτάγρετον ἀλκὴν 114. αὐτάγρετον τιμὴν 196. αὐτάγρετον ὥρην 82. αὖτις pro αὖθις 52. αὖτις ἀναζήσειε 124. αὐτοβόητον δάκτυλον 38. αὐτοβόητα φθέγγεται 56. αὐτογένεθλος Θεὸς 154. αὐτογένεθλον Θεὸν 38, 50, 96. αὐτογόνῳ υἱεῖ 18. αὐτοέλικτον ζωστήρα 208. αὐτοέλικτον ὕδωρ 48. αὐτόθι μίμνεν 18, 28, 42. αὐτόθρων μαρτυρίην 54. αὐτοκέλευθος στείχων 150. αὐτοκέλευθος βαίνω 80. αὐτοκέλευστος πεσοῦσα 136.INDEX TO THE PARAPHRASE OF NONNUS
A αὐτοκύλιστον (self-rolling) swarming crowd 218. αὐτομάτη (self-acting) ship 62. αὐτόπρεμνον (rooted-itself) race 118. αὐτόρριζον (self-rooted) sign 200. αὐτόσσυτον (self-moved) voice 78. αὐτοφόνῳ (self-slaying) destruction 90. αὐτοφύτοιο (self-grown) of God 2. αὐτοχύτῳ (self-poured) stream 82. αὐχήεντες (proud-necked) attendants 40. ἀράστων (unprayable) 214. ἄρατον (unprayed-for) evil 192. ἀφειδέϊ (unsparing) of the feast 66. ἀφειδεῖ (unsparing) hand 82. ἀφειδέσιν (unsparing) hands 80. ἀφροκόμοισιν (foam-maned) oars 64. ἀφωτίστοιο (unlighted) face 100. Ἀχαιίδι (Achaean) voice 200. ἀχάλινον (unbridled) life 82. ἀχάρακτος (unmarked) star 208. ἀχάρακτος (unmarked) by clubs 194. ἀχάρακτον (unmarked) appearance 100. ἀχλύσεις (darkening) spirit 116. ἄχνυτο (was grieving) 216, 222. ἀχνυμένη (grieving) heavily 128. ἀχρήστος (useless) grain 140. ἀψευδές (true) voice 50.
B βαθυχρήπιδι (deep-founded) earth 72. βαθυνομέης (deep-seated) rock 206. βαιός (small) still time 160, 172. βαλίησιν (variegated) with others 114. βαπτίζετο (he was baptized), act. signif. 28. βαρυγλώσσοιο (heavy-tongued) throat 118. βαρύδρακος (heavy-eyed) Mary 126. βαρύδεσμον (heavy-bound) veil 130. βαρυζήλων (heavy-jealous) Pharisees 52. βαρυκάρδιος (heavy-hearted) world 182; swarm 52. βαρύμηνιν (heavy-wrathful) life 196. βαρύμηνιν (heavy-wrathful) boast 80. βαρύνουσαν (burdening) body 58. βαρύφορτος (heavy-laden) woman 174. βαρύφορτος (heavy-laden) Joseph 208. βαρύφορτον (heavy-laden) shoulder-cape 48. βαρυώδινον (heavy-laboring) hour 174, per iota etiam P. ms. βασιλῆος (king's) beginning 192. βασιλῆος (king's) court 192. βατὴν (passable) earth 10. βατῆς (passable) sea 62. βεβαρηότες (weighted) with goad 20. βεβαρημένον (weighted) heavy 220. βεβιημένον (forced) by winds 62. βεβιημένον (forced) water 36. βερέθρου (of the pit) 66. βητάρμονας (dancing) of the brine 218. βητάρμονας (dancing) fish 218. βιαρχέας (life-ruling) commands 166. βιαρχέας (life-ruling) words 178. βιαρκέος (life-sustaining) father 96. βίβλῳ (in the book) divine 224. βίβλων (of books) tended with flowers 222. βιοδώτορι (life-giving) word 118. βιοπλανὲς (life-wandering) burden of necessity 212; character 166. βιοπλανέεσσι (life-wandering) to the poor 152. βιοσσόον (life-saving) breath 52. βιοσσόον (life-saving) peace 162. βιοσσόον (life-saving) faith 216. βιοσσόος (life-saving) king 50. βιοσσόος (life-saving) hour 40. βιοσσόος (life-saving) Christ 124. βιοτῆς (of life) manifold-wandering 54. βιοτήσιον (of life/living) peace 46. βιοτήσιον (of life/living) feast 40. βιοτήσιον (of life/living) work 174; water 56; lip 214.
C βλύσσουσιν (gush forth) water 82. βοέης (of the ox) birth 170. βοηθόον (helper) gave to the world 70. βοηθόος (helper) of life 22. βοογλήνοιο (ox-eyed) face 108. βορῆς (of food) needing 216. βοτρυός (cluster’s), image 164. βοώμενος (cried out) by name Simon 216. βοώμενον (cried out) in Greek voice 198. βραδυδινέϊ (slow-whirling) word 214. βραδυπευθεῖ (slow-inquiring) voice 48. βριμηδὸν (heavily) grieving 128. βρονταίη (thundering) echo 140. βροτοειδέα (human-shaped) form 90, et dativo 183. βρόχιον (noose) fate 156.
Γ γαζοφύλαξ (treasury) place 90. γαιήϊος (earth-born) man 50, 150. γαιήϊος (earth-born) lordship 192. γάλα (milk) faithful milking 206. γαληναίῳ (serene) face 10. γαμίης (nuptial) table 14. γειοπόνος (earth-laboring), agricola 162. γένεθλα (births/races), progenies 94; battle-defying is the birth 25. γενέθλης (of birth) bright-childed 220. γενέθλια (birthday) sufferings 92. γενεθλιὰς (birth) mist 100. γῆρυν (my voice) I sing 116. γιγνώσκεις (you know) me Not. 12. γίγνωσκε (know), cognoscebat 46. γιγνώσκητε (you may know) P. quoque 194. γίγνωσκον (I was knowing) 216; P. ginosko my fruits, and so, these things know me 114. γινώσκω (I know) you as a God-spoken prophet 36. γινώσκων (knowing) 72. περὶ γλουτοῖσιν (around the buttocks) having wrapped 218. γνωταί (sisters), sorores 120. γνωτὸς (known) being archpriest, notus et famil. 186. γνωτὸς (known) yours, your brother 124. γνωτῶν (of known) from companions 221. γοήμονος (lamenting) inner tomb 124. γοήμονος (lamenting) appearance 210. γόμφος (fastening), stilus script. 200. γομφωτὸν (nailed) with timbers nail-cut 198. γοοπλανέων (lament-wandering) Pharisees 22. γραφίδεσσι (with pens), scripturis 56, 58. γραφικῆς (of writing) book 118. γραφικοῖο (of writing) law 168, 180. γραφικοῖσι (of writing) characters 142. γυιοβόρῳ (limb-eating) scourge 120.
Δ δαήμονι (knowing) in hearing 110. δαιτυμονῆς (of the guest) unsparing 66. δαιτυμονῆς (of the guest) son 40. δακρυχέεσκε (was shedding tears) 210, composite P. quoque. δαμάζεις (you subdue) me with blows 188. δασπλῆτος (terrible) necessity 84. Δαυΐδ (David) per au P. ms. 84, itemque Suidae Lexicon. οἱ δὲ δὴ ἄλλοι (the others indeed) 218. δέγμενος (receiving) of the father 172. δέγνυμαι (I take/receive), accipio, accepto, P. 54, 56, sed priore in loco superscriptum χ. δεδάασι (they know), norunt 80, 106, 188, 210. δεδάασιν (they know) to hear, norunt 112. δεδάηκα (I have known), novi 98. δεδάηκε (has known) letters, novit litt. 78. δεδέξομαι (I shall receive) with joyful mind 66. δεῖγμα (example) teacher 150. δείελον (evening) hour 204. δείελος (evening) man 206. δενδρώεντος (tree-filled) garden 190. δέξαιτο (may he receive) with mind 106. δέξαο (receive) persuasion 214. δερκόμενοι (beholding) your works 76. δευομένοις (to those lacking), indigentibus 156. δηλήμονα (harmful) of men, the serpent 26. δήμιος (public) swarm, populus caterv. 84. δημογερόντων (of village elders), Not. ad 84. διάβροχος (drenched) with tears 44. διακτορίην (service) table had 154. διάκτορος (messenger/servant) swarm of companions 60. διάκτορος (messenger), minister 150. διάκτορος (messenger) of Christ 190. διάκτορον (messenger) work weaving 140, 146, 150. διάκτορον (messenger) light, id est, deacon 48; archpriest 186. διάκτοροι (messengers) of archpriest 188. διαπλήσας (having completed) fifty years 100. διαπρυσίῃ (shrill) with a voice 150. διαστείχων (traversing) the land of Gal. 74. διαστείχοντα (traversing) of the pit 128; of the sea 62. διατμήγει (cuts through) a branch 102. διδάγματα (teachings) divine 90. διδάσκαλον (teacher) example 150. διδυμάονι (twin) with law 114. διδυμάονας (twin) fish 60. διδυμόθρους (twin-voiced) echo 104. διείρομαί (I inquire) of you asking 178. διείρεαι (you inquire) of me these things, interrogs, 188. διεπέφραδόν (I have told) to you, dixi 128. διζήμεθα (we seek) Christ 184. διζήμονι (seeking) with basket 90. δίζομαι (I seek) honor 98. δίζυγι (two-yoked) in bond 190. δίζυγι (two-yoked) in law 146. δίζυγος (two-yoked) of yours 42. δίζυγα (two-yoked) messenger 138. δίζυγα (two-yoked) bronze 206. δίζυγον (two-yoked) day 122. διήϊον (these things) 176, 180. διήϊον (these things) 170. διίξομαι (I shall reach) you many things 169. δικασπόλος (law-giver), judex 86, 144, 196. δίκτυα (nets) distant-striking 218. διορνύμενον (lifting up) of the father 168. διπλόος (double) 214. διπλόον (double) day 42. διφήτορι (double-seeking) basket 208. διφήτορι (double-seeking) of the sea 218. διχθαδίης (double-natured) yours 120. διχθαδίῳ (double-natured) with word 150. διχόμητις (double-minded) being 128. διχόμητις (double-minded) strife 84. διχόμητιν (double-minded) new 214. διψάδι (parched) earth 140. διψαλέοντι (parched), sitienti 52. δίψιος (thirsty) hour 32. δίψιον (thirsty) brine 202. διψώω (I thirst), sitis 202. διώνυμος (double-named) Thomas 122, 156. δμωῖς (to the servants) speaking 188. δμῶες (servants) and laborers 188. δμῶσις (servant) to speak 150. δοκέεσκον (they were thinking), putabant 152. δοκεύω (I think), puto 120. δοκεύω (I look for), video 194. δοκεύει (he looks for) 144. δοκεύων (looking for), videns 104, 108. δολοπλόκος (guile-weaving) duplici accentu, P. ms. 136.
A δολοπλόκος Ἰούδας (guile-weaving Judas), also P. ms. 134. δολοπλόκον ἐσμόν (guile-weaving swarm) 192; also P. δολοπλόκον φωνήν (guile-weaving voice) 132; P. δολόπλοκον. δολοῤῥαφέας πατρός (guile-stitching father) 94. δολογραφέων Φαρισαίων (guile-writing Pharisees) 154. δονακοτρεφὴς ἔρνος (reed-nourished sprout) 200. δούλειον ἀνάγκην (servile necessity) 94. δουλοσύνην Θεῷ τελέσται (to perform servitude to God) 170. δουρατίης ἀκάνθης (of wooden thorn) 26. δουρατέην χηλόν (wooden chest) 152. δόχμιον ὀμφήν (oblique oracle) 174. δοχμώσαντες γούνατα (having bent the knees) 194. δρηστήρες, ministratores (ministers) 192. δρηστήρες αιθέριοι (ethereal ministers) 164. δρηστήρες ἁλός (ministers of the sea) 218. δρηστήρες βλοσυροί (grim ministers) 196. δρηστήρες οινοχόοι (cupbearing ministers) 14. δρηστήριον ἔργον ὑφαίνων (weaving a ministerial work) 148. δύνων αἰθέρα (entering the ether) 146. δυσαλθήτῳ νούσῳ (with a malady hard to heal) 48. δυσήνεμος οδμή (ill-windy scent) 128. δύσματα οὔατα (ill-hearing ears) 24. δυσπειθέϊ βουλῇ (to disobedient counsel) 90. δυσπειθεῖ λαῷ (to disobedient people) 56. δυώδεκα κύκλα (twelve cycles/circles) 60. δυωδεκάριθμος ἐσμός (twelve-numbered swarm) 18. δυωδεκάριθμος Ἰούδας (twelve-numbered Judas) 152. δωμήσας, ædific. (having built) 116. ἑαδότα τοχῆα (pleasing parent) 92. B ἑάσας γαῖαν (having left the land) 170, 178; δεῖπνον (supper) 146; ἐὸν θρόνον (his throne) 194; πέδον Καν. (soil of Cana) 44. ἑάσατε τάρβος ἀήταις (leave fear to the winds) 62. ἑβδομάτοιο φέγγεος (of the seventh light) 204. ἔβλυεν ὕδωρ (poured forth water) 16. ἔγγραφον αὐδήν (written voice) 78. ἐγγύθι νηοῦ (near the temple) 82. ἐγγύθι πέτρης (near the rock) 66. ἔγγυον αὐλῆς μῦθον (a pledge of the discourse of the court) 172. ἐγερσιβόητος ἀλέκτωρ (awakening-cry cock) 154. ἐγέρσιμον ὕπνον ταύων (spending wakening sleep) 210, 220. ἐγερσινόοιο γυναικός (of the woman who awakens the mind) 42. ἐγκύμονα ἀμπλακίης (pregnant with sin) 76, 176. ἐγκύμονα γαστέρα (pregnant womb) 22. ἐγκύμονες δυσσεβίης (pregnant with impiety) 92. ἔγκυον νεπόδων (pregnant with offspring) 220. ἔγκυος ὀμφῆς θεοδ. (pregnant with the oracle) 6, 21, 51. ἐγουνάζοντο Χριστόν (they knelt before Christ) 42. ἔγρεται ἐψιτέλεστος (he awakes thoroughly completed) 104. ἐγχθονίων ἀνδρῶν (of earth-born men) 160. ἐδέγμην Γ. (I received) 150. ἐδέγμην πάντας (I received all) 166. ἔδεύλον ἁγνόν (they enslaved the pure one) 76. ἔδεθλον Προσολύμων (seat of Jerusalem) 156. ἐδέπλιον Καναναῖον (Cana-dwelling) 44. ἐδίῃνεν ἱκμάδι (he moistened with moisture) 120. ἔδρακεν ἑώς (the dawn saw) 110. ἔδρακες αὐτὸν ὀπωπῇ (you saw him with the eye) 110. ἔδρανα νηοῦ (seats of the temple) 116. Είπας, Not. ad 94. ἔειπες (you said) 142. ἐθήμονος τους (of the familiar one) 80. ἐθήμονι κείμενον εὐνῇ (lying on a familiar bed) 48. ἐθήμονι λαίλαπι (in a familiar storm) 76. ἐθήμονα δαῖτα (familiar feast) 220. ἐθήμονα κώμην (familiar village) 124. εἴ συ, es tu (if you are) 196. εἰ μὴ ἐμοὶ μίμνητε (if you do not remain with me) 164. εἰ μίμνητε (if you remain) 164. εἶδαρ ἄφθιτον (imperishable food) 66. εἴκαθε πότμῳ (he yielded to fate) 126, 204. εἰλαπινάζειν μελιῤῥ. ἄρτον (to feast on honey-flowing bread) 66. εἰλαπινάζων ἐμὸν δέμας (feasting my body) 70. εἰν ἀγάπῃ (in love) 124. εἰν ἑνί, uno ore (in one, with one mouth) 46. εἰν ἑνί, uno verbo, id est, ut uno verbo dicam (in one, with one word, that is, that I may speak in one word) 52, 54, 116, 164, 166, 172. εἰν ἑνὶ πάντας, uno v. seu unum omnes (in one all, or one all) 176, 214, 218. ad εἶν ἑνὶ χώρῳ (at the one place) 208. εἵνεκα pro ούνεκα, eo quod (because for, for the reason that) 176. εἰνοδίης πορείης (of the wayfaring journey) 148. εἴρεον, interrogabant (they asked) 50. εἴρετο, interrogabat (he asked) 40; P. ms. εἴρετο, itemque (and likewise) 50. εἴρετο 192, 194, 220. εἰρόμενος, interrogans (asking) 64. εἰρομένοισιν ἐνίψαι (to say to those asking) 106. εἴροντο ἀμφοτέρους (they asked both) 100. εἰς subaudita (understood) 48, 154. εἰς γενετῆρος, sc. δῶμα (to the father’s [house]) 158. εἰς ἐμὲ βαίνων, ad me (entering into me, to me) 82. εἰς ἐμὲ μίμνων, pro ἐν ἐμοί (remaining into me, for in me) 164. εἰσαίειν θέσκελον ὀμφήν (to hear the divine oracle) 90. εἰσαῖοντα φθογγῆς (hearing of the voice) 112. εἰσαφικάνει κοίρανος (the ruler arrives) 224. εἰσόκεν ἔλθῃ, donec ven. (until he comes) 153. εἰσόκε, dum (until) 100, 102, 192. εἰσορόωντες (looking upon) 90. εἶχον σθένος, poterant (they had strength, they were able) 218. ἐκαίνισε θεσμὸν ἑορτῆς (he renewed the ordinance of the feast) 116. ἑκὰς ὁδεύειν (to travel far) 154. ἑκατοντάδος ζαθέης (of the holy hundred) 206. ἐκεύθετο σιγῇ (it was hidden in silence) 144. ἑκηβόλος ἑώς (far-darting dawn) 8. ἑκηβόλα δίκτυα (far-darting nets) 218. ἔκλυε φήμης (he heard the report) 136. ἐκταδίη ἀπεμάξατο (stretched out she wiped away) 134. ἐκταδὸν κείμενος (lying stretched out) 104. ἐκταδὲν ὀρθώσαντες (having raised up stretched out) 200. ἔκτοθι γαίης (outside the land) 218. ἔκτοθι κόσμου διώκεται (is driven outside the world) 142. ἔκτοθι νηοῦ (outside the temple) 20; they drove away 110; et al. ἐκτὸς ἔλασσαν (drove out). ἔκτοθι σταθμοῖο (outside the dwelling) 112. ἐκώμασεν εἰς δόμον ἀρχ. (he revelled to the ruler's house) 190. ἑκὼν ἀέκων ἔδωκε (he gave willingly unwillingly) 198. ἐλατῆρες νηός (oarsmen of the ship) 62. ἐλαφρίζεσκον μιν μύθῳ (they were lightening him with speech) 126. ἐλεγχίστῳ τινὶ πότμῳ (by some most disgraceful fate) 198. ἑλεῖν ἐς τὴν ὁλκάδα (to take into the ship) 62. ἐλελίζεται νούσῳ (he is whirled by disease) 120. ἐλεύθερον ἄτης πρόφασιν (freeing the pretext of ruin) 168. ἐλεύθερον ἴαχε φωνήν (he shouted a free voice) 108. ἕλιξ χρόνος (coiling time) 102, 172. ἕλιξι κυκλούμενος ἁψῖσι (being circled by coiling loops) 116. ἑλίσσεται αἰών (the age is coiled) 26, 94. ἑλίσσων βίβλον (coiling the book) 86. ἑλκυστῆρα κάδον (drawing vessel/bucket) 54. ἑλλήνια τέκνα (Hellenic children) 82. ἕλπομαι, opinor (I hope, I suppose) 224. ἑλπομένη, putans (hoping, thinking) 210. ἐμαιώσαντό μιν λοχεῖαι (the childbirth pangs delivered him) 100. ἐμὰς τελέσειεν ἐφετμάς (may he perform my commands) 160. ἐμέθυσσε δόμον ὀδμῇ (he intoxicated the house with scent) 134. ἐμιτρώσαντο ὀθόνῃσι (they bound with linens) 200. ἐμπεδόκυκλον χρόνον (steadfastly-circling time) 92. ἐμπεδόμητις ἀνάγκη (steadfast-counselled necessity) 114. ἐμπεδόμητις βροτός (steadfast-counselled mortal) 104. ἐμπεδόμυθον ὅρκιον (steadfast-worded oath) 174. ἔμπλεος ἀρῆς (full of curse) 84. ἔμπλεον ὄξεος (full of vinegar) 202. ἔμπορον ἕδρην (merchant seat) 18. ἐν pleonast (pleonastic) 32. ἔν subaudita (understood) 186, 206, 208. ἐναυλίζοντο μελάθροις (they were lodging in halls) 210, 212. ἐναύλιον ὀθνεῖον (strange lodging) 28. ἐνδαπίῳ μύθῳ (in a native discourse) 198. ἔνδιον ἄστρων (midday of stars) 162. ἔνδιον αὐλῆς (midday of the court) 156. ἔνδον αὐτοῦ ἔμεθλον (I was about to be within him) 160. C ἔνδια κώμης (dwellings of the village) 136. ἔνδοθι νηοῦ (within the temple) 134; P. ms. ἔνδοθε. ἔνδοθι τύμβου (within the tomb) 128. ἐνδόμυχος πίστις (inmost faith) 144. ἐνδόμυχον ὕδωρ (inmost water) 82. ἐνδομύχων λύχνων (of inmost lamps) 184. ἐνδομύχων προβάτων (of inmost sheep) 110. ἐνδομύχους ἰχθύας (inmost fish) 218. ἐνένιπεν, increpuit (he rebuked) 44. ἔνερθε φορῆος (beneath the bearer) 200. ἐνερρίζωτο μενοιναῖς (it was rooted in intentions) 84. ἔνθεος ὀδμή (divine scent) 134. ἔνθεον αἴγλην (divine radiance) 22. ἔνθεον ἴχνος (divine footprint) 76. ᾧ ἔνι, in quo (in which) 146. τῇ ἔνι, in qua (in which) 104, 136. ἐνίαχον αὐτίκα λαοί (the people shouted immediately) 128. ἐνίαχε θαῦμα νοήσας (he shouted having perceived a wonder) 60. ἐνίψαι, dicere (to say) 106; μῦθον (word) 146. ἐνίψω μαρτυρίην ἰδίην, dicam (I will declare my own testimony) 54. ἐνίψει (he will declare) 100. ἐνίψῃ μιν Χριστόν, appellarit (he may call him Christ) 100. ἔννεπεν (he said) 224. ἐννύχιον οὐδὲν πιέζειν (to press nothing nocturnal) 216. ἐννύχιοι σύλησαν (nightly they plundered) 210. ἐντροπαλιζομένης ὀπωπῆς (of the glance turning back) 222. ἐντύνεις, pararet (you prepare) 152. ἐξότε seu ἐξ ὅτε (from when or from the time when) 108, 116, 150. ἐπαείσετε θρήνους (you will sing laments) 174. ἐπάρκιος μάρτυς (sufficient witness) 54. ἐπάρουρος ἀνήρ (earth-bound man) 72. ἐπασσυτέροισι κυπέλλοις (with successive cups) 52. ἐπεδήσατο εὐφροσύνης (he bound himself with joy) 100. ἐπεβήσατο κώμης (he ascended to the village) 126. ἐπέσρεψεν ἄσπετον ἠχώ (he turned back a boundless echo) 196. ἐπεθάμβεεν αὐτόν (he was amazed at him) 78. ἐπειρήσαντο πιέζειν (they tried to press) 84, 118. ἐπειρήτιζε γυναῖκα (he tested the woman) 36; νόον ἀγνῶσσοντος (the mind of the unknown one) 58. ἐπεμβαίνοντες νηός (stepping into the ship) 216. ἐπεπάφλασε λαός (the people boiled over) 96. ἐπεπείθετο μύθῳ (he was persuaded by the word) 46. ἐπεσβόλος δμωῖς (mocking slave) 188. ἐπεσβόλε σύ (you mocking one) 110. ἐπεσβολίῃσιν ἐλέγχων (with mockings of reproaches) 166. ἐπεσμαράγησε λαός (the people thundered) 140. ἐπεστόρνυντο κονίη (dust was spread over) 184. ἐπέτελλε πατήρ (the father commanded) 92. ἐπέτελλε τελέσσαι (he commanded to perform) 98. ἐπέφραδον, ἐπεφθέγξ. (they declared) 108. ἐπεφράσσασθε μύθῳ, consider. (take thought with discourse) 176, 178. ἐπεφράσσαντο (they took thought) 138. ἐπεψιθύριζεν ἀκουῇ (he whispered to the ear) 152. ἐπήβολον πρόφασιν (hitting the pretext) 194. ἐπήλυδα λαόν (incoming people) 58. ἐπήλυδες ἄνδρες (incoming men) 102. ἐπηλυσίη, aditus (approach) 112. ἐπῄορος ὄρθιος ἔστω (let him be upright and lofty) 196. ἐπήτριμα κύματα (successive waves) 80. ᾧ ἐπι (on which) 78. ἐπιάσσατε, cepistis (you took) 220. ἐπιβήτορι παλμῷ (with climbing throbbing) 220. ἐπιβήτορα θώκων (climber of seats) 72. ἐπιδευέα φωνῆς ἑτέρ. (lacking a voice of another) 44, 176. ἐπιδήμιος αὐδή (sojourning voice) 208. ἐπιδήμιος ἐσμός (sojourning swarm) 200. ἐπίηρα ἀμπλακίης (pleasing things of sin) 96. οὐκ ἐπίθησαν (they did not add) 106. ἐπικήπιος αὔρη (garden-breeze) 206. ἐπίκλοπος ἀνὴρ (thievish man) 132. ἐπίκυρτος ρόος ἁλμῆς (arched flow of salt water) 62. ἐπιμάρτυρος αὐτὸς ἑαυτῷ (witness of himself to himself) 18; ἐμαυτῷ (to myself) 90, 224. ἐπιμάρτυρα φωνῆς μῦθον (word of the voice as witness) 190. ἐπιμάρτυρες αὐτῆς (witnesses of her) 188. ἐπιμάρτυρας ἔργων (witnesses of works) 144.
A ἐπιμάρτυρον ἔστω (let it be confirmed by witness) 52. ἐπιμίμνετε ἐμῷ φίλτρῳ (remain at my love) 164. ἐπισφίγξαντες ἀνάγκῃ (having bound fast by necessity) 200. ἐπιτύμβιος ὥρη (sepulchral hour) 136. ἐπιτύμβια θεσμά (sepulchral ordinances) 206. ἐπιχρίσας πηλόν (having anointed with clay) 102. ἐπιψύχοντες γαῖαν (cooling the earth) 188. ἐπουρανίη λύσις (heavenly release) 212. ἐπουρανίοιο θεοῦ (of God heavenly) 176. ἐπυργώθη ῥόος ἅλμης (the stream of brine was piled like a tower) 62. ἐπωμίδα βαρύφορτον (heavily-laden shoulder-piece) 48. ἐργατίνης πόντοιο (worker of the sea) 12. ἐρέεινε, interrogabat (he asked) 46. ἐρέπτων ἄρτον (eating bread) 72, 150. ἔρεσθε, interrogate (ask) 106. ἐρέσσω τὸν πόδα, moveo (I move my foot) 48. ἐρετμώσας χεῖρας (having made oars of hands) 218. ἐρεύγεται ἔμπεδον αὐδήν (it pours forth a steady voice) 56; ἠθάδε φωνήν (customary voice) 80. ἐρευθιόωντι δεέθρῳ (in the reddening stream) 46. ἐρευνητῆρα θαλάσσης (searcher of the sea) 10. ἐρημάδος ἐγγύθι πέτρης (near the desert rock) 66. ἐρημάδα πέτρην (desert rock) 62. ἐρημαίῃ παρὰ πέτρῃ (by the lonely rock) 66. ἐρημαίῃ παρὰ λόχμῃ (in the lonely thicket) 70. ἒρνος γνήσιον (genuine scion) 220. ἔρξον, seu ῥέξον, facito (do) 152. ἐρωτοτόκοιο σαρκός (of flesh begetting desire) 4. ἐς οἰκίον ἀρχιερέως (to the house of the high priest) 186. ἐς ὑμέας ἐνθάδε βαίνω (I come here to you) 80. ἐσέδρακον νεκρόν (they looked upon the dead) 204. ἔσθενον φυγεῖν (they were able to flee) 98. ἐσίδητε θαύματα (look upon wonders) 44. ἐσίδοιτο βιοσσόον (he might look upon the life-bestower) 136. ἐσπερίην πορείην (evening journey) 186. ἔσσαν, ἦσαν (they were) 16. ἔσσο, es (be) 188. ἔσσο, sis (be) 214. ἔστιχεν ἁγνὸν ἔδεθλον (he walked to the holy abode) 76. ἔστιχε πάνδοκον οἶκον (he went to the house of entertainment) 48. ἔστυγεν αὐτοὺς κόσμος (the world hated them) 180. ἔστυγεν ὑμᾶς κόσμος (the world hated you) 160. ἐσύστερον seu εἰς ὕστερον (afterwards) 154. ἐσχαρεῶνι παριστάμενος (standing by the hearth) 190. ἐταρίζετο ὑμᾶς κόσμος (the world was salted/preserved for you) 100. ἑτερόθρους μαρτυρία (various-sounding testimony) 90. ἑτερότροπον κρίμα (strange judgment) 110. ἑτερόχροον ἄγρην (diverse-colored catch) 218, αἴγλην (gleam) 46. ἑτερόφρονι λύσσῃ (with strange-minded madness) 54. ἐτήσιος ἑορτή (annual festival) 74. ἐτήσιον μνημοσύνην (annual commemoration) 116. ἐτήτυμος ὀμφή (true voice/oracle) 72. ἐτήτυμος προφήτης (true prophet) 84. ἐτητυμίη, veritas (truth) 96. ἐτητυμίης μάρτυς (witness of truth) 140, 224. ἐτητυμίης οἶμον (path of truth) 78. ἐτητυμίης πανθελγέος (of all-beguiling truth) 192. ἐτύπωσεν ὀπωπήν (he formed the countenance) 100. εὐάγγελον ἴαχε φωνήν (he cried out an evangelical voice) 58. εὐαγέεσσι μενοιναῖς (with holy purposes) 92. εὐαγέως ἀγαπάζων με (loving me holily) 160. εὐάζων ἔτι πάσχα (still celebrating the Passover) 204. εὔνασε κεῖθι πόδας (he laid his feet to rest there) 208. εὔνασε πότμος Λάζαρον (fate laid Lazarus to sleep) 122. εὐγλώσσοιο θερισμοῦ (of the eloquent harvest) 40. εὐδένδροιο λόχμης (of the well-wooded thicket) 58. εὔδιος πόλις, tranquilla (serene city) 152. εὐκελάδοιο ἑορτῆς (of the well-sounding festival) 76. εὐχεράους βόας (well-handed/ready-handed oxen) 18. εὐκίονι τέχνῃ (with well-columned art/skill) 116. ἐϋκροκάλοιο ἅλμης (of the well-fringed/surging brine) 62. ἐϋκροκάλοισι παρ' ᾐόσιν (by the well-fringed shores) 216. εὐλαῖγγος νηοῖο (of the well-rowed/ship-related temple) 72. εὐλαίγγι θοώνῳ (in a swift temple) 198. εὐλαίγγι νηῷ (in a well-rowed temple) 48, 78; τύμβῳ (tomb) 206. εὐπετάλοιο τραπέζης (of the well-spread table) 60. εὐπόδος ὥρης (of the fair-footed hour) 202. ζωαρκέϊ μύθῳ (with life-sustaining word) 180; πομπῇ (procession) 168; πότμῳ (fate) 142. ζωαρχέα τιμήν (life-ruling honor) 128. ζωοδότης γόνος (life-giving offspring) 142. ζωστήρα κεφαλῆς (girdle of the head) 208.
[H] ἠγάλλετο ἰδεῖν (he rejoiced to see) 100. ἡγητὴρ περιδέξιος (a very clever leader) 130. ἡγεμονῆες ἄστεος (leaders of the city) 80. ἡδέϊ θυμῷ (with sweet spirit) 96. ἦεν, ἦν, erat (was) 128. ἠερόφοιτο δαίμονος (of the air-wandering demon) 78. ἠεροφοίτην διάκτορον (air-wandering messenger) 14. ἠερόφοιτος οἶστρος (air-wandering gadfly) 98. ἠθάδος ἰχθυβότοιο (of the customary fish-fed [sea]) 220. ἠθάδι κώμῃ (in a customary village) 156; ταρσῷ (in the customary tarsus/sole) 150; χαλκῷ (brass) 80. ἠθάδα ἄγρην (customary catch) 216; μῦθον (word) 174; φωνήν (voice) 80. ἤνδε θυμῷ, sciebat (he knew in his spirit) 148. ἠκάχε Θεόν, offendit (he offended God) 100. ἠλοτύπους χεῖρας (malleus-striking hands) 212. B ἤμασιν ἐν τρισσοῖσι (in three days) 20. ἠμείβετο μύθῳ (he answered with a word) 64. ἡμερίδων κλῆμα (vine-shoot) 162. ἠνεμόφοιτος Κύριος (wind-wandering Lord) 214. ἣν τελέσειεν (which he would accomplish) 162. ἡνίδε, ecce (behold) 8. ἡνίδε πῶς, ecce ut (behold how) 80, 128. ἡνίοχος βιότοιο (charioteer of life) 100. ἠνίπαπε μύθῳ (he rebuked with a word) 222. ἤντεον, Ion. ab ἀντάω (they met) 46. ἐς ὄνα ἕλκων (drawing to the edge) 218. ἠπεροπῆϊ δόλῳ (with beguiling guile) 74. ἤρετο N. ad 40. ἠρεύγετο φωνήν (he vomited forth a voice) 78, 110, 152. ἠριγενείης μυστιπόλοιο (of the early-born mystery-celebrant) 50. ἠριγενείης ὑστατίης (of the last early-born) 68. ἤφυσεν ὕδωρ (he drew water) 102. ᾖχι πέλω, ubi sum (where I am) 182. ἠχὼ ἔνθεον (divine sound) 54. ἠχὼ πολύστομον, etiam P. ms. (many-mouthed sound) 84. ἠχὼ P. ms. 136. ἠχὼ ψυχοστόλον, etiam P. (soul-fashioning sound) 154.
Θ θαλύσια πατρὶ τελέσσῃ (may he offer first-fruits to the Father) 42. θάμβος ἔχοιτε, miremini (may you have wonder) 54. θαμβαλέος ἔβρεμε (frightened he roared) 100. θανατηφόρος δόλος (death-bearing guile) 138. θανατηφόρος ληϊστήρ (death-bearing robber) 194. θάρσυνεν ἐῇ φωνῇ (he emboldened with his voice) 48. Θεὸς ἀνήρ (God man) 10. θεηγενέος βασιλήος (of the God-born king) 200, 212. θεηγενέων ἔργων (of God-born works) 144. θεηγόρος μολπή (divine-inspired song) 202. θεηγόρον ἄνδρα (divine-inspired man) 6. θεηγόρον ἀνθερεῶνα (divine-inspired throat) 66, 90. θεηγόρον φωνήν (divine-inspired voice) 220. θεηγόρα χείλεα (divine-inspired lips) 92. θεηδόκος (God-receiving) 120. θεηδόχου μίνα (of the God-receiving [woman]) 218. θεήλατον πῆμα (divine-sent suffering) 100. θεημάχος γενέθλη (God-fighting birth/race) 94. θεημάχον ἀνθερεῶνα (God-fighting throat) 26. θεημάχον ἴαχε φωνήν (he cried out a God-fighting voice) 180. θεηπόλος ὥρη (divine-serving hour) 58. θεητόκος Χρ. μήτηρ (God-bearing Mother of Christ) 14, 18. θελήμονι σιγῇ (with willing silence) 210. θελήμονες εἰς ἐμὲ βαίνειν (willing to come unto me) 6. θεμείλιον κόσμου (foundation of the world) 40. θεμιστοπόλοιο βίβλου (of the law-ministering book) 192. θεμιστοπόλον στόμα (law-ministering mouth) 90. θεμιστοπόλων Φαρισαίων (of the law-ministering Pharisees) 86. θεογλήνοιο προσώπου (of the divine-viewing face) 210. Θεογλώσσοιο βίβλου (of the divine-tongued book) 20. Θεογλώσσων μερόπων (of divine-tongued mortals) 80. Θεογλώσσων διὰ φωτῶν (through divine-tongued lights) 56. Θεοδέγμονος αὐλῆς (of the God-receiving court) 114. θεοδέγμονος ὀμφῆς (of the God-receiving voice) 54. Θεοδέγμονι θυμῷ (with God-receiving spirit) 82; λαῷ (people) 2. θεοδινές παλμῷ (with divine-whirling pulsing) 62. θεοδινεῖ ῥιπῇ (with divine-whirling darting) 56. Θεοκλήτοιο μελάθρου (of the God-called hall) 106, 17. Θεοκλήτῳ ἑνὶ νηῷ (in the one God-called temple) 188. θεοκλήτῳ τινὶ φωνῇ (with a certain God-called voice) 174. θεοκμήτῳ πέπλῳ (with God-wrought garment) 212. θεόμητιν φωνήν (divine-counseling voice) 96. θεόπαιδα τεκοῦσαν (having borne the divine-child) 202. θεοπειθέος ἀληθείης (of God-persuaded truth) 90. θεοπειθέϊ μύθῳ (with God-persuaded word) 50. θεοπειθέα λαόν (God-persuaded people) 28. θεοπροπέων ἐπιτέλλομαι (divine-proclaiming I command) 166. θεοπνεύστῳ τινὶ μύθῳ (with a certain God-breathed word) 118. θεοπρόπος ἀνήρ (prophetic man) 132. θεοπρόπον ἄνδρα (prophetic man) 40. θεοῤῥήτῳ μύθῳ (with God-spoken word) 156. θεορρήτων βίβλων (of God-spoken books) 56.
A God-poured rain 88. God-sent track 156. God-sent footprint 90. God-sent work 64. God-sent lips 98. God-loving Galileans 44. God-hated Jews 222. God-pleasing truth 92. God-pleasing law 64. God-fearing Moses 108. God-fearing fruit 164. God-fearing crop 42. God-fearing faith 142. God-fearing voice 76. God-fearing person 206. God-fearing disciples 154. they told of the way of God-fear 168. concerned with God-fear 108. he keeps all things by God-fear 28. God-wise rod 42. God-wise disciples 214. of God-wise words 98. wondrous utterance 24. lawful court 192. Moses of the Theotokos 108. Law-bearing fathers 38. in the divinely-inspired book 216, 224. by a divine impulse 14. by a divine voice 50, 112. they spoke divine decrees 84. behold the wonders 60. to the wondering world 160. to the wondering people 80, 120, 198. wonders of works 168. female voice 30. servants and slaves 188. Bacchic hours 4. to the feasting people 14, 60. the nourisher 146. with a heavy-scented offering 198. the man of sacrifices 170. of the maenad spring 48. with a raging voice 88. breezes of a maenad 218. Bacchic feast 20. Bacchic utterance 14. the spirit commands 222. spirit-destroying thirst 82. of fragrant myrrh 120. fragrant myrrh 206. door-frames 212. B I send, for the same 212. I send, to send 170. sending rain, divine 89. sending forth intellectual sparks 54. to break sleep, re-collected 122. sudden voice 58, 220. shouted of exhaustion 176. shouted in the temple 80. they shouted the same court 74. they shouted one voice 40. See, behold 198. with skillful counsel 96. with skillful silence 144. with skillful art 78. with skillful voice 222. skillful hours 28. we have placed 210. un-iron [invulnerable] hunter 144. healer of disease 50. straight-way impulse 130. straight-way youth 144. they received [him] with a straight-thinking mind 178. guide of the world 60, 98. of the way of the spirit 142. you reach the place, or "to" 154. he reached the place, instead of "to" 198. to bow a suppliant knee 38. of the moist flock 220. of the moist shore 92. carrying a wandering eye 150. bound in chains 130. he was lashed with vapor 120. the lashed child 44. the body of lashed men 58. the lashed mind with a prick [goad] 126. of the lashed [woman] near the shore 92. of Indian aloes 206. we go from there 162. to the streams of the Jordan 120. of the Jordan river 8. by will 52. having traveled from Judea 46. of Jerusalem 18. equaling, equalizing 52. people equal to the sands 58. equal-yoked without assistance 160. equal-yoked to his begetter 52. equal-yoked to the law 54, 70. equal-natured imitation 150. fishermen 218. of the water-traveling fisherman 60. water-living fishermen 216. of the accustomed fish-giver 220. they track to subdue 80. he turned his track/footprint 76. God-sent footprint 90. kenotaph, empty tomb 208. of the empty tomb 208. with a sting, a lance 204. with a stinging word 98. C heavy-straining offering 38. with twisted threads [of a] sphinx 130. joy-giving chorus 18. be hidden in silence 80. subterranean depths 220. favored, gifted 196. he called your husband 56. and the moving hand 40. mourning woman 210. of the mourning house 126. snowy radiance 46. cista, money-chest 156. fragments of the table 60. gates of Jerusalem 56. with thief-minded words 76. of the nursing bed 50. bed, *lectum* 48, 150. hear the word 154; this 196. I care for a love-token for you 222. of the peak-bearing way 158. peak-bearing swarm 184. peak of an acanthus 194. still wandering 222. he was holding his feet 148. wheat-like loaves 60. judgment, *corr.* 110. my judgment, *i curr.* 90. of the judgment to come 54; and shortly 16, my judgment, *i curr.* 32 corrected. of funeral hours 156. in the vaulting movement [dancing] 18. he gladdens the Word, the Son 52. under the wheels [circles] of the table 220. with the circular [revolving] disease 80. circular hours 122, 134. circular temple [or: of the circular girl] 150, 148. waves of peoples 40. the people was surging 90. having bent his curved neck 110. feast-commotion 74. secret life 72. with a storm of voice 140, 184. stony in the empty-waisted [one] 16. with stone-like missiles 118, 122. talking lamb 10. with a talking trumpet 56. with a talking silence 152. talking sickle 42. talking image 116. having lanterns 184. people-leading king 82. people-leading voice 88. Latin-wise, *voce* 200. portion, allotment 202. with a white voice 174. white hair 22, 90. nature of a woman in childbed 4. of the woman in childbed, near-child-bearing 174. women in childbed hours 100. with forgetful [lethaean] breezes 160. wondrous crop 42. robber, un-animated 194. robber, unseen 112. robber, death-bringing 194. to the robber word 188; tarsin 119, voice 112. of the stone-thrown snowstorm 100. of the stone-carving empty-waisted [one] 210, stone-carving swarm 100. D (Note: The index continues.)
A paved site, near a place 198. Of linen capture 74. Linen-weaver Simon 215. Linen cloth, 146; in the manuscript, *legōtion* [shroud], as also in Suidas. Of shining-light world 88. May they become shining-light 110. Of the missing-eyelash [blind] circle 100. Leaving light on the world 144. Leaving light on the face 102. Leaving light on the darkness 122. Leaving light on the eyes 128. Of the voice-losing dead man 150. Night leaving shadow 136. Shadows leaving lights 102. Pleading, *precamini* [pray ye] 174. They supplicated Pilate 200. Pleading neck 38. I plead, *precor* [I pray] 148. Destructive hour 84. Final hour 54. Of the ambushing sound 108. Of the year, years 152. Lyre-striking David 84. Disciple of the law-loosening [Christ] 108. In the toil-loosening tale 50. Toil-loosening foam 102. Toil-loosening mouths 82. Furious world 174. To a furious bridegroom 190. Savior of birth, man 182. Solutions of grief 124. Lamp of piety 54. To the prayer-bearing people 90.
M Magdalene Mary 202, 208, 210; in the manuscript, written above throughout as *Magdalēnē*. Seeking, *quaerentes* [seeking] 82. Furious rushing 96. Furious Jews 50. In a prophetic voice 38. Wasting fire 218. Mary 212. Mary of... 16, 120. Witness of truth 140, 224. Witness to life 158. Witness of face 118. Witness [to the] voice 8. Witness [in the] tablet 216. Witness [in the] tale 38. Witness [in the] voice 219. Witnesses [of the] faces 168. Witness of a steady word 54. Witness of escaping evil 188. Let there be a witness 110. A true witness 88. Let it be a witness of a steady word 14, 24, 52. Witness of suppliant neck 56. These things are a witness 116. He seeks his own glory 78. They were seeking to kill 50. Seek ye to kill me 78. Seek ye the oracles 56; the honor of God 56; to kill 94; to press upon lights 184. Warlike shield-bearers 184. Of lustful bed 46. Lustful hair 154. Managing the dance 14. Of wine-stumbling weddings 18. Black-veiled mist 62. Of the black-minded demon 98. Honey-breathing song 204. Honey-flowing bread 60. Honey-dripping snowfall 202. Cared for in transgressions, *studens* [studying/caring] 108. Cared for in the service of God 132; in prayers 108. But, indeed, however, *tamen* [yet] 190, 208. They were eager to seize 62, 136; to destroy 74. You were eager to travel 222. He was eager to tame 94. He will remain in me, *manebit* [will remain] 70. They were contending with him in stories 108. Lowest, extreme 202. Returning, brought back 118. Sowing seed in a furrow 42. Death-bearing sound 130. Death-bearing hour 52. Death-bearing Christ 138. Death-bearing Joseph 206. In an indignant tale 44. In an indignant voice 188. Indignant at transgression 168. Indignant in voice 84. Of the newly-bright face 102. Newly-persuaded men 60. Nothing newly-wandering 194. Newly-wrought books 224. Newly-wrought eyes 102. Newly-grieving sons 126. Newly-fixed banquet-halls 76. Newly-built tomb 206. Of leaping grandsons/descendants 220. Of the nether pit 92. Will of the parent, *voluntas* [will] 66. Sending signs to the knowing/wise 152. In a sailing tale 90. New-come, foreign-looking 190. Temple-serving, priests 194. Asking the temple-servants 190. Numberless people 64. In numberless mouths 196. Nodding toward Hades 120. Like clouds they hasten 30. Nicodemus, 1st corr. [correction] 84, 86. Being conquered by possessions 136. Moving the stone from the door-frame, for *from* the door-frame 208. The moved [removed] stone 208. Sheep and lambs 222. Sheep-rearing shepherd 112. Of the apple-eating festival 204. Of long-limbed descendants 220. You have [a] purpose, *sentis* [you feel/think] 104. Mixed rows 60. Mimicking image 38. Vine-like imitation 164. Starry imitation 184. Cluster-like imitation 164. Diminishing life 56. From short-lived food 61. Short-living water 34. He girded himself with a linen girdle 146. Girded with companions 212. He girded his loins with a garment 218. Suitor of a feast 64. He thinks of pain, *meminit* [remembers] 174. They were toiling in the furrow 42. Of the single-sceptered king 198. Uniquely, self-rolling 208. He told the people 96. As you speak to me 150. Myth-bearing heart 170. With a story seeking friendship 222. With the sound of the voice 140. Mourning the living one 210. Mournful ointment 208. In mystic art 38. Was performing mystic rites 20. Of the mystic festival 78. To the mystics 28. To the mystic voice 38. Of mystic men 54. Of mystic Jerusalem 134. Of Moses 78, 80.
N Many dwellers 43. Mixed dwellers 80. Dwelling 94. And I plead 148. In the hollow basin 146. Of stone-thrown snowfall 100. You perceive me, *nosti me* [you know me] 12. He perceives me, *novit me* [he knows me], and immediately, *noēō* [I perceive] the Father 114. In thoughts, *sententia* [opinion/thought] 84. Varied thoughts of stories 188. Purposeful flock of sheep 222. He knew/perceived me, *novit me* [he knows me] 158. False shepherd 112. False crown 194. My mind, my warnings 164, v. 16, flow of our speech. Mind-harmed men 144. Mind-erring eye 26. He came home safe 208. Safe/returned from the dead 130, 220. He is cut off from life 224. Diseased, *aegrotus* [sick] 48. Diseased woe 120. In a diseased bond 120. Wonders of the diseased 64. Of the sick-bed 50. Of the affectionate nurse 48. Now, still now 98. Of the night-roaming robber 204. Night-roaming lights 200. Of the night-roaming servant 190. Night-shining star 208. Night-shining Nicodemus 22. He changes the goal/turning point 60. In a long-standing goal/turning point 94. Night-time woman 208.
Stranger to the world 180. Host of our people 122. Guest-gift water 32. Host of Christ 122. Being helpless together 152. In a shared law 34, in a shared story 80, in a shared fate 124. Companion of yours 156.
A Joint prize of mine 90. Fused with the disciples 72. Fused with the disciples a tale 212. 0 § pro ὅς, is 46, 206. Converse with one another 82, 134, 158, 200. Converse pro said 62, 63, 98, 110. Converse to the world 188. With gentle words 154. Far from one’s own 78. Eighth circles 48. Eighth hour 156. Bulk of a threat 214. Wayfarer flock 138. Pain-assuaging water 48. Pain-assuaging hour 46. Such a disciple, perhaps saw 222. With a surging swell 182. Way of truth 92. Wine-colored fruit 162. Wine-colored robe, purple 200. Wine-pouring voice 16. Wine-faced 6, Nonnus to line 24. With a goaded foot 208. Goaded into anger 72. For the sheep, pro ovibus 114. With the draw of a wave 218. Rather than all companions, magis omnibus 220. Accompanied from afar 186. Gathered, you seek 184. In the assembly of disciples 212. Of like age, hair 90. Fellow members, high priests 200. Fellow members, fishing nets 210. Fellow members to her 196. Fellow members, peoples 62. Might associate with destruction 90. Might associate with a pit 92. Mist, ten. sp. p. ms. 408. Eye of the world, lux m. 178. Eyes of counsel, lumina cons. 144. Of the same womb as Peter 216. With a common-tongued tale 92. With common-tongued throats 76. Customs of like-born men 44. Of the same family, sister 128. Of the same family, brother 190. Of the same family, brother 120. Of common board, flock 60. With equal zeal, intention 50. With equal-zealed throats 116. With equal-zealed disciples 60. Yoke-fellow to him 70. I am a yoke-fellow, child 118. Yoke-fellows, disciples 152. May they be yoke-fellows 182. Yoke-fellow peoples 150. Yoke-fellow dwellings 156. Yoke-fellow cargo ships 62. Of yoke-fellow companions 220. Yoke-fellow ranks of lights 78. Gathering to her 74. They were lying down together 14. Ran upon common-woven nets 220. With a common-woven net 130. Common-woven girdle 208. Common-rowed chorus of men 120. Common-woven crown 194. Common-polity 140. With a common-spoken tale 12. With equal-strung hands 220. Fellow-traveler man 184. Fellow-traveler flock 100. Fellow-traveler shall be to you 160. With equal-affectionate bond 160. B Common-bordered land 74. With a common-drilled pit 200. With a common-sounding tale 200. From common-sounding throats 104, 198. Common-goer 140, 224. Common-goer peace 162. Common-goer of companions 220. Common-goer of yours 170. Like-minded came 42. Like-minded Pharisees 158. Of like-minded peoples 84. Grain seed 42. Having loosed the voice-filled mouth 152. Under the same roof, friend 152. Under the same roof, companions 122. Likewise, simul, 208. With a sharp tale 212. Sharp-flowered crown 194. Having heard sharply, that is, quickly 202. Having let go sharply, pro quickly 194. Of a sharp-cutting thorn 194. Of sharp-piercing nails 214. Sharp-lighted if bright-eyed 110. Attendants of the high priest 190. Coming to the net 229. Watchers 214. Watchers of the feast 138. Watchers, companions 210. Following behind accompanied 180. With a backward-stretching bond 190. With a backward-going foot 112. Walking with a backward-going foot 154. With backward-going sandals 126. Where, ubi 84, 90. Roasted feast 220. Of a mountain-dwelling desert 132. Mountain-dwelling descent 34. Upright journey 156. Defining straight justice 50. Mountain-wandering migrants 72. Let him leave the orphans 130. Leader 192, 222. That, pronom. relat. 92. That, quoniam 108, 133. Thou art not, thou not 190. Strength is not to increase 104. Of the earth-spring 30. Of the earthy chasm 128. Mountain-roaming people 54. Of the worthless world 92. In order that, while, quum 48. Fish lying on the brows 218. Aqueduct of the feast 132. Aqueduct of yours 172. Having bound with indissoluble fetters 154. In a fetter they shut up 200. Fetters of unshaken friendship 222. Having opened the mouth-gates 84. Late-coming having arrived 124. Late-coming light 82, 102. Of late-coming men 204. Late towards repentance 28. Late-appearing he was ascending 78. C Π All-begetter God 8, 56, 142. Childlike already 106. With a healing tale 22. Back-loosened voice 118. Back-loosened girdle 208. Back-loosened 194. Back-loosened bonds 94, 130. Back-fallen, rursus 210. Back-fallen 82, 108. Back-grown water 82. Back-retaken desire 64. Back-retaken bodies 52. Back-returning journey 14. On back-returning paths 44; in cups 16; with feet 194. Back-turned body 52. All-white foam 102. For the all-ruling begetter 64. For the all-ruling son 52. All-ruling form 158. All-mother life 52. Of all-shining Christ 154. With all-seeing eye 144. Public feast 74. Public day 116. Public water 102. All-receiving court 156, 196. All-receiving door 112. All-receiving house 48. Lines of all the Greeks 82. All-true 96. All-charming voice 82. Of the all-charming truth 192. All-merciful eye 68. From everywhere 220. All-nourishing age 108. You gaze upon the near-appearing 58, 144. Gazing upon a man 50; wonders 58. By the feet 126. Sideways 174. Might cross me out, rejec. 14. Remained, praeteriit 100. Diverts the mind 76. Stepping beside the path 100. Diverting crookedly 176. Diverting word 112. Of him who sits beside, inquires 170. He was measuring beside, praeteribat 152. Passing by with clusters 34. You were passed by in mind 84. Consoling ones for grief 126. Striking the tip of the cheek 114. Virgin son 202. Virgin-loving virgin 202. Having ridden beside N. 48, 202. All-appearing banquet-giver 154. Fatherly house 94. Fatherly might 116. Blowing with the spirit 13. With bubbling tale 198. Frosty hour 116. Of those digging the earth, hollows 52. Earth-nourishing water 34; or earth-trodden? 210. Edge of the feet 210. To the edge on the other side 190. On the edge he alighted 210. Beside the edge 210. Foot traveler 10. With obedient law 52; people 106; tale 104; voice 36. He was, pro he became 204. They might send into the pit 136. Grief-filled grief 170. Grief-filled of one loaf 60. Grief-filled at Martha 128; in silence 124. Grief-filled voice 122. With grief-filled moisture 196. Grief-filled myrrh 208. It was full of grace 4. Robes pro garments 194. It had been covered with a robe 218. Across the salt sea 62, river 28; Tiberis 220.
A Perimeter of a voyage 218. Very long 106, 220. Watching over the sheep 134. They wander in a pasture 112. Of a table filled to excess 60. With an excessive story 80. To the excessive disciples 172. A wanderer 100, 105; he walks to the stars 82. Is sold 134. Crown heads with leaves 94. Of an unbuilt stone 206. In a stony tunic 118. Hearing that, audiens 124. Of the inquiring servants 190. Borne upon the winds, the year 160. Borne on the shoulder 206. Where do you dwell at times 10. Why do you hasten? quo fest. 170. Fat moisture 134. To grasp, prehendere 80, 82, 118, 184, 216. Having grasped him, preh. 134. Pilate, ι and α shortened 190, and elsewhere. Selling doves 20. A life-bestowing faith 216. Of faithful nard 134. I declare, I say 128, 192. Of the pierced side 204. Full of wisdom 222. Still breathing the pain of childbirth 106. Holy Spirit 212. Wind-footed 46: he came 208. Where do I walk, Not. ad 88. Passion-stricken cares 90. Created God 96. Varied-gifted king 138. Varying age 108. Variegated man 196. Variegated tunic 62. Of the punishing judgment 170; to the punishing Paphos 196, punisher of disease 50, punisher of lights 18, they held punishing exchanges 168. Many, mul. 76, 80, 134. Of the many-tongued people 82. In a diverse story 194. To the many-wondering people 140. About the much-lamented dead 126. Very skillful teaching 78. Many-curved turning-post 100. Much-desired day 100. Closed 108; Pascha 132. Much-prayed-to God 174. Much-blaming voice 118. A much-wandering world 144. Much-wandering of life 54. Much-wandering remains 60; flocks 114. Much-wandering in the winds 64. Of the many-branched cluster 104. Of the many-stitched sandals 110. Of the many-dispersed men 92. Much-mouthed echo 84. Of the many-turned table 18. Much-signed joy 164. In many-bored robe 218. Many-turned miracles 104. Many-turned flocks 114, signs 216, drugs 142. Much-shining honor 144. Of the much-echoing house 190: table 60; in a much-echoing world 176. In some much-echoing story 114. Wide-reaching hall 112. B Wide-reaching table 154. Herald of sin 152. Guide of the way 30. By the guides of God 22. Deep-sea hunt 10, 216. Neighboring the purple rock 62. When he walks 21. Expecting from one another 56. Many-coiled age 98. Many-coiled track 90. Much-housed courtyard 156. Many-toothed iron 204. Prone, leaning 38. We shall cut, fut. temp. 58. Fore-announcing song 204. Fore-announcing the day of the feast 204. Fore-announcing oracles 170. Fore-announcing, opening the lips 162. Protecting the antagonist 178. In the sheep-pasture watered 40, 83, he prefers 144. Projecting, right-hand 102. Projecting eyes 102. They sent me to reach 80. Fore-telling, praedixi 170. Prophesying, prædicens 82. Driving forth, emittebant 82. Free, gratis 168. He challenges to shepherd 112. A forerunner walks 112. Forerunner of light 2. A preceding voice 144. Leading man of the army 186, 206. Before the companions, coram 216. Day before the Sabbath 198. I shall embrace this one with kinship of like-love 160. You will embrace me with a word 174. Having taken me, he is embraced 150. Toward you, why does this happen 224. He spoke beforehand 172. A pre-empting tongue 150. May they purify the body 154; P. ms. may they enlighten, Ion. more. Pre-named from 102. Judging ahead of time 26. Preceding honor 144. He reveals pre-destined oracles 172. First step of sacred 216. First-angel man 4. First-throned council 152. First-throned oracle 142, 150. First-throned herald 28. First-sown Abram 94, 98. Winged army, ang. 24. Folds of the temple 100. Bottom of a fig tree 14. Gatekeeper opens 112. To the gatekeeping attendant 186. They built high with foundations 49. Pyre 218. Fire-eyed seasons 120. Wise flocks of sheep 229. Flocks of the herd 116. P enclitic P. ms. 80, 90; al non item 74. Rod, 21, 22; rod 212. Rod of the King 64; Rabbi 212. With a silent rod, redo 220. Of the begetter 94. With a man-breaking voice 184. C Salem of the deep-waves 28. Showing in appearances, venerationem 148. His works 76. It shone with rays 2, it shone starry 62; it shone with light 184. With a signaling voice 8, 16, 50, 188. Signs, miracula 132, 216. They had strength, poterant 218. Strength exists to cross 82; strength exists, possibile est, 90. He was weak to accomplish 128. With a silent foot 206. With silent feet 100. From iron-bearing nails 198. Of iron-bearing men 184. With iron bond 200. Siloam spring 102, P. ms. later in the place Siloam. Covering of hidden shame 218. Scepter-bearing Jesus 200. Shadow-like to the earth 208. With a crooked-minded counsel 96. Watch, speculare 12, temp. imperf. 62. They were watching one another 152. Of a desolate height 26. Wiping away the filth of the heart 28. Having mixed pro wiping, P. ms. 102. Handkerchief, Syr. ex Latin. 150, 208. Casting sparks 54. Standing track 126. To groan or to sigh 210. They circled in a crown 18. Spread out in a crown 14. Crown-bearing fisherman 42. Spotted doves on the limbs 16. Row of fruits 42. Rows of men 92. Ships standing in rows 62. In rows 224. Leaning 60. Mouth of the lake 216. He loathed me 166, 16'. They shook with a blow 110. In an immortal whirl 146; of dust 130, of time 54. Kin by transgressions 110. He found his kin 10. I am a yoke-fellow 158. Yoke-fellow to the people 60. Yoke-fellow for one another the tunics 208. Symbols of lordship 194. Symbols of victory 202. They stood mixed 188. Mixed dwelling-dwellers 80. Of mixed peoples 138. Growing together with me 102, 164. Of a joined hand 60. Joined swarm 60. Joined to the cross 196. I am of joint nature 858. To the gathered disciples 122. Fellow-worker is God 22, 222. My fellow-work, Not. ad 90. Joined together in one form 158. Shining together with 72. Together it will shine 146. Fellow-diner at the table 150. They locked together the gate 206. They locked together the tracks 212. Fellow-traveler 218, to a companion 10, with the student 188. Fellow-traveler of the world 172. Being a fellow-traveler to the student 208. Fellow-dweller of the lights 170. Joined companions 18; companions 202; to us 183. Joined knees 58. Synthesis, pactum 106.
A
INDEX TO NONNUS' PARAPHRASE
of the table, unsated 220. With trembling ears 198. Rolling children 216. Rolling point 100. Round circle 102. Wasting away with cares 176. Tomb from the rock 206. Tomb of the tear-loving 208. Strange type 200.
Y Water-living, fish-catching 216. Water-faring, fish-catching 60. Son 44. Son 46, 52. Aged son 154. Dinner-bearing life 58. Life-bearing son 64, 94. Life-bearing fate 190. Shield-bearing men 196. Life-carrying of Tochas 52. Better hope 14. Having reached Simon 208. Treading with reaching foot 120. Pestilent demon 180. Of our voice 114. In the table-loving bedchamber 14. Of table-loving weddings 46. He loved the world 26. The student loved 202. Merchant-loving swarm 18. Student who loves to hear 206. Lover of the student 186. Tear-loving Mary 126, 202, 208. Mocking army 194. Fond orgies 20. Treasure-loving sting 146. Hospitality-loving women 120. Virgin-loving mother 202. Father-loving King 40. Inquiry-loving for the world 188; for the B story 222. Inquiry-loving voice 64, 92, 102, 103. Wealth-loving table 18. Wrath-loving feast 58. Affectionate King 152. Affectionate of the table 146. Affectionate in law 120. Much-cut of the [...-cut] 156. Cloak-loving woolen garment 202. Christ-loving Galileans 44. I bring love to you 222. In my love, amori erga me 16. In the fiery vapor of fire 184. He reddened with a lash 194. Bloody hour 80. Wandering silence 126. Wandering of a ship 218. Of pasture brine 220. Carrier, gestatoris 138. Living bearer 206. Bearer of a bed 50. Bearers of a garment 202. Carried on the shoulder 206. Consider, cogitatis 132. Of mind-spinning hour 140. Walking with a guarding foot 206. Escape for the corpse 208. Water-producing 34, and superscript in P. water-producing C (Nature-producing sound, the same in P. 136). Fragrant plantation 182. Tending for a man 210. Plantation of that 182. Seed-bearing Abraham 94. Seed-bearing age 100. In a den of silence, note 144. He broke forth a voice 64. Deceitful thieves 112.
X You need of the story 220. Of earth-born birth 118; of the river 34; of men 144; of works 106. On a stony bed 206; stone-like 200. Of the torrent gate 210. Of the torrent river 182. With torrent-like missiles 118. Grace to the Begetter giving 64; stretching 60. Paying grace, mortals 80. He rejoices in joy 50. Loosed in joy 195. D
941 χατέεις ἵνα τίς σε ἐρεείνῃ 176. χατέει ὕδατος 148. χατέουσιν ὀπωπῆς 214; θερισμοῦ 40. χατέων βορῆς 216. χατίζω νουσοκόμοιο 48. χερὶ βάψας 152. χερμάδι λύσση 118. χιτῶνας τοὺς ἀπέθηκε 146. χοὺς ἀνδρογόνοιο 102. χοροστάδος ἑορτῆς 82. χραισμήτορα κόσμου 30. χρέος εἶχεν, opus habet; χρέος Ouly, necesse est; 30, 36. χρέος ἐστὶ τοκήων, opus est p. 106. χρέος πέλει ἔργα τελέσσαι 100. χρησμήτορα κόσμου 160; φωτῶν 26. χρησμήτορι μύθῳ 80. Χριστὸς, ὁ Μεσσίας 58. χυτῆς ψαμάθοιο 206. χέων αὐδήν 88. χιονέους σπινθῆρας 210. χιονωτὴν φύσιν 44. πέλει χρέος ὡς κεν ἐγείρω 114. χιονώδεας ὀθόνας 208. 942 ψευδαλέοι γνωτοί 74. ψευδήμονος ἐκ γενετῆρος 96. ψευδήμονι κλήσει 194; μύθῳ 190, 198; φωνῇ 22. ψευδώνυμος ἀνήρ 56. ψυχοσσόον ὕδωρ 82. ψυχοστόλον ἠχώ 138. ὠδίνοντες φόβον 106. ᾠξεν ὀπωπάς 108. ὧνον ὀλέθρου δέγμενος 146. ὤρεγε πᾶσιν ἐδωδήν 60. ὥριος χρόνος ἔλθῃ 170. ὡς pro οὕτως, sic 164, 166. ὥς κεν ὦσι, ut sint 182. ψαμαθώδεϊ θῆκε χαμεύνῃ 208.
DANIEL HEINSIUS' SACRED ARISTARCHUS, OR EXERCISES ON NONNUS' METAPHRASE OF JOHN
CAPUT I.
A 1-3. Judicatrix, sive vera critice, quæ et qualis. Eam passim exercuisse Aristotelem. De utroque Nonni opere. Ac primo, de Dionysiacis seu Bacchicis. Bacchi historia cum universa ejus gente e Phænicia deducta: quod ex vocum vestigiis apparet. Nonnum in Oriente natum, eorum quæ ad Orientem spectant ignarum fuisse. A Cadmo rerum ac scientiarum in Græcia origo. Ejus in Bœotiam adventus, et in ea mera Orientis nomina, quemadmodum auctoris primi. Id quo pacto etiam Hebræis usurpatum. Bacchi nomen e Phœnicia. Unde desumptum. Ululare et ὀλολύζειν in sacris Bacchitis, εὐοῖ et evohe Hebræorum voces. A quibus εὐάζειν et Evan. Bacchus lacrymosus Deus. Tragoedia poema lacrymosum, et hinc Baccho consecrata. Adonis δακρυότιμος. Bacchus discerptus, ac cum lacrymis quæsitus. Βάκχος, κλαυθμός. Eleleus vox Hebræa. Διόνυσος unde. Origo ejus Nonno ignota. Bacchus domitor Indorum, id quoque unde. B Saba vox ambigua. Saba de ebrietate et Indis. Sabasius. Iacchus Atticorum mysticus. Ejus nomen unde. Attici a Cadmo atque Oriente oriundi. Nomen iis unde. Iach a Judæis in mensa celebratus. Eorum preces. Hallela iach. Ἐλελεῦ, ἴακχε. Natus e femore Bacchus, et unde. Femur, pars obscena Hebræis. Ἐξελθεῖν ἐκ τοῦ μηροῦ. Εἰραφιώτης. Semele unde. Semel vox Hebræa. Semala et Semal. Sammael, malus dæmon. Arma Bacchi ex Oriente. Thyrsus unde. Thirza. Bacchi sacerdotes ex Oriente. Mimallonides unde. Chaldæam origine eam vocem. Thyades unde. Thea sive theas. Bassarides. Bassareus, et unde. Satyri unde. Maron unde. Pytho unde. Stultissima de ea Græculorum nænia. Pethen quid. Nachas. Divinationes ex serpentibus. Serpentes οἰωνοί. Antiquis, et, præ cæteris, Phœnicibus culti. Boreas. Lævum ejus numen. Aquilo et septentrio quid Hebræis denotarit. Βορεασμοί Græcorum. Βόρρας Hellenistarum. Boreach. Boriach. Δράκων ἀποστάτης. Calais, et unde. Draco arcticus. Ascra, patria Hesiodi, et unde. Aschera. Abominanda lucorum superstitio. Arborum cultus. Hilana Syrorum Oni et haoni. C Aonia. Musa. Musar. Lex in monte lata. Harmonia. Cabiri. Camiri. Cadmelus, Casmilus, Camiltus. Ἀθηνᾶ. De ejus origine Nonni ac Græcorum deliria. Chaldæorum Hatthenau. Iris Nonno in India nata. Græcorum de origine illius næniæ. Ab ἐλπίδι deducta. Iris unde; εἴρη Hellenistarum. Hir Chaldæorum. Hir ἄγγελος. Ἐγρήγοροι ἄγγελοι Clementi. Venus Libani, et unde ita dicta. Ὑπὸ Ἀφροδίτη. Unde Ἀναδυομένη. Venus unde. Ἔν quid Hellenistis. Fen et Ven. Adonis, comes Veneris quare et quis. Adon, ἑοῦ. Venus σύνδρομος planeta solis. Noga. Cinyra. Myrrha. Proteus quis. Dionysiacorum dispositio. De ea disputatum. Actionum, quæ in epico poemate a poeta describuntur, divisio. Odyssea, quod ad dispositionis artificium, Iliadi prælata. Et quare. Πλατυσμοῦ μηχαναί. Διονυσιακά inscriptio. Aliud πράξεις et πράγματα. Inscriptionum ratio antiquis usitata.
Inter cæteros scriptores, quos vel celebres accepit, vel ad aliquam celebritatem nostra hæc evexit ætas, sine dubio et Nonnus est. In cujus Bacchicis tum emendandis, tum Latine explicandis, cum non pœnitendam, quòd testantur multi, operam jam olim Utenhovius, patricius Gandensis, posuisset, tandem ea magno cum favore eruditorum ac applausu, Falckenburgius in lucem dedit. Nam Metaphrasis, de qua hic agimus, jam pridem factum est, cum eruditis se probavit. Porro, cum in omnium auctorum lectione, ut, quis scopum assecutus sit, quis item, in dicendo ac interpretatione, sive mentis suæ, quæ est eloquentia ac emendata ratio dicendi, sive alterius quem explicandum sumpsit, minus assecutus sit quod debuit, compertum quisque habeat, haud parum interesse ad solidam scientiam ac eruditionem videatur; idem alios docere posse, erecti est ingenii ac artis. Critices videlicet unius opus, non illius, quæ hac tempestate celebratur, sed quam inter veteres præ cunctis Aristoteles tractavit; qui in hoc præclarum studium ac vere heroicum, cum passim ubicunque de disciplinis agit, tum præsertim in libello De poetica, cujus sola jam fragmenta exstant, omnes animi intendit nervos. Quæ hoc tempore, eo diligentièr
Awe had to recall with care and labor, how much more prompt this was for those who had more surviving authors than we do today, and who applied themselves to this matter with greater talent and learning. But there was no one who would be offended by this study, the end of which was considered to be either utility or truth. Indeed, just as those who either despise the ancients or do not even touch them are foolish or unskilled: so I consider those who hold everyone in the same place, or who admire everything in some one person or think everything is to be imitated, worthy of pity. The rest not only do not deserve well of posterity, but also impose laws on others. If they attain these, with the fruit of posterity, they either imitate the ancients or surpass them in judgment and care. I, indeed, although I think as much is owed to all the ancients as is deservedly owed to those who have preceded us in all learning with such success, nevertheless think that those who examine the writings of antiquity with judgment, who observe what is worthy of praise and what is to be avoided in them, deserve far better of studies, not only of this age, but of all posterity; than those who most happily emend infinite places in an ancient writer. For the norm of living and knowing 6 is judgment and the supreme law. The more keenly anyone possesses this on earth, the more he binds others, especially those who, although they excel others, are destitute of this. But our writer, when he published his writings, formed and arranged one of them as he wished; to the other he did not give arrangement, but he found it.
Before we deal with the sacred work, which is our purpose here, we have judged that certain things should be noted here in the former, which most excellent men have already diligently examined. For the work of the Bacchics itself, although it may seem to be fabulous, as it is, it can hardly be said how much learning from antiquity, and especially from the East, this subject admits; since in it he also described the arrival of Cadmus into Greece for the first time; from whom all human and divine things, language itself equally and the disciplines, which the Greeks are not accustomed to rightly claim for themselves, received their origin and birth. That, therefore, is to be deplored, that a man originating from the East, when he undertook history and those things which many of the Greek race had treated in such a way that they had given us hardly anything but fables and darkness, described them in such a way that he seems not to have touched even lightly upon the origin and truth, which had to be sought from the East alone, where all these things were born. For no one should doubt that the whole fable of Bacchus, with his entire race, C was brought from Phoenicia; no one should doubt that the traces and vestiges of the same language have remained everywhere in the very words themselves. About which, the Greeks could not even dream of anything, because they were ignorant of it. Cadmus, indeed, from whom they received their words along with their sacred rites, some have made a Jew, others a Canaanite. Just as Canaanite, if taken more narrowly, is the same as Phoenician, and sometimes is the same as Judean. Where, indeed, the Canaanites are placed by the Hebrews, the Phoenicians by the Greeks. D That Cadmus came to Boeotia first, there is no one who does not know, from whom almost all the names of places either preserved their origin or can easily be recalled to it by one who is skilled. For no one can doubt about him who is not ignorant of what Cedem and Cadmon are: about which the learned [must be consulted]. For effort must be given; lest we do here what has already been done. I will say this, that it seems likely that the Greeks first used the word Cadmus in the way that, when they speak of an uncertain man, they are accustomed to use their 'deiva', the Hebrews their 'Ploni Almoni', which the Hellenists called 'phemoni'. Just as the Hebrews generally use 'to Cadmoni' when they doubt about an author. Indeed, just as the Greeks, and Theocritus especially, when he brings in a proverb, 'As the wise man said', said it with wonderful sweetness, so they, 'As the proverb of the ancient says', when his name is kept silent, 'kaasher yomar mashal ha-kadmoni', 'As the ancient said the proverb'. For by the same A name they also call the inventor and author of individual things. Bacchus himself, there is no doubt, was named from 'buca', which is to howl or lament. Just as the Latins are also accustomed to use the same word for the Bacchantes. Virgil, Aeneid vii: But others fill the ether with trembling howls, And carry vine-clad spears, girded with skins. As also of wailing. The same: She wails, and hides her daughter in the leafy mountains. Just as the Greeks [use] 'to ololuzein' about the same. Whence Bacchus himself in Euripides' Bacchantes, And first I howled for Thebes of this Greek land, Having fastened a fawn-skin to my skin
8 he says he first filled Thebes with howls. And that the insane Bacchantes gave forth tearful voices, the acclamation customary to them, 'Euoi', or 'Evohe', proves. Which, indeed, is not derived from 'eu', 'the kalos' (the good), as those who are ignorant of all other languages wish, but from the same Hebrew word 'heestati'. For they were not thinking that 'Eboi' is the Hebrew 'oy', that is, 'avoi' or 'evoi'. Whence they also derived both 'Eboi' and 'aiboi', which are the acclamations of those who mourn. Whence 'euazein', 'Evan', and what is everywhere obvious in our B 'Epos'. With which this 'rhetoseidion' of the Kabbalists wonderfully agrees, who observe that the letters 'rini', the numbers with the word 'hoi', which denotes a howl, produce the same. To which they add, ten and four times, where the invention of wine is treated, this syllable is repeated. Which to the Hebrews denotes the same as 'va' to the Romans; because of the howl, they say, and the inconveniences which follow wine. Who is Bacchus or Osiris, a truly tearful God. To whom the Greeks also inscribe mournful things. Who, with all their wisdom, cannot teach us the reasons for those things which they themselves did. As when they consecrated a tragic poem to their Bacchus. Just as a tearful poem, tragedy is called by Flaccus: That you may watch more closely the tearful poems of Puppius. And who doubts, who has ever examined or consulted the ancient authors, that Osiris is the same as Bacchus? Whom they also made the same as Adonis: who is not without cause called 'dakruotimos' (honored with tears) by Orpheus; that is, Bacchus. For that Osiris is indeed no other than Bacchus, there is not even one among the Greeks who does not confess it. Among others, especially our own, who not rarely confuses the sacred rites and mysteries of both, who calls Osiris C the Bacchus of the Egyptians; who explicitly notes that Cadmus first of all celebrated the sacred rites of Osiris, the Bacchus of the Egyptians: and of the Egyptian Dionysus Showing the orgies of Osiris, the bearer of 'Eua'. Which, as being accustomed to be celebrated with howling and weeping, no beginner is ignorant of. For that is known: And whom you, weeping, testify is the man Osiris. Just as they expressed the name of Osiris in turn, when they called this very Bacchus 'Aithopa', just as Anacreon [called] 'Aithiopaida'. But also that Bacchus was torn to pieces by the Titans and sought with tears, there is no one who does not mention; before all, however, our own. And hence that immense mourning and wailing, about which Firmicus: Mourn Liber, mourn Proserpina, mourn Alyn, mourn Osiris, but without insult to our dignity. Eusebius reports in the theology of the Phoenicians that the most ancient among them worshipped the most useful fruits of the earth as gods; and when they failed, which happens at a certain time of the year, they followed them with tears and wailing: 'Eleon de kai oikton kai klauthmon, blastemati te apionti kathieron' (They consecrated pity and compassion and weeping to the departing sprout). Such a 'klauthmon' D the Phoenicians themselves in their own language called 'Bacchus'. About which name, indeed, there is no reason for us to dispute, since Hesychius, in whom the learning not only of all Greece, but in part also of the East, lies concluded, observes that it is a Phoenician word, denoting a howl or wailing: 'Bacchus'...
A crying, say the Phoenicians. The most ancient Hebrew writings which exist, namely the Sacred Scriptures, confirm this as well. In Ezekiel, women are indeed said to be celebrating Thammuz or Adonis (whom the Greeks wish to be the same as Bacchus), *mebaccoth*, from *baca*, that is to say, "bacchantes" or "those performing Bacchic rites." From this it is clear that these rites, even in the East, were celebrated primarily and especially by women. As is the case with *Euoi*, so *Eleleu* confirms this: a term which the tragedians, especially Aeschylus in his extant *Prometheus*, did not use any less. For this very reason, this god was also called by them Eleleus. As in that passage: "And Nyctilius, and Eleleus the sire, and Iacchus and Evan." Wherefore, even in this regard, they should not have strayed so absurdly. For *eleleu*—which they did not see—is the Hebrew *helilu*. That is: "wail." And in the same sense, the prophets also used it everywhere. But as for Dionysus himself, whose name he inscribed on his work, I believe he knew as little about where it was derived as the ignorant. Regarding him, one can hardly say what and how nonsensical things the Greeks have imagined. He himself derives it from a Sicilian term: "Calling Dionysus; since with his foot he raises a burden, / Either limping, the son of Cronus with weighed-down thigh: / Nysos, because in the Syracusan tongue he is heard as 'lame'." As if *Dionysos* were so called from *nysos*, which is 'lame,' because Jupiter limped when he was pregnant with him. And this is the man—if it pleases the gods—who sometimes called Greece mendacious and fabulous. Just as no one is unaware that it was customary among the ancients, and especially among the Greeks, to consider all heroes to be born of some god, primarily Jupiter (whence they called Castor and his brother, excellently, *Dios kouroi*, and gradually in one word *Dioskouroi*), so there is no doubt that they called this person—whoever he was—a hero, *Dios huios* ("son of Zeus"), and then by a single word *Diosysos* (Dionysus), eventually—as we often see happen in such things—with letters changed or added in the pronunciation. For just as it is clearly noted by Theophilus 11 in his *To Autolycus*, that families drew their origin from the gods of the ancients (for, as those who were *Heracleidae* from Hercules, who *Apollonidae* and *Apollonii* from Apollo, who, he says, *Poseidonii* from Neptune, who *Dioi* and *Diogeneis* from Jupiter), so those who were sprung from Jupiter, *Dios huioi* ("sons of Zeus"), which gradually became *Dionysoi*, were so called. C Whence so many are commemorated by Cicero and others by this name. And hence so many fables and trifles about Nysa, which they placed in India, for no other reason than that, as fable usually drags in fable, they understood him to have lived in India, and, based on the common opinion of Greece (which our author has pursued in so many books), to have conquered it with singular valor. Which, like other things unknown to the Greeks, has its origin in the East. *Saba*, that is *NBS*, is said by the Hebrews (as the holy elders interpret this word) to mean "to gorge oneself on wine": whence *sobe*, *NBS*, "a terminally drunk person." *Saba* again, or *Seba*, that is *ND*, is said by the Hebrews and Punics to be the one who first conquered the region of India. So that "vanquisher of the Indians" and "drunkard," the same person, are one in word and origin. From both, the little Greeks fashioned *Sabasios* (which is the name for Bacchus among them). And hence that which, as our author does, the remaining authors report about the battles in India and the conquest of that region. Now the mystical Iacchus, of whom our author says so much, was first received by the Attics from the Boeotians: who themselves also draw their name from the Hebrews, to whom *hattikim* (as is known, they prided themselves most on this) were called the ancients. For to the divine name, as a most learned man correctly observed recently, they added nothing but the termination *Jah* or *Iach* used by the Hebrews. In which the devil delighted, who everywhere translated this name or invaded it himself. Moreover, that this god was celebrated at banquets—to add what is most important 12—there is no reason for anyone to doubt. But the Jews, as to their God, whom they do not utter by the common name, so they say *Jah* or *Iach*, as if he were the discoverer of wine, and celebrate this form even at this time at all tables D *Baruch attah Yahweh Eloheinu Melek Ha-olam...* "Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the world, Creator of the fruit of the vine." To which the ancients undoubtedly added the very well-known *hymnion*, *hallelu iah*. Which Justin, or whoever is the author of the booklet that is now inscribed *Orthodox Questions and Answers*, after seriously inquiring what *allelouia* might mean, finally explains: "With a song, praise the Being." From this *hallelu iach*, the enemy of the human race seems to have translated his own *eleleu, iachye* among the Greeks, into contempt of the divine name: which they used everywhere in the celebration of this god, and especially when drunk. Regarding which, already at length above. For they used this acclamation in a different way. Just as at this time the Jews, whenever they are drinking heavily, do not sing it—as is clear from certain formulas—that *hallelu iah* of theirs, more than at Passover. Whence also this festival is called from merriment, by a witty change, *ND*: just as also among our author elsewhere in the Gospel, the Passover is called *euazein*. And the very word of which we speak, in *Piel*, namely *hillel*, is used by the Sacred Scriptures concerning Bacchic choirs, that is, of those who through wantonness trampled grapes. The passage is illustrious, Jud. 9: 27: *And they went into the field, and gathered their vineyards, and trod them, and made dances.* Where they are called "those making the dances." Whence in the Bacchic rites and in comedy, which is sacred to him, [they are called] *the choirs*. For the Athenians retained almost all the traces of ancient antiquity. 13 It follows in the same place: *And they entered into the house of their god, and ate and drank, and cursed Abimelech.* Where the proper name of that god and the curses and insults of the comedies are placed. Daniel the prophet teaches that even the Chaldeans translated that *hallelu iach* to their own gods at banquets. *They drank wine and praised the gods—the golden ones*, where *‘elāhayā’* is in the Chaldee, which is placed by the Chaldeans instead of *hallelu iach*, even in the Psalms. The Greeks hand down that this child was born from the thigh. And what absurdities have they not also imagined about this! Even our author, who derived the beginning of his own work from these. But those who have greeted the Orient know that the word *yarek*, that is, "thigh," is used for the pudendum of a man as well as a woman. And indeed of a man, as when (for there are almost infinite places) the posterity of Jacob is said to have gone forth from his thigh, Gen. xlvi, 26; Exod. i, 5. Where at one time the Hellenists rendered it, *And the souls that came out of Jacob*, and at another, *those that came out of his thighs*. But for a woman, as when that part is meant, less apt for conception, *meros diapteptokos* is said by them, Num. v, 21. In the way that *diapherein* is used in obscene contexts among the Greeks, although the word in itself is honest. And who does not know the passage: *The scepter shall not depart from Judah, and the leader from his thighs?* And Procopius had perceived something such as this when he noted, *For the thigh signifies the seed*. And that God is called by that name; for to proceed from someone's thigh is to be a son of someone, or begotten of him. As concerning Gideon, to whom very many sons are said to have belonged: *Those going forth from his thighs, because he had many wives*, the Hellenists say. And the Sibyl, whose fragment Theophilus commemorates *To Autolycus*: *But if he is created entirely and decays, God cannot be formed from the thighs and womb of a man.* Where the thigh is in a man, what is the womb in a woman. Because they were ignorant of this, they wittily contrived the name *Elephatiou* and similar things, as if, so that he might be born from Jupiter, he had to be sewn into his thigh. In the parent of that one, Semele, who does not immediately see the word *Semel*? Which is the name of both the idol and the demon in the East, even
known to the prophets. But, that we may now proceed to instruct the Greeks in their own school, it is not to be doubted that the wise men of the East, when they observed a certain wonderful and exceptional utility in wine, rightly called it a gift of God; which is termed by them *semal*, or *zeon*, but among the Greeks, Zeus or Zēn, being called by the same word. Hence, they also called him the son of that god. Yet they attributed the fruits which it sometimes produces, and its abuse, to a god of the left hand and the sinister. Indeed, *semala*, or *semal*, is said by the Chaldeans and Syrians [to mean] left. Whence the deity of the left, whom the Greek Christians called the devil, the Chaldeans call Sammael, a term that later interpreters also use everywhere. Bacchus also has his arms from the same East. For the thyrsus is manifestly *thirza*. This word denotes a pine tree, which they used to clothe with vine-leaves and iron. Whence Hesychius, a grammarian of wonderful and profound learning, says: "Thyrsoi, branches, torches, lamps." For out of the pine tree, excellent lamps and torches were made. Wherefore they also assigned to Bacchus the pine, that is, *peukēn*. Euripides, in the *Bacchantes*:
The Bacchic one, holding The pine-fire torch, Springs from the reed bundle, Driving on the wanderers with running and dances, Leaping with shouts, Tossing his delicate hair into the ether. [15] You will see him also on the Delphic rocks Leaping with the pine-bearing spear-carrying band.
From the same source he has the priests: whom, when the Greeks called Mimallonides, and wished them to be said to be *apo tou mallou*, they produced no less a primary [derivation] against themselves and their own testimony. For in the first [syllable] of the word there is a *sheva*, not a *chirek*. But that is short—nay, the shortest of all, if it should be so spoken—it is a vowel. Indeed, B *memallelin*, from a noisy sound, the Chaldeans call talkative and garrulous [men]. *Memallelon* [is used] regarding women; which word also denotes clamour. Whence "Mimallonides" comes from the word or from the clamours. To omit the word "Thyads," which straightway reveals its origin: for *theas*, or *thyas*, denotes to wander or to err. Whence also Euripides used the word for Bacchic priests as a literal translation. What of the fact that it is also used regarding the drunken? As when Isaiah said [Hebrew text]. Where the Hellenists [say]: "For these are led astray by wine. They have wandered by reason of strong drink; priest and prophet have staggered by reason of wine; they have been swallowed up by the drunkenness of strong drink; they have wandered." The Targum [says]: "They have erred by *yain*," that is, old wine; and in Amos, chapter 11, verse 12, where the Hellenists have: "But you gave the sanctified ones wine to drink," the Chaldeans use this word. Hence *thui*, which the Syrians use for error. Therefore, the Thyads were those whom the Greeks spoke of: who, driven by wine or fury, wandered about. Which the poet expressed:
As one believes them to have touched with the vine-bearing two-horned spear, Wherever frenzy drove, thither she went.
What of the fact that Pausanias hints that this word also, first in Boeotia, like the rest, originated from Cadmus? Who, when he speaks of Delphi, [says]: "But the people of Delphi desire [a report that] a native man, Castalius, and his daughter Thuia were born, and that Thuia was the first to act as priestess to Dionysus and to celebrate the orgies for the god. And from her, later, all those who become frenzied for Dionysus are called Thyads by men." Castalio says that Thyam was his wife: who first instituted the rites of Bacchus, and that his priestesses were called Thyads from her. For in their myths, the Greeks everywhere find, as we have often said, a refuge for their ignorance. That truly teaches that the word was born there. For also *thyein*, regarding fury, [comes] from the same source. Just as perhaps also regarding the rites. Whence also the Cyprians, a part once of Syria, called *thya*, according to Hesychius, *apopata*. And *anarpax*, [miswritten] there in the text, is the *hierosylos*, the temple-robber.
A They also called the same priestesses Bassarides. Which grammarians deduce from Lydia or Thrace. Those I do not now refute. I will say this: they seemed to be so called most simply from that word from which the god himself is. Who is called Bassareus by Flaccus and others, which is known. And *Bassareus* is Dionysus, the *euangelos* Dionysus, because he announced most abundant harvests and felicity. As from *baschar* is *basser*. Whence among the Targumists [is] *bassaru*; which, especially in the minor prophets, occurs so often, *basar*, that is, "bring good tidings," or "evangelize," and, like acclamations, it is accustomed for the most part to be repeated or doubled. But it is known what is said in the sacred rites: "Euphemeite, pas ho laos"—"Speak good words, all the people." And so, as from *helilu* (from which they made *Eleleu* and from it the name of the god *Eleleus*, of which before), which is of the same form, so from *bassarn*, [comes] *Bassareus*. Whence the appeal to the god himself, in Flaccus:
I shall not shake you, candid Bassareus, Against your will.
Where it is not for us to recount what the grammarians babble. For what can they do but appeal to unknown tongues, who have learned neither these nor any other save their own? The Satyrs, the Bacchic companions, were without doubt named from *satir*, which has already been observed by others, that is, "from lurking," because they lay hidden in caves and groves like wild beasts.
It is known from Diodorus—whom Eusebius, not without cause, called the most learned of the Greeks—and others, that men of lofty stature, and giants, accompanied Bacchus. Whence *Maro* seems to have been named: who is not only a companion of Bacchus, but is also placed by our [authority] among the first companions of the expedition, among the sons of that god, as in Euripides' *Bacchantes*. But everywhere, when they are customarily inflated by Bacchic fury, he [the poet] blusters with words that are turgid and great. Therefore, either from these or from a lofty body, *Marom*, and with the element changed, as is the custom of the Greeks, he was called Maron. Just as this word is used by Moses in the book of Deuteronomy regarding men of lofty stature, and who approached very close to the giants, or the Enacim: to whom also *rmm* is called lofty stature. Where you have that word from which *Maron* [is derived]. Let no one wonder that our [author] wishes him to be sprung from the blood of the Titans. For so it is in book XIX:
Nor did he, as an old man, bring the Titanic blood.
For the same word is used more than once by the royal Poet [David] concerning God, who is said to be *Marom* there from another loftiness. For the devil accomplished nothing else in these matters than to transfer the names of God to his own initiates in mockery. Which we constantly observe in these things. Just as *maran*, or *moran*, is among the Syrians *ho kyrios* [the Lord], by which name, for the sake of honor, the priests were also called. First of all Boeotia, just as our [author] observes with the rest, is thought to have been entered by Cadmus. Whence also he notes that he went straight to Python, in order to approach the oracle of Apollo. Concerning whose name, as of the others, how many, how intolerable are the things the Greeks comment upon! For among them there are some D who [derive it] from *pynthanesthai*, that is, consultation, and there are those who [say] *pythesthai* from him [the serpent] who, having been there, was destroyed by Apollo—that is, because the serpent was destroyed there by Apollo and rotted. Which, perhaps, are even more foul than that foul serpent. For with less effort they could have deduced it from *Pythōn* itself. Except that they saw it was easy for them to "stick in the mud" here also. For if the place is from Python, whence is *Pytho*, and from which is the name for the place? But *pethen* is called by the Hebrews a species of serpent. From this word *pethen*, that is, *Python* the serpent, and from this *Python*, comes *Pytho* the place. And Elias hallucinates festively elsewhere, who observes that *to pytho* (for so it is written) is an Italian word; for the masters of the Rabbis use the Greek word. Furthermore, it is known that the Hebrews once instituted many divinations and auguries from serpents, the most crafty animal on earth. Whence *niches* or *nachas*, which denotes in the sacred texts both the serpent and to divine or to augur, by the same letters. Which is not poorly [observed].
A observed, the Greeks translate *oionizesthai* [to practice augury]—those who refer to serpents themselves as *oionous* [augural birds/signs]. The abyss of ancient grammatical erudition, Hesychius, says: "Oionos, a serpent; for they are accustomed to keep serpents for the sake of divination, which they also called *oionoi*." Just as the Romans include the serpent among their pedestrian auspices, so, clearly, did the Hebrews—using the same word *nechasin*—refer to both serpents and auguries (literally *oionous*). Primary, indeed, is the one who used this word in the most ancient author, Moses: Laban the Syrian, a most ancient idolater, as is apparent from his idols, or *theraphim*. The first, who transplanted this from the East, like other things, is Homer, in whose second book of the *Iliad* this type of divination is used, as the most ancient augur confirms the leader of the Greeks regarding the sum of the matter and the destruction of Ilium. For he is brought in—*pachon epi nota daphoinos* [crawling upon his back, blood-red]—which is a true description of *nachash*: for they wanted it to be called so from the marks that are on the backs of serpents, from which, among other things, they used to take the divinations and auguries of that animal.
B There is no doubt that the Pythian Apollo—that is, that filthy spirit whom the Hebrews call *Ob* and *Abaddon*, and the Hellenists translate literally as *Apollona* and others as *Apollona*—was first worshipped in Greece under this form, by which he once brought misery to the human race. Just as Pherecydes the Syrian—who, according to Eusebius, had written a book on this theology—called the prince of evil demons *Ophioneus*. Whence they also consecrated serpents to Apollo, Minerva, Aesculapius, and others. And to Apollo, especially in that temple where he mocked the credulity of men with oracles. As if from this, the guest of the ancient serpent and instrument of fraud, the knowledge of good and evil might be sought—that which was persuaded to the first parents of our race: a belief sought in antiquity even by princes and kings for the sake of the greatest happiness or glory, notably by Alexander the Great, Maximinus, Commodus, Severus, Aurelian, and others. To this also pertains the religion and efficacy of the Psylli and the Marsi.
But before everything else, the most wicked and truly detestable worship and opinion of the Ophites. But beyond the others, the Phoenicians, whose leader Cadmus contributed much to the worship of serpents, as Eusebius shows first in *De Praeparatione Evangelii*: "Now Taautus was the first to deify the nature of the dragon and of serpents; and after him in turn the Phoenicians and the Egyptians." And after he gave the reason for this matter: "But the Phoenicians themselves call it a good demon." C For it revolved into itself and thus represented eternity. Whence, by the same witness, the Egyptians say *kneph*: "Likewise the Egyptians also name it *kneph*." Just as for the Arabs, *canaf* means "to revolve," or to go around. He adds that they consecrated them in temples, and that the Carthaginians paid vows and performed sacred rites to it. Which in that place was undoubtedly done by Cadmus. Nor is there any other cause why they use the dragon, by whose name, as the most known, they refer to the species of serpent, and especially why, as is noted in Pausanias in the *Eliaca*, they joined the tails of serpents in place of feet. D For it is known that every evil, and the devil in particular, is designated by the Hebrews by "the north" or the "settentrione" [the North]; just as it was also for the Greeks among the *scaevi* [left-handed/ill-omened] gods, or "left" ones. Whence the *Boreasmoi*—sacred rites by which they averted his left-handed divinity. Hesychius says: "Boreasmoi, thus at Athens those who conduct feasts and sacrifices to Boreas that the south winds might blow; they were called *boreasmoi*." For it is clear concerning the Hellenists, who are accustomed to denote that enemy hostile to the human race by the name *borron* or "north wind," following that of Jeremiah: "Out of the north shall evil break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land." Hesychius says: "Borras, a cold, freezing, and harsh wind, which, interpreted tropologically, is called *skaios* [left/sinister] and *apopompos* [averse/averter], which signifies the devil; but by the impious it is called 'right'." He referred to that most noble passage of Solomon, "The north is a harsh wind, but by name it is called right," whereas the Hebrews read nothing of the sort in this place. Add to this that the word A itself is also Hebrew: which notes speed as much in course as in flight. So that it might be as *boraach* or *boreach*; for the Greeks are often accustomed to add a final [letter] to the end, just as they made him *phugition* [a fugitive], whom the Attics did when he snatched Orithyia. For the things which they themselves bring forward concerning the origin can hardly be read without laughter: since he was worshipped so diligently by the Attics, and no differently than a familiar and domestic deity; just as our own [author] shows elsewhere; the same with the serpent, that is, the enemy of the human race. Thus the great writer Job says that the Lord created the serpent, *bariach* or *boriach*. From the same word from which *boreas* is named: which the noble Hellenist men have interpreted as *spattonta ton apostaten* [the runner who is the apostate], the serpent who defected—that is, the devil—from the speed, or because he penetrated everything. Whence, the divine poet says in the seventh book of the *Metamorphoses*:
I, too, when I have approached the curved holes of the earth, And have placed my back, fierce, into the lowest caverns, I rouse the shades, and the whole world with tremors.
Just as they also gave him the son *Cala* from the word *cal*, which notes speed. To him, therefore, they added even a serpent. The passage of Pausanias in the *Eliaca* is this: "The fourth upon the chest, as one goes from the left, is Boreas, having snatched Orithyia; and he has tails of serpents instead of feet." Whence perhaps also the arctic or northern dragon is placed by astronomers in that part. The name hints that among the first places to which Cadmus came, in Boeotia, was Ascra, the fatherland of the poet Hesiod. For it can hardly be doubted but that he consecrated a grove there according to the rite of the East, which the Lord abominates so greatly in sacred things: which is called *aschera* by them, and which, like other things, the Greeks expressed from the superstition of the East. Thus, the pious king Josiah, when he is said to have burned all the idols—which are not without grave cause called abominations by the Holy Spirit—is said to have burned the *aschera*, that is, the grove where they were worshipped: just as it is established that they were also ejected from the temples by the same. Just as, because they often worshipped one tree 22 or consecrated it to one God: such as that plane tree of Theocritus, which was sacred to Helen with the inscription: "Revere me; I am the plant of Helen." Nor is it to be doubted but that Homer, who, as we shall perhaps show shortly elsewhere, took everything from the East, drew Helen herself superstitiously from here. For *ilana* is "tree" in Chaldean, and, as is likely, one of the goddesses to whom they consecrated trees and groves: such as the Dryads of the Greeks. Thus in the sixth [chapter] of Ezekiel, when it is spoken of the worship of idols: "Under every thick tree and under every thick oak." Where *mabes* is *ela* [oak/tree], with which the name *El*, or God, is sometimes confused by interpreters. In which the Greeks, and Apollodorus himself in particular, confirm us, who notes that in the *alsei*—that is, in the groves or woods—the egg of Helen was found. But how old this superstition is, is apparent both from others, and especially from that of the *Deuteronomy* [lit. "Repeated Law"]: "Thou shalt not plant thee a grove; thou shalt not set thee up any tree by the altar of the LORD thy God." Where in the Hebrew it is *aschera*. And hence Hecataeus, where he speaks about the Jews in Josephus: "They have no image, nor statue at all, nor any plant, such as a grove or anything of that sort." From which *haoni* also is *navis* [ship]: whence they made *Aoniam*, because Cadmus had been brought into those parts by ship. For others have already dealt with Thebes, Helicon, and Parnassus, as Eastern words, just as they have regarding the Muses, although sparingly and not fully enough. Our author says that the Muses were present at the nuptials of Cadmus: in which he followed the others. Thus the ancient Hebrews handed down that the first instruction, which is accustomed to be called *musar* by them—that is, the Law—was given on a mountain, just as the Greeks wish their disciplines, which they also call Muses, to have been born on a mountain. Because Cadmus, according to the custom of his race, celebrated sacred rites only in high and elevated places 23. Which, when the people of God expressed it, like other things, they are said by the kingly Prophet to have offended God, *bam*, in their high places. For that...
which denotes an exalted place, the Greeks expressed their word A βωμούς; in which word, as in others, they themselves trifle wondrously. And not without caution, the Hellenists rendered this word by the word βουνός, which denotes either a mountain or a hill. Just as he transferred this to the mountains of Apollo: «Αθάνατον κορυφῇσιν ὀρεσσιβάτοις ἐρέθοντες. They celebrated ten parts of the law; these nine, the Muses. The Jews also seem to have accustomed themselves to call ethical doctrine specifically *musar*: whence even at this time they have a book which is called by them *Sepher musar*, or *Book of Discipline*, just as Solomon begins his gnomes with that word immediately, who testifies that he wrote them down [לִדַּעַת חָכְמָה וּמוּסָר]. Namely, to instill wisdom and *musar*, or discipline: whose presidents in Greece are the Muses. And Theognis began his ethical gnomes in this way: who adds incidentally this very thing which our author reports concerning Cadmus, that the Muses were present at his nuptials: Μοῦσαι καὶ Χάριτες κουραι Διὸς, αἴ ποτε Κάδμῳ. Εἰς γάμον ἐλθοῦσαι καλὸν ἀείσατ' ἔπος. He subjoins an ethical poem, namely: “Otti καλὸν φίλον ἐστί, τὸ δ' οὐ καλὸν οὐ φίλον [ἐστι· which Euripides attributes to Bacchus: just as Cadmus brought the rites of Bacchus himself into Greece. And in the same way, Hesiod the Boeotian also began his ethical book, *Works and Days*, with an invocation of the Muses. Nor should anyone think about the origin of a Hebrew word or its final letter, when they often derive a name from a name and, as seems fit to them 24, change the endings. In which they have allowed themselves the greatest license. And this is constant in them, if anything else is. The father-in-law of Cadmus, Ares, that is Mars, is called by them such. The same one the Greeks, according to the custom of the East, as Macrobius observes, make identical with the sun, which is called [שֶׁמֶשׁ] by them, or as the Hellenists read this name, "Αρης. Whence the interpreters of the Greeks, when in the eighth chapter of Judges Gideon is said to have returned from war before the rising of the sun, rendered it ἀπὸ ἀναβάσεως "Αρεος. Where "Αρης is written with the aspiration dissimulated. Just as the Hebrew *chasida* is *asida* to the Hellenists. Now those who invited the Muses to his nuptials thought his consort was named Harmonia. In which you have the word [אַרְמוֹן], *armon*, or *harmon*, from sublimity and height, which denotes a palace or building; and not rarely the Hellenists explain it as a foundation or [θεμέλιον], doubtless for every cause: because they viewed this in nuptials. Although there is another cause, if we stand by the rabbis, why the Hebrews impose names from palaces and buildings upon wives: because in the creation of the woman, Moses used the word for building. For he said [וַיִּבֶן], *and he built*. Whence many rot arguments from the similarity which a wife has to a building. Which is simpler, and without the trickery of sophistry, is demonstrated by the word for children, which in this language comes from *building*. Just as when matrons were sterile, and would substitute another for themselves to their husband, they said they were built by her. Whence that: *That I may be built by her*. In Greek, ἵνα τεκνοποιήσωμαι ἐξ αὐτῆς, in the seventeenth chapter of Genesis, as elsewhere, and not once. And hence the Hellenistic manner of speaking is without doubt: *And because the midwives feared God, he made them houses*. So that *to make houses* signifies to be happily multiplied. Where the scholion says: *Instead of, he multiplied the lineage from 25 them, God increased the lineage for them*. For they read: *He made them houses*, namely, God. Cadmus, as with Diodorus, took Harmonia to be his wife in Samothrace. Where those who are of the rites of the Cabiri, as the name argues, were translated thither from the East. Where likewise Mercury is celebrated under the name of Casmilus, as Varro teaches: whom Tzetzius notes as being the same as the Boeotian Cadmus. Whence that in our author:
εἰπὲ δὲ φύτλην
Βάκχου δισσοτόκοιο· τὸν ἐκ πυρὸς ὑγρὸν ἀείρας Ζεὺς βρέφος ἡμιτέλεστον ἀμαιεύτοιο τεκούσης, Φειδομένοις παλάμῃσι τομὴν μηροῖο χαράξας, Ἄρσενι γαστρὶ λόγους, πατὴρ καὶ πότνια μήτηρ Εὖ εἰδὼς τόκον ἄλλον· ἐπεὶ γονόεντι καρήνῳ, Ὡς πάρος, ὄγκον ἄπιστον ἔχων ἐγκύμονι κόρσῃ Τεύχεσιν ἀστράπτουσαν ἀνηκόντιζεν Ἀθήνην. In which he taught us nothing, except what the Greeks profess insipidly, who themselves stumble very often when they hunt for etymologies and origins, contrary to their own laws and analogy. When having received the Wisdom of God—which is also called his 27 Word—as if through some cloud, they said it was born from God, whom they called *Ala*, the father of gods and men likewise: whence so many ineptitudes and pollutions. But no one learned in these letters is ignorant of what the Chaldeans mean by [תְּנָא] *thena*, which is to learn or study. Whence the wise are called *Misna*. And in the Talmud that frequent [תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן], *our masters have handed down*. For there is no doubting that they preserved these things from the older Chaldeans. Hence *thenaa*: which they now use slightly differently. And with the article *Hatthenaa*, Ἀθηνάα, Ἀθηνᾶ. That this word was commonly used by the ancient Chaldeans before, there is no doubt: at least concerning this one, since this is their meaning. But in expressing the words of the East, they sometimes dissimulated the aspiration of the article, sometimes expressed it, as in *Ros*, *haros*, *heros*. (For *Ros* is first, or chief..."...) A chief, which the Hebrews also attribute to the princes of families and patriarchs—a word about which the Greeks have devised something ridiculous! But in Athens, just as in *Aonia*, they hid it. And yet, this is a word that both the ancient Romans and, before them, the Greeks, inquire into and scrutinize so curiously. The philosophy, or poetry, is wonderful, in that it derives Iris's lineage from the borders of the Indians, where, as everyone knows, it never or very rarely rains. Pliny and Eratosthenes acknowledge only summer rains in India; while from Patallena, if we believe Strabo, to the Hydaspes, it never rains. "Inquire," he says, "how the places in between are not rained upon. For neither is Thebais until Syene and those nearby Meroë, nor are the Indian regions from Patallena as far as the Hydaspes." Our own author, however—it would be a wonder if he did not—wanted Iris to be born in those places, for he gives her Hydaspes as a brother. For thus it is:
From the beds of Thaumas was born a twin offspring, 28 Electra of the rose-arms, wedded wife; from whose bed A river sprang, and the herald of the heavenly ones, Iris the storm-footed, and the swiftly-flowing Hydaspes.
But I ask, how is Iris imagined to be born in those places, which are at odds with his reasoning? For since the cloud, in which she is generated, is dewy, and of such a nature that it is usually dissolved afterward—which is the matter and, as it were, the mother of Iris—how can she be generated or produced in those lands, where the sun is believed to hold absolutely no mother, or matter, or as it were a spouse from which it could produce her? In the meantime, it is well that he called her a "herald" (*angelon*). For thus he excellently expressed the word, about which, I think, he was thinking very little. For grammarians derive Iris from *eirein*, to herald. For it is forbidden for them to keep their hands off such things, and they seek by force from their own language those things that are diverse from it. Meanwhile, some derive it from *eris*, because she announces or composes contentions in the writings of poets. For—which is the height of tyranny—since they cannot be silent, they demand belief for those things that exceed all absurdity, which no sane person, and not even they themselves, believe. For no one is unaware that it is used by Homer himself for others in most cases. Just as in the eighth book of the Iliad, he calls back and stops Pallas from war and Juno; and in the fifth, he very benignly leads Venus, who was treated rather ungraciously by Diomedes, away from the battle; and in the fifteenth and sixteenth, he commands Neptune, so that he might lay aside his arms in accordance with the mind and mandate of Jove; and in the last (for it is tiresome to enumerate each), he calls Thetis to himself so that she might stop the excessive cruelty and fury of Achilles. To omit there also the very joyous report brought by her to the father about redeeming Hector. Moreover, as our great poet drew everything from the East, so Iris, who is called by him *theon angelos*, the messenger of the gods, is a Chaldean word *ir*. Hence, with Daniel, *Ir*, or *Hir*, is called an angel. He says, C "And behold, an angel and a holy one." For which the Hellenist [says], *eir kai hagios*. "I was watching," he says, "in a vision of the night, upon my bed, and behold, an angel and a holy one descended from heaven." Hesychius, who learnedly interprets the sacred codices in many places, says, "[*eir*], *angelos*, because this for the most part follows Iris, or because for this reason others might have accepted that word in Daniel." But the *Scholion* on Daniel: "But *eir* is nothing other than 'awake' and 'sleepless' translated." Item, "Instead of *eir*, the Seventy translated 'angel,' others used the word 'watcher'." From which, indeed, it appears that the version which is now inscribed to the "Elders" was frequently interpolated. And this is the reason why Clement called the angels "watchers" (*egrēgorous*). But more on these things at some time, when we discuss those things that Homer owes to the East (in regard to ceremonies, matters, and words). In which our author should have seen a little more, for he was born among the very sources from which Homer drew most things. Iris is perpetually called *angelos* by Homer. *Eir* is *angelos*, and so it is used by the Chaldeans, to whom *irin* is *angelos*, and D those who minister to God. Let this be the cause why, for the ministry of the gods, Iris was placed in charge. For you seek in vain for the cause of this matter in *phasma*, which is what Iris is called by philosophers, since it is to be sought from the usage of the word, not from the Greeks, but from the East. For the very *phasma*, as for the Latins, so for the Hebrews and Chaldeans, is called "bow."
He commemorates Venus from Lebanon, or the Libanitid, in many places: which also gives her a page on both sides. Since he neither explains the reason and origin of the matter anywhere, nor has he grasped it in his mind. 30 That the ancients thought, especially the men of the East, that the stars ought to be saluted on the mountains (which the sacred page everywhere also places as the seat and proper place of this idolatry), is certain, because they seemed to rise there first. And so in Lebanon, as on a most high mountain, since they observed its rising there best, they worshipped her. Which the Latins also observed regarding Oeta. Nor is there any other cause why they called her *Aphroditē*, except that they saluted the morning star, or Venus, bathed in the spray of the sea, as the poet speaks, as she rose in the morning. Whence also *Frutinal* to the Romans, as also *Fruti*, which is Venus herself. But how many, how inept are the things the little Greeks [devised] about their *Anadyomenē*? Which is the same as *Aphroditē*, or *Aphrodutē*, which they first saluted in the manner of the East, as if coming forth from the sea, or from the foam, and from this, without a doubt, they called her by that name. And yet, the origins of words, for the most part, are the origins of things, in which men of this and the ancient age, being supreme, placed the foundations for eliciting the truth. As, for example, the divine man Cæsar Scaliger, of the greatest Plato; who himself, to the form of the prince of philosophers, brought true criticism back in our time. So also regarding the origin of Venus, how rotten, how frivolous was what the descendants of Aeneas, having been born here, trifled! Or look at Cicero himself. But *venustas*, or grace, is *hen* to the Hebrews. Which is *hen* from the Greeks. Whence in Origen's Hexapla, *hen* of the Hebrews was written. In this way:
He. He. [D (margin)] *hen*. Aquila: *charopos* (bright-eyed). Symmachus | Seventy | Theodotio: *eucharistos* (graceful).
Which also with the Aeolic digamma is *Fen*, which to the Romans 31 is *Ven*. As *hespera*, *Fhespera*, *vespera*. *Enteron*, *Fenteron*, *venter*. Although they often kept that whole. As, in *Fircus*, *Fordeum*, *Fariolus*; *Hircus*, *Hordeum*, *Hariolus*. Thus *en*, *Fen*, *Ven*, and if you add the termination, *Venus*. Whom, because they made masculine, they also worshipped this goddess as bearded. Whence also *deus*, by the testimony of grammarians, is said to *Maro*. Although that also is rather from the rite of the East. To the Hebrews, moreover, *hen*, and to the Phoenicians, is without doubt the grace of the mouth and the elegance of the form. To this, in the East, he joins Adonis as a companion. Who to the Hebrews as well as to the Phoenicians is *Adon*, that is, *kyrios* (Lord). Hesychius: *Adōnis*, *despotēs* (master), *apo Phoinikōn*, that is, *kyrios*. But when fawning, they used to say *Aduni*, *kyrie mou* (my Lord). By which word they saluted the sun; and that *Adon* or *Adonin* is the sun, Macrobius also testifies. Whence also they brought forth *Adōna* from *Adon* in the sixth case. The same Hesychius interprets *Adōna* as *Adōnin*. *Adon*, therefore, is *Adon schemes*, Lord sun, just as the same was called *Baal schamam* by the Phoenicians, Lord of heaven. Concerning which, from the theology of the Phoenicians, and especially of Sanchuniathon, which Philo of Byblos had translated into Greek, Eusebius notes in the book *De praeparatione*: "For when the air became clear, they stretched forth their hands to heaven, to the sun; for this one, he says, they considered to be the only god, the lord of heaven, calling him Beelsamen." For when the weather cleared, he says, they lifted their hands to the sun in the heavens. For they thought this one alone, he says, to be god, whom they therefore also called lord of heaven, or Beelsamen. In which prayers, without a doubt, they were repeating *Adoni*, *Adoni*. But because Venus, who is called *Noga* by the teachers of the Hebrews, is a runner (*syn-dromos*) planet of the sun, and accompanies it, the loves of this one and Adonis to the Gre-
Greeks have been devised. Whence the Sicilian poet says of Adonis, ministering to the Hours, 32 that he both dies and rises again *from among* the heroes: Such as Adonis to you, from the ever-flowing Acheron, In the twelfth month the soft-footed Hours have brought back; Slowest of the blessed ones are the dear Hours. For he completes his annual course, to be sure, in twelve months. And then: You creep, O dear Adonis, both hither and to Acheron, Unique among demigods, as they say; neither Agamemnon Suffered this, nor Ajax the great, the heavy-wroth hero, Nor Hector, the eldest of the twenty children of Hecuba, Nor Patroclus, nor Pyrrhus, returned from Troy. But because of the mourning which they exhibited in his rites, which was called *kinyresthai* by them—a word which itself has a Hebrew origin—they called his father Cinyras. And because they customarily drenched his image with the most exquisite myrrh, above other perfumes, or offered myrrh to him in the ancestral custom of the Orient, B they gave him Myrrh for a mother. For the words are of Hebrew origin. But concerning the rites and myths of the Greeks, which flowed from this source, there will one day be a greater and more suitable place to speak. These are the things which seem to have to do with our inquiry. He who desires more may approach the very learned *Syntagma of the Gods of the Syrians* by that most eminent man, John Selden, where there is more on Adonis and others. At the beginning of his learned work, though he was ignorant of it, he employed Proteus as one who was very close to Bacchus. For thus it is there: Set up for me the many-turning Proteus, that he might appear, Having a variegated form, because I am weaving a variegated hymn. Indeed, to the Hebrews *cadam* is *proteuein* [to be first], whether you refer it to age, or to wisdom, or other such things. Thus *cadmon* is "first." Whence also *Proteus*, about which I marvel that none of the 33 learned men [have remarked]. But it seems that there has been lacking until now one who would carefully demand of Greece, and pressingly examine, the Orient. That they say Proteus was an Egyptian according to the poet, "Immortal Proteus is Egyptian," there is no reason for that to detain us here: for Diodorus says the same about Cadmus: "Cadmus, being from Thebes of the Egyptians, to have begotten children with others, and Semele." Therefore, since the word *Cadmon* denotes both him who is first in some matter and him who is sprung from the Orient, the Greeks, according to custom, have used one of these meanings, as is perpetual for the Hellenists. And the most ancient author Homer quite prudently called Proteus a minister of Neptune. For he was among the first in the art of navigation and of the stars: for which same name Cadmus is celebrated by our author. And to this point the poet’s expression tends: Of *the whole sea* C he knows the depths. Idothea, whom they wish to have been his daughter, demonstrates his erudition, as an inventor of letters. That he turns himself into all the elements—chiefly fire and water—is said because he publicly demonstrated the forces of natural things and the principles which they commonly call elements, and their causes; for the interpretations which grammarians are accustomed to bring forward make a spirit, uplifted nearly to the point of desperation of the truth. They say that Cadmus came into Greece many years before Proteus. As if a certain account of times could be held in fabulous matters; or as if Homer were saying something about the age of Proteus and not rather, as having been already related among the gods, celebrating him. Which indeed was owed by the Greeks to the merits of Cadmus. And thus indeed we opine. For there ought to be a place for conjectures where one does not know. Other things others have also noted, and we too formerly in the same books [noted] certain things, and not a few indeed that seemed worthy of notice. Among whom also truly 34 our other parent and incomparable teacher, the great Scaliger, who had marked his very many solecisms on the margin of his copy. Which we leave to others. Unless it be that some other things, in which the laws of either speaking or D of the poetic art are transgressed, can now be sought from our *Metaphrasis*: in which we note certain things of that kind according to public usage. That this was our purpose, not ambition, I can affirm. And we write the *Exercitationes*, as we profess. In which we do not hang onto the reader, but commend to him. Now something must be said about the work and its constitution. All poets who have produced some perfect heroic work, since they have pursued either uniform actions and ones clinging to each other, or diverse ones—yet of one person, or of one time—the author of *ours* departs very far from both in those parts which are called the Bacchic [books]. As one who described in this work neither the same actions *of one*—namely neither any nor all of one, nor diverse ones *of one time*—but of one cause, not of one, but of many, which did not cohere with some nor with all of one. We call "the same" of one, like those things which Bacchus performed among the Indians in a short time. Which, since they are barely a thousandth part of the whole work, could be sufficient for the whole work, and indeed a just one. "Some of one," like the Bacchic *Indica*, but [not] all things. "All of one," like those things which were performed by Bacchus throughout the whole of his life; which, however, is not without cause criticized by Aristotle. Wherefore, if we are to judge with the King of Critics, he produced not so much an epic work as a chaos. For in order that Bacchus might subdue the Indians, Jupiter carries off Europa, the heavens are attacked by Typhoeus, Cadmus wanders and searches for Harmonia. The same founds Thebes, and gives away his daughters; 35 Actaeon is torn apart by dogs, finally Proserpina is loved by the gods, and thus at last Zagreus, and after him Bacchus, is born. Of such mass was it to grant to the nations and the earth a god who would dwell, as he says, in a wine-jar. And therefore, even before him who was born, whose deeds he constructs, he consumed the material of six or seven works. Among which not even one argument is uniform, or of the same thread or color. So that as many books could be produced from these as there are the works themselves: the first would be *The Rape of Europa*, as he himself judged; the second, *The War of Typhoeus*, or *The Gigantomachy*; the third, *The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia*; the fourth, *The Cadmeia*, or *The Deeds of Cadmus*; the fifth, *The Marriage of Persephone*; the sixth, *The Births of Zagreus*; the seventh, *The Births of Dionysus*. For the following ones are no less intricate. So that in the twenty-third he undertakes the *Indica*, who before had proposed a catalogue in the thirteenth. Wherefore the whole work is nothing other than an episode which has no episode. For there is nothing principal or first; there is no *katastasis* [setting-of-stage] of the work, and finally nothing so *epallēlon* [interconnected] and coherent together, that with this one placed [first], which Homer alone handles, another follows. In which, however, the praise of all epic poetry turns. Nor is there another cause why critics prefer the *Odyssey* to the *Iliad* regarding the art of disposition, than that, as they say, *glischra kai oligothylos hē hypothesis* [the plot is sticky and small-pouched], except because the argument is thin and meager, and thus admitted the art of amplification: which the same critics gracefully called *platysmou mēchanas* [mechanisms of expansion]. Deceived by which, the ancients seem to have ascribed diverse works to our author: these he did not write elsewhere, as I think, but here he confuses them. Whence that: I, Nonnus, my city is Pan; but in Pharia, With a resounding spear I harvested the births of the Giants. 36 As if he had written a *Gigantiad*, not the *Dionysiaca*. Unless he understood the Indians: which seems to be the case to Falckenburg, a man who deserves very well of this writer. Furthermore, when the work was delineated, at least in thought and with himself, the poet of ours without doubt ought to think about the inscription of the work, not the contrary; before it, he thought about the inscription itself. By which he wished to embrace as broadly as he could whatever things could be performed by Bacchus. How correctly this was done by him, let us see. For since almost all the inscriptions among the Greeks are *ateleis* [incomplete], that is, to be aided by the understanding of the principal word: just as when I say *Ilias*, or *this book*, or
his name, of the Messiah, indeed. Just as A the Jerusalem Targum expounded the word *bir*, according to Elias in his *Thisbite*. Whence it seems they have transferred this to the saints and those already consecrated to God, and to their own proper names. This is confirmed by the case of the mother of Gregory the Theologian, and others, of whom the ancients made mention. So that it is not without cause that Moschopulus translates *Nonna* as "mistress" [or lady], which that most learned man wonders at. And the inscription is not lacking in modesty. For it is inscribed *Metabole* [Transformation], as we have said. For just as retail dealers, whom they called *metaboleis*, commonly exchanged merchandise for merchandise, or for a small coin, so it seems the duty and office B of the *metaboleus*, or interpreter, as belonging to that class, is to exchange in the writings of the authors they translate, word for word, and language for language. This same thing can also apply in other matters. But also critics note that he is a *metaboleus* who is [*ton to auto noema diaphoros exaggellonta*], who is accustomed to express the same meaning in one way or another. Regarding which the poet most eloquently [says/writes]:
He was wont to render the same thing often in another way.
It seems, therefore, that the term is taken by them more broadly for any interpretation whatsoever, and just as *paraphrasis* was in use among teachers of rhetoric for school exercises, so perhaps also *metabole*. Which grammarians and others in this kind of writing—that they should exchange word for word—would strive to do. Such was, of old, the interpretation of the Thracian writer Dionysius, or the Thracian, according to Eustathius, upon the C great poet's *Odyssey*: *Metaballein*, he says, is said of the bilingual speaker of words; whence also that Thracian Dionysius, having paraphrased this whole book, called such a work of his a *Metabole*. Where he said *paraphrasas* [having paraphrased] instead of *metaphrasas* [having translated], as it seems. Which appears from another passage, where he speaks of the same interpreter: "Instead of *asaminthos* [a bath], the *metaboleus* interprets it as *pyelos* [a trough]." For the word *asaminthos*, he says, which denotes a tub, the interpreter used the word *pyelos*, which denotes the same thing. Where you see, he rendered word for word. For when he had found the word *asaminthos*, which was less common, he translated it with a more common one: and thus, as in merchandise, he instituted an exchange. *Metaballein*, therefore, is *ameibein*, to exchange. In which latter sense I see the ancients also used it. Concerning interpretations, of course, or versions, as they say now. Also in poetic works, which is most relevant here. Whence also D *ameiphthenta* [things exchanged], the very writings or works themselves, are called so by the critics. Photius indeed praises the poetic Paraphrase of Eudoxia of the *Octateuch*, which are the first eight books of the Old Covenant. The subject of which the same very great man calls *ameiphthenta*: "The Paraphrase of the *Octateuch* was read; but she transmuted it according to heroics, into meter; and there were eight discourses, according to the number of those things exchanged." *Ameiphthenta*, therefore, [are] the *metaballomena* [things transformed], that is, the work itself, or the Octateuch, which Eudoxia, as ours did the Gospel of John, had rendered in that work. Just as the same supreme author and prince of sacred critics says there that a faithful interpreter, and one who departs as rarely as possible from the words, [is one who] does not depart from the sense, *engys ameibein* [to exchange closely]. Which does not always happen in our practice. Unless it be that he does not rarely adhere to words which, just as we prove concerning Hellenistic words and phrases, he did not attain. And to render the same word and not to exchange it, is neither *metaballein* nor religious, but to leave the reader gaping and empty. Who, when obscurity arises in very many places from an unknown word, after having long expected another from the interpreter, receives the same one which he does not understand. And these things concerning the inscription, indeed. For before we approach the interpretation itself, we shall do a service if we compare not only the words, but especially the mind with the sacred context, if we carefully weigh what he has added of his own, and what are so greatly and in so many ways commended by others (of which kind are the apposites and attributes). Concerning which, however, lest the reader’s study of the author...
A be delayed by his own judgment of him, it seemed best to us to say something first on the matter in general. Therefore, since poets, after the manner of the philosophers who were their translators, were not accustomed to provide definitions, nor yet, for it is the principal thing in poetry, distinguished and separated things by means of great ornament, they assigned to both primary and secondary substances, and to some accidents as well, certain properties or attributes, often for the sake of definition, often merely for the sake of ornament: 41 by which, in that manner, particulars are in part bounded and in part distinguished: which are called either attributes, or apposites, or, as Fabius noted among other names for them, followers, and most commonly, epithets.
Indeed, the way these are used in poetry is such that they are applied either congruously or incongruously, but also often denote the false; or at the very least, as the dialecticians say, they involve an enunciation. Concerning which, since very grave and eminent men, among whom are some of the chief theologians of our age, have long attributed this praise to us, so that for the most part, in theological and sacred matters, the things used by him can serve in place of commentary or interpretation, we must take pains to examine them in a few chapters before everything else. Having finished this, we shall more easily dispatch the rest. Thus, for the sake of instruction, we shall premise what must be said about these in general. And first concerning the word [epithet], which it appears was transferred here from another usage, just as when the Pythagoreans called the binary, B or rather the second in the binary, that which they added [without doubt, for it does not make a number] to the monad. Hesychius: "An epithet is the number two among the Pythagoreans." And the Athenians spoke in this way of those festivals which were not native or their own, calling them "added festivals," [ἐπιθέτους ἑορτάς], and regarding those causes which, because they were foreign, were committed to the judges of Mars; and some things of the same kind, which must be sought from the observations of the ancients. To which the king of philosophers, in his urbanity and according to his custom, refers C when he called the things of which we are speaking "added names" [ἐπίθετα ὀνόματα]. "Nouns," he says in the *Rhetoric*, "are added and double"; just as that same philosopher in that same place spoke of the thing itself as "making additions" [ἐπιθέσεις ποιεῖσθαι], and "adding the epithets to the things" [ἐπιτιθέναι τὰ ἐπίθετα τοῖς 42 πράγμασι], as the interpreters urbanely said. Hermogenes: "For a word is sweet and because of the added nouns." But, before saying anything about the definition, let us touch here in passing upon their history, their first use, and their origin. That attributes first found a use in divine matters, many things teach; especially the sacred page. In which the holy, who speak especially with affection of soul and [ἐμπαθῶς], use them most. Let that most noble place in Exodus xxxiv be witness, where God himself leads the way in this manner of addressing or praying. Where thirteen, as is observed by the teachers of the Hebrews, or properties, he himself [ἐπιτίθεται]: "And Jehovah passed before him, and he called, Jehovah, Jehovah, strong, merciful, and compassionate. Long-suffering" and "abounding in mercy and truth," and what follows. Such is also that in Jeremiah xxxii: "Most strong, great, and powerful. The Lord of hosts is thy name. Great in counsel, and incomprehensible in thought." Which the devil continuously, like all things, expressed; for, to pass over so many attributes by which the Greeks and Romans named individual gods and goddesses, as is evident from their formulas, nowhere does it shine forth as clearly as in the Hymns of Onomacritus, who is commonly called Orpheus. For they consist solely of attributes. Nor D is there reason to doubt that he is the same author whose writings (for more were extant at that time) are first cited by the philosopher in *De Anima*: "This, he says, is also the case with the account in the so-called Orphic verses; for he says that the soul enters from the whole, being borne by the winds to those who breathe." Where Philoponus says: "He said 'so-called' because it does not seem that the verses are by Orpheus, as he himself also says in the *De Philosophia*; for the doctrines are his." They say that Onomacritus 43 [ἐπεὶ καταθεῖναι]. It should be read exactly so: Aristotle said in those poems which are called Orpheus's that it does not seem they are by Orpheus, just as he himself said in the first book of *De Philosophia*. For as the doctrine is Orpheus's, so they hold that Onomacritus conceived it in verse. But that entire book is a true liturgy of Satan himself, in which the hymns, as we were already saying, consist individually of naked attributes. That it is more recent than Homer, and that he added many things of his own, is proven even by this: that he scatters Priapus and other gods not yet known to him, as is believed. He, therefore, in the hymn to Bacchus, says that he calls Bacchus: Εριβρομον, εὐαστῆρα, Πρωτόγονον, διφυή, τρίγονον, βακχεῖον ἀνακτα, [Ἄγριον, ἄῤῥητον, κρύφιον, δικέρωτα, δίμορφον, Κισσόβρυον, ταυρωπόν] and the rest that follow there. Of which kind also is that hymn of Bacchus, which is read in the Anthology of Greek epigrams, constructed from the attributes of the letters, the beginning of which is: Μέλπωμεν βασιλῆα φιλεύτον, ειραφιώτην, Ἀβροκόμην, ἀγροίκον, ἀοίδιμον, ἀγλαόμορφον, [Βοιωτόν, βρόμιον, βακχεύτορα, βοτρυοχαίτην, etc.] Who are mere trifles, or amusements of men who have nothing greater to do. For among the prince of poets, Agamemnon and others, when they pray, use them according to their dignity: [Ζεῦ κύδιστε, μέγιστε, κελαινεφές, αἰθέρι ναίων.] Thus Achilles: [Ζεῦ ἄνα, Δωδωναῖε, Πελασγικέ, τηλόθι ναίων.] Which an excellent poet and critic, Callimachus, tempered with singular art and judgment in his hymns; for he used them sparingly and gave a reason for each. Just as concerning Jove, whom he initially 44 calls: [Πηλογόνων ἐλατῆρα, δικασπόλον οὐρανίδῃσι.] And then: [Πῶς καί νιν Δικταῖον ἀείσομεν ἠὲ Λυκαῖον, Ἐν δοιῇ μάλα θυμός.] And then most sweetly (for he always interweaves something, and for the most part joins a cause or a narrative, which does not fill the reader but detains him. And that with words not sesquipedalian, but chaste): Ζεῦ, σὲ μὲν Ἰδαίοισιν ἐν οὔρεσί φασι γενέσθαι, [Ζεῦ, σὲ δ' ἐν Ἀρκαδίῃ· πότεροι, πάτερ, ἐψεύ- σαντο; Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται.] You may say the same of Theocritus: in whose *Dioscuri* no attribute occurs that is turgid or insolently composed. Our author, outside the necessity of the work, gave to that god whose affairs he describes in his Bacchic poems so many attributes everywhere that a bright catalog and index could be made from them. Which was done by him for individual names. Most of which he transfers here without any reverence for the matters he was treating in the Gospel. So that he turns these very things, which are commended for their rarity and are accustomed to commend a discourse, almost into a mockery. Which the rhetoricians long ago saw sharply, having warned that one must take care not to use unnecessary or many attributes in discourse, of which the one is inept (as if you were to call snow white, or sweat humid), the other joined with boredom, because the speech leans toward poetry. And the great teacher Aristotle accuses Alcidamas, who, when writing in common and loose speech, used them too frequently, too lengthily, and too prominently. Although no one is ignorant that more is allowed to poets, as is repeated by him quite often; yet the individual items of these have their place in our author. Wherefore that is true concerning him which the same prince of critics pronounced with 45 judgment: [οὐχ ὡς ἡδύσμασιν, ἀλλ' ὡς ἐδέσμασιν], that he uses them everywhere not as condiments that delight, but as food, to the fastidiousness and satiety of the reader. What of the fact that that coldness,
which Aristotle condemns in his own work, he seems to have affected by design? For what is it that he most especially notes as cold in him, when he calls the "counter-mimicry of the soul" *epithymia* (desire) instead of *epithymia*—that is, when he signifies lust—other than that which our author so often takes pleasure in, a "counter-mimicry"? As in: "Counter-mimicry of the dragon’s face," wishing thereby to signify a dragon. This is at once an attribute and a compound, a "double" expression at the same time, as Aristotle calls it. You may observe this everywhere throughout the entire work with excessive frequency. A brilliant example occurs at the beginning, where the most holy Evangelist—though he had judged that he should abstain from all of them, and not without cause—wove a complete discourse out of attributes: "Timeless he was, untraceable, in the unspeakable beginning the Word, Of nature equal to the Begetter, coeval, a Son without a mother, And the Word of God who is self-grown." Cold, like that saying about the generation: "But they were born of God, husbandless children of the Begetter." And since invalid, or improper, terms occur everywhere, it even carries obscenity in a holy matter, due to the method of translation. What of the fact that he has assigned attributes to attributes? As in that line: "Abram of the first-born, of the cloud-gathering Begetter." For just as father is an attribute in that line, "And father Aeneas, the source of the Roman lineage," so is *genetor* (begetter) in this one. What of the fact that he mixes in attributes of an alien character? As in the first chapter: "46 And the choir of Hebrew men Sent him, a divine man, afterwards he took up in a tale." For he said *pempimos* (sent one) of those who were being sent from the Pharisees and Levites to the Baptist. Because he had read in the *Trachiniai* of Sophocles: "O children, how then did the gift sent for Heracles Initiate for us no small evils." As the ancient tragedian might say: "Furthermore, comrades, with the worst possible evil Did he initiate the gift, sent as it was for Heracles." This, in an epic character, and in that place, is of no value. To judge of which, as is proper, is the final end, as he says, of a great mind and nature. And since attributes were invented for the illustration of a matter, he even mixes in *adialogia* (non-reasoning) and obscurity, so that you do not know what he wishes to say. Just as in: "The night-shining, featureless star of the dawn it was." For what is *acharacton* (featureless) in a most shining star? Especially since, regarding eyes that are blind, to one who was born with this evil, he said in the ninth chapter thus: A Dithyrambically composed, for example, "God-terrible wanderings," or not "the spear-bearing army of the stars," but similar to those composed by the truth. For I make this a general rule for every naming: the legislators, and architects, and many other such things, are safely composed—that is, that one should use compound names, not such as are composed in a tumid and dithyrambic manner. As if someone were to say *theoterapous planas*, that is, errors sent prodigiously by God, or *astron doryphoron straton*, an army of stars fortified with fiery spears; but rather those which are so composed that they depart as little as possible from usages and received forms. I wish this to be a universal standard and law in such matters. As when we call *nomothetai* "legislators" and *architektones* "architects" of laborers. And others of that genus, which are safely composed. But ours is so removed from the common usage of words and from simple terms that, with danger, he everywhere affects compounds in their place, even when others offered themselves. Such is chapter 11: B "This first-appearing miracle beside the bridal chamber, Jesus performed." Which another would have said: "This, first, a miracle." For the compound decreases the truth no less than the simplicity of the matter. For *proton* (first) is more than *protophanes* (first-appearing). For it concerns a certain and simple miracle. Such is *polyspereis* (sown in many places) for *polloi* (many). Which are unusual, and please him for this reason. And he exceeds all absurdity, that he inadvertently called nails which were of iron, not *sidereous* (iron), that is, iron, but *siderophorous* (iron-bearing): "May this man perish, upright, by iron-bearing nails." As if you in Latin would say a wooden ship, "wood-bearing." I will omit the fact that there are certain things which occur perpetually, as *antitrypon, antikypton, palinnoston, palinagretos, atheito tini palmo, gampsonychi palmo*. Any one of which could have been expressed by simple words and others immediately. Which we note in passing, being very few from many, so that we may illustrate the opinion of antiquity, in which he so often C sinned. And these pertain properly to the form of the attribute: for the rest, which are either inept, or harmonize little with the matters, or are expressed viciously, we for the most part annotate individually below. Which, before it is done, the definition must be considered. Which the grammarians, as is their habit, have devised worthy of themselves. An *epitheton*, or attribute, is a noun denoting praise or vituperation: which is conveniently added to proper names, or to what they themselves call appellatives; and which is taken from the body, from the mind, or from those things which are outside. In which definition, as many words as there are, so many are the signs of laziness or negligence. For, first, who could bear that division, that it must denote praise or vituperation? For what praise or vituperation is there if, for instance, I say "herile gressum" (masterly gait)? "And holding a gathered, undivided, featureless countenance." And he scarcely admitted anything other than compounds: which are called *dipla* (double) by Aristotle. Which the remaining poets, as well as orators, admitted no less with judgment. For the end of composing, partly, as is noted by the critics, is that the speech may rise—not haphazardly, but when necessity demands it: partly so that our mind, where there is need, in place of a complete sentence, may use the benefit of a word, so that it may grasp not just one thing, but many, in one. By which meanwhile the speech also grows. Near to whose grandeur is tumor. Into which vice one goes when either many are used, or words are not composed sufficiently aptly, as was wont to happen in dithyrambs. Wherefore 47 both dithyrambic compositions of words, and (being) unusual and therefore harsh and dangerous, such as ours generally are, rhetoricians relegate. About which the author of the most excellent book *On Elocution*, who is now called Phalerius; by Ammonius, regarding the book *On Interpretation*, he is simply called Demetrius: who called the book itself *The book of the Rhetorical Idea*, has spoken elegantly. He, therefore, Demetrius: "One must also take compound names, not D those composed dithyrambically; for example, 'God-terrible wanderings,' or (as he says) 'the spear-bearing army of the stars,' but those similar to those composed by the truth. For I make this a universal rule for every naming: the legislators, and architects, and many other such things, are safely composed—that is, that one should use compound names, not such as are composed in a tumid and dithyrambic manner." And when the same prince of poets spoke concerning the nature of individuals, "the liquid fields," "the dark-blue sea," and others of that genus? Which indeed can denote neither praise nor vituperation. Just as they denote nothing in certain things, except what is redundant, as "and they chop with axes the liquid wines"; or "liquid humor," and others of that genus. Which Charisius, when he understood it, said: "An *epitheton* 49 is a verbal expression added to a vocabulary, for the sake of adorning, or destroying, or judging." And Donatus, "for the sake of discretion, propriety, or ornamentation." It is a wonder, however, what came into their minds regarding that division: when they say it is taken from the body, or from the mind, or from outside, or externally applied. Which Charisius and the others follow. Nor did Donatus—which you might wonder at—depart from this. And this is now generally accepted by all. But if this is true, it is necessary that they be restricted to the primary substance. For these things are observed in Socrates, not in a human being. For no one commands either by form, or by the fortitude of the mind, or by wealth, unless such a one as this: Hercules, Ulysses, indeed, or Croesus. And thus orators (commend) this one or that, by a triple felicity.
A But those things which are said first by the Philosopher concerning goods, they had undoubtedly read. As if wisdom were not occupied as much about individuals as it is about species. For it always looks toward "this such-and-such," that is, the specific: such as Plato is, or Socrates. Whence from antiquity itself, the sophists chose certain names for their vituperations or commendations, as Isocrates did for Busiris; others, especially among the later writers, chose not a few others, whom they either debase or elevate. Just as not infrequently, since these gleaners feed themselves on the remains of philosophers, on scraps of feasts and crumbs, they do not so much satisfy the hunger of others as irritate it. For they did not consider that some things here are put forward, and others are appended. For they are put forward either as primary substances, which Varro calls names; or secondary ones, which the same author calls nouns. And these are either incorporeal, as God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who by a perpetual appended term, as he is, is called holy by the Church. In whose proper appended terms, as predicates, 50 which are attributed to a subject, our author errs neither rarely nor lightly. As when he called God either *autophuton* or *autogenethlon* from the theology of Orpheus and the pagans, and improperly and insolently called the Father coeval with the Son; and when he treats of the divinity of the Son, he occasionally incorrectly subjected an incongruous appended term. And when he called the Spirit either a Paraclete, or *hagnon* rather than *hagion*, and, which is least to be borne, *metanasten*; concerning each of which, [I shall speak] according to the authority of the ancients, in its proper place. And when he called the divine power of the Savior and *katholiken* by the appended term for Neptune, *gaiēochon*. Which he appended neither piously enough nor cautiously enough: whether they are created, such as angels, who are good or evil; or corporeal, inanimate, simple, as the heaven, *ouranos*, which our author called *kachnōta*, both tumidly and not aptly enough; when he intended to indicate open or patent: or corporeal, inanimate, composite, and absolute: such as a thunderbolt, snow, and the rest, about which the Philosopher speaks in his *Meteorology*, not to mention the others.
Eight places for these, to which they can be conveniently referred, certain fewer of the philosophers have made. In distinguishing which, the poet has often sinned, either through thoughtlessness or lack of skill, and perhaps more often than others. From which those things here especially look toward what is in substance or is found around it, which they call *symbebēkota*, such as those things which are expressed by the name of quantity, such as magnitude, space, and the rest of the same kind, namely time and number, which elsewhere in the *Bacchics* our author called *isometron*; or those of quality, such as habit: which the poets subject to appended terms that follow either the soul or the body—indeed, virtue and wisdom and almost all other matters of the same 51 kind, they subject to appended terms, just as [they do] other species of the same quality, concerning which the books of the philosophers must be consulted; for it is enough for us to have pointed these out incidentally. Or finally, those things which are said in relation to some one, as when one is called father, or impious, or pious.
To which class the B other six can be conveniently referred. Beyond which not even the Stoics ascend, unless they divide that final genus; for they said that some things exist in a certain manner; others, that they exist in a certain manner in relation to something, was the final one. They made only four genera: the subject, namely, qualities, and things that exist in a certain manner, and finally, things that exist in a certain manner in relation to something. By which the ten classes, or genera, of Aristotle, as they themselves wish it, are circumscribed. And indeed they best called the substance, from the custom of the poets. For although they themselves also called quantiables and qualifiers, and things related to something, often adorned by attributes, or appended terms, yet it is less properly appended or predicated of the former two, and also the latter, such as when I say, Father Aeneas, that is, Aeneas is a father. The same must be said of appended terms, which are properly called such. Which, since they are nothing else than accidents of the substance itself, are predicated of it. Quantity, as of Achilles, since he is called *pelōrios* by the Greeks, and in the same way of any thing whatever. And these are either continuous, as that which I have already said, or separate, as: *Twenty tawny cauldrons from elaborate bronze.*
Quality, such as swift, which to Homer is *podas ōkys* (which it owes to the Hebrews, to whom it owes this, as well as many other things: just as when the hero Asael is called *kouphos tois posin autou* by the Hellenists in Samuel), prudent, wise, and not a few other things of the same kind, are named by them either of one, or of the whole species, as when a man, or the human race, is called prudent, wise, or endowed with reason. 52 To which add also relations, which are either appended or admit of appended terms. If you again collect the remaining things which follow as genera, you will recall all the classes, if I am not mistaken, both the Homeric ones and the others. For there are accidents, which in a substance or around it, as children know, fluctuate, and the final ones are almost called *kata ti*, as relations. But also those are to be corrected who think that appended terms, with those things which are generally called adjectives by the grammarians, are C entirely the same, as when Priscian puts "great rogue, great thief" in such a way that what is first is an adjective, to which he appends that which is the latter. Although the latter is not rarely used for an appended term. For each is an accident. For just as "white" or "great" is necessarily referred to someone, so "thief" and "parricide," and the rest, are referred. And therefore the greatest of philosophers correctly counts "parricide" and "avenger" among attributes, or appended terms: since in the third book of the *Rhetoric*, where he treats of their use in speech, he teaches that "parricide of his mother" and "avenger of his father" can by that reason be said of Orestes. For these indeed are his appended terms: "And in D attributes," he says, "it is possible for attributes to be made from the base or the shameful, for example, 'matricide'; and it is possible from the better, for example, 'father-lover'." Thus "Virgin," concerning the most holy Mother of God; "Friend of God," concerning the parent of believers, are appended terms for Epiphanius. From which even the technical writers of the Hebrews do not depart. By whom, "servant," "king," "thief," "parricide," and other things of that kind, are accustomed to be understood no less than "good" or "wise." For thus they are accustomed to signify whatever denotes quantity and any form inherent by habit or potentiality, to use their words. And in the definition, which they called *kat' epainon*, as if I should say, "Memory is the guardian of things, the treasure of knowledge, etc.," whatever things are added to the defined are correctly called *epitheton* or *epitithemena*. As in that [verse]: *Root of life, Cytherea, nurse of gods, mother of loves.* Sola Cytherea, *ouk epitheta*. The nurse, therefore, and the mother, and whatever things are added in such cases, are said in such a way, as those which we commonly call epithets. Concerning which, as also infinite others, the grammarians did not even think. Add that for the Latins also, abstract nouns placed simply instead of concretes denote that which is said, as in that [phrase], *clay macerated with blood*, concerning Tiberius. For it denotes more than just "sordid" or "bloody," namely, such a one in an exceptional way. And the epigrammatist understood this when he said: *He lies who called you, Zoilus, vicious.* *You are not, Zoilus, a man who is vicious, but vice itself.* And for the Hebrews this is so customary that it belongs to the property of that language; for to the parent of believers it is said, *kai esē eulogia*. The Hellenists speak less accurately there, *kai esē eulogēmenos*. For it is said in the preterite: except that sometimes, however, they expressed it, as in that Cant. v, 16: *His palate is sweetnesses, pharynx autou glukasmoi*. Add, that these which are called attributes or appended terms for us, are the offspring and progeny of that name, which is *shēm*, or the name of an accident, as is commonly said to them. Such as is strength, wisdom, prudence, dementia, grayness, old age, childhood, youth, and other things of that kind. Whence, *Achilles* is *fortis*, *Pythagoras* is *sapiens*, *Ulysses* is *prudens*, *Dido* is *demens*, *Charon* is *canus*. Which *parōnuma*, [as] the Philosopher, and *par-
as John of Damascus speaks, *parayoga* (derivatives), are for the most part appositions, and therefore suit Titius or Seius; which are usually called by the Hebrew logicians A *’ish niphla* in the art of speaking as well.
For antonomasia comes very close to an apposition. But it is also at times the same. Concerning which matter, one should consult the man of diffuse erudition, Gerard Vossius. And sometimes they either define or are at least convertible, as if a poet were to call a rational being an "animal," and mean a man. For the defined is understood and is convertible. But as to the false, it cannot happen that a poet, when he adds an apposition, should likewise state or predicate it: he who thus joins a predicate with a subject, so that nothing is lacking in it save the copula. Therefore, if you confuse an apposition, or join it to a strange subject, not only is an incongruity introduced, but also a falsehood. And this, indeed, is so in any science whatever, as if you were to say the earth is light, or fire is heavy; it differs nothing from the enunciation. Nor does it matter whether you say, "The Punic man is Hannibal," or "Hannibal is the Punic man"—which is also called an axiom. And because it contains truth or falsehood, it is called by the Stoics the foundation of dialectic. And he who says "Miserable Crassus," according to Cicero, asserts that Crassus is miserable, or he says nothing, so that "Miserable Crassus" is the same as "Crassus is miserable," regarding which he speaks in the *Tusculans*. And it is to this point that he notes that appositive nouns are not, strictly speaking, nouns, but are called verbs. Because they are of the nature of verbs, which are predicated in such a place, as if you were to say "is best," it has the same force as "he acts best." I say that both have the same force if attributed to Achilles. Yet it truly denotes either truth or falsehood. So that it does not matter much, especially in poetry, whether you say "Achilles is best," or "Best is Achilles." For B the Hebrews place the apposition in the second position. Unless this is done, it is meant to be a predicate.
And so, when they say "God is good," they are said to be speaking imperfectly—or if you would say "he is such." Which they themselves also sometimes do not observe. But, what you might admire more, they even dissimulate those things which are most necessary to the mind and sentiment, as in that phrase: "He who finds a woman, finds a good." Which the Hellenists for this reason supplemented, *Hos heure gynaika agathēn*, "He who finds a good woman"—for about a bad woman it is certainly false. The Targumists, however, though they were interpreters, added nothing. It matters little to us whether the poet calls the Attic land "barren" appositely and *epitheton-wise*, or whether he says "Attica is barren." For both are true: seeing that it is for that reason called *leptogeōs* ("thin-soiled") by Thucydides, to whom he also ascribes the antiquity of the people logically. Thus, whether Jesus is called *poiētēs* ("maker"), in the Arian voice, or whether this is announced thus, we think it adds nothing to blasphemy. Nor does it signify whether *metanastēs* ("migrant") is said with an apposition of the Holy Spirit, or if this is announced about Him as an epithet; for both are false; the Manichaeans posited two gods, this one good, that one evil. To him, the profane and blasphemous attributed that book which is now inscribed as Exodus. Because they would deny that it belonged to the good God, that He should later inflict such a force of evil and calamities upon those whom He had led out of the land of servitude. "For it is not," says Leontius in *De sectis*, "of the good God to take them out of Egypt and afterward do many things against them." But certainly, whether one says "The evil God, when He led the people out of the land of servitude," or "The evil God was He who led the people out of the land of servitude," it is equally false. For neither can such a God exist, and he who is goodness itself places this mark of his goodness everywhere. What of the fact that they generally contain quantity also, when joined together? For universals, although without a sign, sometimes have force; for poets generally express their meanings *aprosdioplōtos*, or indefinitely, as if you were to say, *Deiloi brotoi*, "Miserable mortals." For this is the same as if you were to say, "Every man is miserable." And in those things which are called perpetual, that which I say is perpetual. It is singular, as if you were to say *dyō kynes argoi*, with Homer, "two white dogs." Which is as if you were to say, "Some dogs are white." Indefinite, as "pious Aeneas." Which is "Aeneas is pious." But you will also find a triple matter: necessary, as "Man is mortal"; impossible, as "The world is eternal"; contingent, as "Man is just." In which, in these three, *anthrōpos brotos*, *kosmos aidios*, and what you have elsewhere in our text, *anthrōpos dikaios*, you will find [a pattern], so that you may thus judge concerning the matter. Of which individual items, what Apuleius called an *effatum*, Cicero an *enuntiatum*, and the Stoics an *axioma*, others have called an interpretation—if a copula is added, they complete them. Plato elegantly called them *onoma kai rhēma* ("noun and verb"). Just as he also calls any speech whatsoever in the interim. And in his imitation, Flaccus:
There are words and voices, by which this pain you may Soften, and cast away a great part of the disease.
Concerning which matter, we used to say not a few things to the Tyrian philosopher. The logicians of the Hebrews, regarding the excellent *dabar*, said that it is the first judgment of the mind. Now, since that which is thus expressed is expressed properly, or figuratively, or unusually, and in these matters the greatest authors also not rarely err, the masters of the art of speaking [are best] concerning these. In which part our author has frequently sinned; for he often employed uncouth translations, and brought forth unusual expressions not cautiously enough, and does not always compose appositions most felicitously, and at times C adds them with some change and defect of the sense they involve. All of which examples he himself will provide a little later. Furthermore, since the scope of the first interpretation, or enunciation, as I have just said, is whether it be true or false, and these properly complete it, the reader ought to remember that we are also dealing here with this when we judge concerning the attributes and appositions in Nonnus, which are predicates and cling to the subject. Just as, for example, *thrasys* ("bold") is called by this our author "Judas"; which apposition,
A even if it be attributed to Peter also, and to our evangelist, men most holy, it cannot be that it is true of both, unless there be either an equivocation or an impropriety in one of the terms. Yet the imprudence of the poet remains no less, who, in such a wealth of words and attributes, appends the same [epithet] to things clearly different, and, as the logicians say, disparate. For most of the time in their works, as I have already said, the poets understand *to prosgoroumenon*, or the copula. And so much for these matters. Which things far exceed the definition of the grammarians, and from which a more perfect [understanding] can easily be collected and constituted by anyone.
CHAPTER III
The appendages or attributes of the first chapter are reviewed. B Our [author] is noted here and there in their usage. The opening of the evangelist, not rightly understood. An attribute in it, placed in an alien position. The inscriptions of books [derived] from their [first] beginnings. Presence in God, regarding eternity. *En arrhētō archē*. A most sweet allusion of St. John to the beginning of Genesis. That St. John frequently looked to the Chaldean interpreters. What our [author] understands by "beginning," when St. John said *en archē*. The Father is the beginning of the Son. The beginning of divinity. The Son in the Father, as in a beginning. That opinion refuted. An inept congeries of attributes at the beginning: *achronos* (timeless), *isophuēs* (of equal nature). The Father of the Son is eternal, the Son [is] the peer in age (*homēliks*). *Hēlikia* 59 regarding the stature of the body in sacred writings. *Autophutos* (self-grown), *ho autōn* (the one who is), and [so used] wrongly. Different is *phusis* (nature), different *phuesthai* (to be born/grown) concerning God. Different is *pephukenai* (to be by nature) from *phuesthai*. The Father is the first person, *ho phusas* (the begetter). *Theophutos* (God-planted), concerning the Son. *Autogonos* (self-begotten) and *autogenethlos* (self-originated) concerning God. *Autogonos* regarding individual persons. *Sunthronos hedran* (sharing the throne), [used of] the Son wrongly. *Sunthronos* [meaning] Lord, in two ways. A division of things, into things breathless and things [that are] breathing, [showing] in this, as often elsewhere, the unskillfulness of Nonnus. The Son of God [called] *ergonomos* (worker) wrongly. The same [called] a minister (*hupourgos*) by the Eunomians and Arians. *Muthos* (myth) instead of *Logos* regarding the Son of God. *Logos* [applied to] the Son of God, previously termed by the Chaldeans. To say in his heart, to think [in] Hebrew. *Audē* (voice), the Logos. If thus in Orpheus, the Logos. Also [used] by theologians. The Syrian [origin of] that word, and whence. The *muthoi* (fables) of the heretics' C dogmas. *Politeia*, the way or rule of life. *Erēmikē politeia* (desert life). *Erēmopolitēs* (citizen of the desert) John the Baptist. *Archegonon* (first-born/originating). The type of Baptism, the Spirit who was carried over the waters. *Achronos* (timeless), a word which ancient theologians [used] in the creation. John *daosophos* (knowingly wise). It is wrongly attributed to him, because it is an attribute of Christ. Light illuminating [is] Christ; light illuminated [is] John the Baptist. *Autotelestos* (self-perfected/final). *Suzux morphē*. *Suzugiai* (conjunctions) in the Trinity, and which ones. John *proangelos* (before the messenger). The error of the Manichaeans. *Prodromein* (to run before). *Prodromos* (forerunner) or *stratēgos* (general) [as] leaders *en schessei* (in relationship). John [is] *angelos epigeios* (terrestrial angel), in the Greek Menaeum. The "angel" of Malachi, and how. *Autogenethlos* (self-originated) God, and [so used] wrongly. *Autoparakton* (self-produced) or *autopoietos* (self-made) [used] by the pagans for the same. Attributes communicable in God. And how they are to be understood. God *autoagennēton* (self-unbegotten). *Autolocheutos* (self-delivered from the womb) God [used] by pagans, and wrongly. The error of Nonnus regarding the two embassies to Christ. The Pharisees *agrupnoi* (sleepless), and by what pact they would defend themselves against sleep. *Luein himanta* (to untie the thong). *Himas* [meaning] what? *Hupodēma*. The Canaanites used to untie the shoe for the Jews. The Lord, whether he walked shod or unshod. John's baptism called *apneuston* (uninspired) by Nonnus. The difference which the ancients posited between the baptism of John the Baptist and that of Christ. *Huponeuein* [used] ineptly concerning the Holy Spirit. Christ *hēniochos harmatos* (charioteer of the chariot). Cherub, cherubim. *Lalos amnos* (prattling lamb). Ignorance of Greek idioms.At the beginning, an attribute occurs placed in an odd position: for when the evangelist said: *En archē ēn ho Logos*, it is without doubt a most sweet parody, taken from the beginning of Genesis. Which he places even contrary to expectation, because it departs from that one. For whereas there it is: *En archē epoiēsen ho Theos ton ouranon kai tēn gēn*, he, using the same beginning, proposes an exception unknown to the Jews and no less necessary to the Church: *En archē ēn ho Logos*, but not, *epoiēthē*. Which principle was the more common precisely because the Hebrews [named] the book, which is first in order, as they [named] the rest, D and after their manner the Hellenists also, from the first words. Yet the allusion is most graceful and clearly sweet. [alt-version omitted] As if you were to say: In the beginning, when all things were being made, the *Logos* was not made, because He was. But to be in divinity presupposes eternity in itself. Whence also Procopius [says] excellently regarding Genesis: "He made," he says, "and it was not [before], which John says concerning the Word of God." For by a certain denotation of time, in which those things which were created began to be, it is clearly shown that He who preceded them was, who did not then begin, but was God with God. This style of speaking corrupted the mind of the greatest writer very badly when he added *th' archē*: by which, as if he had spoken adverbially, that time is denoted at which all things began to be. From which the evangelist excludes him, through whom were made the things which then began: that he had been *achronos* (timeless), he denies by this very fact. For thus he says: *Achronos ēn, akichētos, en arrhētō Logos archē*. Which does not express the mind of the writer. Who indeed intended this: *En archē hote panta epoiēsen ho Theos, ouk epoiēthē ho Logos, all' ēn*. And what did it matter to say *arrhētō tēn archēn* here, except either to obscure the brevity or to involve the speech equally with meaning? Which, as St. Basil [says] rightly, seems to be opposed to the Holy Spirit by that truly diabolical [expression], "There was when He was not." And therefore the holy Fathers, [warned] that nothing in these words should be rashly changed, but [that they should be] held and preserved perpetually as some sacred *keimēlion* (treasure), as often and with such care they have warned. The same Basil [says] 61: "Therefore, so that it may not be permitted to say such things, the Holy Spirit having anticipated through the Gospel, *En archē*, he says, *ēn ho Logos*. If you hold fast to this utterance, you will suffer no evil from the wicked craftsmen. But you say, How was He before He was begotten? You, do not let go of the *ēn*; do not leave behind the *en archē*. The summit of the beginning is not grasped; the extremity of the beginning is not found." Let that be preserved, he says, and let not that be snatched away, "In the beginning," you will easily preserve eternity. For as "was" denotes eternity, so "beginning" admits neither end, nor beginning, nor declaration, and therefore neither admission [of an added] *appositum*. In the beginning, when all things were being created, or, before they were created, the Word was, or existed. But this is from eternity. Which the ancients equally confirm. Solomon himself, first of all, who said that Wisdom, or the Son of God, concerning whom it is treated here, *echtisen* (created) (which the Hellenists render *pro aiōnos* / before the age) existed. And in the same way *en archē*. "The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways." Who would say here *en arrhētō archē*? For indeed *En archē*, as the Chaldeans have rendered it most excellently, since it is *bereshith*, denotes nothing else by the evangelist than that the Son of God, no less God from the beginning, that is, God of eternity, or eternal, is, than the Father. Which even among the first attributes of God the Holy Scriptures have known. Whence also in Isaiah IX, the Son of God concerning whom it is treated here, is called by the Chaldean [interpreter] *o ap' archēs* (from the beginning). Since this therefore is the attribute itself, there was no need here for a new attribute, which they now call an epithet. For whether you say, the Word was in the beginning, or, the Word is eternal, it makes no difference to the meaning. Just as God also, *Cadmon*, who is from the beginning, is said by the rabbis. But there is a passage truly illustrious indeed, since the divine author, which we prove here and there, has often alluded to the Chaldean interpretation, which the Asiatic Jews, as of old, so now use: but he alone remembers *tou Logou*, or *tou*, as it is said there, he could not better convince the Jews [that He was] in the beginning, than if he proved that He whom they read of daily, and who is so often called Jehova there, was this one. And since the paraphrast Onkelos, a writer, whatever the Jews may chatter, most ancient, and whom, even by their own calculation, our [evangelist] could have seen, made no mention of his first [beginning] in the creation of all things, but at paradise and immediately after the fall, our [author] even anticipates and precedes this time. And with him, also that of the creation, concerning which it is said: *En*
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.* With *In the beginning was the Word,* he says. And he adds: *All things were created through him, and without him was not even one thing created.* He ought not to have misinterpreted so illustrious a passage. It is truly apparent with how great a difficulty, both of understanding and of meaning, he involves himself here with one attribute, for he who places this beginning in the beginning, and indeed in another, although he is neither first nor alone, has interpreted this passage in such a way. For as the Jerusalem Targum explains *In the beginning he created* as *In wisdom he created* (which is that Wisdom of Solomon), so in this place the Greeks—who, since they could not place the Son in the Son (or in Wisdom), placed him in the Father—have rendered *the one in the beginning* as *in the Father*; among whom is Cyril. And Nonnus also intended this, if I am not mistaken, so that just as all things were created by them in the Son, so with our author, from the beginning, in the Father—as in another beginning—the Son is said to have been, that is, as the B *beginning and source* of divinity. Which he here called *ineffable*. He therefore understood the *beginning* of divinity. Regarding which the ancient theologians, and among others, Zacharias, bishop of Mitylene (63), says according to this sense: *We say that the Father of the Word and of Wisdom, and the producer of the Holy Spirit, is the first cause and beginning of divinity, an ageless beginning of that which is contemplated in the Son and in the Spirit*, as our theologian Gregory says. Augustine *in John*: *Because Christ is the Son of the Father, and the Father of Christ is the Father, and the Son is God from God the Father, but the Father is God, not God from the Son.*
Thus, therefore, our author understood. But although it may be true that the Father is the beginning of divinity, and that from him the Son arises in his own way, the evangelist did not for that reason speak of him here; for what he says here as *in the beginning*, he says in the Epistle as *from the beginning*: *That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes.* And this strikes at the jugular of this interpretation. Unless the Father is also to be understood there. To omit what he now puts forward, although it is said more circumspectly: *This was in the beginning with God.* Where St. Basil rightly says: *He did not say, "The Word was in God," but "With God," so that he might set forth the propriety of the hypostasis. He did not say "In God," so that he might not give an occasion for the confusion of the hypostasis.* He did not say "in God," but "the Word was with God," so that he might show the property of the person. He did not say "in God," so that he might not give occasion for the confusion of the person. And yet in this sense our author [was saying] the Son was in God, or in the Father, so that I might omit a most inept tautology. For who in this divine brevity could bear: *The Word was in the Father, and the Word was with God?* How much more ineptly will what follows come: *This one was in God with God?* And yet the divine man has spoken in this way, if we accede to these interpretations. In vain, therefore, from the mind of the most holy author, did he say an *ineffable* beginning, which does not admit an attribute, because there is nothing above it. Just as the word *was*, as it is the most simple, so it precedes every thought, so that if 64 anything is added, it does not ascend further, but diverts the intention elsewhere. Divinely, the same Basil on this matter, in his book *On the Holy Spirit*: *In the beginning was the Word; "was" is inaccessible to the mind, and the "beginning" is transcendent to the imagination.* Just as in *Against Eunomius*, he denies that this word is of those things which are said in relation to other things. Therefore, it no more respects an attribute than *from the beginning*, at the beginning of his same Epistle. But who then would be so insane, that if he were to render that in verse, he would say *That which was from the beginning, that which was from the ineffable beginning*, and add an appositive? Wherefore it is by no means to be borne that the luxury of epithets has, as it were, suffocated the ineffable roundness of the greatest author. Of which he left not even a trace. But it is clearly to be admired: *The Word was in the beginning, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Through this Word all things were made; in this Word was life; and the life was the light of men; and the light shone in darkness; and the darkness did not overtake the light.* For which he substituted a great number of epithets C congeriem, so that you scarcely recognize the most elegant face of the speech, and what the rhetoricians so strongly denounce, the reader is nearly suffocated: for in place of the first statement, *In the beginning was the Word*, you have these: *He was without time, inaccessible, in an ineffable beginning, the Word,* *Isos-substantial, same-aged with the Begetter, Son without mother,* *And the Word of God, self-sprung, light, from light, light.* For the second, *And the Word was with God*, *Indivisible from the Father, co-throned in an endless seat.* For the third, *And the Word was God*, *And the Word, high-born, was God.* D Where then is the power of the speech? Where the density, the simplicity, and the vigor? Where the figures, which by repetition add both an ineffable force to the speech and suggest delight to the mind 65? Where those progressions, *was in the beginning, was with God, was God*? And is a man such a sophist that he has so carelessly read the writings of the rhetoricians, that he did not know that these *cola* or members are praised most highly in speech, which, though they are very brief, exhaust the author's mind individually? Which the Greeks so greatly admire. Such is the first, such the second, and such generally all the rest in turn. To which no one will reconcile the original purity, unless he who would remove this mask of appositives from the oration. As if you were to write thus, and correct this immense luxury: *In the beginning was the Word; with God was that one,* *And God, he who was the Word; with God he was in the beginning,* *He was always and remained and all things came to be through him;* *Without him nothing was, that which came to be.* *In him alone was life; and life was this light of mortals;* *In darkness this shone; and the darkness did not seize it.* Thus indeed the ratio of the parody [alt-version omitted] will be consistent, and the round sweetness will remain, and, if I am not mistaken, the splendor of purer Hellenism will be preserved. But neither, where the second 66 person is treated, who is said to be eternal, shall I heap up appositives of the whole divinity. Such as are *ageless, incomprehensible* (for this he intended when he said *inaccessible*), which are called properties of the divine nature. Nor, again, shall I add relations, or those which denote relation, since there is no necessity. For he did not say the Son, as the ancients rightly note, but the *Word*. Of which we are about to speak shortly. Such is *iso-substantial*, and what follows. Nor shall I attribute age to God the Father, when the eternity of the Son is discussed, or say that he is of the same age as the Son; mindful of that theological adage from antiquity: *Those things which are sublime titles are to be attributed to the nature alone, which is both greater than and free from affections; the others are merely human.* But common things [are attributed] to the composite. Namely, to Christ alone. Who, as he is God, so is he man. Which is excellently stated by Cyril. Not that we are unaware that it is customary in sacred writings to speak *anthropopathically*, and what the Hebrew critics, 𐤁𐤍 𐤀𐤃𐤌, holy men speak: which is, *from these things which are present in us, to fashion the energies of God.* But what place can this have, where you deal concerning divinity alone, nay, even of its source and origin, which is the Father? Add that *helikiā* (age/stature) is wont to be referred not only by Homer, but by the evangelists, to the magnitude of the body, that is, to the stature of the body. Such is, *to add upon his stature one cubit*, Matt. vi, 27. Such is, *And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature*, Luke ii. Concerning which passage Theodoret: *He increases in stature as to the body, and in wisdom as to the soul.* Likewise, *that he was small in stature*, concerning Zacchaeus, a short man, Luke xix, 3. And age, as well as nourishment, when they dispute concerning both natures, the theologians always separate from the divinity, as Cyril not once. Vigilius: *And what is added, "Jesus however was increasing in stature and wisdom, and grace, with God and men," cannot be congruent with the nature of his deity, because the deity neither receives an increase of age, nor feels any augmentation, nor is it subjected to the course of times, nor is it calculated by the number of years, and, so that all things...*
A that are born of their own accord, immediately perish. But if you say that he is speaking here of the Father, as the man of wide-ranging erudition, Petrus Faber, in the little book he entitled *Dodecamenon*, notes that the pagan philosophers (for God forbid that he should say this of Christians) called the first person in the Godhead *autophue* (self-grown), *autogonon* (self-begotten), and *autogenehlon* (self-originated), you say nothing more. For just as to be *phuesthai* (to grow/come into being)—he who always was, always is, and always will be—is proper to God, so *agennesia* (unbegottenness) is proper to the Father, which constitutes his idiota (property). Therefore, he is himself the *phues*. And thus, by Cyril, an accurate author in such matters, the first person of the Trinity is called [the one] who, as he says, B *taute sunedreuei, kai to phusanti* (sits enthroned with him, and with the one who begat). Whence you will find the Son called *theoputon* (God-planted) by the theologians. To whom also add *autogonon* and *autogenehlon*, about which I will speak more in a moment. These things do not fit the individual persons any better than they fit the essence; nay, they overturn the *idiotas*. But our author, after having once derived these streamlets from pagan fountains, dares to apply them to the individual persons. For concerning the Father, chapter xiii, verse 10: *Dechnutai autogenehlon emon pempsanta Tokis*. But the property of the Father is not to be begotten. Concerning the Son, chapter ii, verse 12: C *Autogono de Parthenos hamartese theotokos Huiei meter*. And yet the property of the Son is not to be from himself, but from the Father, to have been eternally begotten. Concerning the Holy Spirit, chapter iv, verse 6: *Pneumatos autogonoio pelei katharoio loetrou*. And yet the property of the Holy Spirit is not to have been begotten, but to have proceeded. But what the evangelist said, *Kai ho Logos en pros ton Theon*, and before him Solomon, *Emen pros auto, hēn*, he expressed by putting something else, when he says that he was *sunthronos* (enthroned with). But to pass over the fact that he said the same thing twice—because *mōnos* (being alone) and *hedre* (sitting) are the same (though it would have been enough to have said *prostonmōnos*), he would have better expressed the simplicity D of the evangelist by using the same word that the evangelist uses here. Add that he attributes one [term] to the divine nature alone in this place, while the other is now common to the human nature as well. For just as I acknowledge that theological aphorism to be true: *Hoti ouk ek prokopēs ton thronon eschen ho Logos*, [the Word did not obtain the seat or throne by the passage of time]: so I know it to be true that in this way now the flesh is glorified. Rufinus, in his *Exposition of the Creed*: "He ascended, therefore, to the heavens; not where the Word [as] God had not been before—for he was always in the heavens, and remained in the Father—but where the Word made flesh had not before sat." How much more circumspect, then, is the evangelist, who said he was *with God*? By two things, as he thought himself, he encompassed whatever exists, when he said, at the third verse, *kai epleto panta di' autou, Apnoa kai pneionta*. Which division, if we wish to admit the truth, includes only the *hupobebēkota*, that is, as the theologians say, natures inferior in creation, and scarcely even that. Wherefore Cyril is better: *Panta ta onta ē ktista estin* (All things that are, are either created). Or Nyssenus, who divided all things into *noēta kai aisthēta* (things perceived by the mind and by the senses), in his *Catechetical Oration*: "There is a twofold understanding in existing things, divided into the intelligible and the sensible contemplation: and nothing could be grasped besides these." Others [divide] into *theōroumena kai nooumena* (things contemplated and things conceived), just as Theodoretus does when he treats of this passage. Others, finally, into *horata te kai aorata* (things seen and things unseen), with the Apostle. But who would bear what follows, *kai ergoponou dicha muthou, Ouden eou toper eske*? For who would say that the eternal Son of God labored when he created all things? Unless perhaps he considered the Son as an instrument in creation, or a vicarious minister, whom Eunomius and Arius [call] by the peculiar term *diourgon*
71 and he called him *ergoponon* (worker): whom faith rightly knows as Creator and *autourgon* (self-worker). For I would scarcely call the highest artificer *ergoponon*.
Rightly says Augustine: "The Lord is not to be said to have labored." Likewise, "As the Father works without labor, so too the Son." And he had forgotten the Word, or Speech, before the incarnation, or, as the ancients speak, *before the theandric visitation* (pro tēs theandrikēs epiphoitēseōs), to be considered in this place, who, as God, was present to God in creation, not as man. But to labor is a *human activity* (anthrōpinē energeia), not *divine* (theikē), not of the godhead, but a human function, as Anastasius says. And, as Basil rightly says, truly a *passion* (pathos). But *impassionately did God create all things*, God created all things without perturbations or fatigue, as is excellently said by the same. Therefore, when in the sacred books it is said that he labored, this was done *not by the nature of his godhead, but by the economy of the union*, that is, not by a natural manner, which is divine, but by that of the union, as the canons of the theologians have determined it should be understood.
Add to this that in the sacred books, wherever Jews inquire of the Lord and his will, as the profane do of Apollo, whether they say *id* [in] *to Kyriō* (for so the Hellenists render it), or *to say* to do a thing, in both places *Memra*, which is *the Word of God*, has been rendered by the Chaldeans. Since, for the most part, the same ones say *Memra* for the prophecy which the Lord is wont to dictate. So it is not without cause, as the ancients frequently testify, that when the Word of God was born on earth, Apollo no longer gave his oracles. Regarding which, his own confession is also adduced. Furthermore, the same one who is called the Word (*Logos*) to John, if indeed we stand with Justin—a man as holy as he is ancient—was called *Audē* (Voice) by them. For regarding that of Orpheus:
*I adjure you, the Audē of the Father, which he uttered first.*
He names here as *Audē* the Word of God, through whom *the heaven and the earth and every creature came into being*, as the divine prophecies of the holy men teach us, to which he attended in part in Egypt and learned that *through the Word of God all things came into being*. With which word the ancient theologians also make use, as Cæsarius, the brother of Gregory, in *Dialogue 1*: "For God and Father always existed, and as Father he always existed of the only-begotten Son, the A substantial *Audē*." Which word is manifestly, as are not a few that Homer uses, in the usage of the Chaldeans; for from *pehal* *p-e-l* is formed in *aphel* *a-p-l*. *Oda*, or *auda*, for so the Syrians [say]. Which is, to make something known to another, or (which is done by the benefit of speech) to signify. Just as Homer said, *Auda* (tell me), *that you know*.
From which it is clear that the use of the word, along with the thing itself, originated with the Chaldeans. For the same Orpheus, in the same place:
*And looking to the divine Word, he attended to him.*
For he calls the divine *Logos*, the Divine Word. And there is a great difference, indeed, regarding the wickedness of one who sins, whether one speaks with ignorance or imprudence, or whether knowingly, one speaks in a way that is little Christian or impious; it matters little to the damage and the opinion of him who is offended. Truly, B whoever, in the writings of the prophets, reads so many illustrious things regarding the Messiah, and the attributes, who in the Chaldean books and interpretation, as often as and in whatever ways the Church has invoked the Word of the Lord (for so it is called by them), in whom all the saints, especially in the Psalmist, say they hope, and contemplates that this Word has finally come and assumed human flesh; as one who, existing as God with God always, as he also was even then, became man for our salvation and for life; it is impossible that he should not be moved when he hears this same one being called a *mythos* (fable). If this word were of an honest notion, as we do not deny it sometimes is, yet on account of the infamy of its distinct signification, it should have been banished from this usage. To omit that there is nothing in it that is common in word or definition with the word *Logos*. Which, as the holy men formulated with highest piety, so with excellent success, at the prompting and leading of the Holy Spirit, that I might omit [the customs of] the Church and of the Fathers, who are wont to mark the dogmas of the C heretics with the same word. *For as the Arian myths, for as the myths of Eunomius*, when they speak of heresies. And Theodoret inscribed the book he edited on heresies, *On Heretical Myth-making*. In which he never or rarely calls their dogmas and opinions anything other than *myths*. Among other things: *And indeed the myths of the ancient heresies, gathered from the ancient teachers of the Church.* How much more wisely Gregory the Theologian [spoke]! Who of this Word:
*Yielding to the Word of the great God; who covers all the changeable and manifold myth of the human mind.*
Where he not only separates that subsistent *Logos* from this profane word, but also justly opposes it to it. When the most holy evangelist in verse 4 said, *And the*
light of men*, he did not speak distinctly; he created a compound, for he said: *And the life-giving light of men was the all-nurturing life*. Thus, he confuses the predicate and the subject; for he meant, *And this life was the light of me*n. Add to this that the principal function of that life, which is treated here, is not to nourish, but to vivify: for that life is self-life which he understands here. A fixed manner of life or living is what the Greeks elegantly call *politeia* (policy). Ecclesiastical writers do the same. Thus, "lofty *politeia*" in Nyssen, by which one has wholly consecrated oneself to God, in the *Laudatio Basilii*: "When someone, through a lofty *politeia*, is translated from earth to heaven." Hence "eremitic *politeia*", the life of hermits: such as John embraced. Photius says: "And Leontius, who chose the eremitic *politeia* and the solitary life." Whence John himself is called by Theodoret "citizen of the desert": "The citizen of the desert, who threatened the corrector of all cities." Or, "desert-citizen." The monastic garb A 76 is by way of imitation of the desert-citizen and Baptist John; for his garment was of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins. Germanus the Confessor. In the same way, the manner of life which each one used, the heretics and those like them called *politeia*. So, when the Massalian heretics, or Euchites, were called by the idle *Vacantini*, and in Greek *Bachantinoi*, Synesius called that word common to their *politeia*, proper to their life and conversation. In such a way our author, being quite inaccurate, when he wished to say "citizen of the desert," said "denizen of the waste." As if because *asty* (city) and *polis* (city) are sometimes the same, and likewise *astos* and *polites* (citizen) are the same, just as now authors had made their own in that sense, as they had made the word *politeia*. This is that in verse 6: *There was a certain mountain-roaming citizen of the desert waste.* Since he said *baptisma archegonon* (primordial baptism) in the same place, *Herald of the primordial baptism*; I think he looked to the opinion of some of the Greek interpreters, who from the beginning of creation, where the Hellenists say, *that the Spirit of God was borne above the water*, wished the grace of baptism to be understood. Theodoret in *Quaestiones in Genesin*: "To some, it seems that the Holy Spirit vivifies the nature of the waters, and maps out the grace of baptism." Procopius in *Genesin*: "But some say that the grace of the holy baptism is also hinted at immediately from the foundation of the world." Those who referred the Spirit, of whom Moses speaks there, to the Holy Spirit, undoubtedly gave rise to this interpretation. How ancient this opinion is, the Jerusalem Targum teaches. From which B *Spiritus gratia* (the grace of the Spirit), which is borne above the waters, is spoken of. That *archegonon* (primordial) is a word which ancient theologians use in the matter 77 of creation is certainly clear. Caesarius in *Dialogo 1*, quest. 62: "Who made the darkness? Was it primordial, or did the devil make it?" and in *Dialogo 3*: "And why is the primordial day not called the first by Scripture?" as also that, that the Syrians in the formulas of baptism remember the Spirit who brooded upon the waters: the thing which they express by that word, the mention of which is made in creation. The Evangelist Matthew thus interprets the name Jesus, *For He shall save His people*, which is truly *laossóos* (people-saving). Why then does he attribute to the Baptist what was the Lord's? To the Forerunner what is the King's, who arrives in the flesh, and whom the evangelist here so solicitously distinguishes? Unless he interpreted John's name in this way. For he says in the same place, *His name is divine John, the people-saver.* When that which is said to be proper, by itself, belongs to Jesus, and that name, by the very authority of the Holy Spirit, is interpreted. *And you shall call*, says the evangelist, *His name Jesus; for He Himself shall save His people from their sins.* Where Theophylactus rightly: "Here he interprets Jesus, what it signifies: that He is Savior. For He Himself, he says, shall save His people: not only the Jewish, but also the Gentile, who has made haste to believe and to become His people. But whence shall He save? Is it perhaps from wars? No; but from their sins." And then he adds: "Whence it is clear that He who is to be born is God; for it is for God alone to forgive sins." Whence it appears that it is God who was about to be born, because it is for God alone to save from sins, or to forgive sins. The Greeks themselves also, in their *Menaea*, after they have adorned the most holy Baptist in their own way with so many titles, excellently call him "the one preparing the way of salvation." But I would not call the *kosmou metera* (mother of the world) that faith, about which the evangelist speaks in the next verse, when he says, 78 *that all might believe through him*. For it is thus: *They might have right faith as the eternal mother of the world.* For whether you take the word *kosmos* (world) properly for the whole race of men, it is said ill, since there are many C faithless and infidels in it; or, as John commonly uses that word in the manner of the Hebrews, *the world* and *the faithful* are opposed. Whence those, *They are not of the world; I pray not for the world; the world hated them.* And, could he have been ignorant of what follows, *and the world did not know Him*? which others of the theologians interpret as the common, turbulent, and senseless people, that is, of the plebs and the seditious, others of the wicked, some of the Jews. St. August. *Tract. in Joannem* 77: "For 'world' is said in this place of those whom he immediately subjoined and said: 'He who does not love me, does not keep my words.' Idem *Tract.* 95: 'If the world did not know Him,' that is, infidel men, with whom the world is full throughout the whole orb of the earth." Theophylactus on the Jews in the tenth and seventeenth chapters of John: "He frequently calls the Jews the world." August. *Tract.* 89 on the same: "Christ spoke to the Jews, and not to other nations. In them, therefore, he wished the world to be understood, which hates Christ and His disciples: nay, in truth, not them alone, but he showed that these also pertain to the same world." He should at least have considered that the prince of this world is called the devil by this most holy man. *Now the prince of this world shall be cast out*, ch. xii, v. 31. You see, therefore, what is to be thought of this compound, and how it is not taken from the custom of the author, so that I may pass over the *hypallage*, which is undoubtedly unpleasant. For he wished *atermonos metera kosmou* (eternal mother of the world). Nor do they think rightly who distinguish otherwise. Since the evangelist said in the eighth verse: *That man was not the Light, but that he might bear witness 79 concerning the Light*, our author expressed it thus, *Truly he was not the intellectual Light*, he would have spoken far more prudently, *Truly he was not this light*. Or for the sake of those who took all these things concerning the Holy Spirit: whom they said was necessarily and always called *phaos* (light), whom Chrysostom refutes quite prolixly. Add that the Father is *phaos noeron* (intellectual light), and the Spirit is, not only the Son. Justin Martyr *Exposit. fidei*: "For the light from light generatedly shone forth; but the light, from light also, but processionally proceeded." Just as the Father is *phaos* (light), true and *anarchon* (without beginning), he himself is the fountain of divinity indeed: John was also a light, but not that light, of which we are now speaking, he says. Whence that in our author, *He was the burning and shining lamp*, how it is said not once in the Greek *Menaea*. On which occasion Augustine and those who are with him elegantly said that one light, of which he speaks here, is illuminated, and the other is illuminating. It can indeed be called a light, and is well called a light itself, but an illuminated one, D not an illuminating one. And therefore, do not discern one thing as light that is illuminated, and another that illuminates. The most holy evangelist, in the thirteenth verse, in order to describe the spiritual regeneration of the children of God, wards off every lewd and foul pleasure from it; for he denies that such are born of blood and flesh, or of the will of that, or that this nobility arises from grace, when
A he altogether denies that it is the beginning of another life. Wherefore he would have abstained from this most foul term if he had applied it. For the word *apoūv*, which is in itself honest, others—and he himself in the *Bacchics*, and not in one place only (for this is almost customary for him)—transfer to obscenity. As one who might also call that part of the body, which cannot be expressed while preserving modesty, *arotron*, Dionys. XVIII:
80 Cut the male ear of the father's unwedded [ploughshares. For at times obscenity arises from proportion: which the usage of translation or a similarity to the thing itself produces. And yet he repeated this also: Nor even this itself: The marriage-bed—a bringer of love—pleased not the flesh, But they are born as children of the God-Parent, without man.
Which is not to avoid, but to show one's lack of shame thoughtlessly and imprudently. How much more circumspect, however, are the Hebrews: who, although they scarcely admit suggestive words, if any such seem to exist even in appearance, they soften them with a most elegant change of vowels, or divert them to another meaning. The Incarnation, or *Enanthropesis*, the most holy evangelist has described in few words, but most effectively: "And the Word became flesh." Where the Word, who assumed flesh, denotes the Son of God, the flesh, the man assumed, the assumption of it, and the ineffable conjunction of both natures in one person: and to show that this was absolute, he says not that he assumed flesh, but that he became it. But what did he intend, when in the following verse he used the word *autotelestos* in this mystery? To me, indeed, it does not seem a matter of doubt that what others call *autoteles*, our author here calls *autoteleston*. Unless it be taken adverbially. Truly, those things are *autotele* to which nothing more is lacking or wanting for their perfection. And thus the Pythagorean Ocellus, who frequently uses this word, defines the universe as *systēma tōn holōn physeōn autoteles kai teleion*. And theologians, when they discuss the Son B and his filiation, have transferred the word to their own disputations. And the great Athanasius: "Not a spoken Word, not one internal, not an emanation of the Perfect one, not a division of the impassible nature, nor a projection, but a Son *autotelē*, living and acting."
81 By these words he means this, that the Word of God, or the Sermon, is not a word which is either conceived in the mind, or uttered by the voice, nor a stream or segment or particle, or anything of the same kind, which is derived from that perfect and immutable nature of his, or brought forth, but that the Son of God is perfect, living, and endowed with the power of acting. Just as he also calls *to autoteles tēs hypostaseōs* the true and altogether absolute hypostasis of the Son: "As the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whom he wills." He does not say that he does this separated from the Father according to energy, but he teaches us *to autoteles tēs heautou hypostaseōs*, in his fifth dialogue *On the Trinity*. Truly, if I can judge anything concerning this passage, our author, when he saw that it is somewhat more that the Word is said by the most holy John to have become flesh, than what others call *ensarkōthēnai*, to excuse the weakness of the word, added *to autoteleston*. Which in this place is *autotelōs*. So that the sense is, "And the Word *autotelōs* was made flesh," that is, he assumed the whole flesh, or man. For two natures, says Anastasius, we recognize in the mystery of the incarnation: the human, namely, and the divine: *hōs einai ton auton Hyion, Theon teleion, kai anthrōpon teleion*, that is, in such a way that both the perfect man and God are the same Son here. For I do not believe he called the Word himself *autoteleston*: as the interpreters imagined. For the things he adds clearly look to the union, not to this perfection of persons. Unless I am mistaken, he meant this, "And the Word *autotelōs* was made flesh, so that he became a God-man." But he attempted, though with little prudence, what he could not do. For just as, when they said *Theos kai anēr*, they expressed C the natures most excellently, and thus they are accustomed to speak, so when they said 82 *theanthrōpon*, they expressed the union, for the sake of which that word was devised, with care and success. Which does not proceed further in the other case. For we do not say *Theos kai anēr* in the same way, nor is the compound from them easily spoken; for in paronyms the ratio is different, as when the ancient Fathers treat *peri tōn theandrikōn energeiōn*. Wherefore the reason escaped him. And especially, because he brought forth those two things, *Theos* and *anēr*, which are neither compound nor joined by a copula, separately and distinctly, whereas he is treating here of the union, which, I say, he himself called in the following verse a *desmon*: And the Word *autotelestos* was made flesh, a God-man, Born late, pre-existent, in an ineffable bond Having united the divine to a mortal-seeming form.
Wherefore he should have at least said *Theos kai anēr syndetikōs*, so that, if I say the soul and body are a man, because they are united hypostatically, they perfect the man. The ancients sometimes say *theanthrōpon*. Caesarius dial. 4, quest. 189, *ho theanthrōpos diakeleuetai*. Now, that he thought *to autoteles* and *to autoteleston* to be the same, belongs to the forum of the grammarians, who, if I am not mistaken, will not admit this. For if *autotelestos* in this place is an appositive to the Word, so as to say this, that the whole Word, or Sermon, was made flesh, in the schools of the theologians an account will have to be rendered. Concerning which the great Athanasius, against the Arians, orat. 3: "For just as hearing John, 'The Word became flesh,' we do not think the Word is completely flesh, but that he put on flesh, and became man." And elsewhere, "He put on the man." So that through the whole *kataperychōresin* (for so they call this complex), just as the soul through the body, the divinity penetrates and is diffused. Which when it puts on that, it does not become because of that what it puts on, nor does it cease to be what it was. Certain things are 83 more perilous: which, I would scarcely admit, if a precedent of the ancients were available, or would rashly concede to a Christian poet. Such is that he called the Savior, or his truly human nature (for we shall speak elsewhere of the word *morphēs*), in the place we have now brought forward, *brotocidē*. By which, indeed, he could have abstained for the sake of Manes, Eutyches, Dioscorus, and others: of whom the former used to say that the Lord appeared in the flesh *phantasia psilē kai schēmati diakenō sōmatos anthrōpinou*, this is, by a bare imagination, and a vain form of a human body; the others said that he was made man only in appearance: which *brotocidē*, if I am not mistaken, you may interpret conveniently. Not to mention Marcion and the Manichaeans, who urged *tēn peri phantasias dokēsin* in the flesh. For this is the same as if someone were to call God and his nature, or at least the divine [nature] in Christ, *theoeidē*. Yet Homer himself does not call men gods in this way: namely, those who approach them most nearly in the form of body or mind. Nor indeed can a true man be more truly called *brotocidēs*. And who would bear for Titius or Seius to be called so? How much less he, who if he was *brotocidēs*, neither truly put on that which can die, nor even died truly. And Leo the First says excellently: "He who does not think the cross of the Lord is false, and does not doubt that the punishment undertaken for the salvation of the world was true, whose death he believes, recognizes also the flesh," *Epistle to Flavian*. And Ignatius, whom the most great Theodoret praises, says excellently: "If the Lord assumed flesh imaginarily, I also now am in bonds imaginarily for his sake": *Ei gar tō dokein tauta eprachthe hypo tou Kyriou hēmōn, kagō tō dokein dedemai*. And I do not say the cause, he says, lest I be insane, who have addicted myself to death for his sake. Add that the devil can be so called. But that Antichrist will be such, Hippolytus, bishop and 84 martyr, prophesies in his book *On the Consummation of the Age*; for it will be that he assumes flesh, *all’ en dokēsei*. Which is what else, than that he will be *brotocidēs*? By which name he is also noted, when the Apostle, 11 Thess. II, 3, expressly calls him the man of sin. But concerning the flesh of the Lord, whom the same one luculent! *Ho gar*
our God has settled among us in the flesh, and the flesh of our own, which He Himself made for Adam and for all those from Adam, without sin—that is to say: for our God truly dwelt with us in this flesh, a flesh such as ours, which He Himself fashioned and created for Adam and all who come from him, yet without sin. The ancients, being very refined, called the union of both natures a *synodos*: for they often join these two, the *enōsis* and the *synodos* of the natures. Our author, together with them, also placed the term *syzygia* there when he said: *Having yoked the sacred, mortal-seeming form.* That this word was used by the ancients in this way, there is no room for doubt. We know that we ourselves have used it regarding the Trinity, with the meaning of relation or *schesis*. Thus, those things which are said of the Son, because they presuppose the Father, are wont to be called *syzyga*. Even as when He is called *apaugasma* or *charaktēr*, He from whom these derive this quality is necessarily understood. Therefore, they are called *syzyga* in the Trinity, of which each single one is so used that there is nothing in them which is considered alone and by itself, but it presupposes by this very fact something else, the other of which being removed, the former is also removed. Thus, if there is a Son, there is also a Father, and if there is a Father, there is also a Son. But likewise, he who removes the Son removes the Father. Thus, if there is the Wisdom of God, the one to whom this Wisdom belongs also exists. These are the *syzygiai*, as is proved at length elsewhere by the Nyssen, who uses this argument to prove that *he who denies the Son, denies also the Father*, because he who does not admit the Son, rejects the Father along with Him. Such a relation does not exist in [created] natures. For it is not the case that he who says "human" therefore understands "divine" by itself. Wherefore in these cases it is a *synodos* rather than a *schesis*; yet he did not speak rashly or merely for the sake of supporting the verse, although he loves that word, but rather he spoke thus out of precedent. Nor am I forced to condone the fact (whether through forgetfulness or for the sake of the verse I know not) that he called John, who foretold the coming of the Lord, an *prōtangellos* in the following line. For he writes thus: *But holy John, the proto-messenger of the flesh-bearing Word, confirmed the witness voice.* Clearly, just as he had already called the Lord, before His coming, the *phaos akērykton*, the unproclaimed light, in line 8: *And the herald of the unproclaimed light appeared.* But if we believe this, let us also believe, if it seems right, that there was no one who foretold the coming of the Lord: that there was no one who brought forth any announcement in testimonies concerning the Savior before His coming. This is the opinion of the Manichaeans. Hence Faustus, of this sect, in Augustine: "Why, you ask, do you not accept the prophets? Nay, rather, say you, if you have any reason, why we ought to accept the prophets." "Because of the testimonies," you say, "which they pronounced concerning Christ." "I for my part have found none, although I have read them quite attentively and with the utmost curiosity." And yet, this itself is a confession of an idle faith: to believe in Christ without witness or argument. To which St. Augustine replied: "Faustus is surely working toward this with all these words, that we should believe that the Hebrew prophets neither foretold anything about Christ, nor—if they did foretell it—that the testimonies before us are of any profit, nor that they themselves lived according to the dignity of those same testimonies," in the twelfth book against Faustus the Manichaean. After which he accurately adduces every single one of the prophecies concerning Christ. The same author [says] in Tractate 36 on John: "Before our Lord Jesus Christ came, He ignited and sent many prophetic lamps before Himself. Of these was also John the Baptist: to whom the Light Himself, which is the Lord Christ, offered a testimony such as no man has ever received. For He says, *Among those born of women, there has not risen a greater than John the Baptist*." How then did He come *akēryktos* (unproclaimed)? Without a harbinger or messenger, I ask? How is he called a *prōtangellos* (first-messenger), he who had so many and such great predecessors? But he spoke through forgetfulness, and wishing to support the term that the Church is accustomed to call the *proangellos* (pre-messenger), he preferred to call him *prōtangellos* out of pity for the meter, lest it cause a collapse. As if *prōtodromos* and *prodromos* were the same thing.
D Yet he is so named, who precedes and goes before a leader for the sake of either measuring out or sometimes scouting, from which his [the leader's] arrival is judged. This is what Synesius intended. "Leaders," he says, "arrive, *hous ouch horōntes*, whom when we do not see, we know from the precursors that they will be present." And sometimes for the Hellenists, *prodromein* means nothing other than to announce by running ahead. For which purpose soldiers were employed by commanders, so that nothing might be unready when they arrived. Whence in his *Meneiae*, the Greeks call the Baptist, among other things, a soldier and forerunner of Christ. For they call him both *the boundary among the prophets*, and *the beginning of the apostles*, and *an earthly angel*, and *the voice of the Word*, and *the forerunner and soldier of Christ*, in the sense that I have already stated. And Elizabeth says there to Mary: "You shall carry the King, and I the soldier." Which sometimes happened with others as well. Whence the angel added to Tobias, just as the Hellenists speak there: *Let us run before the woman*, and let us prepare the house, which Malachi had already stated: *He shall prepare the way before my face*. This passage of Malachi, indeed, not to speak of Isaiah, who accepts it concerning Christ, cannot, if I am not much mistaken, be used to name John *akēryktos* (unproclaimed) or *first of the angels*. To omit now that *prodromos* and *stratēgos*, precursor and leader or commander, are altogether relative terms, and are referred to each other by a certain necessity. Moreover, it was the prerogative of the greatest of men that, just as the others announced that He would come, he alone announced that He was coming, and thereby got there first. Chrysostom says remarkably: "The prophets and all the apostles, indeed, proclaimed Him as absent; and some [did so] before the coming in the flesh, others after the assumption; but this [John] alone [proclaimed Him] as present; wherefore he is also called the friend of the bridegroom." Add that, just as the Greeks, who called John an earthly angel, misunderstood the word, so it was with him. For in Malachi, from whom he is called *angelos*, God speaks after the manner of men. For He did not understand a spirit, but a man, in that place, who is indeed truly illustrious: *Behold, I send my angel, and he shall prepare the way before my face, and the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to His temple; and the angel of the covenant whom you desire. Behold he comes, saith the Lord almighty.* For there is an ambiguity in the word *malach*, which the Hellenists, as is their habit, have rendered ambiguously. Whence the Greeks, in order to extol the Baptist, seem to have accepted it not for a messenger but for a spirit: which there was no need to do. So that in the same way he errs in both cases, when he called both the arrival of our Lord in the flesh (of which we spoke before) *akēryktos*, and His precursor—after so many messengers—a *prōtangellos*. Not a few things, as we were already warning, adhered to him, whether from pagan custom, or from reading and recollection. As when he called God *autogenethlon* in line 18: *And God, self-born, in the opposite sights, / No one ever beheld.*
D Just as they also said *autoparakton*, which is the same as *autopoiētos* or *autogenētos*, the *Questions and Answers to the Greeks*, which is inscribed thus far as Justin's, shows. Among other things: "If God is without beginning and eternal, He is neither *autoparakton* nor *heteroparakton*; for the *autoparakton* is in no way eternal and without beginning." If, he says, it lacks a beginning, and God is eternal, He is neither produced by Himself nor by another; for he who is produced by himself can by no reason be eternal or lack a beginning. And among other things about that word [he says] much: "There is no difference between *aparakton* and *autogenous*; but if God is *autoparakton*, then both God and the world will be *autoparakton* and *autogenētos*." And elsewhere he shows that *autoparakton*, *autopoieton*, and *autogenēton* are the same thing. Hesychius: *Autogenēs, autogenethlos*. Add to this what the scholastics testify, that God is not only eternal, but that His eternity is Himself. Which if true, [then] it is false that *autogenethlon* is the same [as eternal]. For thus, He is neither eternal, nor eternity, but rather a beginning.
A *autophyton* (self-born), *autogonos* (self-generated), *autogenethlos* (self-originated), B or *autogeneis* (self-created), with similar terms, are to be relegated to whence they unwillingly brought their foot here. The Sacred Scriptures, that they might express the supreme majesty of God, which human condition does not grasp, assign to Him a seat in heaven: of which they make the Son (as the Fathers are accustomed to speak of the entire Trinity) a participant. And they call Him *homophroneon* 91 [co-thinking] from it, just as the Psalmist called God *ho kathemenos* [the One who sits]. Indeed, *ho kathemenos ap’ arches* [the One who sits from the beginning], Ps. liv, 20. And, because it places His majesty with supreme power far from our disturbances and mutability, He is said to have sat in the flood, so that *to bebaion, kai aperiphoiton*, that is, supreme stability, might be noted. Just as the Son, so that *to achoriston*, and, as Gregory the Theologian speaks, *to ameriston*, that is, supreme and inseparable conjunction, might be shown, comm. 18, is placed in the bosom of the Father. Where our [author] has not once managed the matter very poorly. For firstly, since it is customary for theologians, when they oppose the persons of the Trinity among themselves or treat of them together, to distinguish them hypostatically, ours on the contrary, when he speaks here of the Father and the Son, called the Father *amometos*, or "blameless," not reverently enough nor considerately. Which apposition Homer attributes to his Polydamas. But it is such that it neither befits that person [the Father] nor [the one] whom he joins to the Son. For who would call God, let alone that true, ineffable, and eternal Father of the eternal Son, "blameless"? Which word neither proposes essence nor declares hypostatic property, that is, *oute ten ousian parestesen, oute ten hypostasin*. How much better, therefore, C would he have spoken *homodoxon agennetoio Tokeos* [of the same glory as the unbegotten Offspring]? Except that *Tokeos*, which always pleased them, does not please us; a word which not even Homer attributes to his Jove. Meanwhile, in this way, he would have spoken more conveniently of both, and according to the usage of the ancients. The other thing is that, while the evangelist implies that both are sitting, it pleased our [author], however, not otherwise than if God the Father were the first unmoved mover, and the Son followed this motion of His, *homophoiton*, that is, co-walker, of the blameless Father, or, companion of that motion, 92 with supreme contumely to both, as I have already said, to call [Him] *homophoiton amometoio Tokeos*.
For *phoin* is said of any good and polite man. But how is *homophoitos*, or to walk or be moved with him, said (for so the interpreters render it), if He is in the bosom of the Father? For this seat, as it is *hedraios* [stable], so is it quiet; the other, however, [is] wandering and unstable. And he did not even think that *to phoitan* (which cannot be rightly used here even in an honest sense) is also an infamous word, which is used concerning Venus and fury. Whence *phoitos*. But truly he has no concern. The Bacchides of Plautus are *homophoitoi*. The two Agyrtae of Cybele who rave and wander about in like manner are *homophoitoi*. Osiris, and gods like him, whose images were accustomed to be carried about and wander, were called *phoitetai*. Whence our [author] rightly, in a profane writing, called him so. And so it must be said, that it cannot be sufficiently said for the sake of youth: that a man who has merited best of sacred things either by example or labor, has indulged himself so much in these matters, that he appears to have left us rehashed paganism for sacred poetry in many places. *Thyas, euazein, krotos, orgia*, for the feast of Pascha; *komos*, a word plainly infamous and proscribed, for sacred festivities, and especially the feast of Tabernacles; *Thalusia*, which is the feast of Ceres, for the worship of God; *gai- D ochos*, by which name Neptune is called by them, for the Son of God; the apposition of Minerva, *promachos*, for the same Wisdom of God, which created all things *aponeti*; *alexikakos*, by which word Hercules is celebrated by them, is transferred to the same [Christ]. Which, as they are used without measure, so they are used without reverence.
The most holy evangelist says a little later, *Kai haute estin he martyria tou Ioannou*, 93 *hote apesteilan hoi Ioudaioi ex Hierosolymon hiereis kai Leuitas*. Which words of the evangelist our [author] received thus, as if
A this embassy were of the priests and Levites, to which the other, of the Pharisees, soon follows. In the opinion of Origen, who understood two embassies to be here, even though the evangelist soon says clearly, *And they who were sent were from the Pharisees*. Which Epiphanius also confirms: *And he immediately showed, how to those sent to John the Baptist by the Pharisees, John himself answers, saying, I am the voice of one crying*, etc., book 1 on the history and sect of the Ebionites. Concerning which, more below. I shall state now that he who wishes these priests to be others than the Pharisees—which would best befit the Pharisees—has attributed [the attribute] to these priests. For no one was more vigilant in that sect, nor did anyone practice *agrypnia* (vigil) from set purpose more than they. For some, as is found in Epiphanius, used to prepare small planks from those [materials], upon which they would lie, so that if they were ever pressed by sleep, they would straightway fall to the ground, and by this method return to themselves; others, during the night, would lie upon flints, others upon prickly thorns. They looked to nothing else but that they might drive sleep from themselves and repel it by every means. Wherefore this was to be attributed to them rather than to priests of any other sect, especially when many of the Pharisees were themselves priests, and this the evangelist himself would seem to demand. The words of Epiphanius concerning this *agrypnia* of theirs are as follows; for we have already explained the sense in passing: *Some would fasten planks to themselves a span in width, and would place themselves upon these at evening, so that if one were to doze, and were to fall to the ground, he might be aroused again to prayer, in order to keep his life wakeful in accordance with what is possible. Others, gathering pebbles, would spread them out for themselves so that by them they might not be carried off into deep sleep, but might be forced to supply themselves with wakefulness; others also had a bed of thorns, for the same purpose*. Wherefore, just as it often happens to travelers in a foreign land that, when once they have lost their way, they frequently turn aside and finally wander off the entire road, the same has happened here to our author, who did not even believe the evangelist that these things were to be understood of the Pharisees. And not even to himself, who here attributes them to the priests, whom he separates below from the Pharisees, although it was a property of the Pharisees, namely the *agrypnia*. For below he posits another embassy than this of the Pharisees, verse 25. Where he says: *And another faithless chorus of sinning Pharisees / Was sent*. But he has not always well expressed the attributes which he had found in the Holy Scriptures. As when in verse 21 he said of Elijah, who is called *Thesbites* from the city, *a citizen of Thesbite soil*. For Elijah's city, Thisbe or Thesbe, was of the land of Gilead or Gilad. Whence Elijah is called *ho Thesbites*, signifying Galaad, a citizen of Thesbite [territory], inhabitant of Gilead, 3 Reg. XVII, verse 4. Which place the Hellenists changed. Therefore, whether he understood the city, he wrongly called it *aroures* (soil), or whether the region, he less correctly called it *aston* (citizen). Although he is fond of this *achuron*. Josephus follows the Scriptures distinctly and after the manner of the sacred letters. Who said, *prophet of the most great God from the city of Thesbone, of the Galaitid region*, prophet of the most great God, from the city of Thesbone, of the Galaitid region, he said. There follows, in the following verse: *And the bold throng said of the unwashed-feet priests*. Which is a Homeric *kakozelia*, to be illustrated here in passing. Homer, in the sixteenth [book] of the Iliad, when he describes the religion of the Dodonaean Zeus in passing, called his priests *aniptopodas* (unwashed-footed): 95 *And around [him] dwell the Selloi / Interpreters, unwashed-footed, sleeping on the ground*. Which word gave, as usual, argument and occasion for arguing to the critics there. For some wished them to be so called because they were both chaste and did not leave the shrine, and therefore they thought they had no need even of the washing of feet. And that this itself was an indication of purity. As Euripides said of such in his Erectheus: «984 feet they do not moisten with springs.» To which the most learned Hesychius referred when he interpreted *aniptopodas* as «those who, out of purity, have no need to wash.» Others wished severity to be signified in this way, because by institution and intent they judged that not even the grit of their feet should be washed away. For in that way they had persevered strongly in their institution: for they were very studious of simplicity. Concerning which Philostratus in his *Imagines* [says]: *The interpreters of Zeus, whom Homer knew as unwashed-footed and sleeping on the ground, are a kind of impromptu men, and not yet furnished in their way of life; and they say they would not even be furnished: for Zeus is pleased with them, since they greet everything from its source*. He says they are pleasing to Zeus by that name, because they embrace simplicity. Andron, an old writer, [says] they were military men who, by that austerity, and, as the Greeks better express it, *skleragogia* (harsh training), hardened both soul and body. Others, and among them a certain Alexander, [say] they were a people originating from the Tyrrhenians: who, according to the institution of their own race, thus honored and celebrated Zeus. And this, our author did not so much examine as seize upon and make a prize for his own ostentation. Which, if we wish to confess the truth, succeeded very poorly. For since the Pharisees are understood here, that this sect was especially devoted to ablutions, 96 no one, unless he is a stranger to the Scriptures, is ignorant. And concerning hands, and their frequent washing, the evangelist Mark [speaks], in a place already praised by many. Nor indeed is there any doubt concerning the feet, since individual Jews also, even often for friends, either for the sake of refreshment, or because this part was especially unclean, would studiously wash their feet. Whence the Truth itself says, *He who has been washed has no need except to wash his feet, but is clean all over*. I will not omit that it was customary in the East to wash the feet also before a meal. That the Pharisees therefore did this is likely, both at other times and as often as they discharged their duties in the temple by their stations and turns. Concerning which matter, the most high and incomparable Joseph Scaliger is to be consulted in his dissertation with Serrarius. For, that they washed the whole body both frequently and according to the custom of the Orient, reason and practice dictate. Which the Sacred Scripture says is *baptizesthai* (to be baptized). For I do not believe they bathed their feet when they immersed themselves into a fountain or bath, [as if] they exposed them with a covering. Certainly not more than the matrons of the Jews, who, when after childbirth, before they join themselves to their husbands, are accustomed in cisterns, fountains, and pools to *baptizesthai*, and to immerse themselves entire, so that they have no part of the body unclean or untouched by the water. That other Jews, and especially the Hemerobaptists, did this diligently, no one is unaware, especially since there were Hemerobaptists even among the Pharisees. And all these things, when he either did not know, or feigned ignorance of, or, what is closer to the truth, in order to transfer what was gathered here from the myrothecia (perfume-boxes) of Homer, he called the priests *aniptopodas*, as if they were either not Pharisees who were priests, or that what is attributed to priests was alien to the Pharisees, although he himself admits a little later 97 that these who were washed most accurately and most frequently were priests and Pharisees. Just as Mark notes that they did the same when they returned from the marketplace. Which is also to be referred to the feet. For these parts were often unclean and touched things that were far from chaste, even against their will. Nor is it to be doubted that that eremitic Pharisee, whose very frequent, and indeed nightly as well as daily, washings Josephus celebrates, applied himself especially to the washing of his feet. I, among the other *lektikas* (lexical) virtues of the Holy Scriptures, admire the simplicity and *apheleian* (guilelessness), which I do not easily suffer to be encrusted either by other writers or by poets. What Matthew had said concerning the Baptist, *of whom I am not worthy to carry the shoes*, our evangelist said a little differently, in verse 27, *I am not worthy to unloose his shoe strap*. Which simplicity our author thus interpolated:
A *Of a foot’s extremity* *Andromelian palm I am not worthy to approach* *To loose the sole strap of the God-breathed sandal.*
For first, what is it to "approach the palm to the extremity of the foot," when he meant "to the tip of the foot"? And who speaks Greek in this way? For it cannot even be excused by ellipsis, which occurs quite often with poets. Then, what does he call the *tip of the foot* (ἄκρον πόδα)? For this term properly belongs to this passage in that sense which ancients usually refer to the sole or the extremity of the toes. As when Apollonius says that Amycus stood in wrestling "in the extremities of his feet" (ἀκροτάτοισι ποσίν). This the Latin poet calls "standing erect on his toes." But he was not thinking that it was a question here of a thong or a sandal fastening; much less even that the Jews wore sandals on their shins. Whence the most learned Tertullian attributes a *caliga* (military boot) to Moses: he finished his 98 very fastidious scouting for his feet, beginning to step on holy ground, indeed a military *caliga*. Which, by way of the leg, it encompassed with a thong or strap; which, from the surrounding (ambiendo), is called by the Hebrews, and the same way by the Hellenists, *sphairotēra*. And so, what is called *himanta* (strap) in our Augustino, is called *sphairotēra* (sphere-binder) by Gregory. This is therefore the same as if someone placed our leggings on the tip of his foot. Wherefore, he involves himself in the greatest difficulties with this *periergia* (needless curiosity).
No less than those who, from the occasion of this passage, inquire whether the Lord walked in these lands shod or unshod. So much so that, even regarding parts (such curiosity was in the smallest matter), it has come to this. For just as the later writers, Arbulensis, Dionysius the Carthusian, Bonaventura, and Lyra, prove this: so the former, from this passage of Mark and Matthew, among others, Chrysostom in *Ad populum Antiochenum* and Blessed Augustine prove it. Since it was not said properly, but *kata paroimias tropon* (in the manner of a proverb) by the most holy evangelists. For they treat of the most worthless and abject part. As when Amos complains of selling the just for a shoe. And yet it can hardly be said how many allegories the greatest men have drawn from this. Which, if anyone cares for them, *kat’ ei tini*, just as the ancient theologians speak, *anagogais te kai theōriais* (by anagoges and contemplations), he may go to them if he wishes, in my place. For us, it is enough that a most lowly ministry is signified. So that from this the greatest humility of the most excellent man may appear. *To gar hypodēma lysai, tēs eschatēs diakonian esti* (For to unloose the shoe is of the lowest ministry). To unloose a shoe, the ancients say, is a most worthless and despised ministry. Among whom are also Augustine and Theophylact. But Jews used the Canaanite servants for this duty, as being vile. For those who take this regarding property argue no less. Furthermore, not content, 99 he called that part which is proverbially belittled by the greatest man, "sacred," and even called it *theopneuston* (God-breathed): as if the gift of prophesying also belonged to it, which the Baptist so depressed—nay, without which his divine humility and modesty cannot be understood. Therefore, he would have done better to abstain from these additions, as in most other things, with him whom he interprets. For absurdity led to absurdity. Because he had said "Andromelian palm," he called the shoe "God-breathed." Which the Jews would not read without laughter, namely, that the Holy Spirit, or the prophetic [Spirit], is placed in the sandals of the Messiah. When there was no need for this, nor that. How much more simply, therefore, he could have said:
*Whose strap* *I am not worthy to unloose, and of the extreme sandal.*
A little later, namely in the thirty-third verse, when it is said by the same John:
*Who cleanses the body of men meant for rebirth* *With fireless and breathless baths,*
the reason escapes him when he thought that *apneustois* (breathless) is the same as *apneumaton* (spiritless). Which, without any affectation, the Fathers more willingly said of *pneuma*, like Gregory and others. For *apneustos* is "he who does not breathe," who does not respire, but not "he who is not inspired or blown upon." Hesychius: *Apneustos*, *ho mē pneōn kata physin* (he who naturally does not breathe). For he looked to the Homeric passage:
D *Who breathless and speechless* *Lies weak.*
Such are those whom mind and spirit fail: whom we call *leipothymountas* (fainting). Such is that most noble and much celebrated *apnous* (breathless), which Galen mentions, and about which Heraclitus had written a book. Such are those who are said by physicians to suffer from *apnoia*, as in strangulation of the womb, apoplexy, and lethargy. But to the matter from the words. 100 For the third time Matthew said the Baptist had spoken: *I indeed baptize you in water unto repentance*, and a little later concerning Christ, *but he himself will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire*. Whence the ancients, which no one is ignorant of, distinguished between the baptism of the Lord and of John. Basil calls the former *eisagōgikon* (introductory), to pass over others, and this *teleiōtikon* (perfective); the former a departure from sin, the latter a union toward God, or *hyothesias* (adoption). Just as Tertullian calls the former of preparation, the latter of perfection. Which perfection is newness of life, as Augustine is accustomed to speak, and regeneration. [*Enchiridion* ad Laurent.]: For his baptism is not in water only, as was John’s, but also in the Holy Spirit, so that everyone who believes in Christ may be regenerated by that Spirit, from whom Christ, being generated, needed no regeneration. As not once elsewhere, but even especially against the Donatists: as almost all the others [have done] from antiquity. For I do not touch on the opinion of the moderns here, nor do I dispute about the truth. And it appears that our author was indeed in that position. Who, to express his own mind, interprets what John said, *in water*, as *apyroisi kai apneustois loetroeis* (with fireless and breathless baths). I ask therefore, if he felt this way, why does he say that those baptized by him are *palingenesias* (of regeneration)? For he explicitly said *palingeneōn demas andrōn baptizei* (he baptizes the body of men meant for rebirth). But yet, those who restricted the baptism of the Forerunner to repentance, as they did the Spirit (the fount of regeneration), undoubtedly denied the regeneration. And therefore they also called his baptism *an[apneumaton]*. Where there is newness of life, as he says, there is also the innovator Spirit, as also the contrary. Whence also *palingenesia psychēs* (regeneration of the soul) is called baptism by Cyril, and *palingenesias loutron* (bath of regeneration) by Gregory the Theologian. Augustine in *Enchiridion*: *For they were not reborn, 101 those who were baptized with the baptism of John*. Our author, however, although he manifestly takes the Spirit of regeneration from them, nevertheless concedes the effect of the Spirit; for he calls them reborn. And not cautiously enough, when he withdrew the Spirit from the baptism of John and conceded regeneration again, he says that he baptized the body: which, whoever says, seems to exclude repentance itself also. Wherefore it would have been enough if he had said *baptizein andras* (to baptize men) or *anthrōpous*. Therefore he fluctuates and hesitates, or *meteōrizetai kai rembetai* (is tossed about and wanders), a deserter of both himself and the ancients. By some, one must abstain from reverence in holy things and religion. What *hypanemion* is, is known from the discussions of the philosopher and from the customary use of speaking. For *hypanemia* are those things which are imperfect, *kai atelē* (and incomplete) and of no thing. Whence *ōa hypanemia* (wind eggs), at times *ex hōn gonos ou ginetai oudeis* (from which no offspring is generated), in the book *De animalium historia*, vi, cap. 2, at other times simply *agona* (barren), as they are called elsewhere in the same books. Whence also commonly *panta ta achreia* (all useless things), whatever is useless, is indicated by this word by the Greeks. Wherefore, not reverently, nor as a theologian, has he done it, because he dared to call the Spirit of regeneration—the fount in the baptism of the Lord who consecrated it himself—by the translation *hypanêmion* in this place, which is little religious. For so in the following verse:
*Unto whom thou mightest breathe the wind-egg (hypanêmion) descending* *Spirit of God, the intellectual.*
But he intended to signify *meteōron* (sublime). But which of the poets besides him speaks thus? For the ancients call this *retakenthon*. Nor would I say the same Spirit is *Pneuma Theou noeroio*: especially, to omit that by theologians this is very often attributed not to God but to spirits who are destined for his ministry, nor [that] 102 *parum noeron kai noēton* (little intellectual and intelligible) differ . . .
in the Godhead from substance; A the Holy Spirit, however, differs from God. But those things which are less known are not illustrated without reason by epithets. Add that *to pneuma Theou* (the Spirit of God), among the attributes of the Son, is used by Theophilus, an ancient writer, in his book to Autolycus. I do not think it is sufficiently clear to everyone what he intended when he said of the Baptist, in verse 36, that he saw Him walking on earth (he means the Lord):
*Armathos hypsiporoio metarsion hēniochēs* "Who was the charioteer of a sublime chariot."
In this, he no doubt followed one of the Greeks who turns *cherub* into *harma* (which in the same letters, not changed but transposed, denotes the action of carrying) and thus expressed the divinity. For that of the royal Prophet is known, "He who sits upon the cherubim," and that of the same, "He rode upon the cherubim." Where the word of which I spoke now exists in Hebrew: 101, that is to say. Although the Greeks [also say] *kai epebē epi cheroubeim*. Nor should you wonder that it is expressed in the singular, for perhaps they wrote *cheroubeim*. But that this is a singular word, Suidas the grammarian dared to note among the Greeks: *Cheroubeim*, among the singulars, with a diphthong; but in the plural with *i*. A funny and witty thing. But Justin Martyr also, B by imitation of the Hebrews, even notes that Plato attributed a *harma* (chariot) to his Zeus, when he represents his magnificence and majesty, where he said: "The great Zeus in heaven, driving a winged chariot," because, he says, he had read in the prophets, 103 *Kai epebē epi cheroubeim*. The epithet which he used a little before is out of place, when he said:
*Ēnide pangenetao Theou schedon amnos echephrōn.* "Behold the prudent Lamb of the all-begetting God."
To which that which follows here is equal and akin:
*Outos epouranioio Theou lalos amnos hodeuei.* "This lamb of the heavenly God, gifted with speech, walks."
Many things are said by way of similitude about Christ, says St. Augustine, which are not so by propriety. By similitude Christ is a rock, he says, and Christ is a door, and Christ is a cornerstone, and Christ is a shepherd, and Christ is a lion. From this observation our [poet] sought a subtle or *gorgōteros* (vigorous) appearance, when he added the attribute *lalos*, so that he might show that the word *amnos* (lamb) is used less properly here; he added, as he thought, the propriety of a human: which is *logos*, or *legein* (to speak), which follows the difference or that which constitutes a human. Nor was he thinking that *amnos* and what he placed differed much from one another; for *to lalon* does not denote a property, but a defect. And the Greek poets, when they express that which our [poet] intended, use the word *audēeis*. How much better, therefore, would he have said:
*Ēnide kosmou pantos, amartada pasan aeirōn,* *Audēeis Theou amnos.*
And thus Homer C uses that word, as critics have long since noted, most notably Aristophanes. Who, he says, *Audēentes* are called, the humans, by way of distinction from other animals, that is, he usurped that word for the distinction of man from other animals. And therefore Circe and Calypso, whom he wished to be partly humans, partly goddesses—that is, as the ancients say, *sōmatikōteras theas*—he always addressed in this way. Nor was our [poet] entirely ignorant of that. For in chapter xv, v. 5, when the Lord called Himself a vine, he said *ampelon audēessan* for the sake of distinction. Just as *audēen pedaphoron*, 104 in another place. And therefore the great Scaliger had rightly marked this word with an obelisk in the margin.
CHAPTER IV
The attributes of Nonnus in the second and third chapters are examined. The passage marked at the beginning of the second chapter. *Meropes* who. The abuse of this word. *Oi tēs theias aulēs*, the Christians. The city of Chalana. Strato the Comedian. His jest D about the *meropes*. *Opisthokomoi* who. *Kyklēdon tonderi*. *Perikykloūn tēs kephalēs to klima* according to the interpretation of Aquila, forbidden to the Jews. *Isthē Hellenistēs* which. The *Abantes* *opistheokomoi*, and on what occasion. Hesychius in *istōthē* corrected. To shear the corners of the head. *Stephane*, *peridromos*. To surround the hair according to Tertullian. Hair cut in the shape of a wheel according to Sidonius. Whom Nonnus intended when he said *meropas opistheokomous*. The Galilaeans long-haired (*komali*), according to the opinion of Nonnus, and therefore called *tanuplokamoi* and *akersēkomoi* by him. Nazarites, or separated, who are *ēugmenoi* or *ēgiasmenoi* to the Hellenists, when they are confused by Nonnus with the Nazarenes. *Nazoraios* or *Nazēraios*. *Nazoraios* and *Nazēraios* used promiscuously by Nonnus. The absurdity of Nonnus concerning the Nazarites and Nazarenes. Nazaræus as a crown, by Nonnus *opisthokomion*. The indiscretion of Nonnus. Deceived by the word *methysthēnai*. How the word *methē* is used by the Hellenists. "No man to whom his own time [is not come]," a proverb of the Hebrews. "My hour is not yet come," a passage not understood by Nonnus. His *periergia* (excess) in epithets. *Pyratē kyklou hōra*. *Methysphaleis hymēnaioi*. *O kalos oinos*, a Hellenistic expression. *Kataibatis oimos*. *Katabainein*. Hallucination of Nonnus in the number of the disciples. *Stikta melēessi peleiades*. *Periergia* or *alogistia* of Nonnus. *Peleias* or *peristera*. What *stikton* is. *Stikta* animals which. *Trērōnes peleiades*. Bacchic words imprudently used concerning the festival of Pascha. The institution and end of that feast. Bahal Zephor. Its power and authority from the superstition of the Egyptians. *Seirim* gods of what kind. Nicodemus *aima Pharisaiōn*. "Rulers of the Jews." Nicodemus called *phios* (son) by Nonnus. The opinion of the ancients concerning him. The passage concerning heavenly and earthly things, not correctly understood by our [poet]. Christ the Lord, when his divine nature is treated, is called *theoskedos*. Many words, on account of heretics, [were] by the Fathers suppressed. *Erynganein logon*. *Pneuma Theou*. Son of God, *Logos hypourgos*. *Douratēē* 105 *akantha*, *Akantha* for a serpent. *Eudendros paradeisos* concerning life eternal, or the place of the blessed, incorrectly. *Monogenēs* concerning the Son of God, incorrectly changed into *tēlygeton*. *Tēlygetos* or *Monogenēs* who. A long dispute concerning him. This word [has been] preserved concerning the divinity of the Son in all Symbols, councils, and synods. By this word the ancients used [it] against the invectives of the *adelphotheas*, and likewise Arius and Eunomius. That *tēlygetos* suits a human and only that. *Yios gērou* (Son of old age). Wise son among the Chaldeans, who is *tēlygetos* among the Greeks. *Agapētos*, the same as *monogenēs*. [With] this word the Lord was baptized. The word *monogenēs* hated by Arius. His interpretation. In its place is the word *tēlygetos*. Petrus *thrasys* (bold) called by our [poet]. Likewise John. The same to the Greeks *philos epistēthios* (bosom-friend). The land of the Jews, a foreign land to the Lord, called [so] by our [poet]. Jerusalem and the *Ioudaion chōra*. *Saleim bathukolpōn*. Ignorance of places noted.
Everything we have undertaken must be conducted without any display or allure of words. For, as he says, "A walking of the tongue is gossip." Immediately in the second chapter, as it is now commonly distinguished, verse 2, that [passage] occurs:
*oti chthoniō para pastō* *Christos opisthokomōn meropōn thoinētori laō* *Klētos ēn syndorpos.*
Where he has joined two things equally apposed, neither of which, indeed, as it is done by him, seems to have been composed with mediocre judgment. Since the word *meropes* is an apposition or attribute which is used by Homer and others, not of a single nation, much less of a few guests, but of humans in general. And this is known by anyone who is not ignorant of Greek. Nor is it to be doubted that the poet, who took many things from the East, adorned the human race with this epithet from the writings of the Hebrews, whose language was divided in this way after the confusion which is described at length in the sacred books. From which [comes] an [attribution] to some sacred writer by Eustathius: "Indeed, those of our divine court" (so he calls the Christians) "*meropas*...
A they say are called after the division, namely the division of the voice, which they suffered after the tower of Chalana, having been divided throughout the lands. *Chalana*, the city which he mentions, is that which is called *Chalne* by the Hebrews and Chaldeans. The Greek Hellenists, in the tenth chapter of Genesis, call it *Xala*. Therefore, as I said, this manner of speaking is inept and one which no one who speaks in the received custom and familiarly would imitate, unless perhaps he should mock, or charge another with bombast and affectation by this method. For he would be ridiculous who might call some guests or men invited to a banquet *meropas* rather than *anthropous*. This he could have been taught by the ancient comic poet Strato, in the comedy inscribed *Phoenicide*. Where he festively mocks a certain cook, a man insolent in his speech: who, among other things, would inquire with the greatest gravity of the one who had hired him how many *meropas* he had invited. Which the other, as stupid and novel, denies he can understand. Indeed, he says that he hired himself a sphinx, not a cook, whose diction no one could understand. And so, among other ineptitudes, he also sets down this:
*“I have taken a male sphinx, not a cook, into the house; for I understand absolutely nothing, by the gods, whenever he speaks; he is here having prepared strange words. For when he entered, he immediately asked me, looking at me greatly, ‘Tell me, how many meropas have you invited to dinner?’ Have I invited meropas to dinner? You are raving. Do you think I know these meropas? No one will be present. For this, by Zeus, is what is left over, to invite meropas to dinner.”*
That is, as the ancients speak: *I have brought a male sphinx into the house, upon my word, not a cook.* 107 *Who, by Pollux, I do not see at all what he means, so does he chatter with such new and musty [words]. I believe he had scarcely set foot into the dwelling, when he began to inquire, eyeing me with grave and significant [looks], “How many meropas have you just now invited to dinner?” What meropas? Am I to invite meropas? You are mad. No one is about [to come]. That, therefore, by Jove, is the one thing left, that I should invite meropas to dinner.*
For that madman, as mechanics often do now, because he had read Homer and remembered that men were sometimes called *meropas* by him, thought it a word too trite for *anthropous*. But he was doing something else, or else he was ignorant of the rites of the Jews, when he called guests who were Jews *meropas opisthocomous*. Which Homer assigns on purpose to certain nations that were better equipped than the rest in war, and therefore let their hair grow in the back. This is to be tonsured *kalthodon*. Which hair, or tonsure, Greek critics have called *trochalene*. Against which, by all means, those Jews had been forbidden, who had received the commandment, *to make a sisoen* (as the Hellenists speak) in Leviticus: which the interpreter Aquila rendered there as, *“You shall not cut around the corner/crown of your head,”* or, which is the same thing, *“not opisthocomous.”* The same thing which Homer attributes to the Abantes. Who, because they had fared badly in war several times on account of the hair hanging and prominent from the front part, which enemies would therefore grab, afterwards became *opisthocomoi* (having hair behind). Which others did as a vow (for it was a custom for many nations to nourish and vow [to dedicate] hair to the gods). But Moses seems (for regarding that passage, because they understand his mind too little, and especially, as it exists in the Greek, scholars have disputed) to have wished that the people of God should not, by the rite 108 of the rest, nourish or vow to some foreign god [hair] that had been consecrated to God. Which the Hellenists call *sisoen*: they explained the rest as *plexeidion*, as in the Collectanea which are ascribed to Suidas. And the nations seem, for the sake of the sun, to which the Orient would generally vow hair, to have tonsured their hair *sphairoden* (in a sphere). Just as when it follows there, *“And you shall not make incisions on your soul [body]”* (Leviticus 19:28), which designate a foreign and gentile religion. The vocabulary A *sisoen* (σισόην) the Hellenists undoubtedly made from the Hebrew *tsits* (ציץ), which they interpret as *plexeidion* (a plait), and it denotes a votive lock of hair. Hesychius [says]: *Sisocoura, roia, Phaselitae.* Write, *Sisoe, koura poia, Phaselitae.* That is, *Sisoa* is a kind of tonsure, which the Phaselites use. So that *sisoe* is, in his opinion, a word first used by the Phaselites, who, as a people of Pamphylia, were not far from Syria. It is probable that they dedicated such hair to their gods. Just as Pollux teaches that the Greeks themselves often nourished hair in that part for the gods: *"Some, however, [let grow] hair from the side, or from behind, or above the forehead, for the rivers or the gods, and it was called plochme, or skolys, or a row of hairs."* Such hair, without doubt, was *sisoe*. Furthermore, the word in the Hebrew is, *“You shall not shave the corner of your head into a circle.”* For he who levels the corners, introduces a crown, as some render it, or *peripheretan*. For he leaves only the hairs that are on the occiput. From which it does not depart entirely, which the Greeks called *stephane* and *peridromos*. Pollux: *“The last circuit of hair around the head is called stephane and peridromos.”* Just as the tonsure itself, without doubt, was so called. Whence that which is adduced by Eustathius from an ancient rhetorician, although metaphorical, *“a stephane has been shorn of the towers,”* which Tertullian says is to surround the hair. Sidonius 109 Apollinaris calls hair of this sort hair cut into the likeness of a wheel. And such are *opisthocomoi* in part. Which it is established the Jews very studiously avoided.
And from this is the fact that because the Christian priests, as they themselves say, shave the corners of the head, they call them *balcontemple* (the bald). Just as also those *enkleistous* or *koinobious*, whom we now call monks, they are accustomed, by hatred of both, to call *chirim* (נזירים/חרים), because the priests of the idols are so called: with whom the priests of our God (for so they most willingly speak) they compare and equate that Apella. It appears, therefore, that he is never more deceived than when he twists the rites and vocabularies of the Greek men to the explanation of the sacred and divine man, whom he had undertaken to interpret, or does not ponder them according to the customs and reasons of the Hebrews, as it behooved an interpreter. But not even thus have we finished this [matter] sufficiently. Wherefore, that I may say at once what I think concerning this place, I judge that when he said our Lord and Savior had reclined with men *opisthocomous*, he meant the Galileans, who are said to be perpetually *tanuplochamoi*, or *akersokomoi* (unshorn) by him. Because, since we are writing *Exercitations*, it does not seem alien if we investigate here why this was done by him. Those who are versed in these matters know that the Hellenists call the Nazarites, or the separated ones, whom Symmachus called *aphorismenous* (separated) to the word, and whom they call *eugmenous, euxamenous, hagiasmenous* (vowed, prayed, holy ones) [in the] Seniors, they simply also call *Nazeraious*, or *Nazaraious*. Just as in the same way the Savior is called by Matthew in the noblest place, chap. 1, where you have: *Nazaraeos*, or *Nazoraeos*, he shall be called. From whom, as far as I can remember, he is never called *Nazaraios*, just as he is not called [that] by our John. 110 Our [author] therefore took *tous Nazaraious*, or Nazarenes, and *tous Nazaraious*, or *aphorismenous* (the separated, to God separated), of whom mention is so often made in the Old Covenant, to mean the same. And because in his time and long before, all Christians were called now Galileans, now Nazarenes, and because the Lord is said to have been here in Galilee and invited by the Galileans, which was of the Nazaræans, that is, *tōn aphorismenōn* (the separated ones), as Samson once was, he attributes it to the Galileans, or Nazarenes. As if Nazarene and Nazaræan were the same, because in the Greek the name is mystically confused, especially by Matthew, as it has pleased some; or because the marriage in Cana of Galilee was celebrated by the Galileans, but Christ was called a Nazarene, [and] the others were also Nazarenes, nor did these names differ at all. And indeed, although all Nazarenes are Galileans, not the converse, our [author] nevertheless uses those names also in the title of the cross.
A This title: *This is Jesus the King of the Jews, the Galilean*. Therefore, he treated Galileans and Nazarenes, as well as Nazarenes and Nazarites—that is, *nezer* and *nazir*—as the same, although the Jews deny that the latter existed in the ancient Law before the former. And although this seems to surpass all absurdity, as indeed in truth it does, we nevertheless doubt not that it is accurate. And because they, that is, the Nazarites, because they were consecrated to God, maintained their hair according to His commandment—a fact most well-known—he called the Galileans, whom he otherwise confounds with the Nazarenes, now *opisthocomoi* (long-haired at the back) from the tresses which they let down behind, now *akeirokomoi* or "unshorn," now *tanyplokamoi* or "long-maned." For who is ignorant of that, "Nor shall a razor pass over his head" (1 Sam. 1:11; and before that Judges 13:5, and elsewhere), for it is also used of Samson the Nazarite. We find, therefore, the term *opisthocomon* which lay hidden, denoting, of course, the Nazarite hair. Which the Hebrews call *nezer*, meaning a crown (which, as in Greek, denotes both a long head of hair and a wreath), and the Chaldeans call *nazir*. Our author therefore attributes to the Nazarenes what ought to have been attributed to the Nazarites. And although the Nazarites are most ancient, so much so that even in the first book of Moses, in the history of Joseph, mention is made of them, there is, nevertheless, little doubt that bit by bit something was added by vow, and that the Jews, having been separated unto God, were commanded to keep their hair so that, having seen and learned in Egypt that it was devoted to foreign gods, they might transfer this to their own property and truth, that is, to their own God. But if this pleased Him, as indeed it did, why did He forget the other: "Nor shall he drink wine or strong drink"? Since here both wine is drunk, and water is made into wine—not that anyone might not drink it, but so that everyone, from moderate hilarity, might celebrate with greater pleasure Him who proved such divinity here with a famous and amazing miracle. What of the fact that our author wished the guests to have been drunk? Because, I believe, he took those words which he had read below, "Everyone sets out the good wine first, and when they are drunk, then the inferior" (John 2:10), to refer to drunkenness, as if that word were nowhere used among the Hellenists for the moderate use of wine. Just as, for example, when Haggai said, "to eat, but not to fullness; to drink, but not to drunkenness" (Hag. 1:6), it is not wine, but satiety. And what is that (to pass over for now the rest, of which below), if it does not denote total drunkenness? "Seeing men drunk, weighed down in their heads" (112 where, he says, their heads were heavy with wine). For that saying of the old poet is famous: "I have a head heavy with wine, O Onomacritus, and the wine is too much for me." But what did he say or leave unsaid in this whole chapter concerning this matter? Yet I consider that nothing more imprudent or thoughtless, if I may say so, could have escaped him than that he attributes to the Virgin Mother of God—to whom, without doubt, sobriety commended itself no less than divine purity and other virtues—those parts in verse 13, so that He signifies to the Lord that the *hemitelē gaomoio methyn*, that is, those who were taking part in the wedding, were still half-drunk, and *aoine opōrē*, that is, that the second courses were destitute of wine. To what end? That, if we believe him (who attributes drunkenness to some of the guests), they might all be saturated with wine and be put to sleep. For then finally, and especially with the table cleared, the Greeks and Romans would call for more. Concerning which the epigrammatist says: B "When Lycus rages, / When the rose reigns, when the hair is wet." And in this matter, if we go along with him, the Mother, blessed among women, implores the aid of the Son and an *alexikakon* (averting) voice:
"The wedding, unfinished in its drunken state, and the autumn without wine, the mother told the knowing Christ that she shared the house with, this wedding needs a voice of the averter of evil."
Behold, the *opisthocomoi* (long-haired) mortals; behold, the Nazarites; behold, the holy nuptials at which the Son of God and the most holy Mother of God were present: which are more suited to Maron, Silenus, the Satyrs, and the Maenads. Although nothing of the sort is said here. So much so that among the Syrians these eleven verses, from those words, "And on the third day" (John 2:1), through to those, "After this he went down to Capernaum" (John 2:12), are read at the beginning of the fast, or 113. What, therefore, was in his mind when he described these nuptials, which our very Salvation honored with both a miracle and His presence, in no other way than as a sacred Bacchic rite and the banquet of his own shameless and insane god, from start to finish? Just as, to signify that wine was lacking for the feast, he dared to call it *abakcheuton*. For *abakcheuton* is not *to aoinon*, which lacks wine, but that which is ignorant of the intemperance and madness of bacchanals, as if this defect of the feast were the case, or as if, had the wine not run out, that feast would have been one of Thracians and bacchanals. To whom, in the presence of the Son of God, and the holy Virgin, as I have already said, C what place could there be? Hither points the fact that he has several times called this feast *philoinon* (wine-loving), and at times *daita diphaleān* and *diphada*, a thirsting banquet: these are the words of a satirist, not an interpreter. But the word is also inept in this sense. The Greeks certainly had their *aoina*, and the Romans their *sacra* (vintages); but who, unless perhaps in a satyric drama, would dare to call them *abakcheuta*? Except perhaps the unique Euripides, who dares everything on stage.
There exists a most urbane proverb in the writings of the Hebrews: "No man, to whom his own time has not yet come..." which is numbered among the counsels, and, as the Greeks used to say of philosophers, among the *apophthegmata* of Ben Azai. Now the meaning among them is this: that to no wise man should it be prescribed what and when something ought to be done, since those who are truly such know the proper time for convenience best: and therefore the matter should be left to them. Although some think a little differently. Here, there is no doubt in my mind that the Lord, being most urbane, looked to such allusions and, being most frequent in them, said, ch. 4: "My hour has not yet come." As if to say: "Why do you advise me? Why do you press me, if I do not yet judge 114 it advisable that I should do that?" Which saying—those who, because they turned the rest of the things which were either done or said more humbly by the Lord into a reproach against His divinity, are therefore elegantly called *sperein elattomata* (sowers of defects) by the holy Fathers—the Arians, indeed, understood very poorly, just as those who, from those words, subjected the Lord of fate to fate. Concerning whom Augustine speaks at length on this place. And elsewhere, to this same evangelist: "For what is 'His hour has not yet come'? For the Lord was not born under fate. This is not to be believed of Him whom He created: how much less of Him by whom he was created? If your hour is His will, what is His hour, if not His own will?" Our author involves the grace, first with the word *tymatēs*, equally with the sense, which is most simple. For he seems to speak of the death of the Lord:
"Not yet has the final course of the circling hour come for me,"
although I know there are among the ancients those who drag this place so that it might refer to the passion. Among whom I am surprised that the divine man Augustine is numbered. For there is nothing harsher. Then, when he adds *kyklados* (circling), he runs onto the same rocks as those whom Augustine accuses, as if the Lord were bound to a fixed time or revolution, such as the Hebrew *tecupha*. Just as when Orpheus said of Adonis, or the sun:
"Perishing and shining in the beautiful circling hours,"
which the divine man Joseph Scaliger [rendered]: "Slain and brought to life again as the fixed years revolve." For the sun has received fixed times and laws. So much D
A for that; let us not, however, use materials inappropriately. Again he mocks us, nor has he sufficiently understood what it means to speak circumspectly, when in verse 12 he called these same nuptials *methyspalais*, wandering through wine. Unless perhaps he believed that the 115 Jews were present then, who, according to the custom received today, drunken and intoxicated, would shout their *chaiim tobim* at every toast. But the Fathers observe excellently that they were present for the sake of the faith and the dignity of the miracle, lest anyone think that the guests were drunk and intoxicated, and lest anyone think they were deceived by wine, when, regarding such a drink and such an admirable miracle, such witnesses could not judge as is proper: "Lest some should suspect that it was a gathering of drunkards, and their senses were corrupted, and as if corrupted by drunkenness they thought water to be wine." "Lest anyone should think it was a meeting of drunkards, whose senses were corrupted by wine; and hence it happened that they thought water was wine," says that most saintly man. For I cannot agree with those who [say] *methyspalais* is said because the wine had run out among them: for they judged this to be unworthy to be attributed to such a wedding. As if he had not often spoken in this very way in this chapter, as when he said *philarchytountes* and similar [words] which we noted before. Such is what he says about their having drunk *tassoteris kypellois*, with dense and frequent cups. But he, without a doubt, had in mind that which is in verse 10: "Every man at the beginning sets forth the good wine, and when they have well drunk, then that which is worse; but thou hast kept the good wine until now," as I have already said. Which passage reminded me of the ignorance of Hellenistic diction. For what writers commonly call *agathon*, it is commonly called *kalon* by the Hellenists. As "Good is the mercy of the Lord." Also, "For He is good, for His mercy [endureth] forever." Alluding to 1 Machabees iv, 24; and elsewhere. Nor did the evangelist speak in any other sense: "Every man at the beginning sets forth the good wine, and when they have well drunk, then that which is worse." Which we would call *kreissio* and *cheiro*. Our author referred this to the color of the wine, as if he were commending nothing else. I believe that they used a reddish wine in those places. Such a wine, as the ancients observe, is 116 most potent, and remains for a very long time in the habits of those who drink it. Nor do I think one ought to inquire with great effort or anxiety why he calls the road that leads to Capernaum a *kataibatin oimon*. Thus he says in the same passage: "He bent his homeward path, traveling a path descending." Which the most holy evangelist [describes as]: "After this he went down to Capernaum, he and his mother." But no one is less secure about interpretation, and more agitated generally, than he who, because he does not grasp the genius of the language, does not dare to depart even from the words. He is twofold here, namely Hellenistic and Hebrew, although the latter is the interpreter of the former: whose ignorance has sometimes stood in the way of our author in the entire verse. It ought to be known to those who are versed in the text of both languages, that verbs which have no other force or meaning than walking or going are rendered by *to katabainein*. Such is what they say in the Song of Songs: "Let my beloved come down (*katabito*) into the garden," and in the books of Kings: "And Saul arose and went down (*katebe*) the road to his place." In the one is *yarad*, in the other is *yarad*. As for those things which learned men have curiously observed in some places about Judea, namely, and Palestine, and also the south and the north, let them have no place here. Hesychius, not an insignificant author, whose glosses, as I have observed in infinite places, seem to have been compiled for the sake of explaining the Hellenists, and especially the Seventy: *katebēsato*, he entered. And thus our John also spoke a few times. Such is the case here. In which our author has fluctuated vehemently, when the matter is of no importance and clearly trivial. And so he also said *nostein* and *kataibatin oimon odeuein*. Such is chapter iv, verse 47: "And he asked him to descend (*katabē*)," that is, to enter 117 his house. Also [verse] 49: "Lord, come down (*katabēthi*) before my child dies." Which he renders in one way B or another; *agchisanēs* C indeed sought Jesus, how he might save his son, walking the edge of the near-approaching city. See how laboriously [he speaks], when *katelthein* is nothing else for the Hellenists than *elthein* or *eiselthein*. He who does not know this must be occupied with nothing. So much do things that are sometimes small and of no consequence either exercise or stop and detain those who are ignorant of a language they have not learned. And interpreters perpetually follow these trifles, just as those who construct dictionaries; for when Scripture speaks of Jerusalem, the reason is different. For when shortly after the same verse he said: "The twelve-fold band of companions was walking behind, a flock of associates walking one path by the nearing divinities," he forgot, it seems, that five disciples [had been] called by the Lord shortly after the miracle performed at the wedding; nor did others follow at that time, of those who are called the twelve, except those mentioned in the chapter above. Whence then the twelve? For it is certain that Matthew and others were called some time later. What is more, Peter and Andrew also had not yet fully followed, since, having only followed in the beginning, as per the chapter above, it finally appears that they adhered to the Lord after abandoning everything. Concerning which, Matthew in the fourth chapter. But also with the greatest confidence he mentions the lower regions, verse 22, to which he says the Lord descended, *anostētoio barathrou*, a barathrum from which there is no return, he named it in the manner of the pagans, although in the following verse he affirms that the Lord returned from it. For after he had said: 118 "But that indeed after the bosom of the unreturning [barathrum]," he adds: "A returning one from Hades with a rekindled fate." Surely, if it had been *anostēton* [unreturnable] to our Savior, there would be no hope of our own resurrection. But this indeed seems to be a morbid obsession. He is always in love with what he has once said poorly. Thus in chapter v, verse 25, where he treats of the resurrection of the dead, and proves it, he called the sepulchers, from which those who will rise are to return, *anostētous kolpous*: "When the speechless dead shall again revive from the unreturning bosoms." And verse 28: "When the gathered dead shall hear from the life-giving [Voice] from the unreturning tombs." And how *anostētoi* [unreturning], if *zoogoni* [life-giving]? For these things expressly clash. He thought this was acumen; when it is lack of judgment, not sharpness. For it is the manner of the profane to speak, when he tries to prove a contrary opinion from the truth itself and its own self-authenticating words, because he had read that *anistētous enerous* was perpetually used by his own [authors]: for he is accustomed to willingly impute to the readers what he reads among them, and what helps the verse. Nor is curiosity always appropriate in poetry, and especially in interpretation. And a poet ought to be more learned than *periergos*. Surely, he who demands that the entire universe, and what is contained within it, be illustrated by his own attributes, ought to be either imprudent or clearly learned, but above all to excel in judgment. Which we admire so much in the Romans. Who generally imitated the Greeks so that they might improve them. Which you see almost perpetually in Maro. Our author did not lack spirit, but care and judgment failed him. Thus, when he had read that the Lord had found in the temple 119 those who were selling *peristeras*, that is, doves, he calls them *stiktas meloessi peleiedas*. For in verse 14 he said: "And speckled doves with [their] limbs." In which, first, he did not understand, what ought to be known to the poet, that the reason of philosophers is one thing, and the reason of poets, in the use of words, is another, who not rarely are compelled to use a species for a genus. In which, as in the rest, judgment is needed. Thus, in the case of the dove-
- A genus, *peristeria* is the genus, or, as others who do not wish the highest genus ignored want it to be, a species, but one more common. Which poets, because of numbers and meters, are accustomed, even unwillingly, to abstain from. For they use the species in place of that word. Which is the *peleias*. Which the Latins of this age, whose leader is Theodorus Gaza, have called *liviam*, which are either leaden, or of a varied color. Aristotle *History* book V, ch. 13: *Ἡ δὲ πελειάς, καὶ μέλαν καὶ μικρὸν, καὶ ἐρυθρόπουν, καὶ τραχύπουν· διὸ οὐδεὶς τρέφει*, he says, that it is small, black, reddish, and rough-footed; this species, and therefore scarcely kept by anyone. And so, as I said, it is better known to poets than in actual use. Concerning the variety, then, I shall concede even in that species. But who would attribute it to the limbs rather than the feathers? Which, if it were true, it would be necessary that pheasants and peacocks be such in their limbs. Which, just as it is true in part concerning the hair of quadrupeds, is false in plumage. For he notes in the *History* book, in the Philosopher: that to varied animals, a skin of the same color underlies, or something first appears in it, which refers to the color of the hair. Correctly, in the case of hair. For he distinguishes feathers and the affections of both, in the same place, soon after. Nor does he say it *pre-exists* in the limbs (for he used that word there), but in the skin. And if we follow this philosophy, either the feathers will be limbs, or, for those birds that have varied feathers, the limbs will be distinguished by the same color. Who could bear this? Or who of the ancients said that doves were varied and stained in their limbs? And what of the fact that he did not even understand what *stikton* (spotted) is in animals? Rightly the prince of the tragedians called stags *stikton*, rightly Oppian called the hyena *stikton*: *Θαῦμα δὲ καὶ τόδ' ἄκουσα περὶ στικτῇσιν ὑαίναις.* B Rightly Gregory [called] leopards, which the Hellenists in Jeremiah [called] *poikilous*, first against Julian, *kata-stiktous*. For in their skin, as is said by the great teacher, *proyparchei* (it pre-exists), which corresponds to the hair. Among birds, correctly the Numidian, which is called *guttata* (spotted) by Martial, *stiktas*. For spots are, inside the feathers, just as many points. But the neck of doves, which is so much varied when the sun especially approaches, should not be called *stikton*, but partly *poikilon*, partly *poikilophanes*. And doves, whose feathers or wings vary, are not *stiktai*, but *poikilai*. The peacock's tail is *stikton*, and the peacock itself is *poikilos*. Whence Euripides also spoke quite carelessly, which the old comedy often objects against him, when he calls the eyes of Argus in the *Phoenissae* *stiktous*: *Στικτοῖς πανόπτην ὄμμασιν δεδορκότα.* For his eyes are not *stiktoi*, but the bird itself is *stiktos* because of the eyes, as is the peacock's tail, to which the poets referred his eyes. And the refined model of eloquence, Naso, understood this, when in his books of *Metamorphoses* he called the chest of the stellio "starred with spots." For to the name of the animal and its power he alluded with great urbanity from the fable. And who tells him that there are more, or that they are preferred, in the East? We certainly believed in the white ones, which they both kept and held intact there. Which is known even from Tibullus. But, as we were saying before, no one will call birds that have varied feathers *stiktas*, D much less *stiktas melëessi* (spotted in limbs). Which even his own Hellenists, who had more than us and less corrupted ones, could have taught him. May it be far from him, therefore, to call her *stiktën* or *poikilën melëessi*, as he does! Which difficulties, when the prince of poets saw, he imposed upon the whole dove genus, removed from their customs. Which after him some even applied to the species. For from *pavor* (fear), which is common to all, he called them *tre-monas*. But best of all, the differences in animals are taken from their customs, with the philosopher as author. He himself said *dë*. I could never admire enough that an author so ancient, and who wrote many things in Greek, should so often slip, or depart from the genius of the language he professed. Just as, when a little A after, in clause 16, he said the Jerusalem temple, which in fact had been constructed from stones:
"These you have removed from the stony temple."
Not that it is *lithodes* (stony), which is made of stone, but which implies it. How much otherwise the king of poets, the unique standard of Hellenism! Who could have taught him that *lainon* or *lainëon* is said by the poets, which is commonly *lithinon*. *Iliad* I: *πλυνοὶ εὑρέες ἐγγὺς ἔασι, Καλοὶ, λαϊνεοι.* *Iliad* A: *Οὐδ' ὅσα λάϊνος οὐδὸς ἀρήτορος ἐντὸς ἐέργει.* *Odyss.* O: *Πυθοῖ ἐν ἡγαθέῃ, ὅθ' ὑπέρβης λάϊνον οὐδόν.* And so always. For he uses that word sometimes. And Hesychius, the most learned grammarian, explains it as *lithinon*, not *lithoëdes*, which heaven forbid. The most accurate both as poet and grammarian, Apollonius: 122 *τῇ μέντ' ἐνὶ νηὸν Ἄρηος Λαΐνεον ποίησαν Ἀμαζονίδων βασίλειαι.* And Gregory the Theologian, who speaks in poems not a little more purely than our author, says that the Law was written *en lainëais plaxi*, on stone tablets, not *lithoëdesi*: *Τοὺς δὲ νόμους ἐχάραξε Θεὸς δέκα ἔν ποτε πλαξὶ Λαϊνέαις.* Wherefore rightly this passage, as also not a few others, the great Scaliger had marked with an obelus. But neither can I forgive him, because when he describes the feast of the Passover, which was instituted for most serious reasons, he took from sacred Bacchic rites and the abominations of the Gentiles things to apply to it. As when he used *orgia philokrota*, *thuias heortë*, and other things of that kind for the interpretation of clause 23. It bears, I say, the appearance of the greatest levity, that in no more than two verses he snatched five terms from those horrific rites, which the Romans themselves, because of the filth and crimes perpetrated in them, were compelled to abolish by law. And who, then, could bear those [lines]: *Εὐάζων ἔτι πάσχα, καὶ ἀρκοφάγων ἱερῶν Ὄργια μυστιπόλευε φιλόκροτα Θυιὰς ἑορτή;* For both *to euazein*, which he usurps concerning holiness itself, that is, the Lord, as I have already warned, and *orgia*, and *mystëria*, and *krotos*, and *to thuias*, are signs of Bacchic rites, which have not yet been purged from profane ceremonies by the Christian mind. And yet at least he should have considered that no feast is more alien to the wicked rites of the pagans than that which was specifically instituted against superstitions and idols. Whence in the institution it is said by God, *Καὶ ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς θεοῖς τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ποιήσω τὴν ἐκδίκησιν* — "I am about to take vengeance on all the 123 gods of the Egyptians." Among whom Bacchus himself, or Osiris, was. So that not without reason he himself in the Bacchic rites calls him *Dionyson Aigyption*, the Egyptian Bacchus: which is as it were adultery in a song so sacred. Just as the Chaldeans well call these Egyptian gods adulterous in that place. Whence also the teachers of the Hebrews note that all the gods whom the Egyptians worshipped, with the exception of one, who was called by them Baal Zephon, who, in order to block the fleeing Israelites and halt their flight (which the foolish nation ascribed to force), was worshipped by them, were removed. But also the Fathers note that *oti panta ta zoa plën tou choirou etheopoiounto tote hoi Aigyptioi* — "That all animals except the pig were then honored with divine honors by the Egyptians." Nor is there any doubt that the gods whom Nonnus here celebrated are the Hebrews': such as the Pans, Satyrs, Sileni, and others of that kind of shaggy and hairy gods. Just as Bacchus himself, the prince of the Seirim, in the battle with Typhoeus, [used] a goat or buck, which even from Ovid inA opere ingenioso aliisque notum, induisse fertur.
Now, concerning the fact that in the same place he says the priests [ate] the paschal lamb, this was done somewhat incautiously by him. For it was not a feast of the priests, but of the entire nation. And how could the priests alone have eaten the lamb, when it was distinctly stated in the institution of the feast that each person should receive a lamb *according to the houses of their fathers*? For since the entire people, as is well known, were divided into tribes; the tribes [were divided] into families or father-clans, and these into houses, or, as the Hebrew has it, *according to the houses of their fathers*, that is, they were divided house by house. Now, it is well known that those who were called Fathers presided over each.
What the evangelist said about Nicodemus at the beginning of the third chapter, *There was a man 124 of the Pharisees*. Where it is said *of the Pharisees*, as in the first chapter, *And they who were sent were of the Pharisees*, that is, they were Pharisees, although by reason of the Hebraism, concerning which we treat in its own place, it seems to imply that he was not the last among them. Where our author [Nonnus] says: *a chorus of the evil-minded Pharisees*: for those whom he there calls "evil-minded," he here calls "mentally wandering." And yet here he thought that *of the Pharisees* was said of one who was sprung from the Pharisees. From which he attributes to him *the sacred blood of the Pharisees*. And yet the Pharisees, a sect like the Stoics, and, as Epiphanius rightly and elegantly said, were nothing other than a *theoprosophia*, a superfluous and vain worship, which they had devised themselves. But not all Pharisees were priests; nor was Nicodemus himself: whom the evangelist called *a ruler of the Jews*, [and] he himself called *archon*. B This word the Syrian did not change, but kept it slightly inflected. And from the Law that [verse] is known, *Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people*. Among the Chaldeans, sometimes [it is] N27, as in that passage, sometimes [as it is] concerning Joseph. Where, however, the Greeks [say], *And Joseph was the ruler of the land*. But concerning Nicodemus, *he was a ruler*, that is, *one of the rulers*. But neither were priests.
But let us proceed. The ancients (although even from those things which are said in the Passion regarding Nicodemus, it is certain that he thought very well of the Lord), meanwhile, when they attach the third chapter—according to the division now received—to the preceding ones, as the Syrians also deliberately did, they place Nicodemus among those who, attracted by the miracles in the previous chapter, did not yet fully believe. Of whom, indeed, it is said, *Many believed in his name, seeing his signs which he did*. Likewise, *But Jesus himself did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all men*, etc. But our author, not content with having called Nicodemus a *believing man*, 125 *And to the believing man Jesus, revealing the divine radiance of baptism*, (which can thus be taken, as other things are said homonymously by the evangelist, among which is also that word) furthermore called him *persuadable by God*, verse 2: *And he spoke the fable to God, the persuadable man*, as if he understood himself to be speaking with God.
At Theophylactus, however, places him among those who had attained a *short-lived*, a *temporary*, a *not-firm* faith, that is, who had attained a very light, temporary, and not-yet-firm faith, as one who thought he was dealing with a divine man, but nothing less than with God: *For he attended to Christ for a time, not as God, but as a God-bearing man*; and then: *He calls him a Master, as a mere man; for such was the opinion he held concerning him; wherefore he also adds, For no one can do these things, except God be with him*; he calls him Master, as a mere man; because he thought of him in this way. Whence he also subjoins: *Because no one can perform these things, unless God be with him*, according to the opinion of St. Chrysostom: who himself, among other things, [says]: *He held an opinion concerning Christ, but not as he ought, nor with the mind that was proper, but was still held by the Jewish weakness*. St. Augustine, on that passage, *But the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and life*: this Nicodemus, who had come by night to Jesus, did not understand. It follows, not long after, in verse 12: C *And so great are the heavy-persuading ears of you all; / If I should proclaim the winged army or the works of the ether, / Why from the untried desires do you prefer to be persuaded, / Hearing of the nature of heavenly, unseen matter?*
That which the most holy evangelist said: *If I have told you earthly things, and you do not believe, how, if I tell you heavenly things, 126 will you believe?* In which place, it is known that the ancients understood *the earthly things*, and their opposite, which he adds, *heavenly things*, in the same way. Among whom the opinion of Chrysostom appears the simplest: who accepted the former, concerning baptism, insofar as it is performed on earth, or concerning the similarity of the blowing wind, which he had already used a little before. Just as, through *the heavenly things*, he understands the eternal generation of the Son from the Father: compared to which, this very thing, which is now being discussed, regeneration, may seem earthly. D What, therefore, came into our author's mind, when he takes *the heavenly things* concerning the host of angels, to which he has clearly added, to no purpose, the *winged* [nature]? Which is here surely beside the point, just as the works of the ether are for him the *ethereal things*. But he undoubtedly had his Hellenists in mind, for whom the *army of heaven*, sometimes angels, sometimes stars, are mentioned in Hebrew usage: which he expressed in the whole verse. They err vehemently who wish to allow everything to poets. Whom most learned antiquity, in order to correct them, rose up critically, which was divinely exercised against the license of poets by, among others, Aristotle. For, just as poets profess all erudition and science, so, in order that they might be kept in their office, these [critics] judged of everything. For recently it has begun to prevail only in those things which labor concerning the restoration of corruption in authors. But now, if critics have not permitted everything in profane literature to poets, how much less should it be permitted in sacred things? Who, when they depart from the custom of the Church or the Fathers, are rightly brought back into order by the learned.
Which Fathers, indeed, permitted themselves many things, which, on account of heretics, they later changed. Thus Tatian, a most ancient writer, thus Theophilus, dared to say that *God belched forth his own Son*, until a heretic 127 called the Son of God a *belch*. The same Theophilus called the Word a *co-worker* in creation: which others, and especially Basil in *Against Eunomius*, so strongly, and deservedly, censured. The same called the Spirit of God [the] Son of God. It is customary for Nonnus to call our Savior now *Word*, now *flesh*, just as he called the same *God-bearer* elsewhere, which for the ancients designated the same thing. Thus, in verse 13, when the most holy evangelist said, *And no one has ascended into heaven, but he who descended from heaven*, our author [says], *Unless this God-like one*.
As if you would say "the divine Son of God," and that in that place in which his higher nature is being discussed. Such appendages, because Nestorius cunningly abused them, the Fathers, as Damascenus testifies above all, rejected. He adds the cause: *For we do not say that the Word is a man deified, but God having become man*. Why? Because a higher nature assumed man in such a way that it remained that which it was, and he who was man was none the less God. We do not therefore call him a divine man, or a deified one, he says, but God incarnate. And that was the same reason why the Fathers, although they everywhere call holy men, such as Basil, Gregory, [and] Nyssenus, *God-bearers*, did not, however, admit this name here, by which Nestorius was cunningly abusing it. Damascenus: *And every God-bearing man can be called Christ, but not God by nature, even if Nestorius, that god-hated one, was panting to call him who was born of the Virgin a God-bearer*. And he adds, *But let it not be for us to call him a God-bearer*. Well, therefore, did he call the Baptist a *God-bearer*, but less rightly did he so call the Lord. For he is of the holy prophets—
A—that attribute, not of Him who is above all, as the Fathers commonly attributed it, as I said before. The same Damascene, 128 lib. I of the *Orthodox Faith*: "Whose energy is one, of these the essence also is one, according to the God-speaking Fathers." Hesychius: "God-speaking, divine, receiving from God." I ask why he says a little later that the serpent, which Moses lifted up in the desert, had the B *wooden* type of the *thorn*. For thus it is in the fourteenth verse: "The wooden type following the thorn." Neither am I ignorant of what is observed by the learned, that Nonnus sometimes uses the word *thorn* for a serpent. But also the serpent, of which it is being treated, was of brass, and there were indeed serpents (which the Seventy call "deadly snakes") for whose sake it was lifted up. Nor is it true what he says, that this serpent C was "deadly to those who were bitten," a killer of the men whom it had bitten, since it healed the bites and provided an antidote against the poisonous ones; and therefore it was a true type of the Savior—unless, as Epiphanius rightly says, not because of the nature of the serpent, but because of God's favor, working as an antidote for those then bitten, just as it is explicitly written: "And every one who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live." Nonnus spoke as if Moses had lifted up a "deadly" serpent, which soon after he himself, forgetting his own words, calls "pain-releasing." But in truth, the *wooden thorn*, concerning which our author writes, signifies, if I am not mistaken, the crown of thorns, of which he intended this serpent to be a type. Because every serpent has something similar to the crown of thorns, so that in this way he might allude to the Lord’s crown of thorns in the Passion, which perhaps others from antiquity also did; such subtleties, however, heroic geniuses do not favor. Sometimes he ruins the words themselves and their use by inappropriate additions. *Paradise* D is a word from the East, but one which the Greeks have long possessed, and it is especially common to use it for the place of the blessed. Our author, because he gives a status to heaven that is proper to paradise, brings it about that *paradise* is now used improperly concerning it, which it is rightly used to describe. As when he said: "Dwelling in an immortal home in a well-wooded paradise," whereas the evangelist thought it sufficient to say "eternal life." For the analogy of the translation—without which, as Aristotle rightly says, it cannot consist—perishes in the translation.
But why do we note here one of so many things? The whole sentiment in which our author is engaged, and which he expresses through so many invalid and inept circumlocutions, is, as it is simply conceived by the evangelist, truly divine: would that those who have spoken on the sacrament of Christ the Lord would fix it in their minds. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." But this, as we were just saying, he expressed in such a way, partly by grandiloquence, partly by frequent and compound adjectives, that he marred it entirely, so that the *apheleia*, that is, the simplicity which is especially observed in sentences, perished entirely. For what is meant by "the multi-form world," and "the high-throning scepter-bearer," and again, "the four-yoked world," and "the turn-coat manner," and "the well-wooded paradise"? When the sentiment is chaste, and alien to all affectation and swelling, which is usually the sign of a well-constituted and composed mind. But let us hear him himself: "For He so loved the multi-form, wandering world, The High-throning Scepter-bearer, that for the sake of the harvest of lights, He gave the Only-begotten Word to the four-yoked world; That whoever should receive Him, having changed his turn-coat manner, And bending his neck of his own will to the unshakable faith, Might come into the eternal dance of heavenly life, Dwelling in an immortal home in a well-wooded paradise." 130 Add that he said it not once, but frequently, and the speech redundantly waxes wonderful. Add that "multi-form" is not an adjective of that world of which he is treating, but of this place, and of the world which God loved. And what is this to the world which the Son of God saved? Add an incongruous, nay, more than "ill-mannered" prayer: "So He loved the world, that He gave the Son." For who would speak thus? Especially when, having found the most sweet Attic phrasing, "so loved that He gave," he could have expressed it much more simply and less affectedly: "For God Himself so loved the formless world, That He gave His only-begotten, most supreme Son; That every one receiving Him might escape the steep destruction, And reach the all-blessed harbor of immortal life!" So that lovers of elegant letters might learn how much it matters how each thing is uttered. But let us proceed. Certain words, which the Church has admitted, one should hardly admit rashly if they are of the same power; so far am I from wishing to excuse the *cacozelia* and various interpretations of names, which are taken from the poorly understood writings of pagans. The Son of God, in the common Creed, we Christians confess daily by the word "only-begotten": whom in the same word the most holy evangelist here called "only-begotten." "But he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God." For which word, since not even the verse was fighting it, he rather imprudently substituted the word "late-born."
1000
*Of a late-born king into the name.* Since *telugetos* or *telugetes* is, for those 131 born in old age, he who is born to parents in their later years. Such they call "late-born." Or (as the grammarians, who show themselves off in such things, and most gladly extend the boundaries of their own ambition, have observed), he who is born while the father is far away, "the father being far off." The rest of the inanities I omit. Moreover, the greatest poets, being deceived by passages which they had not sufficiently understood, explained *telugetos* as "only-begotten," because Homer had said, "only, late-born": "And he loved me even as a father would love his own son, only, late-born." And elsewhere in the same way, because it can happen that he who is "only-begotten" is also "late-born," and conversely, that is, that he may be unique and born late, such as are loved before the rest, if especially both happen equally. Because they did not weigh this, Hesychius and Suidas took "late-born" for "only-begotten." Nor were they thinking that two such are placed by Homer. As in the Iliad, book E: "He went after Xanthus and Thoon, the sons of Phaenops, both late-born." And because one is occupied in sacred matters, such were Joseph and Benjamin. Neither was an only-begotten son, and both were "late-born." What of the fact that for one, two sons—of whom one is only-begotten, the other late-born—can be given? Whence that saying of Hesiod: "And may an only-begotten son preserve the ancestral home, But may an old man die, leaving behind another son." Where those things are opposed which our author thought were synonymous. For *telugetos*, who among the Hellenists is called a "son of old age," is he who is born when the father is old, such as Joseph is said to have been, whom it is established had so many brothers. Which fact has no place in an only-begotten son. If he is alone, he is only-begotten: if he is only-begotten, then he is alone. Just as *telugetos*, if he has a brother, is no longer only-begotten. 132 But who could bear, either old age in God the Father, or the late generation which accompanies that, or in the Son anything of those things which are included by this word? Since He is both alone, and as He is alone, so He was begotten from eternity, nor is His generation less eternal than He Himself. Cyril of Jerusalem—A hearing "Son" again, do not think of God, but of a natural son, the only-begotten, having no other brother; for this reason, he is called Only-Begotten, because in the dignity of his divinity and in his generation from the Father, he has no brother. Rufinus, in his interpretation of the B Creed: "Lest you think that these human words teach you something earthly, he therefore adds that this is the one Son of God, our Lord." For one is born from one, because the radiance also is one of its light, and the word of the heart is one. Nor does an incorporeal generation dissolve into a plural number, nor does it fall into division, where He who is begotten is in no way separated from the begetter. But it is to this very word concerning which we are speaking that St. Augustine seems to have properly looked, in the 20th Tractate on John: "And perhaps someone will say, because for many ages C God received a Son in His old age. Just as the Father is without old age, so the Son is without increase. Neither did He grow old, nor did he grow: but the Equal begot the Equal, the Eternal the Eternal." By these words let this be settled once for all. For I do not write these things that I may entangle myself in the levity of the grammarians, but that I may vindicate sacred Scripture from them, and then show what is to be followed in this part by interpreters. Who, as they ought to be reverent, so they ought to be circumspect. I cannot, however, but add this: that I see no cause nor can imagine why a word received by the Church and the Creed, which the law of the poem no less permitted, should be changed—as if it were dangerous, suspicious, or at minimum ambiguous. He should at least have thought D of the counsel of the Great Basil, who accuses Eunomius because he imposes 133 words outside the usage of the divine Spirit, whereby he sanctions words unused by the holy Spirit. He should at least have considered that words received first from Scripture and then from the Church are not to be changed for that reason, because antiquity most prudently formed and derived from them arguments against the crafty deceits or inanities of heretics. And therefore that nothing should have been changed rashly.
For that axiom is well-known, that nothing in the holy Trinity is adventitious, as if not existing before and entering later; for the Son never fell away from the Father. This means: Nothing is adventitious in the holy Trinity, as if it did not exist before and soon arrived. Nor has the Son ever been absent from the Father in this. And this usage is already ancient, so that the Jerusalem interpreter of the Pentateuch has used this word, which is *monogenēs*, concerning God; as if one were made from us. And he said, he says, the Word of the Lord: "Behold, Adam, whom you created, is the only-begotten in the world, just as I am the only-begotten in the heavens on high." Add that the ancients also set Isaac as *monogenēs*, a type of our Savior: whom Sanchuniathon, who had written their theology, noted in his first book of the *Evangelical Preparation* as having been called *Ieoud* [by the Phoenicians]. *Ieoud*, that is, as the Chaldeans [say]. Add that the Lord was baptized into this name, which I wonder has not been observed until now. For the words are, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found pleasure," that is, the *Monogenēs*. For thus the Hellenists are accustomed to speak. St. Jerome B at chapter XII of Zechariah: "He is called Unigenitus, according to the propriety of his nature, and first-begotten, according to the Apostle, of those rising from the dead." The Septuagint translated *agapēton*, that is, most dear, for *unigenito*. Of whom we read in the Gospel: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found pleasure." A most illustrious example is Genesis xxii, 2, where concerning Isaac: "Take now your only-begotten Son whom you love, Isaac." 136 Where the Hellenists have: "Take your beloved Son." Just as to Homer, Astyanax is called the C *agapētos* [beloved] son of Hector: "Hector's beloved son, like a shining star." The Glossator, *beloved*, *only-begotten*. Hesychius, *beloved*, *only-begotten*, *favored*. Just as Aristotle in his *Rhetoric* called the eye of a one-eyed man *agapēton*. Because he has not another: and therefore he needs it more, and loves it more. But because we are now dealing with the Hellenists, in whose language the holy apostles wrote, the same Elders [use it] in the same chapter, verse 12: "You did not spare your beloved Son for my sake," which is repeated a little later. Jeremiah vi, 26: "Daughter of my people, gird yourself with sackcloth, and strew yourself with ashes; and make for yourself a mourning of the beloved one." So in Zechariah, "a wailing as for the D beloved," concerning an immense lamentation.
A And who is so furious, when the very word, for which such great wars have been fought among Christians, and which Arius and the Arians have so petulantly abused—insomuch that, as Theophylact testifies, they said he was called "Only-begotten" because he was made and created by the Father alone, while all other things were from him—they substituted in its stead that which denotes his infirmity, just as it denotes the nature of man, namely, to beget late, or to be begotten. If Arius had found this elsewhere in the Scriptures, no one could easily have wrested from his hand that *“There was a time when he was not.”* For this is exactly what *tēlygetos* is. Certainly *monogenēs* (Only-begotten) is *he pro chronou* (he who is before time), who by the man of desires is called the *Ancient of Days*, that is, God. *Tēlygetos* is *ho en chronō* (he who is in time), that is, a man. Which has nothing to do with what he is expounding. Wherefore he should not have changed anything at all. For there are certain words that belong to the Church, not to us: in which we have no authority. And since philosophers do not tolerate this in their own spheres, neither should it be tolerated in ecclesiastical matters.
And this word, Cæsarius and other theologians have noted, because they place in it a *schesis*, or relation. For they note that by this notion it is proper to him whose Father is God: which is understood from the word itself. Which certainly has no place in *tēlygetos*, to omit the fact that it is said to be a proper noun by Theodoret. And what did he mean, when in the following chapter, verse 27, he called Peter, that most holy apostle and greatest hero, *thrasys* (bold/rash)? *“And Peter did not ask him, as he was bold.”* Which is generally attributed to glory, and indeed a most putrid one at that. Whence come the Thrasones (braggarts), whom Horace called the bold. By which name he also points to our evangelist elsewhere, and that in a place which is completely alien to this attribute, when he reclines upon the Lord's breast:
*“But the bold man, with a sharp pulse, Falling upon the immaculate breast, the man loved By the feasting King.”* (Chap. 13)
He was, therefore, in his judgment, *thrasytes*, whether you call it temerity or ambition, because he who was loved by the Lord above the rest, B by the privilege of his love, clung to his breast: whence he is also called *philos epistēthios* by the Greek Church. And how much better is their liturgy: which says he did this *pepoithota* (confidingly), not *thrasynomenon* (acting boldly). At the very least, he might have considered that he had assigned this epithet to Judas, as when he said: *“Son of Jacob, and not the bold Iscariot”* (Chap. 14, 22), whom Cyrus Theodorus called *thrasycheira* (bold-handed) and *authadē* (arrogant). But what could he have in common with two most holy men, the apostate and the traitor? Wherefore they were not to be noted with the same epithet, and certainly not if taken otherwise. C Imprudently, when the Lord is said to have come into the land of Judea after having held a conversation with Nicodemus from the holy city (*“After this, Jesus and his disciples came into the land of Judea,”* says the evangelist), he called the land of the Jews a foreign dwelling (or however one wishes to interpret *to enaulion*), as if he were not born in Bethlehem, or as if Bethlehem were not in Judea, or as if it had been said rashly by the prophet: *“Out of thee shall come forth for me he who is to be a ruler in Israel”*; or by the Apostle, that Christ was of the Jews according to the flesh; or by the Truth itself, that salvation was of the Jews. Furthermore, since some could not grasp how, after the divine discourse of the Lord with Nicodemus, which it is certain took place in the city itself, he is said to have removed himself to Judea, they want him to have gone first again into Galilee, and from Galilee after some time to have returned to Judea. Among whom is Bede. But he says after these things: Not immediately after the dispute with Nicodemus, which happened in Hierosolyma, but after a lapse of time he returned from Galilee to Judea. Which opinion our author also followed. But Theophylact, *“While the feast of the Passover was continuing, D Jesus was in Hierosolyma; but when it had passed, he went out into the land of the Jews, and tarried near the Jordan.”* Which the great Chrysostom also renders word for word before him. As if, indeed, it were a new thing to have come out of the city of the Jews into their land, that is, *chōran*. And thus our evangelist says, chapter 11, verse 55: *“And many went up to Hierosolyma out of the country.”* Here he means from Hierosolyma into the land of Judea. What of the fact that our own author himself has interpreted the word *chōran* there by the word *gains*, or *gēs* (earth):
*“And from the broad earth Many of the Jews, neighbors of the desert, Went up to the seat of the Mystagogues of Hierosolyma.”*
And in Matthew *nano*, *“into all that land,”* and *“in all that land,”* that is, *chōra*. For here the knot is really in the bulrush. In which, however, the greatest men entangle themselves. Sometimes ignorance regarding the places mentioned has imposed itself upon them. As when, a little later, in verse 23, he said of Salim *bathykymos* (deep-waving): *“Baptizing with water near deep-waving Salim,”* as if it were a river, or rather a sea, and not a city. But if he commended the place for the convenience and abundance of its waters, which seems more likely, because it follows, *“that there was much water there,”* he incurs the charge of maritime swelling and *tò achyron*. For there are no *kymata* (waves) there, as anyone knows: whence also the ocean is called *bathykymōn* by the most elegant poet Dionysius Periegetes. From which it is argued again that it should be attributed not to the earth, but to the ocean. But the evangelist noted something else, that is, the convenience of the water, or the abundance, which was there. Wherefore there was no need for him to repeat this, when he says:
*“For there, the water, overflowing in never-failing streams From the broad-flowing river, waves.”*
Regarding Salim and Ænon, the notes are known, and are in the hands of all which the ancients noted. So that in a matter so obvious, error can hardly find patronage.
CHAPTER V
John the Baptist, an imitator of Elijah. Elijah’s garment; John’s garment. *Mēlōtē*, *zōnē dermatine*. *Melota* and *zōnē* are the same to some. A girdle of mortification according to Jerome. *Dasys chitōn* of Nonnus. *Addereth* simply what it is. *Addereth sehar*. *Dora*. A garment *apo trichōn kamēlou* (of camel’s hair) and *chitōn dasys* are different. A skin tunic, and shaggy. Its use in penance. A different *dasios* and a different *chitōn*. Also a *chitōn* of such or such a kind. A sack of the Hebrews. *Cilicium* (haircloth). *Stolē* and *sakkos* are opposed. *Stolē* of the Chaldeans. The patriarchal purple sack in penance. *Cilicia*, and whence they are so named. Chaldean haircloth. Whence *cilicium*. 140 *Leptophyēs chitōn*. *Leptophyē* what it is. Conjectural note on the place of Nonnus. *Asoūrī* what it is. *Leptolachana*. *Psila*. James the *phytourgos* (planter). James the dweller in a tent, and why. The same called *oikōn oikian* by the Hellenists. The same called a minister of learning by the Chaldeans, and why. House of learning. A tabernacle is a type of the synagogue and temple. *En skēnē trechesthai*, what it is to the Greeks. Why the vineyard field is attributed to Jacob. Sichar from *schecar*. *Tò sichera* sometimes opposed to wine. The words *phrear* and *pēgē* according to Hebrew usage. In Nonnus, *lyoen phrear* (loosened well) the well of Jacob. *Hodos tēs lepōros* incorrectly. *Kalpin dia kolpou aeirein*. *Dorsenōpais* (or *darsenōpais*) Jacob. *Orkion hydōr*, and *archion*. *Phrear orkismou* or *archon*. Beersheba. The ridiculous folly of the author when he said *loibēn keraelkē*. *Loibē*, *chysis*, *spondē*, *nesech*. The *adoleschia* (garrulity) of Nonnus corrected. Galileans *philochristoi* or *philostorgoi*, and whether they are rightly called so by him.
Not without serious cause is it noted by Chrysostom concerning the third chapter of Matthew, most eloquently, that the most holy man John, the Forerunner and Baptist, concerning the gravity and austerity of whose life, and, as the Greeks better express it, *sklēragōgia*, he discourses there, in all things devoted himself to imitating the most holy man Elijah the Tishbite: to whom, as a garment, a *mēlōtē* is attributed not once, so also among...
these things a pallium, as Plautus speaks, he stripped off; they said: as if it were a shaggy tunic, when they had found nothing other than an *addereth*. But the error is indeed a foolish one, where a leather girdle is attributed to Elijah, for them to think that a shaggy tunic is attributed to the same, 143 because it is said *ba'al se'ar*, which signifies a shaggy man, not one possessing a shaggy tunic. Wherefore both the Hellenists and the Chaldeans interpreted it as *dasys* (shaggy), but not as *dasychitōnos* (shaggy-tunicked). For where it treats of the habit and marks of that greatest man, they write thus: "And the king said to them: 'What is the manner of the man who came up to meet you, and spoke to you these words?' And they said: 'A shaggy man, and girt with a leather girdle about his loins.' And he said, 'This is Elijah the Tishite.'" And Josephus, book VIII: "When the king ordered him to indicate who had spoken these things, he described a shaggy man, and one girt with a leather girdle." What of the fact that a "shaggy tunic" is not attributed even to John? To whom Matthew gives a garment of camel's hair: which Mark also preserves, who says he was "clothed in camel's hair." The passage of the other is: "And John himself had his clothing of camel's hair, and a leather girdle about his loins." Which surely denotes a garment, not shaggy or of skin, but coarse, of the kind that the Jews who were repenting, and the philosophers, especially the Stoics, generally wore: such as Lucan attributes to Cato: *For him, banquets had conquered hunger, and great household gods, / [And] had cast out winter with a roof; and his precious garment, / Hairy over his limbs, in the manner of a Roman Quirite, / He had brought on as a toga.* B John’s tunic, which the preacher of repentance wore, was altogether like this. And he bound it about his limbs with a girdle, as Lucan [says], as the Hebrews [say] *'ezôr*, which certainly was neither hide, nor of hides, but woven from hair. Wherefore Prudentius, in *Cathemerinon* Hymn 8, not as circumspectly as he ought, [says]: *Afterward he departed into the open solitudes, / Clothed in the shaggy skins of beasts, / Covered with 144 bristles and down, / Shuddering to be stained and defiled / By the contaminated morals of the towns.* Who, like our author, clearly gave him a *lasion chitōna* (shaggy tunic). Juvencus [is] more correct: *There were coverings woven of camel bristles, / And a skin girdle circled the middle of the prophet.* For he expressed the words of the Gospel, from which others failed. Which Paulinus later followed in the poem in which he celebrates this herald and legate of our King: *The garment was, woven of the curved bristles of a camel, / So that it might harden the soft limbs against luxury, / And ward off heavy slumbers with a pricking body.* But *lasion* (shaggy) and *trichinon* (hairy) are far different; likewise a *lasion chitōn* and a *trichinos* one. And the Hebrew *saq*, which penitents put on, is of the latter, not the former genus, which is *cilicium* in Latin. Thus, Jonah 3:6, the king who was repenting, *removed his cloak from him, and put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes.* Where *stolē* (cloak) C is called by the Hebrews by the same name as Elijah's mantle or chlamys: so that they understand *ha-'adderet*, which is a precious, or finely woven one. Whence it is also called [that] by them. Which the Chaldeans also generally express with a Greek word; for they themselves also, with letters nearly the same, or slightly deflected, call it a *stola*. But the garment which she who has stripped off the former puts on, is surely not a *lasion chitōna*, but a *trichinos* one, which would prick and exercise the body; and would excite the soul to repentance and subjection of the body (which is excellently called *asarkia* by Gregory in his praise of the martyr Cyprian). From which also perhaps the patriarchal *saccus* [comes]: which, because they judged this color to be 145 unseemly at that time, [they made] of purple. D
A suitable for fasts, or 145 for mournings, the patriarch provided.
Regarding this, let the most illustrious man and one who has well deserved of these letters, Joannes Meursius, be consulted under this word in the Glossary which he inscribed *Graeco-barbarum*. Isidore says the Arabs of Cilicia call the coverings woven from goat hair, from which they make themselves tents, *cilicia*. Varro derives the name from the Cilicians, although it appears to have originated instead from a Chaldean word. For just as the ancient heroes, who are celebrated by Homer and Virgil, would cast dust on their heads in mourning, so the ancient Hebrews would cast themselves upon the ground. Thus, for his sick son, the royal prophet *ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν ἐκυλίσθη*, "on the earth he rolled himself." For thus the Hellenists [translate it], for which *ἐκυλίσθη* is now read. Which the Chaldeans call *galgali*. Whence *app kilki*, which in the glosses of the more recent writers is explained as *cilicium* [haircloth]. Why, then, does he fruitlessly attribute a *rásion chitōna* [frieze tunic] to John, which is more suited for warding off cold or for softness, since an *askētikē kai metanoētikē* [ascetic and penitential] garment is described here? But what did he intend, as I said before, when he called the same tunic *leptouphē*? Which is *addereth*, just as we should also admonish there, *sinear*; a Babylonian and precious garment, when not even *addereth*, which they call *sear* [hairy], or lined with skins—which I said before—is rightly attributed to him. But let us assist the learned man, who at that time did not poorly deserve of sacred things. What if he wrote *leptouphē* more specifically? So that *leptouphē* may be said of *kakouphē* [badly woven] and cheaply woven things, which are lightly and most vilely woven, just as "thin" is used by the Latins in both ways. Thus *leptolachanon* in the diet of ascetics. Although the little Greeks, who are absolutely the latest and of a lesser age, rendered what is called *leptophuē* [thin-grown] as *psilocharomena* [thinly brushed] in their own language, and by this word they understand what is accurately woven, and, as they are also wont to speak, *ta leptoskeuasmēna* [finely made things], which others also understand as *psila* [thin/bare] absolutely. However it may be, he entangles himself heavily. For *to leptophues* and *to perimuxasmenos* [the finely woven and the one wearing a cloak of camel hair] are manifestly in conflict; the garment, moreover, made of the hair of a camel, or of camels, which the Evangelist attributes to John, and the *chitōn lasios* [hairy tunic]. Meanwhile, in his mind, with this confusion, he had a description of his garment truly *askētikēn kai metanoētikēn* [ascetic and penitential], such as the Hellenists called *mēlōtēn*; thus some of the Hebrews attribute it to the monks, that is, the *addereth* of Elijah. In the history of the Samaritan woman, ch. 5, it is read: B *hopē phutoergos Iakōb/Ampeloen pedon eiche.*
It is imaginary, and sought from what follows, that he here called Jacob *phutoergon* [a planter], who is said by the sacred writer to have lived in a tent. Esau, he says, was "skilled in hunting and a man of the fields; but Jacob, a simple man, dwelt in tents." Where what seems to be attributed to Esau, our author attributes to Jacob, although not as a husbandman, but, as the learned Hellenists [say] there, Esau is rather called *agroikos* [a boor]. But Jacob, who is called *tōn skēnōn oikistēs* [a dweller in tents] literally, is said to *oikein oikian* [dwell in a house] to them, because he was intent on livestock: which, as the king of philosophers says, is most slothful and sluggish, C as it provides a living from tame animals with no labor. But because they follow the herds for the sake of pastures, he says, they are also frequently forced to change their location. So much so that they seem to practice a kind of living agriculture; since it consists not in plants but in animals, to which he forthwith joins hunters. But now let us hear him: "They are indeed most idle nomads; for they live in idleness, because their food comes from the animals. And because it is necessary for them to move for the sake of the pastures for the cattle, they themselves are forced to follow, as if cultivating a certain living agriculture."
147 That such men lived in tents, which they moved because of the necessity of pasture, we know. For nothing is more well-known from antiquity, and from those who wrote about Nomadic geographies. And in the thirty-third chapter of Genesis we have a famous passage on this matter: "And Jacob came to Sochot: where, a house being built, and [with] stakes fixed, he called the name of that place Sochot, that is D Tabernacle." Where the Hellenists have: *Kai Iakōb apairei eis skēnas; kai epoiēsen heautō oikias, kai tois ktēnesin autou epoiēse skēnas; dia touto ekalese to onoma tou topou ekeinou, Skēnai.* Which is to be noted for the sake of the Chaldeans, who call him a minister of erudition or doctrine: which seems forced to Fagius and Mercer, since he himself notes that the Jews are engaged in this opinion. For my part, there is no doubt that the Chaldeans interpreted this passage as if it alluded *kata pro-lēpsin* [by anticipation] to the *skēnē marturiou* [tabernacle of the testimony], in which the Lord was present. About which, indeed, he will not doubt who considers the famous passage of Exodus thirty-third, verse 7. Where, when it is a matter of this tabernacle for these men: *Kai labōn Mōusēs tēn skēnēn, epexen exō tēs parembolēs; kai eklēthē Skēnē tou marturiou; kai egeneto, pas ho zētōn ton Kurion, kai exeporeueto eis tēn skēnēn exō tēs parembolēs*, the Chaldean uses the same word. This tabernacle, he says, he called *sukkath*, that is, a house of doctrine. Just as also the *skēnē marturiou*, the type of the Synagogue and Temple, which received the Church, he undoubtedly signified Jacob as its president, and minister through faith, even then. Therefore Philo also interpreted it as *oikon, kai aulas tou Kuriou* [house and courts of the Lord]. Furthermore, the Hellenists interpreted it not as *skēnēn* but as *oikian*, as I think: not being unaware that the Greeks would less honestly use that word. Inasmuch as they commonly used *en skēnē* 148 *trephesthai* [to be brought up in a tent] for those who were lustful and obscene, or for those who had prostituted their body for a price. Theodoret in the Preface to the book to which he gave the inscription *Peri tēs hairetikēs kakomuthias* [On the heretical malicious stories]: "But the lechery also legislated and practiced by them—not even one of those raised in a tent would endure to speak of it, or to hear it from others; so much does it leave behind even the famous workers of lascivity." Now *en tē phutourgia* [in the planting], that the first place is assigned to *tē ampelourgia* [vine-pruning], is known even from Philo, who also inscribed a book with that very title, which is well known and which is in everyone's hands. But why he called the Sichemitic field *pedion ampeloen* [vine-rich plain], although I could perhaps bring forward other causes, I believe our author looked to the fact that Sichem (for he is not rarely delighted by allusions) was later called a city by some: that, however, the Greeks interpreted almost as from *sichy*, *sikr* or *sikera*. But he is mistaken in that he thinks *sikera* [strong drink] is made from the vine alone, since it is often contrasted with wine, as in Num. vi, 3; Mich. ii, 11; and elsewhere not once. Whence also that [saying]: "He shall not drink wine and *sikera*." To which passage the Greek Fathers, directly opposing what he intended here, noted: *hoti sikera pan to methēn empoiein dunamenon, legetai, ouk an de ex ampelou*—that "sikera" is said of everything capable of causing drunkenness, but not derived from the vine: since it can only have application in those places in which *oinos* [wine] and *sikera* are contrasted. As in that case, for example, in the first of Luke, of which I spoke before, and in similar [passages]. What he imposed upon Hesychius, when he said: *Sikera, oinos summiges hēdūsmasin, ē pan pōma empoiein methēn dunamenon, mē ex ampelou, skeuaston de kai suntheton* [strong drink, wine mixed with spices, or any drink capable of causing drunkenness, not from the vine, but manufactured and compound]. For that wine is also denoted by that word among the Hebrews, there is no one who does not know who has casually glanced at the Targum of the Chaldeans. Which is said by Josephus, a very great writer, in the second book of Antiquities about the 149 Barbarians, *hoti en tois thremmasi to palaion pasa ēn hē ktēsis autōn*, that is, that their wealth in ancient times consisted of livestock; it is true also concerning the ancient patriarchs, Jacob most especially, of whom we were speaking before. Furthermore, since the whole Orient was wondrously arid and dry, no one is ignorant of what care they took there to dig wells, or, having dug them, to defend them from injury and violence, as if these were more useful or necessary than other possessions for livestock. Nor are the things which are read about them in the history of Abimelech and Abraham, but especially in that of Jacob, unknown. Such was the well at which our Savior had those divine discourses with the Samaritan woman: which [is called] now *pēgē* [fountain], now, by the custom of the Hebrews,
A *phrear* [well], as the elder Greeks say. For at one moment [he says], "Having come down to the fountain, she filled the pitcher, and went up"; and at another, "She ran again to the well," just as they found that variation in the Hebrew. For when there were wells, because of their purity, as it seems, they were also called fountains. For they were accustomed to being carefully closed and reopened by means of a stone placed over them. Concerning which matter one must look at the history of Jacob in the twenty-ninth [chapter] of Genesis, unless perhaps he spoke thus solely from the consideration of the language, or *kata tēn dialekton* [according to the dialect], as we were saying. Our author, which scarcely befits a translator—beyond the fact that he himself also said now *pēgē*, now *phrear*—dares also to say *elusen*, that is, "muddy." For thus he speaks:
"A deep-bosomed fountain..." [and then,] "He drew forth the lower water of the muddy well."
Nor was he thinking further down that it is said of Jacob: "And he himself drank from it, and his sons." Who B 150 have finished a huge or long journey, whom the Greeks call *tēlēporous*. And this is so well known that not even boys would be ignorant of it. Our author joined this to the journey itself. For thus [he writes] regarding comma 6:
"And there, having ceased from his far-faring path, Christ, weary from his journey, rested from his toil."
And since the Hebrews also have participles among the things added [to the text], this may be appended to what is above. It seems *desultory* what he says concerning the Samaritan woman at comma 7: *aeiromenēn dia kolpou kalpin echein*, that is, that she carried a pitcher in her bosom, when in the twenty-fourth chapter of Genesis, *ōmos*, as the Greeks translate it, *ōmon* [on her shoulder], she carried it. By which it is not to be doubted that he alludes to this chapter several times. Not much later, namely at comma 12:
"You are not greater than our father Jacob, of a holy line,"
he calls Jacob *arsenopaidas* [male-child-begetting] rather inappropriately, where the city of Sichem was mentioned a little before, just as all these things which he has pursued up to this point were done there. He might at least have thought of Dinah, whose defilement caused such a slaughter in this place that the city was ennobled by that alone. It would have been another matter if he had been speaking about the tribes. It matters so much how you speak. And perhaps this is the reason (although I know another can be brought forward based on the Hebrew way of reasoning) why it is not numbered in the list of the children of this patriarch. It follows:
"And he drank from it... water of the well for an oath."
Where most have read *orkion* [for an oath]. But if Nonnus wrote *arkion*, which the Hellenists are accustomed to call now *phrear horkismou* [well of the oath] or *archō* [ruling], now *Bersabee*, he might seem to have looked to [the text] C 151 where that [place] is called *Bersabee* [to which] Israel, when he was setting out for Egypt, was told [to go]. But what has that to do with this one, which is said to have been Jacob’s and is located in the region of the tribe of Ephraim, whereas Bersabee, or *phrear horkion*, or *horkismou*, or *horkou*, was the highest boundary and limit of Palestine; more celebrated in the affairs of Abraham and Isaac than of Jacob? And yet, that it can be called the same *arkion*, if the point is moved from right to left, they know who have been imbued with these letters: whence arises the abundance of vulgarity, because in the Greek it is read *orchon*. And so the difficulty will be removed if, as some do, we read *arkion*, unless this is to be ascribed to ignorance. What, however, was he intending when, for those words at comma 21: "Woman, believe me, that the hour is coming when neither on this mountain, nor at Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father," he translated: D "With bull's blood you will offer a horned libation"?
Which [the] interpreters render, "making a libation drawn with horns." First of all, it is one thing to adore, another to sacrifice. And one should not depart from the words of the Lord rashly, especially in this place; nor should things that are contrary and explicitly conflicting be said: for since sacrifices are abolished, our author holds them [in the text]. But let us suppose these things do not differ at all, and let us defend our author as best we can. I ask, what *keraelkes* [horned-drawn] is said to be here? Interpreters reply, a libation which is drawn by [means of] horns. But what am I hearing? That a horned victim should be a libation. The royal prophet commends in Psalm LXIX, 32, *moschon kerata ekpheronte*, a horned calf, but as a calf, if I am not mistaken. But as for a libation, which was made from wine, honey, and other liquids, who ever called [it] 152 *horned*? Which of the Greeks called *chuseis*, *choas*, *loibas*, and *spondas*, which were spoken of as being poured out or offered as a libation, a [horned] victim? The Hellenists of the Hebrews [use] *choē*, that is *choē*, mostly *spondē*; they called the instrument by which it was poured now *kyathos*, now *spondeion*. Glossary: drink-offering, *loibē*, *spondē*, *choē*. David, II Samuel XXIII, 16, when he could have drunk water from Bethlehem, preferred to pour [it] out: this is *loibē*. Aeschylus entitled one of his tragedies *Choēphoroi* [Libation Bearers], on account of the *choai* [libations] that are poured out there; which [in that same] place he also calls *chysin gaipoion* [earth-drinking pouring] and *chernitas* [purifying waters] from the liquid. And these are true *loibai*, yet not *keraelkeis* [horned-drawn], unless we are insane. Let us again suppose that bull’s blood is being considered, not as part of a victim, but as a *choē*, what does that have to do with horns? Why, if it is a *loibē*, how is it *keraelkes*? And if it is *keraelkes*, how [is it] now a *loibē*? It is sophistical and clearly untimely that, when the divine author treats [the subject] of adoration in Spirit and in truth with the purest words—the one of which separates [us] from superstition, the other from all ancient types, such as victims and sacrifices—he, as Chrysostom correctly interpreted, has foolishly expressed I know not what gestures and postures of the body in adoring, imprudently and with most annoying additions. For whereas the holy author, as he is wont to do, [speaks] most simply: "But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father also seeks such to worship him": so our author:
"But for wise rites, the priest awaits the hour, And now it has come near, when true initiates Together incline the suppliant neck to the earth, The neck inclined from the dropping head, All in truth and in spirit; for 153 such The High-Ruler God desires, who to him Bend their joined knees [to the] earth, With divine spirit and truth-bearing voice, On the floor, prone, with face pressed down."
So that in that place, in which there is [a question] of simple, true, and spiritual worship, beyond an ineffable *adoxia* and loquacity, he appears to commend nothing else than superstitious and Judaic gesticulations, and, as Sidonius speaks, the sighs of men with humbled necks and bowed breasts. Which is no light or vulgar *akrisia*, especially in a man who, as some desire, has either taught or treated of sacred things; certainly he has interpreted them. How much better and simpler he would have expressed this great author in this way:
"But it has arrived, O woman, and the hour has come, When my attendants and true initiates, With divine spirit and with truth alone, Incline the knee to the Father; for he who dwells in the ether alone Is well-pleased with such; and he delights in those who pray."
One can inquire likewise, what came into his mind that he should call the Galileans sometimes *philochristous* [Christ-loving], sometimes *philostorgous* [affectionate]. For a little later in the history of the Samaritan [woman] it is read:
"And again he came to the plain of the affectionate Galileans."
A
1011 AD NONNI METAPHRASIN IN JOANNEM
"Gladly did the swarm of affectionate Galileans receive him." It is as if nowhere else did the Lord have subjects more devoted or benevolent toward him. Yet the Truth itself pronounced concerning them: "A prophet is not held in honor in his own country." Item: "Woe to you, Chorazin; woe to you, Bethsaida," etc. Item: "And you, Capernaum, which are now exalted to heaven, shall be brought down to hell." However, certain ancients seem to have urged this point, because in Matt. 26:32 and Mark 14:28, it is said by Christ: "I will go before you into Galilee." Lactantius, lib. 4, chap. 20: "Having set out therefore into Galilee (for he did not wish to show himself to the Jews, lest he should lead them to repentance, and preserve the impious), with his disciples gathered again, he opened the scriptures of the holy law, that is, the secrets of the prophets, which, before he had suffered, could in no way be understood; because they announced him and his passion." Theophylact: "Showing from thence that he would abandon Jerusalem; but he would go to the nations: for Gentiles inhabited Galilee." Whence also the learned have noted that the whole time from the Passover to the Ascension, which the Lord had spent in Galilee, was called Galilee: among whom is also that most illustrious man, Joannes Meursius. Which, however, unless I am mistaken, can hardly have a place here.
CHAPTER VI
1013 From him who *hyperousiōs* (super-essentially) was *hyperousios*, he mutated into the substance of wine—whom he called *chionē*? Truly, *physis* (if one must speak in this way) *chionē*, will be snow rather than water. But also snow, which is *eidos* of water, and not water, should I call *physis chionē* or *chionōtē*? Because water, which is simply called such, was never snow: just as it does not freeze in every place, nor can it become snow. 156 Nor, indeed, upon the earth, *en tō anō topō*, as the prince of philosophers is accustomed to speak. The *chionōtē physis*, unless I am mistaken, does not exist anywhere. And *chionōdes hydōr* would be not nival, but nivata (snowy) water. And thus *oinōdes* [is] without doubt *chionōtē*. For *chionoun*, to make snowy, or, by infusing snow, as the learned know, to temper, just as Nero used those steeped in snow, as Suetonius witnesses: "He often refreshed himself in warm pools, and in summer time in those cooled with snow"; for that which he called *chionōtē physis* must be excused among the tribe of grammarians. But who would call a white nature, or, a nival nature, one who understands water? Truly *physis* is the *einai* [essence], but color is an accident. And it is indeed so [separable] in water, that whatever it assumes, it does not therefore cease to be water, or cease to be what it was. But also Aristotle, when in another place he says that those are most of all simple colors which adhere to the elements, as whiteness in water (as in the book *On Colors*: "Of colors, those are simple which follow the elements, such as fire, and air, and water, and earth: for air and water are by nature white in themselves"), yet elsewhere he says this comes from the earth, through which it flows. He treats of the earthy and the tints of waters, when they do not even allow that the color which receives the name "white"—of which snow is the source—is a perpetual and inseparable color, which in the mountains of Armenia, they note, arises not white, as elsewhere, but red, which is born from the exhalations of painted earth: which we now omit. But that is truly strange, and unworthy of a theologian, that he should have said—impudently, yet consistently—that the color of water rather than water itself was changed in this miracle, perhaps as other things usually are. So indeed above, in chapter 11, where this miracle is described.
157 "And it was a wonder; and into the flow B of dark wine he changed the watery color—the white."
You see *chroēn chionēēn*, which water he changed, you see water called *heterochroōn*. And then he adds, that it had been *akraton* water, pure, or mere, except that a certain Bacchic scent either breathed from it, or, as others read, floated upon it:
"And through the vessel-holding bosom C of pure water a sweet breath floated."
Which is to call the water vinous, or wine-tinctured: which nevertheless he calls pure, when especially after the miracle, which he had already introduced, it was not wine-tinctured or infused, but instead of water was wine. And let us suppose he had posited *hydatos akratou*, for *hydatos akratou prin oinōthentos*, that is, which had been diluted before and was now pure: how do the rest satisfy? What, that a little later, he did not say wine, but *nama oinōthen*, or, water tinctured with wine, or vinated?
"And when the steward of the feast tasted, with his throat as witness, the vinated stream, reddening."
And then he commends it from the color:
"How first he sets forth the sweet-colored wine by mixing."
But if the Lord changed nothing else in the wine than the color, it is necessary that the miracle was wrought *kata doxēn* (in appearance), not by the transformation of the water, and was not done in truth: for he provided nothing that any tavern-keeper could not do. And about Marcus the heretic, known from Epiphanius and Irenæus, who was accustomed to play with colors in this way. D Yet the evangelist says nothing about color, who judges from the taste.
A For lest any one (Theophylact prudently says) should think that some were drunk, and did not judge correctly, the tasting is committed to the steward, as to one who is sober. Concerning which Chrysostom speaks at greater length. Indeed, unless it is certain, as Augustine rightly holds, that true wine and true water are understood in this miracle, all others labor in vain; for if this be not true, it is not rightly commended as the first. And Hilary excellently notes that it had ceased to be what it was, and had begun to be what it was not. Likewise Augustine, who says: "He made wine that day in the jars, who every year makes it in the vines." On which account Theodoret elegantly called it, as something born of a miracle and suddenly produced, an "offshoot." But this from the luxury of epithets, if I am not mistaken, which turns the simple and pure speech contained in those words, *as the steward tasted the water that had been made wine*, into an inappropriate and disordered form, which is anything but fitting. For he rendered it thus:
*And when the steward of the feast tasted with the witness of his throat* *The stream flowing red with wine.*
Where neither of those things which he puts for wine (namely, the *wafer* that had been turned into wine, and the *flowing stream* that is red) indicates its substance. Thus, when he found here that he did not "make the water wine," which was said simply enough by the author, but not "water," but "yellow water," and not "wine," but a "flowing of wine," and not "to make water," but to "make into water," or "into the flowing of water," he spoke that which the Greeks call "to make wine," or "to change into wine." Now, nothing denotes the substance of wine less than *chysis* [flowing], and it is common to both water and wine. For it is the very movement of pouring out, or an abundance B and flow. Thus it is transferred, as when the greatest poet in the fifth book of the *Odyssey* said a "flow of leaves"; and as astrologers also assign a "flow" to the stars. But we were seeking here the *being*, or the *essence* of the wine, which would resolve the miracle: which origin Sedulius mentioned in his Acrostich:
*A new kind of power,* *The water jars blush,* *And the wine, bidden to flow,* *The water changed its origin.*
Where you have a change in both nature and color. Nor is it to be doubted that when he posited "origin," he understood "flavor": which origin and principle is that from which wine is usually distinguished, as is noted by the prince of philosophers in the fourth book of his *Metaphysics*, among other things: "Whence the thing is first known, that is called the beginning of the thing." He says that which is the source from which a thing is first known is called its origin or beginning. Our author, having set down the color almost everywhere solely, judged very poorly of it too. For what did he mean, when he called the water, which he called "snow-white" or "snowy" elsewhere, "yellow" [xanthos] here? Although it will be worth the effort, if I am not mistaken, to set down here again the passage we have been considering:
*Where the Canaanite soil, whence of old into a flow of wine* *He made the yellow water, having changed the snowy nature.*
For what, I ask, did he intend when he said "yellow water," and in the same poem called it "snowy"? For he did not understand the force of the epithet. For in the elements, where color is most simple, water is called by the prince of philosophers "white," and fire "yellow." For he says: "Air and water, by nature, are white; fire and the sun are yellow." And yet that color is so far from being white that in fire it is reddish, in other things it is dark, and comes very close to black. Whence it is also called *aithos* by Eustathius and others. Therefore, C on account of the weakness or defect of the black, where nourishment is lacking, as in fruits, in the hair of animals, and others of that kind, it is born—this the philosopher proved by a sufficiently long induction in his book *On Colors*, just as in the case of the crow's wings, he notes, he derives it from black, and finally from the drying and concoction of the humors (as in fruits in August, in trees in autumn, which, whether they wither or ripen, put on a yellow color). By what reason, then, will this be the color of water, which is born when it [the water] is absent and deficient? Add that the closer each thing approaches the fire, the less it is tainted by darkness or shadow (which always tends toward black), so it is more cheerful in that color, and it appears less diluted. Whence *aithos*, which is the color of fire, is also called red and ruddy. Ancient glossaries: *xanthos*, yellow, reddish, ruddy. As in wine, not so much yellow as reddish, which Homer called *aithopa*; and which our author understood throughout the entire second book and here; which that [*word*] which the Hellenists incessantly call *akratos* [unmixed], because the less it is tempered by water, the more exquisitely it burns, or is less diluted in color. Indeed, that *xanthos* is the proper color of wine, and is sometimes used for reddish, or that which comes close to it, no one teaches more than the Hebrews and Chaldeans: for when a yellow color, but one that is reddish, as in Greek and Spanish wine, is called by the Hebrews *ahuv* (as they wish) from the color of gold, which (as appears from the noble passage on leprosy in the thirteenth chapter of Leviticus) is called *hharur* in the hair by the Chaldeans, they clearly transferred the same to their reddish color, which they call *hhamar*. D Moreover, all that is reddish draws more from white than from yellow, although the ancients often confused these two. And Plato, when he wishes yellow to consist of red, brilliant, and white, undoubtedly looked to this. For whatever light illuminates, it must needs have something of the white: for darkness and shadows lack light. Whence also *achroos* [colorless] is a term for darkness from Ocellus Lucanus; just as white, surrounded by much light (which almost all black lacks), is spoken of by Plato. But if you should say that the color is also described according to the capacity of the vessel or the quantity of the water (for as it is little or much, so it is less or more black; for either the vision penetrates to the bottom or is hindered: which is noted by Aristotle also concerning the sea and rivers), the author himself implies that these were full jars, and that each contained a great force and volume of water. But let us suppose that the ancients, which is indeed true, amazingly played with colors, and with that one in particular. Just as when Pacuvius said of both water and dust:
*Grant me, however, a foot with yellow waters, that I may wash* *The yellow from my skin, with the same hands* *With which I often caressed Ulysses, and lessen* *The weariness of my hands with their softness.*
(For concerning Ennius, when he called the sea both azure and yellow, he says:
*They sweep the sea at once with a calm, yellow marble,* *The azure struck by the foaming salt with a crowded raft,*
the less critical marvel, because they say, since yellow is a color mixed of green and white, he called the foams of the green sea "yellow marble," as it is in Gellius book 2, chapter 26.) Whatever there may be of this, not only does this pair of epithets—*xanthos* in the same water and "snowy"—plainly fight, but it will also be the same color of the water that was changed as the color of the wine which it assumed. By which reason the mark, which he everywhere places as *diakrisis* [discrimination], namely the color, he will overturn. And these things are surely enough concerning these colors: which both Greeks and Latins, as I have said often, confuse. But much the most the later Hebrews, who—having drawn from I know not what Arabic interpreter of Aristotle that simple colors are best seen in the elements and their colors, and therefore wrote that the tabernacle, which they called of the Testimony, represented individual ones—nevertheless contend so much about them that they can scarcely define one. Just as concerning the Thasian animal, and the color [of...]
A of snowy stones, they have produced a multicolored radiance. The passage is immediately after the beginning of chapter 5. Where *snowy stones*, as *white stones* in Josephus: most white and uniform and *of one color*. Why, therefore, do I not pardon him, because he said *multicolored radiance*, that is, a variegated splendor, when especially, it is not variegated, but of one color, this whiteness of the marble, which should have commended the temple's appearance. In the same chapter concerning the sick man, who, already restored to himself, was taking up his bed, when he speaks thus:
*And shaking his unaccustomed knees,* *And bearing with toil on his shoulder the heavy bed,*
is faulty, and certainly not Greek; he said *shoulder-bed*. It would indeed be *to the shoulder*, although *shoulder* and *shoulder-blade* are different things. Nor would I call a bed, a very light little couch, which it was the custom to carry about, *heavy-burdened*. That is known:
*Who might be able to place on his neck* *The broken leg of an old bed.*
Wherefore he might have expressed this more in Greek and more truly thus:
*And straightway he himself lifted the bed upon his shoulders.*
Although he has already said the same thing before, *and taking the bed lying upon his shoulders*. How much better, therefore, he would have conceived the whole passage! B
*And he leaped up, and having planted his foot on the ground,* *He walked, as of old, again shaking his unaccustomed knees,* *And straightway he himself lifted the bed upon his shoulders.*
There is truly no kind of study that can be compared with this. For there is nothing that better informs the wit or accomplishes the judgment: a thing which we do not everywhere concede as whole even to the most ancient [writers] against us; for it is established that they could err in things just as in the method of language, as well as it is established concerning us, but of these matters at another time; now concerning the attributes of Nonnus. And since the Hebrews number participles following [them], let that be added here, which follows concerning this same sick man, in the fifteenth comma:
*Shouting a tale to the people, rejecting the jealous one.*
He surely does not notice, if I am not mistaken, what he says here. For if he who had been convalescent and had been restored, points out to the Jews that it was Jesus the Lord, by whom he had been restored to health previously, so that by this evidence (which Euthymius, Chrysostom, and others certainly do not fear to deny) he might betray him to the wicked, it is not to be doubted that this was perceived by them as pleasing. For the author himself adds, *and for this cause the Jews persecuted Jesus*. Why, therefore, did he say *to the people rejecting* (*anainomenôi laôi*), that is, refusing, [the truth]? In the same chapter, in the thirtieth verse, as the distinctions now have it, and [the] third, thus our poet sings:
*And they asked* *The holy John, pregnant with the God-receiving oracle.*
Those who are imbued with even vulgar erudition know that *God-receiving* (*theodegmon*) is said by the Greeks of one who admits God, or who receives God, one who receives God, such as those who are inspired by the divine. This is what the poet wished when he said: *There is a God in us*. For this is: *We are God-receiving*. Whence also the prophets are said to suffer and admit God. What, therefore, did he want, when he called the most holy John, who preceded the Lord and preached, full of the *God-receiving* oracle? For he should not be said to be so, [since it was not] that which John had received, but John himself, who was divine, [who was the receiver]. And thus he is accustomed to speak in chapter 10:
*There are, indeed, there are also other various ewes of the fold,* *Of this not being of the God-receiving court.*
And in 18: *He came as a companion to Christ within the God-receiving court.*
And 7: *Late-coming visitor of the radiance,* *Of the Spirit, which he was about to obtain with a God-receiving mind.*
C And 1: *Declaring a common testimony to the God-receiving people.*
And concerning Joseph who was carrying the Lord and our God, 19: *Lightening the burden placed on his God-receiving shoulder.*
To all of which, against this passage, [my] opinion...
if I am not mistaken, he expressed. Although indeed he did not always understand the words of the Evangelist and of others whom he uses, yet those points which, not sufficiently circumspectly, and without taking into account either his own intention or [that of] the author he is interpreting, he took from Greek authors of the Church, do surpass [the others]: which, as it appears in the greater matters of which I spoke before, so it appears in the lesser. The boats in which they were accustomed to cross the lake of Tiberias in that time were altogether small: such as were called by a single helmsman or master, as it seems, by the Syrians. Whence the Evangelist called them *ploiaria* for the most part. So below, *and other little boats came from Tiberias.* Where *ploiarion* seems to be a skiff, by which the lake was crossed: the same which perhaps [is called] A *dugith*, or not much larger, by which they would cross the Jordan in that storm. Our author said *polukleidi* by Homeric example. For thus at the beginning of the sixth chapter, in the first verse to be sure: *With a multi-benched ship, cutting the opposing water.* Which [vessels] were generally huge and compacted with immense beams, and required the work and service of many. So that *poluzugoi* and *hekatonzugoi*, or *polukwoi*, because they were moved with difficulty by oars and by many [men], are called by grammarians of the same sort: similar to the *Dugith* of the Rabbis. Wherefore, he makes an elephant out of a fly, when of such a skiff, he said below: *Having played with a sea-coursing chariot of the sea.*
167 Most imprudently, not long after, in the 9th verse to be sure, he called the speech or word of Andrew, who was warning the Lord, that, as the Evangelist speaks, *there is a lad here, who has five barley loaves and two fish,* [a] *spetmon*: which truly was owed to [that] voice to which the miracle was also owed. For this was convenient to the Lord, when He was blessing the food, not to the Apostle, who could contribute nothing to the miracle from himself. Furthermore, when the most holy Evangelist wrote those words which I have already cited, *there is a lad here, who has five barley loaves and two fish,* because there is no one who does not know that *opson* and *opsarion* are said of fish, he translated it quite idiotically as *opespon*: as if *opsarion* and *to optasthai* (to be roasted) had anything in common, or [as if] those fish were roasted. Which, if I am not mistaken, neither Matthew, nor Mark, nor Luke said. Then, if I can judge anything at all, there was no cause why he preferred to recast the loaves, which are called *krithinoi* (barley), and to call them *krithodeis*. Which is as if you were to say of *tritikees* (wheat), *purudeis* instead of *purinous*: as if *krithodeis* denoted the material, not something of the form, or as if *xulodeis* meant the same as *xulinon* (wooden). Such are the words [which] grammarians, too carelessly until now, having taken no account of utility, have transferred into their glosses. In the same chapter at verse 22 it follows:
*But when [the crowd] having recognized the rock neighboring Tiberias, B dawn displayed the sunless mist, the people standing, looked across the sea-salt [water] of fine-pebbled face.*
*For your [fathers] in the desert near the rock of the air ate the undying bread of Manna,* he called Manna, the *arton aphthiton*, not very circumspectly. For the Jews could not have been ignorant that it is said in the sacred context concerning this bread, that it rotted and bred worms, *that it bred worms and stank.* Also, when the sun had grown hot, it began to melt, Exodus XVI. Which seems to have happened divinely, so that they would not attribute too much to this food, or expect another [food], which was truly *athanatos te kai athaanatzon*, of which this chapter treats. But the error is also clearly idiotic, nor worthy of an C educated man, that he called the desert of Sin, in which Israel ate manna, and in which the people wandered for forty years, *petren eremade* (a desolate rock). Hence it arose, without a doubt, that he confuses the *eremon Sin*, which is mentioned in Exodus sixteenth and in other places, and where manna was provided to the people, with the *eremon Sin*, which is mentioned in Numbers XX, where was the rock of Arabia, near which Moses' sister Mary was buried, whom our author dreams [is mentioned] both here and below, when he said, *And they died in the crags of the desolate rock,* being secure regarding the Scripture of the Hebrews; to whom [the Hebrews] the one desert, in which they ate the manna provided by God, is called *Midbar Sin*, the other, in which they did not eat manna, but water, which Moses provided from the rock, they drank, is called *Meribah*. Thus a little later: *Did not Moses before this provide for you by the rock the nectar-flowing bread of the air?* With a similar error. For the Rock, of which he speaks, was at Kadesh, where was the water of contradiction, of which our author was thinking nothing. It follows in the next verse: *Moses has not given you the bread from heaven.* Why? For it is said expressly from the person of God, Exodus xvi, 4, concerning manna: *Behold, I will rain bread for you from heaven.* And then, it is said with the greatest care by Moses: *This is the bread which the Lord gave you to eat; this word the Lord commanded.* Why? Because God Himself, as they speak now, gave the manna immediately; but concerning the water, which the sons of Israel drank from the rock, *And Moses lifting his hand, and striking the rock with the rod,* it is said. This therefore he says: As you did not receive manna from Moses, but from my Father, so my same Father now provides to you the true bread from heaven. For the defect in the speech is manifest: *Moses has not given you the D bread from heaven, but my Father, who also now gives to you the true bread from heaven,* when some seek the interpretation from the homonymy of *the bread from heaven*. As if he were to say: That bread of Moses was not truly heavenly, but this one is truly heavenly, which is given to you by my Father. In vain, because it is not attributed to Moses, but to God; and the Evangelist alludes casually to those same places in his own manner. For concerning the bread, that one was a type, this one was the truth, no one can doubt. Nor does our author depart from this opinion. Ineptly he said that the Jews despise Joseph, whose son they thought he was, as *theodea* (God-like) at verse 42: *Was he not the son of the God-like Joseph?* Around the end of this sixth chapter, in the penultimate verse to be sure, when the Evangelist said, *And one of you is a devil,* it is undoubtedly a hyperbole. Our author seems to have understood [it] as an evil spirit, since even the Greeks use that word concerning an extremely wicked man: whence *anthropos diabolos* is cited from Pindar. But also Athenaeus, elsewhere, called the disciples of Plato *turannikous kai diabolous* (tyrannical and slanderous). The same, *One reigned,* he says, *being a phailos and a devil,* concerning an extremely wicked man, as…
Eustathius correctly proved from this passage. And in Plautus’ A *Asinaria*, a worthless youth, good for nothing, is called a devil (*diabolus*); for he does not traduce the old man, but enjoins this upon the parasite. But to me it does not seem doubtful that the disciple reached the extreme of wickedness and depravity from slandering; he who thus wickedly traduces Martha and her divine deed. Just as it is not to be doubted that he judged the Lord and His acts in this way, and everywhere acted as a whisperer and a slanderer, such as the Law of Leviticus describes, where it is said: *Thou shalt not be a sycophant, or a whisperer.* Wherein, divinely, the Chaldean says, *Thou shalt not eat calumnies*: which some have interpreted as *Thou shalt not eat cakes*; [a suggestion] that this class of men was admitted to banquets, and, like parasites, for the sake of the belly, would slander others. But it is most well known that the Chaldeans speak in this manner.
In the sense in which it is said by the Greeks, *to rejoice as at a feast* (*chairein hos daiti*): thus warlike [men] are said to be *rejoicing in war as at a feast* (*polemo kecharēotes ēute daiti*). The Syrians interpret this with one word. Wherefore the Syrian interpreter, when he converts *diabolos* here as *karna*, would have spoken somewhat more circumspectly, had that most learned man said it in his own tongue. As in the eleventh chapter of Proverbs, verse 13, a man is called double-tongued: *A double-tongued man revealeth counsels in the council*, which fits this wicked man perfectly, and there the Chaldeans speak in the way I have already mentioned. B In the seventh chapter, verse 23, those words—*Ye are angry with me because I made a man every whit whole*—most people think are to be referred to the miracle which is described in the fifth chapter, namely, that of the man who had lain there for thirty-eight years. That he was a paralytic, both some others from antiquity, and Theophylact in that place, take for granted. For he says: *The patience of the paralytic was astonishing. He had thirty and eight years, and each year expecting to be freed from his disease, he was waylaid and hindered by the more powerful, and yet he did not stand aloof, nor did he despair.* What, then, did he mean when he said *kyklada noson*, that is, periodic? For a cycle is either the same as a period in medical terminology, or it expresses the force of a limit in a definition. Therefore Galen called a periodic disease *the disease which comes around in a certain cycle* (*tēn kata tina kyklon perierchomenēn noson*). And he adds: *Every physician calls such a cycle a period.* But paralysis, whether perfect or exquisite, quickly kills. The other is more lingering, but which, as seems to be the case with this patient, takes away all motion, and in this manner has something *kyklikon* (cyclical) and *periodikon* (periodic): because it sometimes returns or grows stronger. And this is what the same patient complains of above: *Lord, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool.* But he wanted [to say] something else, if I can judge anything at all. Namely, that the disease was chronic and long-lasting. For in that place he himself said,
*Three decades having passed in sickness,* *And again eight circles of rolling years.*
Just as Homer, the rule of poets, said *periplomenōn eniautōn* (rolling years). And so too did Maro say that the year rolls in itself. And a year is nothing other than a cycle. Just as a ring is a *kykliskos*. Such are the cycles of years in the hymn of Hilarius:
*Thrice ten cycles of years,* *Living already a part of time,* *He seeks the stream of baptism,* *Lacking all contagions.*
Just as for thirty-eight annual cycles that sick man had lain there, to whom he attributes a *kyklada noson*. He indicates, therefore, nothing besides the long duration of the disease, nor does he define anything further, unless I am mistaken. The ancients, when they wished to signify the *homotimon* (equality of honor) which the Fathers established in the Nicene Creed, with the *homoousion* (consubstantial) or *synaidion* (co-eternal), in Christ the Lord, said, among other things, that He was *homothronon* (co-throned) and *synthronon* (fellow-throned) with the Father, just as C Gregory the Theologian called the Spirit *ever co-throned and co-natural with the Father*. For which our [poet] *parakekindyneumenōs* (at great risk), and not prudently enough, said *anchithronon* (near-throned). For thus in chapter vii, verse 39:
*For not yet had it taken root in human intentions,* *Christ the King, having appeared near-throned to the Father's seat*
—having found in the sacred code, *For the Holy Spirit was not yet*, because Jesus was not yet glorified; which is to take away equality, or to grant vicinity or proximity. Which Aristotle also concedes to vices and virtues, because some things of a good nature, as the poet speaks, are covered by proximity, such as prodigality by liberality. And the same Gregory called virtue and vice, that is, *kakian kai aretēn*, *anchithyron* (near-doored). Yet he expressly adds that they *dwell separately* (*diandicha naietacin*), that is, they dwell apart. For thus he says concerning the parables of the four evangelists:
*Where virtue and vice dwelling separately* *Are near-doored.*
And what prevents you from saying *anchithronous*? So also, he who is far removed from the royal dignity can be near to the king in seat or in place. Such was that scribe whom Mucius was taking away for Porsenna. Thus with the book of Esther, the satraps, *hoi engys tou basileōs, kai parakathēmenos*, who were near to the king and sat beside him, that is, the *anchithronoi* (those near-throned), are mentioned; who doubts that there was a great difference between this honor and the king’s? D To omit that he ought to have said *synthronon tō Patri*, and not *anchithronon tēs Patros hedrēs*. For who would say *synthronon tō thronō* (co-throned with the throne), unless he says the same thing twice? Or *anchithronon*, unless he posits two thrones? And what of the fact that he assigns a throne to the Father, a throne to the Son? For those who made [the terms] *synthronon* and *homothronon* did not want to tear the essence asunder, but to distinguish the persons. Just as when it is said that the Word was with God, whom the ancients and our own called *synthronon*: whence He is said to be in the Father and in His bosom. Furthermore, as with not a few other things, so here he had in mind his pagans and their *paredroi* (co-sitters) gods. For thus the twelve gods were *theoi paredroi*, in Latin *assessores* (assessors). Just as those also who were referred into the number of the gods by princes, as when Alexander 174 is said by Lucian elsewhere to have made Hephaestion *theos paredros*. And as those to whom it was permitted to play at this with impunity combined *paredrous* or *synthronous*, whether gods or magistrates, and those who are called *paredroi* to the Athenians in the magistracy, because they sat beside the king, by Pollux, and by others *synkathedroi* (fellow-sitters), because both words would sometimes designate the vicinity of a seat or proximity, so our [poet], who recedes a little further, wanted *anchithronon* and *synthronon* to be the same in the person of the Son: as if you would say that *to homoousion* and *to homoiousion*, which caused so many troubles, are the same; for from the latter they prove the former. Thus, when from the word *synthronos*, they infer *to symphyes*, or the unity of nature in the Son or in the Spirit with the Father, against Arius and Macedonius, [it is so that] the Fathers, like Gregory and others, might not approve the word *anchithronos* for another. But, as I said, he was carried away by the imitation of the pagans. What of the fact that he said *phaneis* (having appeared), not *ōn* (being)? What of the fact that the entire passage has no place here, and the evangelist [says] no such thing? For while he speaks concerning the Holy Spirit, ours has spoken concerning the Son. But of this elsewhere, if I am not mistaken, more suitably. Let the learned meanwhile consider whether that passage of his, *For the Holy Spirit was not yet*, which he interpreted, was to be taken on this condition, that he might say nothing—certainly he could have expressed his thought in one word with Chrysostom and the others. In the eighth chapter, what came into his mind, when to those words in verse 30, *As he spake these words, many believed on him*, he wrote thus:
*These things being said by him, the multitudes of scattered men* *Inclined towards the unbreakable bonds of faith,*
as if it were a matter of true and immovable faith, when...
they heard the Lord’s teaching, they willingly listened, or did they admit it? A Chrysostom: *They believed indeed, but not as they ought; rather, they were simply and incidentally pleased and found rest in the simplicity of the words; for that they did not have perfect faith, the Evangelist shows by the words that follow, in which they again insult Him.* In the same way, the word *Gerionidae* is used by the Sadducees, almost as it is by the Pharisees. Those who "believe in the Law and the traditions of the fathers" are called the former, while the latter are said to believe "in the Law alone." And how was their faith immovable if, shortly after, as Chrysostom observes, they curse the Lord? A fact he himself, having forgotten his own words, shortly after admits: *The Hebrews cried out with a harmonious throat.* If with a harmonious voice, and all of them, then those who had believed were among them as well. From this, however, Augustine departs, who, in his forty-first treatise on this Evangelist, says: *They answered Him—not those who had already believed, but those who were in the crowd, not yet believing.* In the same chapter, not long after, in verse 34:
*Desiring to accomplish all the long-sought-after labors of the elevated Mind.*
Who the *pothoblētoi* (long-sought-after) are, scarcely boys who have a command of the language can be ignorant. Certainly, it is used for *pathētikos* (passionate). Therefore, *pothoblētos* is not love—which is clearly ridiculous—but the one who loves. Moreover, the magnitude of Nonnus’s authority is well established, even from Agathias the Scholastic, an elegant poet who lived at the same time as the incomparable poet Agathias, who himself also makes mention of Nonnus: who, by the example of Nonnus, dared to call amorous affairs *pothoblēta erga* (long-sought-after works). So much, if authority is added, can pedantry achieve, that even from this it becomes plain how much it concerns the integrity of judgment that the youth be warned against those things which are incorrectly spoken. And the same man, how much better he spoke elsewhere according to the custom of the Greeks:
B 176 *In this dust* *The spoils of the long-sought-after Anaxagoras lie.*
Far better than Nonnus, however, he translated that word to mean love. For besides the fact that he spoke of *tas epithymias* (the desires) rather un-Greeklike as *pothoblētous merimnas* (long-sought-after cares), he did not even consider how alien this would be to the sense of the most holy writer: who called the *tas tou diabolou epithymias* (the desires of the devil) not love at all, but sins, of which the devil is the author, and primarily actual sins, just as Augustine observed long ago at this place. The species of which he himself sets forth here: certainly not lust or love, but the exact opposite; namely homicide, the origin of which the ancients ascribed to Cain. Augustine: *Therefore, in this place he signifies Cain, the father of the Jews, whose imitators the Jews, wanting to be, killed the Savior. For from him was the form of fratricide given.* But who would dare to call fratricide *pothoblēton*? But because the *yehen*, which the Hellenists translate as "desires," often denotes a pleasure, a perverse inclination, and especially *anthropoktonias* (homicides)—which in that author of crimes, who from the beginning is said to have been a murderer, exists—he expressed it thus. With the same chapter, at verse 38, which the Evangelist said, *that you are a Samaritan*, he renders it:
*That God, the new Creator, has grown up for the Samaritans,*
I thought at one time he had looked to the place in Isaiah ch. x, 11, *As I have done to Samaria and its idols*, and that he had used *to haplon* (the simple), as the critics say, instead of *syntheton* (the composite). Whether *theos cheiropoietos* (God made by hand) may be *o theos ouk theos* (God not God), that is, created, just as the Samaritans daily either worshipped new gods or produced them from their own mountain. It could have happened, however, that someone among the Greeks rendered that word thus. But truly 177 *Samareitēs* is one thing, which is here cast at the Lord by the Jews, and another thing are their gods or idols. Wherefore with the greatest
C
CHAPTER VIII
Nonnus corrected. The passage in chapter nine concerning the blind man to whom sight is restored. That he was without eyes according to the opinion of the ancients. That they were created by God, according to their opinion. *The creation of the eye.* *Chthonios keneōn* (earthly void), to which the eyes of the blind are compared, what it is for Nonnus. *Kenōma* (emptiness) which is *kanōn* (rule) for Theodotion, Gen. ch. 1, 2. Both are attributed to the earth. *Chous androgonos* (man-begetting dust). *Alaupōs homichlē* (blind-eyed mist), whether correctly. The illness of Lazarus *astheneia* (weakness). *Phonios olethros* (homicidal destruction), the disease by which Lazarus perished. *Phonoi* (homicides), places where murders are committed. *Phonoi*, murderers. *Phonos*, the blood from a murder. Caiaphas *theopropos* (prophet), and whether correctly. *Theortos* (God-sent) other than *theopropos*. That the latter belongs to Caiaphas, not the former. The prophecy *di' oikonomias* (by divine dispensation), such as this of Caiaphas was. A verse of the Hebrews concerning her perhaps born spontaneously. A septenarius verse to Varro, who is the *Politicus* among later Greeks. In that genre, a triumphal song, which is first sung to David, conceived. The Feast of the Passover, which was approaching, called *artichoreutos heorte* (festival of initial dancing). *Op esthon*. The place of Zechariah poorly rendered by the interpreter. The works of the Lord are miraculous and which would argue for a divine nature in Christ, poorly called *theogenē* (God-born). What *theogenēs* is, even by his own testimony. The works of the Lord [are] divine, called *theoprepē* (God-becoming) by ancient theologians. *Artichoreutos*. The linen with which the Lord girded Himself, *sklēron hyphasma* (hard fabric). *Lention*, *sindon* (fine linen) to the Syriac interpreter. 178 *Baddin*, *byssinon endyma* (fine linen garment). The error of Hesychius. *Bad* and *bar* confused by the error of the Hellenists, the linen with which the Lord was girded was of cotton. Called the garment of Osiris by Tertullian. The error of Nonnus. *Opoteron* (which of the two) what it is to the Greeks. *Kainē entolē* (new commandment), *love one another*, and how the Evangelist says it. *Kainon* (new) by reason of Hebraism [means] *to exochon* (the excellent), and that which excels. The Holy Spirit thoughtlessly and imprudently called *metanastēs* (migrant). The Holy Spirit is a gift *ametamelēton* (irrevocable) and nothing less than *metastatikon ē apostatikon* (migratory or apostate). Who the *metanastai* (migrants) are in the republic. Who the *metanastai* are to geographers. The Iazyges are *metanastai*. Among astrologers, *metanastai* in the stars. The stars are *palinōra*. Among theologians, *metanastai* who are also *apostatai* (apostates). The Messalians or Euchitai are called *authairetoi metanastai* (self-willed migrants) by Synesius. In what way the presence and constancy of the Holy Spirit is spoken of among the Chaldeans. *Schecina* is the mark of constancy. *Menein* (to remain) and to dwell concerning the Holy Spirit. *Menein* by the custom of the Chaldeans and Syrians [is] what the Apostle calls *oikein* (to inhabit). Abraham is a *parepidēmos* (sojourner). The Holy Spirit is called *syngonos* (kinsman), or brother of the Lord. The Holy Spirit is from the Father, yet not *yhiōn* (as a son) like the Son, but *ekporeutōs* (by procession). *Adelphotheia* (brotherhood of God), which Nonnus seems to have expressed, is condemned by the ancients. *Proboleus* (producer) is the Father of the Spirit. *Tropoi yparxeōs* (modes of existence) confused. *Pherallēla kai allēlendeta* (parallel and interconnected) are names for theologians. *Kosmos aénaos* (eternal world), and whether correctly. *Korymbos* (cluster), *polyptorthos korymbos* (many-branched cluster), and in this is the error of our [author]. *Kradiē [...] protokos* (heart [...] first-born), concerning the Lord [is] insufficiently pious. The devil [is] *archēs agēnōr* (lordly of origin), insufficiently circumspect. In the beginning of the ninth chapter, the blind man, to whom the Lord restored sight, is said to have had *sympherēn ameriston, acharakton ōpōpēn* (indiscrete, undivided, unformed vision). Where I read *symphytēn* (confused) not *sympherēn*, so that it signifies that his vision was clearly confused and indistinct. For when he adds *acharakton*, it signifies that he had not even eyes, which the Evangelist was content to have called *typhlon ek genetēs* (blind from birth). And truly, the ancients felt this way about him, that not vision
but rather eye-sockets were given to him, but also that they were formed and created by the Lord. Cyprian says: "Christ fashioned eyes with spittle"; and Asterius says of this man, "the improvised eyes and to be constructed." The same author says, "so that from whence the whole animal was fashioned in the beginning, he might show the part being fashioned." Or, from that [dust, namely] from which the whole was 179 fashioned in the beginning, he might now show the part having been formed. Chrysostom looked to the same passage in Matthew XIV, when he called the miracle which is here treated, "a creation of the eye." "When," he says, "he created the eye." Theophylact, when he says he was formed and created in the same way as the protoplast: "On account of this he fashions the eyes also from clay, in that manner of creation in which he also fashioned Adam." Augustine, or whoever the author of the *Sermones De tempore* may be: "He received eyes in this instance (of the other blind man), he accepted another; and that which nature had not given, the hands of Christ fashioned. For he placed upon the forehead dust, mingled with spittle, and hastening at the touch of the sacred hand for the discipline of the work, he fixed shining gems in the perforated orbs, and that which nature had not given, Christ the artificer made whole." What did he intend by that same dust when he called it *chthonion keneona* [earthly void]? For so it follows at the 6th comma:
*And stirring the field mingled with earthly void.*
That the word to which this is applied is used in various ways by our poet, those who have read his *Bucolics* especially know. Now, when he says that the Lord made clay here from an "earthly void" and froth, that is, spittle, with which that blind man, of whom mention is made, might be anointed, the thing itself teaches that earth or dust is to be understood. But no one teaches the cause for why he spoke thus. For the interpretation which the interpreters offer concerning earth that is void of stones is certainly of no account. And perhaps, as he did not weigh everything to the exact balance of judgment, he looked to *to kenoma*, which the interpreter Aquila used in expressing the word 172, or "vanity" [emptiness]. This is what Theodotion had translated as *kenon*. For it is said of the earth that it was "void and empty" in the beginning (Gen. 1:2). But what, from its origin, is *konis* [dust] other than *kenoma* or *kenon*? Which is 180 *napa* to the Chaldeans. But as no one is unaware, Moses treats there of the *ataton* and *akataskeuaston* of the earth, or of the earth which was not yet earth. Nor does it however stand in the way that he might have looked to the very word of Aquila, and just as he had called it *kenoma*, an earth still empty and void, so he called a part of it—that which is most of all empty and light—by his example; dust, namely: for it is the lightest and most empty part of the earth of which he treats: for it is wonderful how much the ancients delighted themselves in those interpretations at that time. A little after, when he said,
*Perfecting newly-wrought eyes with humble clay From man-bearing dust,*
he had his Hellenists in mind. For they [say], "And God fashioned man, having taken dust from the earth." So that he might look to those whom I have already mentioned, who wished these eyes to have been made in the same way and from the same earth as Adam was made. Whence Cyrus Prodromus called the clay with which the Lord used here, *ommatourgatēn pēlon* [an eye-making clay]:
*This clay, an eye-making clay, Not as having the nature of an artificer of eyes, But as ministering to the command of the Word As you spat upon me, O Christ, for the pupils of my soul.*
To remove the darkness of the eyes, and to induce blindness in them, is clear: which is called *epiprosthein tois ophthalmois* by the Greeks. To whom to happen this is 181 *alaōpin*, it deserves this application. Hesychius: *Alaōpin*, dark, not seeing. *Alaōpon*, privation of eyes, blindness, not seeing. For this is the affliction of the blind man, which is called *alaōpē* by the poets from the blindness itself. Which he was not thinking of, when about this same blind man, some time after [he says]:
*In it he prepared clay, and fashioned light for the eyes, Christ, having driven the blinding mist from the eyelids.*
But why does he now say that the shadows were driven from the eyes, which he had said were formed before, indeed, had he said so many times? The evangelist did not express the sickness by which Lazarus, the friend of the Lord, was extinguished. Except that he urbanely called it *astheneian* [infirmity]. Concerning which matter, to the place itself below. Our author placed a fever above, if we judge anything. What then is that which he says at that place in the eleventh chapter, at comma 37, "But some of them said, 'Could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind man have done that this one also should not die?'" thus he speaks:
*Might this corpse not have parleyed with murderous destruction!*
For who called fever, or any sickness of the same kind, *phonion olethron*, that is, murderous death? For *phonos* is the death which is through slaughter, which he could surely have learned from the least of the Greeks; for such things as these are enough to nauseate grammarians. Whence *phonai*, the very places where slaughters are committed, and [those] who are of that crime, *phonoi* by the Dorians: who also call the wicked *axian phonou eirgasmenous* [worthy of [having done] slaughter], just as *ei phonos*, the blood from slaughter, which is blood from murder; and this is absolutely inconsistent. He imprudently, in the same chapter, at comma 51, called Caiaphas, whom he had previously not badly called *athemiston* [lawless], *theopropon*:
*But not of his own accord did this prophet-man speak this.*
Which does not suit him any more than it does Balaam or the devil, when, by the prompting of God, he says true things, even if unwilling. But in 182 the glosses of the grammarians, he had read *theopropon* to be said of one who foretells from God. But in truth he was *theortos*, not *theopropos*. For he spoke, not by his own powers, but by the will of him by whom he was ruled, as we might say with D. Hieronymo. He might at least have considered that elsewhere he had used that word concerning Christ the Lord. It was therefore a prophecy which the ancient theologians called an *oikonomia*. Which the masters of the Hebrews express most roundly, *Naba birtson ha-Elohim lo yada ma naba* [He prophesied by the will of God and knew not what he prophesied].
It is, moreover, a poem which is said by Varro to be septenary; by later Greeks, political: in which Manasses conceived the *Chronicon*, [and] Tzetze the *Chiliads*. In which kind we have observed the triumphal poem which is sung in reproach of Saul to David by the women, 1 Sam. XVIII, v. 7, conceived: so that it might appear to have pleased the Hebrews also: although those things sometimes slip out from those doing other things. Furthermore, although quite thoughtlessly, he called the groom, whose marriage had been recently celebrated, in chap. 2, *artichoreuton*, whom you might call *neogamon*, he surpasses every absurdity, because in this very chapter, at the fifty-sixth comma, he called the feast, not one that had passed, but one which was now imminent, *artichoreuton heorten*. Indeed, to omit that *to choreuein* is *ametabaton*, or a word that does not transit, so that *neochoreutos* cannot be said like *neopoietos*, who persuaded him that *to arti*, which is the same as *to pro oligou*, is a mark of future time? As if it were *neoploutos*, who is one who will be rich. And yet he said,
*For this mortal cannot to a recently-danced feast*
with the evangelist a little later saying that [this happened] *pro hex hemeron tou Pascha* [six days before the Passover], even [saying] that those things which follow immediately had occurred. In the 183 following chapter, at the fifteenth comma, when these words with the prophet Zechariah are brought in, "Fear not, daughter of Zion," he sings thus,
*Daughter of the high-climbing Mother, do not fear, O Zion.*
A Now, those who are scarcely skilled in Hebraisms also err in the most well-known passage of the prophet, in that they say the lily of Zion is spoken of, just as in almost infinite places; namely, as the daughter of Tyre and of Judah, that is, in the genitive case, as grammarians say. So that it may be "daughter of Zion," of Zion, [or] "sons of the Achaeans." But our [author] has accepted "Zion" as if it had been placed in the nominative by the prophet. Whence he has assigned a mother to Zion, Jerusalem herself, as I think. And yet, in the prophet's place, "daughter of Jerusalem" is added in the very same way to the former: "Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion; preach, daughter of Jerusalem." Ridiculously, in the same chapter, or certainly carelessly and inaccurately, at comma 42, concerning miraculous works, and those which would demonstrate a divine nature in the Lord, he said "God-born": an attribute which is of Him who performed the miracles. That [fact] did not escape him either. For in chapter XIX he said: *The God-born King’s divine attire.* And in chapter XXI: *And the God-born King, while feasting,* etc. B Just as if He who is begotten were the same as the things that were made, He who is begotten from eternity, and the works which He performed. And yet the works, about which he treats, the ancient theologians have especially called "divine": like Cyril and others; a verse which he did not reject here. In chapter thirteen, comma 4, the most holy evangelist says that the Lord truly rose from the sacred and divine table. "And he laid aside his garments," he says, "and having taken a linen cloth, he girded himself." *And having taken a towel, he girded himself.* I do not see for what reason he should have called this linen cloth *skleron phasman*, a hard garment. For there is no doubt that it was both thin and clean, 184 especially. Such as is that which in Hebrew is called *ephod*. As when they say *ephod*, which the Chaldeans interpret as "byssus"; not because of the material, but rather because of its fineness. And therefore the learned Syrian also calls it a "sindon" [linen cloth] in this place. When Hesychius said *perizoma hieratikon* [priestly loincloth], he undoubtedly looked to the *ephod*. The same most learned grammarian [says] *baddin*, a linen garment, for priests, from the interpretation of the Chaldeans, to whom *bad* is "byssus." Whence *baddin*, which is of the plural form. For when the same [author] wrote, *Ephoud bar*, a priestly garment, and *the bar*, he says, is called "small," he follows the error of the Hellenists, who did not read *bad* but *bar* in the Hebrew, which I think no one is ignorant of. Unless someone thinks that a linen cloth made from the softest cotton down could be called hard: such as the most ancient author Tertullian without doubt thought it to have been; since he called the linen cloth, which Christ used here, the proper garment of Osiris, in his book *De Corona Militis*: "If you name an author of the day for each piece of every person's household goods, and for individual vessels, it is necessary to acknowledge Christ reclining on a couch, and when he offers the basin to the feet of the disciples, and when he pours water from a pitcher, and when he is girded with a linen cloth, [it is] the proper garment of Osiris, whose priests are for that reason called 'linigeri' by the poets, it is known, [and] it is called by Benjamin of Tudela 'Citin Mizri', the linen of Egypt, if I am not mistaken."
In the same chapter, comma 34, regarding the words, "A new commandment I give unto you," he does not seem to have understood what *oploteron* means to the Greeks, since he translates the words of the most holy evangelist thus: *I command a newer kindness in all things.* For the Greeks refer this to youth, which is apt for basic training, which the Romans also had described and defined. Furthermore, since this commandment, which is expressed by the Lord in this 185 place, "that you love one another" (since it is rather a compendium of the second table), is not new, although most of the ancients refer it to the mode by which Christ specifically loves us: it seems, however, as learned men have already cautioned in other places, that *exochos kai anankaia*, that is, eminent and excellent, or necessary, is signified here as the commandment. Just as "new wine" [is used] by Matthew; in the manner of the Hebrews, which not even boys are ignorant of. Add that he did not say: "A new commandment I give unto you, that as I have loved you, you [also] love one another," but simply, "that you love one another," to which he adds the rest: "as I have loved you, that you also should love one another." Just as when this precept is repeated elsewhere, it is not said, "that as I have loved you, [so] love one another," but, "love one another," as the most learned man Jansen noted correctly. Wherefore the ancients struggle here in vain, and depart from the now-received distinction. Theophylact: "Then, since someone might be puzzled, how, O Lord, you give a new commandment, [about] love, which we know was legalized even in the Old [Testament]; he adds, that 'As I have loved you, that you also love one another'," just as Chrysostom and Cyril also [say]. But if you take the word *kaine* [new] in the way I have already said, no difficulty remains. Nor does the passage in the epistle of our author, where he said "not a new commandment," stand in the way: [it is] in another sense, and because he had spoken there about it, as it pleases some. Unless someone reads "not a new" even here, which I do not approve, and [believes] the evangelist [possesses] his own [meaning], using the same word in a different way.
In the same evangelist, chapter fourteen, comma 16, Truth itself pronounces thus: *And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Paraclete.* Where our [author says]: *And I will ask God, my Genitor, that he may send you 186 From heaven a Paraclete, a wanderer,* *Another equal to Christ, established forever* *As a guide of truth.*
In which place, since the holy Spirit, a gift, [is] neither light nor inconstant, but perpetual, and, as the Apostle speaks, *ametameleton* [irrevocable], as the author [says] in this place, *menon es ton aiona* [remaining unto the age], is promised, who could divine what came into his mind, when he assigned to Him an attribute which, through all disciplines and sciences in which it has use, is proscribed with the significance of inconstancy and levity? Such is the word *metanastes* [wanderer]. For in political [matters], if I may begin from here, *metanastai* [wanderers/migrants] are not so much foreigners as [they are] vagabonds, and those who have no stable dwelling, as he is accustomed to speak: *oi methistamenoi* [those who move away], who elsewhere, as grammarians correctly [say], when they were born [somewhere], withdrew themselves thence. Whence it comes about that in the republic in which they live, they are *metoikoi* [sojourners], that is, residents, and cannot aspire to magistracies, as at Athens. Whence also [they are] *nothoi politai* [bastard citizens]. Hence Achilles complains: *Who made me among the Argives* *As some dishonored wanderer.* Who afflicted me with the greatest insult among the Greeks, as a wanderer and an errant, or a bastard and adulterous citizen. But, as I have said, it does not properly denote a foreigner (although it is so used in the republic), but one who has changed his own place or fatherland. In geography, roaming and erratic tribes, such as the nomadic, are called *metanastai*. Whence the Iazyges [are called] *metanastai*. Astronomers, and especially those who have followed the doctrine of the *phainomenon* [heavenly bodies], oppose to the rest those stars, or signs, which do not wander, but have both order and a definite rising and setting, [those] which they call errant, or *metanastas*. Theon on Aratus: "For all the planets do not have such an order of position 187 but wander, and are *metanastai*." And therefore they are not *palinora* [turning back] like the rest: which both set and rise at the same time. Aratus himself: *You would not then guess regarding other* *Stars, where they lie; since all are wanderers.* And in the same place Theon: "Since all are wanderers, and not reclining in the same place." And he then adds, "for they are not of those who remain." Just as the property of the holy Spirit is everywhere placed in the sacred [writings], *to menein* [to remain], about which a little later, [and] among theologians, *metanastai*, *metastatai*, [are] those who have deserted [their post], who have abandoned the order prescribed for them. Whence Synesius, [concerning] the Messalians or Euchites, who once having deserted their station, wandered about, called them *autairetous metanastas*, spontaneous wanderers, or fugitives, in epistle 67: "These, having a seat shown [to them]..." [index: entries preserved]
refuse to have one, as those having deserted their own; not expelled by calamity, but having become voluntary wanderers." Therefore, that attribute is always a mark of inconstancy and levity, although sometimes it is usurped otherwise B "by sequence," which has no place here at all. The most excellent and incomparable Glossary of Henry Stephens defines *metanastēs* as a "transfuga" (deserter) or "migrator" (migrator). So it cannot be denied that in that passage, where the Lord commends not less the constancy of him whom He is about to send than the excellence of the office, he has used an attribute clearly inept and contrary. But how much better the Chaldeans and Rabbis, who call the divine presence of the Spirit *Schechinah* (habitatium, or dwelling). Which word is C indeed the exact opposite of *metanastes* (wanderer). Even the Chaldeans, when they speak of the majesty of God and His presence, say that it dwells. And in this sense the Targum everywhere uses the word *schakan*, which is "to dwell," but the Hellenists use *menein* (to remain). Whence that very divine passage in Numbers 11, where the presence of the divine Word and His majesty is said to dwell among His own. Thus when in the first chapter of Ezekiel he says, "The hand of the Lord, that is, of Jehovah, came upon me," D which the Hellenists translate, "The hand of the Lord came upon me," the Chaldeans explain it as the spirit of prophecy having rested upon him, and they use this word. To which our holy author looked back everywhere in the Epistles. Especially in the second chapter, 14: "And the Word of God remains among you." Such are those things which are read there everywhere: "And he who remains in love, remains in God, and God in him," chapter 4, 16. And in the same place a little earlier: "No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us. In this we know that we remain in Him, and He in us, because He has given of His Spirit to us." And in the Gospel not once, has he used the word thus: "He who remains in me, and I in him." And elsewhere, "to make a dwelling." And the Apostle said *oikein* (to dwell) in the same sense. And indeed concerning the Spirit, he said distinctly: "If the Spirit of God dwells in you," Romans chapter 8, 9. And, "Do you not know that you are temples of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you," which is *schakan*. Which word, after the manner of the Chaldeans and Syrians, is attributed to *schechinah*, and denotes the same thing. Which, because of the Ark of the Covenant, was said to have dwelled in the sanctuary long ago: just as later in the temple. Whence, the faithful are "temples of the Spirit," whom here our own author has elsewhere called the "threshold and house of God." But why these things? Since it follows, "that He might remain with you for the age." And yet *metanastes* is what the Hebrews would call *ger*: the Hellenists are accustomed to translate it *parepidēmos* (sojourner). Thus Abraham is called *ger*, which Gregory translates *metanastes*: for the patriarchs were wandering: wherefore he [Nonnus] applied no judgment here. And surely it is not befitting in a man who desires to speak theologically, that he should have called this very Spirit, of whom he is now speaking, *Christou syngonon* (Christ's kin) in this place, that is, "brother." Although indeed both are from the Father, yet not in the same manner. For hence the very property of the persons arises, that one is "generation," the other is "procession." Although even the Spirit Himself is from the Father, yet not *huiikōs* (son-like) as the Son, as Cyril speaks, but *ekporeutōs* (processionally), when truly brothers are born *huiikōs*. Add to this that the ancients had already deservedly condemned that opinion. Cyril is excellent: "For the generation is not homogeneous; the generation is one thing, the generation of the Son of God is another; for if the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Father, yet it is not born, but proceeds." And Euthymius: "But why are the Son and the Spirit not called brothers, when they have the same Father? Because they are from Him in a different manner. Since the one is born, but the other proceeds." And Epiphanius against the *Pneumatomachi*: "Neither is the Son a fellow-brother to the Father, nor a commingling; and the Spirit is neither a commingling, nor a fellow-brother to the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is not begotten..." [missing text]
The unlooked-for
And the unlooked-for begins the everlasting world, a noble ruler. Where, why he called the world "everlasting," I see it can be doubted. For if he spoke properly, which cannot be, he departs not only from the Christians, but has not even most of the philosophers on his side. But if he speaks with the Evangelist, who understands the wicked by this name, he has brought great obscurity to a passage which he ought to have illuminated. For although it is certain that the wicked are kept for eternal punishments, no one, however, if I am not mistaken, would rightly call them "everlasting," who are said to die twice. It is next, therefore, that he understands the age to come, which is commonly called by the Hebrew masters *olam haba*. But if he so intended, he departed from the mind of the Lord, who explicitly called the devil the prince of this age. For He said "of this world." Concerning which blessed Jerome rightly: "The world of the devil, which is placed in the evil one; not by the dignity of the creator, but by the magnitude of the delinquents." Whence also Chrysostom: "Prince of the world, calling the devil thus, and wicked men thus. For he does not rule over heaven and earth; since he overturned everything and cast it down; but he rules over those who deliver themselves to him; therefore he also calls him prince of the darkness of this age." But a ridiculous thing happens to him: because the word *kosmos* (world) and the word *aiōn* (age) are often usurped for the same thing by Scripture (as when blessed Paul in II Cor., chapter 4, 4, said "god of this age" for him whom the Lord called "prince of this world"), he said "everlasting world," which Scripture is accustomed to call the *aiōn* or *kosmos* separately. As if that could be everlasting which is separated from eternity by the express word *toutou* (this). To the third passage in the following chapter it reads thus: And the cluster-like likeness of the multi-branched tendril. And yet *korymbos* (cluster), which he transfers from the ivy to the vine, is not *polyptorthos* (multi-branched), since rather the *ptorthos* or palmes (branch) is *korymbophoros* (cluster-bearing): for it is not the palmes that bears the cluster, but the palmes bears the cluster. But the error in the use of *korymbos* among our poet, who [uses] the branch...A in the place of the cluster: for fear he should repeat himself, he confused it with the *corymbos*. Just as it was insufficient for Caesar that his wife be chaste, if she were not also above suspicion: so, for the 192 sacred poet, it ought not to be enough to avoid blasphemy, unless he also carefully beware of and avoid the suspicion of it, which generally arises from ambiguity. Our [poet], as we said above, in his *Bacchica*, more than once called Greece *mythotokon*, that is, a mother of vanity and lies. Which epithet, not without great negligence—to use a temperate word, so as not to call it impiety, to which it is not far removed—he gives to the Truth itself, our Lord and Savior, chapter xvi, verse 4. For when the evangelist says: *These things I did not tell you from the beginning, because I was with you*; he [writes]: *These things, however, by a myth-telling heart cloaked in silence,* *From the beginning I pondering did not tell, still remaining* *A fellow-walker of yours upon the earth.* Who could bear this? Or who could patiently read that His mind, or *kardiē*, is called *mythotokon*—He in whose mouth no guile was found? To which is similar that which he committed in chapter iv. For when the Savior said there, *My food is to do the will of Him who sent me*, etc., he imprudently said: *My food was myth; my drink the deeds of the Father.* Which some impious person, such as Julian was, would read with mocking laughter: as if the food of Him who knows not how to lie were fables or trifles: for the ambiguity of the word and common usage suggests this. When he could have spoken correctly and cautiously, if he had said instead of that: *My food is the Word; my drink the deeds of the Father.* For by the Syrians—an occasion which, urbanely, as with many others, is attributed to the Lord—everything in which someone delights is called *brōma* (food): just as *dais* (feast) is used by Greek poets. And Hesychius explains *eidar* as profit. In the same chapter, as above, at verse 2, he describes the devil loosely, when he said: *On account of the world* *The manysided, haughty prince is judged.* 193 For *polytropos* (manysided) and *agēnōr* (haughty) are middle terms, as grammarians say, and they often draw praise upon themselves. Thus Ulysses is called *polytropos* by Homer, and Achilles *agēnōr*; each with the greatest praise. And he had those virtues as the substance and argument of either work. The Lord had a reason for calling him the "prince of the world": our poet [has] none for adorning him with such attributes. Wherefore he would have spoken better: *On account of the world* *The manysided, crafty prince of the worthless [one] is judged.* D
CHAPTER IX.
Nonnus’s imprudence in the description of the torrent Cedron. That it could be crossed by a ford. The same crossing mentioned. Cedros or Kedron, confused. *Hē speira tōn archiereōn* (the cohort of the high priests), which is the temple guard. *Stratēgoi tou hierou* (captains of the temple). *Archontes tou naou* (rulers of the temple). Nonnus is noted, when he said *anaideas archiereas* (shameless high priests). Who are the *pherōnymoi* (namesakes). *Pherōnymos topos* (namesake place). *Kraniou topos* (place of the skull). Adam’s skull. Adam, *anthrōpos* (man). Adam *anthrōpotēs* (humanity). The story of the Hellenists concerning Adam’s skull. *Antygi pherōnymon*, an inept expression. *Pherōnymon* or *epōnymon*. The name *etymon* (etymology). A published epigram of an ancient poet. *Hebraioi epidēmioi* (Hebrew sojourners) according to Nonnus, whom the evangelist calls *Ioudaioi* (Jews). Who are the *epidēmioi*. *Paroikoi* or *paroikountes* (sojourners). The place where the Lord was crucified, Golgotha, or *Kraniou topos*. Juvencus also [calls it] *rus*. The mystical inscription of the *Nazōraios*. *Galilaios* (Galilean) for Nazarene. The crown of holiness *nezer*: to which is inscribed *to hagiasma Kyriō* (holiness to the Lord). The word *calami*, known to the Chaldeans. The manner of writing, which is called *ektetypōmenon tēs sphragidos* (impressed with the seal) by the Hellenists. *Glyphē* or *graphē*. Nonnus’s *alogistia* (folly), when he used the Syriac language instead of the Hebrew. The title of the cross calls it *tripictos* (thrice-painted) in Prudentius, and why. The tunic of the Lord called *oino* (wine-colored). *Eidos ambroton* (immortal form), regarding the Lord’s body. Andrew, the *homogastrios* (uterine brother) of Peter. Nonnus’s *cakozēlia* (bad affectation). *Eima ambroton* (immortal garment), regarding the Lord's body. Likewise *himation* (cloak), regarding the same. *Hagios*, the proper name of the Holy Spirit. That *hagnon* is put in its place by Nonnus. Who are the *hagnooi*. And how sometimes that word is used by the Greeks. The chaste, who in the case of some god. The *akrisia* (indiscretion) of the interpreter noted. 194 Concerning the torrent Cedron, of which he speaks in the eighteenth chapter, he manages the matter no differently than if he were representing the Ocean sea, or something else that lacks a ford, to the eyes. For he attributes to it *oidma lyssēen* (furious swelling), or a raging surge, and he says *oidanein* (to swell). For thus at the first verse: *Where the stream of Cedron* *Rolls in a raging surge, a wandering rain,* *Swelling with the bold current of a mountain torrent.* Since it is known more than enough, not only from the description of the sacred Code, which often mentions it, but also of other Hebrews, among whom is Gorionides, that it could be crossed by a ford. Which the Syrian excellently expressed, *trangelta*, calling it a foot-passage. A childish error also, when he did not distinguish between *kedron* (cedar) and *Kedrōn*. Which he could have found even from his own Greeks, who in the Old Testament remembered the brook *Kedrōn* in so many places. Wherefore he applied neither of this place nor of the name appropriately. Our great and most holy author, a little later, namely at verse 3, when he said, *Judas then having taken the cohort and from the high priests and Pharisees [taking] servants*, he understood the phalanx of satellites, which followed the prefects of the people, whom the evangelists otherwise call Elders. Our [poet], unless I am mistaken, called them *straton* (army), because those who were over them are called *stratēgoi* by Luke. *And he went and spoke with the high priests and captains, how he might betray Him to them.* Where the Syrian called it *the temple army*, because only ecclesiastical and temple affairs, as is clear, were left to the Jews at that time, and the custody of the temple, just as they are called *stratēgoi tou hierou* (captains of the temple) for the same reason. But our [poet] is deceived when he thinks that it is *straton* (army) wherever there is mention of a *stratēgos*. Wherefore 195 neither were shields needed here. For the Chaldean interpreters also use the word *stratēgōn*, which they had made their own by usage, very broadly for prefects and guards. As appears elsewhere, and from the place at 1 Kings 4, 7. For thus it brought that forth: *istratigin*. *And having received a shield-bearing army of high priests.* Stephanus’s Glossary: *Stratēgos*, magistrate, duumvir; *stratēlatēs*, master of soldiers. And the Syrian understood this, who in the Acts, or, as the ancients say, *en tois Apomnēmoneumasi* (in the commentaries) of the apostles, called them *archontas tou naou* (rulers of the temple): to whom the evangelist attributes the *speiran* (cohort). Which, when our [poet] attributed to the high priests, he did not understand what the evangelist intends; who distinctly said: *Having taken the cohort, and servants from the high priests and Pharisees*, not therefore the cohort *of the high priests*, but *of the captain of the temple*. Certain things applied are *para to prepon* (contrary to what is fitting), as when Pilate, in the presence of the Lord, calls the high priests *anaideas archiereas* (shameless high priests). For thus at verse 35: *But your* *Nation, that I might judge you, and the high priests,* *Themselves delivered you shameless to me.* Since the evangelist in the nineteenth chapter, verse 17, wrote: *And bearing His cross, He went out to the place called the place of the skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha*, it pleased him to paraphrase it thus:1032 A And there are some who are called by the Hellenists *paroikoi* (sojourners) or *paroikountes* (dwellers). For because he said that the place was a neighboring region, he speaks perhaps according to the opinion of the common people, who used to set the little hill there—198 which bore the shape of a skull—as being so called. But he himself followed another opinion regarding the skull of Adam, so that he spoke of it with little circumspection. Certainly, the sacred page does not call Golgotha a mountain, but a "place." This is what Matthew also repeats twice: *"And having come to a place called Golgotha, which is called the place of the skull,"* and our evangelist: *"For the place was near the city where Jesus was crucified,"* as is also said by Cyprian and Tertullian. For Juvencus said in the rustic manner: *Infelix! nam qua primum te voce ciebo?* *Infelix! vox haec tristia cuncta notat.* *Matronae flos ille abiit: cui contigit aevi* *Moribus et vultu gloria prima sui.* *Nae verum Primae nomen tibi! namque secundae* *Nulli hominum veneres, diva, fuere tuae.* The name of this woman is therefore rightly said to be *etymon* (true). But here, there is nothing of the sort. For neither was the place named by the intention of the evangelist from the skull of Adam, nor does the term *Kranion* correspond to this, whether to a tradition inherited from fathers or to a secret instruction. And the place was not called the skull of Adam, but, as the evangelist speaks, the "place of the skull." For the fact that Chrysostom and others wish for Adam to have died in that place (some, he says, maintain that Adam [perished] there), among whom is also Athanasius, does not even contribute anything to the *pheronymia* (name-bearing) or to the word "skull." Closer to the point is the fact that Epiphanius notes that the skull of Adam was found in that spot. To this our author looked. I am surprised that those who were well-versed in Hellenistic books did not see the origin of this story: in those books, *Adam* is wont to be used collectively, and after the manner of the Hebrews, whose word they also preserve. Just as it was done by the Latin interpreter who says in 1 Samuel 7, 9: "This is the law *Adam*," that is, "of men," not "of Adam." Indeed, Symmachus translates *Adam* as "humanity." Thus, Josiah is said to have burned the 197 bones of [*Adam*], that is, "of men." And so the Hellenistic elders: *"And he burned the bones of men upon it."* Whoever is moderately versed in the Hebrew language understands what I mean. Since, therefore, there were skulls of Adam—that is, of men—in that place, the place was so called. Our author increased this absurdity, for he was not content to have said *Adam* so as to cover the error with ambiguity, but stripped it bare when he added, "of the first-born Adam."
But after it has come to the name *Golgotha*. The Syrian also calls the place by that name, and adds nothing further. Furthermore, concerning the title, in verse 19, which the most holy evangelist frames thus: *Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews*, our author substituted *Galailaios* (Galilean) for *Nazoraios*, although no one is unaware that Nazareth was in Galilee; yet it is certain that many even lesser things were both said and done here *kat’ oikonomian* (by way of management). And already an earlier evangelist had clearly stated in that passage which is difficult for the learned: *He shall be called a Nazarene.* For there is no doubt that that mystical word was one which denotes the *hagiasmenon* (sanctified). He was truly a *Nazoraios*, that *Nazoraios*—as in these neighboring words they silently allude, there is scarcely any doubt. For *Nazoraios* is rendered by the Hellenists as *ho hagiasmenos*, that is, "the sanctified." Just as he was the *Nazoraios*, the Holy One of the Lord whom Nazareth brought forth: which two things are separated by a single letter even for the Hebrews. So there is no doubt that in this inscription of the Lord which was carved on the tablet, there was an allusion to that plate of the crown of holiness, which itself was also called *Nezer*. And inscribed upon it was "Holiness to the Lord," which is *Naziraios tou Kyriou* (Nazarite of the Lord), in Exodus 39, 30. I, for my part, would not dare to change anything here. Just as he talks nonsense when he notes that this was written with a "reed" (*kalamo*). For although the word for "reed" is so well known to the Chaldeans that it is often found in the Targums, the evangelist here understands an entirely different method of writing: namely, that which the Hellenists call the *ektetypomenon tes sphragidos* (an impression of a seal), which is a carving, not writing—that is, a glyph, not a script. *"And they wrote upon it letters impressed as if by a seal,"* say the Hellenistic elders regarding that passage. Just as the *akrisia* (indiscriminate judgment) is also in our author, who, when the greatest doctor and evangelist mentions that it was written in Hebrew, says that it was written in Syriac. For it is known to all that Hebrew—as our evangelist himself confirms in several places—is called the Syrian, and not the other way around, just as the Syrian metaphrast also followed this elsewhere. Furthermore, because of these languages, the same title is gracefully called by Prudentius "in three parts": *Pilatus jubet ignorans: Tu scriba triplicis* *Digere versiculis.*
There is another error in that he ineptly said *antygi pheronymon* (name-bearing by the rim), when he should have said *pheronomos* (name-bearing). For the place of which he is speaking is not *pheronymos* (a person bearing a name related to his own)—for who would dare speak so?—but it was *pheronomos* to the skull. It would be an entirely different matter if he had said: "Many skulls were there; hence the place is *pheronymos*," or, "The skull of Adam is said to have occurred there; hence the place is *pheronymos*." For this is how Greeks are wont to speak, and their usage must always be taken into account. Not much later, in verse 20, when the evangelist wrote: *Many therefore of the Jews read this title*, it pleases us—lest I say anything deceitfully—that our author called those whom he refers to under the name of Jews, the "foreign-dwelling Hebrews." For thus, at verse 20: *And a great flock of foreign-dwelling Hebrews read* *The title, having seen: that the place, etc.* So that it may be understood that they were those who were staying in the city for the sake of celebrating the feast. Of whom, as most (such as the Hellenists) knew Greek, so some also knew Latin. So much so that all these, for whom that title of which mention is made here was devised by Pilate, would not have found it difficult to understand the languages. For the rest understood nothing besides their native tongue. So here therefore Pilate commands, unaware: *Tu scriba triplicis / Digere versiculis.*
In the same place, at verse 24, it may be asked why he called the seamless tunic of the Lord, of which the evangelist treats, *oinopa* (wine-colored): *Oinopa me schizomen alethea tonde chitona.* And to me, indeed, it seems he did this after the manner of the ancients, who not infrequently and secretly allude to some passage contrary to expectation. So now, it seems to have been in his mind: *He shall wash his garment in wine, and his vesture in the blood of the grape*, Genesis 49, when one speaks of Shiloh, or the Messiah. Just as for *alethea* (true), a word which in this place is of no value, I do not doubt that *anithea* (seam-less), which, as I think, others have suggested, should have been written, because he reads that it was woven from the whole, not stitched, for which *achoston* (seamless) would have been more correct and more common. But whoever would demand an accurate accounting from him, 200 who not infrequently speaks negligently? For concerning this very tunic, in its place. Not so long after, at verse 29, to be sure,
A to Sophronius and others. And what need was there for a new attribute, where no mention of Andrew is made? A little later, the Lord says to Mary: *Touch me not*. Regarding which passage our author says this: *But God held back the woman, / Who was about to touch his immortal garment.* When he said this, he meant the manna, since it is said to have been *like frost on the earth*, Exod. xvi, 14. And Josephus, in book iii of the *Antiquities*, when speaking of the manna: *The multitude ignoring it and thinking it was snow*, he says; this is, like snow, clearly what our author meant, that it fell from heaven. And indeed to such a degree that all believed it to be snow. Rightly, then, did he call it a "honey-dropping frost." Nyssenus, in his sermon on the Resurrection of the Lord, says: *They gave bile to him who rained the manna upon them*, in the same sense and using nearly the same words as our author. The same writer, in his *Life of Moses*, using phrases like "crystal-like clots, the taste of which mimics the sweetness of honey," points to the same meaning. In the following chapter, at verse 2, when he speaks of Peter: *While he was grieving and suffering*, we must read *katyptiōonti*. And having placed the following, he gave John, the companion and member of the household, to Peter. But if this is true, the Lord will appear to have entrusted to Peter, at the same time that he entrusted his mother to the disciple whom he loved: which is *aprepes* in the story, as the critics put it. At the beginning of the last chapter, at the first verse, he seems to have spoken not prudently enough, that the Lord, after his passing, showed a divine form or appearance to his own, when he was showing a body, incorrupt indeed and B undefiled, but nevertheless a true body. Yet, it is one thing for a body to be incorrupt, and—if I may add—immortal, and quite another to be a 201 divine form. *And he said the words: Do not touch my garments.* Where, "immortal garment," he seems to mean the sacred body of the Lord. And thus the ancients have sometimes spoken. In Photius, Chrysostom says: *And my garment came*, from Zechariah, if I am not mistaken, where it says concerning the priest Jesus: *Remove the filthy garments from him.* Lactantius, lib. iv: *He spoke therefore of Jesus the Son of God, to show that he would come first in humility and flesh.* For this is the filthy garment; and also: *He therefore became incarnate, and was clothed in the garment of flesh.* I know that the Fathers, according to the various gifts of the Holy Spirit, sometimes attribute various things to him. So that one name may remain for him, which the Church desired to be proper to him. This is *Hagios*, or Holy. Wherefore our author is not correct, in that passage where he speaks properly of the Spirit, and yet he is expressed to the apostles as unknown, to have said *Pneuma hagnon* (pure spirit), when he could have called it *hagion* (holy). For when the Lord, in chapter 22, verse 22, had said, *Receive the Holy Spirit (Pneuma hagion)*, it sufficed to have said: *Receive the Holy Spirit.*
As if this would complete the name *hagion* in the Holy Spirit, who among the Hebrews is also called *Haccados*, but mostly *Haccodes*, that is, *of the Holy*, because they wished to attend *to the Holy*, that is, to the sanctuary. But if he had said *Receive the Holy Spirit (Pneuma hagion)*, 203 he would have spoken with the Church, and he would have left the propriety, or *middah*, as the Rabbis call it, of the third person, untouched in that place where it concerns the sensible sign of one already arriving, because "Holy" is the proper name of Him who is particularly designated by this word, just as Cyril the younger and other ancients speak. And Damasus, bishop of Rome, says: The proper name for the Father is Father, and the proper name for the Son is Son, and the proper name for the Holy Spirit is Holy Spirit. And St. Basil says: *an klesin idiazousan te kai kyrian*, that is, he calls the peculiar and proper name of the Holy Spirit what is said in this way. And what is more, he did not examine the word he used? For *hagnos* properly designates *that which is pure*, and does not always denote holiness. As when Sappho, a true prostitute and polluted with foul loves, and, as Tatian rightly says, an *erotomanes gynaion* (lustful woman), is called *hagna* by Alcaeus. As in that line: *Violet-crowned, pure, honey-smiling Sappho.* And for the Romans, all who are consecrated to a chaste god, that is, to a profane god, such as truly our God detests, are called chaste, just as among the Greeks. Thus in an ancient epigram of Dioscorides, not yet published as far as I know, Atys, a truly effeminate scoundrel, because he was in the service of the castrated Great Mother, is called *hagnos*: *The pure Atys, attendent of Cybele, was chilled by the spirit of dire frenzy during the evening, while it walked through the darkness.* The glosses of Henri Estienne, *castus*, *hagnos*; *castimonium*, *hagneia*, as in that line of Naevius, *He declares divine things, he predicts being chaste*. What of the fact that he himself usually uses this word otherwise? Certainly, that the Galileans were crafty men and of corrupt morals, both others testify, and that saying in our author: *Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?* And yet he called their land the *hagnon edhlon* (pure dwelling) of the Galileans in that line: *He walked to the pure dwelling of the unshorn Galileans.* The Jews were thinking of putting to death the Lord and our God, and yet, a little before that happened, he called him or their land *hagnos*.
A You see that *hagnos* [unshorn/pure] is used for those who, as the Savior objects to them, sinned most frequently against the Holy Spirit. And yet he used the same attribute for them and for Him whose property it is not only to be holy but also to sanctify, doubtless on account of the sacrifices, and as one pure. But this, or that, or rather neither, is sufficiently cautious. For attributes ought not to be cast about rashly, or where one has cast them, they must be recalled to divine and holy expressions. Although I know the Greeks sometimes did this for the sake of the meter. As when Amphilochius, whom others called *panagion* [all-holy], said:
The Father with the Son and the all-holy Spirit.
And in those poems which were recently added to the rest of Gregory the Theologian’s works at Paris:
He shall see, if he wishes, and if he has drawn anything pure of the Spirit into his heart;
whether for the sake of the meter, or on account of the gifts which he bestows: which, however, I would not wish to be done. But in the interpretation of this passage, that change, without a doubt, argues complete either imprudence or *akrisia* [lack of judgment] on the part of the interpreter, which those who have sound judgment understand.
CHAPTER X.
Consideration of nouns and words. That the Stoics concerned themselves with their meaning diligently, and indeed in logic. The distinction of ambiguous terms and homonyms. How concerned sacred critics have been about these. The Seventy Interpreters. Their use of the European *diaspora*. B 205 To what extent the evangelists and apostles followed them. Regarding the fable of the Greeks. Its vanity now first exposed. From where it was drawn. The name of the Elders; and what is said about their number, about the chambers, and their separation. From where the fable about their consensus arose. The Tetrapla, Hexapla, and Octapla of Origen, and their arrangement. The Hellenistic language. It is different from the Greek. Much in the New Testament misunderstood because of it. That the interpretation of the words of this language must be sought from other sources. How frequent in the New Testament are ambiguities and homonymy. That this is a property of the Hellenistic language, and this proven by some examples. The homonyms of St. John. The meanings of words adopted from the usage of the Orient. How variously the word *sarx* [flesh] is used. What is the duty of the interpreter in explaining the meanings of words that exist in the New Testament. The error of Nyssen and Optatus arising from the ambiguity of a word. How variously *pneuma* [spirit] is accepted. How variously the word *aletheia* [truth] is accepted from ours. The *episymbebekota* [accidents] of God, according to Anaxagoras. Other examples of *polysemon* [words with many meanings] in the sacred author. How variously *krisis* [judgment] and *krinein* [to judge] are accepted. A most obscure passage of the evangelist, and its interpretation. The method of interpreting only through the same words noted. This proven by various examples. *Aimata* [bloods] and *sarx* [flesh] poorly understood by Nonnus. What the Jews meant. *Atrekeia* and *aletheia* [truth], whether they are the same. *Aletheia* and *dikaiosyne* [justice] the same for Hellenists, most different for Greeks. Nonnus, as in words, so in the complexity of his speech, commits *parermeneiai* [misinterpretations]. C *Eis ta idia elthe* [He came unto his own]. The inept interpretation of this passage. *Yious Theou genesthai* [to become sons of God] and *tekna Theou akouein* [to hear children of God]. *Akouein* and *einai* [to hear and to be], and their difference. The *entelestate huiothesia* [most perfect adoption], regarding the election or its execution. The obscurity of Nonnus noted. The passage rendered in Greek differently than by him. The method of interpreting approved by Jerome. Hebraisms in Nonnus, even when none are in the evangelist, and whence they come. Hellenistic in canon law. The opinion of Antonius Augustinus on Ulpian examined. That even poets ignorant of the Greek and Hebrew language *hebraize*. The Hebraisms of Nonnus noted. *Oikos aeiphrouretos* [house perpetually guarded], regarding a prison. The use of *rubelli* [red/ruddy ones] in the East. *Hagios Theou* [Holy of God]. *Amoibas biblos* [book of exchanges]. *Gymnousthai* [to be stripped], regarding jars, after the custom of the Hebrews. *Es physin oinou poiein* [to turn into the nature of wine], a Hellenistic locution. Tribe for nation. *Choros* [dance] and *chorostados hemar heortes* [the dance-standing day of a feast]. *Mythos* [fable] used in the manner of the Hebrews and Chaldeans. The hallucination of Ambrose. *Ereugesthai logon* [to belch forth a word]. The idioms of Nonnus. *Time* [price] for D *ousia* [substance]. Concerning the interpretion of sacred books, especially those of the New Testament, advice. What should most be followed by others, and what has been neglected by our own. A judgment on the evangelist and his virtues in speech.
206 And these things, indeed, regarding what is appended. Which belong not so much to the interpreter as to the poet, although they must be required of the evangelist also, whom he has interpreted. Now let us speak something of the method of interpretation which he followed. In which, truly, while doing something else incidentally, we shall also illuminate the mind of the holy author. For this care requires another part, and as it were a proper one, in this volume. To which we shall come a little later. The Stoics, men diligent and industrious in searching for truth, and who spent a great part of their lives in examining its instrument, dialectic, because they saw that all investigation of truth is best begun from the signs of things, or the notion of words, dealt with this most especially in dialectic. Which they divided into two parts, *Peri semanonton kai semaineomenon*, Concerning signs and the signified. And Socrates, as Epictetus bears witness, called the *onomaton episkepsis*, the contemplation of nouns, the beginning of erudition. Especially, however, did they diligently treat the place *Peri amphibolon*, Concerning ambiguous terms. Just as ancient critics set forth the principal duties of an interpreter, especially one who is occupied in the interpretation of the sacred page, *hina tes homonymias apomerize tas lexeis*, so that he might distinguish all ambiguous words. But also regarding Eusebius, the ancient theologian, Photius notes that he did not censure Andrew the monk by any name more than this: *He hoti monosemanton to tes phthoras exeilephos onoma, epi mones hamartias oieto tattesthai*; That since the word *phthora* [corruption] had a wide reach, he had thought that it was to be used in one way only, namely for sin. Whence also the ancient philosophers rightly note that an ambiguous expression, and one which signifies now one thing and now another, is not an enunciation, but enunciations, and a word, which 207 is of such a kind, is several things rather than one. Because, as the Damascene says excellently, *Hekastos auton allo ti semainei, kai ousias alles esti*; Each one of them signifies something else, and belongs to a different substance.
Concerning which, before we speak, I think I will have done work worth doing if we speak here incidentally of those things which have devolved to us from the Hellenists and their language. The Seventy Elders’ most ancient and first interpretation, which at that time held sway in the European *diaspora* (whom they called Hellenistic Jews then), the evangelists and apostles followed not so much in individual words, as many think, as they followed their manner of writing, which it is established they used at that time *kat’ oikonomian* and by the dispensation of God, so that they might join the Jews with the Greeks, not without grave cause. Regarding which interpreters, what nonsense, fables, and trifles have the Greeks not devised! So that the most holy and learned man and writer D. Hieronymus does not rashly admire and at the same time laugh at most things from them. However, regarding the very origin of the name and the chamber, that we may incidentally uncover it, because we do not remember that this has been done by anyone, this place warns us. We note that the number of the interpreters, the manner of interpreting, and what is said about the separation and consensus in such volume, arose from the twenty-fourth chapter of the second book of Moses. Where that great emperor and friend of God is said *meta hebdomekonta presbyteron Israel pros Theon anabebekenai*, to have ascended to God with the seventy elders of Israel. But there it follows, *kai ton epilekton tou Israel diephonesen oudeis*, which is, and from those chosen ones, or from the seventy elders, no one disagreed or dissented. Hence the history without doubt about Ptolemy, hence those famous chambers which Jerome mocks. Hence that invention: that no one out of 208 so great a number had dissented in expressing sacred things. For some have, And of the chosen ones of Israel not one dissented. Whereas in the Hebrew it is written far otherwise; and almost what is in the vulgar: Nor upon those who had retreated far from the sons of Israel...
A Since some chose, and others—from the Latins, who without doubt, as is their custom, followed the Greeks—rendered it "separated," that is, *kechorismenous*. Whence the story about the separation, and that they translated the Scriptures separately and apart. If the most learned Joannes Woverius, our dear friend while he lived, had considered this, he would have discovered the source and origin of the error without any trouble in his very elegant little book about these interpreters. But let us set forth the very words of the sacred codex. Thus, then, in the chapter already mentioned, verse 9: *And Moses went up, and Aaron, and Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel.* And verse 11: *And of the chosen ones of Israel not one dissented.* Although they could have derived that very number from almost infinite other places. Because mention of him, and of the Elders, is found everywhere in the sacred books. Which, because they wished to deviate from it a little, they were unwilling to make round. Which, however, is generally confused. From this and other interpretations, Origen had arranged the Tetrapla, the Hexapla, and finally the Octapla, so that each text might claim a page or part of it for itself. Of these, six were Greek, written in the Hellenistic language. Whence that language began to spread greatly. So that you may easily see its traces through all the writings of the Greeks, even those who speak more purely. The Tetrapla consisted of Aquila, Symmachus, the LXX Elders, and Theodotion. In the Hexapla, an edition found in jars in the city of Jericho in Palestine under Caracalla was added, and another found near Nicopolis. In the Octaplo B 209, the text of the Hebrews, written first in Hebrew letters, then also in Greek, claimed a place for itself. In this way:
Column 1. Hebrew, Hebrew letters. 2. Hebrew, Greek letters. 3. Septuagint. 4. Aquila. 5. Theodotion. 6. Symmachus. 7. Jericho. 8. Nicopolis.
Or since he published first the Tetrapla, soon the Hexapla and the Octapla, as we remember it was delineated for us in a table by Scaliger, we will exhibit it here. Page 1. Aquila. Page 2. Symmachus. Page 3. LXX Elders. Page 4. Theodotion. Page 5. Edition of Jericho. Page 6. Edition of Nicopolis. Page 7. Hebrew text, Hebrew letters. Page 8. Hebrew text, Greek letters.
After this most noble edition, he gave another to the Elders, from these alone, which others have noted more than once, so that he might slaughter what had been added to the Hebrew text; and he might supply what was lacking primarily from the interpretation of Theodotion. Hence arose a greater corruption of the text formerly 210 corrupt. So that it is not surprising if those who followed this are often mistaken. And these authors indeed, in the Old Testament, have that language which we call Hellenistic, because it is accustomed to speak not with the Greeks, but with those whom it interprets, and with the Orient: just as the notions of words and homonyms follow the precept of that language, not the Greeks; which anyone can see is held in the New Testament, though few have hitherto distinguished it from Greek. Whence come many errors of interpretation, and hallucinations of the greatest moment C in these books, of which so many illustrious men in this age have deserved very well, and mistranslations. For since the mind is expressed by speech, and the speech by which things are expressed is expressed by words or definition, the first ambiguity consists in the words: which is removed by the learned either by explanation or by definitions, which, when they denote diverse or other things as words, are distinctions. Wherefore when a word is one and the same, D from a name, a different definition, an equivocation is born: which, unless it is removed by another word or definition—which is either true and perfect, or is nothing other than an interpretation of the word—necessarily difficulty and ambiguity arise in matters. Which in books written in Greek is greater and more difficult, because either the interpretation of them must be drawn from elsewhere (namely, Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldean), or the definition. But how frequent ambiguity is in this language, the interpreter must first consider: who from the beginning must apply himself to understand and remove these things correctly. For hence come all the Jewish sophistries, *kakoscholiai*, and inanities. Hence absurd *symphorata* and indignation. Nicodemus hears: *Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.* Hence that absurdity, *And how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the mother's womb a second time and be born?*
And when the Lord had said: *He who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has eternal life*; the disciples themselves respond: *This is a hard saying; who can hear it?* Thus when it was said, *The truth shall make you free*, they take what was said differently. So when they heard: *If anyone keeps my word, he shall not see death forever*; as if it were about death, to wit, which is the solution of the soul from the body, not that which, as is correctly said by Cyril, has the annexed reason of guilt, they are wondrously indignant. Whence that: *Now we know that you have a demon.* Now we do not doubt that you are in the power of the devil. Why? For Abraham and the prophets have died. So when they heard: *Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am*, they are said to have taken up stones, so that they might vindicate with the death of an innocent man what they understood in the worst way. What, that there is a greater difficulty for us, to whom the ambiguities of this language are proposed in Greek? Let the word "flesh" be an example, which, although it pertains properly to physicians, they made three genera of it, which they also accurately distinguished: the rest used it according to the custom of the Greeks. But our evangelist uses both this word and most others in such a way that he expresses in Greek only the name, which is common to the Hellenists, but keeps the significance of the Orient, and assigns to the same words not the same, but other and different notions according to their reason. Thus the word *haimatos* is accepted differently in that, *Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh*: differently, when he said, *And the Word became flesh*: differently, when he said, *And the bread which I will give, is my flesh*: differently, when he said, *As you have given him authority over all flesh.* In which the Greeks, unless those who have been versed in Hellenistic matters, understand or see nothing. For he transfers the Greek word 212 outside the notions of its language, to the significations of a foreign word, in a foreign manner not used by the Greeks. Which, unless a poet avoids, or transfers to the use of his own language, he acts neither as a true interpreter, nor as a poet. For he neither speaks Greek, which is the poet's task; nor is he understood by those for whose sake he writes in Greek. And to whom but the Greeks did he write? Such are *thelēma, paratabein, doxa, kosmos, hypsoun*, and others: which everywhere are used by the sacred author differently and again differently, according to the custom of the Orient, not of the Greeks. Such is *to pneuma*, which in the most noble place, *The spirit is God*, by its ambiguity, although it has no difficulty, has posed difficulties for the greatest men from antiquity: who understood it regarding the holy Spirit. Among whom are Nyssenus and Optatus. For it is one way in that, *Spirit is God*: another in that, *For as yet there was no holy Spirit*: another in that, *He groaned in the spirit*: another in that, *He gave up the Spirit*: another in that place of which we have already spoken:
The Spirit, turning back again with some unheard-of impulse, Knows how to blow wherever it wills; and you hear the nearness Of the voice of the divine-whirling air, Carried to your ears.
So that not without cause does Jerome feel anger toward the interpreters, because, with no regard for the reason of ambiguity,
everywhere this word is preserved. In his commentary on Amos, "Why did he speak of a spirit, and not say wind," which in Hebrew is called *ruach*, the cause is manifest, for with this word both wind and spirit are designated. But he also notes a further danger from this ambiguity. He says: "He who creates the spirit," is not to be understood as the Holy Spirit, as heretics suspect, but as the wind, or the spirit of man. Otherwise in the text, "Where do you dwell?"; otherwise in the same chapter, "And he remained with them," 213 concerning the Holy Spirit; otherwise in the text, "If I wish him to remain until I come," which is *zoein*, to live, according to the usage of the Syrians. In these things he understood nothing, nor did he render words more known in place of the terms of the Syrians and Chaldeans, but kept them obscure.
And yet these matters are of such moment that, from ambiguity, false conclusions, false reasonings in disputation or discourse, and, because of false definitions, a false method in teaching may arise. Otherwise is the word *truth* in the text, "The law was given through Moses; truth came through Jesus Christ." Otherwise in the text, "Sanctify them in the truth." Where the definition is subjoined: "Your word is truth"; and thus it is accepted by the author at times. Otherwise in the text, "I am the way and the truth." Where among the primary attributes, and, as Anaxagoras did not quite properly phrase it of old, the *accidents* of God. For it is Truth itself: just as divinity, in a neighboring word from which this could be deduced, is called *Malku* by the Syrians and Chaldeans. Another case in the text, "Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice," which our author rightly understood no better than Pilate, who asked, "What is truth?"; which truly no one could define, unless the individual notions of it were understood. It is pointless, therefore, to everywhere either preserve the word or change it to one less effective. The passage is most noble in the third chapter: "For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, so that his works should not be made manifest; but he who does the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be made manifest." Indeed, "doing the truth" and "living justly" are often joined by Hellenists. Truly, when Isaiah said: "Let there be peace and truth in my days," the Hellenists rendered it "justice": "Let there be peace and justice in my days," Isaiah xxxix, 8. For indeed, no one who knows Greek would understand our author’s translation: 214 "But he who fears God preserves all things that are true, He comes self-bidden to the light, so that his Works, which he wrought by the counsel of God, might be made manifest." Otherwise, when it is said, "In your law it is written that the testimony of two men is true," when in the law it stands: "Every word shall be established." Which Matthew and Paul also followed: for according to the Hellenistic manner and custom of speaking, *truth* here is the same as *credible*. Nor is it said in the law, "two witnesses do not lie," but, "If two witnesses are present, it is held to be valid," since an accusation does not proceed from the testimony of one. Our author however interprets it as if the two did not know how to lie: "What is?" according to the usage of languages, varies and is exchanged. And therefore 215, without them, it cannot even be known. Thus *glory* (doxa) is otherwise in the text, "I do not receive glory from men." Otherwise in the text, "And we beheld his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father." Item, "And he manifested his glory." Item, "When he saw his glory." Item, "With the glory which I had before the world was, with you." Such are *to be glorified*, *to be exalted*, and the like. Which is otherwise in that Luke, "And he exalted those of low degree." Otherwise in our author, and particularly in the Syrian manner, as in the text, "When you have exalted the Son of man." Otherwise *peace* (eirēnē), a word of the Hellenists of many meanings, is accepted in the text, "Peace I leave with you." Otherwise in the text, "Peace be unto you," where, when Cyril, as in the previous passage, understands the Spirit of Christ, the great man was doing something else. For it is nothing other than a greeting: which the Hebrews call *shalom*, and the Greeks *chairete* (rejoice). Nor is this to be understood as the Spirit of Christ any more than in the infinite number of places in the Old Covenant; where holy men use this formula in greetings. Therefore when our author said, "Peace, the companion of your journey," or something else, he said either something else or nothing at all. If you ask what the *judgment* (krisis) is in the text, "But this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light," Chrysostom will answer, "punishment or condemnation." If you ask what it is in the text, "My judgment is true," he will answer, "a verdict," that is to say, "a judicial decision." If you ask our author what *judgment* denotes in the former place, he will answer *judgment*: "But the child of the world" (as he says) "this is judgment," with the ambiguity of the word, he does not remove the attribute, but confuses the passage. If from the same author, you ask what *judgment* means to him in the latter place, he will answer *judgment*: "My judgment is truthful and blameless." Among the signs and *criteria* of the Messiah, in Ezekiel chapter xxi, 216 verse 27, *the judgment* is placed, which is the truly royal office of judging. "Until he comes to whom the judgment belongs," which Theodoret and others think should be referred to the Messiah. For the Seniors have, "to whom it belongs." In which interpretation Truth itself pronounces: "For not even the Father judges anyone, but has given all judgment to the Son," chapter v, verse 22. If you ask what *to judge* is, he will answer, "to judge"; what *judgment* is, he will answer, "judgment." For the attributes he adds are either obscure or say nothing: "For my Father judges no one; but he has given All judgment to the Son of man’s later day." And what is more obscure in that passage? "And when he has come, he will convict the world, concerning sin, and concerning justice, and concerning judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning justice, because I go to my Father, and you see me no longer; and concerning judgment, because the prince of this world has been judged," chapter xvi, verse 8, and following. The world, he says, that is, those who follow the wickedness of the age: first, he will publicly convict him of sin, because after so many signs and miracles, which even against their will strike the eyes, they still do not believe in me; second, concerning justice, and its public contempt, because they have not embraced this in me, whom they also prove truly righteous and free from every stain, not as they clamor, a sinner, which even this very thing proves, because I am departing to God the Father, the fountain of justice and truth, whom you will never see again, and I shall be with him forever: concerning judgment, (he will convict them) of judgment, corrupt and perverse, because they have so often condemned him as unbelieving, by whom the prince of this age is at once convicted of injustice. If you ask our author what those individual things are, about which the learned here contend, he will respond, either with the same words, or with ones he wrongly judges to be synonyms. If you wish to know what *to convict* (elenchein) means, he will with good faith answer, as in that text: "He will convict the unbelieving world." "The testimony of two witnesses was proven to be true." But if this is true, what will become of those two who, against our Savior, that is, Truth itself, in Matthew xxvi, 60, testified most mendaciously? Therefore it was established, that is, this testimony was admitted and utilized according to the ordinary and customary formula of the law, when it was anything but true. Wherefore, if anyone publicly expounds a passage of a most holy author, and in place of the definition of one thing, sets the definition of another meaning, he will assuredly lead the unskilled into error, a thing which not rarely happens, and he will deserve to be a laughingstock for the learned. Nor can it be that one who does not distinguish notions because he does not understand them, should not, in the whole method and explanation of the subject, as we were saying before, gravely hallucinate. Because neither the *an sit*, nor the *cur*, nor the *quod* can be dealt with, except erroneously, in the explanations or dissertations of Sacred Scripture, unless that which is *per se* and *quid est* is established. But the *quid est* itself, upon which definition and the rest depend, lies hidden in equivocations, 217 If, what is justice, about which generally no one…
A is accustomed to be accused or convicted, since this fits with injustice; or finally what judgment is, or whose judgment is here understood: he will answer, *About justice and judgment.* And this is perpetual for him in almost this entire work. Finally, as boys, when they shout in hollow places or valleys, receive from the refraction of the air what they themselves say: so our author (and this is something that we wonder at, which today they call religion) does not interpret doubtful things, but preserves them. Which is not B *metaboles* (translation), whose first duty is to exchange word for word, although he himself or others have ascribed this interpretation to *Metabole*. Chapter 1, verse 15, the ancients who explained this place, *not from blood*, marvelling not only at the significance, but at the insolence of the plural number, understood *ta katamenia*, or menstrual blood. And so many did. Our author, because he did not understand it, omitted it. Nothing, says Ulpian in book XII *Ad Edictum*, matters—neither whether one denies or is silent when asked, or answers obscurely, so that he leaves the questioner in uncertainty. But to the Jews nothing is more usual; for when they speak of other sins, and then of the origin in man that is corrupt, or the source of sins, they say this: which also *yeṣer hara‘*, a thought, or figment, evil, they commonly call. If you ask, what in that most obscure disputation of chapter VI, *Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood*, is blood, he will answer, or, which I scarcely believe, he himself, or whoever the author is, [will provide] this very thing which you asked, but with a verse frankly inept: *Unless you eat the flesh, and drink the sweet [wine] and blood.* If you ask what *phagein* (to eat) or *trogein* (to gnaw/munch) may mean, he will answer with most inept words. For he interprets [them as] *ereptein* (to graze) or *eilapinazesthai* (to feast). One of which belongs to wild animals or 218 beasts, which in their manner do not so much eat as devour. Hesychius: *The word is applied to grazing quadrupeds*. Concerning cattle, he says, the word is used. For others, to devour quickly, as they are wont to do. But *eilapinazein* is *euōcheisthai*, to indulge one’s genius in feasts. Moreover, both are *akratos* (unmixed/inappropriate) and useless in this place, nor does it have anything in common with a mystery so great and plainly ineffable. But they play who use ridiculous words. If you ask what there is in that [passage] *blood*, "And immediately there came out blood and water," our author will answer: *First indeed blood was poured, afterwards the divine water.* C Since here the *blood* differs no less from the higher significations of the same word than blood differs from water. Whence therefore shall I seek a definition? Or if a definition is not given, how will the theologian teach or interpret what he has not yet learned? Sometimes, therefore, he sticks, and omits the place which he does not grasp. Sometimes he says the same thing as is asked. Sometimes, in a sense plainly reluctant, as one who is doing something else, he joins synonyms that neither always mean the same thing, nor always teach. And sometimes, while they are Greek, the languages do not agree, or square with what he interprets. For no one asks, for example’s sake, whether *atrekē* (truth) is for Greek poets sometimes what *alētheia* is—this no one is ignorant of; but whether for the Hellenists, who do not use words in the Greek manner, but in the manner common in the East, those words are *tautodynamounta* (equivalent). About which he, as is the case with most [men] at this time, did not think. Then, whether in the individual places in which there is mention of *the truth*, that word expresses *atrekiē*. As in that Hebraism, *The grace and the truth through Jesus Christ*. Where it is immense how much these differ. And yet he said: *And grace from Christ and truth were for the world.* 219 Thus no one can doubt that for poets *etētymon* is what *alēthes* is. Furthermore, whether it is ever for the Greeks what is in that place, *He who does the truth*, that is, whether *etētymon* is the same as *dikaiosynē* (justice), that indeed is what is sought: which, if I am not mistaken, neither Homer nor Demosthenes himself, nor Aristarchus himself would understand. And yet, nothing is more usual for either the Hebrews or the Chaldeans. Who [use] *‘emeth*, that is, *alēthes*, and [it is] typically and more often used by the Hebrews thus. Thus there is a true measure [among the] Targumists, which is just for the Hebrews. Wherefore, as he confuses homonyms, so he did not understand synonyms. For Hellenists have other synonyms from the Greeks; for *dikaiosynē* and *alētheia*, both in definition and use, while being the same for Hellenists, differ from the Greeks by the whole heaven, as the saying goes. Just as [they do] when they say *theoudeiēsin*, which neither Aristotle nor Plato would understand. For the ancient Greeks speak of their own things, the Hellenists for the most part of foreign things. He who does not understand this, stumbles everywhere: which we observe daily in our author and in others to the point of being tedious. Wherefore it is ridiculous that which we were bringing forward even before, *He who guards all things truly in the fear of God.* And indeed, skilled only in Greek, he will never, as we were saying then, be able to divine what [the Hebrew] might mean, nor did he write for Hebrews, whose language he was ignorant of. But just as nothing more befits a merchant than that he should rightly understand the estimation of goods and the values of coins, so that he may not be deceived, so it is the proper duty of an interpreter to know the *isodynamiais* (equivalencies) of words and languages, so that he may not mix different notions or substitute one for another. In which our author is remarkably deceived. *Mē skandalisthēte*, chapter XVI, 1, says the Lord. Our author interprets *skandalon* as *oistron* (goad): 220 *Lest a rash goad of unbelief come upon your mind.* Which will be wondered at by one who has learned from Jerome, or the commentaries of others, what a *skandalon* is; for the things he adds there perhaps recede even further from the definition of a *skandalon*. But he feared the word, as also very many others, while he prefers to preserve some that are in use among the Hellenists, than to employ a different one which differs entirely in definition: just as he prefers not to change some, such as *Patēr*, *Logos*, [although] to call the Holy Spirit *Agon* is inept indeed. D Therefore, when he calls God the Father *Tokēs* sometimes, *Logon* (which is plainly inept), *Pneuma hagion* he calls *hagnon*, he exercises a license in serious matters which is granted to no one. Nor [does he do] this only in words, but also in the junction, or the complex of the entire speech. That place is well-known in the first chapter, verse 11: *Eis ta idia elthen. In his own [he] came.* Which some formerly referred to the Jews, others to the universal world. Theophylact: *“Unto his own,” either you will understand the whole world, or Judea, which he chose, as the measuring line of an inheritance, and as his own portion.* If you ask of our author, who the *idioi* are, you will learn [it] from me, because he preserves the same [meaning]. If [you ask] about the whole sentence, he has imprudently changed it all: that is, he said something entirely different. For whereas the evangelist [said], *Eis ta idia elthen*, he: *He was near to his own,* as if the Lord, *en oikonomiai* (in the economy), or the assumption of the flesh, about which it is treated there, were only near to us. Which is the same as if someone were to interpret *Kai eskenōsen en hēmin* (And he pitched his tent among us) as *eskenōsen engys hēmōn* (he pitched his tent near us), or, when the Apostle said that the Spirit of God *enoikein en hēmin* (dwell in us), you should say for it [that he] *engys hēmōn enoikein* (dwell near us). It is one thing, therefore, [to translate] *enoikein*, or what the evangelist said, and another the interpretation which he brings. Which you may see almost everywhere 221. Thus, because he had remembered that *akouein* and *einai* are elsewhere used promiscuously by the Greeks, for what follows, *As many as received him, to them he gave power to become children of God*, he himself said *tekna Theou akouein* (to be called children of God). Which is common to hypocrites with others. For it is one thing to be, another to be called the Son of God, especially when the ancients refer that place to the very election, or *tēn huiothesian* (the adoption), which they call *entelestatēn*. Truly it is one thing *to dokein* (to seem), another *to einai* (to be). Whether therefore he says the same thing, he says nothing; or whether he employs a word or speech which designates something else, he teaches nothing.
A And it deceives and misleads the reader in both respects. For both the speech and the words, being interpreted otherwise than they should be, persuade him of something else. And if the same [words] are kept, the reader is no less deceived than by that line of Plautus:
*Those whom you see standing here as captives two,* *Those who stand by, both stand, they do not sit.*
For he hears nothing new who was awaiting this one thing. Obscurity is the greatest fault in discourse, yet it is a greater one in an interpreter, whose duty it is to remove it. And so they say that Homer, when he could not solve a riddle that held the sum of all knowledge, died out of indignation at the event. Yet our author—and whoever else, without regard for the character of the languages from which and into which divine oracles are translated, keeps foreign and unusual kinds of speech or words—often proposes riddles to his readers. Such is that one in the first chapter, verse 3:
*Those whom nature did not bring forth in travail, nor life know,* *The offspring of an Andromean will; nor did even the bed itself* *Of love-bearing flesh find favor as a marriage-bed.*
For both the subject matter itself, to a man B *tōn exō* (from the outside), or one who is ignorant of these mysteries, and the manner of speaking—*hoi ex haimatōn* (those from blood), which he does not clarify here but omits, and *hoi ek thelēmatos sarkos* (those from the will of the flesh), 222 *hoi ek thelēmatos andros* (those from the will of man), if especially they are more involved by the poet as interpreter—are equally unknown. I omit the foul and obscene translation of the word *porse*. I omit other things. For what *andros thēma* may be called, those skilled in Hebrew understand; but what he himself said, *andromeou blastēma thelēmatos*, comes from the vanity and insolence of the author, who does not interpret the Hebraism but involves it, nay, changes it so much that by this method he may consult meter and rhythm: which is not religion, but *akrisia* (lack of judgment). Now what is *physis ouk lechōias*? "Childbearing nature?" And why not rather "corrupt"? For the evangelist is dealing with the unregenerate. Truly, these things tend entirely to obscurity, not to [conveying] the sense. Which, if you were to render again into Latin word for word, you would think Loxias was speaking:
*Whom nature as a woman in labor did not bear, nor life know* *The germ of virile will; and not even* *Did the nuptial hour of love-bearing flesh plow.*
For these to be understood, there is need of the one whom he wished to translate, who however speaks like a foreigner, not in Greek; for the words are Greek, but the use of the words and phrases is not Greek, but from the East. This, then, is that foolish *kako zēlia* (bad emulation) which Jerome so forcefully agitates against, which takes away all grace, and does not provide or teach the reader what it ought, since it does not change what it was supposed to explain. Concerning which the great doctor most brilliantly writes to Pammachius: "But if it does not seem to anyone that the grace of language is changed in translation, let him express Homer in Latin word for word. I will say something more: let him translate the same into his own language in prose. You will see an order that is ridiculous, and a most eloquent poet scarcely speaking." Just like our author, who, sometimes the meaning, sometimes the definitions of words—not domestic, but foreign—has enclosed with great labor in Greek verses. Which is to abuse talent and 223 grace. How much better, however, he would have expressed the mind of the passage thus:
*Whom nature did not bring forth, and a man did not beget in sleep,* *Full of folly, a helper to a family,* *But they are offspring of God, and a heavenly origin is theirs.*
In which there is nothing foreign, nothing, if I am not mistaken, from across the sea; all of which has been removed by us. Regarding so serious and grave a matter, without which a poet cannot properly speak nor a paraphrast interpret, it seems our author has not even found time to think, since such things occur everywhere. Let those be an example which are read in the first chapter as Hellenistic, for those which exist here and there can better be given separately elsewhere: C
1, *kai ho Logos ēn pros ton Theon.* 8, *all’ hina marturēsē peri tou phōtos.* 9, *panta anthrōpon erchomenon es ton kosmon.* 11, *kai hoi idioi auton ou parelabon.* 12, *tois pisteuousin eis to onoma autou.* 13, *hoi ouk ex haimatōn, oude ek thelēmatos sarkos,* *oude ek thelēmatos andros, all' ek Theou egennēthēsan.* 14, *kai eskēnōsen en hēmin.* Ibid., *kai etheasametha tēn doxan autou, doxan hōs* *Monogenous para Patros.* 15, *hoti prōtos mou ēn.* 17, *hē charis kai hē alētheia dia Iēsou Christou egen* *neto.* 18, *ho ōn eis ton kolpon tou Patros.* 22, *hina apokrisin dōmen.* 26, *mesos de hymōn estēken.* 27, *kai ouk eimi axios hina lusō.* 33, *baptizein en tō hydati, ei, en Pneumati hagiō.* D Ibid., *to Pneuma katabainon kai menon ep' auton.* 37, *kai ēkousan autou hoi duo mathētai.* 39, *pou meneis?* 224 42, *heuriskei houtos prōtos ton adelphon.* 46, *heuriskei Philippos ton Nathanaēl.* 49, *pro tou se Philippon phōnēsai.*
Which the Greeks either do not admit in speech, and, as is wont to happen also with our own, do not understand at all or understand perversely. For in some cases the words, in others the *syntaxis*, in others the entire speech, is foreign. In all of which our author has everywhere shown himself such that he either preserves the very words and the speech, and therefore does not speak in Greek; or he makes the discourse—about which he ought to have been concerned above all else—foreign, and, when Greek is required, he makes it far different from Greek. Sometimes, what he does not grasp himself, he judges as customary and Greek; sometimes he utters plain and clear things obscuresly; sometimes he cunningly omits what he does not grasp. There is also where he substitutes something else, which does not fulfill the meaning. But he always walks timidly, nor has he an exact grasp of what he is about to say. And, what you would most admire, oppressed by so many difficulties 225, what he does not grasp in others, he uses of his own accord and not under compulsion. For he sprinkles many Hellenisms about himself: and not rarely, being ignorant himself, from their reading and imitation is *Hebraikos*. Yet no one will wonder that certain Hebraisms have slipped out of him who considers that most of the Interpreters of the Old Covenant, whom they used at that time, expressed Hebraisms even to the point of superstition, and kept certain words themselves just as they found them. It happened from this that the writings of some of the Fathers, which in many places are parodies or centos of Holy Scripture, bear upon them a language in which the authors had placed no study at all. Which you may say of 225 Greeks and Latins alike. Even in that age among them, there survived neither knowledge nor erudition of either Greek or Hebrew. Why? Because the Latins also had persisted in almost the same way of interpreting, namely, that they would not change the Hebrew and Chaldean custom. Such things occur in law also, which we call canonical, which have deceived Alciatus and others; for insofar as Antonius Augustinus, a most excellent man, thinks that the jurisconsults, especially Ulpian, a man from the East, speak in the manner of the Hebrews, or, as he himself says, of the Jews, because he loves the ellipsis common to Greeks and Romans, as when he says regarding the edict, "Pro haerede autem gerere," not to be of fact but of intent (of which kind he has gathered not a few), I fear that reason has escaped him. For he brings forward nothing, if I am not mistaken, of which there are not examples in Tacitus and Plautus—even Homer—authors of different ages and languages. For ellipses and similar things, which are called *endeias* (deficiencies) by the masters of speech, are figures, and as they are perhaps more familiar to the East, so they are common to all ages and languages. And what Ulpian has, seem to him to have stuck to him from the custom and usage of Roman authors. Which cannot be said of the writings of those who in a later age, being learned in neither Greek nor Hebrew, would willingly speak in the manner of the Hebrews: and sometimes the very words…
as they were, retained the voices of his language. I will provide one example of this: for to speak of phrases and locutions would be infinite: thus, when the ancient interpreter had preserved the word *manzer*, for "bastard," poets, unskilled in both the Greek and Hebrew tongues, Sedulius and Fortunatus, used it as though it were Latin. Of whom, the former in his description of the Lord's Passion: 226 *Yet none of these so feared signs of peril,* *Who fixed the Lord upon the cross: and furthermore,* *When He, athirst, did seek a draught, one of the wicked crowd,* *Reached out the vinegar, infused with a sponge upon a reed.* *To the degraded peoples, wallowing in worse,* *That liquor was appropriate.* He says that the Jews, a race truly adulterous and spurious, were most similar to that liquor which they offered to the Lord; once most excellent, as wine; but now, for nothing, as vinegar. But Fortunatus: *But the Christian throngs then perceive the "manzer" being yoked,* *They rush forward at once, where the treachery lies hidden.* Since the Hebrew word is *manzer*, which exists only twice in Hebrew. Which, had Greek interpreters also preserved it, would perhaps not appear among the inlaid work and emblems of our own. For it frequently slipped into the speech of the one doing other things. Thus, for "prison," he said *oikon aeiphroureton* (a house ever-watched): *A house ever-watched he donned, a minister of ruin.* Because among his own he had sometimes read *oikon phylakes* (a house of guard), among other places in 1 Sam. xx, 3; Isaiah xl, 7. Of the same habit is that: *Of water turned to wine in the reddening stream.* For he understood the Hebrew *adon*, or "reddish": which they used in the East. Thus, in chapter vi, what the evangelist said, *And we have known that Thou art the Christ of the Son of the living God*, he says thus: *That Thou alone art the Holy One of God.* Which is moreover *qadosh*. Which is in Mark i, 24, the confession of the devil, *I know Thee who Thou art: the Holy One of God.* Thus in the seventh chapter, verse 52, he called [it] *amoibada biblon*, the book of the law: which the Hebrews call *sepher* or a complicated codex, as also *to elissein* (to roll), because it expresses the same word more, he added: *Rolling the interchangeable book,* 227 *Seeking the [scroll] of Ezra.* It is also a Hebraism, that which is read in chapter ii, verse 3: *All the sweet-drinking wine-bearing jars* *Were emptied.* Which anyone who did not know Hebrew would rightly mark as *a-kyron* (invalid) in a Greek speaker. But he expressed the *to erah*, which is *to gymnoun* (to strip). Thus it is said of Rebecca in Genesis xxiv, 20: *And she emptied her pitcher;* that is, poured it out: for which the interpreter now [uses] *exekenose* (emptied), having rejected the novelty. Of the Hellenists also is that which is in chapter iv, verse 46: *When before, for the pouring of wine,* *He made the yellow water.* And he seems to have had in mind that, *He made them man and woman*, although the reason for both is not the same. The Greeks indeed say *metaballein es ti* (to change into something), not *poiein* (to make). Refer to this also when, for "race," he put "tribe" or "generation": *What have you in common with the Samaritan woman and your descent?* In the history of the Samaritan, chapter iv, verse 9, that too from the fountains of Hebraism, that he called a festival, *choron* (dance), or *chorostados hemar heortes* (the festive day of the dance), chapter ii, verse 37: *But when at last came the festive day of the dance.* Because, forsooth, the *chag* denotes both a dance and a festival, just as many a one [derives] the word *tripudium* from the Latin interpreters elsewhere, unless I am mistaken, he used it. It is a pure Hebraism that is read in the ninth chapter, verse 52. *Great is the story never heard, that to the allotted* *Eyes, manifold-threaded, of the unlighted face,* *One gave light to a man, whom, through the womb of the newly-delivered,* *While yet blind, the birth-pained Dawn beheld.* And chapter vi, verse 22: *Performing a mimic image of the true story.* And chapter ix, verse 32, concerning the restored blind man: 228 *Great is the story never heard.* In expressing which, the Hellenists use now the word *logou* (word), now *chrematos* (thing). Where he used *to mythos* (story) with the same rationale that they use their *dabar* or *pethgama* (Chaldean) for a deed or affair: just as I remember Homer also spoke elsewhere. Which deceived the most holy man Ambrose: who, when the shepherds say in Luke ii, *Let us see this word (verbum) which has come to pass*, that is, the thing done, namely the birth of the Lord, he thought the word was accepted in such a way as *ho Logos* is accepted in John i. Such is *ereugesthai phonen* (to belch a voice), instead of *lalein e legein* (to speak or to say) *... and the King belched a voice*. And, *From my heart I belch forth a story . . .* For he had in mind, *Day unto day belches forth speech.* Likewise, *My heart has belched forth words*; of which kind we have noted not a few, from which, lest we be tiresome, we omit some. To which add, those whose rationale can scarcely be rendered, proper idioms. What the Lord meant when He said to Pilate, *Thou wouldst have no authority at all against Me, unless it were given to thee from above*, anyone understands; what He Himself meant when He said: *Thou holdest no self-willed honor against Me,* no one will easily interpret, or render its rationale. What a gazophylacium (treasury) is, no one is ignorant; but perhaps what came into our author's mind when he called it *choron* (a space), which is surely an inept idiom. For when in chapter vii, verse 20, he had found: *in the treasury, teaching in the temple*, he said: *Where the space of the treasury is heard.* For who would call a certain part of the temple *choron*? It is certain that the man, who expressed almost no Hebraism or idiom from the most holy writer, 229 brought many things from home and from his own: as if it were a small thing to have written in the Greek language most excellently. Furthermore, before I impose an end to this chapter, I will set forth in a few words what I desire. That there is supreme majesty, eloquence, and power of speech in the sacred writings, no one ought to doubt. I add, that the same spirit manifestly appears in the New Testament, in its sinews. As to the *hermeneia*, or manner of speech, it is not so much different, as diverse by the dispensation and good pleasure of the same God. For the Hellenists do not use the Hebrew language, but the Greek in a Hebrew manner. For they were writing at once for Greeks and for Jews *Hellenizontes* (speaking Greek): whom they also followed. For our own [author], as the Elders who held sway at that time did, almost everywhere kept the Targumists before his eyes. It seems to us, therefore, to be hoped for and desired, that anyone who undertakes to interpret a writer from the New Testament, either in Greek or Latin, in free or bound speech, should do so with a great heart and study. Let him bring judgment, genius, sublime and upright: which, after God, to whom alone all things are owed, each one owes to his education and nature. And as, first of all, he should render all Hellenistic modes of speech into Greek or Latin for himself: and distinguish these very things among themselves. Let him remove ambiguity, if any exists in the words. Let him define the words first in passing for usage, then most fully. Let him ascribe what belongs to the Hebrews, Chaldeans, and Syrians, to each individually; or [let him take] in this the work of another, who might have these [original-script column: see facsimile]
A, then most fully. Let him ascribe what belongs to the Hebrews, Chaldeans, and Syrians, to each individually; or [let him take] in this the work of another, who might have these, then must he add the Roman terms which sometimes occur here: let him add those which, as they are Greek in origin and primary concept, were, in their reason and usage, those of the Chaldeans and Syrians at that time. Such as *parrhesia*, *paraclete*, *lestes*, *astheneia*, *strategos*, and the like. Which words, as they used them then, so—a fact which even now deceives most people—they used with a different notion. It will thus happen that he writes purely, when he has grasped the definitions of the words in his mind, and rightly obtains the things that cohere with them, as it behooves an interpreter, and rightly explains them to others. Now it happens that those who have always neglected words, while they believe themselves to be teaching things as much as possible, contend among each other about words and almost about them alone. They are worthy of that punishment which they earn through the security and contempt of others, who treat words along with things, and pass from these to those with an unoffending step. Our author, secure from all these, neither gave us a pure speech, nor understood a foreign one: and therefore he did not interpret B: he is equally troublesome, whether he preserves what he does not grasp, or interprets otherwise than he ought: and therefore he has fulfilled the role of neither poet nor interpreter. Let us conclude. In our evangelist, everything *lexical*, as regards words and speech, is foreign, and the *synthesis* is sometimes harsh, sometimes softer, and indeed such that it goes into verse of its own accord. We have a few examples of this. Thus in chapter vi, verse 11:
*Ἐκ τῶν ὀψαρίων ὅσον ἤθελον.*
It is indeed a hemistich. And in the same chapter, verse 18:
*Ἡ τε θάλασσ' ἀνέμου μεγάλου.*
In the rest, the *kathomilēmenon* (the colloquial), the *aperiergon* (the unlabored), and the *anautourgon*, as the critics say—that is, simplicity free from all alien affectation and familiar—reigns. As for the *ennoēmatikon* and the senses themselves, everything is lofty, high, and sublime. In which such force resides that this part stands out and prevails. Therefore, just as Longinus, a most noble author, though a pagan, who wrote about the sublimity of speech, although he had read Moses in Greek C, nonetheless admired the character of his speech (whence he also calls him *ou tychonta andra*, not a common man): so in our writer, in speech there is *apheleia* (simplicity), and in the senses there is *hypsos* (sublimity), which he mostly extinguishes with bombast: for it does not rise, but, as critics are accustomed to say in these matters, *exothouphamboutai*, that is, he intumesces in the manner of the dithyrambic poets.
CHAPTER XI.
On the method of interpreting used by the ancients. Various species of it. *Hypomnēmata*. *Hermēneiai*. *Scholia*. *Paraphraseis*. *Metaphraseis*. *Homiliai*. Authors of *hypomnēmata*. Marianus the poet, a metaphrast. His diverse poetic metaphrases. The noblest method of interpreting, which is called Paraphrastic, and whence it arose. Examples of paraphrase in imitation of the ancients. An emended passage of Archilochus. The paraphrase of Gregory of Neocaesarea on Ecclesiastes. Judgment upon it. Its praise. Noted elsewhere. Falsely ascribed to Gregory Nazianzen. The *basis* of Gregory Nazianzen. *Metabolē*, what kind of method of interpreting it is. The praise of Janus Rutgersius. An example of *metabolē*. Nonnus D *en tō metaphrasei*, the error, and how badly this method of interpreting succeeds for him. Another *lykithon*, another *pyelos*. *Lykithon* not distinguished by Nonnus from paraphrase. *Lykithon*, which is called a purple patch by Horace. Examples of Nonnian *lykithōn*. Paraphrase, a species of *ekphrasis*. *Ēthos* and *ēthopoiia*. Its parts. *Alētheia* in speech, twofold. John the evangelist called *parōn* particularly, and why. Nonnus's idea, which he used, of having lifted the *ēthos* of the evangelist. He drove out the *vox*, interpolated with Nonnian interpretation. His *akrisia* and *adoleschia*. *Lykithoi* generally received with laughter from serious readers. Nonnus noted a few times. Another example of *lykithon*. His tautology.
[alt-version omitted]
*Parermēneia* of the same. *Anellēniston* of the same. *Hebræorum more* (the manner of the Hebrews) used by the evangelist. How the Greeks use that word otherwise. *Heuriskein* and *symballesthai* are synonymous to the poets. The solecism of Nonnus. The noted negligence of Nonnus in filling the defect of speech. The doubt of the ancients concerning the passage of chapter ii, 1. Regarding the miracle of Christ performed in Cana, the doubt of the ancients. The *paidika thaumata* (childhood miracles) of the Lord Jesus. *Doxa* and *timē*, another matter. Nonnus noted in the explanation of the place. *Paraphrasis* applied for the sake of supplying a deficiency. Figures of deficiency how customary in the Orient. Another passage poorly explained by Nonnus. The same explained by Augustine. *To ergon* in that passage, how poorly Nonnus expressed it. *Parabolika schēmata* (parabolic figures) of John, which are called *anexergasta* (unwrought) by critics. An example of them. A passage poorly understood by Nonnus. Interior sense, among the Hebrews. A passage of the evangelist which seems contrary to another passage. The same explained by Chrysostom. Negligence of Nonnus in his explanation of it. The same passage rendered otherwise. The paraphrase of the *Octateuch* by the Empress Eudocia. Her virtues and praise from Photius. Nonnus having lapsed into fables in a sacred author. Nonnian *adoleschia* (garrulity). Much omitted by him. The judgment of St. Jerome on that matter, in Nonnus the *metaphrastikon*, the *parekbolikon*, and the *metabolikon* genus of interpreting are confused.
And these things, then, thus far concerning the Hellenistic and the equivocal. The labor further increases; great indeed, but also most noble, which we have now undertaken. In which one or two things remain. And first, of the method of interpreting which he observed here: concerning which, before we come to our purpose, or to the principal part of it, something must be said. That the ancients followed various methods of interpreting, especially in sacred [writings], there is no one who does not know. And *Hypomnēmata*, *Hermēneiai*, *Sēmasiai*, *Scholia*, *Paraphraseis*, *Metaphraseis*, and others of that kind are praised by the ancients. For *Homiliai*, such as those of Chrysostom, can rightly be called *Homiliai kai Logoi hypomnēmatikoi* (Homilies and Commentarial Discourses): whose *Sēmasiai* on John, however, Suidas praises. They seem to have approached most nearly to the form of *Hērmēneiai*, or Commentaries. For they did not always examine only the words, as appears from Photius, who notes concerning the *Hermēneia* of Hippolytus the martyr on Daniel, that *kata men lexin ou poieitai tēn anaptyxin, plēn ton noun, hōs epos eipein, ou* 233 *paratrechei*. That is, he does not indeed unfold the individual words, yet he overlooks nothing that pertains to the sense. Nor, however, did they always neglect them. The same critic, when he treats of the *Hermēneia* of Theodoret on this same prophet, notes *tē tōn prophētikōn rhēmatōn anaptyxei kai diakatharsei kratein*, that he reigns in explaining and illustrating prophetic words. The ancients mention various authors of his, as also of *Hypomnēmatōn*, [namely] Theodoret, Hippolytus the martyr, Chrysostom, [and] Cyril, the latter two of whom are also often cited in *Hypomnēmasin*, as is extant today in Latin, that of Cyril on John. The method of *Scholia* from many authors is most well-known, as also that of the *meta-phraseōn*, except that it does not form one genus. For there were those who were called *diglōssōn* (bilingual): such as those who convert a language into another, just as the Jews also use the word *Targumim*. In which number Photius places the *Seventy*. Others, who interpret the mind briefly: so that they sometimes add interpretations of the sentences, sometimes of the whole. There were also those who exposed poems in the same way, that is, in metaphrastic verse. Suidas makes mention of a certain Marianus, who he observes wrote iambic metaphrases on Theocritus, the *Argonautica* of Apollonius, the *Hecale*, the *Hymns*, the *Aitia*, the *Epigrams* of Callimachus, Aratus, the *Theriaca* of Nicander, and other poets' writings. The noblest method and mode of interpreting is the paraphrase; not indeed that which is prolix and diffuse, but the most brief and strict: the most illustrious examples of which we have in Themistius, and in the *Andronicus Rhodius*, first published by us. Which, from imitation, first
A arose, and is produced in common by orators from observation. Unless perhaps the rhetoricians later observed in imitation what interpreters had already brought to the light of ancient writings. Homer had said: *For such is the mind of men upon the earth, As the day which the father of men and gods brings on.* Which Archilochus expressed thus by paraphrase: *For such a spirit to men O Glaucus, son of Leptines, comes, Such as Zeus brings upon any day to mortals.* Which would be all iambics: *For such a spirit to men, O Glaucus, son of Leptines, comes, Such as Zeus brings upon any day to mortals.* Nam et *metaballei* verba. For it renders *noon* (mind) as *thymon* (spirit), and *ep’ hemar* as *eph’ hemeran*. And it removes the figure: for what he called "father of men and gods," this one called Zeus. And it omits the apposition. And it changes the case: for *anthropois*, not *anthropon*. Thus, what he had said: *It is not holy to exult over dead men,* The same expressed thus: *For it is not good to mock the dead over men.* Homer had said concerning the storming of cities: *They slay the men, and fire destroys the city, And others lead away children and deep-girdled women.* Which Aeschines expressed thus: *And consider that you see the city being taken, the tearing down of walls, the burning of houses, sacred things being plundered, women and children being led into slavery, and old men and old women, learning too late of their freedom.* This form of writing, as Jerome insightively observes, the sacred writers sometimes follow when quoting passages from the Old Testament. In which it is customary to add something gracefully, to change certain things, and, while the sense remains the same, to extend the appearance of the speech decently, though not laboriously.
The venerable monument of antiquity, the Paraphrase of Gregory Neocaesariensis on Ecclesiastes, still exists: which they now inscribe as *Metaphrasis*. Many things are set forth there tersely and politely. Nor was anything so much a care to him, as that which is proper to a paraphrast, namely, to demonstrate the *allelouchian* (sequence) in a very obscure writing. Which he for the most part happily achieved. And so, with feet unencumbered by the detours of the Hellenists—which our own [age] primarily lacks—he runs through the Greek and significantly, the level ground. So that he would more willingly omit some things (for the entire speeches, which I do not approve, are desired) than fail to connect them. Yet, although he lingers somewhat elsewhere, he never goes outside the laws of paraphrase. But the ancients, as I have already said, loved brevity in this genre. I know that elsewhere he goes not only away from the Hebrews, but even from his own. As in that passage: *I saw all the living, who walk under the sun with the second youth, who shall stand in his stead.* When the Hellenists say: *walking with the second youth, who shall arise in his stead.* But this means: to adore most people, the successors of kings, and, as that man [Tacitus] used to say, the rising sun. But what did he say? *For it happens that those placed under the new one, yet prudent, are free from grief, as many as are older.* B Which departs very far from the mind and spirit of the writer whom he is interpreting. Indeed, he said nothing of the kind. And the Chaldean rightly, as he usually does, grasped the meaning. Just as in the allegorical description of old age which exists under the banner of the same wise man, which the Chaldean reports more than he explains, he understood nothing. In which I fear he was deceived by his own Greeks. The great Gregory the Theologian, C as to those who ascribed it to him, the reason surely escapes us. For nowhere is that grave footing apparent, which even those who think differently about it praise in him. Concerning which Philostorgius, of the Arian sect, judges excellently according to Suidas. But this is proper to this interpretation, that while other interpreters omit what they do not understand, the paraphrast ought to weigh the *akolouthian* (sequence) and the intention of the author, so that while he interprets everything, he takes away nothing, and adds nothing, except what removes obscurity or diminishes difficulty. From which *metabole*—which properly is called so—he departs, which is sometimes a childish and grammatical method of interpretation. An example of this we have from the inheritance of our brother, the most noble and supreme man Janus Rutgersius, in a small poem of the Batrachomyomachia. The memory of which man, *Outis emou zontos kai epi chthoni derkomenoio*, no one will erase from his heart. In it, a certain Greek had inserted, according to the custom then received, equivalent lines in the following manner: D *[from the mountain of Helicon]* *Beginning first, I make a prayer of poetry that the chorus of the Muses may come from Helicon to my soul,* *I pray that it may come to my heart, for the sake of the song,* *Which song I have placed in the books,* *Which I have recently placed upon my knees in my tablets,* *I speak of the great battle, the action of fear,* *The boundless struggle, the clamor of war, the work of Ares,* *[making a prayer to put into the ears of men]* *Praying to cast into the ears of all mortals, in what manner the mice, having done the best deeds, came.]* *How the mice, having excelled among the frogs, have existed.* You see *verbum verbo* being transformed, just as in the last line he renders the word *myes* (mice) as *pontikoi* (of the sea/rats) according to the usage of his language, although sometimes he omits certain things. Truly, he who performs this in the interpretation of the New Testament ought to do what our own has most neglected: namely, both to change foreign terms, and to seek equivalents, from concepts, not of the Greek language, but of those whose custom those writers followed, with judgment and care. Which, although those who wish to call themselves "Realists" neglect—and in these things profess nothing but shameful ignorance, to such a degree that, because they understand nothing in the words, when it comes to the things themselves, they mostly sweat, hesitate, and trifle to the great laughter of those whom they despise; may the immortal God grant, *kai exoch’ o phile helie*, that someone might perform this according to its dignity. Our own writer, who for the most part represents the words themselves, as often as he departs from them, just as often either stumbles or falls. The Greek grammarians note that Demosthenes the Thracian, who, as we have also said above, had written *Metabolai* on Homer, said *pyelon* because *asaminthos* was said by him: with excellent success, indeed. But our own writer, in the fifth chapter, verse 2, when he had found the word *kolymbethran*, he dared to interpret it as *asaminthon*: with what success will be seen elsewhere. Wherefore he neither wrote [a] *Metabolen*—or at least does not change what is obscure or foreign, or if he attempts to do so, he succeeds very badly—nor [does he do it] because, which is his characteristic, he sometimes pours himself out immoderately in the explanation of words. And since he acts more as a paraphrast (such as the ancients wish him to be, surely Suidas calls the Parthenian Theologian [Nonnus] one who paraphrases by verses), whose property it is to amplify what you interpret, and to interpret what things are obscure, he usually performs neither, but the former, where it seems least necessary, he is accustomed to perform. And, which is above all to be noted with judgment, he does not distinguish *lekythos* from exposition. That is, for interpretation, he...
A adds poetic pigments or *lekythoi* (oil-flasks): which is that bread of Horace, whom the supreme critic in his *Art* so wittily censures: *A purple patch, that it may gleam far and wide, is stitched on, one or two: when a grove and the altar of Diana, and the river rushing through pleasant fields, or the Rhine, or the rainbow is described.* Thus, he usually interjects descriptions of Aurora, Night, Vesper, and other things of that kind which are foreign to the explanation of the text. This is like painting battles of frogs on a wall, when the evangelist is speaking only of things [ἀναγκαῖα καὶ ψυχωφελῆ] (necessary and soul-beneficial), as the critics judge of sacred matters. If, for example, the author says regarding the third day, as in that most simple passage: *And on the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee*; immediately he has his perfume-box at hand. But that is something a wise man cannot approve: B ...that which the author treats, he scarcely touches upon or looks at, acting intemperately with the rest. He certainly surpassed my expectation; for in describing the almost supreme and ineffable love of the greatest hero—in which the author commends his own simplicity and candor even more—he lapsed into the ultimate details, and even admonished us about the shame of the fishermen. Because Homer had said of his Thersites, a shameful man: *He hides those things which are shameful*, I can endure it the less because the most holy Parthenias had used a virginal and especially modest voice. And lest anything should remain of such a great meditation, he even teaches how to swim: which he perhaps was ignorant of, as with many other things. For those things which he did not seem to have learned yet, his *lekythoi* provoke laughter. These he empties everywhere, even in the sermons—of which you have many here—not in the subjects themselves, but in the comparisons and other things 241 which are mentioned in passing: he plays and is fixed on the C trifle, and in passing, and for the sake of explanation, if anything is said, he immediately not so much fills as pours out his oil-flask. Which, just as in the poet they provoke laughter, as I have already said, so in the sacred paraphrast they also extort indignation from grave and serious men. The author said simply and in his own manner in the first chapter: *On the next day Jesus wished to go forth into Galilee; and he finds Philip, and says to him: Follow me.* Which he renders thus: *But when the threshold* *Of purple, the third-day handmaid of the dawn, was painting.* If the evangelist says: *On the next day John sees Jesus coming toward him*; he [writes]: *But when the far-shooting dawn brought another course.* 239 But this is perpetual with him. However, there is no doubt that a paraphrase is a certain species of [ἐκφράσεως] (ekphrasis), that is, of description, as it is called by the rhetoricians. Its primary virtue is a relaxed speech, which neither swells nor rises too much, as is posited by the same men. In this, two things have a place: [ἦθος] (ethos), namely, or manners, and what expresses and paints them, [ἠθοποιία] (ethopoiia). That he accurately expresses for us the manners of the Lord, who lay upon his breast, is not even to be doubted. The former, namely [ἦθος], is expressed in deeds and the description of them; the latter, I say [ἠθοποιία], is expressed in the sacred sermons of the Lord. It is observed in both. Which is twofold. Either that which rhetoricians consider, and which approaches closely to simplicity—which the most candid author has displayed everywhere—or that which the ancient theologians particularly praise in our author, and from which they call him [φιλαλήθης] (truth-loving). Not that others do not write equally true things, but because this author, whether he speaks of himself or of others, does not dissemble those things which he could have passed over while preserving the truth, out of his greatest love for Him. And you have examples of the latter in his narratives. These, with frequent translations, with perpetual additions, with inflation, and with such [λῃκύθοις] (lekythoi)—which especially conflict with this idea—our author has either changed or corrupted. We have a very illustrious example of the latter in the twenty-first chapter, verse seven. Where he reports that he, when he had warned Peter that he who was on the shore of the lake was Jesus, that man immediately cast himself into the water out of the impatience of love. In which he undoubtedly attributes the former to him: although he had said of himself, *whom the Lord loved*. This cannot be read by anyone without a stirring of the spirit, both because of his candor and because of the other's most flaming vehemence of love. But who 240 does not feel that the whole of this perishes because he used a dual *lekythos*; first he laboriously and most annoyingly describes the garment of Peter and the manner in which he girds himself, and then how he swims? For of the former: *Simon girded his loins with a cunningly-wrought garment,* *And his skin was covered with a linen robe of many holes,* *Wrapping the sea-covering around his buttocks,* *The pelt, which loosened into the fold of twin thighs,* *Which fishermen wear as a covering of shameful modesty.* Of the latter, however: *And quickly he leapt into the stream, and traversing the familiar sea,* *Oaring with his hands, lifting his head on high,* *With alternating feet he thrust the water behind him.* Although only haste commends both. Whereas the holy author had equaled them with the most brief speech and simplicity, our author abolished it: who, when the matter D which the author treats, he scarcely touches upon or looks at, acting intemperately with the rest. He certainly... *But when the neighbor* *Clear-appearing, with dewy darts, the dawn was reddening.* You have a *lekythos*. He adds: *Jesus after the night wished to go shadowless.* You have a tautology; for he who says that something will happen on the next day, if I am not mistaken, indicates that it will happen when the night has passed. But notice that *on the next day* had preceded it. Then: *Into the sweet-smelling city of the long-haired Galileans.* You have an interpretation. For the author did not say that the Lord went to Nazareth—which he not rarely avoided—but to Galilee. Then: *And he quickly found Philip.* You have a *lekythos*. Therefore, that which alone ought to have been interpreted, he omitted in such great luxury. For [εὑρίσκειν] in Greek is to find what you seek; but in Hebrew, [ἐντυγχάνειν] is to happen upon even him of whom you were not then thinking. And so it is several times in this chapter: *He finds this first the brother*; if, *He finds Philip Nathanael*. So Gen. ch. iv, vers. 13: *And it shall be that everyone who finds me will kill me*. Which for the poets is [συμβάλλεσθαι] (to meet). For it happens without a certain destination. It follows: 242 *And the King said he became* *A faithful fellow-contestant.* You have a solecism. For who would say [εἶπεν αὐτὸν γενέσθαι] (he said him to have become), who wishes to signify, he commanded that it should be, or that it existed? For he narrates past things, when he wished to indicate future things. All of which he would have avoided if, in the manner of the Greeks, and simply, he had written either this or a similar mode: *On the next day, Jesus desired to go again into Galilee, his fatherland: and Philip met him: and as Christ saw him, thus he spoke the word: Follow, divine Philip, to me immediately*. But there is no method of interpreting so strict in which critics do not permit one [τὰ ἠπορημένα λύειν, καὶ τὰ ἄδηλα σαφηνίζειν], that is, to solve doubts and to clarify obscurities. Our author has entered upon a method such that he mostly clings to the words, but does not look at or touch upon difficulties of any kind. So that he does not support the passage even by a word where he can, or present it in full, which is the greatest security—not to say negligence—now. Take for an example that passage in the first chapter, verse 8: *He was not that light, but that he might testify*
concerning the light. Nonnus wished to say: *He was not that light, but he came, having been sent, that he might testify concerning the light.* A Yet our poet, while having amplified nothing of good that he might rightly have left out, left the sentence half-complete and hanging just as he had found it:
*Yet he was not that intellectual light, but only that he might* *Unfold to all the God-taught throat,* *And appear as the forerunner of the unutterable light,* *Telling of a hidden witness to the God-receiving people.*
Thus, in such great excess, what was lacking to the speech he does not bring home; but that single thing which properly falls to the task of an interpreter, the reader might rightly have expected, he negligently 243 omitted.
There are places, too, that are even more obscure, where he remains seemingly destitute of aid—though he could easily have provided it—to the reader's great detriment. Furthermore, he seems to have hesitated. Various people are vehemently vexed at the beginning of the second chapter as to how those words, *on the third day*, should be referred. *On the third day, there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee.* Among these is Epiphanius, as we have mentioned elsewhere. Of this, however, he said nothing at all, while the other things he adds are beside the point. Nor were they any less perplexed by the ambiguity of that place in the same chapter: *This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee.* For it was a matter of doubt to them whether He did this *first*, or whether it was *first in Cana of Galilee*. And indeed those who peddled the *puerile miracles* B of the Lord Jesus and similar trifles to the people used to urge the former interpretation. Concerning whom, Theophylact speaks elsewhere. The same Theophylact proves this former interpretation by this argument in particular, that it is added: *And He manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him*, as if it were a *scheme of want*. As if he had said: *And then for the first time He manifested His glory.* Where our poet surely did not preserve the ambiguity, but even extorted from his readers that by which it is removed. For since *gloria* (glory) is the interpretation of the Chaldean *[yqar]*, by which the majesty and power of God is designated, for this he substituted *honour*. The evangelist was not thinking of this here; for he intended something entirely different. C Which is not the part of an interpreter or a paraphrast.
I believe this to be certain, that *for the fulfillment of what is lacking*, the paraphrase was formerly left to choice: which occurs when something is added to the speech that is missing. And yet, the *schemes of want*, as they are called, are most common among the Orientals and the Hellenists: wherefore they ought to be supplied by the interpreter. A wonderful ellipsis is that in chapter xxi, verse 9: *As then they landed on the earth, they see coals of fire laid, and a small fish laid thereon, and bread*, as if they had found bread with small fish placed upon the coals. To which place Augustine, in his Tractate on this evangelist, 123, says: Where it is not to be understood that the bread also was placed upon the coals, but only to be supplied: *they saw*. If we repeat that verb in the place where it must be supplied, the whole can be said thus: *They saw coals laid, and a fish placed thereon, and they saw bread.* Or rather thus: *They saw coals laid, and a fish placed thereon; they saw bread also.* But our poet, although he could have looked to the reader's need with a single word, joins the bread with the rest, D so that he intensifies the difficulty of the passage:
*And when they stepped upon the shore of the thirsty beach,* *They saw a fire burning with a scorching vapor;* *And upon the edges, lying above the coals, [a fish,* *A side-dish, and new bread.*
Furthermore, since *ovon* is used here for "fish" according to the custom of the Greeks, he himself set *ovon* as a third thing. Which is *idiotic* and trivial. Moreover, the evangelist abounds also in *parabolic schemes*, which are called *unworked* by the critics because they leave the sense, which is called "interior" by the Hebrews, to be supplied by the interpreter. Such is that in chapter xi, verse 9: *Are there not twelve hours of the day? If any man walk in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.* In which place, if one were to be deterred from the interior sense by the fact that he was wondering about something like what the ancients used to think—that one could hardly preserve the connection with what went before without it—he should at least have correctly expressed what he had found. Which now he expressed as if it had been said: *If anyone walks in the morning, or when the sun has first risen, he does not stumble:* as if the morning time contained as many hours as the natural day; or the beginning of the day were the whole day. For thus does he render these things:
245 *Are there not twelve cyclic hours of the day?* *When the day is rising, a traveler never trips,* *His foot stumbling with slippery sandals;*
as if he had found, *if anyone walks while the day is rising*, which, unless I am mistaken, never came into the Lord's mind here.
In the eighth chapter, verse 13, it is read: *You bear witness of yourself; your witness is not true.* But on the contrary, in chapter v, verse 31, it is said: *If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.* Where it seems manifest *apemphaenon*, or absurd. For in what way is the testimony of Him not true, who is Truth itself? Rightly, therefore, Chrysostom adds here: *Therefore, "it is not true" is not to be read simply, but according to their assumption; as, "to you it is not true."* That [phrase], *It is not true*, is not to be taken absolutely in this place, but from the sense and judgment of the adversaries, as if He were saying, *You deny that it is true.* And therefore, by the law of a paraphrase, the whole difficulty could have been removed by even a single word. Or by a similar manner, indeed: *You indeed will say that if I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true*, that is, *I know indeed that it is said by you, etc.* Now he has miraculously increased the difficulty:
*Which witness I shall tell,* *No other hears and is persuaded;* *For my account is not proven to be true,* *Which I shall tell as my own witness* *Solely; but of me* *Another man is a sufficient witness; and I know of him* *His faithful witness.*
Who in this manner might have removed every [difficulty]:
*For I indeed* *Myself bear witness concerning myself, I no longer speak* *Of truth, but a lie is basely scattered, as is your account.* *But for me there is a witness, whom we know to be true,* *246 And his witness is altogether true, which on some occasion* *We know He spoke.*
Of which kind you will find not a few. For out of many I bring forward one or two, which will lead the way for the readers regarding the rest. Photius, the prince of sacred critics, praises the poetical metaphrase of the *Octateuch* by Queen Eudocia—admirable first and foremost in this genre—[saying it is] excellent: because it would express both all the virtues of an interpreter and that antiquity itself so that it would come close to it; and yet she would neither redundantly show off the art, as was customary for most at that time, nor impute it to her reader, but she would neither foolishly intersperse fables for the delight of the ears, nor draw Christian souls away from those things which she related from faith, by digressions. If our poet had performed these things, he would be an example to all in this genre now: now he has neglected almost everything. For he has both omitted certain things where it was not necessary, and sometimes, for no good reason, digresses quite abundantly. As when he describes the death of Lazarus, or rather the miracle exhibited by the Lord in that event. Where, with the evangelist, who, as is his custom, had said most simply: *And the dead man came out, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin*, and the very few things that follow in the same verse; he, as if loosened from the sacrament by which he had spoken to the interpretation, or having now become a deserter of his own work, finishes with twenty verses or more, not entirely the best. In which he is very solicitous about how much Pluto he might have missed, who,
having searched in vain among the dead for the one who had escaped him near Lethe, shows the reader. Whose great portion he ought to have drunk, who would have forgotten this whole thing which he professed, that is, both the interpretation and the interpreter of it, since he had learned neither Lethe, nor Pluto, nor any of the foolishness and filth of the pagans of that sort. But if Prudentius and others were so much repelled by it, what ought the interpreter to be? But critics say it is necessary for the transmitter of the words of the Creator A not to feel things foreign to Him whom he interprets, for one who has taken on the role of interpreter. Thus, regarding those things about Mary Magdalene, *and he sees the stone taken away from the tomb*, he is very imprudently playful for nine or ten verses. And when he says the same thing, he nevertheless puts it back again. The same man, who in other places does not even interpret so much. Such is the beginning, as we showed above. Where he inflates and extends very short and simple periods or axioms with sesquipedalian words added, so that sometimes he amplifies even one single thing quite ridiculously. Such like you will find everywhere in the whole work, even in that admirable debate with Nicodemus. Where he fractured the sublimity of things B with preposterous amplifications. He also passed over many things, as we were saying before, with a plan not good for so holy a work. For, as Jerome rightly says, "It is better in divine Scripture to translate what has been said, even if you do not understand why it was said, than to remove what you do not know." That this is indeed plain even from those things which were inserted or added to his work by others. About which in the following chapter. So that in the same work, the *metaphrastic*, the *paraphrastic*, and the *digressive* style of interpreting is confused: you will recognize nothing less, however, than the *metaboli- con* which the title promised.
CHAPTER XII
Nonnus's verses that are missing: whether they were lost. The lack of judgment of those who have supplied any places whatsoever. Many things that he could not grasp were passed over by him. This is proven by several examples. *ὅτι πρῶτός μου ἦν*, a Hebraism. *ἐτάραξεν ἑαυτόν*. Other reasons why he passed over some things. "Temple" instead of "Synagogue" posited by Nonnus without any judgment. The passage about the Holy Spirit passed over, or something else supplied in its place. Nonnus's negligence; and that this is the reason why he passed over certain things. Places of this kind are noted. Many things were omitted by the interpreter in the sixth chapter especially. Very inept verses published for that chapter by Bordat. In them, a hiatus. The numbers are slow, and different from Nonnus's numbers. Which are rapid and agitated, and he did not admit *σπουδάζοντας* (haste) in his own. Nonnus's *ὁλοδάκτυλοι* and bucolic verses. The verses which Bordat supplied, examined; *λογοειδής* (word-like) verses. *Ὄσσα*. *Ἀνθερεών* as a part of the body. Nonnus often abused that word. *Βυκτάων ἀνέμων*. Whence that is taken. *Κακόζηλος* (affected/badly labored) verses. That a judgment on Greek poetry has been given in very few words.Before we proceed further, the levity and lack of judgment of certain scholars must be castigated, who have thought that whatever was missing in this paraphrase had perished by the calamity of time or by negligence. Hence people have been found who would very solicitously supply even the most trivial words and particles which the holy author has. With what success, I do not say now: I only accuse this judgment. Especially in those things which are so manifest. For he omitted many things which he could not grasp. Such is that in the first chapter, verse 30: *ὅτι πρῶτός μου ἦν*, which is among the first Hebraisms, and about which we [speak] in its proper place. Such is that in the eleventh chapter, verse 33: *καὶ ἐτάραξεν ἑαυτόν*, which, when it occurs elsewhere, he is accustomed to interpret unhappily. Certain other things, terrified by the difficulty, he did not render: because, as I think, the verses would not wish to support it. Such is that in chapter 1, verse 12: D *τοῖς πιστεύουσιν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ*, which he also represented elsewhere, neither correctly nor as he ought to have. Such is that in chapter v, verse 2: *Ἡ ἐπιλεγομένη Ἑβραϊστὶ Βηθεσδά, πέντε στοὰς ἔχουσα·* which neither Melpomene nor Polyhymnia could say, nor pious Calliope with Phoebus, as he says. Wherefore it is right that he be pardoned. Such is chapter xii, verse 21: *τῷ ἀπὸ Βηθσαϊδὰ τῆς Γαλιλαίας*. Such is in the same chapter, verse 42: *ἵνα μὴ ἀποσυνάγωγοι γένωνται*. Which, when he attempted to interpret otherwise, succeeded very badly; for instead of "Synagogue" he put "temple," which the Jews would not admit. So in chapter vi, verse 39, those things about the Holy Spirit: *Οὔπω γὰρ ἦν Πνεῦμα ἅγιον*. For which he clearly supplied other things. And again, chapter xiv, verse 26: *Τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον ὃ πέμψει ὁ Πατὴρ ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου*. There is also [a place] where he passed over certain things which he might have thought had preceded, or were sufficiently expressed. Thus after that, chapter 1, verse 31: *Ὁ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἐρχόμενος*, what follows, *ἐπάνω πάντων ἐστίν*, he did not express, because he believed that what he had posited embraced the other. So chapter iv, verse 7, in those words, *Ἔρχεται γυνὴ ἐκ τῆς Σαμαρείας, ἀντλῆσαι ὕδωρ*, he did not express the final parts, since he thought that what he had said was sufficiently understood: *Ἔνθα γυνὴ Σαμαρεῖτις, ἀειρομένην διὰ κόλπου / Ἠθάδα κάλπιν ἔχουσα, μετήε γείτονα πηγήν·* as also some other things of that sort. He omitted others through negligence: and either fewer, as when he neglected a word or another here or there: which were noted by Nausius; or more, as when in the fourth chapter, almost the entire twenty-seventh verse; and in the same chapter, the forty-first and forty-second; in the fifth chapter, part of the second, with the third and part of the fourth; finally in the eighth, he did not express the thirty-eighth. Which anyone will note for himself; and the individual items have been annotated by us privately. But I have no need to abuse the reader's leisure or diligence. Why he passed over part of the eighth chapter, others have already noted. Which, indeed, certain men from antiquity, partly the book and mostly the interpreters, would not acknowledge: which part in the most ancient codex of the four Gospels, which we, like all our possessions, carried to that supreme man of incomparable memory, Janus Rutgersius, [our] only brother, or which he reported [as accepted] by the reverend man of both erudition and humanity, Andreas Rivetus, as it stands, yet many things vary in it, and not a few things are read otherwise, although with almost the same sense. Nevertheless, he passed over nothing more than in the sixth chapter. Where he omitted almost the entire discussion, as we [do], divine, as the Capernaites then judged it, *σκληράν*, about the eating of the flesh of Christ. By what plan this was done by him, I am still asking. If there were no argument by which we could prove that this passage had been passed over, very inept verses could persuade us of it, which Bordat gave there, previously missing: we did not express them in this edition in their place. If anyone, however, thinks it of such importance, he will find them in the Sylburgian Notes, which we have subjoined to the interpreter. He who first gave them so confidently, it cannot be that he either saw nothing himself, or believed that judgment on the matters had perished; for they are clearly even unworthy of Nonnus, or entirely alien to his custom and habit of writing. At least the hiatus, and other things from which he clearly recoils, they should have weighed. To omit that there are different numbers here, namely slow and tardy; while in those [of ours], nothing is more agitated than [his], as indeed *ὁλοδάκτυλοι* delight him for the most part. For which reason he excluded *σπουδάζοντας* everywhere. So that he admits bucolic [verses] almost alone in very many places. Behold for them immediately in the very first chapter: An equal in nature to the Begetter, Equal in age to the Father, he was undivided, eternal. And the Word was God, of lofty birth. Older than the world, and he came to be. Nothing existed which was not, and innate. There was a mountain-haunting herald of the silence, A herald of the primeval baptism, Divine John, the gatherer of the people. "That they might have the right faith, eternal," which Theocritus so much delights in everywhere. [alt-version omitted]
A And there is nothing of the sort in the Evangelist. Nor are those better which are read in the twelfth:
"Let the lord of Israel be praised in blessings, Coming in the name of the author of the everlasting."
They are more than trivial. Just as in other chapters also, a few of some worth are found. But now we are nauseated. And yet the most ornate and most learned old man, who has deserved most excellently well of this author, and is on that account worthy of every honor and praise, saw nothing of much consequence in these that might displease him, he who even inserted his own verses and imputed them to Nonnus: which, I confess, he would never have done had I been his advisor. For, just as I know it is a greater crime to murder a man than to abstain from writing verses (for everywhere this is permitted with impunity), so I also know that it is joined with less danger to write verses that are not of the best than to go to lengths to display them. For individuals remain in every age who are deficient in judgment both of our own works and of the ancients, B and it is not given to everyone to know how to judge; thus, of the poetry of the Greeks, [it is given] to very few. 254 Indeed, just as poets are born, so are the judges of poets. They are perfected, however, when, to a most excellent nature, without which we are in vain in many other matters too, there is added practice and the reading of authors.
CHAPTER XIII
Distinctions of commata and verses. That the ancients were ignorant of them, and Nonnus with them. Our verses. The verses of the Hebrews. The minor parashiot. Nonnus accommodated to these things. His [i]adoleschia[/i] (loquacity). Negligence in expressing the brevity of periods. The paraphrast of Aristotle's Ethics. His wondrous brevity. The brevity of Apollinaris in expressing the Psalms. The [i]stichoi[/i] rightly omitted by him in the interpretation. Another distinction of chapters among the ancients. A thousand one hundred and sixty-two chapters of the four Evangelists. The sixty-fifth of Matthew. The sixty-seventh of the same. The eighty-second of Luke. The division of the Greeks. The Catalogue of Theophylact. The division and parts of the Gospel of John according to him. The major parashiot of the Hebrews. The method of citing parts of books customary to the Hebrews. John [i]En arche[/i]. The parts of the holy Gospel of John according to Cyrus Prodromus. [i]Apokathelosis[/i], to which part it belongs. The division and titles of the same Gospel according to Gregory. Similar division of Homer. The [i]perikopai[/i] of both of his works. The division of Cyril. The division of the Syrians. The division of the sixth chapter of S. John according to the Syrian method. The division of the same from the Catalogue of Theophylact. The division of the Gospel of S. John according to Bede. The division of the sixth chapter according to the same. That the distinction of verses is not necessary, nor to be superstitiously observed.
Hitherto regarding our metaphrast, or paraphrast, for the most part; who, with the sacred author whom he has translated, must hereafter be compared by us. In which very thing, also, very many remained for us D which men of learning of this time have made for us. Which neither our author, nor perhaps those who hitherto have not sufficiently illustrated them. The first, 255 which comes to our mind, is concerning the division of chapters and commata. Concerning which nothing can be gathered from our author, who is ignorant of both, along with the other ancients (I speak of that [division] which now prevails): in whose work not rarely he concludes the end of a chapter with an acrostich, and begins with an acroteleutoni. For as to the fact that some have accommodated this metaphrasis to commata, which they call verses today, it was done because most are periodic, and complete a whole sense. Which, since the interpreter follows, it cannot be but that he closes and completes the sense in the same place. Just as it was easiest for Onkelos—not only who is shorter, and rarely strays beyond the text into the Law—but also for Jonathan in the Prophets, and for Joseph the Blind, who [wrote] on the Hagiographa, to accommodate the paraphrase to our commata, or verses and commata. For the end,
A which the Hebrews call *soph*, he leads it. And just as they desire the sea to be called *soph*, because it is the boundary of the Holy Land and encloses it; so too [they call] the limit or end, *soph pasuc*: by which latter term the verse itself is called by the masters, *u* and *sp*. Which differ little from our own, as appears whenever they adduce any passage from the sacred scriptures. Thus, when they interpret those words of Isaiah, cap. vii, 14: *Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign*, they immediately add after them *ans*, that is, *In the end*; furthermore, it is so written in the verse. And they adduce those words: *Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel*: which is also a verse for us. But the minor *parascha*, which between them and the greater *parschios*, as they are now called, sometimes comprises three little verses within its scope. Thus in Bereschit, which is the major *parascha*, you will find from those words, up to those, verses B three times. Our verses, or those which come nearest to them, the ancients usually speak of; and thus it is in the hand-copied manuscripts of the Gospels, which we have, and the chapters are enumerated in each. The *comma* today in the evangelist is, but it is minimal, in chapter xi, 35; but in Nonnus, a greater *comma*, for example, that one: cap. xii, 10. But in Nonnus, in which you see the intemperance of the poet. Which, however, elsewhere you see to be much greater; and sometimes, where there is a larger column, a smaller one. Such is that of the twentieth chapter, 25, not because there are fewer verses there, but because he said fewer things according to the prescription. For usually he expands himself according to the occasion, and cares nothing [for measure]. In which he conducted himself such that, while the *cola*, or members of the discourse, are wonderfully short and concise, the longer ones, which are called by the critics, arise also from the concurrence and, for the most part, from the accumulation of attributes; he has placed larger ones. Since some paraphrasts, among whom is the one already so often praised by us, whom we published in Ethics, even when they add certain things by illustrating the sense, contend elsewhere with the roundedness of Aristotle and brevity. And Apollinaris expressed certain psalms in such a way that he seems to vie in speed with the royal prophet: for which thing the eighth one will provide faith. Who, since C he offers a handle to so many, prudently omitted all of them. As those things which are said there concerning created things, of the sun, moon, stars, oxen, sheep, birds, and fish.
For if our man had not lingered on each of these, he would never have deserved the Attic talent. But how far otherwise the ancients divided the chapters, to omit the authority of Suidas, is manifest even from Caesarius, the brother of Nazianzen. Who in his *Questions* says: There are for us four Gospels, which consist of one thousand one hundred and sixty-two chapters. And Euthymius on John, to the chapter from our division the eighteenth and sixty-fifth of Matthew, which is now the twenty-sixth, he adduces. For to those words: *And he sent Annas bound to Caiaphas the high priest. And Simon Peter was standing and warming himself, etc.*, he says in the sixty-fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, this was diligently disputed. Where it is had: *And having entered within, he was sitting with the ministers to see the end.* And soon to the words which follow, *And immediately the cock crew, etc.*, *Wherefore*, he says, *in the sixty-sixth chapter of the said evangelist, where it is similarly said: And immediately the cock crew: there it is manifestly spoken of.* Yet both exist for us in the same chapter, and in that indeed which I have already said; the other in the 58th, the other in the *comma*. The same, to those words, in the nineteenth chapter of our evangelist, *And they took Jesus, and led him into the praetorium*, adduces the sixty-seventh of Matthew. Search in the sixty-seventh chapter according to Matthew; where it is held, *And after they had mocked him, they took off the chlamys from him, and clothed him in his own garments*, and by law the account. Which place, from our division, currently stands in the twenty-seventh chapter, *comma* 28. The same, D to the twentieth chapter of our evangelist, adduces the eighty-second of Luke. He has followed, however, his own division, or, if you will, that of the Greeks. From which the *Catalogum* of Theophylact departs somewhat. In our evangelist, Suidas and with him the Greeks place the titles; for there are minor sections there. Thus our evangelist is said to have titles and chapters. So that the first may be:
I. ON THE MARRIAGE IN CANA
For the first chapter from the history of the miracle at the nuptials, which begins there, not without a grave cause, of which below, I began. For they separated this as the first, as a Preface:II. ON NICODEMUS.
III. ON THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA.
IV. ON THE KING'S OFFICIAL.
V. ON THE MAN HAVING BEEN THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS IN HIS INFIRMITY.
VI. ON THE FIVE LOAVES AND THE TWO FISH.
VII. ON THE WALKING ON THE SEA.
VII. ON THE MAN BORN BLIND.
IX. ON LAZARUS.
X. ON THE WOMAN WHO ANOINTED THE LORD WITH MYRRH.
XI. ON WHAT JUDAS SAID.
XII. ON THE COLT.
XIII. ON THE GREEKS WHO CAME.
XIV. ON THE FOOT-WASHING.
XV. ON THE COMFORTER.
XVI. ON THE REQUEST FOR THE LORD'S BODY.
Which in my most ancient manuscript of the Gospels, you may find noted word for word sometimes in the upper, sometimes in the lower part of the page. Which portions, as the Hebrews [call] their *parschiot*, they are accustomed to cite, Bereschit, Noe, Lec Lecha. Unless it is that the Hebrews are accustomed to look to the beginnings of the words, but the Greeks to the history, as if you were to adduce our evangelist. Just as Cyrus Prodromus made his first lemma: which is the first as if it were a title; the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, the tenth, which comprised the history of Nicodemus, who was taking the Lord down from the cross; the eleventh, [etc.]. For Gregory in his division exhibited only the miracles. Who seems to have made the titles,
A regarding the death of the Lord, regarding the resurrection, regarding the discourses with the disciples. These pieces are very similar to those into which ancient critics divided the Iliad and the Odyssey. As if you were to cite *The Dream* or *The Catalogue*, *The Oath* or *The Single Combat*, *The Confusion of Oaths* or *The Inspection*, *The Aristeia of Diomedes*, *The Arming*, *The Renunciation of Anger*, and similar ones from the Iliad; *The Necromancy*, *The Departure from the Phaeacians*, *The Recognition*, and similar ones from the Odyssey. These 260 fragments help the memory not a little, and impress the division of the work upon it. Augustine explains them in individual treatises, Chrysostom in individual homilies, some meanings or verses. These men, so that it may be manifest how secure he was even about the Greek division, join those words, *and on the third day*, which both we and the Greeks separate and distinguish, with the end of the first chapter; Cyril divided the Gospel itself according to the division of the books, of which he published twelve on this Evangelist. For the first book he started from them, *In the beginning*; the second from them of the same chapter, *On the next day John sees Jesus coming*, which is the twenty-ninth verse; the third from them, *He was the burning lamp*, which is the thirty-fifth verse of the fifth chapter; the fourth from them, *That I have come down from heaven*, which is the thirty-sixth verse of the sixth chapter. And so on: for Chlichtovæus added the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth. With a far different division the Syrians [divide it], the first chapter into four, the second into three, so that they connect the end of it, where you have the words, *And when he was in Jerusalem*, which for us begin the twenty-third comma, with the dissertation that the Savior had with Nicodemus, up to the twenty-second comma of that chapter. Perhaps so that, regarding which some Greeks and Latins also noted something, they might refer those words, *from temporal things*, to Nicodemus, to whom they attribute a place among them 261; again, they might join the words of the twenty-second comma, *After this Jesus went and his disciples into the land of Judea*, up to the fourth comma of the fourth chapter, and the history of the Samaritan woman to the forty-third comma of the same chapter, where are the words, *And after two days he went out from thence*.
From which we understand how much regard they had for our chapters, and that sometimes they divided better those things which did not fit together. But they adapted the individual parts of these to their own feasts and solemnities. Thus they read the miracle at Cana at the Sunday Matins, where they begin the fast, and the history of the Samaritan woman before Pentecost. The sixth chapter for us has five parts for them, while we, although they fit together badly, collect [them]. Thus in the catalogue of Theophylact, eight parts were made of this chapter. Among which, it is necessary that some were very small, so that from the beginning to the fourteenth comma they establish the first part of it: which comprises the miracle of the five loaves and fish, up to those words, *The people then having seen the sign which Jesus did*; the second, in which the departure, so that he might not be made king, is described: which has for us no more than the fourteenth comma with the following: for from that verse which follows this, *Regarding the walking on the sea*, he begins to act. The fourth part contains, if I am not mistaken, eight verses; the fifth, when it begins with the thirtieth comma, follows the subsequent [text] *Regarding the bread from heaven*: which he made the sixth. Which part is truly the largest, and extends to the sixty-sixth comma, where it treats *Of the disciples who departed from Jesus*. The last part, again small, comprises the testimony of Peter about the Lord. Since the 262 manuscripts, both the Greek and the others, made only two parts of the sixth, seventh, and eighth chapters, up to the ninth. For they divided this place, from the beginning of the sixth chapter, *Jesus*, up to the beginning of the ninth chapter, *And passing by he saw a man blind from birth*, so that the former dealt with the miracle of the loaves and fish, the latter with the walking of Christ on the sea: which, as I said, is described in the ninth chapter. Therefore, in the most ancient codex, between that inscription or title, *Regarding the walking on the sea*, and that, *Regarding the man blind from birth*, twelve pages in all are entirely empty. The same thing done in other codices is manifest from the books of the great man Joachim Camerarius, and others, who copied them from the Greeks. From these the Catalog of Bede dissents, who made, if I am not mistaken, fourteen chapters for the whole Gospel. But he divided the sixth in such a way that he seems to have made five of it. For thus: Regarding the five loaves and two fishes, and that they wanted to make him king. Jesus walks upon the sea; and he speaks of the manna and the heavenly bread, and as the disciples depart from him, he says one of the twelve is a devil. But also those who have inspected once the catalogs of the Acts and Epistles, both of the teacher of the Gentiles, and of those which they call *catholic* or *encyclical*, which are read with the commentaries of OEcumenius (what their antiquity is, however, I do not ask), know that there is nothing there which squares with our division of chapters. For there are always more or fewer. Indeed the Acts of the Apostles, forty there, have twenty-eight for us. Those written to the Romans, sixteen for us, have twenty there. Those to the Galatians, six for us, have twelve there, lest anyone always think the chapters smaller, as when titles and chapters are joined together. Our Evangelists 263 have the first [part], five for us, seven there; the second, one for us, two there; the third finally has one for us, three there. For Aretha divided the Apocalypse both into *logoi* and chapters, so that it contains twenty-four *logoi* and seventy-two chapters, because the former number [alt-version omitted], or tripled, produces the other; the former, however, they say, [is] on account of the same number of presbyters, who are described in that place. For these things please them. But how much these are worth, we do not dispute. For it is enough if the superstition of those is removed, who, entirely ignorant of antiquity, superstitiously adhere to these distinctions. Indeed, just as the most excellent and most holy man St. Jerome, regarding the Minor Prophets and elsewhere, often begins a new book in the middle of a chapter, so those who have treated Cyril, Chrysostom, Augustine, and others know how many of our verses or commas the ancients made, just as, not to go at length, it is clear even from this, that the majority of the ancients, and among them Cyril, immediately combined the third comma of the first chapter, which is objected to the Manichaeans elsewhere by Augustine, with the fourth. He who admires this as something new (although I truly do not approve the interpretation of that place) binds the ancients to our findings *formerly and recently arranged*. I can affirm this, that these parts, just as they occur to the memory, thus have given occasion for the corruption of places elsewhere.
C
CHAPTER XIV.
The transition to the explanation of those things in the Gospel of St. John which have not yet been sufficiently explained. How much antiquity valued him. This is evinced by the praises and names given to him by them. He is called Theologos, son of thunder, thundering voice, or thunder-child. A certain *doxesophia*. The contempt of the critics. 264 Regarding which places John [was known] to the ancients, and why he was called Theologos. The false opinion of some concerning him. The Gospel of St. John was preached, as the Syrians wish. On that matter with a Greek word. The inscription of this Gospel according to the Syrians. St. John's Gospel to be deemed *dictated* to be said also by the Greeks. Excerpts from the Florentine manuscript, or the Summary of the Gospels. The mind of the Syrians, when it says *preached, the Gospel of St. John*. That it seems taken from the division of the Hebrews. The Gospel of Mark preached or dictated by Peter, excerpted by Mark...A as he has found it, B or C what I had proposed, *logomachies*, and when he had become somewhat incensed, *foolish questions*, or rather *uninstructed* ones, as the same apostle calls them. For these mortals gladly seek from the inspired writings a veil for their ignorance, just as the first-formed pair sought leaves from the fig tree. There I again said, "Do not rage, great priest. Even here there are gods, as the philosopher used to say."
When he, ignorant of all elegance, scarcely penetrated the meaning, he began to rebuke me for my use of the word "gods," calling it vain and unworthy of a Christian man. Nor, he said, was it right or orderly for one to inquire into languages, or to busy oneself with them, when one was born for other, much weightier matters. In the Greek text, he claimed, there was nothing at all that was hidden from him. He knew it to the letter. Of the Hebrew and Chaldean, or the Syriac interpretation, he had never even thought. For he did not care for foreign things. He was fulfilling with faith the office that lay upon him. The care of souls was committed to him; that was the one thing he was now doing.
"A rare," I said, "and deeply stupendous felicity of intellect. To which, as I think, no theologian—though our age or that of our parents has produced so many supreme men—has reached. But why should I speak of them? Augustine, Jerome, Cyril, and indeed the prince of the interpreters of the New Testament, Chrysostom, sometimes either reveal or confess their ignorance. And we, base chicks hatched from unhappy eggs, seem to ourselves to know something if sometimes we observe something unknown or unsaid by others in these books."
To me, indeed, when I approach the word of God and His mysteries, I always endeavor to profess how much I do not know, and to raise my dim eyes to His Spirit, who alone is the torch of truth; for while they cling to this dust and to the fabric of a most wretched body, I believe nothing can be hoped for without this protection. Many years have passed since I began to read the writings of the Fathers diligently, 268 and I have progressed only so far as the confession of ignorance. But do you enjoy this, your felicity: and, as he says, *Assume the pride sought by your merits.*
"Yet spare me," I said, "Father, and as those Syrians whom you so despise say, [דָא (dâ)]: for even the Apostle Peter himself (you know the man, if I am not mistaken), lest I speak hereafter in the manner of philosophers, is accustomed to speak so; nor should you induce in your mind that whatever many prefer to ignore is learned in vain by some. Indeed, you should know that languages are both a gift of God and an instrument. And since he knew Greek, there was one thing I asked of him—at least that he should teach us, regarding a certain passage of Paul, how it was to be understood. And when he had nodded, 'In the First to the Corinthians,' I said, 'what did he mean when he said, *in tongues*...'"
[to others] faith, to others the gift of tongues, to others the interpretation of tongues, was given? And of what spirit did he think here?' For it is added there that all these are of one Spirit. Then, in the same Epistle, when he said that he wished all to speak in various tongues—'I wish you all to speak in tongues'—what did he mean? Finally, what was in his mind when he dared to boast of the tongues he possessed? And when he was searching a passage with the greatest attention, 'For the sake of brevity,' I said, 'I wish you would now let this research be, for it is read in the same chapter.' And when I had pointed it out to him with my finger, he took revenge on us with one or two quips. When I had passed over this with great modesty, I said, 'The study of Theology, which you champion, and to which you are committed, is indeed right. But that you should exclude others from its possession, I do not think is done rightly or in order by you. For it may be that they read the writings of the ancient Fathers and recent interpreters diligently—those whom I do not know how fittingly you call critics—who, I fear, know much more than you do, for they do not despise the philosophers, nor the ancient theologians, nor the languages which the prophets and apostles used.
Among the Chaldeans, indeed, beyond their erudition, no one is unaware of what clear testimonies exist concerning the eternal Word of God, concerning eternal life, even when it is not expressed in the sacred text, from the occasion of interpretation. And when all the synagogues, especially the Asiatic ones, where the most holy John is said to have preached, were sounding forth with these, I doubt whether those who in this age have tried to persuade the human race that these were first brought in by the apostles are to be considered human. The Syrian interpreter, too, is unjustly despised. For if I—already, not he who would understand and know all these things, but I and those like me—were to employ them when there was need, to understand their opinion, how much would they be worth, since they represented so well in many places the mind and even the idioms of the Savior and the apostles? There happened also to be present a theologian of exquisite and very diffuse erudition, who, although he knew much, would nevertheless willingly attribute more to others, such was the natural goodness in him, even to those who were less learned. You would have described my old favorite, Thysius, in terms of natural disposition and erudition. He, having chastised the man's rashness and A arrogance in good faith, said, 'But you, proceed, yet on the condition that you explain your opinion first of all on what you proposed, and so in order on the rest.' 'I will indeed do what you ask,' I said, 'yet keeping safe your judgment, to which you know how much I defer. As for the Syrian, when he uses the word for "preach," I am led to think that he had the Hebrews in mind. Who, since they divide sacred Scripture into the Law, or Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa, say that the latter—to distinguish them from the others—were written indeed by the instinct of the Holy Spirit, but not "preached." Therefore, I think that by that word, authority is asserted for the evangelists. B So also the Greek. For he wants those books to have been written by others, and either preached or dictated by others. "We must know," he says, "that the Gospel according to Mark was dictated by Peter in Rome. And he made the beginning from the prophetic word which comes from on high to Isaiah, signifying the winged image of the Gospel." And then he adds these verses:
"Whatever, preaching, the heaven-speaking Peter taught the nations concerning Christ, from his honored lips, here Peter raised up and set in pages. Therefore, another evangelist for mortals was shown."
He wants his Gospel to have been preached, or rather dictated, by Peter, and excerpted by Mark. Hence Mark is called by Sophronius the C *hermeneutes* (interpreter) of Peter. And the Greeks explain *hypagoreuein* (to dictate) as *hermeneuein* (to interpret). Thus he holds the Gospel of Luke to have been written by Luke and dictated by Paul, since Dorotheus calls that writing *kat' epitropēn* (by commission) D of Paul, written at the instigation of Peter, to note the Acts of the Apostles. You are not unaware of what occurs a few times in Paul, when he deals with his own Gospel; for example, the Epistle to the Romans: "In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men, according to my Gospel, through Jesus Christ"; as well as to the Galatians, "The Gospel preached by me," and again later to the Thessalonians, and finally the second to Timothy; the ancients refer this to the Gospel, just as he also remembers the author. Concerning John, however, he says that his Gospel was dictated 271 *en Patmō tē nēsō* (on the island of Patmos). First preached, soon dictated, after the manner—unless I am mistaken—of the Hebrews and the Syrians, who here use the word *in Aphel*.
And in truth, all the writings of the apostles and evangelists can rightly be called by us *Hypagoreuseis* (dictations) and *Hypagoreuomena* (things dictated), because they were written with the Holy Spirit dictating. They, however, used this word otherwise, although they seem to tend toward the same goal. The same author only excepts Matthew, whose words, because they have not yet been published as far as I know, I shall describe here: "The holy Gospel according to Matthew was published by him in Jerusalem before those from Judea, by means of Hebrew letters. For this reason, indeed, writing for the Hebrews, he sought to show nothing more than that Christ was from Abraham and David." And he adds:
"This is the work of Matthew, the noble-toiling tax collector, who declared the divine birth of the maiden who knew no man, whom she bore as a seedless son, whom the [wide] heaven did not contain, the ever-living Christ, God and man, who always is."
But whom will he persuade that Matthew performed nothing else than to show that the Savior was descended from Abraham and David? See what the ignorance of Hebrew letters can do. The same thing that a little Greek teacher imposed upon Erasmus (and what a man!). The beginning of Matthew in the Hellenistic language has it thus: *Biblos geneseōs Iēsou Christou, huiou Dauid, huiou Abraam*. Which they received as if this were an inscription of the whole Gospel, or as if *biblos* were a "book" rather than a "series." This is, he says, the series and order of the lineage of Jesus Christ. For he began from the first book of Moses, "This is the book of the lineage of man." Which is a common formula, not only in beginnings but also in the middle of books, especially when they mention some great man or describe a history. Because *ED* in that notion is a catalog, or series, not a book. But the Hellenists, by the notion of the Hebrews, as is their habit, accepted it, as John Drusius, who deserved well of these things, had noted before us. But this is wandering. Therefore, let us return to our evangelist. I would wish, therefore, from you, I say, most excellent of men (for with this man, who despises those things, we are at peace), to know what the inscription of the same author means, when it commemorates *tēn praktikēn tou Christou genean*. For in fact it does not exist in the New Testament, in which nothing escapes that man. Since he confessed that this was also unknown to himself, I shall therefore say what suddenly came into our mind, I say. Although I know that the ancients spoke thus more rarely, I think *praktikēn* is that which you call *hypostatikēn*, insofar as the Son is not generated from the Father in an image or idea, but *ousiōdōs* (essentially), just as he subsists. Which Cyril, in the first book *De Trinitate*, and Damascene, who wrote this chapter first in *De orthodoxa fide*, distinguish more subtly. Who wish that which is common in human beings—take Peter and Paul, for example—to be distinguished by mind and reason, but that which is diverse, by things, that is, *pragmata*. On the contrary, in the divine Trinity, in which that which is common, namely essence, goodness, will, and other things of that kind which show identity by communion, are distinguished by reality, not by reason; but the properties, or modes of existence, which [create] the difference...
A are said in that same place to be distinguished by those "realities and by reason." Thus Epiphanius called the three persons three B "actualities." Yet he seems to have said "sovereign" because Christ, who is called the "substantial Wisdom," is said 273 by the ancients to have been generated from the very mind of the Father. Known is that [verse] of the ancient writer Damasus: "Voice of the highest and of the sense of God, which the Father poured forth from his high Mind." But "mind" is C "sovereign" to Plato. Or, which is more pleasing, because this generation precedes all created things, so that you might call it the first, or princely [nature], in Latin.
And not once have I remembered that theologians speak thus: for from that [precedence], as Cyril interprets this passage, "every family in heaven and on earth is named," from which our [Latin] men departed far when they translated it "family." When he did not refuse, and I was already hastening to other things, he [said] there: "But you, again and again, see what you are doing; for concerning the name of theologian, and the rest which are attributed by the ancients to your holy writer, nothing so far." See that, so that you may return to the [proposed] subject; for we already have the matter constrained. And you have already injected there a certain scruple, that you might have seen me pondering something about it as well. You are not unaware, I say, that the ancients not rarely speak so as to oppose "theology" and "economy" to each other. Thus Chrysostom, thus others sometimes use it, as when that great doctor [speaks] concerning the Evangelist and the others: "That the others flashed the economy, but John thunders the theology," so that with the others there exists economic lightning, but with him, the thunder of theology. And so they think that those things are said D "according to economy" which deal with the Lord's humanity, but those "according to theology" which deal with his other nature. Thus Basil against Eunomius: "He does not deliver to us a mode of theology, but he delivers the modes of theology." Which [the ancients] are accustomed to call "theoprepic," and also "anagogical," in this writer and others. Hence in the Menæa, "the leader of theology," or the guide of theology, and as it were the first author, is called ours. Which, not from the definition about which we argued before, and which exists in the books of the scholastics 274, but this one of ours the Greeks say there, because he began from theology, as others from economy. Thus the "Book of Generations," about which Matthew [speaks], is "according to economy"; about which ours [John works], is "according to theology." And this is what the Greeks add in the same place, that he is a leader, and as it were a prince, who brought theology down from heaven, because he cries, "In the beginning was the Word." Likewise they say that, being full of love, he has also become full of theology. Whence it is said "to theologize the Word," or "to theologize the Son of God." In the same Menæa, it is said, "He who has theologized the Son of the most high God." Just as to Caesarius, it is said that Scripture "theologizes Christ" when it deals with his divinity, as when it derives his generation, not from the series of the human race, but from eternity; when it proposes the "genealogy of the ungenealogized," and begins from this. Whence also, up to those words, "He came unto his own, and his own received him not," they say that he speaks [about what is] "to theologize," [but] in those things which follow, [he speaks] "according to economy." Theophylact on those words which I have already mentioned: "Here most clearly he injects the discourse concerning the economy in the flesh." Such are: "And the Word was made flesh," or, "And he tabernacled among us," which are said "according to economy." Although both the word "Word" and the word "tabernacled" also include a mode of theology. Whence the ancient theologian Eulogius: "See again also John preaching two natures; the tent is one thing, and the One who tents is another." And Photius likewise from an ancient theologian in the same place notes that the schema of the economy and that of theology are joined there. Thus concerning the principle, or the first foundations, Chrysostom, "about to deliver to us the things concerning the theology of the Son of God, gave no other beginning of all things." He called that same principle "the theology of the Only-begotten." Just as in one and the same passage he speaks "according to theology and according to economy."
1068 275 After he said, "And he tabernacled among us," he adds, "And we saw his glory, as the glory of the Only-begotten from the Father," which is to speak "according to theology," or "to theologize the Son." And this is that theology of the Only-begotten, to which Chrysostom looked, just as they have also called the whole Gospel by this name, as when Suidas [cites] from some ancient theologian, "dwelling there, he writes theology." Which, when I had said in passing, that prior doctor of mine and alpha of theologians seemed to let down his guard regarding the fateful gravity of his countenance and his eyebrows a little, so that he himself might ask me why he was called "son of thunder." For although he knew what is brought forth about him from the Gospel of Mark, if I had observed anything more about it, he appeared to consider it as a benefit not light for us to bestow, which he most gladly would hear. I replied that it had so much the more difficulty, because the Greeks had never ceased to doubt about it. Of whom some had referred it to a part and likewise to the first words, others to his entire Gospel, others assigned it to the gravity of the mysteries and to theology, others to the weight and brevity of the words; for as thunder unexpectedly suddenly ceases and is finished, so [he] equals individual periods, or clauses, which are things clearly unusual and unheard of in the weight of sentences and in speed. And what is more beyond expectation than that he who in the others reads that Christ was deduced from Abraham, from David, and from the rest, [here] hears in the beginning that he was [the one] whom he thinks of as having been deduced from so many ancestors? But also ever self-splendid and grave in language is the brevity. "Sharper is the short and imperative." Sharp and commanding is its own brevity, said the greatest author who wrote about elocution (Tacitus called it "imperatorial" in the same way), and it always leaves something for the reader to think about. Add 276 that his periods are "monocola," just as they have nothing "periodic," or "wound up," nothing of affectation, or [drawn] from the art of rhetoricians. Example for the sake of [illustration]: "In the beginning was the Word." Likewise, "And the Word was toward God, and God was the Word," and what follows. Which are mere bolts of lightning, shaken out at once and abrupt; for at the end of one, a new period begins and ends. Whence Pericles was also called "thunder." And hence indeed the Greeks believed he was called "son of thunder": whence also they said "thunder," or "thunder-voiced." Thus the same author, whom we have said wrote the Summaries of the Gospels and Epistles: "Thunder indeed, the God-voiced John, all-excellent, Of the First-born Wisdom he found the super-archaic beginning, The first-appearing Begetter of God, God self-begotten."
And he adds next: "Whence he dulled the minds of death-bearing heresies;" for he permitted so much to himself in poetry as he permitted in the Greek style. Thus in the Menæa or Menologies of the Greeks: "He also thundered, 'The Word was in the beginning'; whence he was shown to be thunder-voiced." And, "By your thunder-voiced tongue speaking forth." Which they seem to have believed as the same, that he was "son of thunder," when [the latter] is rather a question of what its true interpretation is. In the same place, "You were called son of divine thunder," just as in the same place he is also called "child of thunder," and "thunder-child" sometimes to Caesarius in the Questions. Among other things, "Concordantly, of this, John is the thunder-child." For the beginning and true cause of the name is from Mark, by whom he is called Boanerges. For he says in chapter 3, verse 17: "And James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James and he put upon them the names Boanerges, which is sons of thunder." Where this name is put not on John alone, but on James also, so that it can scarcely be referred to his eloquence. What the learned note about that word can be seen from their books. But to me 277 another thing seems [to be the case]. For I would not doubt that it is noted by the word [denoting] thunder, which for the Hebrews, who denote the presence of the divine majesty and of that Spirit, [is used]. Such is that which is in the secret of the thunder heard, in Psalm LXXXI, 8, that is, in the secret of my majesty. Where Symmachus had, "through hidden thunder."
A to remove the Chaldean, who in the hidden place of His majesty, explained it. As God for the most part used to expound the divine pleasure and ordinances with thunder, just as He also brought forth the Law, so that today kings and magnates [might be moved] by the trumpet, Exodus xix, 16: whence also thunder is not rarely *qōl*, sometimes the "voice of the Lord," as in Psalm xxviii; and if the voice of God is added, it is called *qōl*. This kind of prophecy was [common] among the Hebrews (of which others have spoken more than once), because for the most part they were warned about future events with thunder. Thus, in chapter 12, verse 28 of our Evangelist, when the Lord had said, "Father, glorify thy name," there came, he says, "a voice from heaven. I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again." The Hellenists, indeed, call thunder in their own language *phōnē*. In the place of Exodus already mentioned, "And it came to pass on the third day, when it was morning... and there were voices and lightnings and clouds." B Neither does the Chaldean [interpreter] differ. But in John it follows: "The multitude therefore that stood by, and heard, said that it had thundered. Others said, An angel hath spoken to him." You see that the same thing is called both a voice and thunder. But [it is clear] that the people also disputed about it, because thunder is the sign and concomitant of the divine voice. Some, therefore, said it was a voice, others thunder, that is *qōl*, or *pē’rāh*, divine thunder, or, joined with the divine oracle or testimony, they said. Others, however, said an angel was speaking, according to the custom then familiar to the Chaldeans, by which they ascribed divine works to these ministers. As when they spoke of sudden death, saying "the angel of death," in Psalm 91. Likewise, this our theologian here, in his prophecy which we call the Apocalypse, always joins thunder with divine oracles and voices. And this is constant with him. Thus in chapter 5, 5, he joins "lightnings, and voices, and thunders." Thus in chapter 6, 1, he testifies that he heard "as it were the voice of thunder," saying "Come," as a voice of thunder prophesying. And in chapter 10, 3, "the seven thunders uttered their voices," they are said to be giving forth their voice. Which are the last voices and the final thunders, by which the last prophecy on earth was confirmed. Whence also the Jewish Christians, who always join thunder with vision and prophecy, object to their own, that while they seek from morning until evening on the day of atonement for the coming of the Messiah and deliverance, yet no vision or voice regarding His coming is any longer exhibited. Wherefore one is no longer to wait, but [to realize] that He has come. From which it is clear that the two venerable messengers, *qōl*, of His voice and divine majesty, are named Boanerges, that is, as the Syrian rightly says. There are also other names which are attributed to this Evangelist by the ancients, in which there is no difficulty: as when he is called *philos* in the Meniæi, from history; as with Aquila, which is noted; as when he is called *theosynegetos* by Arethas from the collections of Andrew, as it seems, of Cæsarea, and perhaps not a few others. Of which kind new ones can be thought of daily. Which, when I had brought them forward, one [man] gave thanks modestly and bashfully; another also, who had perhaps heard by hearsay something from the writings of the Fathers, [or] that he had read something himself in them, when he had scarcely touched upon Greek letters, in which he took wondrous pleasure in himself, said with a very grave countenance that it did not displease him. I, although I knew that it was little safe among such men, 279 nevertheless began to beseech [him] that he would not deem it beneath his leisure and gravity to treat the writings of the ancient theologians a little more accurately than he had done; and to give some attention also to the languages of the time. But if that was not possible for him through other things, at least to judge well of them (for he spoke quite confidently about some great men who had excelled in that praise), who, having been instructed in those letters, might publicly benefit the world. No one has attained to celebrity by the contempt of others, unless perhaps an ill-starred one: but by contention, by labor, by science, and by erudition; nor by the envy of great men, but by emulation and example. Never would human affairs have returned to such a point that one would prefer— C judgment and estimation to be deferred only to the ignorant.
I, indeed, as a man who am well aware that I am ignorant of many things, and on every occasion profess this, have nevertheless learned this: that it is in vain for anyone to attempt to interpret the mysteries of the New Testament being instructed only in the knowledge of a few Greek words. In the Old [Testament], however, they alone are wise who, for the understanding of both, diligently compare the texts, not only Hebrew, but also Chaldean and Greek. That Origen was by far the most learned of all the Greeks; and that the Fathers testify to this (concerning whose other errors, lest you intervene again, I do not speak), [and] that Jerome yielded to none of the Latins. That both were the princes of critics; and from that most noble care, they earned for themselves the first praise. For which, as much as was due, there would never be wanting those who would profess it. Wherefore do not, I say, speak evil of those who, in illustrating the sacred [writings], confer and set their effort and study, by the example of these. For they are for the most part fiery, lest you be deceived; and there were among 280 them in this age who joined together not only some, but almost all languages and disciplines. Such as in our time I can rightly praise the Scaligers and Casaubons. Therefore, what I would now rather have said only in the ear,
I have never seen a rivalry more unfairly matched than that today among [you all. For you both give effort on both sides; the one, that you may know much and that the studies of the learned may profit; the others, that you may speciously lay claim to erudition and knowledge by the contempt of others. Nor have you, I believe, attained anything from that among those people thus far, except that they hold you as actors or buffoons, and publicly, when it seems good, traduce you; for those whom these [things] can move, are worthy of being despised. As for me, all you learned men, as much as each of you can, either by talent or by erudition, contribute to these studies. And, as it is in the ancient verse,
Bring together wings, O birds, and wax, O bees.
For this is better than to remain forever around the cliffs of the profane, and perhaps to have made shipwreck of the faith. But as for us, away with malevolence and these true dogs who, although they can speak, prefer to bark at everyone. When that last and inevitable day takes me, let this fame alone accompany or follow me, that although I have disagreed with some out of love of truth, I have maligned no one. For the barking of others, it will be enough to have vindicated [myself] by contempt alone. When these things had been said by me without any disturbance of mind, the one began to wrinkle [his brow], and, as he speaks, to perform *toxopoiein* with his eyebrows. The other seemed to smile. And so I dismissed this Thestorides *ophryanaspasidēn* (eyebrow-puller).281 OF THE EXERCITATIONS PART TWO D In which the Gospel of St. John is chiefly illustrated from the collation of Nonnus. CHAPTER XV. The Evangelist is compared with the interpretation of Nonnus. The place in Nonnus is distinguished otherwise than is commonly read. The place is negligently rendered by Nonnus. The malignancy of Julian the Apostate. The *akolouthia* in the first chapter is noted by him. The words of the Apostate. His false accusation rejected. The *akolouthia* of the whole place is discussed. It is proposed according to the mind of the Evangelist. The times of the Baptist are divided by the Evangelists. The *endeiai* of the Word, which must be supplied in the Evangelist. A note on how the testimonies of others distinguish the Master of the Hebrews. The Father and the Spirit, called "light," as the Son. The imprudence of Nonnus. "The light coming into the world," is a Hebraism. For it, "to come upon the earth," wrongly used by Nonnus. "To come into the world" is one thing, "to go upon the earth" is another. Both are used by the Hellenists, and how they are used by the Hebrews. *Paralabein*, of the voice.
A *Chaldaea interpretatio*. "Acceptance," *to accept*. It is, *and dwelt among us*. But in what manner, I know not. *To obey*. *To take* (being spoken) of the Prophet by excellence. *To honor*, in Nonnus for *to believe*, and used thus by the ancients. Of his places, *And he dwelt among us*, an interpretation. What *to dwell in a tent* is. The passage not correctly understood by Nonnus. The *dwelling* of Nestorius, and his perverse use of the word. Of his places. *And we saw his glory*, an interpretation. That he substituted *glory*, *fame*, and *honor* very ineptly for the word *doxa*. *Indwelling*, the *shekinah* of the Chaldaeans. *Indwelling* and *glory* joined regarding the divinity. *Glory*, the divinity itself to Cyril and others. This proved in many places. Instead of the ineffable name, the same word is in use. How the Asiatic and European Jews used that word. A hymn of Cosmas, and in it *that he was glorified*, concerning the incarnation of the Word, or, concerning the flesh which the Son of God assumed. Not even to the Hebrews was this name unknown concerning the Son. *The glory of the Lord* concerning the Son. A name of majesty unknown to the Greeks. How ridiculous the Greeks are in expressing it. *Royal magnanimity*. *Charge of sacrilege*, concerning the crime of majesty. B The passage of the Evangelist, *as of the Only-begotten from the Father*, 282 is falsely taken by heretics. The particle *as*, a note of assertion in that place. It is confirmed by the example of the Hellenists and Hebrew usage. Disputed concerning a certain reading in the text. *Grace and truth*, a note of divinity. Of that place, *he was before me*, an interpretation. *First* not only of order but also of power. *My first*, as my primate, or my ruler. The interpretation of Arius of that place is rejected. The opinion of Harmenopulus.
It remains, therefore, that we examine the sacred author with the interpreter now in order, and if anything is to be noted in him also or to be illustrated, we shall perform it without the apparatus and allurements of words. Immediately under the very beginning of the first chapter, at the first clause, it is read: *And the Word of God true-born, light, light out of light. / Partless, enthroned with the Father on an eternal seat.* Where it is indeed no doubt to us, but that the passage is badly distinguished, and by the author was conceived thus: *And the Word of God true-born, light, light out of light / of the Father was; partless, enthroned with the Father on an eternal seat.* C Since the Evangelist a little after, namely at the third clause, wrote, *And without him was made nothing that was made*, the Holy Fathers well annotated that it is rightly said by him, *that all things were made through the Son that were made*, not simply *all things*, or *all things that are*, that is, all things, or all things that exist, on account of the heretics, who did not fear to refer this to the Holy Spirit: who, as also the Father, *was not made, because he was*. Gregory the Theologian on the Holy Spirit: "And I shall not even fear that, that all things are said to have been made through the Son, as if He were one of all things and the Holy Spirit; for all things that were made, it is said, not simply all things; for neither was the Father, nor those things which were not made." But also, it is most well known from Epiphanius how cunningly not one of the heretics would abuse that place. Of the reason of which our author took no account, when he said: 283 *And without toil of fable / Nothing was born such as it was*; not however *was made*, as it ought to have been.
Follows at clause eight: *That man was not the light.* Which place, together with a few clauses that follow, the malignity of Julian the Apostate caused me to consider more diligently. Who wanted there to be no consistency therein, as if he speaks now from himself, now from the opinion of the Baptist; and when he himself first, as he thinks, taught that the Word of whom he speaks had been God, he cunningly ascribes this afterward to John the Baptist, so, however, that mention having been made of him, he again slips away from him. His words in Cyril, by whom he is refuted, are read thus: "And when he had said a few things about John the Baptist, he reduces the discourse again to him who was preached by him. And, *The Word*, he says, *was made flesh*," D being troubled, he says that he nowhere extols either Jesus or Christ to this point, that he might call him God and the Word; but quietly and secretly he lays it upon our ears, and that John the Baptist had proposed this testimony for Christ Jesus, that he truly is the one, whom it behooves to be believed to be God the Word, and the things which follow to the same sense. Which words, although they contain the height of malignity, it is clear, however, that he either imposed the reason of the consistency upon him, or gave occasion to his calumny and impropriety, although surely undeservedly, which I think not even our own have sufficiently perceived. Wherefore I think something must be said of it here. That whole chapter, that it is nothing other than a vestibule of the following history, in which with supreme artifice, from the testimony of the Baptist, to whom the Jews at that time paid a great deal, as is evident also from Josephus, the author commends the Lord, even some of the ancients saw. Furthermore, 284 from the eighth clause, it is wonderful how Nonnus, and others both of the ancients and of our own, have fluctuated in the connection of the oration. The reason for which is that they did not sufficiently perceive the *schemata of lack*, which are proper to the Syrians and to the Hebrews. Wherefore, I shall propose here once the *coherence*, according to the opinion of the author and his words, under the law that I add only those things which serve to complete the oration: *That man was not, that is, John the Baptist, the light; but was sent, that he might bear witness concerning this light; saying, that this light was the true light, which lighteth every man coming into the world. And that he was in the world, and the world was made through him; and the world knew him not. And, that he came into his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, that to them he gave power, to be made the children of God; that is, to those who believe in his name; who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; and that we ourselves saw his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father. These things, therefore, John testified concerning him. But the same John testifies, and cries out, that is, he shouted, saying, that this was he of whom I said, He that cometh after me, is preferred before me: because he was before me. And of his fullness we all have received, and grace for grace: for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.* So that all these things, contrary to what he thought and our own suppose, contain nothing other than the first testimony of the Baptist, nor are they the words of the evangelist, as is thought, but of him whom he always mentions. Which afterward, 285 new follows with these words: *And this is the testimony of John.* Which is the note of the second testimony, to which he subjoins the rest. But the ellipses misled them, as I was saying.
You see therefore the most illustrious testimonies of the Baptist. Which if any man should think therefore are not his, because the others nowhere mention them, even those things which are spoken concerning the legation to him and the second testimony, let him ascribe to others. There exists the most illustrious testimony of the Theotokos, there exists the most illustrious testimony of Zacharias concerning the Savior, of which, beside Luke alone, no one makes mention. There exist among the individual evangelists many things, and especially this one of ours, which except for him no one mentions. Nor is it to be doubted, but that the Baptist, full of the Holy Spirit, said not a few things concerning Christ, which either nowhere exist, or are not expounded by the others. Add that the evangelists also divided the times. Thus Matthew, those things which precede the captivity of the greatest prophet, casually, John has pursued at length. And this *distinguishing* note the Fathers use. Among others Chrysostom, when he says: "The evangelists divided the times; and Matthew, the times before the Baptist was bound,..."
he hastens to those that follow; but A the evangelist John, not only does not abbreviate, but especially lingers upon them." The evangelists, he says, divided the times. Thus Matthew contracted the time which precedes the captivity of the Baptist, so as to devote himself to other things; but the evangelist John not only did not contract it, but clings to it most of all. The first thing that misled the interpreters is the *lack* [ἔνδεια] in the lines, "in order that he might bear witness concerning the light; the light was," that is, "to bear witness concerning the light, that it was the light; the true light, which lighteth every man," etc. This is said in the same way as that, "I said, Ye are gods," which is, "that ye are gods." This is what the Hellenists commonly do, B "but in order that he might bear witness concerning the light," saying that it was the light. Nothing is more customary. As if, indeed, it had been said: "That one was not the light, but in order that he might bear witness concerning the light." He bore witness, therefore, that the Word was the light. Now after those things which follow, *discretively*, or for the sake of distinction, he adds, "John bears witness concerning him;" lest anyone should ascribe them to another, and that he might thus distinguish them from his own: which the teachers of the Hebrews say, *hic est sermo*, and distinguish with this mark, [.]. In the way in which his discourse has proceeded, which they subjoin, just as they sometimes prefix other things. Thus that is used, "And He cried out saying," such as they usually prefix to a new testimony. But now they are confused. Therefore "John bears witness," *subjunctively*, for that common phrase, "This is the testimony of John." For the authority of the Forerunner, which the Jews also, as Josephus notes, held in esteem at both the beginning and the end, he distinguishes when he cites his words. Such is verse 9: "And this is the testimony of John." And verse 52: "And John bare witness." Which is almost the same as that of Phocylides: C "And this of Phocylides," unless Phocylides speaks of himself, and ours speaks of another. In which he again imitated his Chaldeans and especially the Targumim, which he loves: who sometimes in the middle of a chapter, and sometimes even when nothing of the sort exists in the text, interpose those words, *Dixit propheta*, according to their custom. A most illustrious example of which you have at the strength of Micah, and likewise in the third of Malachi. Which, because the ancients sometimes believed that these were to be omitted in this very chapter, they added of their own. Just as after those words, "That he was before me," which are the Baptist's, yet are not distinguished from the following, they wish that what follows, "And of his fullness have we all received," to be the evangelist's. We have shown the *connection* which we think should be followed here: concerning which the Apostate attained nothing. And primarily, how those are joined, "that the law was given through Moses." And, "that no man hath seen God at any time." Certainly not more than Nonnus. And yet he dares to criticize these. Which proves that he occupied himself more with his Homer than with the Hellenistic tongue, even while he was living among Christians. But more of that below. For D that he says that this evangelist of all others attributed divinity to Christ, or rather, to him alone, and that this was not done by Paul and others, is plainly *easier to refute*, nay, it is unworthy of refutation, and what the Greeks would say of his words, "a falsehood not resembling truths." Let us now proceed. I have never been able to prove that, to those words in the 8th verse, "the light was" (how, or in what manner, those were to be joined to the others, he does not show), he added what he did not find: "For indeed, being with the Father, the truly primordial light, the Only-Begotten Word was." As if it had been written: "For indeed the Son was the true light with the Father;" *the Son with the Father was the true light.* Although here there is no mention of the Father: no more, indeed, than of the Holy Spirit, who is himself both light and is not rarely called so (for that saying of the ancients is known, "The Father is light, the Son is light, the Holy Spirit is light"). Whom he seems to exclude by this reasoning, and to whom the place also seemed to be due. This is easily suspected in a man who speaks less correctly of him in many places. They went clearly in the opposite direction who, so that they might separate the Son from the Father and the Spirit here, referred what follows, "coming into the world," to the Son here: as if it had been said, "the true light was, which coming into the world, 288 lighteth every man." In which passage, however, our author stumbled no less. Wherefore something must also be said about this. To the Hebrews, and to the Hellenists who interpret them, *to come into the world* is to be born. And thus the authors speak frequently. The author of Sepher Amana, concerning Abraham, "There was to him peace [Hebrew text]," with all those who come into the world, that is, as many as lived or were born on earth, just as also in Tobit, which book, as it was published by Fagius, is most purely and succinctly *Hebraized* according to the form of the Scriptures. For which our author [wrote], "enlightening the nature of men coming upon the earth," which does not even mean anything in Greek. *Coming into the earth*, for example, of the Phaeacians, is Greek, when it is said specifically. *Coming into the earth*, or *land*, or *upon the earth*, is nothing, and *to walk upon the earth* is something clearly different, as when they say [Hebrew text], by which the Jews, and Christians [too], note the time during which the Lord was on earth. The Greeks would say, "the saving sojourn of the Lord." And they sometimes use both equally. As when they ask about the Lord, why he walked on the earth for thirty years, before it was revealed to those coming into the world. Which the Greeks would say: "Why did he sojourn with us for thirty years, and this was known to none of the men of that time?" The Hellenists, however: "Why did he walk upon the earth for thirty years, and this was not made manifest to any of those coming into the world?" Where you see that *to walk upon the earth* is one thing, and *to come into the world* is another, with which *to come into the earth*, or *upon the land*, has nothing in common hitherto, which, if I am not mistaken, means nothing. Finally, how much they differ, *to come into the earth* and *to come into the world*, those who know how much they differ outside the usage of the Old Testament [know], the *erets* [land] and the *olam* [world]. 289 There follows in the same place verse 11: "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." What entered into the minds of the learned, when they interpret it by excepting [others], I do not see. Ours, to the Hebrews, but in the Chaldean sense, would be [Hebrew text]. For that which to the Hebrews is *shama*, to the Hellenists is *to obey*, the Targumists express by this word, as in Gen. XXII and XXV:5, concerning the firm faith of Abraham; which to the Apostle is *to accept* [to welcome]. Whose acceptance is faith. But there is no more illustrious passage than Exod. XXIII, 21 and 22, where God solemnly promises his angel who would lead them into the land of Canaan: whose *discourse* [Word] they are commanded *to obey*. Which is *to receive* in Chaldean, that is [Hebrew text]. For this is perpetual, as in that illustrious passage Deut. XVIII, 18, 19, where plainly as here, concerning Christ himself, whom our John, a little later, when he looked to this same passage, calls *the Prophet*, God speaks thus: "I will raise up a prophet for them from the midst of their brethren," etc. And then: "And the man who will not obey my words, as many as the prophet will speak in my name, I will take vengeance upon him." For which the Chaldean [paraphrase reads]: "If any man does not receive my words which he will speak in my name, my Word will take vengeance upon him;" that is, If any man shall not receive my words, which he will speak in my name, my Word will avenge itself upon him. Where the same is that prophet and the Word. And so, just as following the Chaldeans, *from the Word*, which to them is the eternal Word of God, or Speech, the author began this Gospel, so here, as at other times...
he clearly has the Targumists in view. The ancients, A 290 and among them Augustine, refer it simply to faith, in the book *De Trinitate*, XIII: "And his own received him not." For it is understood: "they did not believe in him." And a little later, "as many as received him," he explains as "they who had believed in him." What, then, was in the mind of our author when he explains [Gk αἴρειν 1075] by [Gk γεραίρειν]?
"Near to his own, yet his own in foolish madness As God did not revere him."
This, I think, is not sufficiently understood by anyone. Yet he says the same as Augustine. For [Gk γεραίρειν] in those times they used instead of "to believe." Gelasius, in the Council of Nicaea, concerning those who after the death of Licinius professed the Lord, or believed in Him, says: "The King, God, and this his true Son, Christ, first of all, inasmuch as they had been taught this, they revered ([Gk ἐγεραίρον])." What, then, of the fact that our author himself used the word in this way? For because at Chapter IX, verse 36, it is said, "Who is he, Lord, that I might believe in him?" he himself [paraphrases]: B "King, who is this of whom you spoke, so that I may revere ([Gk γεραίρω]) him?" which is to be noted. What, then, do those eminent theologians mean here, who drag in that passage of Matthew, "do not fear to take Mary thy wife," and translate [Gk ἐκδέχεσθαι] here as "to accept"? For the masters would say one thing as *laqal*, another as *qabbel*. Who would expect such things from great men? Verse 14 follows: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." The force and elegance of this passage neither our author, nor the interpreters, if I am not mistaken, have attained in any way. And therefore our author interpolated it. It is certain that *to skenoun* for the Hellenists is elsewhere what *shakan* is, as in Genesis XIII, 12, which the greatest man, Ephraem Syrus, warns should not be dragged in here in his Christian critique. Indeed, this is without doubt a most graceful parody, which had to be sought here from the usage of the Chaldeans and the Hellenists. Which learned men have not 291 once failed to notice. In Psalm LXXVII, 60, it is said: "And he cast off the tabernacle of Silo, the tent where he dwelt among men," C where indeed the Hebrew uses the word *Shekinah*, from which the Chaldeans derived the majesty of God, which is *Shekinah*, just as the Targumists also use that word there. To which he also indirectly looked. For parodies are often made of mere words, even the most sweet and clearly pleasant. And this is a property of this inspired author. But the prophecy itself to which he alluded exists in Zechariah II, 12: "Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Sion, for behold I come and will dwell in the midst of thee." But concerning this [Gk κατασκηνώσει], more in the following member. How much better, therefore, had our author been, if he had changed nothing here, if he had kept the same word, which is the soul of parody! He who, for what he now said:
"And God inhabited a house with men,"
would have said somewhat better:
"And God dwelt ([Gk ἐσκήνωσεν]) among men."
For one thing is [Gk οἶκος], which refers to human beings; the other is [Gk σκηνόω], from which the most holy word, of which we have already spoken, is derived. Better, therefore, that [word] than either *oikos* or *oikesis* had he placed here. At least, so that heretics might be excluded here with their *oikesis*: who, just as in the individual prophets, so in the Savior, said that the Word had his *oikesis*. Among whom was Nestorius, who posited a relative union and a mere indwelling. It follows: "And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father." And this is the member of which we were speaking, the other, [Gk Καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς Μονογενούς παρὰ Πατρός], D which, regarding the divinity of Him who is the subject, is so notable in our evangelist that it is 1076 scarcely possible to find such a passage. The more, therefore, I wish our author had correctly understood it. Who, as in other places where he follows the Chaldeans (292), which is perpetual with him, either he uses the same word, he has not at all attained its force. For at one time he substituted the word *kleos*, at another *times*, for the word *doxa*. And indeed both in this passage. For when he had found, "his glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father," he, however, did not hesitate to render:
"And his glory we saw in human eyes, even as the honor Of the Only-begotten Son from the highest Father."
Thus, in the second chapter, where the Lord proved his divinity by the first miracle, the evangelist proceeds, when he says: "This beginning of signs Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory," he [paraphrases] very confidently:
"And to the Hebrews he revealed the uplifted honor."
And chapter XII, verse 41, when it is said, "These things said Isaiah, when he saw his glory, and spoke about him," in the same way:
"That he saw the precious honor of the God Christ."
Than which nothing could be said or thought more alien to these passages. Since "here" *doxa* is far other than *kleos*, and far other than *time*. If the supreme man Chrysostom had understood the force of this, he would not have discoursed here so diffusely and abundantly concerning the glory of Moses and the saints. For with one word from the usage of the Chaldean language, which is perpetual and constant in the Targums, he could have sufficed. And indeed the evangelist would have said *Shekinah* if he had written in Hebrew. For sometimes they use that word in this way, although they also are accustomed to refer it to other things. Now, since he conceived in another language what he writes, and expressed what he had conceived in his mind, as the Hellenists are accustomed to, one will have to come to it. For he who does not do this labors in vain. *Kataskenosis*, of which we were just now speaking, 293 is called *Shekinah* by the Chaldeans: which denotes the divinity and the presence of that one: which cannot be unknown to him who reads one or the other of the authors in this language.
Thus, when Zechariah, in the place I mentioned before, wrote, "And I will dwell in the midst of thee," the Chaldean used that word for the interpretation of the passage, just as it appears passim elsewhere not once. Wherefore *kataskenosis* is *Shekinah*, as I said before. Which is derived from that word which the Hebrew also used there. But the word *doxa*, which he uses now, is *yaqra*, which two so agree, that one with the other is not joined without cause. And this is common to our author, whose most illustrious passage exists in the Apocalypse: "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them," Chapter XXI, 3. And afterwards he subjoins *tēn doxan* several times, as when at verse 11, he says he saw Jerusalem, "having the glory of God." Thus Moses in Exodus XXXIII, 18, wishes to see the glory of God, which is denied to him. And a little after it follows: "Thou canst not see my face: for no man shall see my face and live." Therefore, *doxa* is the majesty of God, or even his *ousia* or nature (for the neuter is separated) which no one has looked upon as it is, and lived. And lest anyone doubt about it, the Chaldean in that passage, "face," [Gk τὸ πρόσωπόν μου], interprets it in his own tongue, using the word that we have already mentioned. Thus also Isaiah is said by this evangelist to have seen "his glory," when he saw the thrice-holy, or the Trinity itself, of which it is treated there, by way of exhibition. For the seraphim are said there to have acclaimed three times, "Holy, holy, holy," when at the beginning the prophet says: "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and the house was full of his glory." To which passage, in the Catena whose Greek has not yet been edited for that prophet, I profess that I owe the usage to the reverend and most learned man, Antony Thysius—294 after he said that Jacob from his own confession had seen God face to face, he adds: "He who is who..."
A remains, having existed entirely in corruption, the wise Creator fashions anew; for He has been glorified. Seeing the Creator wasting away the man, whom He fashioned with His hands, He bows the heavens and descends; and He is entirely embodied from the divine holy Virgin, having been truly incarnate; for He has been glorified."
For Christ is born, glorify Him; Christ is from the heavens, go to meet Him; Christ is on earth, be lifted up. Sing to the Lord, all the earth, and in gladness praise, O nations; for He has been glorified. He who flows from the transgression toward the image—of those who have been B of the prophet, he himself also is testified to have seen His glory. And to this point looks the formula of the Rabbins, which they use in the prophecies where God speaks, *Yakar Adonai*, that is, *Elnev* or glory of the Lord. Nor do the Greeks use it only once. Cyril against Nestorius: "He came before Him, that is, taking precedence in glory." When he said, "He has been made before me," he looked to the glory by which He preceded him. Where *doxa*, or *theotes* (divinity), as the same author interprets it, if I am not mistaken, elsewhere. And expressly against the Anthropomorphites, to this effect: "But if they think that in truth anything has been ignored regarding Christ according to which He is understood as God, they are carried wide of the mark, and run against stones, and lift up the horn against His glory."
What of the fact that the Chaldeans express the ineffable name with this word? Thus in Genesis xviii, 33, where the Hebrews have, *And the Lord departed, and stopped speaking*, the Chaldeans have *Yakar Adonai*, that is, the glory of the Lord. Where those who B would render it "glory" with ours, let them be worthy of laughter or pity. But Haggai ii, 8: *And I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations shall come; and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts.* Where the Hebrew has *yakar*, the Asiatic Jews *yakar*, the European—or Hellenistic—Europeans, *theoi* (gods) were reading. Which pertains only to Him, as I said, to whom the name of Jehovah pertains: since *kleos* or *time* (honor) is attributed to any man, and sometimes, such as are men, to the wicked. Because this is in the power of man: but not the former, because it pertains to Him alone, in whose power we all are. In which sense God everywhere promises to His people under this condition, both in the law and by the prophets, His *doxa*, or presence, if they remain in His law: 295 otherwise, He threatens that He will take it away, just as He also carries it out.
And hence the Fathers ask why Isaiah, when Uzziah died, says he saw the *doxa Kuriou* (glory of the Lord). And Eusebius answers: that the king had been polluted and therefore touched by leprosy. It was an abomination that as long C as such a king lived in the holy city, the *doxa Kuriou* should dwell in it. Therefore, the leprous king inhabiting the place, rightly the glory of God had departed; He says, the majesty of the Lord had departed under the leprous king. But when such a king was removed, he says it returned. Who here would explain *doxa*, *kleos*, or *time* as glory? But the evangelist, so that no one might doubt, sets a mark which does not deceive. For he adds, *the glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father*. And that the "Only-begotten" is an attribute of divinity, no one who has even inspected antiquity is ignorant. And Eusebius to the place of Isaiah, which is the *yakar* that the prophet says he saw, interprets this according to the opinion of our evangelist, *concerning the Only-begotten who is in the bosom of the Father*. And Theophylact, because he was ignorant of the usage of the Chaldean word, noted that the divinity of the Only-begotten is to be understood. Away, therefore, with those who interpret "splendor" or "honor" here. Truly, no *kataskenosis* (tabernacling) can suit anyone except God, nor any *doxa* unless it is suitable also to the *shechina*: which is *kataskenosis*, which not even the teachers of the Hebrews can be ignorant of as being divinity, since they use this word in this way. Nor is it indeed any wonder that the Greeks, because of the Hellenists, D who had interpreted the Chaldean and Hebrew terms out of the usage of a language they did not understand—just as they had found them—interpreted them as they had spoken with them more often. Hence also in the hymn of Cosmas for the Nativity, they made the *kataskenosis* a refrain out of that word. For at the beginning, after every verse, they are accustomed to repeat, "For He has been glorified," which is, "For He tabernacled among us." Or, because He showed His glory on earth. 296 Although that is proper to God, we understand it better than they do. And thus they do: "Christ is born, glorify Him; Christ is from heaven, go to meet Him; Christ is on earth, be lifted up. Sing to the Lord, all the earth, and in gladness praise, O nations; for He has been glorified." After He had fallen through transgression, the one born according to the image
A of God, and what was pleasing to politicians, the kingly majesty, the king himself. Thus, the imperial majesty, the emperor himself, as in the writings of the jurisconsults: where neither *kleos* (glory), nor *time* (honor), nor *doxa* (majesty) has a place. For it is something essential. Wherefore the Greeks are also ridiculous in that passage who render *basilikēn* (royal) instead of *megalophrosynēn* (magnanimity), which is a name of virtue, not of power; they render the crime of majesty itself, *enklima kathosiōseōs* (crime of high treason), in their own law. But the Latins handle these matters better.
Therefore, *Kai etheasametha tēn doxan autou, doxan hōs Monogenous para Patros*—"And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father." And so it is in all the passages of our evangelist, as often as it is thus used. There follows, *hōs doxan Monogenous para Patros*. In which passage *hōs* (as) somewhat twisted the most ancient writers of the Church, because heretics might mock at it, and commonly say, "Not the Only-Begotten, but as the Only-Begotten." Whence Chrysostom, Theophylact, and others wish it to be placed instead of *ontōs*, that is, *in truth*: so that, they say, it constitutes not 299 a note of similarity, but of confirmation and indubitable separation. That is, as if it had been said: "We beheld His glory, a glory truly," or *as truly*, "of the Only-Begotten of the Father."
Nor can it be denied that *hōs* is used for *alēthōs* (truly) by the Hellenists; and I am surprised that they have brought forward no example of this in such a great matter. Thus in Hosea 5:10: *Egenonto hoi archontes Iouda hōs metatithentes horia*. Where Cyril [says], that they surely transfer boundaries. "They have become as those who transfer a boundary," that is, they altogether transfer the boundary. Nor has this escaped the rabbis, who affirm that the *kaph* there is placed for the confirmation of the matter. Of which matter they bring forward many examples. But the whole affair is mere *kakozēlia* (bad emulation) and ingenious malice, which no one would tolerate in a state or a serious matter. If anyone should say of a monarch that he had seen majesty in him, and indeed majesty, as of the only king on earth, and another should infer from that that there is no king similar to the king, he would undoubtedly deserve mockery and ridicule.
Nor is the observation of Theophylact to be despised, who seems to refer those words, "full of grace and truth," to this place, when he says: "Instead of 'the glory which we beheld was as the glory of the Son in truth,' [it is] 'full of grace and truth'," so that the whole passage may be read in this manner: "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld His glory, a glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." In which way the annoyance of the parenthesis, which intervenes rather harshly, will be removed. "And we beheld His majesty, majesty, inasmuch as it is of the Only-Begotten, full," etc., truly and excellently. And although our [version] and the vulgate books place these latter words with the Word, I am nonetheless surprised that scholars were so displeased by the other [reading]. And had they forgotten that a little later it is said: *Kai ek tou plērōmatos autou hēmeis pantes elabomen, kai charin anti charitos*? 300 What wonder, then, if it is said *plērēs charitos*, in whose *plērōmati* (fullness) of the bodily Godhead, as Basil speaks, *charis* (grace) is placed? Indeed, grace and truth are signs of majesty, and of divine [majesty] at that. As in Genesis 27: "Blessed be the Lord God, the Lord of my master Abraham: who has not taken away His mercy and His truth," or, as in the Hebrew, "His mercy and His truth." Regarding these entire matters in this chapter. Here relates that [passage], *kai charin anti charitos*. Item, "Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."
But it is a wonder how much the Hellenists vary in expressing the former. But a little later there will be a more convenient place to deal with these. Let us proceed. In verse 45, there follows: *Ho opisō mou erchomenos, emprosthen mou gegonen, hoti prōtos mou ēn*. The most holy and also greatest man, John Chrysostom, refers those words, *ho opisō mou erchomenos*, to preaching; those, *emprosthen mou gegonen*, to dignity. For the argument does not proceed otherwise, nor can those words which he presently adds, the *aitiologia* (cause) can stand—*hoti prōtos mou ēn*, he says—which is not without cause referred to the eternity of the Word. To which the same [evangelist] looked for our *emprosthen mou gegone*, which is said in Matthew: "Whose sandal I am not worthy to loose." To which Cyril also subscribes: except that those former things, "He who comes after me," refer to his birth, because, he says, John preceded him by almost six months. But what did our [author] mean for himself when he said, *prōtos emou bebēken*? Which is neither Greek, nor do I see in what way it can be true; for John preceded the Lord both in the time of preaching and of birth. Much less did he himself understand what he was writing when he said, *Hoti men dē prōtistos*. For *prōtistos*, 301 in Greek is not said of two. He was writing Greek, but did not understand that which is said by the author, because he had not learned—which I see happens to many in this age—that it is a peculiar language. Just as they also err commonly when they take *prōtos* as an adjective, so that it denotes nothing beyond order, just as [it does] in Latin [when one says] *primus*, although it is taken very differently. As when the Hebrews say *r’shōn* for the first, in which the whole elegance of the passage turns. But no one ought to judge of these things, unless he who can bring a genius and a sober judgment, and one trained in such things. And as if you would say in Latin *primum* for *primatem*, *summum* for *summate*. Which is customary, when the kind of speaking is unusual, although a prince of the Roman tongue, indeed, in the Eunuch: *Plurima salute Parmenonem* *Summum suum impertit Gnato.* Where, when the soul of the interpreters sees the ellipsis, in another place, however, in the Adelphoe, indeed, where the same [is], *Nam is nostro Simulo fuit summus, et nos coluit maxime*, he wishes it to be placed absolutely. For he notes thus: "Is *summus* referred to a relative, or to a friend? or is it placed absolutely, as in the Eunuch, *Plurima salute summum suum impertit Gnato*." The most learned Henry Stephanus's Glossary, *prōtoi*, *primores*, *primates*. Here indeed it is placed absolutely, there is not even a doubt. That to the Hellenists nothing is more frequent than to explain the word *r’shōn* with *prōtos*, those who are versed in their writings are not ignorant. Nor does it matter whether *Nisan* is called *r’shōn* among the months or *n’r’shōn*, for both are said and it is the same. But with that word also the Messiah is called. Among other things, Hosea 1:2: "And they shall appoint for themselves one head, or primate." In the Hebrew stands the word which I mentioned. And as if you would say in Greek, 302 *Kai thēsousin autois prōton tina*. Where Rabbi David [says], "This is the king Messiah." And it is an elegance to which our [author] did not aspire, which expresses at once the prerogative of both time and dignity in the divinity. Thus among Luke *prōtos tou laou*, in the Gospel, and *prōtos tōn Ioudaiōn*, in the Acts. If you would express this in Hebrew, nothing [is] milder or sweeter; if in Hellenistic [style], which John did, it cannot but seem harsh to those who are only skilled in Greek, or who are little trained in Hellenistic matters, whose words, as regards use and the custom of speaking, are far different from that, so that the sense is: "He who comes after me, surpasses me in excellence and in all gifts, as one who always took the first place over me." I seem to be *prōtostates* (the one who stands first) when I am a forerunner: he [is] *epistatēs* (the one who stands over or master), because he came after me. But he who comes after me has been made first. And not without wonder. For as he was in time, so in power he was my *prostates* (leader), for which the Hellenists [use] *prōtos mou*. For *to emprosthen gegone*, is referred to *doxa*. Which Cyril saw sharply, as he does most things. For just as it happens, he says, that he who teaches before the pupil, becomes of more value, because he excels in skill or in some matter, so it happens sometimes that the pupil precedes the teacher. He understood how dilute it would be [to say] *proteros mou gegone, hoti proteros mou ēn*. Therefore, *emprosthen mou gegone*, as man. Whence that [passage], "And Jesus advanced in age, and wisdom, and grace." *Prōtos mou ēn*, in time and power. For he was my predecessor. For he expressed the order, as [he expressed] the dignity of him of whom he speaks. Of whom the prophet [says]: "I am the first, and I am the last." Add to which
that the interpretation of Arius also falls here. He who explained those earlier words, "He who has come before me was created before me," to whom Hermonopulus, in his booklet *On Sects*, responds quite well from antiquity: that the sense is that it should have been said in reverse order, "that he is first in respect to me, because he was created before me." But for our own part, it proceeds perfectly: "he has come before me, because he was first in respect to me." And it would be wonderfully elegant if this were said in Hebrew. And they who do not sufficiently grasp this, after having twisted themselves for a long time in every direction, finally return to the point of admitting that the phrase, "because he was first in respect to me," denotes nothing other than dignity or also power. But what I have often said, that he who demands to prove himself from the Greek concerning the logic of the Hellenistic language must needs be playing in sacred matters. Our author [Nonnus] was of such an opinion that he thought *protistos mou* was said in Greek, while he did not understand by what reasoning *protos mou* might be said here.
CHAPTER XVI
AInterpretation of that passage, "The law was given through Moses." Nonnus's misinterpretation. "Through Moses." To practice mercy, justice, grace, truth—these are synonymous among the Hellenists. To practice grace and truth, a mark of power. Grace and truth are the two foundations of the law according to the Jews. "And grace instead of grace." The thoughtlessness of Nonnus, who says the law was given not by God but by the Father. The Angel of the Great Counsel is excluded in the giving of the law. "Through Moses it was given, through Christ it came to be"—the distinction between "was given" and "came to be." This was neglected by Nonnus. The law which is to be understood in that place. The idiocy and miraculous negligence of Nonnus. *Biblos themiston*, for the law of which the evangelist speaks, and about the etymology of the word. How different *themis* is from *nomoi*. What *themis* is. Whence it was said. The foolishness of grammarians. The Greek word *nomos* is almost always retained by the Syrian interpreter, and for the most part by the Targumists. The *akolouthia* (sequence) of the evangelist is observed, [but] ignored by Nonnus. Interpretation of that passage, "No one has seen God." It is badly expressed by Nonnus. The heresy of the Massilians. *Horan* (to see), instead of *ginoskein* (to know). How the prophets and others are said to have seen God. The different species of his vision: that which is by phantasy; that by appearance; that by the configuration of the ruling faculty. In a threefold manner God was beheld by our evangelist. Interpretation of that passage, "He interpreted." *Exegetai*, if it is missing, how it is to be supplemented. *Exegeti* used by Hellenist interpreters. How powerfully it is said concerning the Son of God. The passage of Job and the passage of John compared. Concerning the embassy sent to the Baptist. That it was unique and established from the Pharisees. "Priests and Levites, priests [and] Levites." The same are the Pharisees. The ignorance and error of Nonnus. The prophet with *kaiedia*. John the Baptist is a prophet. "Angelos," the prophet. Nonnus's lack of attention. The diverse opinion of the Jews concerning the prophet so called by preeminence. That he is not rightly distinguished by Nonnus from the others. "The morrow." The custom of the Hellenists when they speak of the next day. "Bread of the morrow." Nonnus's *lecythus* noted.
It follows in the same chapter, in verse 17, a most elegant passage: "For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came to be through Jesus Christ." In which whole passage our author understood nothing, as he ought to have. If the evangelist had written in Hebrew, he would have expressed himself otherwise. Now we must see what he intends. "Through Moses it was given" is what the Hebrews would say: *bejad Mosheh*. Which, for the most part, is a sign of a minister through whom the Lord acts. As King Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther, who is said to act *bejad serisim*, by the hand of eunuchs. And so elsewhere, as ibid. ch. 1, v. 12: where the Hellenists simply conceal the manner of speaking, while elsewhere they say *en cheiri* (in hand) for this. The law, therefore, was given by the hand of Moses, as a minister. Just as the commands of kings are said to be in the hand of ministers. And thus the Chaldean speaks in the passage already mentioned: "And queen Vashti refused to enter by the command of the royal word," *bejad ¸abday*, which was "in the hand of his ministers" or nobles; this is, what was in their ministry B or was committed to them. Thus the law of Moses is said to be by his ministry, and given by his hand, as Nehemiah 9:14: "And you showed them your holy Sabbath, and commanded them ceremonies, and gave them the law by the hand of Moses your servant." But grace and truth, which is of the Lord, came to be through Jesus Christ. Wherefore I am the more surprised at the Syrian interpreter, 305 who said *bejad* just as much concerning Jesus Christ as concerning Moses. For although the Hebrews use that word differently as well, yet here it had no place, as the distinction is necessary here. To perform grace and truth, *eleos kai aletheian*, righteousness and truth, grace and truth (which exist in the same sense among the Hellenists) is of the superior, and usually of God, as II Sam. 11, v. 6, concerning exquisite grace and benefit. And the Jews had said before that the whole law has two hinges upon which it turns, *to ton kai to pen*, grace and truth, by which are contained partly the benefits which are conferred freely, partly the truth of the promises, which exhibits them. Which the divine author, with his customary urbanity, transferred from the law to its end, which is Christ. It cannot be said with what grace this was stated, so that [the phrase] "and grace instead of grace" might now also be understood. The Jews recognize grace in the law, and the singular favor of God. And they perpetually have in their mouth that saying: "He has not done thus to every nation, and his judgments he has not manifested to them." Thus Nehemiah [cf. Esdr. 9:13], they act thankfully toward God because he gave "laws of truth and good commandments," that is, "full of grace," as the evangelist speaks. For the Chaldean, the Syrian, and sometimes the Hellenists say *agathosynen* (goodness) for it. This, then, is that grace. But now, he says, *charin anti charitos*, we received grace instead of grace, which Chrysostom interprets most excellently: instead of the Old, the New. But how many things concurrently occur here in the same place, in which he comported himself with too little circumspection, and as befits a theologian? Those words, "For the law was given through Moses," thus the Fathers interpret, as if it had been said, God C gave the law through Moses, or the law was given under God through Moses as mediator; lest in promulgating or carrying the law they should exclude the Angel 306 of the Great Counsel: whose voice, in the promulgation, is said to have shaken the earth, as the Apostle speaks to the Hebrews. Where Chrysostom [says], "The voice of him who then gave the law shook the earth." For he was a fearful *vastator* (destroyer), who spoke on Mount Sinai, not to mention that he gave the law, but that grace and truth are from Christ.
*Ottis themiston* *Biblon holen Genetes dia Moseos opasse lao;* *Kai charis ek Christoio, kai atrekie pele kosmo;* which did not come into the mind of the evangelist. Augustine: "And from where did God become known to Moses? Because the Lord revealed it to his servant." Who is the Lord? Christ himself, who sent the law before through his servant; so that he himself might come with grace and truth. Therefore two parts are attributed to him: D that he both gave the law and unbinds the guilt, as the same Augustine is wont to speak excellently. Which our author did not consider, when he placed a distinction of persons in the giving of the law. Now, that which the ancients urge so much, that *egeneto* (came to be) is said concerning Christ, not *esti* (is), he totally neglected. For he said *pele*, that is, *esti*. But the very great author Theophylact: "And see, how concerning the Old he said, 'It was given' through Moses; for this one was a minister and servant; but concerning the New he did not say 'it was given,' but 'it came to be'; that he might show that it was brought about by our Lord Jesus Christ, as Master, not as a slave, and advanced to the end, and the truth." And he adds: "For the law was given by God (and by the Father with Nonnus) through the intermediary of Moses; grace came to be, it was not given, through Jesus Christ." *Egeneto* is authentic, *edothe* is servile. It is full of authority, he says, *to egeneto*; *edothe* indeed is of a slave, or a minister. You see the extreme security in all things. As to the word of the law which he uses here, some [think] the ceremonial...
truth follows, as Augustine says, which held us as guilty, because it is opposed to the Gospel, or to its grace.
He understood the moral sense, therefore: which he points out eloquently in what follows. Although, nothing prevents our joining both together here: the former on account of truth, the latter on account of grace. Our author, however, plays the part of the layman. For he says the whole book of the law was given through Moses, just as if the evangelist understood the Pentateuch or the Torah. God gave the law, which he contracted at the same time. For he expressed himself first in ten words: for the interpretation was added. See, therefore, how ineptly he speaks here of whole books. He did not say *nomon* (law), but *themiston* (ordinances), since *themis* (divine right) differs not a little from *nomos* (law). Perhaps, saving the age of Nonnus, in which these were not rarely confused, as when the laws of the Emperor Justinian are called *themistes* by the Greek poet, whose verses are prefixed to them. But the grammarians, who in the origin of words—in which the truth of things and ancient learning are contained—toss everything up and down, confuse these: they who have not feared to form *themin* (divine law) from *tithesthai* (to be placed), ridiculously among boys, whereas the Greeks have made *Thamis, Themis* from *tam*, by which integrity in actions is noted (for, as is their habit, they added the termination). As long as this existed on earth, there was no place for laws. After, as the poets, those greatest men, said, it began to be exiled from the earth, there began to be a place for laws. And so, not until *Themis* departed into heaven and left men, were laws enacted. Thus our ancestors, the Protoplasts, and the patriarchs next after them, concerning whose golden age the greatest and most eloquent poet wrote: Of their own accord without law they cultivated faith and righteousness.
Which is *themis*. Once this was removed, a law was necessary. *Themis*, therefore, B which the Latins call *fas* (divine right): while it is safe, no use of law can even exist. And this is what the supreme author Tacitus said, that in a most corrupt republic there are most laws. *Nomos* (law), just as it is an effective word, so is it wonderfully polysemous. *Themis* is so far from being *nomos*, that it is entirely different. Nothing, therefore, had to be changed, so that not without cause the Syrian always, and the Targumist often, have usurped the Greek word. But how many things slipped away from them alike, about which more should have been warned here, if they did not call upon other things? He says the law was handed down not by God, but by the Father: whom he calls not even Father, but *geneta* (begetter). To whom he openly opposes Christ. Nor did he think that Moses, as a slave, was set against Christ, as Lord and King, the former as an administrator, the latter as the author of the law and its end. He changed the word of the law with no judgment: *aletheian* (truth), which is taken in the Hebrew sense, he changed into *atrekeien* (unwavering truth), which denotes nothing of the sort here. In those things which follow, to wit C verse 18, "No one has ever seen God," he had not examined the *akolouthian* (sequence), as he ought. Mention had already been made of Moses: concerning whom they had in their mouth, and still have, "Moses spoke to the Lord mouth to mouth." He shows, therefore, that not even he was admitted to the sight of God or His essence. Granted, this was reserved for Him who was one in essence with the Father. Who both saw God, and, as he adds later, represented and expressed Him. Others, therefore, saw God in this or that way, not as He was, but according to the mode of revelation; no one saw such a One as He was, except He who was not only such as He himself [was], but this very thing. Concerning which sequence, certainly, our author shows the thing itself, he never thought.
And who could have persuaded him that the evangelist in the next verse, when he said, "No one has ever seen God," said, "No one has seen God *kat' opsin* (by sight)," or intended this? For thus he rendered those things: And God the self-originated in opposite sights No one ever scanned. D As if against the Massalians and their opinion, who said they saw the Trinity with their physical eyes. This did not come to the mind of the author: who asserts against the Jews that the divine essence could neither be seen nor, as it is, be known, so that he might again draw the discourse with supreme art to the true character of God, and to the image of His glory, in which He offered Himself to be viewed. This, therefore, he intended: that the divine essence can neither be seen by man, nor, as it is, be known by any reason; and therefore, that it has been neither seen nor known by anyone up to now. And this the ancient theologian meant, according to Suidas: who, following the great Athanasius, interpreted *tēn opsin* (the sight) in this place as *gnōsin* (knowledge). *Opsis*, he says, is *gnōsis*. "And the evangelist [said], 'No one has ever seen God'; instead of 'he has not known clearly'." But, to omit Moses, that Isaiah saw the Lord, both he and our evangelist testify. But both that one, and the others concerning whom they testify this—as the Fathers note not without cause—saw Him who they saw indeed truly, but *en schēmati* (in a figure), and therefore *polutropōs* (in many ways), as the Apostle speaks: wherefore they did not even see Him [as He is]. For from that very fact, that no one has seen God, Chrysostom rightly proved it. "For if they had seen His very nature," he says, "they would not have viewed it differently." If they had seen His essence itself, they would not merely have seen it differently; for it is uniform. But Moses in one way, Isaiah in another, Ezekiel in another, others in other ways, 310 as they themselves confess, and each one often saw the Lord in a different manner; and yet not one of them said that he saw Him with physical eyes. With what, then? "With those of the mind, enlightened by the holy Spirit," as Cyril said concerning Isaiah. But the evangelist said that no one had seen God. But if he intended that no one had seen God with bodily eyes, that is, *kat' opsin*, he said that about which, if I am not mistaken, no one was in doubt: wherefore there was no need for this interpretation here. For, if others, and truly, and as it is, saw God (although not *kat' opsin*), what prerogative would be left to the Only-Begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father (which is His essential mark, blessed above all)? They, therefore, who saw God, saw Him "not as He is, but as it was possible to partake [thereof]," says Nyssenous: "as it was possible for man," says Basil: "as it was possible for them to see [Him]," says Theodoret. Wherefore also Moses, of whom we spoke before, and Isaiah, of whom he treats below, as also the others who testify this concerning themselves, indeed saw God; but they saw Him in their own manner, *kōs dynaton* (as it was possible). Nor does anyone [deny this], so that he might [bring up] that about which he treats here, wherefore also no one [has seen Him], except Him. And this is the cause why the theologians of the Greeks posit various *polutropous* (diverse) species of this vision. One, to be sure, *kata phantasian* (according to imagination), which they also establish as twofold, *hēmerinēn te kai tēn kata nukta* (both daily and nightly); another *kat' opsin*, when something occurs to the eyes for the sake of representation; and thirdly, finally, which they call *kath' hupotupōsin tou hēgemonikou tois mellousin hōs tois parousin antinomēnou* (according to an impression of the governing faculty manifesting itself to things future as present). This occurs when the mind of the prophets, first purged of all human filth, envisions future things as if they were present, as if with [its own] eyes. And thus Isaiah saw the glory of the Savior. And our evangelist saw God in three ways; for he saw His transfiguration 311 on the mount, and viewed the present [Christ] *kata sarka* (according to the flesh): and in the island of Patmos, *hēgemonikō tou pneumatos* (with the governing faculty of the Spirit), as Aretha speaks concerning him, he beheld [Him]. Finally, he lay in the bosom of Him whom he himself places in the bosom of the Father. And yet, such is the love of truth of the divine man, "No one," he says, "has seen God," not with the eyes, as our [author] speaks, but in no way at all, so that no one might claim for himself more than is right, or attribute to the prophets more than is right, or finally detract from the prerogative of the Only-Begotten, and believe the coming of the Messiah to be useless, who as He alone saw God, so He alone *exēgēsato* (made Him known): for this follows. In whose explanation, as in others, our [author] behaved himself. It follows, therefore, "He who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known." [As] in the preceding passage, so in this, every prophecy...
is put forth as the prerogative of the Only-begotten. In which, our [author], having followed others, saw nothing. For what did he mean, when he said,
ἐξηγήσατο μύθῳ
, that is, he "expounded by his tale"? But what else? Was it the will of the Father? Or His mind? Or the doctrine of salvation? But what is this to that vision of God, which he urges so strongly, and of which he speaks so manifestly? And what is this sequence, or connection? "No man hath seen God; the Only-begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared Him." And what if there be no prophet or apostle who does not in some way declare the will of God? What, then, is so great a prerogative here of Him who alone is said to have seen God? Who is joined to Him essentially? For, as Chrysostom rightly interprets, A *τὸ ἐν κόλπῳ*, that is "the [being] in the bosom," *τὸ ἐν φύσει δηλοῖ*, denotes the essence. At the very least, he ought to have brought something from his Greeks for the interpretation of the word. Among whom, *ἐξηγηταί* (exegetes) are called the interpreters of sacred rites and religions. Concerning whom, many have written who have written regarding orators. Hesychius [defines] *Ἐξηγητής* as "he who, concerning sacrifices and omens, interprets," that is, he who explains the will of the gods from victims and tempests: just as, when storms would suddenly arise, if these men gave notice, public assemblies were dissolved. Suidas notes that they were so called who explained laws to the ignorant. The same distinguishes between *ἐξηγεῖσθαι* and *διηγεῖσθαι* with subtlety; and he assigns this latter word to those who taught the unlearned the laws of the country or other things; and who replied to those asking about things of which each was in doubt; things which we shall now leave to them, as well as to Nonnus, for this is a jejune scheme. That the speech is *ἐξηγεῖσθαι* (to interpret/declare), the thing itself proves. Which, if I may hazard any judgment, would be whole and full as follows: *Θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακε· ὁ μονογενὴς Υἱὸς, ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ Πατρὸς, ἐκεῖνος εἶδε τὸν Θεὸν μόνος, καὶ ἐκεῖνος τὸν Θεὸν ἐξηγήσατο*. We have said several times that in this author there is nothing more agreeable than that he alludes most urbanely to the places of the Old Covenant, and especially to the Chaldeans, or to the Targums. Job, a writer truly profound, and sublime in speech, after he had explicitly and magnificently described in chapter xxviii the glory of the Lord, which shines forth especially in the work of creation—which He accomplished with His own wisdom, of which there is mention here too—at length adds: *τότε εἶδεν αὐτήν, ἐξηγήσατο αὐτήν*, that is, after he accomplished these things, he saw his own wisdom; he turned himself to it: he contemplated it, and understood that all things which he had created were good. And then *ἐξηγήσατο*, that is, what the Hellenists call *ἐφανέρωσε*, he presented, he made manifest to the human race. I have no doubt that the Evangelist looked hither. And so, just as he says there that Wisdom saw His own [wisdom], who is the Son, through whom He created all things: so here he says that only the Son has seen the Father. And just as he says there, *ὅτι ἐξηγήσατο*, so here, *ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο*. No man hath seen God. The Son alone saw Him. Being, as He was, always in His bosom, that is, He who is one with Him, God with God. He alone, therefore, as the character of the Father, could *ἐξηγήσασθαι*. But what, then? God, of course, and His essence. But the highest force D is in that word. For *ἐξηγεῖσθαι* is here to relate, and as it were to display what is described. "He who hath seen Me, Philip, hath seen the Father." The character of the Father alone *εἶδε τὸν Θεόν, καὶ ἐχαρακτήριζε τὸν Θεόν*. Even in the flesh. And this is that character of which he spoke before: "And we beheld His glory, as of the Only-begotten from the Father." And it preceded, "And the Word was made flesh." The sense is, therefore: No man hath seen God. The Son saw and expressed Him. But the Hellenists, by the word *ἐξηγεῖσθαι*, expressed the word [original-script column: see facsimile]: which is wonderful and clearly lucid in this sense. But it is worth the effort to consider that whole chapter of Job diligently. For just as he said here: "No man hath seen God," so there, several times: "No one hath seen the wisdom of God, or knows where it is." Thus, verse 12: "Whence then cometh wisdom? and where is the place of understanding?" And he answers: "Man knoweth not the way thereof." And verse 20: "It is hid from the eyes of all living," that is, *τὴν σοφίαν Θεοῦ οὐδεὶς ἑώρακε*. And at length he concludes: *Τότε εἶδεν αὐτήν*, [He declared it]. What is it that the Syrian and Chaldean, and this one in this place, and that one in the place of Job, have used the same word? Unless it be that in the margin of the Syriac the word [original-script column: see facsimile] is annotated: which is the same word which Job also used. Wherefore, the passage is clearly a twin. And in the same way, the royal prophet used the same word: "The heavens declare the glory of God." But if the heavens, from that marvelous and stupendous structure of the sun, moon, and stars, tell of God, and as it were represent Him described, how much more He who is in the bosom of the Father, the very Wisdom of the Father, through whom these things were made? Did not the character Himself of the Father and image, *ἐξηγήσατο τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ*, represent His majesty and virtue among men? And the character is Scripture. For this is the sense of the most holy Evangelist, who, since he speaks so manifestly and effectively concerning the divinity of the Son and His marks, and uses words long since received from the Chaldeans, which he acquired for that use, it is not a wonder that the learned have not had a greater account of them; for it is less a wonder for our [author], who recently prepared himself for these things from pagan rites, and did not examine the sacred phrasing with the diligence he ought: which surely strikes men, and lifts them above themselves. I would that it were persuaded to all, which is known to us, and which we so often warn, that in almost every place the Chaldeans, whose language, or a neighbor to it, he used, our author alluded to or looked back at in the evangelical history. Thus, concerning that noble embassy which was sent here to the Baptist, he speaks in the same way, Comm. 19: "And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent from Jerusalem priests and Levites, that they might ask him, Who art thou?" Which our [author] has rendered after his custom:Ἑβραίων ὅτε λαὸς ἐρημάδος ἐς ῥάχιν ὕλης
Λευίτας προΐαλλε, καὶ ἀγρυπνους ἱερίας.
Although I know that of the Levites, some were priests, whom they properly called Aaronites, and others, who ministered to these, whom they simply called Levites; so that he may say these from the Levites, who were priests among them, were sent to John; yet I think that the Evangelist speaks from Hellenistic usage, and said *Λευίτας καὶ ἱερεῖς* for what we commonly say, "Levite priests." Thus in Joshua 3:3: "When ye see the ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, and the Levite priests bearing it." Where, clearly in the same way, in the Hebrew [original-script column: see facsimile], without the conjunction, of course. Which the Hellenists [rendered]: *Ὅταν ἴδητε τὴν κιβωτὸν τῆς Διαθήκης τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡμῶν, καὶ τοὺς ἱερεῖς καὶ τοὺς Λευΐτας αἴροντας αὐτήν*, in the manner of the Chaldeans: who both here and elsewhere not once, as also the Hellenists, rendered *ἱερεῖς καὶ Λευίτας*. But see how much and what sort of thing ignorance can do. For it not only separated *ἱερῆας* from the Levites, but also attributed the epithet *ἀγρυπνους* (watchful), which belongs to the Pharisees, to them: whom he nevertheless separates from this embassy (concerning which we have said much already) when the Evangelist himself calls them Pharisees: "And they which were sent were of the Pharisees." Since they were only a sect, nothing surely prevented the Levites from being priests. But this is above the comprehension of our [author]. So much so that Origen himself, already long ago, says that a double embassy was instituted, and that the Levites were first sent, and the Pharisees afterwards: which the Evangelist nowhere says. In commate 21, when those who were sent to the Baptist ask: *Ὁ προφήτης εἶ σὺ;* if we know any Greek, *ὁ προφήτης* is with the article. And therefore our [author] learnedly [says]:Μὴ σύ μοι, ὃν καλέουσι, θεηγόρος ἐσσὶ προφήτης,
"Prophet," effectively, whom he thus calls by excellence. So that he is the one of whom it is said, "The Lord will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me," although a little later he suppressed the article. Wrongly, therefore:Οὐ πέλω Ἠλίας, οὐ θέσκελός εἰμι προφήτης.
For he denies that he is a prophet. And yet Zacharias had said this explicitly, "And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest." *Εἰ ἄγγελος*, with which word he uses here, with the Hellenists is *προφήτης*. Thus in Judges 4, "And the angel of the Lord went up to Gilgal," word for word from...the Hebrew, where the Targum has A *prophet*. This is mere thoughtlessness, or rather a lack of attention. The reason, however, that John answers twice (for he denies that he is Christ, and that he is that prophet, although that prophet, who is also called the Word of God by the Chaldean, is undoubtedly Christ Himself) is none other than the error of the Jews who thought differently. For some understood him as Joshua, others as Elijah, and others as Jeremiah. It is not, therefore, that John felt this way, but that, being interrogated twice about the same thing, he answers twice in order to respond to what was asked. But that which he adds concerning this prophet—*Άγγελος ἐσσομένων*—is too watered down and unworthy of a theologian. B As if prophecy consisted entirely in prediction, or as if this were the distinctive mark of him whom Moses treats there, when more is attributed to Moses himself. For he is called the teacher of the people and the deliverer, indeed the mediator between the people and God. Chapter 29 follows: "The next day John sees Jesus." It is a custom of the Jews, in narrating, to use the term "the next day" as if speaking of the past. As when they say, what happened on the next day. This is expressed by the Hellenists as *τῇ ἐπαύριον*, as it is also called here by the most holy John. "And it was," says Moses, "on the next day, and God said," which is to say, On the following day God said. Such is that of Jonah: "And God ordered a worm in the early morning of the next day, and it struck down the gourd, and it withered," chap. iv, 7; and 2 Sam. xi, 12: "And Uriah sat in Jerusalem on that day and on the next day." Jud. xxi: "And it came to pass on the next day, and the people rose up early." The Greeks would say, *τῇ ἐπούσῃ*. Which the Latin epigrammatist used for the sake of ridicule: *Cras te, Cæciliane, non vocavi*, as the learned have long since read. This is *τῇ ἐπαύριον*, *in the following day*. Hence the mode of speaking by which in the Lord’s prayer we ask God for *ἄρτον τὸν ἐπιούσιον*, 317 in the manner of the Syrians, or *τὸν τῆς ἐπαύριον*: which the Greeks translated as *ἐπιούσιον*; for which we have need daily, both tomorrow and today, as the great man Joseph Scaliger and others have acutely noted. Nonnus, as he speaks with the evangelist, performs, in my judgment, with sufficient poetic ambition, just as he said in this passage: *But when the far-darting dawn brought another race*, when he could have said: *on the coming day*.
CHAPTER XVII
The baptism of the Lord is not described or commemorated in order by John the evangelist, but is touched upon by John the Baptist. How *τῇ ἐπαύριον* is to be understood in the series of the history concerning the Baptist. A place most intricate, objected against the orthodox in this narrative by the Alogi. How much Epiphanius labored over it. The Gospel of John, in the second chapter, begins according to the opinion of some. "Crastinum" is used indefinitely by the Hebrews. To what the words of chapter 11, *καὶ ἐκ τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ δύο*, are to be referred. A great difficulty removed by the connection of the history. *Τὸ, καταβαίνειν καὶ μένειν*, concerning the Holy Spirit, how it is said. Whence it was taken. *Ἐπιφέρεσθαι ἐπάνω τῶν ὑδάτων*, so called in the creation. The work of the Holy Spirit and his operation is expressed in various ways, especially by Ezekiel. "The hand of the Lord was upon me." "The Spirit came upon me." "The Spirit of the Lord fell upon me." *Μένειν* concerning the Holy Spirit, and used properly of him. *Μένειν ἐπὶ χερουβεὶμ*. The place of the Baptist, *κἀγὼ οὐκ ᾔδειν αὐτὸν*, explained. The negligence and wonderful thoughtlessness of Nonnus. To what extent the Lord was unknown to the Baptist. The words of the Baptist expressed according to his mind in the manner of the Chaldeans. *Ἀκούειν* instead of *πιστεύειν*. It is one thing to *ἀκούειν* according to Hebrew usage, another according to Greek. The *ἀκριβεία* of Nonnus. An allusion to the name, as it seems, of Simon. *Σιμὼν* concerning a steep place. *Λιμὼν*, C beach, shore. *Πέτρος*, name interpreted. *Μεθερμηνευόμενα* meaning. Certain examples of these from the writings of the Hellenists. The interpretation of Nonnus, *ὅπερ ἑρμηνεύεται*, is not expressed by him with sufficient diligence. *Θωμᾶς ὁ λεγόμενος Δίδυμος*, 318 whom Nonnus inappropriately made binominal. Thomas, his name interpreted as Didymus. The name of Peter. Arguments on the origin and truth of that name among the ancients. *Aratori* is the Hebrew word for Peter. The interpretation of Hesychius. Peter as *ὁ ἐπιλύων* to the same. And whence it is taken. *Pathar, pethar*. Whence Peter comes to some, as it seems. Peter is Latin, according to Elias. *Pereda, peredin*, used by the Hierosolymitan Targumists. Peter is correctly the sign of unshaken faith for Nonnus. *Cepha*, from strength and fortitude. How Nathanael is called a true Israelite. D Priests, Levites, Israel. Bethsaida, the common fatherland of Philip, Simon, and Andrew. That is not correctly expressed by Nonnus. Nathanael, sitting under the fig tree. That is a sign of tranquility and peace. Places among the ancient Hebrews designated by trees. Some examples of this matter. Under the fig tree, according to the opinion of the Hebrews, and in it, the protoplasts had sinned. Wherefore he was recognized by the Lord under the fig tree and called Philip. I have said once and again that no preparation of discourse is to be expected from us in this writing. We like things naked without a flourish of words. Which everywhere in the review of that most noble interpretator, and one so highly commended by great men, halts us in our haste, and in almost every place, beyond our custom, compels us to dwell longer, so that we may perhaps be more prolix elsewhere. In line 32, that place occurs, "That I have seen the Spirit descending," etc. Words of the greatest moment, which not a little, as also certain other things which are said in that chapter, have exercised very great men. The place concerning the baptism of the Lord, which the ancient martyr and bishop Hippolytus called *τὴν διὰ τοῦ βαπτίσματος ἀνάδειξιν*, he did not commemorate, but the evangelist attributes it to the Baptist *δραματικῶς*: nor did he assign to it any order or time in this history (whence the greatest and most serious errors). For he was content to have gathered his testimonies *προοιμίου δίκην*. Which things—some of which he [John] exhibits after the baptism, which, as I said, he leaves out, which is apparent from the series of the narrative—that holy man displayed. Because the Alogi did not observe this, whom Epiphanius refutes at length, they created great trouble for that very great man. For they said that the Lord fasted forty days after baptism, when it is said here, *τῇ ἐπαύριον*, that is, on the day after one testimony John saw Christ coming toward him. And then again, *τῇ ἐπαύριον*, that he called Simon, Philip, and Nathanael. Again, that there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee. In which Tatian also, a most ancient writer, whose *Harmonia* *τὴν διὰ τεσσάρων* antiquity held in place of the Gospels, no less fluctuates: who himself also refers those words, "That I have seen the Spirit," or those which follow shortly after, to the history of the baptism, in such a way that he subjoins the temptation from the Gospel of Matthew, and then subjoins what follows, *Τῇ ἐπαύριον πάλιν εἱστήκει ὁ Ἰωάννης, καὶ ἐκ τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ δύο*, with manifest injury to the time, as the thing itself demonstrates. For forty days intervene. To correct which fault, he who interprets Tatian's *Harmonia* interprets it as the second day. Just as ours, who everywhere performs his task with an ill-timed jar, Item, *But when the light of another*: *But when indeed he brought another race*. Item, *But when a chamber-maid wrote the third of the purple rocks*. As if *τῇ ἐπαύριον* were the same as *τῇ ἄλλῃ ἡμέρᾳ*, or rather, *τῇ ἄλλῃ τινὶ*, indefinitely. Furthermore, how...A much the Hellenists frequently speak in the manner of the Hebrews, I am not unaware; for among them *מחר* often denotes a time near, sometimes far removed, so much so that it is often the same thing as *μετὰ ταῦτα* (after these things) to the Hellenists. As, for example, 320 in Exodus: *If your son asks you after these things* (when in the Hebrew it reads *τῇ ἐπαύριον* [on the morrow] word for word). Yet there is no need for this, if the things said here concerning the baptism are taken not as part of the history, but as the testimony of John (which this evangelist diligently collects here). When some of the ancients understood this, they began the series of the narrative and of the Gospel at the second chapter, and made the beginning of the history from those words, *And on the third day*; but they held the first chapter as a preface.
Nor was there further cause why the beginning of the second chapter should so exercise the learned; for since so often *τῇ ἐπαύριον* [on the morrow] was said there, but B here *τῇ τρίτῃ* [on the third day], they thought it was their business that an exact account of the time should stand. They seek, therefore, whether from whence he had set out from John, or from whence he had come into Galilee (which arrival is nowhere expressed here), or for the third day after the discourse held with Nathanael, the wedding was held in Cana (for others dream up absurdities), when there is no occasion for such difficulty here. And at the end of the first chapter, the way is paved for the second. For in verse 44 it is said: *On the morrow he wished to go forth into Galilee*, meanwhile he calls Philip and Nathanael, meanwhile he betakes himself there. Therefore *τῇ ἐπαύριον ἠθέλησεν ἐξελθεῖν εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν*, and *on the third day the wedding took place in Cana of Galilee*: for thus these things must be joined.
In this, it is strange why Epiphanius should not be consistent with himself, who never wavers. Thus, that difficulty concerning the forty days and the baptism of the Lord, and that other one, *περὶ τῇ ἐπαύριον*, which precedes so often, will be removed. Add that the Hellenists are accustomed to calculate thus: *Today, tomorrow* (which they sometimes call *μετὰ τὴν αὔριον* [the day after tomorrow]), *on the third day*. In Leviticus 19:6, *On whatever day you shall slaughter, 321 and on the morrow, and if it shall be left until the third day*. It fits together well, therefore, that what John says, that he saw the Spirit descending upon the blessed head of Christ, with that, *On the morrow he was again standing there*, the Baptist is simply explaining what happened at the baptism of the Lord, and what was revealed to him in it; and his own words, which speak of the past, C manifestly prove this: *And I did not know him*. When? Before the baptism. But at the baptism, *I saw the Spirit descending*, etc. After this testimony, *On the morrow*, he says, *John was again standing there, and two of his disciples*. Which is, first of all, to be observed by those who weave together historical Harmonies. Again that, *On the morrow he wished to go forth into Galilee*, is perfectly, as I have already said, joined with that, *And on the third day, the wedding happened in Cana of Galilee*, which can be historically connected. And thus, if I am not mistaken, both difficulties, which have somewhat fatigued the ancients and the greatest men of this age, are removed.
It is worth seeing how much this Epiphanius tortures himself. Who, from this passage, in which the hinge of the entire matter and discussion lies, could have brought the whole business to a conclusion. For he argues the mere lack of reason of the Alogi, because the evangelist nowhere reports the baptism conferred upon Christ by the Baptist; but the Baptist commemorates an illustrious sign concerning the descent of the Spirit upon him who was baptizing in that place: *And John testified, saying, that I have seen*. Who, therefore, admits that of Epiphanius, *As John, after saying, The Word became flesh*, says, *And dwelt among us, that is, to have become man; and that he came to John the Baptist at the Jordan, and was baptized by him*. Which indeed nowhere exists: for nowhere is baptism recounted D dogmatically. Epiphanius continues, *John 322 the evangelist testifying, after the return again from the temptation, as John the Baptist saying, that this is he of whom I spoke to you; and again, that I have seen the Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove, and remaining*.
On the descent of the Spirit upon Christ
*He saw the Spirit of God borne along from the etherial bounds, resting with a wise tremor of his wings* upon him. *A figurative likeness of a dove; even unto him*.
But what is it that follows, *and remained upon him*? For Nonnus expressed the words in his own manner, as he had found them; he neither explained the force of the words, nor, which is everywhere manifest, did he understand it. From which passage, as in not a few others, it appears that the evangelist has everywhere looked to the Chaldeans. Furthermore, among all the prophets, who described with care the force, and the invasion, as it were, of the prophetic Spirit, so to speak, no one makes mention of it more often than Ezekiel; who expressed this in more than one way. For sometimes, *The hand of the Lord came upon me*, as in chapter 1, verse 3. Sometimes, *The Spirit came upon me*, as in chapter 11, verse 2. Sometimes, *And the Spirit of the Lord fell upon me*, as in chapter 11, verse 5. In almost all of which places, the Chaldean uses the word *שרא*, which word-for-word is *μένειν* [to remain]. Thus the majesty of God, that is, the glory, *שכינה*, of which we have spoken so much before, or the Spirit himself, is said *μένειν ἐπ᾿ ὄρους* [to remain upon the mountain] at Mount Sinai. Where the Hellenists, which is to be noted, *And the glory of God came down upon the mountain*. The Hebrew is *שכן*, the Chaldean is *שרא* [remained/dwelt], so that you may understand that *to descend* is *to remain*, which the evangelist has joined here, *inhabiting* [κατασκήνωσιν] likewise and *the glory* [δόξαν], which are inculcated so often in this chapter and repeated 324, and which have been neglected until now, are names of the divine majesty and presence; for so too *to remain* [μένειν] upon the cherubim is said of the divine majesty.
Which our author expressed, and most effectively concerning him, who without measure and proportion, full of that Spirit, as he himself speaks, has said. Therefore, he did not say *descending and coming upon him*, but, according to the usage of the Chaldeans, *remaining*. And this either *inhabitation* [μονήν] or *dwelling* [κατασκήνωσιν], the Jews also attribute to their own prophets. Whom the ancient Christians followed, who, as to that Holy Spirit whom we call, even in
the interpretation of the symbol, a prophetic Spirit, they called what is customary among the Chaldeans at the highest level. Justin, in his second apology for the Christians, says that they recognize first the Father, then the Son, and finally the prophetic Spirit; and we honor him after the Word, as we shall demonstrate, having learned [him] to be the Son of the existing God, and holding him in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third rank. You see, therefore, what A it means to "descend" in that place, and what it means to "remain." To the following line is added: *And I knew him not; but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with water,* which place also, among others, has exercised not a little both our own and the ancients. For our [poet], as in many other things, has too imprudently rushed the meaning when he said: By my eyes, I knew him not before.
This, which the theologians of our time have followed, who say, "He did not know him by sight," although I would prefer [an interpretation relating to] name and fame, which pleases some. But by what logic, some say, did he not know him, both [his] kinsman, and him whom Elisabeth and Zacharias had proclaimed? B 325 Let us assume he lived in the desert. But that the inhabitant of the desert was so persistent that he would not want to see him whom his mother Elisabeth and his father Zacharias had called Lord, and salvation, or rather the "horn of salvation"? Or that he was so ignorant of all things that he did not grasp his fame, of whom such great and clear testimonies existed in the family, or finally, that he alone was ignorant of his own duty? For Zacharias had said of him: *And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest. For thou shalt go before the face of his [Lord] to prepare his people.* But if he did not know him before the sign was exhibited from heaven, why did he say before that: *He who comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire*? And why before the sign: *I have more need to be baptized by thee*? All of which things precede the sign. Which, although they refer to the revelation, yet they stick on this point, that he was unknown by sight. But our [poet] can no longer be tolerated, who renders these things paraphrastically thus: "I did not know him by sight; but that he, as one who to all was unknown by face, and had been predicted by no one, might become known to Israel, I came; so that I might baptize an ignorant people who were unlearned in this matter." For this is what those lines mean, unless we C are ignorant of Greek: By my eyes, I knew him not before, but that, Having his visage unknown to all, He might appear to the children of Israel, I came as the precursor of his silent path. These things are incongruous and inconsistent, nor do they hold together in any way. For they are mere contradictions. Which we shall now leave, and [proceed] to the passage itself. The Syrian is good, who used here the verb which the Targumists use. Wherefore because the Chaldeans would say what the Greek version renders as "he was not manifest to me," or "before me," our evangelist said: *I knew him not.* Which is indeed something far different. 326 For he speaks of his office: for the preparation of whom [men] to Christ, he himself had been sent. Therefore he did not know him in this respect, because it had not yet been revealed to him. "I did not know him," he says, "thoroughly and as I ought." Which happened also to the apostles themselves: who, although they were with him daily, yet, as appears from the confession of Peter and others, D *they did not fully know him.* And therefore even Chrysostom, who struggles with this place, yet put it in this way: "He did not say, 'I do not know him,' but, 'I did not know him.'" And so we commonly say, "I did not know him," concerning him whom we did not have fully perceived. Such is that *litotes* of the Theocritean shepherd: "Now I know what love is": not that he did not know before, but that he had not yet fully perceived her cruelty. But the Chaldeans say it far more fully, which is what I want: "He had not yet been revealed to me." By this part, of course, [it is intended] that it be signified that the great man progressed gradually and *katà pros-kophēn*—by way of stumbling/advancement—in the knowledge of the Lord and of his own duty. That, indeed, is certain, that he was the one who was to confer baptism in the Spirit, from the revelation of the Spirit itself, and that sign so illustrious, which he spoke of in his baptism. Augustine, *In the Consensus of the Evangelists*, Book II, chapter 15: "From which it appears, although he already knew him (for he even leaped in his mother's womb when Mary came to Elisabeth), yet he learned something in him which he did not yet know at the descent of the dove. Which was, that he himself was to baptize in the Holy Spirit; by a certain proper and divine power, so that no man who had received baptism from God, even if he should baptize someone, could say that it was his own which he was delivering, or that the Holy Spirit was given by him." And Bede [speaks] very well: "It is certain that John knew the Lord, to whom he was sent to bear witness, whom he kept predicting as the judge of all who was to come, saying: *Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor.* By whom he testified that the Holy Spirit was to be given. *He shall baptize you,* he says, *with the Holy Spirit,* by whom he desired to be washed himself, saying: *I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?* How then does he say: *And I knew him not?* Unless because he recognized more perfectly him whom he had known before, when he was being baptized? Whom he had known as the Savior and judge of the world, he recognized more deeply the power of his majesty, with the Holy Spirit descending upon him." Theophylact: "That he knew him indeed that he was the Christ, but that he himself was the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit, he then learned, when he saw the Spirit descending. Saying therefore, that *I knew him not*, this gives one to understand that he did not know that *this is he* who baptizes in the Holy Spirit; that, however, he is above the many, he knew. Therefore also according to Matthew he was hindering him, as one knowing him to be greater than all. But when the Spirit came down, etc." For he expressly says both. But it is one thing [to say] *that he should be made manifest*, as in that other passage, *and showed forth his glory.* For he intended this, that he should explain his majesty and the prerogative of his baptism. Chrysostom [wrote] well, who significantly said: that the office of John was to "pave the way for the other remaining ones to faith in Christ," so that by his baptism he might prepare the way for all to faith in Christ. It is a wonder how this passage has exercised Erasmus among the rest. Therefore, *I knew him not*, "He was not yet fully known to me, because that which was most important had not yet been revealed to me. For I was ignorant that he was the one who would baptize in the Spirit." Follows verse 37: *And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.* Which our [poet], when he did not follow [the meaning], rendered too weakly: And hearing the sacred word of the truthful man, The two undeviating lights... For *hearing* does not mean to hear in that place, but, when one gives faith to the hearing: which is so customary to the Hebrews, that examples are not needed. Euthymius on this place: "With the ears of the soul, of course; when others had heard with the ears of the body." I confess, and indeed I profess, that I do not find a just reason, with which I myself might satisfy myself, why concerning those words: *Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, Peter*, verse 43, he should so speak concerning the name of Simon: And thou art Simon, worker of the pontus. But I do not ask what Simon had in common with the pontus, who was fishing in a lake (for this error of his is perpetual, that he calls the lake of which he speaks, everywhere, and salty, and sea, and pontus, because the same, the sea for the Hebrews, is spoken of not by nature, but by the custom of language), this I ask, what is common between Simon and a fisherman. For in the word, unless we are mistaken,
A he was skilled in Hebrew, he persuaded others to whatever he wished. And Arator perhaps had found some such thing. But look at the foolishness. Greeks and Latins derive their word from Hebrew, and the Hebrews themselves from Latin: just as Elias, who confesses that it is a Roman word in Thisbi. But even some of the Chaldeans, when they express what rock denotes to the Greeks and Latins, use an Italian word, which flowed from hence. For from *petra* came *pierre* for the Gauls, *pereda* for the Italians, whence *peredin*, *petræ*, to the Hierosolymitan interpreters.
331 But our author comported himself much better when he called C *Petros* a "monument or sign of firm faith." Because it denotes the same as *Cephas*: which Elias says in very many places denotes fortitude, and hence the name was imposed upon the disciple; for this is good, although circumcised. In verse 48, it follows: *Behold truly an Israelite, in whom there is no guile*. In which, if I am not mistaken, an Israelite is understood in such a way that he is usually opposed to the priests and Levites: who, while they claimed all holiness for themselves, and often were nothing less, Israel alone remained. The people themselves, that is—who alone, without pride, kept the remaining praise of innocence and probity. Whence that saying: priests, Levites, Israel. The Lord, weary of the arrogance of the Levites and priests, with whom he always struggled, bestowed this eulogy upon a most simple and most candid man, but one who brought forward no external thing, no legal holiness, and no arrogance nor empty appearance from it, and who claimed nothing for himself: *A true Israelite, in whom there is no guile*. In verse 45 it follows: *Philip was from Bethsaida, from the city of Andrew and Peter*. By which words the evangelist did not mean that this was the fatherland of Philip in which Peter and Andrew lived, but that those three had the same fatherland, or were born from the same city. Wherefore, instead of them: D *Philip had Bethsaida as his fatherland, where Andrew dwelt, where bold Simon lived,* he would have expressed himself better if he had said: *Philip had Bethsaida as his fatherland, together with his disciple Simon and Andrew, in Galilee.* In verse 49 it follows, *Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.* By which words 332 it seems that, while partly doing something else, he alluded to the most sweet and most gentle nature of Nathanael, who, having left Jerusalem, a great city, having left all the clamor of the priests and scribes, having left all popular breath and annoyance, was enjoying his leisure under the fig tree (although undoubtedly intent upon the thoughts of great things). There he received that auspicious message about the Messiah having been found and exhibited: whence also follows that famous and excellent confession. Partly, he seems to have looked toward the very time of the Messiah, which both Isaiah and others had promised in peace. For this sign of peace is posited, as in that passage: *And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon*, 1 Kings iv, 25. Which also happened in the time of that true Solomon. But it is customary for the Hebrews to note the names of places, which are not sufficiently certain or distinct, from trees. Thus Rebecca is said to be buried *under the oak* (ὑπὸ τὴν δρῦν), which to the Hellenists is *under the terebinth* (ὑπὸ τὴν βάλανον). So a little before Jacob hid the idols of foreign gods *under the terebinth that was in Shechem*, Genesis xxxv, 4: of which mention is made again, as some will have it, in the last chapter of Joshua. From which places themselves the name also comes: whence the Valley of the Terebinth, 1 Sam. xvii, 2, and elsewhere not once. Thus God is said to have first appeared to Abraham at "the high oak" (τὴν δρῦν τὴν ὑψηλὴν), as the Hellenists say; or "at the oak of Moreh," as the Hebrews say. For indeed, in such matters the Hellenists use...
A a cochlear as a measure. For the term *metreta* 335, which he puts in its place here, signifies nothing. What, then, will you conclude from it?
CHAPTER XVIII.
Nothing, unless you learn it from the Evangelist. For who would know what *metreta* is here? But if you add the six hydrias, and how many *metretae* each might hold separately—and even mention the *litrae*, yes, and even the ounces—it will be settled. Therefore, for *metrētēn* (μετρητήν), he said *metron* (μέτρον). This we now concede to him, although nothing compels us. At verse eight he deserves indulgence, because he did not keep the word *architriklinos*, as it was not permitted by the numbers. Therefore he said *oinōpēn* (οἰνώπην), which is what the Evangelist calls *architriklinos*. The great Scaliger read B *oinoptēn* (οἰνώπην) in this place, although no one can be ignorant that there were other "wine-servers" (οἰνόπται) than the one the Evangelist describes here, as they had care not so much of the wine and the entire service as of the drinkers, so that the guests might drink on equal terms. Nevertheless, because it concerns the care and inspection of the wine, where that word can be transferred, we also, when we rendered this chapter into Greek, have used the same. I am surprised at the Syrian, who for the "prefect of the feast," does not rather say "prefect of the triclinium," when before our paraphrast, we noted with an obelus that at that place in the second chapter, *Kai etheasametha tēn doxan autou* (Καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ), he changed the word which denotes the essential majesty of God—that is, the mark of essence (*tēn ousias*)—into a mark of dignity C (*tēn axias*). This he admitted again in that most illustrious place which is read in the second chapter. Where those words, by which the Evangelist indicates that first and most divine miracle of the eternal Son of God at the wedding, *Kai ephanerōse tēn doxan autou* (Καὶ ἐφανέρωσε τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ), he expressed thus:
336 *Ἑβραίοις δ' ἀνέφηνεν τὴν ὑψαύχενα τιμήν.*
The passage exists at the eleventh verse: where I would wish it to be noted again, what I said already before: that nothing is so familiar to our author as silently and most urbanely hinting at the Chaldean. In Isaiah, in that illustrious prophecy concerning the Messiah and His advent, it is said: *The germ of Jehovah shall come in magnificence and majesty.* The passage is in the fourth chapter, the second verse. Where the Hellenists say: *In that day God shall shine forth in counsel amid glory upon the earth, to exalt and glorify what is left in Israel.* Where, for the "germ of God," they have "Messiah Jehovah." Elegantly, therefore, the holy author denotes this first miracle with the same word, and adapts this mark, which is always assigned to Jehovah, to the Lord exhibited in the flesh. As if he meant: What Isaiah predicts happened then. *Meta doxis* (Μετὰ δόξης) the Messiah then shone forth, or as he himself speaks: *Ephanerōse tēn doxan autou* (Ἐφανέρωσε τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ). For these things mean the same.
Now, just as this was the majesty of the Messiah, so it was predicted that the arguments of His majesty would be signs and future miracles. Whence Exodus 33, 16: *And whence shall we know, I and thy people, that we have found grace in thy sight, unless thou walk with us, that we may be glorified?* Where the Hellenists have: *And I and thy people shall be glorified above all the nations that are upon the face of the earth.* Which the Chaldean expressed as follows: *Unless thy majesty shall have walked with us, as miracles are done.* In which place *endoxazesthai* (ἐνδοξάζεσθαι) is to be distinguished by miracles from other nations; just as miracles are the indications of the presence and majesty of God. Whence also the word *doxēs* (δόξης) for miracles themselves [is used], chap. 11, 40, of our author: *Did I not say to thee, that if thou believest, thou shalt see the glory of God?* concerning the miracle by which Lazarus was raised from the dead. So that no one should doubt, from the Chaldeans, whose 337 interpretation they were using at the time, he shows that *tēn tou Theou doxan* (τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ δόξαν), the very majesty of God, proven by such an illustrious miracle, was present at the wedding, the master of which he seals with this illustrious mark. This, therefore, he first published, *Kai ephanerōse tēn doxan*
A αὐτοῦ, that is, the majesty of the Messiah, the presence of the Messiah, now so often predicted, he thus confirmed. Now since [*doxa*] is attributed to Him, to whom the tetragrammaton name is attributed, and whom the Jews—before they would betake themselves to food—would celebrate by that name (prayers exist even to this day), and most fittingly attribute to Him, calling Him the Creator of the Vine; the eternal Word of God could surely not have testified more opportunely to His own majesty and presence than if He were to testify, amidst the banquet, to Jehovah—the true Vine, whom they invoked at the table—as the Creator, whom in the banquet they named [...] [*Piri ha-Gefen*], the Creator of the Fruit. For since He Himself was present in person, he thus *ephanerōse tēn doxan autou*, that is, He made His majesty and the presence of such a one manifest to all at this wedding. Away, therefore, with that *hypsauchēna timēn*, which has no place here. Better are the theologians of the Greeks, who, although little skilled in Hebraisms, unless they had perhaps imbibed something from Origen and his interpretations, have interpreted it as [*parousian*]. Damascenus, a man of extensive erudition, and who had surveyed almost all others, in his *De orthodoxa fide* says: "For we know that the Lord sanctified the wedding by His *parousia*." Therefore *tēn parousian autou* is His divinity, to which the masters have given a place, [*doxē*], above the tenth sphere, as Kimchi notes from Aben Ezra on the eighth Psalm, which they call [...], the throne of glory. Nor is anything in the writings of the same Rabbi so frequent as that saying about Zion [...], that is, "that there the glory shall tabernacle." He shows, therefore, that he is the one to whom the *kataskēnōsis* and glory would belong, as above: "And he tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory," of which [we spoke] before. These things belong uniquely to Jehovah, which is, as the Masora says, the memorial of God. Observe now that interpretation, B [*Hebraiois d' anephēnen tēn hypsauchēna timēn*]. It follows, in verse 18: [*Apekrithēsan oun hoi Ioudaioi kai eipon autō*]; "The Jews answered and said to him," although the Lord had said nothing to the Jews. For it had preceded, "And he said to those who sold the doves." Therefore *to apokrinesthai* according to Hellenistic usage, which they have from the Hebrews and Chaldeans, is nothing else than "to speak." Thus in Deuteronomy xxvi, 4: "And the priest shall take the basket from thy hands, and shall place it before the altar, of Jehovah, thy God. And answering he shall say," that is, he shall say [simply] speaking. Such is that passage in Daniel iii, 13: "And they were brought before the king, and the king answered," although no one had spoken to them. And thus not once [only] do Daniel and Job, who thus use [...], occur. Thus King Balthasar; thus the queen in chapter vi is said to "answer" when she speaks. What follows, and which the evangelist records as being said by the Jews, "What sign showest thou to us that thou doest these things?" regarding which the interpreters contend, is a strict and Hebraic mode of speaking. For it should be understood as [...], that is, "that thou art he who doest these things: that thou art the Messiah, who doest these things." By now thou hast claimed authority for thyself, and thou hast not yet proven that this is owed to you. [*Hoti sy ei ho tauta poiōn*]; "That thou who hast claimed this authority for thyself, art the Son of God: or, that promised Messiah." A very similar place is Judges vi, 19, where Gideon, God speaking, says: "And thou shalt do for me a sign, that thou art he who speaks with me." Where in the Hebrew there is the same defect, [...]. That thou art Jehovah, who speakest with me. Therefore, [*hoti tauta poiēis*] is: "that thou art he who doest these things," C 339 [that thou art] the Messiah who doest these things. The Attics would say: "What confidence having [this] authority, do you happen to be doing this?" Which our author interprets not badly: [*Hotti sy tauta telessas*]. Except that it is obscure enough, and perhaps does not depart from that brevity which the paraphrast ought to have illustrated. Nor were they doubting the fact, which they saw before their eyes, but they were seeking a sign. For what reason? Lest they doubt the authority of him who was claiming these things for himself. So that it might be established that he is the one whom he himself presented as being, and whom they were expecting. For it was not of a simple prophet...
D to claim for himself to purge the house of God, and to claim authority for himself. Whence not without cause some among the ancients call this the greatest miracle, that, unsupported by any authority, as it seemed, he claimed for himself divine authority with prosperous success. Now what the evangelist said, [*Ti sēmeion deiknyeis*]; but ours, [*Poia par' Hebraiois eterotropa sēmata deixeis*]; understood a sign, such as the incredulous were seeking, or rather were demanding. Such as the Hebrews call [...], the Chaldeans [...], the Hellenists *peirasmon*. Whence that [passage] in Deuteronomy vi, 19: "The *peirasmon*, the great [ones], which thine eyes have seen; those great signs and wonders." Therefore to *peirazein* is, for the confirming of faith, which is accustomed to be *proskairos* in these cases, to demand some portent or miracle: the true character of which is here. Such is that in Exodus vii, 9, almost word for word, which is read here: "And if Pharaoh shall speak unto you, saying: Give us a sign or a wonder," which they demanded as a pass in war. And the Queen of Sheba is said to have come to Solomon [*tou peirasai auton en ainigmasi*]. It follows in our evangelist: "The Jews therefore said: Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou raise it up in three days?" where there is a great piece of *parhermēneia* by our interpreter and a very confident one. For he so accepts the passage as if the former temple were being discussed here, while even children understand that the latter is in question. For he says that Solomon was forty-six years in building the temple, while not more than seven are set by the Holy Scriptures, 1 Reg. vi, 38: which is a round number, although some set seven years and six months. Those who set twenty years conjoin the time of the temple and the palaces: which is called the "house of the king and the house of the forest of Lebanon." Chrysostom, Theophylactus, Euthymius, and others begin the calculation in this way. Among whom there is no one who refers these things to Solomon or the structure of the former temple. Chrysostom: "They said forty years, indicating the latter building: for the former was finished in twenty years." Theophylactus: "It must be known that, when the temple was built by Solomon at the first, in twenty years everything was finished without defect; but later, after the captivity, the Hebrews having received authority to build it, they began to build in the reign of Cyrus, then, being hindered by those who envied them, they extended the building until the reign of Artaxerxes. Under him, having enjoyed all freedom, they were able with great zeal to complete it." Euthymius: The former structure was indeed completed in twenty years by Solomon: but the latter in forty-six by Zorobabel. And then he renders an account of the years, from Cyrus to Darius Hystaspis, by whom Zorobabel was sent. But Bede, "What, however," he says, "the temple, built in forty and six years, signifies, not the first, but the second building of it. For Solomon, the first, finished the temple in the greatest peace of his kingdom, with a work of six years, most fitting. Which, having been destroyed by the Chaldeans, etc." An illustrious anachronism, therefore. What [of the fact] that it is added, [*ho naos houtos*], lest anyone should doubt. To verse 22 when he said:
341
Ἀλλ' ὅτε δὴ μετὰ κόλπον ἀναστήτοιο
[ῥέθρου Νόστιμος ἐξ ἀΐδιο παλινζώῳ τινὶ πότμῳ, Ἀρχαίην παλίνορσον ἐὴν ἀνεδήσατο τιμήν, he says more than the evangelist intended: who deals with the resurrection, not with the ascension, which could be enough by itself for proving the deity. Nor does Chrysostom without cause, to prove this, bring forward that most noble passage: "Who was determined Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ." Since the evangelist soon says, "Many believed in his name," I know indeed by the Fathers, perhaps on account of what follows, that to those believing is attributed *pistin proskairon* and *proskairon thermotēta*, as elsewhere that word is taken by the sacred author.A This, then, on beholding, the disciples remembered,
[It was written] on holy tablets long ago, [that] zeal for Thy house was consuming me within.
But the people of the Jews, being angered, spoke: "By what signs and works have You shown us that You are he, and that the Father is your immortal [Father]?" 344 He, answering, said again: "Destroy this temple, if you wish, and if it is agreeable to you, and I in three days will bring it to completion a second time." But they, speaking one after another, [said]: "In forty and six years, the illustrious sons of Judah barely finished it, and you will raise it up again in three days?" But the Sovereign spoke of his own body; which the disciples clearly understood when, after the third light, Christ returned from the dead to the light. And then they believed the wondrous pages and the Word that the glorious Son of God spoke.While he was passing through the sacred city by himself, B many believed in his name, seeing with their eyes many deeds of wonder. But he, for his part, did not trust his own intent to any man; for he knew all, and lacked not at all any other testimony to learn the human mind—for he alone knows clearly what is in the minds of anyone. C
Chapter XIX.
Gloomy Pharisees, and whether correctly. Pharisaic gloom and affectation. Nonnus's lack of discernment. Being born regarding regeneration. Regeneration is a creature, a re-creation if "the birth from above from God" is spoken. An interpretation of a most noble passage: *And no man hath ascended into heaven, but he that came down from heaven.* A perfunctory and inept interpretation by Nonnus. "Heaven" used for "God" or divine things according to the custom of the Syrians. *Has ascended* used according to the custom of the Syrians. D *Morphe* [form] of the immortal [God]. *Morphe* for essence. And whether ancient theologians used that word in that way: about which there is much dispute. Paul's passage, *Who, being in the *morphe* [form] of God, is considered. *Morphe* of God, likeness of a man, equality of God, fashion of a man, are equivalent. To be equal to God, and its efficacy. *Morphe*, not an external shape, but the "being of someone"—the form of the gods in Ovid; the form of wolves in Maro. To be likened in the Hellenists from the usage of the Hebrews, the same as "to be." It is proven by several passages. Hebrew words which correspond to "to be likened" and "to be made like." To be made like, to be equaled. *Morphe* taken by some as "person." It is shown by many that the ancients used this word in the meaning of essence. *Morphe* and figure are opposite. Augustine opposes figure and species. *To lift up the serpent*, a Syriac word which he expressed. That from which the serpent was suspended, *crux* [cross] in Latin, and *stauròs* [cross] in Greek, also a sign, also a type of the cross, a standard. Interpretation of that passage: *He who believes not is judged.* The sin that is "with a high hand" in Latin, in the Hellenists "with a hand of pride." To sin with open head. The same sin called blasphemy. Nonnus's error and misinterpretation. *Hamartia* [sin], that which remains. *Katharismos*, *katharmos*, *katharma*, and the difference between them. The *katharismoi* [purifications] of the Jews. The *hagnismos* [cleansing], which was followed by the *katharismos*, which is the same as the *baptismos* [baptism], after the *katharmos*. Interpretation of that passage: *Behold the Lamb of God.* Taken from the excellent passage of Photius. Lamb, an expiatory sacrifice. The young bull of sin, the *katharismos*, and soon called *exilismos* [expiation], which two things the ancients distinguished. *Katharismos* and *katharmos* were once distinguished; sometimes they were confused. *Katharmos* or *kathairein* [to cleanse] regarding baptism, what use it had among the Jews, and the baptism accustomed to be applied. The difference between the baptism of the Jews and of John the Baptist; and hence the controversy arose between the Jews and his disciples. Interpretation of that passage: *He that hath the bride is the bridegroom.* The custom of the Jews in weddings. *He that stands*, the friend of the bridegroom, who stands at the *chuppah*. The *chuppah* of the Jews, its use in weddings. Sarah under the *chuppah*, and what the teachers [say] about her. [Fragment of the Paraphrasis]not sufficiently correct in the place where it occurs, as an example for Nonnus. *Mastiches* [lashes] for the punishments inflicted on account of sins, by the ancient theologians, and whether it is correct. The passage which Nonnus expressed when he said: *to lash the senseless wrath of God*.
In that which occurs at the beginning of the third chapter, B *But there was a certain sacred blood of the Pharisaic wandering-goats*, most have supposed that this word *gooplanéon*, which is nothing, was used for the Pharisees. Among them is also the great Scaliger. Nor do I dissent, unless you refer it to *skuthropos* [sad-faced], which is mentioned in Matthew vi, 16, especially since the Syrian renders *skuthropos*, "darkened," in that place; 346 and indeed with that habit which the Hebrews attribute to the worshippers of idols. The Pharisees, who are called hypocrites there, and used to be in *asceticisms and fastings*, commonly used such garments in mourning. By this appearance, perhaps, since they wandered about and walked around for show, they could be called *gooplanéis* [earth-wandering/deceit-wanderers]; for it is known in what words they usually delight. Otherwise, I do not object to *gooplanéon* being read. In the third verse of the same chapter, in that divine dissertation of the Lord with Nicodemus, it is said among other things, *Unless one is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God*. In expressing which, when our author used the word *tiktisthai* [to be born], he spoke no less crudely than Nicodemus responds, who says: *Can he enter into his mother's womb a second time and be born?* Nay, if the Lord had spoken in this way, he would have himself given Nicodemus the opportunity to respond in this manner. For since it is a question of a new generation, which the Greeks commonly call regeneration, the Greek theologians even *ktisma* [creature], and *anaktisin* [re-creation], or *anagennēsin* [regeneration], the Lord here says *anōthen gennēsin* [birth from above], while he [Nicodemus] posits a new birth with those words: C *Unless a mortal man were born a second time through the goads of a child-bearing labor, he cannot have an eternal beginning for this court of the ether.* Therefore, he was not thinking that it was the question of regeneration now, which Nicodemus drags toward childbirth from a woman. To whose ignorance he not only assents in this way, but also leads, as we have already said. In the thirteenth verse it follows, *And no one has ascended into heaven, but he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven*. Which place he took up negligently, just as it has not a little exercised both our people and the ancients. For both the prophets ascended into heaven in their own way, and the Jews pronounce this daily in their confessions concerning Elijah, 347 and the righteous are said to have ascended into heaven, and it is said of David in Acts ii, 34.
Our author, in his own way, rather clumsily dissolves this knot when he says: *anipnēmiou poda pallon*, which is, *no one ever arrived in heaven with feet*. As if it were a question of the ascension of the body, or as if it even applied to Christ Himself, who had never ascended into heaven in body when he said this. And what is this discourse? No other man ever trod heaven with feet, except this divine one (for so he delights to speak), who, when he joined with the flesh as with the divine form, descended from heaven: the only Son of Man, etc. For who says, no one ascended into heaven with feet, except this one, does he not say this, that only the one of whom he speaks ascended into heaven with feet? Let the words be seen, which are thus: D *But no other mortal, ever moving a wind-borne foot, trod the unreachable rim of the heavenly circles, except this divine one; who, joining his immortal form from heaven to unaccustomed flesh, the only Son of Man; who, holding the paternal soil in the starry house, dwells in the eternal ether.*
For in *anabebēken* [he has ascended], both he and other learned men torture themselves. As if the Hellenists rarely used the past tense after the manner of the Hebrews. Furthermore, he was very unconcerned about the Syriasms, nor did he admit into his mind the ambiguity of the word *ouranou* [heaven], any more than that of *anabebēken*. For the *N'*, the *Tô* of the Syrians, God, or divine things, no beginner surely is ignorant of, who has even glanced at these studies. Now *anabainein* [to ascend], in mind (or rather, as the Greeks say, *tē dianoiai* [in the intellect], or the Hellenists *tous logismous* [the thoughts] or *dialogismous* [reasonings]), is often referred back to the Chaldeans and Syrians, as in Daniel ii, 29, *Thy reasonings 348 ascended upon thy bed*, although the learned note the peculiar ellipsis of the language there, so that the sense is: And do not doubt, perhaps, that he understands the divine things, O Nicodemus, who is now speaking with thee: know that no one penetrates to God or divine things, except him who has now descended from heaven, truly, and as it is proper; for he expressed the *rê* [thought]. Therefore, away with that *anipnēmiou poda pallōn*. Which, since it is placed in the former clause, must be continued in the latter, as he said. Nor did the evangelist say, *no other man*, but *no one*. *And no one has ascended into heaven.* Why? Because the *Son of Man*, as Cyril rightly said, the Word of God descensus from heaven, not concerning the flesh, but is to be accepted of the whole, he says the Son of Man descended, lest after he has become incarnate, he be divided into two persons. But also for the sake of Apollinaris and others, it was necessary to speak circumspectly here. Concerning which the ancients noted at that place. And these things cohere excellently: If you do not understand common things, and those taken from the custom of men and the earth, when I deal with them with you, how, if I propose arduous and truly divine things to you, will you grasp them? I can affirm to you that no one, O Nicodemus, penetrates to those things which are divine and transcend man, except him who descended from heaven. For the *kai* [and] is *bebaiōtikon* [confirmatory]. Now, that he usurped that *morphēn* [form], concerning the divine nature, when he said: *Except this divine one, who, joining his immortal form from heaven to unaccustomed flesh*, he did it in his customary way. And thus above, chapter i, verse 14: *Yoking the divine, human-seeming consort form—* And chapter xiv, 10: *Do you not yet have faith that I am the consort of the Father, and that the Generator accompanies me, joined with one form?* And elsewhere perhaps not once. In which places he clearly 349 said *morphēn* [form] for *tēn ousian* [the essence].
Concerning the use and progress of which word I once consulted a most learned theologian: who, when he thought it was a word full of danger, and, as the Greeks better say, *parakekindunēmenēn* [risky], in theology, I, in my own way, thought more diligently about it. For I think it is most safe in these matters to betake oneself to antiquity: which those who neglect, or have little regard for, have little authority among us. Therefore, something must be said of it. It is certain that no place is more often cited than that most noble one, *Who, existing in the form of God, did not account it a robbery to be equal to God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man*. To the Philippians ii, 6. In which place I see no reason why heretics place a foundation of *kakodoxiōn* [evil-doings/heresies] and perversions. The Apostle, out of the use of language which he had in mind, positioned synonyms. Which are, *form of God, likeness of men, equality of God, and fashion of a man*. Now, however, lest anyone doubt what *morphē theou* [form of God] is, he expressed it clearly when he adds, *did not account it a robbery to be equal to God*, which is said so effectively that there is no language that can sufficiently represent its force. For he did not say *ison Theō* [equal to God], but *isa* [equals/equally], so that he might manifestly represent the essential equality. Indeed, *morphē* is *ousia* [essence]. Which is *to einai ti* [to be something], or *to einai tinos* [to be of something]. In which way the Latins also not rarely speak. Thus the *forms* of the gods are the gods. As when Ovid, in his illustrious work (which elsewhere St. Jerome calls the books of Transformations), when he deals with the division of the individual things, either of places or of the elements after creation, he called the gods themselves *forms*.
"Lest any region be bereft of its animals, 350 The stars hold the heavenly realm, and the forms of the gods: Thence the waters were yielded to be inhabited by shining fish: The earth received the wild beasts, the movable air the birds." He assigns the heaven or the heavenly realm to the forms of the gods no differently than he assigns the water to fish, the land to wild beasts, and the air to birds. For he could have said "the forms of birds and of wild beasts," and no one would have doubted what he meant. Thus, the "forms of the wolves" in Maro are wolves. Book VII of the Aeneid: "Hence may be heard the groans and the rage of lions, Resenting their chains, and moaning in the late night, And bristling swine, and bears in their stalls Raging, and the forms of great wolves howling." Here you have swine, bears, lions, and the "forms of wolves." For those who take this otherwise, on account of Circe, are quibbling, however great men they may be. Thus *homoiousthai* in Hebrew is *einai*, as in that passage of Isaiah (1:19): "And if the Lord of Sabaoth had not left us a seed, we would have been made as Sodom, and we would have been likened to Gomorrah." Where *homoiousthai* like Gomorrah is "to be as Gomorrah"; for the Hebrews heap up synonyms. Such is, "Man is likened unto vanity" (Ps. CXLIV, 4), which is Psalm XXXIX, 6: "Surely all things are vanity, every man living." Nor is it otherwise in Hebrew, where you have the word. When the Syrian metaphrast understood this, he expressed *morphe* and *homoioma* with the same word, namely [Syriac]. As if he had found in the Greek: "He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man." What of the fact that *homoiousthai* for the Hellenists is the same as *exisousthai* (to be made equal)? Whence the incomparable glosses of Hesychius, which for the most part—as we have often observed in our emendations to that author—interpret Hellenistic words, *homoiousthai*, as *exisousthai*.
351 And furthermore, he interprets *homoios* as "standing in the same," so that it is not strange that the Arians have long deceived people under that scheme. What of the fact that *homoioma*, elsewhere among the Hebrews, is called God himself by the opinion of the highest interpreters? Indeed, in Psalm XVI, at the last verse, where our modern Hellenists read, "I shall be satisfied when thy glory appears," the holy language uses the word *homoiosis*, so that the majesty of God and *homoiosis* are the same. Nor did the ancient Hellenists translate that place any differently. Aquila: "In the being awakened of thy likeness"; and another: "awakening of thy likeness." Where, learnedly, in the Nebi edition it is expounded in the margin as "in thy awakening thyself," when you yourself shall awaken. Therefore, *homoiosis* is *Theos*, God himself. Which the Seniors intended, when they translated here *doxa*, which is the essential majesty of God, or the divinity itself, as we showed above with many proofs. And how could the Lord and Prince of eternity have "emptied himself" unless he were more than man? And therefore the Apostle used *morphe*, *homoioma*, and *schema* concerning man, not without cause; which last terms sound to the Hellenists like something neglected and despised; and in this sense, if I am not mistaken, it is used in the Old Covenant. Which perhaps was the reason why the Syrian, because he did not have a matching word at hand to signify it, used a Greek word. From which the force and efficacy of the individual words in this place appear; which, as they demonstrate a true man, so they demonstrate God *kat' isoteta* (by equality). For if there is something imaginary in God, there will also be in man. And thus it will be neither, but instead will be the *Icelus* or *Morpheus* of the poets, he who is truly both, and of whom the ancient Church of the Greeks sang:
In equality with the Father and God we glorify Him.
352 But let us come to the usage, with which we began, of *morphe* in the ancient Church. When the most holy Fathers often adduced this passage, first they opposed *morphe Theou* and *morphe doulou* to one another, which was safest, because they spoke with Scripture. Nor is there anyone who more frequently speaks so from that passage than Leo the Great, a man highly practiced in the controversies of that age. Whose object Photius notes, because he used the word *morphe* absolutely for *ousia* (substance), although some took it for a person, saying that two Persons were posited by him. For he said, "Two persons," and proclaimed the energies separately. Idem. But others again attack the words of the man, in which he says, "For it works in each form according to the communion of the other." Which words, since Ephraimus himself also had used [them], he defends both the word and the mind of Leo. Which is surely wonderful, since so many before Leo had spoken in this way. And after him no one abstained from this word. And therefore Photius confirms it with examples. Who, among other things, [says]: "But that *morphe* is not understood as subsistence or person, but as substance, Basil, the bright herald of the Church, clearly teaches in his discourse against Eunomius." The same from Basil: "The 'in *morphe*' is 'in the substance of God'; for the *morphe* of God is not one thing and the substance another, lest He be composite." And from Nyssenus against Eunomius: "What *morphe* is struck in the passion, and what *morphe* is glorified from eternity?" But no one, as I was saying, later abstained from that word. For Cyril [does so] everywhere. Elsewhere: "Therefore he is not a mere man according to us, but rather God in human *morphe*." Idem: In Questions and Answers, "So as to be substance, nature, *morphe*, one and the same thing." Book 13, On the Trinity: "Accordingly, we dogmatize one *morphe* of the Godhead." And elsewhere in the same book not once. And Anastasius says, 353 "Substance, nature, *morphe* to be one and the same thing." Idem, "Nature, and substance, and *morphe* are one and the same thing." Nor does Damascenus speak otherwise. Who speaks thus several times in the book On the Orthodox Faith, and in the hymn on Theogony: "God mingled in human *morphe*." But also [writing] to Michael Comnenus, Psellus: "Of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one principle, one nature, one *morphe*, one substance and power." Idem on the SS. Fathers: "The holy Fathers therefore assign to the same thing the name of substance, and nature, and *morphe*." *Morphe* is therefore used of both natures, as the truth of the nature of both, as Leo speaks in the Epistle to Flavian: "For," he says, "speaking emptily, he would say the Word was made flesh so that Christ, born from the Virgin's womb, would have the *morphe* of man and not have the truth of the maternal body." To whom the ancients, which may seem wonderful, oppose *figura* (form), just as St. Augustine opposed *figura* and *species*. If therefore (he says to this very evangelist) the *figura* of the sea was so availing, what will the *species* of baptism avail? Just as a little later [he opposes] *figura* and truth. If what was done in *figura* led the people through the passage to manna, what will Christ exhibit in the truth of baptism, with his people passed through [it]? Clearly as the Greek theologians, *typon kai aletheian*. When the evangelist in the same truly heavenly dissertation to Nicodemus said, "And as Moses lifted up the serpent," he was unaware of what that "lifting up" meant. Following his custom, therefore, he preserved the word. But he expressed the Syriac *[Syriac]*—*hypsoun* (to lift up) and *stauroun* (to crucify)—which signifies both, and *hypsoun* and *stauroun*. And [Syriac] *stauros*. Whence the ancients wish this serpent to have been affixed to a cross. And Chrysostom wrote a Homily concerning the serpent according to Moses, which he crucified in the desert. And so the thing from which the serpent was suspended, some called *semeion*, 354 others *stauron*, others the *typos* of the cross. As Justin [in] Apologia 2: "And according to the inspiration and power called [to be] from God, Moses took bronze and made a *typos* of the cross." Also a standard. Our writer is wonderfully liberal (who is usually so restricted and tenacious, that he generally preserves both the words and the Hellenistic modes of speaking, not without no small fraud to the reader) in the interpretation of that passage which follows in verse 18: "He that believeth not is condemned already." For to keep it from being taken [merely] as "to hold," was his great care. And surely that seems to be the mind of the evangelist, that, as the Greek theologians speak...
A they were being washed in baptisms; and henceforth, the punishment for sins that lead to death is death. The sin, of which the evangelist speaks, is what the Hellenists call *the [sin] in hand*, pride, or more truly "a high hand," or "with a high hand," as the Latin interpreter says, because they contrast this sin with that of one who has erred unintentionally. For so they speak of one who has sinned through ignorance: from whom he differs much who sins with an elated mind, or, as the Hebrews rightly put it, through impudence, just as the Chaldeans do, and sins petulantly. For he who sins in this way is said to sin with head uncovered, clearly, as the Greeks would say, "to sin with head bare." Indeed, the Hellenists call this sin *blasphemy*, which our poet, not well understanding, expressed thus:
*But if a man,* *Casting a straying eye upon the form of a woman,* *Dares to lift up his god-speaking chin,* *That man is judged.*
For he thought *blasphemy* was always taken by them as it is by his own Greeks. Whereas *to blaspheme* for them is what it is for the Hebrews: to sin arrogantly, presumptuously, and with uncovered head. Such as Luke in the Acts of the Apostles 355 eruditely said to be "to oppose God." Which the Truth Itself attributes to the Jews not once. Thus, he who blesses an idol is said to "blaspheme" in Isaiah LXIII, 3. Not because he curses God, as our poet thought, but because he plainly and presumptuously falls away from Him. And hence that [saying] from the shrine of divinity: *If you were blind, you would have no sin.* For it follows, *But now you say, "We see": therefore your sin remains.*
It remains, then, that the *sin*, which he now says *remains*, is that which is at other times called *to death*. Well, therefore, Procopius, who explains *the [sin] in hand*, pride, in no. 15, 30, as *sin unto death*. Nonnus, when he interpreted this place, had fallen into a scholion which would interpret this passage in a Hellenistic or similar manner: *But he who has turned B his eyes to the flesh, and has blasphemed, is already judged*, which the Greeks would say as: *But he who has fallen into sin intentionally, and opposing God, is already condemned.* You see how great is the difference between the two languages, which interpreters in this age confuse and treat as one. A moment later, in verse 25, it follows: *There arose therefore a questioning on the part of the disciples of John with the Jews about purification.* It might have seemed wonderful that he joins the *katharmos* [purification] with the *katharismos* [purification], when he interprets the passage thus:
*And there was a certain strife C about purification* *Among the disciples of John, followers of mysteries.*
Certainly a *katharma* is a piacular offering, or a piacular victim, which is also a *katharmos*. Whence that passage, not yet sufficiently understood, if I may judge, *Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world*, which is read at the beginning of this evangelist's work. For the Lamb is the *katharmos*. From which the *katharismos*—which is the subject here, and which was performed by the washing away of filth—is far different. Of which there were very many species in use among the Jews. Another thing apart from them is 356 the *hagnismos* [purification/consecration]. Thus the Jews, when they had defiled themselves, first employed an *hagnismos* by custom; in place of which John instituted a repentance. But that *katharismos* followed it, which the Hellenists also called *baptism*, to which the ancient Christians owe almost all their names, one and all. After this *katharmos* or *katharma* (which was the victim for sin), it was offered. Whence the Greeks drew this custom, and the Hellenists the name from them. John, therefore (for this passage, as far as I can judge, is little understood) after the *hagnismos*, after the *katharismos*—which he had instituted and practiced at the same time—when he looked upon the Lord, says that there is now no need for any other *katharmos* according to the custom: because the Lamb of God was present, who once for all would expiate the sin of the whole world. Eulogius in the Excerpts of Photius: *For the race of the Hebrews, when they sinned, were first purified; then they offered sacrifices for the things in which they had sinned*: from which the Apostle leads them away, and brings upon them a terrible threat. *For it was necessary that the true sacrifice, once offered at the end of the age for sins, that is, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, having been slaughtered, nothing more should be left, but that the many D and typical sacrifices offered for sins should cease.* For that lamb was an *expiatory sacrifice*. Wherefore [it should be] *katharmos*, not, as it has here, *katharismos*. Which is the true interpretation of that passage, this is: the people of the Hebrews, to be sure, were accustomed to be purified first, then to be washed by ablution, or baptism, when they sinned. Then they offered victims for the sin. From which, that the Apostle might turn them away, he even terrifies them with vehement threats. For it was necessary that in the consummation of the age, the true victim having been offered once for all for sins, nothing at all should remain over, but that he should impose an end to the 357 victims once for all on those many and figurative ones that were offered for sin.
Sacred critics note that that young animal which is called the sin-offering, was first called *katharismos* by the Hellenists, which, when Aquila and Theodotion thought it had been wrongly rendered, they themselves [used] *exilasmou* [propitiation], and St. Jerome used the word *expiationis*. For in the text is the *expiationis* [expiation]. Certainly on the tenth day of September, which is called by the same name by the Jews, no one was *purified*, nor did anyone wash, nor did anyone anoint; but by a victim the *expiation* was made by the priest. Wherefore, no one did anything like it; truly the *katharmos* by the high priest, as I have said, seemed that it could have been wrongly and confusedly called *katharismos* and *katharmos*. Yet there are not wanting ancients, and indeed men of great stature, whose authority can be defended here. And among them, the greatest, Chrysostom, in his Catechetical Oration, who says, *If you wish, let us first discuss the nomenclature of the mystical purification.* On the other hand, the Greek Menologia, so that they might use the term *katharsis* [purification] for the mystery of baptism, sometimes said the thing itself, *katharsin*, not *katharismon*. As, behold, *Again Jesus, my [Lord], is purified in the Jordan, or rather, He purifies our sins.* A little later, *Why do you hinder the purification of the many?* If anyone, however, should seek the cause of that questioning, which the evangelist mentions here, it must also be sought from the rites of the Jews. The Jews baptized often and throughout their whole life. But also by baptizing, they thought that lighter offenses—*things*, says Justin, a most ancient author, *which neither contributed to the injury of the policy, nor were they harmful to the life of men*—that is, which neither brought disgrace upon the republic nor harmed the common life of men—could be removed. Thus they had various baptisms, or ablutions and *katharismous* [purifications]. But most holy John, as Josephus notes, exhorted first to true piety, and to the amendment of life, and to justice; but he baptized only those who had first purified their soul along with their body, and then at last: not for the excuse of certain sins, as the Jews, but he conferred baptism for repentance and true amendment of life, that is, to take away I know not what crimes or stains. The Jews, therefore, were dealing with the disciples of this most holy and supreme man, concerning the end of his [baptism], which John had brought in, [different] from the old [usage]. This, therefore, is that *questioning* [syzetesis], namely, about the old use and this new one. Euthymius well interprets *zetesin* as "disputation," and *katharismon* as "baptism." But our poet did not understand the passage, which is in all ways most sweet and of truly wondrous elegance. I mean the one which exists in the twenty-ninth verse: *He who has the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices with joy because of the voice of the bridegroom: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.* In which *hestekos* is he who stands at the *chuppah*, while, according to the custom of the Jews, the bridegroom with the bride, under the veil which is called *chuppah* by them, converses: which is the first *daristus* [nuptial embrace] of the Jews, or, nuptial congress. From which, when the bridegroom emerged, with greatest joy of those who heard the voice of him who was exiting,
he would come forth. Which they might then consider a ratified union. To this also the royal Prophet, as the masters clearly note, looked when he sang: *And he himself, as a bridegroom, coming forth from his bridal chamber [pastos], shall exult as a giant to run his course.* There A *pastos*. For just as the bridegroom exhilarates his friends with joy when he comes forth from that secret place of his, speaks, and shows his face, so the sun, *from his chamber*, that is, the earth, drenches with joy. Which to that true and most beautiful bridegroom of the Church, 359 He himself the sun of justice, his precursor in the most sweet manner, John the Baptist, accommodates. To express which sense one might poetically render the passage itself thus: Each one having a bride is a bridegroom; but the companion Stands by the hidden one in the nuptial chamber, as is our custom, And having received the voice of him coming from the sanctuary, In his gladness his dear heart rages. This is the poetic, and if I am not mistaken, paraphrastic character. I have said B *paston*, because the masters sometimes attribute this *chuppah* to the bride for the sake of modesty. As when they say that Sarah, during all that time in which she did not bear children, stood under a *chuppah*, where matrons, as if to a bride, came to congratulate her, just as Elias noted from Bereschit Rabba. When at the end of this chapter it is said: *He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who disobeys the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him*, our author rendered the latter words: But whoever, a man of pride, disobeys the Son of the living God, The wrath of the most high God comes, the avenger, Scourging the fool. Which, when he was writing, he could have had in mind the observation of the ancient theologians, who warn that the sufferings of the just are called *thlipseis* [afflictions] by Scripture, but those of the wicked are called *mastigas* [scourges]. C That the calamities of the just are called *thlipseis* by Scripture, and those of the impious *mastigas*, is because it is said: *Scourges are prepared for the unruly*, Prov. xix, 29, or that other from the royal Prophet, which I prefer, *Many are the scourges of the sinner.* Which, however, is not altogether true, as those who are versed in Hellenistic [Greek] studies, and no less those who know Hebrew, are aware. For the same prophet declares that *mastigas* [scourges] sent divinely upon himself are not once, nor always, used in the same vocal sense. For it is always used variously. But it is known how the evangelist uses that word. But our author had in mind that saying, *Scourge [mastix] for the fool*, Prov. xxvii, 22. Although it is something else in the Hebrew. You see an illustrious example of parody from the Septuagint, by which one of the things we said regarding Nonnus's Hebraisms is proven. And yet, as I said, something else is read in the Hebrew.
CHAPTER XX
The Samaritan history. Why there is mention of Joseph in it. *Having grown weary from the journey.* Having rested from the way. *He sat thus*, how said of the Savior. *Being carried through the bosom*, little said in Greek. The time *when those drawing water go out*. Communion of drink and food among the Jews. *To ask for a little water.* Jacob, and why his mention here. The custom of the Samaritans described aptly by Josephus to the mind of this place. Nonnus's passage emended. Transpositions in Nonnus. A passage of the same Nonnus distinguished otherwise. A Hebraism noted in the evangelist according to the opinion of Chrysostom. That the mountains Moria and Garizin are wrongly confused. The sacrifice of Isaac on mount Moria. The foreign worship of the Samaritans. A dove worshipped by them, and circumcision celebrated in its name. God placed by Nonnus for the Father. And why the Lord, in this dissertation with the Samaritan woman, poorly mentioned the Father. An interpretation of that passage, *Do you not say that there are still four months?* *Asustatov* noted in Nonnus. *Non* condition. Time *diktion*. Thirsty Apulia. D Ignorance of Hebraisms. Nonnus and the interpreters having lapsed. The part of the year in which the two *regalim* occur. *Four months for the harvest.* Pentecost feast of the harvest. Interpretation of the place of John. And in it a mistranslation of Nonnus. The passage explained from Hellenistic sources. *To go away* and *to go through*, sometimes for the same thing in Hellenists. *Circuits* and *visitations* of the Lord, which have imposed upon the interpreters. *To dwell*, how used by the Hellenists. *Royal*, of whom the evangelist makes mention, who, and the passage about him explained otherwise than commonly. *Servants* 361 from the Chaldean usage. *Servants of Ares* thence from Homer. *Sons of David*. *Servants of a king*, or *royal ones*, after the manner of the Hellenists, the same as the Prefects. Abdemelech the royal eunuch. *He who directs the army* who is called a *royal servant*. Master of the butchers. *Chief cook*. *Standing before the king*. *Royal ruler* or *royal servant* the same. The passage of the evangelist is explained. *Ereinie* for *asked*, poorly used by Nonnus.Not without reason, at the beginning of the fourth chapter, specifically at the fifth verse, in the history of the Samaritan woman, the evangelist makes mention of Joseph, when he says, *which Jacob gave to Joseph his son.* For from him and his sons the Samaritans deduced their origin, and they were wont to glory in this greatly. Josephus, where he deals with the Samaritans: *And from the sons of Joseph they genealogize them, from Ephraim and Manasseh.* Whence also he places his sepulcher in that spot, Benjamin. It follows in the same chapter to the sixth verse: *But Jesus, having grown weary from the journey, sat thus by the fountain.* Where he did not say what the evangelist intended. For thus: And there the Christ, having rested from the long-travelled path, Sat. For it is one thing, *having grown weary from the journey*, and另一*having rested from the way*. For the former denotes being fatigued by the way, the latter that one has ceased from the way. And so always for Homer. Just as in the third Iliad, *having ceased from the war*, the elders are spoken of, who no longer waged war, that is, who had already retired by age. What follows, *sat thus by the fountain*, is a most pleasant idiotism, and clearly a schema for pleasure, as the grammarians speak. For he wishes to say that the Lord sat by the fountain that offered itself on the way without any care or choice, and just as the Greeks say, *as it happened*. By which he notes the wondrous *adiaphoria* [indifference/detachment] in 362 our Lord and King, who, afflicted by the heat, did not seek a place, but found it. So that I might omit the economy of him which is clearly to be admired here, who from this humble sitting found an occasion for so divine a disputation; by which he shows that it would come to pass that the Samaritans, a despised race, would on an equal footing with the Jews, who would not reject him, be admitted to grace. Wherefore not inelegantly Theophylactus, who explains *thus* as *as it chanced*, and *without a throne, upon the ground*, simply, as the situation allowed, without a seat, and on the earth. And not much otherwise has Maro used this word when he said of his Jupiter: And now there was an end, when Jupiter at the highest ether Looking down upon the sea, the ship-bearing one, and the lying-low lands, And the expanses, and the peoples far and wide, thus stood on the summit of heaven. For the grammarians babble wondrously at that place. Shortly after, at verse 7, the interpreter sings: There a Samaritan woman, lifting through her bosom A pitcher, which she was having, travelled to the neighboring fountain. Where it seems erratic that he says the Samaritan woman was *carrying it through her bosom*, which her language, nothing less than truly or in Greek, indicates, that she carried a hydria in her bosom, when Rebecca in the twenty-fourth chapter of Genesis, *in her hand*, as the Greeks rendered it, carried it. The evangelist adds that the woman came *to draw water*. Which was done by her for the use of the midday meal, there is scarcely a doubt. Whence also the disciples arrive later with food. Just as the time of supper, from the Hebrews, the time, in which for drawing…
A water the women proceed, is wont to be called, as in that same chapter of Genesis, which I have already praised. Which, as Hellenists are wont to do, they elegantly expressed as *to pros opse*, when the water-carriers go forth: which is, when the time of supper drew near B. Just as Theocritus says concerning Hylas, who at the time when heroes were about to dine, goes out with his water-jar: *Hylas the fair departed, to bring water for the evening meal.* Just as also in Apollonius. On which occasion even Abraham’s servant is said to have waited for Rebecca in that same place: which could not have escaped him, whom nothing escaped. For, just as with Rebecca there, so here, from the occasion of time and place, round about the hour of *drawing water*, the Samaritan woman comes. Which illustrates the *circumstance* of this famous passage—mirifically, as the rhetoricians say.
Commate 9, which follows: *How do you, being a Jew, ask drink of me, being a Samaritan woman?* is spoken most sweetly, according to the custom of those who, when they were strangers or had been of another mind, tasted each other’s food and drink to win over spirits: which was forbidden to Jews with Samaritans. Thus in the covenant of Jacob with Laban. Thus the Israelites eat of the Gibeonite provisions, Jos. ix, 14: *So the men took of their provisions.* And then: *And Joshua made peace with them, and struck a covenant with them, to let them live.* And the Greeks set down *asking for a little water* among the tokens of familiarity. Which Apollonius Alexandrinus relates concerning Pherecydes: "But as for matters concerning Pherecydes, such things are related: That once on the island of Scyros, being thirsty, he asked for a little water from one of his acquaintances; and he, having drunk, said that there would be an earthquake on the island after the third day." And the Lord had already said before, *Give me to drink*, which is C to ask for a little water. And that He was truly thirsty, and that by this occasion He might find a handle for conversation with the woman, which He did not know whether she would answer, nor even that she was a Samaritan. Such as it is when the same Lord sends the disciples to the fig tree: in which, what He did not know, there were no figs. And when God asks, where Adam was. Which and similar things are said, to be an occasion of conversation, that I may speak with Rabbi Solomon.
Commate 12 follows: *Are you greater than our father Jacob?* From whom the twelve tribes had sprung, as from one tree. And so the Samaritan woman [describes] this grace in him with whom she was speaking: whose character the author depicts mirifically from the custom of her nation: who, for the sake of the Jew, derives her origin from Jacob. Which was customary for Samaritans, so that in adverse matters—namely, for Jewish affairs—they said they had nothing in common with them; in prosperity, or if they thought they had need of it, they would immediately betake themselves to Jacob, Ephraim, and Manasseh: all of which [is] most sweetly *in character*, from the person of the little woman, as I said. Who, having now confessed the Jew, derives her origin from the Jews. What the custom of that nation was, Josephus shows elegantly, *Antiq. Jud.* xi: "For the Samaritans are by nature such, as we have already shown at some point. For when the Jews are in misfortunes, they deny that they are their kinsmen, then acknowledging the truth; but whenever they see anything brilliant concerning them, they suddenly, out of chance, leap into fellowship with them, saying that they belong to them, and they derive their lineage from the sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh." That is: The Samaritans are of such a disposition (which we have also noted before), that in adverse matters (and then indeed they rightfully do so) they refuse to acknowledge the Jews as joined to them by blood. But as soon as they see some prosperity happen to them, straightway from the profit of fortune, they leap as it were into their communion. Indeed they call them their own kinsmen, and derive their nation from the descendants of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh. And observe human nature here. Which, having neglected the fountain of all goods, ascribes its own to men, as when she says of Jacob: *who gave us* D *the 365 well*, who in the solemn stipulation of the Repetitive law, chapter twenty and six, from a calamity, lest any man attribute anything more to him, is called Obed, that is, *a lost man*. And you speak, and you say...
Furthermore, that we may return to Nonnus, it cannot be said how the place where these things are expressed has wearied the learned: *What common speech [is there] for a Samaritan woman and your kin, That you might drink from me, and even if your ordinance hinders?* [the Samaritan woman] calling you a Jew with a pleased mouth. Where Stephanus [has] *kalesso*, with no sense, so far as I know: the great Scaliger, *azomenois* or *aidomenois*, from the same reading with an interrogation mark was writing. I do not doubt but that the same thing happened here which the same greatest man notes throughout in his *Dionysiaca*. That, namely, the verses are transposed, which are to be established thus: *What common speech [was there] for a Samaritan woman and your kin, [the Samaritan woman] calling you a Jew with a pleased mouth, That you might drink from me, and even if your ordinance hinders?* In this sense: What has the Samaritan in common with your people, who by the manifest token of speech calls you a Jew (this is, she bears witness), so that, against his custom, you ask for a drink from me?
Commate 17, distinguish the passage about the Samaritan woman thus: *She said: and not knowing, about the many-seeded couch The Samaritans, falsely, the true voice rang out.* Not as commonly. Commate 20, it is said by the Samaritan woman, *Our fathers worshipped on this mountain.* In which words, if we believe Chrysostom, such will be the Hebraism, just as in that [verse], *And the disciples, seeing [it], were indignant*, Matthew xxvi, 8. Which John, *But one of his disciples*, and concerning Judas alone, ch. xii, 4, interprets. For he wants Abraham to be understood: who on that mountain also offered up his son. *Speaking of those around Abraham*, he says, 366 *and they say that he offered up his son there.* But the Hebrews hold that all the Fathers from Adam offered sacrifices on the same mountain, in which it is said that Abraham offered [his son] when born. Levi, and the grammarian, as they are often wont, by the argument of a single letter. But Scripture teaches that this deed was in Moria: which [was] not only in Judea, but also in that place where the holy city was afterward. Here, however, concerning Garizin, and the cult which was wont to be performed in it, which, in truth, is manifestly opposed to that of which Chrysostom [speaks]. For it follows, *And you say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship*: for there Abraham is said to have sacrificed: to which this is here opposed. It does not go forward, therefore, nor does the interpretation which is brought by the author for that place satisfy: *You worship what you know not, we worship what we know.* Where our [author] [says]: *Ye indeed with a froward rule of fickle heart, Which you did not learn in your minds, you revere only by hearing.* You worship by hearing, whom you do not know by mind. Which perhaps even he himself did not grasp what it meant. For both the Samaritans worshipped God, and were expecting the Messiah. For they admitted the writings of Moses. But the Jews worshipped one God; they, besides this one, worshipped also idols—unknown and found on Mount Garizin: a crime, which the Jews note with two letters, *TY*, and branded upon the Samaritans as with a cautery. Whence that same supreme man Chrysostom excellently said they *mingle things unmingleable*. Among which was a dove: in the name of which the Samaritans themselves were circumcised: most different from that one, under whose form the Lord confirmed His own baptism. Nor is it unknown that their temple, which they called a sanctuary, the Jews called idolatrous. When our Savior, shortly after, in commate 367 23, repeats the word of the Father. *When the true worshippers shall worship the Father*, item, *for the Father also seeks such to worship him*, there is no doubt but that in this most sweet dissertation, He is gradually drawing the little woman, not only to the true cult of God, but also to the true God; who,
in order that the Son might not be excluded, not without cause is A figuratively called "Father"; so that He might show Him to be—not merely the Messiah, as she says a little later, but—the Son of the Father, of whom He speaks. Therefore, I cannot agree with our author, who here either suppressed the word "Father," or used the word "God" in its place. The longer we dwell on this preeminent author, the more we observe things which, though they cause difficulty for us, for most others (which we marvel at) do not even arouse suspicion. Least of all, however, for Nonnus, who, being quite carefree, committed to paper whatever first pleased him. Let that passage in the thirty-fifth verse of this chapter serve as an example: *Οὐχ ὑμεῖς λέγετε, ὅτι ἔτι τετράμηνόν ἐστι, καὶ ὁ θερισμὸς ἔρχεται; ἰδοὺ λέγω ὑμῖν, ἐπάρατε τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ὑμῶν, καὶ θεάσασθε τὰς χώρας ὅτι λευκαί εἰσι πρὸς θερισμὸν ἤδη*. They interpret this passage as if the meaning were: "Do you not say that the harvest is four months away?" And thus the Syriac explicitly states, so that the meaning might mark the Hebrew. The Hellenists might say otherwise: *Ἔτι μῆνες τέσσαρες καὶ ὁ θερισμὸς ἔρχεται*. And this, as most certain, our author accepted with the rest, except that for *θερισμός* (harvest) he carelessly substituted *θέρος* (summer). But the chronologers have so eagerly embraced this in their Harmonies as to assert that this occurred in the month of December. But who would not wonder that this conversation with the little woman was held in the summer, if we follow Nonnus, when, as he now explicitly speaks, it had been held four months before summer? 368 For thus he interprets this place. Moreover, he said that it was the sixth hour, and indeed a summer one (for so I take *διψιός*), when the Lord approached the Samaritan woman. For so he said above: * Ἑκτη δὲ πτερόεσσα διέτρεχε δίψιος ὥρη.* Concerning this time, Alcaeus: "And the hour is grievous; and everything thirsts under the heat." And Horace: "Nor has such heat of the stars ever settled On the thirsty Apulia." Where "thirsty" is like our *διψιος*. At which time the earth is scorched by Sirius. Such heat was in the month of Nisan in Canaan. And indeed the fatigue of the Lord, the approach to the well, the thirst, and other similar things persuade us of summer. For the Evangelist himself says, "There was [he] there the well of Jacob. Jesus therefore, wearied from the journey, sat thus by the well: it was about the sixth hour," which is the hour at which the Hebrews place the heat of the day; for what is done at that time is said to be done [in it]: at which those in the East used to seek shade or springs or hide in tents, as [is said] of Abraham in Gen. XVIII, 1. That this is said of summer (although I know that the reason for Egypt and the neighboring Canaan was different) the very rationale seems to prove. And the interpreters confirm this, who favor the idea that the holy man sat there in order to welcome and refresh those exhausted by heat and labor. But ecclesiastical writers seem to have thought nothing different about this time. Juvencus: "The Savior had sat here, breathless in the rapid heat, etc. Coming from his hands, the Samaritan woman arrives." Sedulius: "He had contracted a human thirst in the burning heat." Now, how plausible is it that the Lord said four months earlier, "Behold the fields, for they are white 369 to harvest already"? For although the harvest of which He speaks is figurative, who yet does not know that this seems harsh, when there are most sweet allegories which approach closely to the signified, that is, to the truth? What then? Robertus Stephanus testifies that in some codices the word *ἔτι* does not exist. And Camerarius affirms that, in his codex, he found: *Οὐχ ὑμεῖς λέγετε, ὅτι τετράμηνός ἐστι, καὶ ὁ θερισμὸς ἔρχεται*, and I have not found it otherwise in the most ancient Rutgersian manuscript. It is therefore a Hebraism, which the Hellenists would express word-for-word as: *Ὅτι τετράμηνός ἐστι, καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ θερισμός*, which is, *Τετράμηνός* B ἐστιν, ἐν ᾧ θερισμός, which the Evangelist said: *Τετράμηνός ἐστι, καὶ ὁ θερισμὸς ἔρχεται*. Camerarius also saw the difficulty, but he stuck in the discourse, as he could not but see, being also cautioned by Theophylact, the error of the received opinion. Who [says], "For you, he says, say instead of 'you think' that the harvest comes in this four-month period." So that not without cause the *τετράμηνος* (four-month period) is called the harvest's, in which two Royal feasts, Passover and Pentecost, used to concur: in the one of which the harvest began, and in the other ended. Just as the *ἑορτὴ θερισμοῦ* (feast of harvest), Pentecost (just as here the *τετράμηνος θερισμοῦ*, that part of the year whose beginning is Nisan), is called by Moses in Exodus: but at that month these things happened: for on the fourteenth day the Passover, on the fifteenth the sheaf of new fruits was offered, so that this is said to be fifteen, or thereabouts, days before the Passover. In which way those things that are said about the harvest agree perfectly. But that it might conflict with the Passovers, the mention of which is made by John, [ *בעלי תקופת* ] let others see; we do not think so. His wonder at the place which follows at verse 43 and onward, *ἀκολουθία* [the sequence]: "And after two days he departed from there, and went into Galilee. For Jesus himself 370 testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country." Jesus went into Galilee; for he shows that honor is not exhibited to a prophet in his own country. For what is this etiology, "He went into Galilee; for he shows that there is no place for prophets in their own country"? Nonnus understood it as if it were written that Christ did indeed seek Galilee, yet did not go to Capernaum, which is called his city in Matthew IX, 1. And therefore he said: *Μούνην δ' οὐκ ἐπάτησεν ἐὴν ζηλήμονα πάτρην.* With whom Chrysostom also seems to agree, yet in such a way that he somewhat hesitates. But it does not hold regarding Nazareth. For Luke explicitly adds in this history, "And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up." Wherefore if our author understood this, the argument fails. The excellent interpreter and man of the greatest judgment, Theophylact, thinks that this was said for this reason, ὅτι οὐκ ἦν ἀεὶ ἐν τῇ Γαλιλαίᾳ, ἀλλ' ἐκ διαλείμματος (which words are his) C ἐπεδήμει αὐτοῖς; that He was not always in Galilee, but dwelt among them at intervals. The reason is to be sought from the Hellenists alone, who sometimes interpret *ἀπελθεῖν* and sometimes *διελθεῖν*, and not rarely [use them] in the same sense. Thus Ps. CV, 13: "And they went from nation to nation." Judg. XI, 18: "And he went through in the wilderness, and encompassed the land of Edom." Or *ἀπέρχεσθαι*, which is an interpretation of the same word, sometimes [means] nothing else than to travel. And thus, by the advice of the Syrian interpreter, it should be rendered in Latin, just as in this whole chapter he describes nothing else than the *κυκλώσεις* (circuits) of the Lord and His *ἐπιδημίας* (sojournings). For He crosses from Judea through Samaria; from Samaria into Galilee, and from it He immediately returns to Judea. But as to *ἀπελθεῖν*, in which the whole difficulty lies, it means at times to go and to return, as in that of Matthew VIII, 21: "Lord, suffer me first to go away and bury my father." And in ch. XIII: "Who, having found one precious 371 pearl, went and sold all." But, as I said, here it is to travel. The most excellent theologians, who were seeking the difficulty of the passage in the word *ἐμαρτύρησε*, were doing something else, unless I am mistaken. Now, as to those words of the Evangelist at verse 46, "Jesus came therefore again into Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine," our Nonnus said: *Ἰησοῦς μὲν ἵκανε, καὶ ᾤκεεν αὐτόθι μίμνων* *Ἦχι πέδον Καναναῖον.* How, however, can it be true that He lived in Cana, when He departed immediately after the miracle? And yet, as this is false in Greek, so it is most true in the Hellenistic [idiom], in whose language *οἰκεῖν* is said of one who fixes his tent in some place for a few days, and soon changes place. Whence that: "And he dwelt with him some days," Genesis XXVII, 44. D Much con-
- demned by the ancients, and by those after them, is the term *basilikos*, which the evangelist mentions when he said: "And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum." That it was said imperfectly by the evangelist, "And there was a certain nobleman," A is manifest. Nonnus expressed this completely: "And there was a man guiding the army, a kingly man." To me, the Syrian seems to have expressed this learnedly, who said: "a servant of the king." And so, first, soldiers are called commonly by the Syrians and Chaldeans as they are also "slaves of war." Whence Homer, who owes not a little to them, said *therapontas Areos* (servants of Ares) to the letter. Which is also not rare among the Hebrews, as II Sam. ch. 11, v. 50, 31, where the *douloi David* are the soldiers of David, the *paides tou David* to the Hellenists. Sometimes, however, they are governors, who are supreme under the king. Just as Joab B is called, to the Hellenists *pais basileōs* (servant of the king). See II Sam. ch. xv, 20. Thus Nahaman is called. Whence sometimes *ebed*, and sometimes *sar tsaba melek*, it passed into a proper name, or is accepted for it, as when the royal eunuch is called *Abdemelech* by the Hellenists, and that eunuchs were governors of kings in the East, no one so ignorant of these things is unaware. Therefore the *basilikos* is a royal governor. Thus the same Nabuzardan is called the governor of the Babylonian king, sometimes prince of the army, sometimes *ebed*, *doulos basilikos*. Which things are sometimes conjoined. Which Nonnus seems to have learned from the Greek interpreters, who were C many at that time. For *ithuvōn stratiēn* is prince of the soldiers: whom the common people called master of the butchers, the Seniors *archimageiron*. But what follow in Nonnus, *basilētos anēr*, is he who is next to him, or his vicar. Who *hestēkōs enōpion tou basileōs* is learnedly called by the Seniors, just as in IV Kings xxv. For our author here conjoins these two. Therefore, the *basilikos* is the king's vicar, *ho tēn prōtēn* (as Gregory the Theologian says) *apo basileōs diēpōn archēn*, who, according to Sulpicius Severus, is the royal prince. To whom Nabuzardan, who is also called *basilikos* D *doulos*, is called the royal prince. When he says Nabuzardan the royal prince was leading him captive with the others. The same Nabuzardan, however, is called prince of the army, and "servant of the king of Babel." The one is prince of soldiers, or master of the militia: the other is the prince from the king. Which is the *doulos basilikos*. But the *doulos basilikos* is said there, "he who stands before the king." And Nabuzardan was both; who is called master of the militia by Jeremiah, according to the interpretation of Jerome. Whence it happened that learned men often confuse these two. Therefore the *basilikos* is the *doulos basilikos*, who is the *basilikos archōn*, 373 to which the Syrian learnedly looked. All which things, unknown to the commoners, the Hellenists, most learned men, teach us. And who was thinking of them? But Erasmus, how much he exerts himself in his *Basilioxos*! And yet, in the same sense as *Basilioxos* pleases him, the Hellenists would have rather said *basilikon*. Or *tyrannikon*, the tyrant, which is customary for them. But few are those who understand this language. In the following comma concerning this very "basilico" it is read: "This man, having heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, went to him, and asked him to come down and heal his son; for he was about to die." Where our author did not understand the force of the word, when he rendered that passage thus: "And the near-appearing one asked Jesus, that he might save his son." Nothing is so customary to the Hellenists, as that they use one for the other meaning of a word, which denotes two things. And yet *erōtan* and *deisthai* denotes to ask just as it denotes to beg. Our author, ignorant of this custom, used *ereinen*, when the Greek language demanded *edeito*. For he was doing nothing less than asking, who was begging and imploring. But children know what *ereinein* is to the Greeks. But what happened to others in this time, happened to Nonnus. That, as I have often noted, he did not distinguish between different languages, the Hellenistic and the Greek. Just as we see happening to many today and we lament, that when they interpret the New Testament, because they once learned something in Greek, they do not understand that the language whose interpreters they profess themselves to be, they have never learned. Euthymius is right: "Again *erōta* means, he was begging."
374 CHAPTER XXI
The fifth chapter of the saintly evangelist is examined. A passage poorly understood by Nonnus. What *Proxi* is to the Hellenists. The same [as] *diorizonta*, *apochōrēseis* and *apolipa* to them. *Probatikē*. The wondrous confidence of Nonnus in expressing the evangelist. *Asaminthos* put by Nonnus for *kolymbēthra*. What *kolymbēthra* is. What *asaminthos* [means]. Stupendous thoughtlessness of Nonnus noted. His passage corrected by Joseph Scaliger. How *kata kairon* is to be accepted. That the waters were stirred at the feast of Pentecost according to the opinion of Chrysostom, of which the evangelist speaks. *Tarassein to hydōr*. Error of the interpreters. *Kinēsis* and *tarachē* [mean] the same to the Hellenists. That what is said by the evangelist about the angel, is omitted by Nonnus. Angels [used] for God, because they are his ministers. The passage of Ecclesiastes noted for this matter. That it is familiar to the Chaldeans, and that from it the ancient Jews drew not a few trifles. That the sick man, of whom the evangelist treats here, was a paralytic. *Sphingesthai* of those who are cured of paralysis. Paralytics [are] *dedemenoi*. *Aprosexia* noted in Nonnus. Miracles, why they were more often exhibited by the Lord on the Sabbath. The passage of Nonnus distinguished differently. *Ergazesthai* and not to cease. Negligence of Nonnus in speaking, and [the fact that] another thing is said by him than what he himself wished. Interpretation of a passage greatly vexed: "The Son can do nothing of himself," etc. That passage poorly understood by Nonnus. *Ap' heautou poiein* [as opposed to] *kath' heauton poiein*. *Ei mē* used in the Hebrew manner, and the sense of the passage from it. *Nyn alla* [used] in what way by the Syrians and Rabbis. *Ou dynatai* used in the Hellenistic manner. *Ou dynatai poiein*, [means] *ou poiei*. *Homoios poiein*. Error of Nonnus in that. *Homoios* [used] instead of *homou* or *hama*. Error of Nonnus, and a heretical locution: "The Son imitates the Father," which was condemned in the Arians. The judgment of Cyril and Caesarius concerning it. Interpretation of a certain passage of Nonnus. His improper locution. The total negligence of Nonnus. *Zētein to thelēma tou Patros*, or *zētein tēn timēn*. John is a lamp. Lamps in the temple, up to the morning time. *Orthēs hōran*. *En eukairiais*. Parody of the evangelist. At the beginning of the fifth chapter it is read: "There is in Jerusalem by the Sheep pool, which is called 375 in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porches," for which when our interpreter said: "And there was a well-made [place] in the well-watered Probatikē, / Five broad-sided over the porches of the roof, etc. / Broad-bending bath," that interpretation is far from the mind of the author, if I judge correctly. Who intended this, if I am not mistaken, that there were some distinct places there, either chambers or inner rooms, in which the sick might await the movement of the water. For *stoai* are distinct cubicles to the Hellenists. Which are sometimes called *apochōrēseis*, from the light they might admit, sometimes *diorizonta*, because they were distinct, just as *apochōrēseis* and *apolipa*—plainly the same as *tameia*. And so also the Greeks use this word. Hesychius, *Stoai, tameia, kai epimēkē eisin*. Write, *an epimēkē ōsi*. Suidas, *Stoa, to tameion, dia to perimēkes einai*, who also adds the passage of Aristophanes, "The porches of the fruit and the drink of Bacchus." The Hellenists also, for the most part, call them *tameia*, and sometimes *apochōrēseis*. Just as the Attics confuse *tameia* and *stoai*. Therefore *pente stoai* are five *apochōrēseis*, hospitals or separated places, in which the sick lay down. Now for that which is read,A *those descending, [having] moved the water of this pool*. He signified that the sound of this motion meant that they were present to sanctify the water. Since that poor man, at *this season*—which we have already spoken of—had not been brought down, he is restored by Him who alone can provide water *leaping up into eternal life*, 378 as the evangelist spoke above. There follows *and troubled the water*, which the common translator rendered "moved." Why Erasmus and later scholars changed this, there is no cause other than neglect of the Hellenistic language. By which the ancients interpret *tō* now as *kinēsis* (as in Jeremiah xxix, 18), now as *tarachē* (as in Ezekiel xxiii, 46). But the evangelist meant nothing other than *kinēsis*. Wherefore, wisely, the Syrian used the very same word that our author expressed. Furthermore, Nonnus omitted all this which is about the angel. And perhaps it can come to pass that what the most holy evangelist said about the angel denotes nothing else than the divine power to which he attributes this miracle, because God does very much on earth through angels. Whence also the Hellenists, in place of "angel," not rarely put "God": to confirm which, the passage among others in Ecclesiastes, chapter v, verse 5, stands forth most clearly. Where, for that which the Hebrews have *before the face of an angel*, the Hellenists rendered: *And say not before the face of God that it is an error*. See the great Mercer upon this. Gregory, the paraphrast of that book, followed the Hellenists, who said: *One must by all means avoid the outpouring of improper words, as if God were about to hear*. Where the Chaldean has: *before the cruel angel, who will exercise power over you*. For it is customary for the Chaldeans, as I have not rarely observed, to assign divine works to these ministers. Nor is anything in their writings—which our evangelist often expressed—as frequent as this, for example, when they speak of the angel of death. Whence also the Jews drew their own trifles about the fury of the angel who presides over death, and others of a not unlike nature, as when they treat of the righteous Benjamin. Unless one wishes to refer these to the eternal angel. 379 Who not rarely prefigured himself and the mysteries which he later exhibited: of which many ancient theologians are full. And it is wonderful that without an angel, without any instrument of water, the very Angel of the Great Counsel shows himself here as a physician. That there was a *paralytic*, most of the ancients, among whom are Theophylact, Chrysostom, Gregory, and others, supposed. But if our author also believed this, he did not speak quite properly when he said, C *He held his knees bound with an untreatable disease*, which is, that his knees were bound by sickness, since paralysis is *paresis*, that is, a resolution of the nerves. Whence those who are restored from this illness are said to be *sphyggesthai*, that is, bound. But what happened here to Nonnus also happened to Chrysostom, who says that this same sick man lay *dedemenos* (bound), who, when he was being healed, was *sphyggestai*; forgetting himself, or through a custom of speaking, he said it. The passage is truly elegant: *But here he first tightened the body, and then concerned himself with the soul*. But we most willingly grant these things to those who were intent upon greater matters. With his fourth verse [of the same chapter], he said; *For an angel at a season would descend into the pool*. It seems that by *kata kairon* he expressed the *lamoed* of the Hebrews, so that *kata kairon* is put for that which is usually said by the Hellenists as *kata kairon touton*, and it is understood that these waters were moved and sanctified yearly on the feast of Pentecost itself, or some other. Which Cyril confirmed by his own opinion and judgment. Who observes: *We believe that angels came down from heaven at the time of Pentecost: because on these days, as also at new moons, they were accustomed to consult them—the ones from whom they awaited help—at that season*. We have an example of this matter in 2 Kings, chapter iv, verse 23, and indeed a most illustrious one. Where the husband of the Shunammite, whose son Elisha raised from the dead, when he saw his wife hastening to the prophet because of the son, says, *Today is neither new moon nor sabbath*. Which 380 opinion, when it was among the common people at that time, and the common people themselves testified by this very fact that the man of God—which is said there of Elisha—seemed to them to be our Lord and Savior, the violence of the priests was the more irritated, so that…
A they should consider that cold and utterly inept remark regarding his "not working on that day." They pressed the point: and they transferred this even to the salutary miracles and works themselves, which are truly worthy of God. This was an extreme and intolerable blindness. Hence also that truly most foolish saying, "It is the Sabbath, it is not lawful for you to take up your bed." For superstition, where it has once begun, generally knows no limit. Nor does it stop where it began, but just as it began, being ignorant of reason and of itself, burdensome to others, and heavy to itself, it exceeds all bounds. Regarding the verse of the same seventeenth chapter, which is stated by our Savior, "My Father is working until now, and I am working," our author interpreted it thus:
"Even now the Begetter works in the habit of the world, In reciprocal patterns, and I, the Son, weave the work."
Which passage is without doubt to be distinguished thus:
"Even now the Begetter works in the habit of the world, In reciprocal patterns, and I, the Son, weave the work."
Although he expressed what he wanted with great difficulty, to say nothing of risk. He would have spoken much more clearly, as befits an interpreter and paraphast, as follows:
"For just as my Begetter works, ruling over the world even now That it has been created, so I again weave the work."
And this is the true sense of the passage: Just as the Father not only founded this world, but also after it was founded and completed, continues to act always, while He sustains and rules what has been created—and this without any regard for the day on which you forbid divine works to be done—so the Son exercises divine works, which exceed the institution of the Sabbath, by authority and where it seemed good. "To work" and "not to cease" are, according to the custom of the Hebrews, tautologous 381.
Although therefore the Lord rested on the seventh day from the work of creation, which they urged, they rightly do not mean that He ceased because of that, nor even on that day on which He is said to have ceased from creating. Neither is God a "Sabbath-keeper," nor is His Son. Neither is subject to the Sabbath. When the evangelist says in the same chapter, in the following verse, "That not only did He break the Sabbath, but also said that God was His own Father," if I understand the Greek correctly, he meant: "That along with the breaking of the Sabbath, He also called God His own Father." But this is: "That He not only violated the Sabbath," but also claimed God as His own Father. What, therefore, came into his mind when he said:
C "But because he called God, the self-begotten, The Father-Source, after the course of the dawn?"
Which is as if you were to say in Latin: "Because after the seventh day, he called God his own Father." But the author wanted to say that he had both violated the seventh day and, which is a second crime, had called God his own Father. I have not seen a man who is less concerned about the sense or speaks more negligently. And who before him has spoken thus in Greek? The passage is most noble, and one that has agitated very many and has been vexed by them, which is read in verse 19: "Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless He sees the Father doing it; for whatever He does, these things also the Son does in like manner." In which passage, since there are almost as many idioms as there are words, there is hardly a word that the learned seem to have understood as they ought. But how much they have tormented themselves over it, their own writings show. They ought to have thought, first, what the sense itself is, and then what each word is; which they could not do, because they were inexperienced in the Hellenistic language. Our author rendered it thus:
"The Son will be able to accomplish nothing in His own power Unless He sees the Father accomplishing it."
382 When the simple sense is that the Son does not do anything other than the Father, just as He is one with the Father. Which he opposes to those who would take offense at his saying that He called God his own Father, D as if the sense were that the Son acts nothing of His own will unless He sees the Father acting. What this meant for him, neither do I know, nor did he understand. Unless it seems to follow: If He does nothing of His own will unless He sees the Father acting, then He does by His own will that which He sees the Father acting. And so he concluded in what follows that the Son imitates the Father in acting. But if this is true, then there will be two different wills; which will conflict plainly and simply with the intent of the author. Therefore, as if there were no difficulty here, when he found *ap' heautou* in the text, he substituted for it *en heautou*—"by His own will." And yet, in the first place, *to ap' heautou* is what the Hebrews say *chophshi*, and the Hellenists call *kath' heauton*, whom the Hebrews explain thus rightly. Which neither takes away the will, nor makes it different, but joins it with the Father, just as it joins the nature. For "*en" is "one," the will is one, the nature is one, as Damascenus rightly says. And as the Son is the same, so He acts the same. Augustine says excellently: That which Christ does with the Father, the Father does, and that which the Father does with Christ, Christ does. Neither does the Father do anything separately without the Son, nor does the Son do anything separately without the Father. Inseparable charity, inseparable unity, inseparable majesty, inseparable power. According to these words which He Himself set down, "I and the Father are one." Then: "What is that, The Son does nothing unless...?" etc. He does nothing separately, unless He sees the Father acting. Wherefore that which has so greatly tormented the theologians 383, because they think it should be separated from the preceding, is in vain. As if what follows were an interpretation of the former. This persuaded them to express it thus: "Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot operate from Himself; that is, unless He sees the Father operating." They were not considering that *me* is often used not after the manner of the Greeks, but of the Hellenists and Hebrews. To whom *lo* has the force of an adversative in speech, as in Genesis xxxii, 26: "I will not let you go, *unless* (ean me) you bless me," which others say, "*but* you bless me." For it is so in the Hebrew, and thus the Hellenists speak. Deuteronomy xvi, 5: "You shall not be able to sacrifice the Passover in any one of your cities, which the Lord your God gives you; *but* (all' e) in the place which the Lord your God shall choose." Which the Syrian understood, and put *alla* for the Hebrew *ella*. Which is also customary to the rabbis, as when they speak of one who is useless, "He reaps nothing, but wind," which is to say, "not but wind." The Syrian, therefore, expressed the latter parts thus: "But this, that He saw the Father acting." Which is the true sense of the words: "He cannot do, but [what] He sees the Father doing." But even that "cannot," although I know it to be true, as theologians observe, even if it is taken properly, to denote no weakness, nevertheless, just like the other things I have already noted, I think it should be taken in the Hellenistic manner. For them, "cannot do" is the same as "does not do." Thus Genesis xliii, 32: "For the Egyptians could not eat bread with the Hebrews," where, as to the word in the Hebrew, "could not eat" is "did not eat," they were not accustomed to eat. Just as if he had said above, "The Jews cannot associate with the Samaritans," for which he said, "The Jews do not associate with the Samaritans." Thus in the twelfth chapter, verse 30: "For this reason they could not believe, because Isaiah said again," 384 "He has blinded their eyes." Where no *adunamia* (inability) is noted according to the view of Chrysostom. For they did not believe, he says, not because it was said by Isaiah, but because it was said by Isaiah because they were not going to believe. Nor did He say "He cannot do *of Himself*," but "He cannot do *from* Himself," which misled some from antiquity, who disturbed the order here, which the following things maintain. Therefore "He cannot do" means "He does not do," which is both simple and expresses effectively what He wanted. But also those things which...
follow, A *“These also the Son doesos in like manner,”* our author understood very poorly. As if the Son were doing things, or did not do the same things, or—as he speaks later on—thoughtlessly, that the Son were a copyist of the Father. Here [ομοίως] (in like manner) is the same thing as [ὁμοῦ] (together) or [ἅμα] (at the same time). Euthymius says: “The expression ‘in like manner’ is placed first not in an ordinary way, but so that we may learn that He does things with equal knowledge and authority, as was said before.” And Augustine says excellently: “It is not that when the Father has done something, the Son does something else in like manner; but whatsoever He [the Father] has done, these same things the Son does in like manner. If the Son does these things which the Father has done, then He does them through the Son. If He does through the Son what the Father does, then the Father does not do one thing and the Son another, but they are the same works of the Father and the Son.” So that the sense of the whole passage is: “That the Son does nothing without the Father, but does that which He sees the Father doing: for both do the same things together.” What then (alas!) impelled our author here, provided that he had managed the matter correctly up to this point, to render the subsequent verses thus?
“For all things which my Father does, these the Son, imitating the God Begetter, performs.”
By which words he wishes the Son to imitate the Father; and thus he makes the Son a mimic of the Father. No one who has even a mediocre acquaintance with the writings of the Fathers can be ignorant of how long ago this doctrine was condemned. Cyril, on this passage, says: “But the Father, they will say, is prior in operating, because perfection of virtue and knowledge is in Him. The Son, however, first sees; and then operates out of imitation of the Father: and so He is called God from the similarity of operating.” Which he himself taught us, when he said: *“He can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father doing.”* What are you saying, most audacious of men? Do you imagine that the Son gathers certain figures of the Father’s operation, and think that He is called God in this way? Thus God will appear to be a certain doctrine, not a nature, and He will imitate the Father by a certain science and art, in a human manner. Likewise in the same place: “But those who say that the Father operates first, and then the Son imitates His works, labor under remarkable ignorance.” And many other things which are brought forward by him on this subject. For the Arians were strangely urgent about this passage. Let those things be seen which the brother of the Theologian, Cæsarius, wrote at great length about it. Who, among other things not few, in the third Dialogue, at 150 interrogation, says: “It is of all folly to be disposed thus concerning the Son of God, the only-begotten God; for it will follow that the whole creation is thought to be twofold. One, of the Father, already completed; the other, of the Son, still being done, and introduced in parts, being fabricated according to the imitation of the paternal work. Let them show us, therefore, those of the madness of Arius, two suns and two moons, and let them distinguish for us which is the Father’s and which the Son’s; and which is the moon of the Father, and which is of the Son.” It surpasses all insanity to think thus concerning the Son of God, God the only-begotten. For it will follow to think the whole creation twofold. One of the Father, already completed, and another, which is still being perfected and progress D ing gradually, of the Son, which is woven together according to the imitation of the Father. Let them show us, therefore, who follow the madness of Arius, two suns, two moons, and let them distinguish for us which sun is the Father’s and which the Son’s; which is the Father’s moon, and which the Son’s. And at the end: “And to speak briefly, the Son is not accustomed to look at anything when He does what is said. For He neither, when fashioning Adam, and from him creating Eve, saw some other rational male or female that had come into being under the Father, to be fashioned according to that own model; but existing as a sovereign creator, and autonomous, God of all things, He was able to do all things before the incarnation and after it, as He was the same.” That is, to be brief, there is nothing at which the Son looks when He performs the things of which we have spoken before. For, when He was making Adam and from him Eve, He did not see some other animal, male or female, endowed with reason, which had been made by the Father, so that He might fashion His own correctly and with art, but—
“And judging whatever He wills, He honors with high authority, because the life-bearing Son hears the Father;” and then to those words, [“Do not wonder at this,”] which Chrysostom connects with the foregoing, about which others at length, he subjoins these things:
[“And do not have fear, and whatever wondrous report I spoke of as coming.”]
For what does that gloss, [“And whatever wondrous report I spoke of as coming,”] mean in this place? He has followed those who accepted “the judgment has been given to the Son from the Father, because He is the Son of man,” word for word, that He is the Son of man, not as others [do], insofar as He is the Son of man. Which, when it seemed harsh to those very people who followed this, 387 they joined it to the preceding, *“Amen, amen I say to you, that the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God,”* so that they might show Him to be the same Son of God. He seems, therefore, to have wished this by very obscure words: “Do not marvel if I ascribe divine works to man: because the hour comes, etc.” For which, being very diluted, the passage demanded this or a similar interpretation by the law of paraphrase: “Do not marvel that I ascribe those things to man which you judge to be of God. Know that He is the same God: know that He is the same whom I have already called the Son of God.” And he has spoken improperly. For [θαυμάζειν] in the words of the evangelist does not denote [θάμβος] (fear), but [ἀπιστίαν] (unbelief), which others also have seen. Although the will of Christ is the same as that of the Father, and the same one always seeks this will who seeks the glory of the Father, who will concede that [“to seek the will”] and [“to seek the honor”] are the same? Why, therefore, when he had found in the sacred author at verse 30 of the same chapter, *“That I seek not my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me,”* did he put in its place: [“For I do not suffice to perform my honor, but the Father’s;”] And what theology persuaded him that [“honor”] and [“will”] are the same here? Very urbanely, it is said by our Savior concerning John: “He was the burning and shining lamp; and you were willing to rejoice for a time in his light,” at the thirty-fifth verse. Which neither our author nor the interpreters have understood as they ought. Thus, indeed, Nonnus:
“But you, into the whirlpool of one swiftly-spinning hour, rejoiced in the testimonies of him who appeared.”
As if the meaning were, *pros horan mian*, that is, for one hour, which is a very short time, 388 you took pleasure in his preachings and life. But, because the Greeks sometimes say [εὐκαιρίαν] (opportunity) and the Hellenists [καιρόν] (time) when they express the Hebrew [ny], the same people also say sometimes [καιρόν] and sometimes [ὥραν]. Thus in that Ecclesiastes, *“To everything there is a time, and a season to every matter under heaven,”* Symmachus had said *pasas hōra* (the season of all). And so elsewhere not once have the accepted interpreters [done so]. John, he says, was a lamp, in which, while the time lasted, you deservedly took pleasure. For lamps used to burn in the temple until the morning hour for the use of nocturnal light. Whence that in 1 Kings 3:3, *“Before the lamp of God was extinguished,”* is such as if you were to say, “before the dawn.” This, therefore, he wants: John preceded me, as a lamp
and you were willing to rejoice for a time in his light. But a greater is here. For the day is present, he himself has risen. And this is what he adds: A *“But I have a testimony greater than John’s.”* Therefore, *πρὸς ὥραν* (for a time) is *πρὸς καιρόν* (for a season), that is, as long as the time endured. The Hellenists render this *κατὰ καιρόν*, or *ἐν καιροῖς*, or *ἐν εὐκαιρίαις*. And it is a parody of that most noble passage, *“I have prepared a lamp for my Christ,”* Ps. cxxxi, 17. For here it follows, *“But you were willing to rejoice for a time in his light,”* whereas there it preceded, *“And his saints shall rejoice with joy.”* Which things argue for and demonstrate the urbanity of the parody, such as most greatly illustrate the sacred author—in which, however, our own author is always asleep. Who, here, would have spoken better according to the law of paraphrase:
Divine John, scattering intellectual sparks, A lamp to me, a forerunner, was appearing to men, That lamp was mine, which the prophet-song described. B
389 There follows in a verse of the same chapter, xxxvi: *“And you do not have his word abiding in you.”* Certainly, nothing more clears the sons of God than if they not only hear the word of God (for the hearing perishes), but also store it up and preserve it in their mind: which ought especially to have place where it concerns the Messiah, as in this passage. For he excellently said *μένειν* (to abide), which, as we noted before, is generally used among the Chaldeans for the presence of the divine Spirit. What, then, did our author want for himself when he refers these things to the ears? For he says: *“Neither do you keep the saying in your wandering ears.”*
For that the Jews had the law and the prophets, who had said so much about the Messiah, no one is ignorant; but they gave them no heed beyond their ears. They also heard each thing that the Truth said, but they did not admit it into their mind. And Theophylact here elegantly says: *“‘You do not have his word abiding in you’; that is, you do not know the Scriptures that bear witness concerning me.”* C
CHAPTER XXII
The twenty-second chapter is examined. *Βασιλεύειν* (to be king), *ποιεῖν βασιλέα* (to make a king), after the manner of the Hiphil of the Hebrews. How the kingdom was transferred to the Lord. Kings were anointed long before. Anointing for the kingdom. Epiphanius’s opinion, which we hold, concerning the kingdom offered to the Lord. The name of Messiah, a name of power. The name *βασιλεύς* (king) placed for it. Anointing as a substitute for a crown, and the display of it was also the usual form among the Jews. The anointing of the Messiah instituted by private persons. The passage of the evangelist was very poorly grasped by Nonnus. The *ἀκολουθία* (sequence) of that passage, and the series of the narrative, were very poorly understood by Nonnus. The miracle, and where the blessing of the loaves occurred. Ziegler’s error. A brief delineation of those passages, mention of which is made in the sixth chapter, and in which Nonnus hallucinates remarkably: *Ἐληλαχότες ὡς σταδίους εἴκοσι πέντε* (Having rowed about twenty-five stadia). How *ἐλαύνειν* (to row/drive) is accepted by the Greeks when it has a space attached. Nonnus’s error. *Εὐχαριστήσαντος τοῦ Κυρίου* (The Lord having given thanks). 390 The Lord’s *Εὐλογία* (blessing), considered by the ancients as the cause of the multiplication. *“Be fruitful, multiply, and fill.”* The interpretation of that passage, *“Work for the food, not which perishes,”* etc. What *ἐργάζεσθαι* (to work) means in that passage. The interpretation of that passage, *“For him the Father, even God, has sealed.”* What the *σφραγίδα τιθέναι* (to set a seal) means to the Hellenists. *Γλυφή δακτυλίου* (the engraving of a ring) from the Greek language among the Chaldean Targumists. A passage amended by Scaliger. The interpretation of that passage, *“And one of you is a devil.”* What *διάβολος* (devil) means in that passage. The word *Satan* interpreted differently by the Chaldeans in Job and other books, and differently in Zechariah. That the evangelist alluded to that interpretation. *Διάβολος*, among Zechariah, is D the apostate. And that this conforms with the observation of the Chaldeans. The seventh chapter is examined. A passage amended by Scaliger. The Lord called *Όσιος* (holy/pious). *Ὁσίου χαίροντες ὀλέθρῳ*. Jerusalem called by Nonnus *ὁμοτέρμων Ἰουδαίοις* (neighboring the Jews). Concerning the holy city, to which tribe it belonged, a controversy among the Jews. What *ἐν παρρησίᾳ εἶναι* (to be in boldness/openness) means. The word *παρρησία* commonly used by the Hebrews, of which Nonnus was ignorant; and in the interpretation of the passage, his error on that account. Interpretation of that passage, *“And on the Sabbath you circumcise a man.”* Nonnus’s ambiguity concerning circumcision and its day. *Κρίνειν κατ’ ὄψιν* (to judge according to appearance). *Προσωποληψία* (respect of persons) in the law. *Δυσωπεῖσθαι πρόσωπον* (to be put to shame by a person) in the law. The passage of the evangelist is expounded. *Εἶπον πρὸς ἑαυτούς* (They said among themselves). *Λαλεῖν ἐν τῇ διανοίᾳ* (To speak in the mind). Nonnus’s *παρ-ερμηνεία* (misinterpretation) from ignorance of Hebrew idiom. The *διασπορά* (dispersion) of the Greeks. Hellenists, and who they are. They were wrongly called *Πανέλληνες* (Pan-Hellenes) by Nonnus. Interpretation of that passage, *“And on the last day, the great day of the feast,”* etc. The custom of the evangelists, who sometimes compress certain things. *Haphiara*, which the Lord interpreted in Isaiah. The *ανάγνωσις* (reading) of the passage of Isaiah done by the Lord in the temple, and his *ἐξήγησις* (explanation). Interpretation of that passage, *“He who believes in me, as the Scripture said, rivers shall flow out of his belly,”* and the final words being the Lord’s. *“For Christ was to be glorified,”* and Nonnus’s interpretation of *ἐδοξάσθη* (was glorified). *Δόξα* (glory) concerning the cross, or the Passion of the Lord. *Δοξάζεσθαι* (to be glorified) or *τελειοῦσθαι* (to be perfected) regarding the same: the word *δόξης* used in the same way, namely, concerning martyrdom, also by the Hebrews. That passage, *“Where David was,”* poorly understood by Nonnus.
In the sixth chapter, verse fifteen, when it follows: *“Jesus therefore knowing that they were about to come and take him by force, to make him a king, he withdrew again,”* the evangelist said *ποιεῖν βασιλήα* (to make a king), which 391 the Hebrews express by their Hiphil, [Hebrew] (to make reign). Which, since the Greeks cannot, they confess their own poverty with the verb *βασιλεύειν* (to be king): which the Hellenists, otherwise quite ingenious in forming words of this kind, use more than once, as when they devised *ἀκουτίζειν* (to cause to hear) and similar things. So Nazianzen, *Stelit.* 1, says that Constantine *βασιλεῦσαι* (made king) [about] him who was badly and saved and made king, regarding Julian. Where you see this defect. But it is a marvel what confidence the populace had, that in this wicked and adverse time they would dare to make the Lord king. I have always referred it to the anointing. For *τὸ χρίειν* (anointing) also designated the royal institution, certainly, just as it preceded by a long time. For example, in David, not a few at that time, even among the common people, confessed his Son as Lord, as the Messiah. Just as not rarely, both by this evangelist and by the others, the name of king and of Messiah, or anointed, is confounded, as also in the Jews’ calumny concerning the affected kingdom: concerning which, perhaps, in its proper place. And in the Chaldean writings, by whose interpretation most people used to use the Scriptures, in infinite places they had read that this supreme king is so called: just as for the most part King Messiah is called by certain interpreters. Which later, when the Lord attributed it to himself, the Jews, fearing for their kingdom, from the ambiguity of the word and their own opinion—who dreamed of an earthly kingdom—accused him seditiously before Pontius. Thus, by the force of the miracles, and especially of the food which he had provided to those who were astonished, they, enthralled, hasten to snatch at the *χρίσμα* (anointing). Which opinion Epiphanius confirms *κατὰ Ναζαραίων* (against the Nazarenes). “For they came,” says the Gospel, “to anoint him as king; and knowing, he withdrew, and hid himself in Ephraim, a city of the desert.” Whence the great author, who—which is to be noted—confuses the history which in the sixth chapter, 392 this verse records, with the other which exists in the eleventh chapter, verse fifty-four, having slipped in memory, I suppose, wishes this anointing to be referred to the throne of David, and both dignities, of King at once and of supreme pontiff. Known is that of the Jews, [Hebrew].
A His connection of the preceding clause with the parenthesis means nothing at all. As if the evangelist meant that the people had seen the disciples crossing alone without the Lord, who had embarked on the ships elsewhere near Tiberias. And so he speaks of the people, and [Nonnus] of the disciples; one wishes for the disciples to have boarded the ship near Bethsaida, the other at Tiberias. But if this were true, either the miracle happened at Tiberias—which those who believe this do not correctly understand the evangelist—or the disciples, while being at Bethsaida, from which place they crossed to Capernaum, were at the same time at Tiberias. But our author says that the disciples came to the place where the miracle was performed, a thing no one would believe if the words did not exist. If this is true, it is necessary that they returned to the same place from which they had come, when it has already preceded, "and embarking into the boat, they were coming across the sea to Capernaum." As this negligence cannot be excused, it is so manifest that it cannot be denied, so that it is not without reason that the great Scaliger wrote in the margin of his book—by which benefit of the most illustrious Gerard Vossius I have made use—that these lines were very poorly rendered. Ziegler notes that this miracle, according to John, was performed near Tiberias. I do not find this. And if it were true, how does he say that the ships came there from Tiberias? Nor did the evangelist say anywhere that they were near the place where they had eaten the bread, but that the ships arrived near the place where they had eaten the bread, that is, that they had set sail from Tiberias: but they arrived not far from the desert of Bethsaida, where this miracle had occurred: which deceived Ziegler. And this is true. Nonnus says that the disciples set sail from Tiberias and came to the place where the miracle had been performed. Therefore, he distinguishes between Bethsaida and Tiberias. And yet, if we follow him, the miracle was performed at Tiberias, which was performed near Bethsaida; for it is certain that the disciples set sail from that place. I, however, deny that in the whole of Homer's *Odyssey* greater miracles could be found than those which our author committed in this B journey, from one bay of the Lake of Gennesaret to another, through C geographical ignorance. For to a man who is unversed in geography he undoubtedly imposed this, because all the places in question here are as near as they are distinct. In this way, D indeed:
For where A A A is, the Lake of Gennesaret, flowing down from the Jordan—which our author incorrectly calls a rush of salt [E] and the sea, and I do not know what else. Where B is, is Tiberias; where C, the river Cison; where D, Magdala; where E, Bethsaida; where F, Capernaum. The Lord, the disciples, and the people are staying near Bethsaida, where E is; the disciples, while the Lord still remains there, cross the lake and head for Capernaum, where F is. The [F] little ships, which are in question, come from Tiberias, where B is. But they arrive not far from the desert of Bethsaida, or from that place where the Lord had performed the miracle: where, indeed, E is. From which place the people also cross to Capernaum, where F is. When the evangelist said there, "near the place where they had eaten the bread, after the Lord had given thanks," it does not seem to be doubted that in these words the term "having given thanks" (which, in that case, often denotes a cause to the Greeks) includes the cause of the miracle: for from the blessing of the Lord the loaves were multiplied. And therefore the other evangelists also say this, because the most ancient—as the Hebrews have rightly observed—in the creation and after the flood, the *eulogia*, or blessing, was contained in the word, that is, "be multiplied." For these three, "increase, and multiply, and fill the earth," according to the prescription of the Hebrews, they join [continuation]
A into one voice by the Hellenists. Thus, in the blessing of the Fathers: "I will bless him, and he shall be for nations." Likewise: "I will bless him, and I will multiply him." For all the blessings are said by the ancient Hebrews to be amplifications of good, all the curses to be diminutions of good. For this word, the evangelists, and our author here, sometimes use "to give thanks." Nowhere, however, is it more manifest than in this place: "Where they ate the bread after the Lord had given thanks [εὐχαριστήσαντος τοῦ Κυρίου]," that is, after He had blessed. This, by Greek usage, implies the sense: When, through the blessing of the Lord, they were 397 fed by the multiplied bread. Indeed, that this is said most appropriately, the matter itself proves. For those five loaves, as he says, were as if they were seeds; not indeed committed to the earth, but multiplied by Him who made the earth. By a blessing, of course, or by a word. Our author, therefore, is too shallow, who here understood nothing other than a bare act of thanksgiving. Hence he said: "Giving thanks to Christ, the all-ruling Begetter." And it is in accordance with the majesty of Him who had created all things with the Father, and with the Father had long ago blessed all generated things, that He, in this blessing, should make prayers to the Father. He did not understand the Hellenistic language, which follows in the same sixth chapter, verse 26, the discourse: "Work not for the food which perishes, but for the food which remains." Indeed, "to work" [ἐργάζεσθαι] in that place means nothing other than the Hebrew ָפּעל [po‘al], which, when it stands for ָעשָׂה [‘asah], is used for "to prepare" [παρασκευάζειν]. So in Psalm VII, 24: "His arrows he prepared [ἐξειργάσατο]," that is, he prepared for himself arrows. The whole passage is: "He bent his bow, and made it ready, and in it prepared the vessels of death; his arrows he prepared [ἐξειργάσατο] for those who burn." Apollinaris: "He prepared bitter shafts for those being scorched." In the same Hebraism that we have here. What then did our author mean when he said: "And rather strive for that lasting banquet of the ever-living table"? For which he certainly would have done better to say: "But seek rather that lasting banquet." For since he said "strive for the banquet," he neither spoke in Greek nor expressed the Hellenistic sense. In verse 27 of the same sixth chapter, when it follows, "for the Father has sealed Him, even God" [398 γὰρ ὁ Πατὴρ ἐσφράγισεν ὁ Θεός], where "to seal" [σφραγίζειν] seems to us to be what is called by the Hellenists "to set a seal" [σφραγῖδα τιθέναι]. By which the Hebrews are accustomed to express the highest and almost ineffable love; such as the Father follows toward the Son whom He begat from eternity, of whom he treats here. In the last chapter of the Canticles: "Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm." Which no one interprets better than Haggai, who, when he spoke of Zorobabel, as a type of Christ, to whom perhaps the Lord looked in this place, said: "And I will set you as a seal," he immediately adds: "because I have chosen you" [διότι σε ᾑρέτικα]. In both places, the Targumists explain it by the Greek word for "engraving of a ring," or what is derived from this. Therefore, "to seal" [σφραγίζειν] here is to confer a token of excellent love upon him whom you have chosen: such as is the seal of a ring, which he who is preferred before the rest wears and carries about on his breast, as with Solomon, or on his arm, as a mark of singular love, where it follows: "For love is strong as death, jealousy is hard as the grave [sepulcrum]." To which passage the Chaldean says: "For love as strong as death is the love of thy divinity." Which things express vehement love, and signify election as well as confirmation. Even for this reason, that things which are approved are accustomed to be signed with a ring. Such are letters, which are proofs of our will and the character of our mind. Which fittingly applies B to Him who is the "radiance" of the Father, and the "character of His substance," that true "seal of the living God," as the Apocalypse speaks. For, as it is in the Megilla, what is written in the king's name, and sealed with his ring, is not revoked. In the same chapter at verse 40, it is corruptly read: "When the last light of the early-born shall come" [ἐππότε κείνης / Υστάτιον ὅτε φέγγος ἐλεύσεται ἠριγενείης·] 399 for which the great Scaliger read: "When the last light of her, the early-born, shall some time come," etc. Verse 70 follows: "Did I not choose you twelve, and one of you is a devil [διάβολος]?" Regarding which place I do not change what he said concerning the devil and slanderous things, he seems to note some change in Judas; we have written of the infamous Judas. Moreover, because I do not change "I chose" [ἐξελεξάμην], which in the Greek "devil" [διάβολος] does not appear at first glance. How studious our evangelist was of the prophet Zechariah and the Chaldean interpreters, we have often noted. However, the critics of the Hebrews observe that the word נָשִׂיא [nasi’], when it occurs in Job and elsewhere, is rendered by the Chaldeans with the same word, but with the letter samech; in Zechariah alone, with the word נְשִׂיא [nesi’], which what it is, Elias confesses in his *Thisbi* he does not know. But what it is, no one who is learned in Chaldee is ignorant, and it is known from the Meturgeman of the same author. Indeed, the devil, who stands by the high priest Jesus in Zechariah, is thus called by the Targumists, from the sin into which he had cast himself: which is "an apostate" [ἀποστάτης]. Whither also our author should have looked, so that the sense might be: "Did I not choose you twelve, and one of you is an apostate?" Our author, however, did not know where to turn himself, as is his habit, when he said "devil" [διάβολος]—as if about the evil spirit himself. What if the Hellenists, whom the evangelist saw, used the word "devil" [διάβολος] in Zechariah? "And the devil stood at his right hand." Not far from the beginning of the seventh chapter at the first verse, where it now reads: "That the sons of the Jews plotted to destroy him by guile of arrogance, rejoicing in a holy destruction," C that same incomparable man also read: "rejoicing in a holy destruction" [ὁσίῳ χαίροντες ὀλέθρῳ]. Most excellently, so that "the holy one" [ὁ ὅσιος] may be the Son of God Himself. I do not understand 400 why, in the third verse that follows, he persuaded the brothers of the Lord to leave Galilee, and to seek the land bordering on Judea, that is, to betake himself to Jerusalem. If the evangelist had made mention of this, someone of the learned might have thought that he had alluded to the controversy which exists concerning the city of Jerusalem, which some attribute to the Jews, others to the Benjaminites: which cannot have a place here, because the evangelist stated clearly "into Judea" [εἰς τὴν Ἰουδαίαν]. Why then did he say "of the land bordering on Judea" [Ἰουδαίης ὁμοτέρωνα γαῖαν]? To verse 4 of that chapter occurs that place, "For no one does anything in secret, and seeks himself to be in openness [παῤῥησίᾳ]." To which the ancient theologians, among whom are Cyril and Chrysostom, note that the members of the sentence in our evangelist must sometimes be transposed. That this happens in this place. For he wished, they say: "For no one, wanting to be in openness, does anything in secret." Add that our author did not understand the locution used at that time. He certainly said nothing when he said: "For no man of mortals weaves a secret work, a work covered by the unapproachable mist of silence, but wishing to be bold, he desires to be in the open." For the evangelist intended nothing of the sort. There is no doubt that those who spoke this were noting some carnal affectation of vainglory and ambition in the Lord. Their mind was this: To no one who is held by a desire for fame, or who demands to attain to it, should it be hidden; since, especially for such a one, all things must be done in public and in the light of men. The Greeks would say this: "For it is not necessary for anyone who wishes to be made famous to do anything in secret." Our author, therefore, ridiculously, since the evangelist used the Greek word not in the manner of the Greeks, but in the manner of the Chaldeans and Syrians, twisted this toward the Greek signification, for whom [παρρησιάζεσθαι] means "to speak freely" [ἐλευθεροστομεῖν], or "to speak boldly" [θρασυτομεῖν], to speak audaciously or prematurely. But at 401 [נָשִׂיא], as Rabbi Elias notes, with a serving letter [servili] which is prefixed, to…
A *in abscondito* ("in secret"), which is in the Rabbis and Chaldeans [*b'tish'in*], is opposed: he who ridiculously derives that word from the Orient. Some of the Rabbis interpret *bepombi*, which is "with pomp." Our author, like one who never saw the sun, or has been constantly moving in darkness, rarely raises his eyes to the mind of the author, because he had not learned his language. Or if by chance he does raise them, he blinks, or is dim-sighted.
In the same seventh chapter, v. 22, to those words: *And on the Sabbath ye circumcise a man*, he has spoken not only obscurely but improvidently, when he said:
*And with an ancestral custom* *When the light of the accustomed dawn of the seventh [day] comes,* *Ye circumcise the new-born with the labor-pains’ iron.*
For if it is understood simply of circumcision, it is false. For although it was done on the Sabbath, the circumcision was not performed on the seventh day. It was not, I say, performed on the seventh day from birth, but on the eighth. But because it fell to the seventh—not of life, but of the week—it was permitted. Hence the Lord’s argument. And therefore not without cause does the holy author add, *that the law of Moses might not be broken*. By reason of necessity, therefore, on the seventh, not by institution. Nor does the force of the argument lie in the seventh [day], but in the Sabbath. For if the Sabbath, which is the seventh day of the week, was the eighth of his life, even he who was born was circumcised, on the Sabbath itself, I say, so that the law of Moses, which had ordered it to be done on the eighth day, might not be broken. And thus, on a day on which it was not lawful for anything to be done, the circumcision took place. For which our author, when he spoke of the seventh, made more of the verse by which he was pressed than of the thought.
In the same chapter, verse 24, it is read: *Judge not according to appearance, but judge 402 righteous judgment*. A most elegant passage, and which, if I am not mistaken, is not sufficiently understood. Moses, he says, permitted you to circumcise on the Sabbath day. I have healed a man on the Sabbath. That you approve; this you condemn in me, as if it were against the law. This is that *prosōpolēpsia* (“respect of persons”), which is called *prosōpolēpsia* *in the law* by the prophet Malachias, ch. II, v. 9. Where *elabete prosōpon en nomō* (“ye have accepted a person in the law”), the elder Hellenists say elegantly: which Symmachus, *Epeisēkeite prosōpon en nomō* (“ye have brought in/admitted a person in the law”), had expressed obscurely. St. Jerome: They accept the face [person] in the law, so that they look not to the causes but to the persons; and despising the just poor, they receive and honor the wicked rich. The mind of the passage, however, is: Judge not as you are accustomed; for if the same poor man does [something] according to the prescription of the law and the rich man [does the same], you praise the latter, you accuse the former. Which is that which the ancients called *prosōpolēpsia*, the [respect of persons] in the law. Our author renders the passage as if they were serving the eyes of others, which is the mark of those whom the Hebrew Hellenists commonly call *hypokritēs* (“hypocrite”). I would that the learned, as they have done with not a few others, had weighed this passage more diligently. But readers will grant pardon if, in such a heap of facts as occur here spontaneously, I now and then interpose something small, without which, however, the rest cannot be understood. For we are not doing this so that we might interpret all the places of the evangelist in order (although learned men have left us a rich harvest), but so that we might annotate the *paraphrase* of the ancient Nonnus. And as for those who object to these things as trifles to St. Jerome and others, I shall wonder if they can provide the twentieth part of the erudition that was in him. B Most interpreters have not understood the Hellenistic mode of speaking, who generally confuse those phrases, *eipein pros heautous* (“to say to themselves”) or *pros allēlous* (“to one another”). Thus when the most holy evangelist, in this same 403 chapter, verse 35, said, *The Jews said therefore among themselves*, they thought it was the same as the Hebrew *amar el libbo*, “to speak,” and in Homer with a similar Hebraism, *eipein pros plēsion allon* (“to speak to another neighbor”), as someone is said to do. Whence more recent interpreters said, *The Jews said among themselves*, which the old interpreter, as in not a few other things, rendered very well as *ad semetipsos* (“to themselves”), for in Hebrew he who thinks, and does not speak, is yet habitually said to speak. For *el leb* (“to himself”), or, “with his heart,” which even boys should have already known, they understand in such matters: which is called *lalein en tē dianoia* (“to speak in the mind”) among the Hellenists. And the Syrian noted this excellently here, who rendered it *pros tēn autou psychēn* (“to his own soul”). Whence also the Lord, who alone is the *kardiognōstēs* (“knower of hearts”), often responds to the *theoprepōs* (“befittingly divine”) thoughts of men. Which miracle, since it is among the first, is passed over. This thing is so common to those who did not understand Hebrew, that it was often a snare to our [interpreter] too, as with this passage, which the evangelist had said, *The Jews said therefore among themselves*, he thus expressed:
*And the crowds there spoke to one another in their conversation.*
There follows in the same chapter, *Does He intend to go to the dispersion of the Greeks, and teach the Greeks?* Concerning which passage it is disputed by the ancients, what is “the dispersion of the Greeks,” of which he speaks. For some understand the Greeks, others the Romans. But it is not to be doubted that the Hellenists are intended, who, though they were Jews by race, spoke and knew Greek. Which, like not a few other things, they owe to the great man Joseph Scaliger, an expert in these letters. Who shows that the *diasporan* (“dispersion”), which was European, [is that known] by the Greek version, which is now attributed to the Seniors [the Seventy]; but that which was in Asia, by the Chaldean paraphrase, formerly in use. How, therefore, did our author call these *Panellēnas* (“All-Greeks”)? For he said thus:
*Where the scattered groups of the Panhellenes, gifts and the law of their own wisdom, [He] may teach the Hellenic children.*
404 Assuredly, if they are *sporades* (“scattered”), they are not *Panellēnes*; if they are *Panellēnes*, they are not *sporades*. For by the word *Hellēnōn*, as ancient witnesses testify, only the Thessalians and Argives were meant by Homer, and all other Greeks are named so [by later usage]. But these were neither all Greeks, nor the chief of the Greeks, but neither were they Greeks at all, but Jews. Eustathius: *But the Panhellenes must not be interpreted according to Zenodotus, but Homerically according to the ancients; saying, the Panhellenes and Achaeans, instead of, the Thessalians and Argives; so that he may distinguish from the whole of the Argives those who were under Achilles, specifically called Hellenes according to some [custom].* But that they were Hellenists, Jews, even Chrysostom observes: who also adds the reason why they cannot be understood as Greeks. Nor was he more diligent here, since he called them *tekna Hellēnia* (“Hellenic children”). And indeed, whether you speak in Hebrew, “sons of Israel,” or born from Israel or from the Israelites; or in Greek, these *Achaioi*, not only Greeks, but born of Greeks. Here, however, *Hellēnes*, and Jews, and born of Jews, that is, they are Jews, but *Hellenistai* (“Hellenistic”). There follows in verse 37: *In the last and great day of the feast, Jesus stood, and cried, saying: If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.* There is no doubt C but that the evangelists often compress certain things in their narrations. We know from Luke IV, 17, that the Lord publicly expounded the prophets to the people, where, he says, *he stood up to read*, for the reading, or he proposes the prophet's words at length; just as, however, he there recounts the summary or the beginning of the reading, so our author here on the contrary omitted *tēn anagnōsin* (“the reading”), and placed the *exēgēsin* (“exposition”) without it. The *anagnōsis*, as it seems, was: *All who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat*, Isaiah LV.
Which *parascha* or rather *haphtara*, quite many and at that time especially adapted, concerning the Messiah, are contained [therein]. Such as that: *Behold, I have given him as a witness to the peoples, a leader and instructor to the peoples*; and that: *Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near.* Which clearly agree with those things that precede: *Ye shall seek me, and shall not find [me]. And, Whither I go, ye cannot come.* This, therefore, is the *anagnōsis*. To which the *exēgēsis*, or exposition, which follows, clearly agrees: *If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth in me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers.*
of living water.* To which the Hebrews might annex that A note of theirs. It is, indeed, an excerpt or a fragment of interpretation, not whatever he said. Which is familiar to the evangelists, as in that place I have already mentioned, where out of the whole discourse only those words, *This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears,* are set down. The occasion for the interpretation, as well as the reading, is contained in those words, *In the last day, that great day.* Since on that day, especially, although they were indeed sharing in the rest of that feast (so that Plutarch says it was dedicated to Bacchus by the Jews), he proposed to the people with wonderful urbanity those words, *Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,* which are referred by the Chaldeans to the desire for learning. For just as he invited the Samaritan woman from earthly water, to which she attributed much, by the occasion of the well to which she was approaching, to spiritual water; so now he invites the Jews, from drunkenness and wine, to that same [spiritual water], by the occasion of this B lesson which he himself adapted to the time, so that he might seem to have publicly read a part, or the whole, of the *Haphtarah* of the prophet to whom the evangelists have given place. From which the interpretation of that passage or verse, *Woe unto them that thirst, come ye to the water,* is placed here by the evangelist. It follows: *He that believeth in me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.* It cannot be told how much this passage has exercised the noble intellects of both this time and of antiquity. For even St. Jerome said it was one of the four Scriptures which are cited in the New Testament, and are not found in the Old. When the great man Chrysostom saw this, he added C a note: *And where has the Scripture said that rivers of living water shall flow out of his belly? Nowhere.* That is to say, where did Scripture say it would come to pass that rivers of living water would flow from his belly? Nowhere. And therefore he also adds: *What then is it, "He that believeth in me, as the Scripture hath said"? Here one must place a punctuation mark, so that the "Rivers shall flow out of his belly" may be of his own pronouncement;* that is: What then is, *He that believeth in me, as the Scripture hath said?* Here one must distinguish, so that what follows: *Out of his belly shall flow rivers,* may be the Lord's words. And no person of sound mind indeed doubts that the whole Old Testament most richly foretold the Lord and commended faith in the one who was to come. Yet I think that it looks to a certain D passage, contrary to what he supposed. But no one, I think, designates the Lord more clearly in the Law, and commands that men believe in him, than the one whom the evangelist always presses, namely Deuteronomy XVIII, 15 and 18, where the *prophet* is promised. Nor was there any passage that was at that time more deeply inscribed upon the minds of all. Whence also in chapter I, 21, those who are sent to John ask: *Art thou the prophet?* Likewise, *If thou art not the Christ, nor Elias, nor the prophet,* and in VII, 14: *That this is of a truth the prophet that should come into the world,* they sufficiently show what they judged concerning him when they treat of the coronation. Peter urgently presses this same passage in his divine discourse in Acts III, 22, so that everywhere the writers of the New Testament love this one above the rest.
But to what purpose are these? When in this very place it follows: *Many of the people therefore, when they heard this saying, said, Of a truth this is the Prophet.* What, however, is said there? *Believe in him,* or, what is the same thing from the Hebrew manner of speaking, *Hear him.* The passage is thus: *The Lord will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken;* so that he means: I am that prophet, and he who believes in me, as the Scripture hath said, that is, has commanded, he is about to receive that illustrious gift of the Spirit, which he so often promised. It remains, therefore, that those words, *Rivers shall flow out of his belly,* and what follows, are the words of the Lord. And indeed, so in chapter IV, 14, almost word for word, with no mention of Scripture made, he spoke: *Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.* Although, therefore, elsewhere the prophet speaks A almost (such is the famous passage of Zechariah XIV: *And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem,* and to which the Lord himself alluded in the upper clause, *All you that thirst, come to the waters*). However, the evangelist himself indicated that they were his words, who adds the interpretation: *But this spake he of the Spirit, which they should receive.* For not the Scripture, not Isaiah, not Zechariah, but *this he* [he] said. Who? The one who is speaking, who promises the Spirit in these words. The same one who, when he praises the words of the prophets, unless it be a parody, adds this. Such as that in the twelfth, *These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory.* Our man, however, thought nothing of these things, who renders them thus: *For every one who has faith shall be saved.* Which is not said here. And then:
*The primordial word of God, from the mind of that same fountain, sends forth from within, by his own gushing stream, the divine water flowing back again.*
Now I omit that, when the evangelist speaks about Scripture, he calls it, irreverently and in his own manner, the B *word of God*, when *As the word of God said* was at hand. How badly the same man accepted that passage, *For the Holy Ghost was not yet given,* we showed above, who indeed interpolated those verses for the interpretation of that passage: C
*Not yet was Christ the King rooted in mortal desires, having appeared near the seat of the Creator.*
But now, because he refers *was glorified* to the ascension of Christ and his final glorification, that is not sufficiently provident indeed. He says the Spirit had not yet been given (for thus the ancients interpret, and especially Chrysostom, who, when the holy author said, *For the Holy Ghost was not yet given*, he understands *given*, because Christ had not yet been glorified). And yet, before the ascension, according to this very evangelist, the Spirit was given, chapter XX, on the day of Pentecost, yet he was given. Therefore Chrysostom is otherwise, who refers it to *the saving passion*, or the death of the Lord. *For not yet, he says, was the Holy Ghost given, because Jesus was not yet glorified, calling the cross glory.* And thus indeed the ancients. Eulogius against the Novatians: *So long indeed as Jesus had not yet been glorified by the cross, the baptism was perfect; but after this, no longer.* But if they say that it was only that insufflation and gift, let them prove that the essence is in question here. But it is used everywhere also in the same manner in the Martyrologies and Menaea. Where *to be glorified* and *to be made perfect* have the same value. From which I do not see that even the Jews abstained. And so that brother D of the seven, whom Antiochus took off with bloody torture, says, that he was led by the Lord *into this glory*: by which he understands martyrdom. And not long after, the same author used the word [Hebrew], which signifies this same thing. Chapter 42, when the evangelist says, *Hath not the Scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?* just as a little before he had said, *For the Holy Ghost was not yet given*, when he meant, *For the Holy Ghost was not yet given*, now he says, *Where David was*, born, of course. Wherefore our man did not satisfy, when he said, *where he went*, since he did not even always live there, but either wandered or reigned. Nor did Christ dwell there as a type of David, although he was born there. This therefore is such a thing, as if one should say that the Lord lived in Bethlehem, because he was born there. Or if one should name the place where Christ lived, and understand Bethlehem.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The eighth, tenth, and nineteenth chapters are traversed. Interpretation of that passage. *When ye have lifted up the Son of man.* Chrysostom's interpretation, and...the familiar interpretation of Augustine and Bede. A *To lift up* used for the cross as a euphemism. Nonnus's strange interpretation of how he received the term *to lift up*. The place of the evangelist mutilated by him. The Syriac word which the evangelist, having spoken thus, expressed. Explanation of that passage: *We were never in bondage to any man.* The free who are Jews, who are servants. The paradoxes of the Pharisees. The paradox concerning liberty. Opposed to this is another from the Son of God. *They which believed,* and how poorly these were accepted by Nonnus. The diverse opinion of Chrysostom and Augustine concerning them. What the faith of the Jews is, from Rabbi Maimonides, or Rambam. The sin which reigns, and is properly caused by him as servos. The sense of that place, *We were not born of fornication*, poorly received by Nonnus. B The word *fornication* taken by others incorrectly in that place. Whoredom among the Hebrews, rabbis, and targumists, in sense. Servitude and whoredom objected to by the Jews against the Samaritans; and why. The Lord secretly called a Samaritan by the Jews; and how. *Hysteron proteron* noted by Augustine. That place concerning the devil: *For he is a liar, and his father*, badly understood by Nonnus. The same accepted concerning Cain, who is commonly believed to be of the devil's lineage. *To have lineage*. An idiom of Nonnus. Blind, profane, and sinners held, and from that is the place in chapter nine explained concerning the blind man. The place of Maimonides. The place concerning the blind man very poorly understood by Nonnus. *Eisoke* for *hina*, in that place very poorly placed by him. C *The neighbors* near the evangelist, *the bystanders*, and that from the usage of the Hebrews and Hellenists. Poorly understood by Nonnus. Synagogue and temple used for the same by Nonnus. What the cause might be, why the ancients conjectured the blind man's eye was created, to whom sight was restored. How *to create* is used by the Hebrews. *Ktizein ktisma*, concerning the miracle. Interpretation of that place in chapter ten, *That they might have life, and might have it more abundantly.* A circumlocution being turned about. The word *to be turned about*, not used in one way. *To have abundantly* what it is, and a dispute concerning it. Nonnus's *meteoria* (high-mindedness/error) and misinterpretation. What *to have life* is in that place. The difficulty of the Hellenists in expressing the Hebrew noted. *To quicken*. *To provide*. Nonnus's misinterpretation. The place concerning the hireling shepherd not correctly expressed by Nonnus. *Not a shepherd*. D The place concerning the Dedication very poorly understood by Nonnus. The first and third Dedications confused by him. Nonnus's *meteoria*. *To renew a house* and *to renew the ordinance of a feast* are far different. *Ordinance of a feast* for the feast itself. Ridiculously said by him *to renew the ordinance of a feast*, instead of what is *to keep the dedication*. Dedications private and public. Both confused by Nonnus. In the time of the *dedication*, an error by Nonnus. *To do something in the name of the Father or God*. The absurd exposition which Nonnus brings forward. Proved by many reasons. "Although he did not always call the Father Lord, yet he did all things in his name." Interpretation of that place: *If he called them gods*. Nonnus's misinterpretation of a most noble passage. Various types of prophecies among the Hebrews. A burden. *Lemma*, *lemna* of a judgment, *lemma* of a word, *rhenna* of a word, *logion*, *rhenna* against someone, a vision against someone. *Logos* absolutely. *Rhenna* absolutely. *Logos* of prophecy, *logos* upon someone, *logos* towards someone, towards whom the *logos* came, who they are. Three things to be considered in prophecy. *In your law*. *Nomos* used in the Hebrew manner. *Thesmos* wrongly placed for it by Nonnus. The place in Nonnus's interpretation is mutilated. 411 There exists a simple and orthodox interpretation of Chrysostom on that place in the eighth chapter: *"When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself."* Which is such: "When you have lifted up the Son of man, do you not then most of all expect that you will be rid of me and will kill me? But I say that then you shall most of all know that I am he, by reason of the signs, and of the resurrection, and of the destruction." Which sentiment Theophylact also expressed. Therefore, "You shall know," he says, "afterwards, that I am the Son of God. You shall know me to be Christ." C The time now at last came, when the peak stands almost, that the wise Son of man might be lifted up. And in the same chapter, comm. 32, which the evangelist said, *And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me*, thus he: And when I am lifted up from the broad earth, I shall draw all of you to myself into the wide heaven. As if it were said, And I, if I ascend from the earth to heaven, will draw all unto myself, when the evangelist himself clearly adds the interpretation: *But he said this, signifying by what death he was about to die.* Which interpretation, perhaps lest he might be refuted, he himself passed over. For as to another, as we said above, D there is no doubt they are these: 413 "Thus he spoke, signifying by what life-restoring fate the gatherer of the people, Jesus, was about to die." But what astonishment it was, that when he was warned by the plain speech of the sacred author concerning the interpretation, he should yet, a little later (for about the upper place it could still be doubted), bring forth the contrary more manifestly? For thus he says distinctly: "Being lifted up from the earthly chambers and having come to the heavens, I myself shall draw all of you from the earth to me, that the wise Son of man might appear lifted up." Augustine well says: "For the exaltation is the day of the passion, not of glory, of the cross, not of heaven, because he was also exalted there, when he hung on the wood. But that exaltation was a humiliation. For then he became obedient even unto death, even the death of the cross." And from that Bede: "For he speaks of the exaltation of the passion, not of the glorification: of the cross, not of heaven." Nor otherwise
which Cyril accepted as concerning death. But as I said before, there is no doubt that he has expressed here the Syriac word *n-p-qa*, which denotes the punishment of the cross with lifting up. This the Hellenists, as is their custom, have elegantly expressed with the word *ypsoun* (to lift up). The words of the most holy evangelist in the same chapter, verse 33, seq.: *We are Abraham’s seed, and have never been in bondage to any man*, which immediately follow those things which precede them: *Then said Jesus to the Jews which believed on him*, so that it might be a response of those whom he had said had already believed. Whence also most interpreters testify that they wonder at a lie so manifest and arrogant. Nor indeed could that solemn formula, which is so often repeated, *And thou shalt remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt*, have slipped from their minds, as they could not deny either the ten words which were fixed in their minds, nor the Babylonian servitude, nor the Roman, in which they were still living. Whence also Chrysostom, Theophylact, Augustine, Bede, and others wish it to be the character of an inflated and arrogant man. A Nor does our author seem to have judged otherwise. But to me it does not seem doubtful that those who said these things were looking to the covenant and to the law, to which those who adhered were called free by a customary paradox. For such a son of nobles, or of free men, that is, a free man, was called *ben-horin*. Whence that saying in the Chapters which they commonly call the Fathers: "No one is held as a free man except him who exercises himself in the study of the law." Yet those could not be such who were outside the covenant, who embraced an *allophulon douleian* (foreign servitude), which is commonly called by them *aboda zarah*. This servitude the Jews threw in the faces of the Samaritans, whom they detested, to such an extent that they would not admit even water or wine from them. Therefore, *we have never been in bondage to anyone* refers to worship, namely, as the Samaritans did to Antiochus. Which is the true mark of the race of Abraham. And this is true from the school of the Pharisees, as we were saying, who, as Josephus testifies, approached the Stoics most closely, [sharing the] paradox: "No one who is not entirely occupied in the law is free." Of such sort is, "He who observes the law is a king," and other things of the same kind which are read in the Chapters. B Moreover, that the formula which I have now set forth was used by them at that time is apparent even from the Targumists. Just as in Isaiah thirty-four, verse 12, where the Hellenists have: *Her princes shall not be*, the Chaldean has, "who say," that is, "We are free," which the evangelist [renders as]: *We have never been in bondage to any man*. Not that they denied they had ever been in servitude, but that they sought to show that by the prerogative of the covenant and the law, they were free. Plainly, as in the writings of the Stoics, that the wise man is free, and that Epictetus never served, is referred to choice, or *proairesis*. Just as the Stoics deny that the wise man serves even when he is a slave. Since they claimed such liberty for themselves, hence such rotten boasting. To which the Son of God opposes another thing: *That whosoever commits sin is the servant of sin*. Which the Stoics themselves urged, yet our author did not understand. But it is not at all to be endured that, while both Chrysostom and others ascribe this most putrid arrogance to those whom he had called "believed" a little before, our author says that they themselves firmly and plainly believed. For he clearly interprets those words in the thirty-third verse, *Then said Jesus to the Jews which believed on him*, thus: *These things, while he proclaims them, various mortals,* *To the unbreakable bonds of faith have bowed.* That is, he impressing these things upon them, various mortals submitted themselves to the most firm and unbroken bonds of faith. Who could bear that? When the same persons, if we believe Chrysostom, were those who a little later oppose themselves to the Truth. C Certainly Chrysostom thought they were the same, for he writes: "They believed indeed, but not as they ought; but simply and as it happened, moved and resting upon the humbleness of the words; for that they did not have perfect faith, the evangelist shows from [the following] words, by which they again insult him." But indeed, just as Augustine said some were those who believed, others those who responded, so he thinks. They answered him, he says, not those who had already believed, but those who were in the crowd not yet believing. Furthermore, regarding the faith of the Jews, one will not desire judgment from their own writings, even in that most accurate interpreter, Chrysostom. The greatest doctor Maimonides, whom they call Rambam from the contraction or first letters of his name, shows this excellently elsewhere. The meaning of his words is this: He who possesses indubitable faith should discern by reason and D thought what he believes, such that he says he believes one thing because he received it from his ancestors: which is faith from tradition; another thing, because it agrees with common sense; another finally, because it rests on evident proof, which is from knowledge. Whoever, however, believes something that is not contained in these three, of him, he says, it is truly said, "The simple believe everything." Thus, therefore, they believed, so that they themselves overthrew individual things, and especially the written law by the law of the mouth which they called: which, like other things which he treats, detracted from the written. Whence faith is various and uncertain from interpretations: nay, often concerning the same subject [they say] one thing and then another. When it follows in the following verse, *That whosoever commits sin is the servant of sin*, he speaks of that sin which they say commonly reigns, and which is committed by those who will it. Which, when it reigns, cannot be but that it makes them slaves. Whence he said *hamartian* (sin), not *anomian* (lawlessness). Between which the theologians of the Greeks distinguish. Whence that of Basil in the Catena on Isaiah: "There are lawless ones indeed, who are entirely disobedient to divine laws, or who have stood apart from them, or who have not approached [them] from the beginning; but sinners are those who sin voluntarily, after having received knowledge." In verse 41, when the Jews say, *We are not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God*, it may seem a wonder that those who before had called themselves the sons of Abraham, now say they are God's: so that they prefix that, *We are not born of fornication*. Where, when theologians and indeed great ones send us to the place in Matthew 15:19, where there is talk of common whoredom, they were undoubtedly doing something else. And Chrysostom, Theophylact and others, who are too diffuse on this place. For when they say "from whoredom," they speak of that which, having abandoned the Lord, is called "whoredom" in Hosea. Which neither Greeks nor Latins express sufficiently conveniently. Therefore they deny *tekna porneias* (children of whoredom), as the Hellenists speak concerning the same Hosea, that is, that they are idolaters, because the Father is He who is worshipped. Whence that: "To the wood I have said, That thou art my Father, and to the stone, Thou hast begotten me," in the manner of the Hebrews. And nothing is more customary in Scripture or the rabbis. The people of the Lord, says Rabbi Kimchi, likened the prophets to the false prophets: which was whoredom; and Jonathan the Chaldean almost always uses the word "whoredom" for idolatry. Therefore our author is foolish: *We are not born of a bastard bed of a harlot.* As if it were a matter of furtive coitus, when it is a question of the *noete porneia* (intellectual whoredom), just as Cyril speaks toward the second [chapter] of Isaiah. But so that the genius of the place may be understood, first they object to the Lord secretly and bitterly what they soon pour out from indignation: *We are Abraham's seed; we have never been in bondage to anyone*. Then, *We are not from whoredom: we have one Father, God*. The Jews threw both, both the servitude and such whoredom, in the faces of the Samaritans. Because they were idolaters, they were whoremongers, and, because they were whoremongers who had abandoned the Lord, so to express it—for I cannot [express it] otherwise—they had another father besides God. These things [they said] secretly against the Samaritans, and bitterly against the Lord. Which, when He—whom they did not once touch as a Samaritan—bravely ignored, they themselves finally interpret these things. For it follows below: *We do not say well...*
A regarding the 44th verse, when it speaks of the enemy of the human race, *And he stood not in the truth, because there is no truth in him*, this is a clear case of *hysteron-proteron* (the latter first), if we believe Augustine, who in the twelfth book of *De civitate Dei* says: "The phrase used is less common. For it seems to sound thus: 'He stood not in the truth, because there is no truth in him,' as if 418 that were the cause, that he did not stand in the truth because truth is not in him; whereas the cause that truth is not in him is rather that he did not stand in the truth." This way of speaking is found also in the Psalms, where he says: *I cried, for Thou hast heard me, O God*, when it would seem it should have been said: "Thou hast heard me, O God, for I cried." The same follows: *When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.* Which words our author interprets in such a way that the evangelist attributes the father to the devil, B saying: *He himself was born a liar, from a lying father.* This carelessness other critics have also noted, since the sense is: *When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, because he is a liar, and the father of it* (namely, of the lie). I have observed, however, among the ancients, that some have interpreted this passage as referring to Cain, as if he were their father, begotten of the devil as his father; and perhaps our Lord intends this now. Suidas: "It has been said by some that Cain was born of the seed of the devil, and having hated his own brother Abel, he slew him." For there is also cited regarding this matter the Lord's use in the Gospels to the Jews: *Ye are children of the devil; your father was a murderer from the beginning, as his father was.* Cain, from whom you are descended, was a murderer just like his father, namely, the devil. At verse 58, it is said: *Amen, amen, I say unto you, before Abraham was made, I am.* Concerning which passage Augustine says: "He did not say, 'Before Abraham was, I am,' but, 'Before Abraham was made,' who would not have been made except through Me, I am." But what did our author mean when he said: *Before Abraham possessed a race, I was*? To *possess a race* is certainly one thing—which here either means nothing or is entirely idiomatic—and to *be made* is another, which is what the evangelist said. And perhaps he said *possessed a race* 419 as when the Greeks say *genei hysteros*, that is, by birth, or *hysteron-genetos* (born later). Or perhaps he used *race* idiomatically, instead of *form*, so that it might mean before he had form or species, just as he also called *substance* (ousia) by the name of *race* (genos) in another place. C In the ninth chapter, when the disciples ask about the man blind *from birth*, *Who hath sinned, this man or his parents?*, there is no doubt they were looking at the opinion that held sway at that time regarding the blind, who were held to be profane and sinners. But I think they had in mind the place in Samuel: *The blind and the lame shall not come into the house of the Lord*; or that they had learned that nothing happens in vain, especially concerning the punishments for sins. Whence that saying among the rabbis, Moses Maimonides: "And thus our truly wise teachers have said: 'There is no death without sin, and there are no chastisements without offense'." Where he deals with chance and fortune. But the state of the question to which the Lord responds is formed by these words, *that he should be born blind*. From which the Lord's reply also depends, as Theophylact rightly notes. For they do not ask whether this man sinned or his parents, about which no one had any doubt. Just as it is not answered: *Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents*; but something is understood *a communi* (as a common matter), so that he was born blind. Which Chrysostom, as well as Theophylact, wish to be expressed again by the Lord: who says that *this does not absolve them of sins; for He did not say simply, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents," but added, "That he should be born blind."* Which in our manuscripts is read only in the former place. Nonnus took the passage most poorly, when he changed the *hina* (that) into *eisage* (he brought in). For he takes away the cause; he acknowledges the *consequence* (to symbebekos), with which they were not dealing. Of the same ninth chapter in the eighth verse, when the evangelist said: D *The neighbors, therefore, and they who had seen him before, that he was a blind man*, 420 said, etc., he did not understand what it meant. For the *neighbors*, just as those who *observed* him, are what the Greeks would call *theoremenous*. The *neighbors*, therefore, are those who are called *engizontes* (drawing near) or *eggys ontes* (being near) among the Hellenists at other times. Thus, Luke 15, *And they were drawing near to Him*. Hesychius: *Geiton* (neighbor), *eggys* (near). But our author took it as if he had to translate the Hebrew word, when he explained them as *aliens* (epelydes). And thus poets speak. But in explaining this word, the Syrian uses a word. And in Luke 19:11, *near to Jerusalem*. Therefore, the neighbors are those who are near. Nor did he err here by straying from it. For he accepted it as if it were dealing *with neighbors*, that is, *sojourners*, as the Hellenists often speak, when it is actually a matter of a beggar, and, as is likely, a homeless man, who do not even have neighbors. Whence by Kimchi, such men are gracefully called in other places *dwellers in the streets*: to whom the ancient Siculus agrees: *He who lives nowhere, is dead without a grave*. Therefore *neighbors* is taken literally from the usage of the Syrians and Chaldeans. It is clearly vulgar and idiomatic, just as it so often confuses the synagogue with the temple. As in that 22nd verse of the same ninth chapter: *That if any man should confess Him to be Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue.* Where he says: *So that whoever might accept him with his mind and confess Christ, might not touch the holy house called by God.* And this is especially ridiculous, because above in the sixth chapter, at verse 59, where the Lord is said to have taught *in the synagogue at Capernaum*, he yet says that He taught in the temple, as if at Jerusalem. Wherefore, if we believe him, the Syrian is one thing, which is Hebrew for another. There follows in verse 32: *From the beginning of the world it hath not been heard, that any man hath opened the eyes of one born blind.* Above we warned in many places that most of the ancients thought 421 the eyes of this blind man were created by the Lord. The reason for which is contained in these words, which you might marvel at. For it is evident from them that it was taken for the highest and most excellent miracle. But regarding such things, the Hebrews used the word for creation: to whom to perform anything new or unusual is called *to create a creature* (ktizein ktisma). So Num. 16:39: *If Jehovah shall create a creation (creaturam creaverit), and the earth shall open her mouth*, concerning the unusual opening of the earth, as here concerning the unusual opening of the eyes. In which passage, what is likely is that, since the ancient Hellenists, who do not exist now, would render *ktisma ktisei ho Kyrios* (the Lord shall create a creature) word for word, it seems to have been used by some ancient for this passage, who, concerning a significant miracle, would note *the Lord again creates a creature* (palin ktisma ktizei Kyrios); and that this persuaded them of creation, so that when Chrysostom spoke of the *creation of an eye*, and Asterius said that *the eyes were created and formed*, it was because he who performs a thing not seen, as I have already said, or heard, *creates a creature*. Whence what you have here, *From the beginning of the world it hath not been heard*, which in Hebrew terms would be *to create a creature*, and it befits Jehovah. Whence also these very works, and the praise of them, irritated the Pharisees more. This passage is most noble, and has been examined not a little by, in part, the ancients, and in part our own theologians: *I came that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly*, which is read in the following, the tenth chapter, at the tenth verse. In which, between the thief and that one true shepherd, who is He Himself, our Savior places a *distinguishing* (diakritiken) mark. He, He says, as he steals, so he slaughters the sheep and destroys. And for this reason He came. *I, that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly.* For so the old interpreter renders these words. But what is that *more* (perisson), or what is it to have *more abundantly*? When that greatest man Chrysostom had seen this difficulty, he learnedly 422 annotated: *And what is more abundant than life, tell me? The kingdom of heaven; but He does not yet say this. But He turns around the name of life, which was known to them.* He meant this, if I am not mistaken: That nothing can be called *more* than that life, than which nothing can be called m-
- A ore than that life; and yet, the term is used here as a homonym, just as the Lord uses it, in such a way that the word is the same, but its definition is not one and the same. Hence arises the ambiguity—if I am not mistaken—which is noted here B as *peristernophia*, or as theologians sometimes use it with a slightly different sense in sacred matters. For example, when they say using one word *peristrephomenos*, they mean that the same word is repeated, although it does not differ in definition. Theophylact and Chrysostom use this very frequently. Theophylact, indeed, is an excellent interpreter of Chrysostom in this passage: "Those were destroying and killing those who followed them; I have come so that they might have life, and might have something 'more'—the participation of the Holy Spirit, which ought also to be understood as the kingdom of heaven." And he adds then: "All men indeed live in Christ, just as in Christ they rise again. But the just have something preeminent, the kingdom of heaven." He is right to establish the homonymy in the word, as is Augustine, who also posits a twofold life here: namely, that which they call life through faith—which the Scholastics, from his expression, later called the life of grace, or that which is had through grace—and that which we have said will be in the future when we shall see Him in whom we believe, as he is accustomed to speak. Our author shrewdly understood this in the former member. Wherefore he notably elevates it, while adding: C
*That they might have something more, [something] superior.*
For what greater [gift] can be given than that life, which is the first in blessedness, and the last and most supreme in human hope? Nor did the Evangelist say *that they might have more*, 423 but *that they might have something more*. For he does not disconnect these, but subordinates them. He might at least have said—what could be said here, though in a different sense—*and that they might have something more*.
*So that they might acquire with a guileless honor* *The life to be, which time has not seen perish, 425* *And that they might have something more, superior.*
But our author did not understand even what follows: *And the hireling, and not being a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep, and flees*, which are read shortly after in the twelfth verse. For he conceived these things with little regard for the sense, D *But the hireling is not a shepherd!*
Which I do not think entered the author's mind. Moreover, he undoubtedly alluded to the passage in Zechariah XI, 17, where the hireling and worthless pastor is called *ro`i ha’elil*, a pastor of nothing. This is what the Hellenists call *not a shepherd*—not that he is not a [nominal] shepherd, but that he is a shepherd of vanity, and as follows, *abandoning the sheep*. For the common people translated it "idol shepherd," because *elil* [means] idols, because they are of nothing. Just as the Apostle, when he said, *We know that an idol is nothing in the world*, did not mean this, that an idol does not exist, or that an idol is nothing at all, but that it is what it is called: that which is of nothing and of no account. He joins, therefore, the mercenary and the "nothing" shepherd: not that he is not a shepherd, but that he is nothing less than a true and faithful one. The things that follow, *he sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep, and flees*, represent exactly that which follows in Zechariah concerning the deserter, *and [they] having abandoned the sheep*. The same author of ours, when he interprets those words in the twenty-second verse, *And it was the dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter*, became entangled in a great error indeed, which others have been able to note. He understands this about the first dedication—or those which were accustomed to be celebrated in memory of the temple dedicated by Solomon. Regarding this opinion, Theophylact says: "Some say that on the day on which the temple was built by Solomon, they celebrated the dedication on that same day." Which 426 were the first, whereas they are understood as the third, in memory of the altar which was erected by the Maccabees after it had been profaned by Antiochus. But that is more worthy of note, which he says concerning Solomon: *He renewed the ancient custom of a marvelous festival.* For there is no doubt that he looked to that passage in I Kings VIII: *And the king, and all the sons of Israel, dedicated the house of the Lord.* But our author, for what he had found—*he dedicated the house*—said clearly something else, that is, *he renewed the custom*: which, if I am not mistaken, he either did not understand, or [it is] something else. For to *renew a custom* is to change something in the manner or rite of a festival: but to *dedicate a house* is to initiate the house, that is, to celebrate and institute that festival which to the Jews is called *encænia*. Now, since he has called the festival itself, or the *festival*, *the custom of a festival*, what [could be] more absurd?
A than to "renew the feast," which is the *encænia* itself, since, forsooth, he intended to say "to observe the *encænia*"? And when he adds "the ancient," if I may judge, he confuses the private *encænia*, which are mentioned in the titles of the Psalms, with the *encænia* of the Temple. Just as these are confused by the word amongst the Hebrews, so they are distinguished by the Hellenists. Apollinarius:
*The twentieth and ninth holy song he sang,* *David, having bestowed a new house.*
Solomon, therefore, as our author confesses, *renewed* by building the house. He celebrated the beginnings of the house he had recently built, whereas this passage concerns the temple: which is undoubtedly something else. What of the fact that he said these things were celebrated in winter, which it is agreed by all were celebrated in autumn? These things he confuses most negligently. In the same tenth chapter, verse 25, since it is written thus, *The works which I do in the name of my Father, these testify of me*, it is worth the trouble to see what our interpreter brings from his own store; who renders these things thus:
*The works which I accomplish, calling the ancestral might.*
As if "to act in the name of the Father" were the same as "to invoke the Father": which if it be true, then he who B *came in his own name* will be one who invokes the name of God. But it is said of false prophets: *We have prophesied in thy name*. Furthermore, when the Lord, in the fifth chapter, opposes himself to the false prophet (whom Juvencus called *dyscolon* elsewhere), he says that he has come in the Father’s name, but that the other will come in his own. By which words, as Chrysostom witnesses, he opposes himself to the Antichrist. And what do these have to do with invocation? But that Christ did all things in the Father's name, as he himself testifies, does not mean that he always invoked the Father, as so many miracles testify. For, as it is excellently noted by Chrysostom on the sixth chapter, he did not invoke the Father when he was healing the paralytic, or when he was raising someone from the dead, or when he was about to impose a bridle upon the sea as if by his own power. Let us hear his words: *But why is it that, when about to raise up the paralytic, or raising the dead, or bridling the sea, he does not pray; yet here, in the case of the loaves, he does this?* And finally he infers: *But he who did those things by his own authority, it is clear that he did these things also by way of condescension.* Wherefore he found one thing, but expressed another. C Since it is one thing to act *in the name of the Father*, and another to *call upon the Father*. For if these are the same, the greatest things he did, he did not do in the name of the Father, if one is to trust Chrysostom, for he did not always—not even in those cases—invoke the Father. Wherefore one must distinguish those things which he administered *authentically*, as the same writer rightly speaks, from those which he administered *by condescension*. Which distinction has room in many places 428 which are poorly understood without it. I confess that among those passages which have exercised us most in this sacred author, it is that which is read in the thirty-fifth verse: *If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken*. Upon which the greatest Chrysostom says: *If those who received this by grace are not accused of calling themselves gods, how could he who has this by nature deserve to be blamed?* If they who received this by grace are not accused when they call themselves gods, how does he who has this by nature deserve to be accused? Which I do not understand. For it does not concern those who call themselves gods, but those who are so called in the sacred Scriptures. For it precedes, *I have said, Ye are gods*, from the most noble passage of the LXXXII Psalm. Therefore, they do not call themselves gods there, but are so called. D For even in the first verse this name is attributed to them, when it is said: *God hath stood in the assembly of the gods*. And then again in the seventh: *I said, Ye are gods*. Nor do I indeed understand that of Theophylact, who interprets the words *unto whom the word of God came* thus: *That is, I; for I am the Word of God; and having dwelt in them, I bestowed upon them the adoption.* If therefore they are gods, much more I [would be] free from all blame, calling myself God; which I also bestow upon others by nature. If *the word which came unto them* be the Word which was in the beginning. With whom Hieronymus, if I am not mistaken, elsewhere agrees. I marvel at this, that there are found those who do not weigh the difficulty, which Erasmus saw, but dissimulated. For what do those words mean: *If God himself imparted the dignity of his name to those to whom the word of God came*? For this is the very thing concerning which the inquiry is made in this place. For who are they to whom the word of God came? 429 In which lies the entire force of the passage. Our author, however, so entangles himself that one can scarcely understand what he says:
*And if of the race of earthly men* *To whom then only came the word of God like a dream,* *He called them gods by your ordinance.*
From which interpretation you can extract nothing solid. Unless his meaning appears to be this: If they, to whom the word of God came lightly, and as if through a dream, are called gods by your prophet. For thus he speaks below of Lazarus, who after his passing was present at the feast:
*And Lazarus was still among the feasters, like a dream,* *Manifest to all.*
Which has no place here. For it is the Psalm that is in question, and one which is especially vehement, and truly, as masters are accustomed to say, a *mâshâl*, that is, a very bitter reproof. Therefore, something else must be sought. The Hebrews have made various kinds of prophecies, which are for the most part reduced to two. For they proclaim either auspicious or adverse things. The latter, because it usually threatens, is called a *mâshâl* by the prophets. Which word you may find in almost infinite places in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the others. To the Chaldeans it is *onus*, to the word, and sometimes the *burden of the curse of the cup*. To the Hellenists it is called now *lemma*, now *lemma of a judgment*, now *lemma of a word*, sometimes *logion*, sometimes *word of a word*, sometimes *word against someone*, sometimes *vision against someone*, sometimes absolutely *word*, sometimes *reason*. And the Hebrews, when it is taken thus, are not rarely accustomed to express it simply as *dâbâr*, that is, word. There is none more vehement and more bitter than that of Micah, which is called nothing other than this, *dâbâr*, by the prophet. See the first chapter, where it is called *word of prophecy* by the Chaldean. Whose sign, when it is used simply thus, the Hellenists generally translate as *against*. Thus: *word against the Moabite, word against Damascus*. 430 In which, however, they often vary. Thus in Zechariah 11:1, *the burden of the word of the Lord upon Israel*, which is, *against Israel*, as the evangelist speaks here. And so the elegant Greeks. Indeed, to the prince of philosophers, *The Oration of Iphicrates against Harmodius* is inscribed in the second [book] of rhetoric, who elsewhere also speaks thus. And also Demosthenes inscribed *The [oration] against Leptines*, *Toward Leptines*. Therefore *unto whom the word came*, is *against whom the word came*, against whom that prophecy is directed. Now to the matter. The Psalm of which he speaks is a very grave prophecy against those who were established in dignity. Which the Chaldeans note as *by the hand of Asaph*, which is the sign of such a prophecy. In which, for the most part, three things are considered: from whom, to whom, against whom. From whom is God: to whom, through whose hand the prophecy is said to be delivered: as in Haggai 1:1 and 2, and elsewhere not once; against whom, as Israel, Nineveh, Damascus, Babylon, who are those *unto whom the word comes*, against whom the prophecy is directed. The *from whom*, in this prophecy, is expressed by these words: *God hath stood in the assembly of the gods*. The *to whom*, is expressed in the title, *A Psalm of Asaph*, for so the Hellenists express the genitive case. The *against whom*, who are those *unto whom the word came*, are the magistrates. The *word* therefore is *mâshâl*: which is the *onus* of the Chaldeans, the *mashal* of the rabbis. The Hellenist writer, because it was nothing less than unusual to them, was content to have said *word*. As in that of Jeremiah 23:33:
"The word that the Lord spoke against Babylon and against the land of the Chaldeans by the hand of Jeremiah." In the like manner, Isaiah 11:1: "The word which came to Isaiah the son of Amoz, concerning Judah and Jerusalem." Which Procopius renders from the version of others "against Judah." This passage 431 is clearly double to ours, so that the ancient inscription might be: "The word which came by the hand of Asaph from God unto the rulers."
Therefore, "unto whom the word of God came" are the magistrates, the *archontes*, who are there vehemently and sharply rebuked. Such as those: "How long will you judge iniquity, and accept the faces of the wicked? Selah. Judge the needy and the fatherless. They do not know nor understand; they walk in darkness." And yet it follows: "I said, you are gods." The sense, therefore, is this: If God, then, is speaking against those whom that whole passage, that whole prophecy addresses—those whom He nonetheless vehemently and sharply warns regarding their neglected duty, nay, rebukes—if He called them "gods" for the sake of their dignity, because magistrates represent God; do you judge him to be a blasphemer who, separated from the Father from eternity and sanctified, was sent into the world, because he says he is the Son of God? "Whom the Father sanctified," is the true *aph?rismenos* [set apart], being at once king and priest. For the Hellenists render that *777* in this way: which the evangelist, not without cause, also draws to the name of his country, *kat' oikonomias logon*. But he indeed understood what "in your law" meant in this place. For "law" means all the sacred books, the *enkrinomenoi*, as the ecclesiastical critics speak, that is, those they admitted as trustworthy. For the same word designates both law and doctrine to the Hebrews. And the Hellenists use one signification for another (as when they say, "the book of the generation of Christ": where the same word denotes both the series and the book). Which our author ineptly interpreted as *thesmos* [ordinance] *hymeteron* [yours]. And he even mutilated the other part of the passage, when he could not extricate himself. For thus:
"You have uttered a foolish tale in your madness, That I am the Son of the living God."
As if it had been written: "Whom the Father sanctified, and sent 432 into the world, do you say that I am the Son of God?" Whether this was done by him, or whether something has been lost, I do not argue. Those who most closely approached the sense of the passage thought the whole difficulty lay in the words, "unto whom the word of God came." Because they could not escape this, they said that it should be understood as the magistrate, to whom the office of commanding others has been entrusted. And that this is a Hebraism. I was of the opinion that the one to whom the word of God comes is a prophet; against whom, he who is rebuked. And this is true. But to other things.
CHAPTER XXIV
The eleventh chapter is run through. *Pyr* [fire] for a violent fever, and it is customary for Hippocrates. *Pyr* for fever, among the Syrians and Chaldeans. *Astheneia*, whether it is rightly called *pyr* by Nonnus. *Arrostein*, *enochleisthai*, *malakizesthai*, what they mean to the Hellenists. The word *isthenis* is used by the rabbis. And if anyone is so called by them. The passage, "from the village of Mary and Martha her sister," was discussed. How the Syrian translator read that passage. The reading of the passage represented according to his opinion. Bethany is a *kome*. Most illustrious cities are called *chorai*. The Hebrew word which is expressed when they speak thus, and hence the error of Nonnus and others. The notable *paregermeneia* [mistranslation] of Nonnus. The passage mutilated by Nonnus. The notable inconsistency of Nonnus. Thomas is ineptly called *didymos* [twin]. Nor was he called *didymos*. *Didymos* interpreted means *Thomas*. Christ is ridiculed and ineptly excused by Nonnus for the fact that He wept. An explanation of the most noble passage: "He groaned in the spirit, and troubled himself." *Emerimäe tini*. An error in the interpretation of his passage by Chrysostom and others. *Pneuma* [spirit/breath] is very poorly accepted in that passage for the Holy Spirit, and for right reason. The passage mutilated by Nonnus. The spirit of the Father alone believed by Nonnus. *Pneumati patrōō* A 433 rendered badly. How "spirit" is accepted by the Hebrews: the spirit of someone, for the person himself. The interpretation of the passage is also taken from the evangelist himself. *Embrimasthai en heautō*. Matthew and Mark, in the manner of the Greeks; John, the *embrimasthai* of the Hellenists. The passage truncated by Nonnus. The interpretation of that passage, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me." *Ēkousas*, in the manner of the Hebrews, instead of "you are accustomed to hear." *Sudarium*. That word is according to the opinion of Nonnus, Syrian, and yet ineptly deduced from sweat. The passage of Nonnus amended by transposition. Innumerable Greek and Roman words were once in use among the Syrians, Chaldeans, and rabbis. And some examples of them. The ineptitudes of the rabbis in the origin of words, especially Greek or Roman ones. *Apulia*, *aphul*, which denotes a bean, ineptly deduced. *Napodikion*, and how ineptly an origin was assigned to it by Elias. The use of *sudar* in the burial of the Jews. *Phoibazein*, *phoibanai*, *phoibazein demas*. Whence that word is taken. Nonnus has not used it rightly. The translation of children through fire in honor of Moloch, and why it was instituted. Most poorly confused by Nonnus is *phoibasmón* and *hagnismón*, of which the evangelist makes mention.
At the beginning of the eleventh chapter, when he spoke of the sickness of Lazarus to those words in the first clause, "Now there was a certain man sick, Lazarus of Bethany":
"Now there was a certain man, Lazarus, languishing with a diseased fire, a man from within Bethany,"
he seems to have thought of the observation of Galen, who frequently observes in Hippocrates that fever is called *pyr* [fire] violently, as in the *Epidemics* and elsewhere, *pyr elabe*, where he says: "Thus he is accustomed to name the fever when it is most violent," and elsewhere: "I know that he calls the most feverish fever *pyr*." And thus, everywhere *pyr oxy*, *pyknon*, and similar things in Hippocrates. Which seems to have originated from the Syrians and Chaldeans, by whom *ish*, that is *pyr*, is called fever. Therefore, he erred in that he called *astheneian* [weakness] as the evangelist said, which at the beginning was not unto death, according to the witness of the Lord who speaks thus. He expressed, however, that which the holy author of the Hebrews says. Which is urbanely called *arrostëin*, or *enochleisthai*, and sometimes *malakizesthai* by the Hellenists. For if the disease is more severe, *l`h* is added by the Hebrews, and this is what the evangelist said later, 434 "This sickness is not unto death." Which is called by the Hellenists *arrōstein heōs thanatou* [to be sick unto death], as concerning Hezekiah, 4 Kings xx, 1: "In those days Hezekiah was sick unto death." What if the masters derived their word *isthenis* from this word, which was undoubtedly in use among the Jews at that time, as not a few other Greek words were? But they speak thus of him who is tempted by *anorexia*. And as they themselves speak, *shwly hwlh b-npsh*, who is ill in spirit, so that he does not admit food. Therefore, just as they commonly, "our Rabbi was *isthenis*," so he was ours, when he was tempted by something here. When it follows, "from Bethany," I confess that I have always agreed with those who think that nothing in the sacred text should be changed without the authority of codices or the certainty of the ancients. Although we could be absolved by the single example of the great man, D. Jerome, who, as often as he argues about the corruption of some passage, so in that Isaiah XLII, 3, as it is cited by Matthew, he wishes some things to have been omitted by the scribes, not to mention here Nyssen, who, as I remember observing, adduces the comma elsewhere complete, which is missing in our editions. In this passage, indeed, there are some things which not unjustly could have moved some suspicion in an acute man regarding the negligence of the scribes. For when he says that the friend of the Lord and of our God originated from Bethany, why does he say that he originated "from the village of Mary and Martha"? For who doubts that Lazarus was well known at that time? So that it was not necessary to borrow this light for that country, or for him, from his sisters; since these rather, the sisters
A of the journey, not of the arrival: "He found," not that he was already present, but that he understood that Lazarus, from Martha who happened to meet him, and from others, had long since expired. From whom, before this digression, Bethany indeed, yet not yet *the village* which they imagine, he could be seen to have arrived at. But what is one to make of our author, who to the place itself, where it is said, *Jesus, therefore*, added on his own *to the village*? For he expressly said there: *Coming then, the King, late-born, to the village renowned,* *Found Lazarus breathless, strewn in the poured-out dust.* By which words, unless we do not understand Greek, he said that the Lord had arrived at the village. And yet, afterwards, he again denies what he said. For at those words in verse 30: *And Jesus had not yet arrived at the village*, he renders the passage thus: *The King had not yet arrived at the village.* He has therefore arrived at the village, and he has not yet arrived. He was present, and he was not yet present. Again, in the first verse of this chapter, he expressly distinguishes Bethany, misled by a corrupt reading, from the village. But at the beginning of the twelfth [chapter], when it was not necessary, he himself called Bethany a village also: *He entered the renowned village.* *He entered Bethany.* B
Lazarus [words] should have been addressed. For those who thought another village was to be understood here, they should have added at least which one it was. But if they cannot 435 do so, they will not be able to deny that what they think is clearly stated is said more obscurely. At the very least, therefore, the ancient codes are better—which it is certain the Syrian paraphrast used—which for those things, "from the village," read nothing other than "of the village," and for the others, "of the sister," read nothing other than "the brother." With this precedent, there is nothing to prevent us from conceiving the whole passage thus: *Now there was one sick, Lazarus, of Bethany, the village, brother of Mary and Martha.* And then: *This was Mary who anointed the Lord.* For the final word, where the verse now ends, the Syrian also omits. Which we have no doubt was changed during the invention of the verses. For it clung to the previous one, which ought to have been joined to the following. Examples of this fact, indeed, we could bring forth, and other illustrious ones. Now, because they deny that this hamlet was Bethany—which undoubtedly gave the greatest cause for this alteration—they should have at least considered, what they have forgotten in more than one place, that he whom they are interpreting spoke in Syriac, but wrote in Hellenistic Greek. And that he expressed this word in Hellenistic, as many others, here. In which usage it is common to transfer proper meanings to improper objects, as what is said in Syriac about a hamlet is transferred in Hellenistic to a city. No one, as far as I know, denies that Damascus was a very great city. Yet, it is agreed that it is called this "village" by the Hellenists. Thus, when Jeremiah said, *Damascus has been let go, it has turned back*, it is added, *How did she not leave the celebrated city, the beloved village* (ch. xlix, vv. 24 and 25)? And why? Because the prophet had used the word. But Bethlehem, indeed, was a city, and of the lot of Judah, to be sure. And that city, although small, yet of all that the sun sees, both on account of David and of Him who was 436 greater than David, is very illustrious; yet it is called a "village" by our author: *Did not the Scripture say that from the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village, where David was, the Christ comes?* To omit that word, which properly and customarily denotes a city to the Hebrews, it is expressed by that word by the Hellenists. Therefore, I sometimes grieve, and sometimes am almost indignant, that the learned have not taken greater care regarding the Hellenistic language, especially in the New Testament, where it was most required. And yet the Syrian understood this perfectly, who used the word here. But this also strangely confused our author, who wants Lazarus to have been sick indeed in Bethany, yet originating from the village of Mary and Martha. Or rather, he did not himself understand what he was saying. For he speaks in a perplexed and involved manner: *And there was a certain man, Lazarus, suffering from a fevered fire,* *Within Bethany, sung of as a village* *Of Martha and Mary.* But even what follows, *of her sister*, because he saw it was most corrupt and could not extricate himself, he omitted. This schema he used more than once. But he persists not a little in [the matter of] Bethany. And so he says it, festive and *sung of*, and because he thought it was celebrated, he made it a different place from that village of which he thought the author was speaking. As if Bethany could not be called a "village," or in this very chapter, where it is said, *Jesus had not yet arrived at the village*, Bethany is not understood. Therefore, it is surprising that some do not even believe the evangelist. Indeed, there are many things that have placed burdens upon learned men here. First is the very long colloquy with Martha. For before the Lord arrived there, it is said that Martha met him. And she then precedes [him] to Bethany again, to summon her sister, of course, where at length 437 the evangelist, verse 30, says: *But Jesus had not yet arrived at the village, but was in the place where Martha met him.* Although he had stated a very long digression and a colloquy with Martha in verse 17, *Coming then, Jesus found him having spent four days in the tomb*, as if, of course, he had already arrived at Bethany. C And yet, in the same chapter, verse 12: *Hearing the rumor that from the sacred village* *Jesus would come to the abode of Jerusalem.* 438 Finally, no servant on stage played the games that this one of ours has played here. See what great waves ignorance of languages stirs up; for if that happens to him whom they wish to have been a bishop and most erudite, what will become of the unlearned? A great and primary occasion for whom the learned would have removed if they had read with us: *Now there was a certain man sick, Lazarus, of Bethany, the village, brother of Mary and Martha; this was Mary who anointed the Lord.* Our author, who did not see or did not follow that reading which exists, but even truncates that very thing. For which fact he pays the penalty in the entire chapter. When the evangelist of the same chapter, in verse 16, said, *Thomas, therefore, who is called Didymus*, he errs twice, since he called Thomas—contrary to the mind of him he is interpreting—a *didymon* (a twin), which even the great man Angelus Caninius warned against with a word, and wanted it to be called *Didymon*: *And hearing, the twin-named [one] spoke, Thomas,* *Whom they call Didymus.* He gave opportunity to both because he did not know what the evangelists mean when they append that *'who is called'* to Hebrew or Syriac names, which is *'which translated into Hellenistic is called Didymus'*; that is, if you express it in Greek, it signifies the same thing that Didymus signifies. Thus Peter was called Cephas, *'who is called,' in Hellenistic, 'Peter,'* that is, which if you interpret into Greek, denotes *Petros*. Thus in chapter 1: *You shall be called Cephas, which is translated Peter*, where more is said on this matter. Therefore, in this place also, *'who is called Didymus'* is as if he had said, *'which is translated Didymus.'* Nor is it true that Thomas was called Didymus, just as Cephas was called Peter. For the *'translated'* adheres to Peter, which cannot be said of Thomas. This is as ridiculous as if I were to say that Adam is 439 binominal because his name denotes earth. For both this would be false, and it would be false that Adam is called Earth. But more on this elsewhere. The shortest verse exists in this chapter: *Jesus wept.* Regarding which place, our author excused the Lord too superstitiously, saying that he wept *with tearless eyes*. Yet he ought to have remembered that he truly wept, and that what is noted by the holy Fathers is true: that no one more willingly and effectively expressed the properties and all the most humble things of human nature than that evangelist who spoke most illustriously concerning his divinity—who is this one of ours. Whom...
A even when moved, the Savior was not tearless, as he confirms that he truly, and not by mere appearance, wept; which is rightly noted by the theologians. Nor in these matters, as is well observed by them, is the rationale of the higher nature and the dispensation to be confounded. The divine nature raised Lazarus; the human nature wept. And, as Damascene well says, "The human nature does not give life to Lazarus, nor does the divine power weep." No less elegantly does Leo say to Flavian: "It is not of the same nature to weep for a dead friend out of an affect of pity, and to raise him, when the barrier of a four-days' burial is removed, at the command of a voice, to renewed life." Wherefore our author, who either diminishes or deletes this condescension, is not far from the error of those whom Epiphanius mentions in his *Ancoratus*: those who were removing the most noble passage of Luke, chapter xix, where the same Lord of ours is said to have wept for the sake of the holy city, because they did not understand it correctly. Wherefore these things and others like them afford no great progress in theology, nor do they exhibit a judgment sufficiently schooled in the Scriptures. B Regarding that place at the 440th verse of the same eleventh chapter: "He groaned in the spirit, and troubled himself," I never read what our author brings forward without thinking that it is most certain that no scruple in sacred matters is so light or trivial that it will not easily lead into the greatest error those who have not distinguished the Hellenistic usage from the Greek language in these books. Which happens not only to ours, but not seldom to the ancient theologians as well. Who was more expert in Grecism than the unique Chrysostom, or more observant in his writings among Christians? He, since he knew that the Greeks spoke in such a way that if someone were to be called *embrimasthai* [to groan/charge] someone, it was understood as *epitiman* [to rebuke], followed that usage in this place. Just as the ancient Greeks also interpreted the passage. And Hesychius, who preserved the glosses of many terms not only of the Old Covenant but also of the New, interprets *embrimōmenos* as "threatened with malediction." It was added that, by Greek usage, Mark and Matthew had used that word, for which the word means nothing else than "to command with a threat," as we have now heard. That great author and theologian, therefore, notes thus on this passage: "Then, having rebuked the passion (for the 'he groaned in his spirit' is, he stopped the confusion), he asks thus." To whom the spirit, or *pneuma*, of which this evangelist makes mention, is the perturbation itself: for he thought that "in the spirit" (*tō pneumati*) here was said in the dative case. Euthymius, having followed this, says: "He groaned in the spirit, that is, he curbed his affect, repressing it himself: he looked grimly and austerely on account of the perturbation, so as not to ask with tears." For spirit is said here to be the affect of perturbation: although a little later he adduces another opinion. It seems therefore that which the very learned Jansenius noted most aptly, that he did not look at what follows, "and troubled himself." For who could say that he 441 simultaneously curbed his affect and let it loose? Or in what way do these things agree: He rebuked the perturbation, and he himself was vehemently perturbed?
The second opinion which Euthymius adduces is that of those who took *tō pneumati* for the Latin sixth case (ablative). Some, indeed, he says, understanding the Spirit, interpret it as his divinity: that he sternly threatened his human nature through his divinity, and shook it, terrified by the minatory threat. But who would say that the Lord imposed a measure upon his own perturbation by means of his divinity, when he soon adds, "and he perturbed himself vehemently"? For what could be more vehement than the voice he uses? The interpretation of Theophylact also falls into the same; he takes *tō pneumati* here of the Holy Spirit, who curbed the human nature here: unless he dilutes the absurdity, but in vain. This nature, he says, conscious of its own weakness, when it could not bear this, was vehemently moved. For he was seeing what would not cohere with the former, "and troubled himself." Now by Cyril, *tō pneumati* is taken for right reason, with which leading, just as he groaned, C so too was the Savior perturbed, so that these two are joined. For he did not dare, as was done by Nonnus, to confess the Holy Spirit as the author of this perturbation. Which, since it did not satisfy our author entirely, he omitted the things that follow, "and troubled himself," not so much in good faith as by judgment, not to mention a third error: that when he speaks of the Holy Spirit, he called him *Patrōō* [Fatherly], as if he proceeded from the Father and not from the Son. Which, although we have noted elsewhere to be customary for some Greeks, although they also, or some of them certainly, who said that he proceeds from the Father through the Son, nonetheless profess that [he is] not only of the Father but also of the Son. But what need was there 442 for so many contentions in a matter so slight, and which boys ought to have known from Hellenistic locutions, except that, in order to understand these, many did not even think it worth the effort? Hebrews, when they say spirit and soul, they understand the very thing about which the conversation is. And this is so known that there is no one who would doubt it. "Into thy hands I shall not deliver my spirit," [Ps. XXX, 6], this is "myself," for which *psuchēn mou* [my soul] they say without any distinction. And that is in all persons: "his spirit," is himself. This, therefore, the evangelist intended: "He groaned in himself and troubled himself." *Tō pneumati* is "in the spirit" (*en tō pneumati*), the Hebrews would say, this is "in himself." "He groaned in the spirit, and troubled himself," are clearly *tautodunama* [synonymous], and are said in the same sense. Which since the Syrian understood, he rendered the one, namely *tō pneumati*, and the other, namely *heauton*. These they constantly conjoin, as if you were to say in Greek: "He groaned in his spirit, and troubled his soul." For both designate *heauton* [himself]. But why do we doubt, when the evangelist a little later explains himself? For what he said here "he groaned in the spirit," at the thirty-eighth verse he said "groaning in himself": "Jesus therefore again groaning in himself." And just as in that place, "groaning in himself," so again in chapter xiii, 21, he said "he was troubled in the spirit," that is, "in himself." "Having said these things, Jesus was troubled in the spirit." Just as in this place, after "he groaned in the spirit, and troubled himself," he appends [the explanation]. Matthew therefore and Mark spoke in the Greek manner. For the one said: "Jesus groaned at them," chapter ix. The other: "And having groaned at it [i.e., at his spirit]," chapter xi. Likewise: "And they were groaning at it," chapter xiv, John spoke in the Hellenistic manner.
443 While these things are not distinguished, they deceive many daily, especially when they translate these locutions into common languages and idioms. Nor do we doubt that there will be some at some time who will prove that many errors have been committed in the interpretation of the New Testament in this way. Provided only that there be candor, and that they think modestly of themselves, and excellently of those who have interpreted many things excellently. Think now what our author has said, who ascribes to the Holy Spirit, but the "Fatherly" one, [this action], lest he be said to be also of the Son. Which [is] customary for him, as we have shown more than once. For thus: "Strengthened by the Fatherly spirit, he uttered a voice." For the rest, when he saw himself held, he omitted it. Those words, 41: "Father, I thank you that you have heard me," who from our author would understand, when he writes: "Thanks be to you, as you heard me, Father; I know, as I am always crying out, that you hear the Son." For he has spoken according to the manner of the Hebrews, by whom [the past] expresses the future: *ēkousas* [you have heard], that is, *akouseis* [you will hear], or "you are accustomed to hear." Which Tertullian has remarkably expressed in another way, who translates: "Father, I give you thanks, because you always hear me." For when the future denotes continuation, the Hellenists designate it by the past [tense], Job 1, 19. That which is, "thus therefore Job was doing." That which follows in that long digression concerning the resurrected Lazarus up to the forty-fourth verse.
A and from foot to head Enveloped in bindings the whole body he held, Having warm sweat of his covered face; And with a linen cloth he had thickened the circular brow, A sudarium, which the mouth of the Syrians has called...
By what name I shall call it, I do not know. For I admire the simplicity and the ignorance of the father. No one is unaware that the Syrians at that time used Greek as well as Latin words. B But among them, and the Roman *sudar*, the reason is the same as for *lention*, which he uses shortly hereafter. This was the difference: that those things generally usurped by them changed their native use, which we showed before concerning the word *parrhesia*. Among these is also *sudar*: or *soudarion*, as it is called here: which both the Syrians and the teachers of the Hebrews use. And these usually use it differently than those others. For with the Syrians it is almost always *sudar*, which the evangelists call *lention*. And thus in the Acts according to the Metaphrast. And in almost the same way Benjamin used it, when he places a *cydari* (turban) as a sudarium. For concerning its use, especially in the contracts of the Jews, Elias Thesbites has many things; and after him, others in this age. Our author speaks ridiculously, and says it is a Syriac word: and yet he undoubtedly deduces it from sweat (*sudor*). C For this is what that *sudor* marks, which he puts forward, *Having warm sweat of his covered face*; so that, if we are to believe him, Lazarus was wrapped in a sudarium because of the sweat. Who, therefore, can sufficiently admire these absurdities? For if dead men sweat after death, they even live after death. And if it was for the sake of washing away sweat, which he seems to imply (for I can find no other occasion for him to mention sweat here), if he was covered by a sudarium and bandages while dead, it was necessary for those who had applied these to fear the sweat in the dead man. It is a wonder, moreover, that when heat is posited as the cause of sweat, dead men should sweat. Not even this can I persuade myself, that Lazarus sweated immediately after death. For who is ignorant that the native heat has been completely extinguished, and only gradually returns? Therefore, much better did Martialis, the Bishop of Limoges, in his *Epistle to the Toulousans*, call it the sudarium of the dead. So that only for its word he might immediately rise from the monument, bound with the sudarium of the dead. D Therefore: outside the use of a sudarium: but in this whole digression he wished to have nothing in common with the author whom he interprets. He seeks Lazarus, and indeed at Lethe. The dead man is warm. And *idronta echei*, that is, he sweats. One line, however, must manifestly be transposed. For who could say that these things cohere? *Enveloped in bindings the whole body he held,* *Having warm sweat of his covered face.* For who would say that the head is bound, just because the limbs are bound? This is *anakolouthon* (inconsistent). Then there is no reason why he should mention the sweat, unless it is because of the mention of the sudarium. And yet, nothing so far has been said about it, but in the things that follow. Therefore, I think the whole passage should be ordered thus: *And having dragged his stiffened knees after his feet,* *Having his blind, straight-directed gaze,* *The corpse was speaking; and from foot unto his head* *Enveloped in bindings the whole body he held;* *And with a linen cloth he had thickened the circular brow,* *Having warm sweat of his covered face,* *A sudarium, which the mouth of the Syrians has called—* And this is what the evangelist said: *Bound his feet and hands with grave-clothes; and his face was bound about with a sudarium.* Which, being disordered before, are now read in the same order. For *keiria* is attributed to the limbs, the sudarium to the face. But to what end are these things so laboriously argued? Since the evangelist says nothing of the sort. He, always mindful of his plan, says that the dead man was raised. And lest anyone doubt it, that he performed the duties of life before everyone; nay, that he walked. The grave-clothes, the sudarium, and other things hindered him from walking freely. Those on his feet and hands, this one on his eyes. These, therefore, the Lord ordered them to loosen. Now, as to what he adds: *A sudarium, which the mouth of the Syrians has called—* whom will he persuade? For if that word is Syriac, and *sudor*, from whence this is derived, will be a Syriac word. And if this is Syriac, because the Syrians would use it, then *nomos* (law), and *archon* (ruler), and *cophinos* (basket), and *stadion* (stadium), nay even *denarion*, *glossocomon* (money-box), *sindon* (linen), *paracletos* (advocate), *lampades* (lamps), *chiliarchos* (commander), *praetorion*, *stratiotai* (soldiers), *spongos* (sponge), *litrai* (pounds), are manifestly Greek words or Roman, which the Syrian metaphrast uses in the Gospel of John alone, they will be words of the Syrians. But if that is true, what will prevent *angelos* (angel), and *doron* (gift), and whatever else occurs in the Targums, from being words of the Chaldeans? Finally, that we must concede that all words—not only Greek and Roman, but also Spanish and Gallic, which occur in abundance in the writings of the rabbis—are Hebrew words. Which exceeds all astonishment and all ignorance. Nor would those who have been even slightly versed in the reading of these admit this: who know by how different a method, as I have already said, both the Chaldean and the rabbinic writers used that word. Indeed, in the Jerusalem Targum, the veil with which Moses covers his face after his conversation with God is called *sudra*: nor is it for that reason not a Latin word, especially since they have noted that it is full even for the Latins. Among others, Elias. What of the fact that the *mappa* with which they strangled criminals, from whom, however, there is no danger of sweat, if I am not mistaken, they called a *sudar*? But who could bear that it is a Syrian word, as I have already said, and yet that it is said to be from *sweat*? Which is as true as that *Apuliam* is said to be from *fabis* (beans), which Benjamin wants, because *phul* among the Hebrews denotes a bean: or *naphthon* from *ner*, which denotes the sun, which Elias also desired. And 447 not a few other things which we read to our nausea in the books of the masters, as often as they deduce either Greek or Roman words most ineptly from the Hebrew. In which our author surpasses everyone: he who wants the *sudarium* to be Syrian, and yet to be named from *sudor*: which is Latin, but Greek in origin. But to conclude what we have begun: why the Jews would use a *sudarium* on corpses, ought to have been sought from their own writings: which teach that it was customary for them, especially at that time, to wrap the dead in mostly vile wrappings. But also the wise sometimes used a *sudar* worth a single denarius. But also, why they would cover the face with a sudarium in particular, the cause is there given by the same ones, so that we may not hear our own thoughts here. In the fifty-fifth verse of that same chapter, which the evangelist said, *And many went up to Jerusalem out of the country before the Passover, to purify themselves,* our author expressed it thus: *So that they might bring forward their bodies with holy purifications.* As to this standing, it should be known that the place which is now read in Deuteronomy XVIII, 10, *There shall not be found among you one that purifies his son,* Chrysostom quoted far otherwise from another interpreter concerning those words of John, *And of his fullness have we all received*: *You shall not purge, you shall not purify your children.* From which passage our author departed not far in taking this word. Unless you seek judgment. For he, whoever he was, adapted the profane Greek word to the profane custom of the Canaanites: Hesychius: *Phoibonai*, to cleanse, to divine, to adorn, to purge, to purify; which to the Hebrews, which was their lustrative offering, and *phoibasai* likewise. Also *phoibasthai*, to be cleansed, who, lest their sons or daughters be taken away by an untimely death through the fire, were brought 448 by the prescription of the priests of Moloch, whom they called *chomerim*. Which the learned interpreters have identified as *phoibazein*; for the Greeks also interpret *phoibazein* as to cleanse by fire or by the sun. Hence also Aeschylus called the *phoiben floga*, the fire of the sun. See therefore the judgment. For first, he [speaks] of that *agnismos* (purification) of the Jews, which he treats here, and which they even today observe wonderfully, [which] was accustomed to be accomplished by water and washing. Then, it was done also to the Lord. He, however, [mentions] *phoibasmos*, both by fire, and to Moloch. Whence also in Leviticus XVII, verse 21, and Deuteronomy XVIII, 10,
it is very strictly forbidden. Indeed, it is called A *bdelugma*, that is, abomination, in the Law.
CHAPTER XXV
.The twelfth chapter is examined. The interpretation of that passage: *Taking a pound of ointment of nard opistike, of great price.* Whether it should be read as *Opistikes* with the learned theologian. Hartung’s emendation of *nardou pisteōs*. *Pistos* [is] used by the Hellenists for *alēthēs* [true]. It is noted in passing concerning the Hebrew word which indicates this. *Oikos pistos* [faithful house] concerning the temple of Solomon. *Prophētēs pistos* [faithful prophet] in the books of the Hasmoneans. *Pistikon* instead of *piston*, the *pist* of the Syrians, *pistico*, the head of the ointment, nard *capitata*, and something other than the head of the ointment. Nard *apseudēs* [unfeigned]. Unction after dinner or luncheon is called by the rabbis the second waters. *To piston tōn hydatōn*. *Machlas chaitē*, which to our poet [Nonnus]. The discussion and controversy of the Fathers regarding those things which anointed the Lord. *Hamartōlos* of St. Luke. The word by which the Chaldaeans express such a one. *Machlas chaitē*, for that which is, of her own *machla*. The custom of women of ill repute of growing their hair. *Alabastron* [is] alabaster. *Hypagein*. Nonnus, through ignorance of the usage of that word, [commits] a *parermēneia* [misinterpretation]. That palm leaves carried the form of a scepter. The encounter of the people with them before the *sōtērion pathos* [saving passion]. The *stoibades* [branches] of Mark. Nonnus’s carelessness when he said *orpēkas* [shoots] or *korymba* [clusters], which by the Hellenists are called *chlōra* [green stuffs]. *Hellēnes* means gentiles, as said by the Syrian interpreter, and elsewhere Syrians. The interpretation of that passage: *The crowd said there was thunder.* The custom of the Hellenists B *phōnē, brontē*. *Phōnai kai hietos* [voices and rain] in the books of Samuel. *Doxa Theou* [glory of God] in the thunder. A daughter of a voice, and the judgment of the Jews concerning it. That it is applied to almost every sacred history according to the judgment of Jewish interpreters. A voice distinct from the thunder and articulated. *Antitypos brontēs phōnē* [a voice as a countertype of thunder], devised by Nonnus, who is ignorant of Jewish rites. The interpretation of the passage: *I will draw all men to myself.* Nonnus’s *parermēneia*. Still one little thing, a Hebraism; what the evangelists mean by *eti mikron*. An elegant passage of Haggai. Nonnus is noted. C Nonnus, how carelessly he translated the passage of Isaiah. Another passage of the same prophet, very poorly translated by Nonnus. *Timē* [honor] concerning the majesty of God is poorly placed by him. His error in the same passage, which he takes concerning the majesty of God, [rather] than concerning the humanity of the Son and [His] incarnation. Wherefore John used the latter passage of Isaiah to demonstrate the divinity of the Son of God. The cause of it is set forth from the Chaldaean interpreter of the passage of Isaiah.
The twelfth chapter follows, in the third clause of which that passage occurs: *Mary therefore taking a pound of ointment of nard opistike, of great price, anointed the feet of Jesus, etc.* Regarding which, how much one word has stirred up factions of learned men, I do not believe there is anyone who does not know. And their writings are in the mouth of all. There is surely no one who has not attempted something. Among whom, that [interpretation] of the learned theologian recently pleased many, who judged that it should be read as *Opistike*. And he was Hartung, a man most learned and of the highest candor: who, because he saw that not indeed an *Opistic* ointment—of which there is no mention among them—but a Babylonian [ointment] is commended, and because *Opin*, a Persian city not far from Babylon, is praised by Strabo and Herodotus, he amended [it] thus, though timidly and modestly. Which conjecture of the good and truly learned man some accepted as an oracle. If, however, they had diligently scrutinized the Hellenistic writers and their custom—which we solely desire in learned men, and especially in those who have applied themselves to the books of the New Testament—they would not have judged so rashly D about many things: although the principle of our institute will always hold for us, God willing, that before all things we should have regard for candor. That which is called by the Greeks *apseudes kai alēthes* [unfeigned and true], it is known that it is expressed in Hebrew by the word with which the Lord confirms His speech. For *to MN* denotes [it]. But the Hellenists, as we have often said, are wont to use [words] of the same origin. Thus, what is *omn*, by them is called *pistos*: because the word of origin denotes *tēn pistin kai to piston* [faith and that which is faithful]. And so *to piston* for them, which is excellent and excels among other things. Thus the temple of Solomon, that famous and excellent edifice, is everywhere called *oikos pistos* [faithful house] by them, as in that [verse]: *That making, my Lord will make a faithful house [oikos piston].* Or, *I will build for myself a faithful house [oikon piston],* in the book of Kings, and so always. Thus the prophet, of whom John makes mention everywhere, who is that true and only Messiah, the head of the prophets, is called *prophētēs pistos* [faithful prophet], in the first chapter of the Hasmoneans: *Until a faithful prophet should arise.* And this is the cause why they—the Hellenists—sometimes expressed *amun*, which denotes excellence. But now, that *pistikon* and *piston* are the same in later Greek, Isaac Casaubon, a man of stupendous erudition, proved from Cedrenus and others: who once, as he himself confesses, thought it had to be deduced *apo tou pein*. And not even in his latest writing, when he deals with it, did he satisfy himself. For, as I said, the interpretation of the evangelical language must be sought from the Hellenistic [usage]. But that he used that word, as well as nearly infinite other Greek ones, at that time, is made certain by the fact that they made *to MN*, *pistos* or *pistis*, their own. A From which they derived many words, and especially *aphel*. Therefore, whatever the Greeks express by *amun*, they derived from that word. Thus in that [passage] of Matthew XXVII, 20: *The chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds,* they [the Syrians say], *AMN*. Nor do they express that most noble passage of Paul, *not in the persuasive words of human wisdom*, as foreign to this word. For *peithois* [persuasion] there [is] *pistois*, and, as Aristotle is not once wont to speak, *pistikois*. Wherefore, it is not even to be doubted that the evangelist had *pistico* in his mind. Which he used in such a way that, as already before, *parrhēsia* [boldness] or *paraklētos* [comforter], and not a few other [words], which the Syrians and Chaldaeans used at that time in their own mode and signification. Wherefore it is particularly worthy of admiration, because the Syrian interpreter, who not rarely did not change words which were by their first signification Greek, but preserved [them] according to the usage of his time, changed it. Yet he expressed the sense rather than the word. Indeed, he interpreted what the evangelist intended; for he said *head of the ointment*, by which he signified preeminence. Which wonderfully deceived the learned, who from that passage imagined their *nardum capitata* [headed nard]. For that nard which he expressed is not *capitata* [headed], but *capitalis* [chief], as must be said with Marcus Tullius: preeminent, namely, and excellent, even as to the Hebrews *W'N MN* [is] ointment of the head, which is the head of the ointment. The Greeks, when they had not seen that the same word denoted both *piston* and *alēthē*, tormented themselves much. For who, according to the custom of the Hellenists and by the usage of his language, speak often, nowhere however found more delays and difficulties than in that language. Ingeniously Theophylact, having followed Origen, I suppose, interpreted [it] as *adolon* [guileless]. Because he remembered that pure nard was called *apseudē* by the ancients. And indeed concerning the adulteration of nard, or *peri tou doloun tēn nardon*, B 452 which is opposed to *tē pisti* or *alēthei*, Dioscorides dealt with [it] in book II, chapter 6. But the Hebrew word itself denotes both *to piston* and *to alēthes*. But that is the reason why it is so called, which we have brought. But it is necessary that those who depart from the Hellenistic language and its custom should always fluctuate. Wherefore not even those who by conjecture came closest to the meaning either understood or rendered the reason why it was so called. The teachers of the Hebrews are wont to call that anointing, the second washing, and the second waters, although it was done with ointment, which after food was in place of a washing. They would call the ointment itself *MN*, the office of anointing *MN AMN*, *to piston tōn hydatōn*: for thus they call irrigation. The learned ask, who wrote to this author, why Mary who wiped the feet of the Lord, *chaitē*
chaitē* A *pachladê* bestowed upon her by the poet. For thus he says at the fourth B of his chapter, *ektadē de / ikmada pialēn apemaxato machladi chaitē*. And without doubt they are mistaken when they refer this to the delicate softness of the hair. That there were three women who anointed the Lord is evident from the evangelists. The Fathers have argued much about them. For some, like Theophylact and Origen, hold them to be different women; some hold them all to be the same. Chrysostom separates this one from them. Jerome separates not this one, but her who is called *hamartōlos*, from the others. The passage is in Luke VII: *And behold, a woman in the city, who was a sinner, when she knew that He sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and standing at His feet, wiped them with her tears and the hairs of her head, and kissed His feet, and anointed them with the ointment.* Augustine wishes them all to be the same, except that he thinks this one of Luke's 453 performed this office twice. Furthermore, that this *hamartōlos*, whom our author mentions here, was the Magdalene, most Greeks and almost all Latins who have followed Gregory believe. Nor is there any doubt that Nonnus was also among them. Indeed, *hamartōlos* is a euphemism for a woman who in Chaldean, whose euphemisms of this kind are specific in this matter, is accustomed to be called [original-script column: see facsimile]. For the origin of the word denotes *hamartanein* or *aphamartein*. Therefore, when he said *machladi chaitē*, he meant the hair of this very *machlas*, which had been sinful, or that of a harlot. Moreover, that it was a custom, even among the Greeks, for harlots to nourish and grow their hair long, is shown by that passage in Callimachus' *Hymn to Demeter*: *Mē pais, mēde gynē, mēd' hē katecheusato chaitan* (Not a boy, nor a woman, nor she who lets down her hair). Lest anyone doubt that Nonnus had this *hamartōlos* in mind, the fact that, just as Luke has *alabastron* for her, Nonnus has given *marmaron* in its place, also argues this. For where he says *komisasa alabastron* here: *Marmaron ēertaze, bebysmenon, anggos eersēs.*
Commate eleven follows: *Hoti polloi di' auton hypēgon tōn Ioudaiōn.* Where, although there is no word in more frequent use among the Hellenists than *hypagein*, which they use of deserters or runaways, such as apostates are, our author nevertheless interpreted it as if they, upon whom the evangelist is acting, had betaken themselves to Bethany for the sake of seeing Lazarus. Who would deny this, who reads those lines: *Touton helein meneainon anaition; hotti di' auton / Laos Ioudaiōn metaneumenos endia kōmēs / Paidi Theou pisteuon, alexikakō basilēï?* Which is to wander as far as heaven from the earth. For *hypagein*, as in that 454: *Mē kai hymeis thelete hypagein?* (Will you also go away?), must be understood here: Do you also contemplate defection? In that, our evangelist excels above the others, that whoever honors unto the Lord and our God—*kat' oikonomian* and [by] an occult providence of God moderating all things for Himself and for our salvation—were exhibited, he notes and observes them. Such is what was said above regarding the royal honor shown, such is what we have below regarding the inscription of the Nazarene: for which our author substitutes the Galilean. Thus he now warns that as He came to Jerusalem, before C the *sōtērion pathos* and the final cruelty of the Jews, the people had met Him, who in their hand *bata phoinikōn*, that is, palms, were carrying before them. Moreover, the Hebrews and Chaldeans wish for the palms and palm-branches to be carried before them in the form of a scepter. Whence clearly here, as in the feast of Tabernacles, occurred the concourse of the people with that solemn acclamation, concerning which our author indeed thought no less than he [Nonnus] did. But what did Nonnus intend when he said: *Kai chloerous horpēkas es ēera laos helissōn?* For he was transitioning to another sort of religion, that is, D those were shaking thyrsi covered with foliage. But there is nothing of the kind in Mark or Matthew, who say they cut branches, *hina strōnnyōsin en tē hodō*. Whence that same Mark elegantly called them *stoibadas*. Much less John, who acts concerning the *oikonomia* of the occurrence. And indeed he says nothing less than accurately, what John called *baia*, [Nonnus called] *horpēkas*, and in his custom said *korymba*. Better would have been, following the Hellenists, to have said *kalynthra*. Hesychius: *Kalynthra, spathai phoinikōn*. Nor does it carry conviction, when he says they were taken from gardens; so frequent is the tree in this East that it is accustomed to serve the function of plaster for walls. More circumspect is Juvencus, who says they were plucked from palm-trees; who nevertheless clearly distinguishes these branches of palms from the others: *Tum populus stratis praetexunt vestibus omnes, / Quaque iter est Christo, subnexa fronde coronant. / Proxima tunc alii spoliant palmeta virore, / Conclamantque omnes Davidis origine creti: / Osanna excelsis sit gloria laeta tropaeis.* Our author (I believe because he did not trust that the word was fitting) omitted the acclamation itself.
Commate 20 follows: *Ēsan de tines Hellēnes ek tōn anabainontōn, hina proskynēsōsi en tē heortē.* What he said, *tines Hellēnōn*, [is] erudite in Syrian, *Noy*. From the nations, which indeed *Hellēnas*, according to the custom of the Jews, is interpreted elsewhere as Syrians. Chrysostom said *ethnē* here, and that the meaning was that they were becoming proselytes. In the twenty-eighth commate of the same chapter, the evangelist speaks thus: *Ēlthen oun phōnē ek tou ouranou: Kai edoxasa, kai palin doxasō.* After which voice sent forth from heaven, the same evangelist adds: *Ho oun ochlos ho hestōs kai akousas, elege, brontēn gegonenai: alloi elegon: Aggelos autō lelalēken.* Understand *brontēn* as that from which the divine voice had proceeded. We have often said that it is customary to the Hellenists that they place the meaning for the meaning of the same word. Thus *hēp* [sic] is voice, and especially, or excellently, thunder. That is, the voice of God. And because the thunder, or, a mighty wind, was accustomed to accompany the "daughter of the voice," as the Hebrews are accustomed to speak, that is, oracles, they rendered it *brontēn*. *Brontē*, therefore, is a heavenly voice, not articulated, but which follows or accompanies such. For the articulated [word] in this place is: *Kai edoxasa, kai palin doxasō.* The one is *hēp*, the other is *hēp na*. Concerning which the learned should be consulted. A 456 illustrious passage on this matter, and one that miraculously illustrates this, exists in 1 Samuel VII, 10: *And Samuel cried unto Jehovah, and Jehovah gave voices and rain in that day: and all the people feared the Lord exceedingly and Samuel.* And then adds that the people prayed that he would not die. Where the cause of fear is not the thunder, but the voice joined with the thunder, a witness equally of the divine presence and majesty. Nor is that 1 Kings XIX, 11 to be understood otherwise: *Behold, Jehovah passeth by, and a great and strong wind, and rending the mountains, and breaking in pieces the rocks before Jehovah: but Jehovah was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake; but Jehovah was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire; but Jehovah was not in the fire: And after the fire a still small voice.* Which the Greeks miraculously [translated] *kai meta to pyr phōnē auras leptēs*. Nor content with this, they added, *kakei Kyrios*, that is, not in the others, but there, or, in the voice, is the Lord. Which they were accustomed to express otherwise, *kakei hē doxa tou Theou*, the majesty or divine presence: of which that voice is the witness. Thus clearly in this place it had preceded: *Doxason sou to onoma.* It is answered: *Kai edoxasa, kai palin doxasō.* How? By my presence and majesty, which I exhibit by this voice and testimony. And thus Moses, when he seeks the divine presence in Exodus XXXIII, 16, in leading out the people, adds: *Kai endoxasthēsometha egō te kai ho laos sou.* But our author, in his manner, understood nothing less than what the *doxa Theou* was. Therefore, he finished [his task] in his own manner.
A "And formerly I honored you, and I again honor you now." And, having forgotten that the Lord said: *"Glorify your name,"* instead of that, he said: "And I honored you." Verily, what is said—*"Then a voice came from heaven"*—is almost what the teachers say: *A daughter of a voice went forth.* Though they wish for this to have succeeded the prophecies, yet they are accustomed to accommodate it to histories of almost 457 [years], even before the first temple, although there is no mention of it in the sacred writings. For example, they say that when Saul had spared Agag, it was indicated by a voice: *Do not be too righteous;* and when he sacked the city of Nob, *Do not act too impiously,* he heard. Likewise, when he cast out the sorcerers and betook himself to the Pythoness. From these, the evangelist is most different, who, out of truth—and especially in confirming the people—notes that this voice was applied. There is therefore a voice with speech: which would be called [a bath qol] by the Rabbis. Which was distinct from thunder, and could be revealed without it. Wherefore our author, concerning what Augustus once pronounced about Claudius, *In strictly important matters he was very unfortunate,* when he said:
*An antitype of thunder came the voice to the ears of the people.*
The voice about which the evangelist speaks, the Lord himself—a voice, some of the people [said it was] thunder, that is, [a bath qol]—they said, due to the ambiguity of the voice, and from the fact that they thought these voices were exhibited with thunder. While others judged otherwise; namely, concerning an angel. Wherefore our author, when he saw [it] called now "voice," now "thunder," that is, [bath qol], and being ignorant of the Jewish rites, he devised *an antitype of thunder voice*: which had no place here; nor did he himself understand what he was writing. Concerning that passage of the evangelist, at the thirty-second verse, *And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all to myself,* Chrysostom excellently [explains it], meaning *even those from the nations.* And Euthymius, *all from everywhere who have received the faith.* And Cyril, *all generations of men,* just as theologians observe that *all* is often accepted. Being little mindful of which, our author preferred to refer this to the Jews standing around: which he shows even by this, that he imprudently added *yumeas* (all you) to the words of the most holy author:
"All you I shall draw to myself into the wide heaven."
458 Follows verse 35: *Jesus therefore said to them, Yet a little while the light is with you.* Where Nonnus [writes] obscurely:
*There shall be yet only for a time the ethereal light.*
Among the formulas which are most elegant, and by which the prophets point to future events a little later, especially that one is [found], which Haggai used concerning the advent of the Lord in the flesh: [a little while, and I will shake the heavens]. By which an altogether hyper-exiguous time is designated: as if you were to say, *yet one little while.* The evangelist expressed the meaning rather than the efficacy, when he said *yet a little while,* or *yet a little time.* Such are: *Yet a little time I am with you. And a little while, and you do not behold me, and again a little while, and you shall see me.* For the [Hebrew word], which is marvelous here, he passed over. The Hellenists attempted this, who, in that passage of Haggai we have already mentioned, rendered it *yet once.* *Yet once I strike the heaven and the earth.* Especially obscure. For to the Greeks this would be something else entirely. Word for word, you would say: *Yet one little while.* For which our author said *only.* And hence both the obscurity and the reason for that passage: *There shall be yet only for a time,* etc. For as he endeavored to express the other, namely [the once], which is peculiar to the Hebrews and certain others, so he omitted *the little while*: which the evangelist most especially kept in view. Not well—indeed, nothing less than in Greek—he expressed the passage of Isaiah that follows at verse 38: *Lord, who has believed our report? and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?* For who that is learned in Greek would understand those [lines]:
B O King, who after these things believed your hearing, Or to whom was the arm of God the creator bared?
Which if he had expressed it thus, any one learned in Greek would have understood: Who, O God, believed our words of mortals; Who in his own mind knew the power and strength of God?
459 For the one was conceived by Hebrew custom, the other by Greek. And indeed, he negligently weighs or renders the passages that are brought forward from the Old Covenant by the sacred author, as also indeed that passage, which a little later, namely at the forty-first verse, is brought forward from Isaiah the sixth: *These things Isaiah said when he saw his glory.* For Isaiah [spoke] nothing there concerning the advent of the Lord in the flesh, but concerning the majesty of the God of Sabaoth whom he saw; nor of the future, but of the past. That he saw [it], after the death of king Uzziah—under which king the glory of God is noted by the Greeks to have left the city—under his successor Jotham his son, a pious prince, [he saw] the divine majesty. Which again must be sought from the Chaldean. For the Chaldean, whom he follows there, [says]: *I saw the glory of the Lord.* Also, *And by the splendor of his glory the temple was filled.* The latter of which the Greeks also expressed: which two passages he contracted, when he said: *When he saw his glory.* Nonnus, besides the fact that he changed the word of essence into [citi] according to his custom, interprets the passage far otherwise. For the one describes the majesty of the Lord from its adjuncts, which he says he saw, *as far as possible for a man,* when he says he saw the Lord, whom he calls Jehovah, whom he calls the God of hosts, to whom he attributes the Seraphim and their acclamations. The evangelist, as Cyril and Eusebius rightly noted at that passage, vindicates those things for Christ: so that no one might doubt his divinity. Who at that passage, as not rarely at others, is called the Word of the Lord by the Chaldean. What then did our author want, when he wrote thus:
Isaiah recorded all these things with prophetic voice, That he beheld the foreordained honor of Christ God, With the all-seeing eye of the heart, and his grace He prophesied as a future forerunner of the divine [voice]?
460 Why *foreordained*? Why *future*? If he saw the present, if he relates a past matter, not a future one; if he treats of nothing concerning the advent of Christ and his humanity, but of his majesty, as all confess? Why, finally, if it is treated of the advent in the flesh, did he say *of Christ God* himself? Eusebius at that passage: *I think that by these things it is also demonstrated who that Lord Sabaoth was, who throughout all prophecy is manifested; and who this only-begotten Son is, who is in the bosom of the Father.* Cyril: *That the prophet has beheld the Son in the glory of the God and Father, no one can doubt.* He says that the prophet [has beheld] the Son in the glory of the Father. And shortly he brings this passage forward. Our author, indeed, was occupied with something else. And he follows: *And he spoke concerning him.* But one might wonder why, when such illustrious [passages] are found everywhere in that prophet and others concerning the majesty of God, the evangelist interpreted this one concerning the Son. I think the reason is that he was bringing forward those words from the Jews, *He blinded their eyes,* etc., which words, which I would especially like to be observed, are attributed to the Word of the Lord by the Chaldean, whom John always follows. For at that passage he [says]: *And I heard the voice of the Word of the Lord saying: Whom shall I send to prophesy? and who will go for us? And I said: Behold I, and send me. And he said: Go, and say to this people: Who hearing hear, and do not understand, and seeing see, and do not know, and what follows.* And it is a wonder that Euthymius did not accept this otherwise. These things, that is, [he accepts] concerning the blindness and induration, and the rest. But he calls his glory that glorious vision, when he saw the Lord sitting upon the throne high and lifted up; and the things which were about him were terrible and magnificent. For then he saw the Son: and he said and spoke these things afterwards about him, when then he had heard these things from him. From him, that is, from the Word, which the Chaldean expressed.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Chapter XIII, with some following ones, is traversed. Nonnus corrected from the Evangelist. *To be troubled in spirit*. The last bread, the divine bread, according to the opinion of Nonnus, offered to Judas. Nonnus' opinion concerning the presentation of the Intincta [the dipped bread] in the Holy Supper. The custom of the Egyptians in offering the Intincta. The Intincta given with wine. Its presentation abolished by Pope Julius, the thirty-sixth in the order of succession. The passage from Micrologus concerning this. Also, from the canons. That Nonnus thought the bread, or the morsel given to Judas, was the sacramental bread. Whether the morsel that was offered to Judas was the same as the sacramental one. That it separated Judas from the Church and the sacred assembly. And that it being dipped and offered, according to the opinion of Augustine, was a clear sign of his being the traitor. The error of Nonnus, who thought it was a sacrament. Thomas the double-named. Again, Nonnus noted in this regard. The *Theomim* of the Masoretes. The ridiculous error concerning the name of Didymus in circumcision, according to the opinion of Nonnus, as an imposition. That the imposition of a name in circumcision belonged to the fathers. The name of the Messiah imposed by his mother. And that this is as it were his being *without a father* among Isaiah, a note, according to the opinion of doctors, and a character. Interpretation of that passage, "That I am in the Father, and the Father is in me." The equality of Father and Son. That it is very ineptly expressed by Nonnus. That the Father, according to the opinion of the ancients, operated through the Son in creation. That Nonnus did not rightly apply this. *Syzygia* concerning the persons. Again, an error concerning the Holy Spirit noted. *The Spirit of God the Creator*. Nonnus’ mistranslation in that passage: "Yet a little while and the world sees me not," and refers it to the divine form. *Theorein* [to see] is used by Hellenists for bodily vision. Nonnus noted in the interpretation of another passage. The passage wickedly curtailed by the same man. The passage, "Every branch that bears fruit, he purges it." Nonnus’ mistranslation. Chrysostom’s interpretation. "They gather them and cast them into the fire," and the interpretation of Nonnus rejected, who understands it as angels. Hebraism noted: "I have chosen you and appointed you." *Set*, that is, *planted*. "Lest you be offended." What *scandalum* is according to Basil. *But* in that passage, "but the hour comes," and in it our paraphrast has slipped. Interpretation of that passage, "to offer *latreia* [worship] by glory to God." Corban. The wicked words of the Jews, concerning the murder, by which they remove the Christian. Which are aptly brought forward in illustrating that passage. That *douleia* [service] and *latreia* [worship] are confused by Nonnus, "to offer *douleia*," un-Hellenistically concerning the victim. "He shall receive of mine." *Lepsis* [reception], 462 knowledge. *Lambanein* [to receive], to learn. *Lambanein* or *lepsis*, properly used concerning the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is distinguished from the Father and Son *by receiving* or *by the reception*. The same is said to *proceed* from the Father, and to receive from the Son. Instead of this, *to receive* [dechosthai] is used by Nonnus. The intolerably bold paraphrase in the passage concerning the Holy Spirit. To establish an erroneous dogma, the words of the Evangelist are changed. Instead of what the Evangelist has, "He shall receive of mine," it is supposed by Nonnus, "of my Father." The interpretation of Chrysostom and Cyril. Concerning our *speaking with a clear voice*. To speak most clearly or to say. To clear up the meaning. How the Scripture is sometimes said to be fulfilled. *Psallimos* [psalms] used by our author ambitiously. The word *again* is again very poorly explained by our author. Another interpretation of Cyril.What is read in our author concerning the Lord, after he had washed the feet of his own, in the thirteenth chapter, verse 12:
When he was changing the circle of the twelve guests, Holy Jesus washed the feet of his companions, Having reclined, again he put on his garments.
It appears that this is not correctly read from the Evangelist: for he said of Christ, "having reclined again." When therefore he had washed their feet, and taken his garments, having reclined, he said to them: A Noster ergo scripsit sine dubio: B *Having reclined, again he put on his garments*, that is, having reclined again, he took his garments. For he signifies that, the duty of washing finished, he had reclined at the table again. In the twenty-first verse of the same chapter, the Evangelist speaks thus: *Jesus having said these things, was troubled in spirit*. But what *to be troubled in spirit* is, we have explained above, from the common Hebraism which was neglected. It is such a thing as *he groaned in spirit*. Therefore, our author errs, when he ascribes this perturbation, which ought to be referred here to the *economy* and *condescension*, to the Holy Spirit: who also, in the place where we have already spoken, is not rightly said by Euthymius C to be affected by perturbation, which appears at 463. To that passage of the Evangelist, which is read immediately in the twenty-sixth verse, *He it is to whom I shall give the sop, when I have dipped it*, and the things that follow, our author writes thus:
With the hand having dipped Into the wine the bread that he wet, I pass it, He himself betrays me.
And afterwards he adds:
And having dipped the bread into the cup full of wine, He gave the last bread to the shameless Judas, The bread, the herald of the killer of him who possesses wealth. And after the divine bread, sowing desire into Him, the attendant of sin, the demon entered him entirely.
Where indeed, since he both said *the last bread*, and not content with this, said *divine bread*, he seems to have done this studiously, that he might persuade his reader that the distribution of the morsel which he describes was a continuation of the Lord's feast. But it is clear also from his words that it is to be understood according to that opinion which the ancients called the *Intincta* [dipped element], who thus celebrated the remembrance of the Lord in bread and wine. Moreover, just as it is certain that the Egyptians, in comparison with the rest of the peoples of the earth, were especially ensnared in and attached to the worship of idols and superstitions, so they, when the mystical rites of our religion were translated to others, of whose number our author also was, almost always departed into factions, both in other things and in the celebration of this mystery. Such is what Sozomenus notes concerning them: that they communicated in the mystery after having dined and toward evening. D *But with the Egyptians in many cities and villages, contrary to what is customary among all in common, assembling toward evening on the Sabbath, having dined, they already partake of the mysteries, and with prayers and hymns of the same kind, or by readings at the same time, it is not possible to find 464 that all have used them.* It was, however, far greater that they offered the bread dipped in wine. Which, since the ancients permitted it in times of necessity, as is proved by the example of Serapion, which is not unknown to anyone, by Eusebius, the Egyptians converted it into a custom and practice, until it was abolished by Pope Julius: concerning which matter he wrote a letter to the Egyptian bishops. Micrologus, chap. 19: *But it is not authentic that some dip the body of the Lord, and distribute the dipped body to the people for the completion of the communion. For the Roman order contradicts it, because it orders that wine not consecrated should be consecrated on the day of preparation, with the Lord's Prayer and the commingling of the Lord's body, so that the people might be able to communicate fully. Which it would surely command superfluously, if the Lord's body dipped on the previous day were preserved, and thus it appeared that the dipped body would suffice for the people to communicate.* Julius also, the thirty-sixth pope in order, writing to the Egyptians, also prohibits such dipping, and teaches that the bread and the chalice are to be taken separately, according to the Lord's institution. Which opinion flowed without doubt from a poorly understood passage *concerning the bread*. Since they thought that what this Egyptian of ours said openly was *divine* or *holy* bread, which the Lord offered to his traitor.
A
Just as he clearly distinguishes this same morsel from the offering of the Lord’s body in Tractate 52 on John, Augustine notes: "But not, as some who read carelessly suppose, did Judas then receive the body of Christ." For it must be understood that the Lord had already distributed the sacrament of his body and blood to them all, where Judas himself was also present, as St. Luke most clearly narrates; and then it came to the point where, according to the narrative of John, the Lord quite openly, by means of the dipped morsel furthermore handed to him, identifies his traitor: perhaps signifying by the dipping of the bread the deception of that man. For not everything that is dipped is washed, but some things are dipped precisely so that they may be stained. But if the dipping here signifies some good, the same good is deservedly a damnation to the ungrateful. From this our author here departs, so that while he establishes that the dipped bread—which was sacred, nay, which he deems to have been a sacrament, which Augustine denies there—nonetheless also hints at the mark of the traitor. For he clearly calls it: *Bread of the herald of the lover of possessions …* B This matches the preceding words of the evangelist, which he cannot evade, and the inquiry of our evangelist. And yet he called it *bread* in the 14th chapter, when in verse 5 the evangelist said, *And Thomas said to him*, he was, in his own way—as is customary for him everywhere—too loosely liberal. For he says: *And the dual-named one, he whose name is Thomas, whom parents named Didymus, since the eighth course of the sun had risen for the boy.* C 466 Here there are some joking and ridiculous things. Such as the one of which we spoke a little before, as others also have, that he called Thomas "double," as if either "Thomas" signified being double-named, or Thomas himself were double-named because he is called so: that is, because *Didymus* is called "twin" in Greek. And, if we call him double-named for that reason, because he was a twin by birth and had a twin brother, this would be the same as if we called Castor double-named because he was the twin brother of his twin. Indeed, the Masorete teachers say the words which occur twice in the same verse in Scripture, *theomim*, are "twins." If anyone on that account calls them "double-named," he deserves nothing but laughter: which our author did not avoid, but—to speak with the Latin comic poet—summoned upon himself with his own beast of burden. To this add his ignorant and most inept error, that he desires this name *Didymus* to have been imposed at the *mila*, or circumcision: whereas it is not a name of the fathers or a personal name, but an interpreted one. What of the fact that *Thomas* will not signify *Didymus* if he was therefore *dionymos*, that is, double-named, because both *Didymus* and *Thomas* were said to be the same thing? Add that, if this was his name, it was surely *Didymus*, as he clearly says here, and this name was imposed by his parents; then *Didymus* will be a Hebrew name. For he says *Didymus* was spoken by his parents at his circumcision. What a remarkable absurdity this is! For thus *Isaac* would be *Laughter* (*Gelōs*), because Eusebius and others interpret it so, and this name would have been imposed on him by his parents on the eighth day. Which those ridiculous people note: D *Eighth course of the sun had risen for the boy.* Nor is it simply true that parents imposed the name, since that matter pertains to the Fathers. Just as is apparent from many things in the Old Testament, 467 as well as from the history of the Baptist and his father Zacharias, who, when he could not express the name of his son, and as it had to be sought from the received custom from the father (although in that case the mother had already supplied it by the inspiration of the Spirit), he conceived his opinion in writing; and by this very argument, the great man, when it is said in Isaiah chapter seven: *A virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel*, is believed by the prophet to deal with the Messiah. For he did not have a father on earth, and therefore that was committed to the mother. Although I am not ignorant of what others have noted concerning that passage. But I marvel at the judgment; the evangelist mentions the Hebrew name. He says *Didymus* was spoken by the parents at circumcision, and yet, because he was called *Thomas*, which is the same as *Didymus*, he says he was double-named. Cyril interprets what the evangelist wrote in the same chapter, in verse eleven, *That I am in the Father, and the Father in me*, as indicating the modes of the divine nature. From these, *isourgia* (equal-working) is not excluded, which itself also notes unity. And therefore, also when it is said, *My Father works until now, and I am working*, equality and unity are proved *through the equal-working*. And he introduces *isourgia* here, when he says: *But if not, believe me for those very works.* Why is it irrelevant what he adds here: *I speak, but he acts*? As if it were the proper and peculiar office of the Word of God *to speak* only, but of the Father without the Son *to work* only. Because without doubt he had read among the ancients that in creation the Father had worked through the Son: and whatever the Father does, he does by the Word: but this Word is the Son. Augustine, to that place of our evangelist which I already mentioned: "Do you attend to the works of God? Through me all things were made. The Father wrought light. But he said that it should be. If he said it, he wrought by his word; and I am his word. 468 My Father both worked then when he made the world, and now works when he rules the world. Therefore, he made through me when he made, and rules through me when he rules." This had no place here. For he is not arguing here about the mode *of the workers*, but *concerning being equal in honor and consubstantial*, as Chrysostom testifies on this passage. But he proves this *from divine things*. And these are miracles. Therefore *through equal-working* he proved the *consubstantiality of nature*. To what purpose then now that: *I am united to the Son; I speak, but he acts.* When he meant this: *I am consubstantial with the Father; therefore believe me; but if not, for this reason believe me; believe for the divine works; for you see the equal-working in the Father*; which is the simple sense. And he is compelled to infer this selfsame thing afterward: *If you do not believe me, believe the wise works alone, through which you may know also the undivided union of the constraint, of the Son remaining in the Father, and of the Father being in the Son.* Where again he used the word *syzygia* (union/yoking) for the persons, yet not alone, since it is evident that the ancients before him spoke thus. Justin Martyr, or whoever is the author of the *Exposition of the Faith*: "He does not include in this doxology the Son and the Spirit, as joined to the divine nature, evidently. Item: But also separated from the created substance, and joined to the uncreated. Item: It would be absurd for them to be partakers of that substance, to which they were everywhere joined." Whence also it is clear that it is said in this way most especially in respect to the substance, in which one and three are one. In the seventeenth verse it follows: *The Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive.* Where again our author is stuck in his mud, in which he sticks in chapter eleven and elsewhere not once, as if the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone, and not also 469 from the Son. Which is the error of the little Greeks.
A and others in different ways based on the time of his A, among whom some confessed that he proceeds (ἐκπορεύεσθαι) from the Father, and in this manner—in the mode of existence—is distinguished from the Son, but otherwise does not proceed (ἐκπορεύεσθαι) from the Son, as he does from the Father, but rather is imparted or communicated (μεταδίδοσθαι), they said. Our author does not even admit that he who is of the Father is also of the Son. For if he had said "the Spirit of God," it could have been admitted and borne. For thus he would have included the Son as well: how many passages of the ancients are not excused by the orthodox? Such is that passage in lib. 2, cod. tit., *De Trinit. et Fid. Cath.*, which is brought forward by the learned in this matter: "Whoever does not violate the Holy Spirit, whom we hope for and receive from the highest Parent of things." Where the Son could have been called the highest parent no less than the Father. But here, the personal noun is relative (σχετικόν), and it is hardly to be doubted that it excludes the other. For he called the Spirit common and paternal:
That a mortal never beholds So great a primordial light in human eyes, The Spirit of the begetting God.
Not long after, in verse 19, it is read thus: "A little while, and the world does not see me; but you see me." Regarding which place—how variously it is accepted—I shall say nothing here. Theophylact refers it to those forty days during which the Lord remained on earth after the resurrection; and Augustine does not conflict with this interpretation, who says it can be referred to the flesh, which he wished to prove to his own to be equally capable of being seen and being touched. And indeed, if it is referred to the contemplation of deity, the world had never seen it. For, as Augustine himself testifies, it saw the man, it did not see God: it saw the garment, it did not see the wearer. But what 470 did our author intend, when he mentions a divine form here:
A brief time yet, when my divine form The unbelieving world will no longer see, But you alone shall behold me.
B This means: "A little while longer, when the unbelieving world will no longer see my divine C form. But you alone shall see me." Yet, that "form" (μορφὴ) denotes substance, in the case of all the ancients and Nonnus, we have already proved at length in its proper place. By what reasoning, therefore, will the world no longer see what it had not seen; nor had those [others] seen, whom he prefers to the world in this part? And not even Moses himself, or Isaiah, or Paul, unless by a peculiar opinion—from which others dissent—of Augustine. For that [saying] is known: "No man has seen God at any time," of such a nature, that is, according to essence (κατὰ τὴν οὐσίαν), according to the divine form (κατὰ τὴν θείαν μορφήν), as the ancients speak with our author. Theophylact on that passage: "He who has seen me, has seen the Father. But many think they see me, yet do not see the Father; so that they do not see me according to the divine nature, but according to the human." Add here that "to see" (θεωρεῖν) is used by the Hellenists for bodily vision. Such are: "to see signs," "to see works," and "to see the linen cloths lying," just as no one D saw the divine form of Christ. This was also well understood by those who refer this "contemplation" (θεωρίαν) to the second advent of Christ with Cyril. Be that as it may, he spoke thoughtlessly, as always, who either refers these things to essence, or used a word by which he expressed the divine essence thus far. For if he intended this, [he meant] that these things should be referred to the "energy of the Spirit," of which Cyril likewise says: "After he departed from here, invisible to the wise of the earth, he is visible to the saints; for the Spirit implants in their minds a divine and intellectual brightness, and a knowledge fitting [to them], and illuminates the eyes of the heart in a wonderful 471 way." Just as he said of the world: "A little later, the world will no longer see me." For with John, "the world" (ὁ κόσμος) is almost perpetually "the unbelievers," certainly in this place, where "the world" (ὁ κόσμος) is contrasted with the saints. And if we should doubt, he himself called it "the unbelieving world" (κόσμον ἄπιστον) here. Wherefore, that we may settle the matter with him most effectively, he has spoken inconsistently and incoherently (ἀνακόλουθα καὶ ἀσύστατα) in this place. Not unlike this place is that which stands in the verse after: "And I will love him, and I will manifest myself to him." On which passage the great man Chrysostom noted: "As the Father manifests himself, so also do I." By which words he sufficiently implies what he means. Thus, indeed, after this life, the Son will be seen, just as the Father will be seen. Augustine says: "He will show himself with the Father as one God, not as he was seen in this age in body and in sufferings." Cyril says: "I will manifest myself to him." To the worlds, the vision of God is certainly the highest reward; in whom Christ will shine through the Spirit, illuminating each thing, and raising their minds to the knowledge of himself with ineffable splendor. Those who reach these things will be truly blessed. What, then, did he mean, when he refers this to the body, and added "the now" (τὸ αὐτίκα), which he had not found:
And I will straightway show the divine form of myself to him?
By which words he undoubtedly expressed the apparitions that took place after the resurrection. And Theophylact is of this opinion: who called what Nonnus termed "the divine aspect of the body" (θέσκελον εἶδος χροός), a "more God-like body" (σῶμα θεοειδέστερον). "Because," he says, "after the resurrection he was about to appear to them with a more God-like body." Euthymius is a little different: "Sometimes indeed in a human manner, at other times in a divine splendor." In whatever way you take it, that "straightway" (αὐτίκα) is curious. But because it had been said before, "a little while yet," which those who understood that passage of the second 472 advent thought could also be referred to the length of time, because they say "a thousand years, before God, are as one day": it seemed to him to speak in this way in this place too. In which I desire judgment, as always. In the following chapter, in the second verse, in that passage, "Every branch in me not bearing fruit, he takes away," the Fathers have judged "in me" (ἐν ἐμοὶ) to be of the greatest efficacy. For this is what he meant, says Euthymius: "He who has germinated from me, and is engrafted into me by faith, yet produces no fruit." Which words our author has passed over neither in order nor correctly. Forgetful of everything that follows in the night: "Abide in me, and I in you; as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it remains in the vine." It follows in the same verse: "And every branch that bears fruit, he purges it, that it may bear more fruit." Where our author: "knows how to purge with newly-sprung leaves" (οἶδε καθαίρειν Ἀρτιφύτοις πετάλοις). What this might be would have to be sought out of that passage. For he expressed what he meant neither ambiguously, nor in Greek, nor according to the usage of farmers. How much better is Chrysostom, who says: "For to purge (καθαίρειν) is to prune (περικόπτειν); which makes the branch more productive," who seems to have read (καθαίρει) just as our author. For also a little earlier: "Therefore he says: 'That which bears fruit, he purges it.'" Yet that word deceived our author, by which he envelops, [and] does not interpret, what the evangelist said. The same man most effectively notes that all things said here are to be understood of the branches. "And every branch that bears fruit, he purges it," he says, "that is, he makes it to enjoy much care." Although the root requires care before the branches, being dug around and stripped; but he says nothing here about it, but everything is about the branches, showing that he himself is sufficient for himself; but the disciples require much help from 473 the husbandman, even if they be very virtuous. Therefore he says: "That which bears fruit, he purges it." For the one, because it is fruitless, is not even able to be in the vine; the other, because it bears fruit, he renders more productive. Therefore the matter concerns pruning. Hence the same great man learnedly refers it to calamities. But it is one thing to prune, and another quite different thing to strip the leaves, which is what our author wanted. Chrysostom teaches that it should be referred solicitously to the branches; our author, who was occupied with something else, took it of the leaves. I cannot admire enough how much he sometimes sticks in trifles. Such is that which the evangelist said: "Unless one abides"
A in me, he is cast out like a branch, and is withered, and they gather them and cast them into the fire." Our author, being apparently completely unskilled in Hebraisms, because he had found συνάγουσιν καὶ βάλλουσιν [they gather and cast] according to Hellenistic usage, thought that something had to be understood. Therefore, he supposed that angels were intended: "And having changed him, they cast him into the fire, / The celestial ministers." But those who have even tasted the Hellenistic idiom know that the evangelist intended nothing else than what is set forth most simply: καὶ συνάγεται καὶ βάλλεται [and it is gathered and is cast]. For the Hebrews understand "the one who happens to be" [as the subject]. So in Ezekiel fifteen, where it treats similarly of the vine: "If they shall take a branch from it to make anything for work," [it means] men, or anyone. Nor in that place does the Chaldean [interpreter] speak otherwise. And everywhere [the author] is a child when he touches upon the Hellenistic idiom. To which even this, in the same chapter and verse sixteen, would beget faith: "Not you chose me, but I chose you, and I set you, that you should go and bring forth fruit." Where Chrysostom interprets ἔθηκα [I set] as ἐφύτευσα [I planted]. Truly and elegantly, as he is accustomed. And what follows: ἵνα ὑμεῖς ὑπάγητε καὶ καρπὸν φέρητε [that you should go and bring forth fruit], 474 [the author] explains correctly, that he used the metaphor of the vine, that is, because he still adheres to the translation of the vine; which observation is undoubtedly true. Our author has correctly expressed neither. And the things he adds from his own store are beside the scope of the proverb and the manner of speaking. See the passage: "I received you all from the cities with an intelligent mind / As strangers, and I set you, so that coming / You might increase fruit, and your seed might be / Fruitful unto eternity."
And it is shameful to note such trivial things. Such is the fact that he added "coming," as if that, "that you should go and bring forth fruit," were anything other than "that you should be fruitful," by a most common pleonasm of his language. Had he never, then, read: "Go and reprove him"? Likewise: "But go, show thyself to the priest" (Mark 1, 44). And others of that kind are, among the Hellenists, "as the dust." It is strange, however, that he was so negligent that he did not learn from any theologian, in the passage that follows, what "to be scandalized" meant: "These things have I spoken to you, that you should not be scandalized." If he had understood this, he would never have rendered it "incredulous fury." The passage is at the beginning of the fourteenth chapter. But no one expressed this better than Basil, who says in *De baptismo*: "Scandal is, as I conceive, being led by what is written, everything which either leads to some apostasy from the truth according to piety, or causes an invitation to error, or builds up toward impiety, or generally hinders anyone from obeying the commandment of God, even to the very point of death." Than which nothing clearer, nothing more accommodating could have been said: just as he puts the scandal in terms of death and persecution. If I wished to recount how often our author has tripped in the use of particles, there would be no end, no limit. But one must proceed gently. You have an example in what follows: "They will make you 475 excommunicated; but the hour comes that everyone who kills you," etc. Which he rendered: "But this is the swift time, when every mortal man / In his mind / Who might kill you with an iron reaper," etc. B And yet *alla* [but] in that passage of the Hebrews [in truth/Hebrew: *in veritate*] is indeed a strong affirmation. And thus the Hellenists are wont to speak. You have an example in Job 31, 8: "And I said, Is not the time of the speaker [the time when the mind speaks]? And in many years they do not know wisdom. But there is a spirit in mortals; and the breath of the Almighty that teaches." It has no less efficacy in that place than if he had said *amen, amen* in the accustomed manner. "They will cast you out of the synagogues. Amen, amen I say to you, the hour cometh, that he who shall take you away," etc. Which the Chaldean has expressed excellently, who in that passage of Job C and not badly as learned men, to whom the *quinimo* [nay rather] please: which, as less effective, thus ties these things best to the preceding. There follows: *δότη λατρείας, προσφέρειν τῷ Θεῷ* [to offer service/sacrifice to God]. D By which words he affirms that it will be such impiety of wicked men after the death of the Lord, that he who shall be about to subject any of the saints to a dire punishment, will think that he is offering himself as a sacrifice grateful and acceptable to God. Where he undoubtedly looked to that word, which does not so much designate a sacrifice, as it contains it. Now that word is *corban*, which also pleased the Syrian here. For that word, as it signifies a gift, so it embraces a sacrifice. And according to the word, the Lord predicted what was to be. For at this time the wicked circumcised, the homicides of our Lord and God, who dare to assert that there is no need of penance for him who has killed a Christian, do not hesitate to add the very words which interpret this place, nay, fulfill the prophecy: that it is a transgression, *corban* [they have offered], as if he had offered a *corban*. Which 476 sacrifice these men understand to be the crime itself. Although, however, to the Hellenists *corban* is for the most part *latreia* [divine service], yet because those same Hellenists, as many of them were interpreters at that time, used the word *douleia* [slavery/service] in expressing it, he was such an infant that he thought *douleia* was the same in this place as *latreia*. But who has progressed so little in Greek learning as to think that *douleia* to offer, or *douleia* to perform, could be said when the matter concerns a sacrifice? By the same evangelist, in the same chapter, verse 14, it is said: "He shall glorify me, because he shall take of mine, and will declare it to you." There preceded, however: "But all things that he shall hear he will speak, and the things that are to come he will declare to you." On which passage Augustine says: He calls the hearing, which is attributed to the Spirit, eternal, because the knowledge also is eternal. To which knowledge he undoubtedly looked when he said, "he shall take of mine." *Lēpsis* [taking], indeed, for the Hebrews is *da'ath* [knowledge], is doctrine. And *lambanein* [to take] for *manthanein* [to learn], just as sometimes *hypakouein* [to obey] for the Hellenists. From which it is clear how clearly [the act of] hearing and [the act of] taking are linked here with Isaiah 29, 24: "And they who err in spirit shall know understanding, and they who murmur shall learn 477 to obey." Where, which you may marvel at, in the Hebrew there is *lēpsis*, which the Hellenists called *hypakoēn* [obedience]. Jerome rendered it as the law. This *lambanein*, and this *lēpsis*, the ancients thought so proper to the Holy Spirit that they accommodated it to the mode of subsistence. And hence their opinion, who while they said the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, also distinguished this. For they said: "to proceed from the Father, to take from the Son." How Epiphanius has not spoken once, when that same man admits it not once, in which Nonnus hesitated, that the Son is from God, the Spirit from both. Against the Pneumatomachi: "If however Christ is believed to be God from God, and the Spirit of him from Christ, being from both, as Christ says, 'who proceedeth from the Father'; and 'He shall take of mine'; and Christ [comes] from the Holy Spirit." And immediately in the beginning: "For the Spirit of the Lord is named, both proceeding from the Father, and taking from the Son, and granting the gifts variously as he wills." Our author, who perhaps had heard nothing about this opinion, and maintains the worse one, did not preserve the word, but changed it; for everywhere he used *tō dechesthai* [to receive]. In which same way almost the Hellenists sometimes use it, as in Proverbs 2: "Hear, O Son, and receive my words," that is, "Hear, and learn." Where the Chaldean [uses] *lēpsis*, whence the Jewish Cabala, word for word. Furthermore, that we may bear everything (for to err is human), what is not to be borne, whether it be of supreme audacity, or of supreme rashness in this place, to say it most lightly, is not to be borne. For with the word of wickedness, which expresses this which I wish, I abstain however from evil. For not when concerning the Spirit...
A he speaks, did he find it sufficient to add what he did not find; as when he sometimes said above of the Spirit that it was "of the Father" or "of the Progenitor," when nothing of the kind existed, except now this:
*This one, going from the Father,*
firmly adding to his own heterodox dogma, unless he were to change those very things which had been dictated by the Holy Spirit. For since it was written, *He shall take of mine*, he substituted instead of it, *of the Father of mine*. And so, when he had found in the Evangelist, *This one shall glorify me, because he shall take of mine, and shall announce it unto you*, he dared to introduce these things:
*This one from the Father shall exalt me, honoring me,* *Because, having received from the Progenitor,* *He reveals beforehand to you the mixed mysteries,* etc.
There was no need for this mutation, since the subject is not the procession B of the Spirit, as he imagined, but the unity of the Son and the Spirit: for as to how he understands *He shall take of mine*, the great Chrysostom says: "The *of mine*, from what I know, is from my own knowledge; for there is one knowledge of me and of the Spirit." The same says, "Just as therefore, when speaking concerning himself, he says *I do not speak this of myself*, because nothing is outside those things of the Father, nor is anything his own, distinct and alien from him; so also in the case of the Spirit." Just as, he says, the Son, when he speaks of himself, claims nothing for himself, ascribes to himself nothing—even in that which he is saying—takes to himself nothing proper which is not equally the Father’s: so now he deals here concerning the Spirit, so that he may show himself to be one with the Spirit. Cyril says, "Since the Spirit is of the same substance with the Son, having all his power, he therefore says: *Because he shall receive of mine*." From which communion, so that he might not exclude the Father, he adds: *All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine*. Whatever is the Father’s, is the Son’s; whatever is the Son’s, is the Spirit’s. From which again he carries it over, what he had already said before: *Therefore I said that he shall take of mine*, because that which is the Father’s is the Son’s. But I cannot sufficiently admire either the rashness or the license of the interpreter. What Christ said twice, he changed twice. For he said once: *He shall glorify me, because he shall take of mine, and shall announce it unto you*. And again: *Therefore I said that he shall take of mine, and shall announce it unto you*. Our author, C with shrewdness, not in one but in both places, introduced what he had found, and in place of it put his own error. For in place of what is said by the Savior, *of mine*, he amended it to *of the Father*. By which, as nothing is more true, so nothing is more imprudent. For in the former place:
*This one from the Father, shall exalt me, honoring me,* *Because, having received from the Progenitor,* *He reveals beforehand to you the mixed mysteries.*
In the latter place, D *479* *For which reason I said to you, that from the holy Progenitor* *Having received, he announces beforehand the end of works.*
He did not see how ridiculous the argument is, since he keeps the same reasons by which the contrary is proved. The Evangelist said: *He shall glorify me, because he shall take of mine*. Nonnus said: *He shall extol me, because he shall take from my Father*. The Evangelist said: *Whatever the Father has, the Son has: and therefore I said that he was to take of mine*. Nonnus said: *Whatever the Father has, the Son has: and therefore I said that he was to take from my Father*. Never have I seen greater license and at the same time greater *akrisia* [lack of judgment]. And this is a wondrous method of both interpretation and argument. For he changed the *problēma*; but he kept the *lēmma*, with which he proves it, as the dialecticians say. Nor did he understand what *doxazein* [to glorify] means in this place. For what the Evangelist says in chapter 25, *to speak with boldness* [parrhesia], Nonnus elegantly said to speak *with a white speech*:
*I shall speak of the angels, diverse matters with a white speech.*
In which way not rarely the ancient theologians speak, who call clear and perspicuous speech *leukada* [white/bright]. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. 12: *And [saying] that he says thus, And in the days of those kings, God shall raise up the kingdom of the heavens*. And a little after: *But we still seek a brighter proof of the presence of the times*. So Caesarius: *Concerning which I shall discourse a little later*. And so he said that the same *leukainein* [to make white] declares the intent, the mind. In the seventeenth chapter, verse 12, when it is read: *Those whom thou hast given me I have kept, and none of them is lost, except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled*, I will not say what seems to us concerning the place, unless that it may seem wonderful that the place from the Psalm, which is cited in the first chapter of Acts concerning Judas, is understood here. For nothing is there *concerning the perdition of Judas*, B 480 used with the mind with which it is seen to be brought in here. But the *to plērousthai* [to be fulfilled], often used by parody, when one word touches upon another, has [a sense] in the sacred books. It treats here of the eternal destruction of Judas, who, because he had sinned—as the Hellenist theologians say—with a *naked head*, had plunged himself into eternal destruction. And yet in the following chapter, the Evangelist applies it far otherwise to what is said here: *Jesus answered, I said unto you, that I am he. If therefore you seek me, let these go; that the saying might be fulfilled which he said, That of those whom you have given me, I have lost no one*. Here he speaks of the destruction of the soul, there of the laying on of hands, from which he had them immune. Theophylact: *The Lord indeed called perish the destruction of the soul, which none of those who were taught by him underwent; but the evangelist took this concerning this bodily [safety]*. Although I am not least unaware what is brought forward here by the theologian concerning temptation beyond one's strength. But if you understand the place which I have already mentioned, our author does not escape the *carozelia* [jealousy/zealotry]: who, because he remembered above that the Psalms are called *nomon* [law], and did not think how, from Hellenistic usage—concerning which we said some things above—that occurred, he wished to imitate it, when Hebraisms, if they occur anywhere, are rather to be removed than, where they do not occur, applied. And this seems to be the principal task of the paraphrast. It is a stubborn and constant error, that everywhere he interprets the word *doxa* [glory] most poorly. Example again, that we may not go far, in the twenty-second verse you have: where when the evangelist says, *And I have given them the glory which thou hast given me, that they may be one even as we are one*, he used, in his own fashion, our word *kydos* [honor/glory]:
*And to them I gave the honor which you afforded me, that among us* *All, joined together, may be perfected and they themselves are* *Yokefellows.*
But how much better Nyssenus, who understands it as *to pneuma* [the Spirit], D 481 who is the Spirit of God himself, who in the explanation of that place: *Then the Son himself shall be subjected*: "But also the following parts of the Gospel agree with those things which have been said. *The glory which you given me, I have given to them.* For I think that he calls the Holy Spirit 'glory' here, which he gave to the disciples through the breathing; for it is not otherwise possible for those who are separated from each other to be united, since the Spirit of Christ is not, is not in them. For the Spirit is the glory; just as he says elsewhere to the Father: *Glorify me with the glory which I had from the beginning with you before the world was.* And from Hellenistic usage, that the glory and the indwelling are joined in the Chaldean manner, and that it is sometimes used when speaking of the same thing as the majesty of God, we have shown already before."
CAPUT XXVII.
The eighteenth chapter is gone through. The wondrous idiosyncracy of Nonnus, *charin ergou*. *Ergon* [work] for *nomisma* [money]. *Those doing the work*, money-changers. *Having worked for hire*. Peter’s sword. Why, in Theophylact’s opinion, Peter had a sword at hand. *Machaira* [sword] as a cultriform knife, a dagger. Pascha as *thyēpolia* [sacrificial rites], the slaughtering of the lamb. Whether *machaira* for Nonnus is correctly *aor* [sword], *xiphos* [sword], or *aossētēr* [helper] of iron. That for the use of slaughtering, the *machairan* for Agamemnon is attributed by Homer. *Dorides* [spears], and their use among the Greeks. To warm the hearth of the wise [men], an ancient [saying] of the Hebrews...
and that the evangelist appeared to have alluded to this. Caiaphas A and Annas were supreme priests, and in what way. In this, the error of Nonnus is noted. Concerning the robbers, with whom the Lord was joined on the cross, and why He was joined to them, it has been discussed. Barabbas is a murderous robber (*λῃστὴς θανατηφόρος*), [and there are] seditionists (*στασιασταί*) [and] rebels (*ἀντάρται*). Men guilty of diverse crimes, affected by diverse punishments by the Jews. The charge or title of the Lord. The word *λῃστὴς* used by the Syrians and Chaldeans in a slightly different manner than by the Greeks at that time. The same who are *ἐνεδρεύοντες*, evildoers (*κακοῦργοι*). To Theocritus, *κακοῦργοι*, and the same as those who are *κακοῦργοι* to Thucydides and Luke. A cave of robbers. Concerning burglars. How they are spoken of in Hebrew. That the word 482 is drawn also to false prophets by the Jews. *Ἄγορον* in prophecy in that sense concerning the robbers crucified with the Lord. *Listin* armed. *Λῃστὴς* with a spear (*καθοπλισμένος*), *gaisa* or *gasa* from a Syrian word. The use of a stylus or graphium among the Romans was forbidden. Committing a common crime to the Lord with two robbers. That it was *majestatis* (treason). But a *peculiar* rebellion (*ἀνταρσία*), or the crime of a feigned kingdom. Sedition (*στάσις*), seditious (*στασιασταί*). The judgment in the punishment of the Lord was that of the Romans. A club (*ῥόπαλον*), *fustuarium*. *Ἀχάρακτος*, un-notched. The punishment of the holy martyrs B was taken by the club.
It is learned, but nothing less than Greek elegance, what is said in the next chapter, verse five, concerning Judas, that for the sake of a fleeting task (*μινυνθαδίου χάριν ἔργου*) he betrayed the Lord. Where *ἔργον*, perhaps, or money, if I am not mistaken, he calls it. But who speaks Greek in such a way? Therefore, this passage exercised us not a little in the beginning. But that it must have belonged to the Hellenists who existed at that time, I have no doubt. Indeed, in Esther ch. III, those who *ποιούντες τὸ ἔργον* are called money-changers. Whence that: "into the hands of those who do the work (*ποιούντων ἔργον*)." Where the Jerusalem Targum interprets it as money: "through the hands of those who make money." And hence perhaps in ch. II, those whom the evangelist called *κερματιστάς*, or money-changers, our poet called those "having a base task (*ὤνιον ἔργον ἔχοντας*)." For I do not believe he was so inept as to think that *ἔργον* is the same as *χρῆμα*, so as to confuse *χρῆμα* and *χρήματα*. Which is hardly to be expected from trivial people. And yet we pass over some things in it, which no one truly learned in the Greek language would tolerate in a beginner; for today there are not a few who think they know Greek because they have learned the rules of grammar. There are many things in this evangelist which, while they seem of no importance, have sometimes caused no small scruple among the Fathers and among us. For you would seek 483 help from Nonnus in most things in vain. Our most holy evangelist says, verse 10, with others, that Peter, when the Lord was led away by wicked men, bore a sword (*μάχαιραν*): which some of the ancients admit they wonder at, because the use of the sword was already forbidden to them before; among whom are two most excellent interpreters, Chrysostom, and Theophylact, who speaks from his mouth very often; who ingeniously wills that he had taken it for the sake of the lamb that had been sacrificed, and for fear of the danger soon impending. The words of Theophylact are: "Learn that for the sake of the lamb he needed this [sword], and he was flaying it, and after supper, or even fearing the attack, he had prepared himself again for this." The interpretation of Theophylact which I mentioned undoubtedly refers to that passage which is read concerning the father of all the faithful, to whom, about to sacrifice his son, a sword (*μάχαιρα*) is attributed by the Hellenists. Although I have often wondered that nothing about Luke came to their minds when they wrote that it was forbidden: "Lord, behold, here are two swords; and He said to them: It is enough." Be that as it may, in this place, Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it, according to their opinion, the sword being undoubtedly a *cecespita*, or the slaughtering knife of a butcher. The Glossary of Henry Stephens: *μάχαιρα*, the sheath-knife (*παραμήριον*), a dagger (*sica*). The same interprets *μαχαιροποιόν* as a maker of knives. Among the Hebrews elegantly *מַאֲכֶלֶת*, in Chaldean D *סַכִּינָא*. The Syrian used a peculiar word. 484 *And Simon, having a blade, boldly drew it, and having pierced the man, the servant-minister of the high priest, with iron steel, he cut off his right ear.*
Yet, as we have said, *μάχαιρα* is something else from their usage, the meaning of which he ought to have expressed in Greek, which Homer could have taught him: who, as a Hellenist, attributes a *μάχαιρα* to the Father of the faithful, just as he does to Agamemnon for sacrifices and victims. For the passage is known. Where you have this usage of the Hellenists. Just as they either had those they called sacrificial knives (*ἀορτίας*) prepared for sacrifices, or wore them attached to their side. Hesychius, who left us the treasures of all Greece that would have been lost: *ἀορτῆρες*, butcher knives (*μάχαιραι μαγειρικαὶ*), and those for skinning victims are *ἐπιτήδειοι*. It is proper for the evangelists to allude secretly to the sayings of the wise which were current at that time. Among which is that: "To warm oneself at the fire of the wise." Which reminder is so ancient that it appears in the chapters of the Fathers: in which many sayings or idioms of the ancient Hebrews exist, to which the Lord and the evangelists everywhere allude. But by them they signify that the company of the wicked, for the most part, provides the primary cause and occasion for sinning. Which happened to Peter, who, while he was standing in the middle of the rogues, or, as others say, was sitting, on this occasion, which our evangelist will soon note, being interrogated by them, denied the Lord. To verse 24: *Then Annas sent him bound unto Caiaphas the high priest*, our poet writes thus: *But Annas, having kept Jesus, bound in a yoke-bond, his hands restrained against his back, sent him to his cousin, the high priest, being carried to another high priest.* 485 By which he indicates that Annas and Caiaphas were colleagues in office and associates. But John clearly shows that Caiaphas was then the supreme priest. For in this same chapter it is read: *And they led him to Annas first, and sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest. For he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was the high priest of that year.* What then? No doubt the passage in Luke ch. III imposed upon Nonnus: *In the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the desert.* That both existed, therefore, is true. But so that they succeeded one another, not that both were supreme priests at the same time. In the same chapter, in the last verse, not badly did he call Barabbas a murderous robber (*λῃστὴν θανατηφόρον*), rather than [just] a robber. Although I know these are confused. But as it is commonly understood, it was not necessary that the person whom he called a robber he should also call a murderer, since they do not consider any to be robbers unless they have committed murder. But two crimes are clearly attributed to Barabbas by the other evangelists, sedition and murder, even if by Luke he appears joined to the other two whom Scripture called *λῃστὰς* (robbers). Although I know the Jews did this, so that they might join the Lord with the most wicked, so that from the common punishment a greater infamy might accrue to the innocent, yet often I have wondered with the learned why He was joined to two robbers on the cross, since especially, both from the accusation of the Jews, and *ἐκ τῆς αἰτίας*, or the title of Pilate, it is manifest that He was punished as a seditious person and one guilty of a feigned kingdom: such are they who generally are called by the word *στασιασταί*, and specifically *ἀντάρται*.
ἀντάρται*. A Added to this is the custom and usage of the Jews, who, unless they caught someone in the same crime, would not condemn him to the same punishment; 486 and they would also sometimes distinguish punishments according to the days, so as not to punish different things with the same penalty. Furthermore, those who were convicted of homicide, like Barabbas here, were punished by them in a very lenient manner, or if capital, as they say, by the sword. To this refers the word of the Lord: *For all who have taken up the sword will perish by the sword* (Matt. 26:52). I am not unaware of how the learned attempt to evade this, who, along with the Sanhedrin and its power, even wish for this to have been snatched away from the Jews at that time. And when they cite from Luke that the other robber said to his fellow, while mocking the Lord, *Do you not fear God, since you are in the same judgment?* (Luke 23:40), they do not yet prove what kind of judgment that was. And by this very fact they teach us that a common cause of death, no less than the death itself, was intended for the three. And yet they call them robbers: by which name they accuse the Lord, though they do not prove it. And let us suppose this punishment was Roman and adopted by them, which the cross itself proves; yet they will not deny that the same punishment is required for the same crime, since the Romans in this respect were most equitable, as they would affix the title of the crime or set it before the guilty parties. That the latter was done in the case of the Lord is attested by sacred history. Wherefore there is no doubt that the cause, at least in part, was common. These men, whom the Greeks call *λησταί* (robbers), were known among the Syrians at that time by the same word, with a slightly different meaning: such are those whom the Greeks call *ἐνεδρεύοντες* (those who lie in wait) and not infrequently *κακούργους* (evildoers). Such were those Egyptians, regarding whom Theocritus says (Syracusae): B *No one is an evildoer* *He sneers at the passerby, in the Egyptian manner,* who armed themselves and disturbed the public peace. This, he says, was restored when they were removed by Ptolemy. Thus Thucydides 487 understood it when he said: *For those evildoers from the islands were removed by him.* Hence Luke also called them *κακούργους*: *And there were two others, evildoers, led with Him to be executed* (Luke 23:32). And: *There they crucified Him and the evildoers, one on the right and one on the left* (Luke 23:33). And: *But one of the thieves who were crucified mocked Him* (Luke 23:39). Indeed, what is called [σπήλαιον ληστῶν] (a den of robbers) by the Hellenists in Jeremiah, is called by the Hebrews the den of house-breakers or ravagers: [פּריצים]; by which name they also metaphorically called false prophets who often broke the law. Nor do these circumcised ones call us Christians otherwise, even today, out of a hollow sense of honor, *Apella*. Hence also the passage in Daniel, chapter 11: *The children of the robbers, or, as others say, of the thieves of your people, shall exalt themselves*, they drag down to us and to that blessed seed. In which passage you have [פּריצים], as above. With which the prophecy agrees most excellently: *He shall be numbered with the wicked* (Isa. 53:12). For [ἄνομοι] (the wicked/lawless) are the breakers of the law. There is no doubt, however, that both Barabbas and the other two were *ἐνεδρεύοντες*: who had taken up arms to disturb the public peace. Such men, as enemies of the state and for this very reason guilty of treason, no one is ignorant of. Of this kind are those who are called armed [listin] by the Rabbis. Elias says: [קורין לגזלן ליסטים וכן בדברי רזל ליסטים מזויין], that is, they call a robber *Listes* in the Greek language: which our Rabbis of pious memory also use when they say an armed *listis*. Such a one the Lord understood when He said: *Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to take Me?* (Matt. 26:55). For He understands *armed*, and that he had taken up arms to disturb the public peace, which the Syrians would express by saying, as they conjoin it to the Greek *ληστής*. The Syrian interpreter, however, has learnedly expressed it there by one word, [גייסא] (*gajoso*): by which name he also called Barabbas; whence *gaisa*, or *gasa*, among the Latins. Or [it is derived] from the troop and the gathered rabble 488 with which they made their raids. Such men the Romans, even if they do not commit slaughter, call public robbers, as Cicero did not once speak of Catiline. For the state claims weapons for itself: against which to use them is the act of a marauder and a seditious person. And it is the truth of the greatest politicians that the republic belongs only to those who possess arms. So much so that, under the Romans, to write with a stylus was sometimes forbidden, and caution was taken that no one should have a stylus. How much more so arms, which someone might snatch up for the sake of crime or sedition: such as, even on the venerable days of Easter, Honorius and Arcadius ordered to be led to punishment. Wherefore it is certain that sedition was equally intended against all. For all three, as *στασιασταί* (seditionists), and as guilty under the law of treason, were nailed to the cross: the Lord, in a particular way, as an *ἀντάρτης* (rebel), for *ἀνταρσία* (rebellion) is the crime of aspiring to the kingdom. But the punishment of the cross, as Theophylact rightly notes. *Because*, he says, *the Romans execute rebels on the cross*: the Romans afflict the guilty with the cross. Nor did they act differently toward armed robbers, and those who publicly usurped the sword. For it is known regarding L. Domitius, or from Valerius and others: who, when he was governing Sicily as propraetor, and was completely intent on suppressing robberies, after he had issued an edict that no one should possess a weapon, it is said that he crucified a man who had killed a boar with a hunting spear: although [he also did this to] robbers. But here we are dealing with a common cause, which was *στάσις* (sedition). But *στάσις* is not just sedition, but also a meeting of such people. The most learned Hesychius, most learnedly, as in everything: *Stasis, position, dance, conspiracy*. They themselves are called *στασιῶται*. The same [author]: *Stasiotai, those of the same party*. Just as Saint Mark intimates that Barabbas and the other two were *στασιασταί*, that is, of the same order, when he says: *And there was one named Barabbas 489 bound with the seditionists, who in the sedition had committed murder* (Mark 15:7). Whose leaders, those who *had organized the band of robbers*, Josephus, *Antiquities of the Jews*, book xx, chapter 2, calls them. Who often, and especially around the feasts, observes that robberies of this kind were stirred up in Judea. That the judgment, under the title of *στάσις* and *ἀνταρσία* (sedition and rebellion), was the Romans', there is no doubt at all. And this is demonstrated by Josephus, who attributes to the Jews the *ἔνδειξιν* (evidence/indictment), or rather the accusation and examination: than which nothing more confused or foolish could be devised. Wherefore, whether you look at the Jews, he was counted among the [פרושים] (Pharisees) and the [צדוקים] (Sadducees), to use the words of prophecy; for he was accused by them of impiety, or of breaking the law, and of creating new things: or whether you look at the Romans, as a rebel and guilty of aspiring to the kingdom, he paid the penalty with the seditionists, as he himself was such a one. But let us return to Nonnus. With the first verse of the following chapter, he notes along with the Evangelist that Barabbas, a murderer, was released by the common voice and judgment of the Jews, who at the same time were attacking the very sanctity and justice with monstrous examples; it is not strange in a murderer: whom the Jews often let off with light punishments, on the condition that they would proclaim and confess their crime in public everywhere. But here, as I said before, *στάσις* concurred: although what the Evangelist sets forth would be quite a serious crime in itself: namely, the slaughter itself. Our author, who did not ineptly connect the following chapter with this one, added in the same history that *ἀχάρακτον* (unscarred) *ῥαπίσμασι* (with blows). In which words he seems to understand the *fustuarium* (clubbing) or stripes, which were usually used for this punishment among the Jews. And *ἀχάρακτον*, not *charassatus*, as the ecclesiastical Latins would say: not marked by any claws or scourges. Prudentius: *Scars both cheeks with claws while writing,* *And cuts the face with bloody marks.* 490 Hesychius: *Rhopalon, stick, rod.* Although *ῥόπαλα* usually brought death. Thus in Photius, Timotheus, Bishop of Ephesus; among others, others are said to have been *killed with clubs*.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Chapter XIX is traversed. *Sophos thalasses spinther* (Wise spark of the sea), purple. And why it was so called. That Nonnus liked to be difficult, and naturally loved the word *sophos*, as did Euripides. And sometimes used it rashly. A discussion about that passage: *And they gave Him blows* (ῥαπίσματα). *Rhapizein* (to strike) and...A *colaphizein* (to strike with the fist) in essence mean giving blows to the face. *Patassein palame* (to strike with the palm); *rhapisma* (a blow) is an injury of the legal profession, of a fortunate prayer. *Rapidis*, or the plucking of a beard. *Rapis* for a sandal or slipper. The place in Isaiah, to which the evangelists looked, is to be considered. How *marat* and *calaph* in the passage of Isaiah are to be understood. What *keleph* means to the teachers of the Hebrews. How *kalpha* is to be understood in the Jerusalem Targum. Whence *alapa*. *Colaphus* from *kalaph*. A certain pedant *Kolaphos* named by Epicharmus. *Rhapizein* and *colaphizein*, used indiscriminately by the sacred interpreters. Nonnus is noted for having said *akron pareidos arassein* (to smite the tip of the cheek). *Haima kochlou* (blood of the mussel/shellfish) wrongly called by Nonnus the juice of purple. The interpretation of that passage. *Ide ho anthropos* (Behold the man). That passage taken from the prophecy of Zechariah. Nonnus’s *adoleschia* (loquacity). The interpretation of that passage: *According to our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God.* The perversity of the Jews in accusing the Lord. And how, in the manner accustomed to the time of Tiberius, He was accused by them of *majestas* (treason). How *eudogein* was used by the Hellenists. By what law the Lord was accused in that place. That same passage little understood by Nonnus. *Onomazein* and *eponomazein to onoma Kyriou* (to name and surname the name of the Lord), what it means in the law of Moses. The name revealed and expressed. What kind of crime. And its penalty. The cavil of the Jews and the perverse *paradeuterosis*, or interpretation of the law, which they brought against the Lord, is noted. That the Jews were accustomed to use entangled expressions, and that they commended these to their own. A passage badly mangled by Nonnus. *Bematikai hemerai*. The right of the bench, the right of the tribunal. *Mythos* for *lexis* (word). Nonnus concerning the Syriac word [for] judgment. Who are called *paphlaein* by Hippocrates. *Epilambanein* in speaking. *Gabbatha*. *Phlaein*. *Plattein*, and 491 what that is. To pant for one thing, to *phlaein* for another. Concerning the hour at which the Lord was affixed to the cross. That passage most audaciously changed by Nonnus. The inept redundancy of Nonnus is noted. Concerning the hour in which the Lord suffered. *Tritene*. *Hektene*. *Parasceve*. And the careless security of Nonnus noted therein. The abuse of the word *tōs*. *Eōs nykta agousa* (until it brings night), improperly. *Lachos hemeras*. *Stephain basilea* (to crown a king), used regarding the Romans. *Egraphe* used by the evangelist in the manner of the Hebrews regarding Pilate. The error of Nonnus regarding the title. *Graphe*. *Titulus*, the tablet upon which the writing is. *Pinax* for title. *Elmia* in Syriac. *To ektetypōmenon tēs graphidos* (the impress of the stylus). Christ’s tunic reaching to the feet, of which St. John [speaks], what it was like. It was of woven work, like that of Aaron, of whose type [it was]. The error of Nonnus concerning it. *Dichron chiton*, why it is called the same by Nonnus. *Hyperthe kai entherphe phortos*. The *epistomion* of that tunic and the mouth through which one was clothed in it. The interpretation of that passage: *Let us not tear it, but let us cast lots for it.* How the most holy author observed the economy of God, even in the least things. *Meil ephod*. *Mē schisthē*: the prophecy concerning the Lord’s garment. The violence that was applied in the flagellation: in which garments were usually torn. *Lachmos*, accepted by Nonnus from the casting of lots with fingers. *Pleistobolyndia*, and that the soldiers appeared to have used it in casting lots. *Psallein en kithara* among the Hellenists. The same *kithara* or *psalterion* to the same people. *Kithara*, an instrument properly destined for triumph among the Jews, not for mourning.
[LATIN COLUMN] Just as above 492 when he says that Caiaphas interrogated the Lord *amphi sophōn hetairōn*, concerning wise disciples, since Caiaphas thought the Lord was convening a group, and therefore inquired about His disciples as seditious ones. Often great men delay us, to whom things not so great [bring] great and frequent annoyances, and sometimes errors, because they did not look to the Hellenists, as I have often said, they have objected. Let the passage in chapter xix, verse 3, be an example: *And they gave Him blows (rhapismata).* In which most learned theologians, thinking themselves to have deceased most excellently, who interpreted it as having struck with a rod: [think] that the others are not a little mistaken, and especially the ancient interpreter, who suggested "the slap" (alapa) to others. Which cannot be resolved unless the matter is repeated a little further back. It is clear that the holy men who conceived these histories gave the greatest effort; so that, when they wrote in Greek, they might adapt the oracles of the prophets which they noted to have happened to the Lord. That they might be able to do this, they very often used the *Seventy*, who were in the hand of most people then, rather than the Hebrew words; more concerned with the matter than with these: but of those whom they were instructing, and who attributed great authority to those books at that time, they were very careful. The passage of Isaiah, which the holy writer looked to, has it thus: *I have given my back to the scourges, and my cheeks to the blows; and I have not turned away my face from the shame of spitting.* That each of these things happened to the Lord is known from other evangelists. Who, like ours, expressed the words of Isaiah, not as they were in Hebrew, but as they were read among the Hellenists; for they said *rhapizein* and *rhapismata*. And in the same way also certain Latins, not what was in the Hebrew, but what they then thought it was permitted to say, brought forth: *I gave my back to the scourges, and my cheeks to the slaps.* Not that *rhapismata* 493 was this, but that they saw *siagonas* (cheeks) added. Just as the same elders [did] in Hosea: *I will be to them as one striking a man upon his cheeks,* when it is read not a little differently in the sacred text today. Matthew, when he had those same interpreters in mind, alluded here to the same passage of Isaiah: *And they struck Him with the fist (ekolaphisan), and others also struck Him with the palm (errhapisan).* Where *rhapisai* [is] to strike with the flat palm: which the ancients used to call *depalmare*. Nor is *colaphisai* and *rhapisai* any more the same in that passage than *to strike with a flat palm* and *to strike with a fist* is in that of Juvenal: *I forbid you to strike the chest with fists,* *nor to strike the face with a flat palm;* although it is spoken there with a different sense. Nevertheless, the one of which Matthew [speaks] is with the flat hand, the other with the contracted hand. Suidas, *Rhapisai*, to strike the jaw with the simple hand: which they also say *epi korrēs* (on the ear/head). Write, *which they also say to strike on the cheek (epi korrēs)*; just as also in Jeremiah, in the same prophecy: *He shall give [his] cheek to him that strikes him.* Therefore, *rhapizein*, not in the manner of the Greeks, but of the Hellenists, [is] to strike with the simple hand, which the ancients [called] *expalmare* and *depalmare*. The incomparable Glosses of Stephanus [say], *rhapizō*, I *expalmo*, I slap. For *palma* is *cheir haplē* (the simple hand), the hand spread out, just as the knuckle is contracted into the fist, whence *kondylisai* and *kolaphisai*. And therefore most learnedly, Tertullian rendered the passage upon which all these things rest, [from] Isaiah, thus: *He gave my back to the scourges: my cheeks to the palms.* And the old interpreter, whose learning we cannot admire enough in many places, what that evangelist said, *And they struck Him with the fist, but others struck Him with the palm*, he rendered: *And they struck Him with blows of the fist, but others gave palms to His face.* Than which, indeed, nothing more learned can be said. Juvencus: *Then they pollute the holy face of Christ everywhere with spittle,* 494 *And [they insult Him] frequently with the palm on the cheeks and blows of the fist on the head.* Sedulius: *Finally, not everywhere* *To strike the head with fists, or to strike with palms.*
This is what Nonnus meant by A *with a palm*. For *a palm* is a simple palm, which he interpreted as *a blow with the palm* in accordance with all antiquity, not in the Greek fashion, which the learned insist upon so strongly, but according to Hellenistic usage. *With a bold palm he struck the sacred cheek.* For thus he wrote above, when he had found *He gave a blow with the palm to Him.* But here: *And one after another, / Striking with alternating hands the tip of the cheek.* Nor is this, in truth, the "hand-sending blow" (*manumissio*) of the jurists, which the witty poet Claudian called a "wrong to one's happy vow," and which he said caused the cheeks of him who was in such a condition to redden like a citizen's. If it is the cheeks, then it is *epi korphēs*, not with a knuckle or a fist, but with the palm. Much less with a rod, as some think; for a "tooth-breaker," a wound, or "torment" was not what was sought in that part, but it was the final mark of servitude and a memory inflicted, which was like a *paigma*, a mockery. But in the passage of Isaiah, to which the evangelists looked, a different *empaigma* appears to be placed: namely, that which is mentioned as *tilmos geneiou*, the plucking of the beard: which is sometimes joined with this. Dio: *Some struck Him with the palm, others pulled at His beard.* In which mockeries *to rapizein* is sometimes used, to strike the face with a sole or sandal, which is the custom for Persius to rebuke. For *rapis* is a sole, or a sandal. Hesychius: *Rapis, footwear.* And *Rapis, a rod, a sandal.* And he says He *offered His cheeks*: which B is *relinquentibus* (to those who strike), if we believe the learned. But if this is true, it will be like that of Flaccus, among whom wanton boys pluck the beard of the Stoics, except that this was violent and involved depilation.
Yet a certain difficulty remains even so. For why, when they had expressed the passage from the prophet Isaiah, did no one describe this mockery? Concerning which something must be said; for here the matter sticks. There are two words which signify both depilation and the pulling out, or skinning, of the surface: *marat* and *kalaph*. And indeed in the latter way, namely, the second manner, in Ezekiel xxix, 18, *marat* is used, although the interpreters have used the word for depilation. And *kalaph* also denotes depilation, as it signifies skinning properly in plants. Whence also *keleph*, which is a thinner membrane where the hairs are, of which the masters often make mention when they deal with the description of the law. And in the Jerusalem Targum, an impetigo which removes hair is called *kalpha*. Now, just as from *alaph*, which is "to learn," they have said *alpha* and *alapa*, I believe it is because this chastisement is familiar to those who are teaching, so from *kolaph* C the Greeks made *kolaphon*, and the Latins *colaphum*: and because those are likewise in use for teachers, a certain pedagogue was called *Kolaphos* jokingly by Epicharmus. The word which Isaiah used, *marat*, is not placed in the meaning they want, but in the sense of *kalaph*, which some signify by *kolaphizein*, while others (as many ancient interpreters were, among whom we also place Matthew and Mark) have said *rapizein*. Indeed, in the passage of Isaiah, the most learned interpreter Theodoret used the word *kolaphizein*, who in the Catena not yet published on that place says: *All these things the history of the divine Gospels teaches: for the servant of the high priest struck Him on the cheek, while others struck Him with the fist.* D For it is certain that these are sometimes confused. Hesychius: *Kolaphizomenos, rapizomenos*, except that the one denotes the mockery of blows and the slapping of cheeks simply, while the other denotes the result as well, that is, the wound or the drawing off/tearing of the skin. Wherefore there was no need for that interpretation of the passage in Isaiah: which the Hellenistic elders, like the remaining evangelists, as I have said, expressed; just as it was not necessary that they should be anxious here about rods. Which perhaps might be true in Greek usage, of which neither the interpreters of the prophet nor the evangelists who express it took any account. Our translator, just as he perhaps did not handle the matter badly here, so he did not well say *the tip of the cheek*: for he did not express the violence. There follows at verse 5:
*And He had a sharp-haired crown woven of thorn,* *And a purple garment soaked in the blood of the shellfish.*
Where there is a popular error, that he called the flower of the purple—as some of the others among the authors—blood: which Plinius much better called "juice"! as also "dew": which he himself and Aristotle believed to be contained in the throat. But that juice is no more blood than the ink of the cuttlefish, as the same Plinius excellently says, who for this reason called those things "analogous" to blood, that is, as the Greeks, and generally the great doctor Aristotle, called them. Closely following that passage are these words: *And He says to them: "Behold the man."* We have often said that this is proper to the evangelist, to allude to the places of the Old Covenant, often indeed secretly, but always most sweetly. Zechariah, whom our author loves everywhere, in the seventh chapter, had been ordered to crown Jesus the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with this greeting: *Behold the man*, which is to him *Hinne Zemach*. But Pilate produced the true Jesus, of whom this place is expounded by the ancients, as the high priest 497 with crown and purple, as a king, by divine dispensation, from which all things were governed.
The evangelist, directing his finger to this prophecy, notes that he used the same words *kat' oikonomian*, and said *Behold the man*, or *even the man*. In that of the prophet follows, *His name is the Branch*: for which the Chaldean, to whom the evangelist almost always looks, says *His name is Christ*. Most sweetly and gracefully, therefore, he shows that Pilate, just as above with Caiaphas, although he was doing something else, spoke of Him economically, who was both Joshua and Zerubbabel, of whom mention is made, that is, leader and priest at the same time, so that the Jews might no longer dream of the son of Jehozadak or of Shealtiel. Such is that line of Maro: *This man, this is He.* Our author has so corrupted the place with his fatal *adoxian* that it cannot be recognized. For what does that have to do with the matter? *And Pilate again distinguished with a jealous people / ...Behold, the blameless man stands with spotted back.* The true interpretation of the passage, as I said. At verse 7, the evangelist speaks thus: *The Jews answered him: We have a law, and according to our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God*—which words, whether our author correctly expressed, we shall see later. Yet there is in this a cavil most worthy of the time of Tiberius: in which, by the interpretation of the laws, all men of note in the republic were being removed, with that monster conniving and rejoicing. For any saying, however most innocent, was generally turned by informers against some head—that is, on a charge of majesty: which was lethal to the accused, since, as Tacitus excellently observes, the laws defined nothing. And so these men seize upon some head of the law: which the perverse expand and extend before the ignorant. Just as they soon 498 level the crime of majesty when they say: *Everyone who makes Himself a king speaks against Caesar.* Where *to speak against Caesar* is what they might call *to praise Caesar*, as when they say *to praise God*. Which two crimes were so commonly joined that by this formula the wicked Jezebel destroyed Naboth, an innocent man, 1 Kings xxi, 10, no otherwise. Whose words are present there: *And set two men, sons of lawlessness, opposite him, and let them testify against him, saying: You have cursed God and the king*, to express what the Hebrew, which is taken in the opposite meaning, signifies: just as the Attics used *euphemein*. Where the Chaldean uses that word by which the Syrian expressed blasphemy in the New Testament. We believe with the learned that the law which they understand was the law concerning blasphemy. Blasphemy is a species of impiety, of which the genus is *asebeia*, which our author, with the poets, called *dyssebien*. Wherefore whoever *blasphēmei* is impious, not the contrary. Therefore he did not say it with sufficient caution:
A This man ought to have died by a vengeful fate, On account of *dyssebien* (impiety).
For there were also idolaters *asebeis*; concerning whom Exodus chapter xx, Leviticus xix, Deuteronomy xviii. Nothing, however, is less worthy of an interpreter than to object the genus to the reader when the species is at issue. And here the species is certainly being defined. Only the case is sought in the law. But the law, which is concerning blasphemy, both posits the case and with the law posits the punishment, albeit one other than the cross. The passage stands in Leviticus twenty-four, 11, where one guilty of the law is said *eponomasas to onoma* (having named the name), and a little later, *onomazon to onoma Kyriou* (naming the name of the Lord). And so he was said to be one who uttered the expressed name. But the name of God, which it was wicked to pronounce, since it is for the most part expressed by the same word by the Chaldeans, Onkelos the Chaldean uses that very word in that place. For he said, *shem*, which the Hellenists called *eponomasas onoma*.
B From which it indeed appears that the Jews of both the Diaspora, that is to say of Europe, as also the Asiatic [Jews], interpreted this blasphemy concerning the divine name, which they deem it wicked to utter, as meaning that he is the one concerned in that passage who, by using this name, had sworn or had wished evil upon another. But there is nothing of the sort in this case, unless we imagine that the Lord could not call Himself the Son of God, unless—which is ridiculous—*eponomazonta to onoma*, that is, unless he were adding the name that was not to be uttered: which is inept. Therefore, when they say, "We have a law," they intend the law concerning blasphemy. When they say, "According to this law of ours he ought to die," they intend the interpretation: to which also the case belongs that follows: "Because he made himself the Son of God." Concerning which no law exists. For if any such law existed, by which he who was about to call himself the Son of God would be condemned to death, that law would have been manifestly passed against the Son of God himself, who was the legislator himself and was about to come in time. Which certainly could not happen, because the legislator himself knew what was to come at the time when he gave the law. Therefore they were thoroughly constrained. There only remained for the unskilled in the law a quibble: there only remained the interpretation which they produce from their own minds. You have, therefore, the interpretation, or *paradeuterōsin*, which is wicked. You have truly bloodthirsty interpreters. And this is the meaning of this passage. In which our author understood nothing. And see the intricate speech, which the great author describes as coming from their mouths. For they do not say: "We have a law that everyone who calls himself the Son of God ought to die." For that would have been false. For that law does not exist. But they craftily involve the speech: "We have a law." Which is the law concerning blasphemy: "And according to our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God." Which is the wicked interpretation of wicked men, and, what is more, an involution and intricacy of words. Which was always highly commended to them. Whence Uziel used to say: "He who speaks in a perplexing manner, let him who can, speak well; if not, let him be silent." Which they commonly call *le-dabber be-milotham le-phathhel* (to twist with their words). Such teachers, such disciples. See by what means and with what candor the truth itself was then opposed. Nor did our author correctly omit those words in comm. 13, "And he sat on the judgment seat," concerning Pilate, when it shows that the power of the sword had then been transferred from the Sanhedrim. Whence also *bēmatikai hēmerai* (court days) in law. To omit this, [he shows] the dignity of Pilate, from which the jurisdiction depends, [is] neither correctly nor in order concealed, to whom belonged the right of the tribunal, not of the bench. When at that same place he writes the same: *en dapiō dē Gabbatha paphlazonti Syrōn kiklēsketo mythō*, he professes himself a critic in the Syriac language. In which he seems to need checking, although he does not convict the Syriac language as a whole, if I understand anything, but traduces this word in particular. And yet not even those learned in Greek will concede that he speaks in this way. For there is a great difference between *mythos* and *lexis*. But let us dismiss this. But what *paphla* might be to Hippocrates,
D or known from Galen by those who have read in him [of those] *tous epilambanontas en tō dialegesthai*, who in speaking repeat syllables, especially vowels, is said to be such. And especially that which in order is the first. Which appears to happen in the word Gabbatha; for the same is pronounced thrice, although it is one thing to pronounce and another to repeat when you hesitate. But the Syrians *platya-zousin*, which is something entirely different either from *phlazein* among the king of medicine, or *phlazein*. And so as the Sicilians are said to *platyazein*, because they coarsely utter that vowel of which I spoke, so the Syrians. In Theocritus, Sicilians are said to *platyazein*, as when they [say] *eorta, nympha*, they coarsely utter it when they pronounce the first vowel as if it were the last, like Boeotian *opistos*, and the like. But the Syrians so utter the *kamets* as the Greeks [utter] the last, as *aloho*. But in what way can you call them *paphlazein*, when from the Hebrew words they either take it away or diminish it? As also in this word if you write it with a Syrian, all *paphlasmos* will perish. But there is also another [meaning for] *anhelare*, which Jerome attributes to the Hebrews, another *nachazei*, which this our [author attributes] to the Syrians. But concerning these perhaps at another time. It is known how much interpreters are troubled in the hour when the Lord was fixed to the cross, who in our passage 14, *hē ōra hōsei hektē*, in Mark, *ēn de hōra tritē* read: so much so that some of the ancients, among whom is Theophylact, say that the number of the *gamma* (3), was changed into the mark of the *stigma* (6). Such as I easily admit sometimes happened by the negligence of scribes. Our author simply expressed *tritatēn hōrēn*, or found it in his own codex. Who, since he did not understand the force of the highly illustrious passage, had enough [to do] to patch it up. For what he had found in the evangelist: *ēn de paraskeuē tou Pascha, hōra hōsei hektē*, he thus expressed; *hektē d’ hēn enepousi prosabbaton, epleto phōs / ēn de titainomenē tritatē thanatēphoros hōrē*. For concerning the day [he says] nothing, but concerning the hour the most holy evangelist: who knew that by the part of the day, or as the ancients used to say, by the weather, *tēn paraskeuēn* is defined. For the Parasceve began with the evening, or *ereb*, that is, the ninth hour. This, therefore, our evangelist notes to have happened a little before, that is, the *paraskeuē* being at hand. Whence it is plain how little curious our author was, who several times defines the *pōs*, or dawn, as the Parasceve. For as nothing is more usual for poets than that dawn should be put for the whole day, so dawn and evening—how can they be confused? Which, even if it might perhaps be borne here, because they sometimes improperly called the whole day by a part the Parasceve, who can bear what is read at comma 42 of this chapter: *geitona nykta pherousa prosabbaton estrechen [pōs?* For who would say that the dawn inclines into the evening? But he spoke thus, because he had undoubtedly heard that *paraskeuē* begins with the evening. Concerning which matter let those things be read which our hero, greater than all commendation, the genius and splendor of all learning, Joseph Scaliger, noted in the sixth [book] of his divine work *De emendatione temporis*. We would understand what he intended when he said *hōrēn titainesthai*, if he had spoken in Greek. Now we understand it thus far, that we understand him to have looked to the parts of the day with the learned men of this time. According to the Greek manner, the third part of the day is *deilē*, evening, between which and the dawn, *meson ēmar* intervenes. Wherefore he would have expressed himself much better in this way: *ēmar gar tod’ ēen proeor-tion, ēnyto d’ pōs / ēdē de tritaton lachos ēmatos, engthi d’ hōrē hektē*. Just as at the third hour, according to the Hebrew manner, the sixth is conveniently referred, because it closes the third quadrant of the day and begins the fourth. Nor did the evangelist say, *ēn de hōra hektē*, but *hōsei hektē*. But that *hōra hōsei hektē* refers to the third part, or *lachos*, it is plain. But these things by the way. And unless I am mistaken, we have well expressed the meaning. *Ēmar anymenon*.
A And the day which preceded the Passover, *ēmar anymenon*, that is, evening, or inclining toward evening. From the former evening the Preparation began; from the sixth hour, or properly the ninth. And thus, by doing something else, he would have reconciled the evangelists. To escape which, he has boldly—unless he relied on the authority of a manuscript—expressed this otherwise: *Now the third, death-dealing hour was being stretched out.*
Regarding the fifteenth verse, when he wrote: B
And with deceitful mouths the high priests cried out: "We know no other ruler, we have no ruler, a self-appointed ruler, whom Rome has not crowned, except Caesar alone, the endless shepherd of the world."
Where the whole verse quite ineptly exceeds the requirement. As if you should say: "We have no king unless born at Rome, except for Caesar"—which, whoever said it, would certainly deny that Caesar was born at Rome—to omit how improperly and almost thoughtlessly he said: *whom Rome has not crowned.* For neither did the Romans crown anyone at that time, nor would Tiberius have admitted this; nor is there any danger that anyone should believe this who has examined the actions of that fox in Tacitus; nor is there anyone who does not know what was handed down to memory regarding the dictator Caesar, to whom the diadem having been imposed by Antony, brought about his death, or primarily reconciled it. Which he could have known from his own Greeks, who pursue these things more accurately than the Romans themselves.When the evangelist in the same chapter writes: *And Pilate wrote also a title*, etc., he used the word *graphein* just as the Hebrews used the *piel* of that word when it is placed for the *hiphil*: to express which *hiphil*, 504 some of the Seventy have searched: though they are lacking here. Just as also in Isa. x: *writing wickedness*, they took care to be written. There is added in the same place by our author:
A letter which they call in the Latin tongue a title, *Iōē*.
From which words it is plain that he thought the writing itself was the title, whereas the title is that *in which* the writing is, the very tablet itself on which is the scripture. The learned Syrian, who interprets *titlon*, which is *puxion*, or tablet. Just as Eusebius called the title of Attalus the martyr a *pinax*; and jurists and Agathias call titles of possessions *sanidas*. And already before we said that this refers to the *petalon* which is attributed to Aaron, or the title of holiness: to which the word *nezer* points. Now, because he says it was inscribed with a reed, how inept, as we were saying even before! For it was an engraving: which the Hellenists call *ektetypōmenon graphidos*, which they do not refuse, as the lines would stand out on a flat surface: which the Greeks call *glyphē*, is properly called sculpture in Latin.It follows to the twenty-fourth verse of the same chapter:
Let us not rend this garment, accustomed to the color of wine.
That Christ’s full-length tunic, which the holy writer called a *woven tunic*, was a tunic like that of Aaron, sleeved, long, woven, and by which the whole body was covered down to the feet. By which those could have absolved us, who concerning this have disputed so much and so laboriously. And thus it will be true, *typon theskelon*, which our author says, to have held. Moreover, it is perfunctory and clearly inept what he adds, *hyperthen homou kai enerthe phyrhoos*, as if there were any tunic which extends toward the top and above itself. Just as none includes the feet also, or spreads itself beneath them. This, the learned can know from the Roman toga and from the *chetoneth thasbets*. Moreover, at 505 that tunic of Aaron is to be referred, and the usage of the ancient Church, and the liturgy, and what we disputed above concerning the color of the garment, which our author called the color of wine, do wonderfully confirm. Germanus, archbishop of the city of Constantine, says: "The *stole* of the priest is the *podērēs* of Aaron, that is, the garment which is the priestly C vestment, that which reaches to the feet, the most precious." And afterwards, he shows [it] to have been the color of wine, so that it might be established that Nonnus dealt here with one and the same [garment], from the opinion of his age. "It is also fire-like according to the prophet who says: 'Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flaming fire.' And again, 'Who is this that comes from Edom?' For Edom is interpreted as 'earthly,' or 'elect,' or 'red.' Therefore he adds: 'The reddening of his garments from the vine of Bosor. Why are your garments red, and your clothes like [those of one who] treads the winepress?' manifesting the robe of Christ dyed in blood, upon his stainless cross. And again, that Christ also wore a red cloak in his passion, the high priests manifest, of which high priest they are the shield-bearers." Partly, therefore, because of that tunic of Aaron, and partly because of the place, *plunein tēn stolēn autou, kai en haimati staphylēs tēn peribolēn autou*, as we said above, which place they have wonderfully dragged toward the saving passion. Nonnus also, *oinopa chytōna*, called [it] the Lord’s. Wherefore, the type of Aaron’s tunic, the antitype of that of the Lord, from the usage of the ancients. And therefore also that *hyperthen kai enerthe*, concerning the tunic, not concerning the *phyrhoos*, should have been said: contrary to what was done by our author. For he wanted: *that the whole was seamless above and below*. For the evangelist said: *But the tunic was seamless, woven from the top*.Which, being entirely both from above and from below, the garment 506 was seamless, woven, reaching from the neck to the ankles.
Therefore, by the word *phyrhoos*, for which there was no need here, he has very badly obscured the meaning. Such a tunic, moreover, since it nowhere except above and below was open, through that mouth which the Hebrews [called] *peh*, and the Hellenists called the *epitomion* of the tunic, it was necessary for the head to be inserted when it was worn. About which more must now be said. It follows in the next verse:
They said therefore to one another: Let us not rend it.
Just as in the saving D passion, or holy suffering of the Lord, no one can sufficiently admire the divine disposition and providence, which brought it about that in it individual and even most minute [details] should correspond to the prediction of the prophets, so the most holy evangelist is worthy of the highest admiration, who noted individual points so accurately, which, neglected so often by very great men, I have not rarely mourned. Of which matter we have an example here again. When the evangelist narrates that the soldiers, concerning the garment of the Lord about which we have already treated, said: *Let us not rend it*, there is no doubt that he again commemorates the words of the economy and dispensation in a tiny matter, which was so customary for him, that it is done by no one more dexterously or with greater judgment. For just as for both garments it was common that they were woven, so it was said concerning the *megil ephod*: *Let it not be rent*. And this was among its marks. For Exod. xxviii, 32, it is read: "A lip on its orifice around about, of woven work, as the mouth of a hauberk will be, that it may not be rent." For when it had a circular and round mouth, into which it was necessary for the head to be inserted, being fitted not with a seam sewn on, but of the same work, concerning this very thing in the Hebrew, *lo jikkarē*, which the Chaldean renders *lo jitzda*, there had been a pronouncement by the holy Spirit, that nothing, namely, in the whole garment should be either disjointed or sewn. Which, when it seems to be said incidentally and while doing something else, 507 nothing indeed could the military force or wicked dishonesty [do] against it, no more than against the bones of the Lord: which for the same reason were kept whole. And this will be more wondered at by one who will consider that there was no violence [which] the Lord had not undergone, especially in truth the scourging. In which torture garments were mostly torn or unsewn. Whence rabbi Maimonides, where he treats of this punishment, although according to the rite of the Jews: "If the garments are to be rent, let them be rent; if they are to be unsewn, let them be unsewn. It is enough if the breast is exposed to the blows." When it follows, *alla lachōmen*, the interpreters have been too indulgent to themselves, who to the lot...[A] they have referred the movement of the fingers, because here it was seen to be said by our poet: *And letting fall the fingers of the hand, far-darting symbols of victory,* *Let us all see, by lot unconquered, whose it shall be.* In the *Dionysiaca*, moreover, they had read concerning the movement: *The lot was of one changing the various fingers of the hands,* *And some they held up straight, but with the wrist* *Of the hand it was bound fast with a joint knot.* Which is a manifest lack of attention. For how is the movement of the fingers understood, when it has been said by the prophet, "They cast lots upon my garment"? Which the Hebrew text also confirms more fully; in which the verb for casting is clearly expressed. It is not, therefore, to be doubted that, as the Roman soldiers B used the *pleistos* [majority/most], which Suetonius wishes Augustus Caesar also to have used according to the interpretation of the learned; and concerning which the incomparable and greatest man Isaac Casaubon has written accurately there in particular. For in it, *ho ton pleiston ballōn arithmon*, he who surpassed the others in number, took away that which had been agreed upon, by the pact. And the prophet, 508 who foretold of this, used a word indeed very common, but one which has nothing to do with the movement of fingers: in which the thing is managed by fingers, not however by a throw. What of the fact that not even our own poet dragged the place of the prophet anywhere else than to a throw? *And they cast lots with a garment-loving lot.* And when it is read in the glosses, *mikare* [to play at dice], *lachein*, the species is clearly explained by the genus. Lest anyone should think the evangelist wished this, when he said: *Alla lachōmen peri autou tinos estai* [But let us cast lots for it, whose it will be]. Nor do I see why he called them *ekēbola daktyla* [far-darting fingers], if he had the movement of fingers in mind. In the same verse, after the passage from the royal prophet, which the evangelist, according to his custom, has here accommodated *tō klērō tou himatismou*, concerning which the prophet had spoken, our author adds: *Which a God-inspired woman singing with the lyre proclaimed.* Which he drew from the Hellenists, among whom *psallein en kitharē* [to play on the lyre] exists not once, to say nothing of the fact that *psaltērion* and *kithara* are confused by them. For thus they interpret *zmr* elsewhere. So that *kitharē psallousa* [playing the lyre] may be *kitharizousa* [playing the lyre]. The Psalm, however, concerning which he now treats, is not referred to citharic music, which is peculiar to them, but to *zmr*. For it is lamentable and full of exclamations. Such is the beginning, which the Lord used on the cross, since the lyre was destined for praise and triumph, as is manifest from the passage in I Chronicles 16, which Kimchi cites for Psalm 4. But, as I have said, because David often makes mention of the *kithara*, and the Hellenists had used this kind of speaking, he speaks thus. 509 CHAPTER XXIX. The second part of the nineteenth chapter is traversed. Consideration of a most vexing passage: *Plēsantes spongon oxous, kai hyssōpō perithentes, prosēnenkan autou tō stomati* [Having filled a sponge with vinegar, and having put it on hyssop, they brought it to his mouth]. Nonnus’s negligence in explaining it. The juice of hyssop supposed by Nonnus. That the same passage was filled out by him from Matthew. And how he read it. *Perithentes hyssōpō* [having put it on hyssop], how badly explained by Nonnus, used for the evangelist's *peritheis* [having put on]. The Hebrew word which he expressed. The same word, how variously [C] it has been expressed by the Hellenists. *Dein*, *katadein*, *symplekein*, *peritithenai* concerning the same thing. *Kalamos* [reed] for the Hebrews for a stick. The vessel of vinegar put near the cross, and the sponges placed to it. And what use they had. The peculiar use of sponges. Woolly substance and its use. *Esypus*, woolly substance. The word *æsypi* in Pliny, Galen, Trallian, Celsus, and others is corrupt, and for it the word *hyssōpos* has been substituted. Attic *hyōpon*, for *oisypa*. The *Ezoph* of the Hebrews, the *zupha* of the Syrians and Arabs, put for *æsypo* by the Arabs. The passage of John corrupted by scribes, its emendation. The mockery of *æsypi* added. *Oispa*, *oisypa*. *Strouthizesthai*, concerning [D] *æsypo*. *Skelokopia*. *Polyodous sidēros*. And the same *dor* said by Nonnus. The inconsistency of Nonnus in the same matter. The greatest *periergia* of Nonnus, and in a thing of no value, a vain curiosity. His inconsistency in another matter noted. *Longchē* and *machaira* placed concerning the same thing. *Nyssein*, *ekkentein*. The passage of Zechariah, *Opsontai eis hon exekentēsan* [They shall look on him whom they pierced]. The interpretation of the Seventy interpolated. And that it can be proven even from the evangelist's passage. *Otaxein*. The interpretation of that passage: "And there came also Nicodemus, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes," etc. In his interpretation Nonnus is often noted. *Migma smyrnēs kai aloēs*. The mummy of sepulchers. *Aloē Indōē*. *Palatina*. *Erythraiou kēpou aloē*. The Erythraean and Indian sea. And whether they are different to geographers. Aloe to be born in Indian gardens, by the author Nonnus. The juice of aloes, not the plant itself, used by Nicodemus. Aloe arundinosa according to Nonnus, or *dendrotrephēs* [tree-nourished]. The same *ernos* [scion] said by the same. And whether rightly. *Xylaloē*, *agallochos*, aloe for *agallochos*. *Alō*. Trees of aloes, in the Chaldean paraphrase of Onkelos. That passage examined against the opinion of a great man. Trees planted by God, a Hebraism: which is also used by the Chaldeans. The word *litre* seems to Nonnus to be foreign. Which also, according to the opinion of the Hebrews, is Greek. *Zathē* hundred, and whence. What the sepulcher of the Lord is like. A ditch and a cave in the sepulcher. A double cave. The passage concerning the 510 cave of Abraham, explained as double. Ridiculous things, which Nonnus wrote *peri pammabou*, when he treats of the sepulcher of the Lord, or crypt. The wonderful thoughtlessness of Nonnus. In the same chapter, in the twenty-ninth verse, when it follows, *Skeuos oun ekeito oxous meston; hoi de plēsantes spongon oxous, kai hyssōpō perithentes, prosēnenkan autou tō stomati* [A vessel therefore was standing full of vinegar: and having filled a sponge with vinegar, and having put it on hyssop, they brought it to his mouth], there is no fear that one who reads St. Jerome and the other ancient critics might admire either such impudence or ignorance, that in the sacred writings something might be either omitted, or neglected, or corrupted by the scribes, especially in the words, and which do not convey the main point. For which this passage may be the evidence. Which has so exercised all the ancients, all the recent writers thus far, that our truly great and incomparable friend said that we must await the coming of Elijah, so that something certain might be determined about it. And that there is no place here for hyssop, among all the truly learned it has thus far been agreed: whose reasons Casaubon among others explains. Our author, having boldly imitated the great Alexander, did not solve this knot, but cut it. For from hyssop, he made hyssop juice, which he mixed with vinegar in an unusual way, and then filled in the passage from Matthew, as do most people. As if it had been written, *Hoi de plēsantes spongon oxous kai hyssopou, perithentes kalamō, prosēnenkan autou tō stomati* [And having filled a sponge with vinegar and hyssop, having put it on a reed, they brought it to his mouth]. Therefore, to omit the rest, *perithentes hyssōpō*, will be, to fill with the juice of hyssop. Which thing proves the incredible ignorance of that language which we call Hellenistic: which those who have tasted it even never so lightly know it to be proper to it, to shift meanings in equivocal terms, or to substitute one for another. Of which kind we note not a few things here and there. Therefore the word *perithentes*, which he expressed, when in that 511 passage it is nothing else than *peridein*, to wrap around or impose, they have, to be sure, expressed this same word now by *peritithenai*, now by *katadein*, now by *symplekein*. Which pertains especially to this passage, as anyone sees. There is also where they have used *peritithenai* more than once. Which word, according to their way of thinking, is to be taken for the preceding ones. *Spongon* therefore, which is said by Matthew *peritithenai tō kalamō*, is nothing other than *peridein* or *symplekein tō kalamō*. For Matthew: *Kai eutheōs*, he says, *dramōn, heis ex autōn, kai labōn spongon, plēsas te oxous, peritheis te kalamō* [And immediately, one of them running, and taking a sponge, and having filled it with vinegar, and having put it on a reed]. John indeed: *Hoi de plēsantes spongon oxous, kai hyssōpō perithentes, prosēnenkan autou tō stomati* [And having filled a sponge with vinegar, and having put it on hyssop, they brought it to his mouth]. Therefore, that the sponge was [put] on a reed
A fixed, the others testify. According to the manner of the Hebrews, as I think, by which [p], that is, *kalamos*, is called a shaft, when they speak of soldiers. Our [poet] saved *kalamon*, and reads it as if it were written: *plēsantes spongon oxous kai hyssōpou, peritithentes kalamō prosēnenkan autou tō stomati*. For he understood that it was impossible that what the other evangelists attributed to a reed (*kalamō*) should be attributed to the very small plant hyssop. Since also that which was to be placed on the cross had to be moved, and not just to the cross, but to the lips of the one hanging; and the cross itself, as the ancients testify, was both high and lofty. Furthermore, great men of this age have rightly admonished that the vessel which the evangelist mentions was one brought there by those standing near, or those who were moved by compassion for those on the cross, to soothe, as far as could be done, their welts, bruises, and wounds. Which our poet also B hints at, when he said: «And ready near by/ A vessel full of vinegar.»
512 And regarding the vinegar and similar things it is already known. Next to him without doubt lay the vessel and sponges, and others of that kind, not so much as a vehicle for the vinegar, as the learned have noted, but because they had their proper use here for wiping blood and mitigating the pains of wounds: and this [was done] with *posca* (sour wine) or vinegar, Pliny, book xxxi, ch. 11: "Sponges are applied to the swellings themselves soaked in *posca*: from vinegar for headaches." For the rest, the moderns discuss [them for] dissolving, softening, and mitigating. The ancients use them for conglutinating wounds; their use is for wiping, fomenting, [and] covering from the heat while something else is applied. To which the same writer immediately adds *lana succida* (greasy wool). In the curing of wounds they fill the place of greasy wool, sometimes with wine and oil, sometimes with the same. *Posca*, of course, or vinegar with water. And then: "This is the difference, that the wool softens, [while] sponges constrict and take up the impurities of ulcers." Of the same in book xxix, c. 2: "Greasy wool provides very many remedies from oil and wine or vinegar, according to what needs to be softened or bitten," etc. Throughout the whole subsequent chapter. Since, therefore, some lived and survived on the cross for several days, there was nothing else that those who were moved by fine sensibility and ultimate compassion could provide, except that they might bring whatever emollients could be devised. That the soldiers abused these in mockery, if anything else is, is manifest from this narrative. The vinegar, indeed, was ridiculously and primarily applied to the mouth of the dying [man], it is certain, just as the other was far fouler to the taste. Such was the *succida*, whose use, as we heard from Pliny, was clearly the same in such cases as that of the sponge, namely, that when the wine ran out, soaked in *posca* or vinegar, it would provide an emollient. Whence that of Juvenal: "Wine that the greasy wool does not want C of the cloth." There is no one who does not know that this, by Greeks and Latins, is called *oesypum*.
That is also known, that there is hardly any place in Pliny, Galen, Trallianus, or Celsus in which *oisypē*, *oisypēros*, and other things are not read that derive from this word *hyssōpos*, or *hyssōpos*, or *hyssōpon*, or *hyssōpēron*. Concerning which Hermolaus [writes] at length in Pliny, not once. Such is *Attikon hyssōpon* in the Method of Galen, for *oisypon*, and similar things in [various] places, of which there is no number. That is more admirable, that when from the Hebrew *ēzōb* (אזוב) they had made *ēsop* (אזוב) in Syriac, which the Arabs use in almost the same way, [the doctors] use that very word not only for the herb, but also for *oesypum* not once. I read therefore: *Plēsantes spongon oxous, kai oisupon peritithentes, prosēnenkan autou tō stomati*. Where *peritithentes* is *prosplēkontes*, *prosdĕontes*. He says that they took a sponge and greasy wool, and both, when they were in that place for a different use, they filled with vinegar in their military insolence, and applied them to the mouth of the one already dying. For as *oesypum* primarily soothes, and does not constrict wounds, as the sponge [does], but mitigates, as they were rightly D applied, so a greater mockery of *oesypum* than of the sponge [there was], since *oesypum* is wool properly, which is found near the seat of the sheep and the anus infected with filth: whence *oisma* and *oisymata*, the filth of such wool: which are called *strouthiōtha* by physicians when they are cleansed. So that it may appear how foully those Roman camp-followers mocked the Lord, who so abused the piety of others. The word *peritithesthai* is expressed most excellently by the word *an* (ἀν); nor is there any difficulty in this. This is my suspicion regarding this place, which for so many years has exercised great souls. Those who have read the ancient ecclesiastical writers, and primarily the Martyrologies, know 514 that the legs of those suspended were accustomed to be broken with a mallet or iron bar, which the Greeks call *skelokopia*. Since our poet has followed this, who called it *polubounta sidēron*, why does he say that the same was done with a sword, or *aori*? For even if we grant what is noted by the learned, that it might sometimes be done with a sword, why does he say one thing and another about the same thing? For at the thirty-first verse, "In order that their/ Christ’s divine legs, and of the two late-dying ones/ Threefold, [their] much-suffering feet might be cut with iron." But at the thirty-second verse, he said *podes aori kopsas* (feet cut with a sword), as if it were done with a sword, when in both places it is called *crurifragium* (leg-breaking) by the evangelist: "But he having bound on the cross The other night-lurker’s twin feet having cut with a sword, Secondly he laid flat the one struck with a sharp fate." Now, indeed, nothing in poetry [is] like *to alogon* (the irrational) and *to apemphainon*, or manifest absurdity, that is to be avoided, [as] the greatest of men as well as of critics, Aristotle, taught. From which there was no danger to ours, nor even the slightest, if he had stuck to the words of the greatest author, by the duty of an interpreter. Now who will absolve him from that, who wants the Romans to have been so circumspect that they would break the legs of the repentant thief first, and then move on to the other? For so the whole passage, in which we are now engaged, holds: "Upright/ First he cut with iron mallet/ The gentle one’s two feet; but having bound on the cross/ The other night-lurker’s twin feet having cut with a sword/ Secondly he laid flat the one struck with a sharp fate."
I, to say what the reality is, do not think that this dregs of Romulus was much concerned with that method, nor that they had flexed their eyes toward that repentance, in fact that stupendous and incomparable [repentance]. Much less do I think that they placed any importance on the fact that he who had done penance should undergo the *crurifragium* first, especially since nothing, as I have said, [is said] about these [matters] in the sacred codex: for concerning the Lord and our only salvation, it was certainly a different matter. In which the cause of the prophets, all things are observed minutely. That the cross of the same Lord was very high (whence also by the author of *Christus Patiens* it is called *ouranodromon xylon*), as well as from the customary usage, and then also by other arguments, the learned have proven. Just as *hyssoōsthai* (to be lifted up) is said by our John and the Syrians, who hangs on this wood. But also many things in this matter have been devised by the pious Fathers. I ask, therefore, in what way the impious soldier, who is dealt with in the thirty-fourth verse (*all' eis tōn stratiōtōn lonchē autou tēn pleuran enuxe*), is said by our [poet] to have done it with a *machaira* (sword)? Which I do not understand, as [I do] not a few other things. Indeed, *machaira* among Polybius and others is called the *ensis* (sword) in the Roman militia; a short weapon, and therefore usually assigned to the *velites* (light-armed soldiers). But I would like to know how the *machaira* could reach to that [part], how the one who used it could have penetrated so deeply that he pierced the pericardium, which is commonly believed, the seat of the fluid which is now discussed? But, to omit the rest, did he forget *lonchē* (spear) from the evangel-
evangelist? Or did he forget the mention he himself made in the verse above? Or A should he have said *anemōdei* (windy)? By which name missiles are wont to be noted by the poets. Although there is nothing of the sort in the evangelist, who implies that a spear driven by the hand had penetrated. The reader will never be able to sufficiently admire how that which became 516 *lonchē* is the same as that which became *machaira* (sword). And yet the passage reads thus:
But the fearless man, leaping up, with a windy spear Pierced the side, anxious for all, with a relentless sword.
That *noun vússein* (to pierce) is used by Homer even for very serious wounds or blows is well known; the evangelist used this word here. And thus the ancients understood it. Augustine, in tractate 120: He used the vigilantly chosen word of the evangelist, so as not to say "he struck his side" or "wounded" or something else, but "he opened," so that in a certain way the door of life might be opened from thence, from which the sacraments of the Church had flowed, without which one does not enter into the life which is true life: which is B *ekkentein*, by which the Hellenists translate the Hebrew word. But this is to pierce the whole body. Which was necessary so that that liquor might come forth, of which the author of the *Christus Patiens* wrote:
The side having been pierced, a wondrous stream At once flowed down, mingled with blood.
Or "blood and [water] not mingled," as it is emended by great men. But if he called *machaira* the *lonchēs to sidērion*, the very point of the spear, I ask for the authority. For this very word *lonchē*, not *machaira*, sometimes designates it. Hesychius: *Lonchē, the iron of the spear*. But let us go to other things. The passage of Zechariah, which is cited by the evangelist in the thirty-seventh verse, "They shall look on him whom they pierced," our poet has rendered thus:
And another word is brought, which the divine man uttered, "They shall look upon him whom they pierced."
Furthermore, that the interpretation of the Seventy, which is read in Greek, is a rare and invaluable treasure, no one who is not a stranger to all erudition can be ignorant. In very many places, however, it has been interpolated with the interpretations of others, and learned men have warned of this, 517 and the most holy evangelist manifestedly teaches this here, when he does not, as is now commonly read among them, *Kai epiblepsontai pros me anth' hōn katōrchēsanto* (And they shall look toward me for those things which they danced against), but brings in, "They shall look on him whom they pierced." On which passage *D. Jerome* triumphs not without cause; he says that John, in regard to that passage of Zechariah, did not care much what the letters contained in Greek, but expressed word for word what he had read in the Hebrew. Our author, whether he did not know what *ekkentein* meant to the Hellenists, and thought that it would be too diluted here if used in the Greek fashion, or whether he was consulting the convenience of the meter, changed the word. But truly *ekkentein* is one thing, and *outazein* is another. To which I appeal to his Greek erudition and the reading of the poets, without which so many things in this C genre could not have proceeded from him. In Homer, Diomedes to Venus:
He pierced the tip of her hand;
which wound is later compared by the same most great poet to a prick by a needle. *Tō ekkentein* by the usage of the Hellenists is the same as the Hebrew *d-q-r*, which is to pierce through and penetrate with iron. And thus I Sam., last chapter, v. 4: "And Saul said to him who bore his armor, Draw thy sword, and pierce me through with it." Jud. 9:54: "And his attendant pierced him, and Abimelech died," and elsewhere not once of a wound unto death. In the fifty-ninth verse of the same chapter it is read: "And Nicodemus also came (who at the first came to Jesus by night) bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight." To which passage our author:
Bringing fragrant myrrh, and of an Indian garden The aloe, a reed-grown sprig of the field. D
In which verses there are many things which should not be passed over without note. First, the most holy evangelist describes 518 a mixture of myrrh and aloes, not separately, myrrh or aloes, as our author does. For the mummies of the sepulchers, for the anointing of the bodies of the dead, were made from myrrh and aloes. Then, why did he want it to be *Indikēn* (Indian) aloe, since it was also produced in Palestine? Regarding which matter also Pliny, who records that it is also found above Jerusalem. And rightly so indeed, if this is understood of that which they were then wont to use in the anointing of bodies, to which they were then accustomed to be applied, as that incomparable ornament of erudition, Joseph Scaliger, has clearly warned. But why "of an Erythrean garden," if it is born in India? Since not even the Erythrean Sea is by itself Indian, and these two are distinguished by the ancients? "The ocean of the east," says Eustathius to the *Periegetes*, "is called the Indian; but that toward the south is called both Erythrean and Ethiopian." Did he therefore have in mind Dionysius himself, who named the Erythrean reed, because, as Eustathius notes there, India reaches as far as the Erythrean?
Else elsewhere Rejoice, green with the Erythrean reed.
And yet he understands the aromatic reed: which Priscianus there called red: why this has nothing to do with Erythrean gardens. And who before him said that aloe is born in the gardens of India? How much better are our contemporaries, and among them Garcia, who reported that it grows in the deserts and maritime regions of India? For truly it is certain that Nicodemus brought *ernos* (a shoot), who did not bring a plant at all, but, as I have already said, its juice, or a mixture, that is, *migma*; to omit that *ernos* is applied very improperly to a herb. For it is a *blastēma* or a flourishing tree, as the grammarians and physicians correctly say. But who ever heard or understood that aloe is a reedy plant? For he calls the 519 *ernos* *donax-trephes* (reed-reared). But if this is true, it is necessary that he had or saw a peculiar aloe, which no man has handled. For I do not believe he was so foolish as to call those minute thorns, into which this herb ends, by that name. And indeed, there is little lacking for me to think that the tree is confused by him with this herb. For he also calls it *ernos*: and from India *xylaloe* is brought, or agallochum, which itself is a Hebrew word, which the Greeks slightly changed from *ahaloth* into *agalloch*, without a doubt. The Hellenists, however, expressed the herb which the evangelist mentions, and the agallochum, regarding which, mention is made elsewhere in sacred scripture, especially in chapter xx and iv of Numbers, by the same word *aloēs* (though they followed a different reading there); it is also sometimes [*alo*] contracted. Garcia laughs at those who wish this aloe to grow only in the earthly paradise: just as they also commonly call it the wood of paradise. Which opinion, how a divine man who wrote brief notes on it thought could be proved from the interpretation, I see. The passage of Numbers, of which we have already made mention, of the Chaldean paraphrase, does not read thus: "As torrents are extended, as gardens beside the river, as trees of aloes which the Lord hath planted." Where the trees which God is said to have planted are undoubtedly excellent and distinguished, which are said by them to be trees of God. For that it may be understood otherwise, there is no need. He adds: Therefore the Chaldean paraphrase, to that passage of Numbers, interprets: to the Euphrates, as to that which God planted. Therefore in this place they can defend themselves who say that aloe trees were planted in the paradise of Adam. But in what way? The Greek has nothing here about the garden of Eden: for what is said, *hōsei paradeisoi epi potamōn* (like paradises upon the rivers), is *hōsei kēpoi* (like gardens), and similarly the Hebrew. Nor did the Chaldean put those trees of which 520 it is spoken in paradise, but places the paradise, or garden, of which it makes mention, at the Euphrates for the sake of fertility. As a watered garden, which is beside the Euphrates: as aromatics which God planted. And yet God is said to have planted the cedars of Lebanon, and not for that reason is Lebanon in...
paradise, or are cedar trees of paradise. "He fills the trees of God; the cedars of Lebanon, which He planted." Where the Chaldean says, "The trees which the Lord created." But why do we dispute about a known matter? For the trees which He called God’s, in His usual manner, He says were immediately planted by God, with a Hebraism and Chaldaism that are similar. Therefore, these things are those tautologies, which I think scarcely anyone could be ignorant of. Our author undoubtedly did not know what kind of plant he was dealing with when he described it as aloe. But I cannot omit what came to mind while we were busy with other things here. I daresay that he also confused agallochum with aloe—that is, the tree, as they might have it, of paradise—with the herb aloe, whose juice Nicodemus used at that time, and with which not only the bodies of the living, but also of the dead, are preserved. For it is wonderful how broad and tenacious that "dream," as a certain botanist rightly calls it, concerning agallochum as a tree of the earthly paradise, has taken root in the minds of men. *Paradeisos* is *gan* to the Hebrews: our author said *kepon* (garden) literally. And because he had heard something about Eden, he confused Eden with *Edum*, because it is written *Edem* and *Edom* by the Greeks, though these are written far differently by the Hebrews. *Edom* is *Erythraios* (the Red), hence the land of Edom, from which also Idumaea. *Kepos Edom* is *kepos Erythraios* (the Red Garden), from the Erythraean (Red) Sea, *thalassa Edom*, about which the Greeks have trifled in such an impossible manner! Whence that *Erythraion* and *kepou*. But he said "of India" because he had heard that both the herb aloe and the tree *xylaloen*—which he calls *ernos* (scion/branch)—are customarily imported from India, and then, because he had learned from the Greeks that the sea of the East and the Indian sea is called *Erythraion*. Concerning which, it can be proven even from Arrian’s *Periplus* and those things which the learned have annotated upon it.
That also is known, how everywhere that color, which the Greeks call *Erythraion*, is applied by the Greeks to the *to soterion pathos*, or the passion of the Lord, and those things which accompany or follow it. That passage is well known, Genesis XLIX, 11: "He shall wash his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of grapes," which, as we said before, they interpret here. And to this end the passage of Isaiah LXIII, 1, is relevant, "who comes from Edom; the redness of garments from Bozrah"; where you have *Edom* and *erythema* (redness). Meanwhile, we have no doubt that the things we have said concerning agallochum and paradise are true. Whoever considers the greater things which occur everywhere will not wonder at these trifles. When he adds *Litras tas kaleousi phatizomeno tini metro*, he seems to have thought that *litran* is a foreign word, which even the Greeks acknowledge, and the prince of grammarians ascribes to the Sicilians, nor do the masters of the Hebrews deny it, in fact they affirm it to be a word clearly Greek. And when it follows: *Achri mias zathees hekatontados*, I know indeed that the sacred number *the hekatontada* (hundred) is meant; it may, however, be possible that it should be referred to *ten smyrnan*, that is, the myrrh itself, which he called *thyrosan*. Most learnedly, as in everything, Hesychius says: *Zatheon*, "highly divine, fragrant." I have observed that this happens to our author not once, that when he intends a diligence that is too curious and unnecessary, he sometimes falls most severely. In particular, however, because he did not distinguish between the Greek and Hebrew rites, he confused them not very happily, as when he writes thus regarding the first comma of the twentieth chapter, which he tried to amplify with all manner of pigments:
*Hopê baryphortos Iosêph* *Iêsoun oligê psamathôdei thêke chameynê.*
For he did not understand what rite of burial was in use at that time, much less what the Lord’s sepulcher was like. For in the sepulcher there were two things, a fossa (trench) and a spelunca (cave). Therefore, the masters of the Hebrews, when they make mention of *pulveris* (dust), or, as our author now speaks, *psamathou* (sand), in the sepulcher, it must be referred to the fossa, unless they are speaking of the ground in general. But the cave was excavated not from earth, but from rock. In which, not in the dust or sand, as our author thought, the Lord was buried. This could have been taught to him by Matthew, who, concerning Joseph, of whom our author here speaks, says, *hoti elatomêse mnêmeion en tê petra*, that he hewed the monument out of the rock. Or Mark, who says *lelatomêmenon ek petras*, or Luke, who called it *laxeyton* (hewn). And is he himself not about to say below:
*Tymbos adômêtoio bathynomenês apo petrês,*
and the things which follow? Which cave, instead of the fossa, seems to have been double in the houses of the great. Such as I believe that of Abraham to have been, which, in the sacred writings, is said to have been double. Concerning which it is wonderful how much both the Hebrews and others have trifled, as the great Mercerus showed quite excellently some years ago. Who, nevertheless, as he himself confesses, satisfied neither himself nor us in this. Since, therefore, there was both a fossa and a cave, the approach to the cave was given through the fossa; in the cave, the dead man lay. Such is the sepulcher that is shown at this time, which is fashioned according to the rite of the East, for the Lord’s, to those who have approached it. Among whom is Brocardus the monk. Who, "And note," he says, "that before the cave of the Lord’s sepulcher 523 there is another crypt, of the same magnitude and shape, separated from the former by a partition wall in the middle; and one descends into this first. Then through the door of the partition wall one comes into the cave of the Lord’s sepulcher." And that door was closed, when the women, at the time of the Lord’s resurrection, said: "Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the monument?" He called it a *crypt*, which the Jews call a *fovea* (pit) or *fossa*. The place in which the sacred body lay, *porea*(?), was a cave. A place *psamathôdês*, such as Nonnus describes here, is called by the masters of the Hebrews. But whether it was a fossa and a cave, or a double cave, he did not say. And it is ridiculous that he said the place was small, when Mark said of the stone *hoti ên megas sphodra* (that it was very great). But who would think the door of a small sepulcher was large? Which, at that time, without doubt, did not come into his mind. No more than the fact that he himself called Joseph, who carried the body of the Lord, *baryphorton*, as if the body were large, and therefore heavy. Why then *oligê chameynê*?
CHAPTER XXX.
Concerning a certain burial by way of an appendix, which looks to the same things, added. The law of the Athenians concerning the casting of earth. *Cheein* and *epicheein gên*. *Epimoirasthai*. *Chyts tês gês tychein*. *Spêlaion*. The custom of the Jews in burying, and after burial. Depart in peace, and the like. The twentieth chapter with the following one is run through. Nonnus of this passage concerning John: *Kai eide kai episteuse*, a false interpretation. The passage of Zechariah, to which Nonnus alludes. Interpretation of that passage, *Mê ginou apistos, alla pistos*. Nonnus’s negligence in expressing it. His *meteorô* and *adelgia*. The inept interpretation of that passage, *Ton ependyten diezôsato*. How wonderfully Nonnus behaved himself in the explanation of that passage. *Lagones*. *Ependytês*, a little tunic. *Chitôn polytrêtos* and the same *daidaléos*. *Peplos*, belt, or *mitrê*, skin and garment of linen. 524 Similar to this is what the evangelist says a little earlier, when he speaks of the same sepulcher, which was destined for the Lord *kat’ oikonomian*: *Kai en tôi kêpôi mnêmeion kainon, en hôi oudepô oudeis etethê*, now our author: *Tymbos adômêtoio bathynomenês apo petrês* *Glyptos holos, neoteuktos, en eulaggi de tymbôi* *Oupô nekros ekeito chytês psamathou tychêsas.* Furthermore, that noble law of the Athenians was once: *Hos an ataphôi peritychêi sômati anthrôpou, pantôs embalein autôi gên*, that is, That he who might see a human body unburied, should by all means cast earth upon the body: which they also called *cheein gên*, or *epicheein*, but they also said *epimoirasthai*; and the Latins have also followed this. Whoever, therefore, had this duty fall to him, was said *chytês psamathou tychein*. But what does this have to do with the Jews, who both were unaware of this rite, and for the most part, as now [alt-version omitted]A we have said, used to bury their dead in excavations? They are accustomed to call a cave *spēlaion*. To this, Matthew also refers when he speaks of this sepulcher: *And he laid him in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock*. He speaks rather improvidently, then, who says that he was buried *chytēs psamathou tychein*. For the Greeks and Romans performed this rite even for the unburied. Thus, the shipwrecked and unburied Archytas in Flaccus asks passersby to *chytēs psamathou tychein*. But the East also carefully buried their own: those who were unaware of all this, except that after the burial they would heap soil and earth onto the tomb, and then pronounce, "Go in peace." Returning home, they would throw behind them a clod of earth with grass plucked up, with the solemn formula, "Remember that we are dust." And in particular, the Fathers note carefully that the Lord was buried not as a man 525 condemned and guilty, lightly and perfunctorily, but, *as was the custom among the Jews, sumptuously, as one great and admirable*, according to Jewish custom, as someone great and worthy of admiration. Nor was there any dust, but a *sēmantron* [signet/seal] that had been placed and closed, according to the reason of divine dispensation, so that it would be clearly established that he was dead, and no one would dare to cavil over the resurrection: *Lest anyone be minded to damage the account of the resurrection*, he says, as always, most elegantly, Chrysostom. Wherefore there was no place here for inept ostentation, whether from Roman or Greek learning. In the following chapter, verse 8, John says of John—that is, of himself—truthfully, that after Peter he had entered the Lord's sepulcher and *saw and believed*; the ancients interpret this to mean that he believed what he had heard from the women: not, indeed, that the Lord had risen, but that he had been taken from the sepulcher. For when he subjoins: *For as yet they knew not the Scripture, that he must rise again from the dead*. Theophylact: *He believed, not that the Lord had risen, but that he had been stolen; for he believed the word of Mary, who said that they had taken away the Lord. But why did he believe Mary, and not consider that he had risen? For they did not yet know the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. And for this reason they believed Mary, suspecting a theft and a moving of the body*. Some think that John believed this, because Jesus had risen. But what follows does not indicate this. *Then he saw the monument in the morning, and believed what the woman had said*. For it follows: *For as yet they knew not the Scripture*. Our author has interpreted the passage as if it had been written: *And he saw and believed; for before this, they did not know that he was about to rise from the dead after three days*. Although he has expressed this quite conveniently, when he said: B 526 *And he believed, that from the depths of the earth the airy corpse flew up to the petals [feet/coasts]. For the two disciples of Christ did not yet know that, quickly after their returnless voyage, he left the soil, and only for three nights he slept a rising sleep*. For he speaks rather to the contrary and inconsistently: that John believed that the Lord had risen, or that he had already ascended into heaven, because they did not know he was to rise on the third day. Who can understand this? Unless he wishes to say that he knew he would rise, but was ignorant of the specific time. Yet the evangelist says clearly: *For as yet they knew not the Scripture, that he must rise again from the dead*. And he has also most ineptly belittled the Lord's death, which he called a *rising sleep*, whereas it matters to the point of faith that he was truly and entirely dead. That the evangelists were just as concerned about demonstrating this as they were about the resurrection, Chrysostom shows excellently: either because this was the time for confirming it, or because if he had not truly died and it was not established, there could be doubt even about the resurrection. *Therefore*, he says, *the disciples make great effort concerning this, so as to show that he died. For the time that followed was to confirm the resurrection. But if that [death] had been obscured at that time, and had not been made very clear, it would have been destined to damage the account of the resurrection*. Because it is peculiar to the other evangelists, as I have noted several times, C that he might utter it in the words of some prophet, so that nothing rash or *anoikonomēton* might be thought to have been said by them. At verse 28, when it is said by Thomas: *My Lord and my God*, he seems to have usurped the words of Zechariah, whom he loves deeply; he used those words, *Lord my God, you*, in chapter xiii. Which words our author has wonderfully interpolated: *Our sovereign and my God*. 527 Those things which precede a little earlier, in which Thomas is commanded by the Lord to believe for the future, *And be not faithless, but believing*, our author interprets thus: *But more faithful to me, be twofold, both seeing and touching*. To which place a critic, although a great admirer of Nonnus, not badly noted that *dichōs* [doubly], or something similar, should have been said. But rather, it was to be inquired whether he had rightly expressed the meaning. For when the Lord said, *Be not faithless, but believing*, if we believe him, he was urging Thomas to nothing else but that he should believe in the future by seeing and touching, or at least believe with a double reasoning, because he had seen what he wished and had touched. This conflicts with the definition of faith, which is the *evidence of things not seen*. If anyone doubts, does he not rather rebuke the disciple's incredulity by this reasoning, who had believed very late and poorly? And this is manifested by the things that follow: *Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed*. Euthymius rightly says: He says this in indignation, as if he had spoken against him not out of diligence, but out of incredulity. But, if we believe Nonnus, he ordered him to believe, induced by those two arguments. But this was something else. But without doubt childishly, when he said *diplooos esso*, he alluded to the name Didymus, or Thomas. Which matter is not a common joy to him. It cannot be said how many disturbances at chapter xxi, 7, at those words of his: *Simon Peter then, hearing that it is the Lord, girt about the over-tunic*, so that from that garment—whether it be an *attribula* [tribute/garment] or other—you may see that he wove together some diverse garments. For first, in general, he called it *eima*. For if he means a cloak-mantle (*himation*), he did not understand what the *ependytēs* is, namely an under-tunic. Since the *himation* is a *gyman*, an outer or exterior garment. But that he was naked when he took 528 the *ependytēs*, the evangelist says, so that it is necessary that it concerns that which is closest to the skin, or that garment which is next to the skin. But he also says he girded himself *with the loins*, or flanks. The loins are in the lower belly, and so the physicians speak correctly. Add that he also said *daidaleon*: which grammarians explain as *polyteles* [sumptuous] when it is used of a garment, and which they restrict for the most part to women. Eustathius: *The chiton girt and feminine; but the masculine is a chitoniskos, which some call an ependytēs; and the short one, chitoniskarion. And the chitonion and chitonarion is a fine feminine, sumptuous garment*. Just as with the *peplum*, which he employs here in describing that same garment: for he also called it a *peplon lineon* [linen peplum]. But even the *chiton* covers the entire body, as does also the *chitoniskos* which is the *ependytēs*; both garments are interior and cover the entire body. But much more so the *peplus*, which is a *syrtos chiton* [trailing chiton], which is an appendage of women, and is dragged behind. Whence also *helkesipeploi* [train-bearing] matrons, and in particular the Trojan, luxurious and barbarous women, are called. What about the fact that the same is called *lineos* [linen], and, what is more wonderful, also *polytretos* [many-holed]? And how *polytretos*, if it is *daidaleon*? Indeed, if he said *ton diktyoeidē* [the net-like one] thus, he would have better said *poluōpon* [many-eyed/mesh-like]: as nets are also called. For *polytretos* is far different, which the prince of poets attributes to the sponge alone. And how, if he drew it over the entire body (for he says *hoti chroa pepytokasto* [that he had covered his skin/flesh]), does he not envelop anything beyond that? It seems, therefore, that he has joined or confused the garment: the *peplum*, namely, and the *zōnē* [girdle] or *mitra*. But if this is true, why does he again mention *tōn gloutōn*, and *tōn mērōn*, and *tēs aidous*? For after he made mention of the *peplum*, again *peri gloutoisin elixas*, and *kechalasmenon es ptycha mērōn*, and *athētou skepas hēs*, in...
A which he suggests that it is a sort of garment that covers the loins, he immediately says it is a *derma* (skin). But what necessity was there to call a garment, if it were indeed a *peplum*, a skin? He seems to have done what a cook does who confounds many rules; for when he has read various things about various garments, whatever comes into his mind, he says of the tunic. He had read in Sophocles: *He weaves together pepla and linen-woven under-garments.* He had read in Homer: *Which covers the privies,* which is the *anaxyris*, which later writers have called *braca* (breeches). Yet that a *peplos* or an *ependytēs*, or *brakia*, or *bracae* are things entirely different, no one is unaware. But that he calls it *derma* (skin), I believe he did it because he had read in the Hellenists: "That the Lord God made for Adam and his wife coats of skins, and clothed them." Why? As he himself indicates, *athētou skepas aidous*. These are not garments: whence the Greeks made their *chitōniskon* (short tunic). But what has this to do with the matter? For John intended nothing else than that Peter had suddenly cast about him an *ependytēs* (outer garment). He described him in such a way that if anyone were to go out in public in such a garment, he would yield to no monster in strangeness. For it is as follows: *If a painter should wish to join a horse’s neck to a human head, and induce various forms.* For it is one and the same, and yet various, and torn, and linen, and a skin: it is the same and yet loose, and restricted: and it is a peplum, and a covering of the body, and a veil of the privies, and what not? The idea of which ought to be such 530 as no tailor has ever expressed. The passage is as follows: *And he, rushing roughly near,* *With a crafty garment, Simon girded his flanks,* *And had covered his skin with a manifold linen peplum,* *Having wrapped a sea-garment about his glutei,* *A skin, which, loosened into the folds of his twin thighs,* *Fishermen wear as a covering for the shameful parts.* From which, as from the rest, both the youth and the learned will learn with what judgment our author has been versed in the writings of the ancients, both sacred and profane. Also what they themselves ought to apply; whether one must judge of antiquity, or whether something worthy of eternity is to be committed to writing.
CHAPTER XXXI
Certain things which were omitted above in Nonnus, are solæcisms, or near-solæcisms, C trifles, or idiotisms, or poorly placed. *Akouetai Messias*, for *akouei*. *Katō dryos*, for *hypo dryi*. *Epigraphein tē biblō*, for what is *peri tinos graphein*. *Amphi pedon Kananaion*. There were lying there water-jars, and how badly Nonnus understood that. *Einai epi nēō*, a solæcism. *Dēthynein pedō*, a near-solæcism. *Houtō ephilato, hoti epore*, a solæcism. *Ioudaioi ē Samareitai*, incongruous. *Pauein*, for *anapauesthai*, and how inaptly [is this used]. It is not said *peri hes stante in scientia*. To be of that age, *ean hēlikian* the evangelist, is said by Nonnus as *perimēketon ēdēn*. *Graphides*, for *graphai* or *graphē*. *Charin titainein*, for *legein*. *Klisiopēgia*. That *klisian* or *skēnēn* are confused by Nonnus. The difference between each. Pastoral scene. *Succa*, *scina* or *secina*. The day of the feast of Tabernacles (*skēnopēgias*) consecrated to Bacchus according to the opinion of Plutarch. Overgrown with leaves, the orgies of Bacchus, which were served under the scaffold. *Sykinos Dionysos*, and from where. Said contrary to the intention of the Greeks. The scene of the comic and tragic poets. The custom of drinking under a bower (*succa*) having flowed from the East to the Greeks. That proven by the example of the king of Syria. *En Sockhōth*. *Thaliai*, or banquets, from whence said in Homer. [It is of] Chaldean origin D to be that word. *Sidēros Thesmophoros*, it is inaptly said of iron, which they used in circumcision. The *gladioli sarei*, which the Jews once used in circumcision. These with Joshua, according to the opinion of the Seventy, were buried. The mistake of Nonnus concerning the age of circumcision is *akyron* (invalid). *Phōs*. *Arsen*. *Anēr*. *Kataugazein*, and how wrongly Nonnus has used it. *Ho men anegnōn*, for *ouk oida*. *Poimainein*, for *boskesthai*. *Echein alkēn*. *Steichein chthona*, a solæcism. *Skedazein*, for *diaskorpizein*. *Perēsai eis heortēn*. *Prin bōmon anaptein*, for *anaptesthai*. *Anaptein*, for *anaptesthai*. *Palamēs ankōn*. *Ankōn* is a part of the arm, not the hand. *Kybiston*. *Kytitizein*. *Brachiōn*, for strength in the place of Genesis in the Hebrews. By which Nonnus seems to have been deceived. The idiotism of the deficient Græcism *hou charin eipe*, for *peri hou eipe*. An anacoluthon corrected. *Ikanon*, for *ikanōn*. *Megalon*, for *megan*. *Megale Zeu*. *Megas archiereus* ineptly said. *Ameibesthai*. *Mythois ameibesthai*. *Pilatos exēlasen aulēs*, said in a non-Greek manner. *Kykloun stephanon kephalē*, for *kykloun kephalēn stephanō*. What is called the great day in S. John, is badly called by Nonnus *athesphaton* (unspeakable). He wrongly or invalidly calls the Lord *phyxēlin* after the triumph over death. What *phyxēlis* means in Greek. *Dainysthai hypo kykla trapezēs*, for *epi trapezē*. How negligent of syllables Nonnus has been. *Probaticē*, with the penult long. *Tiberiados halmēs*. *Kophinos*, with the penult long. *Diabolos*, with the first syllable long. *Pisttikē*, with the penult long. *Kranou*, with the penult long.I can affirm, when we were applying our mind to this kind of writing, that without any ambition or desire for ostentation, three things were set before us above the rest. Partly, that we might note those things which pertain to the interpretation of the greatest and most holy author and to sacred matters. Partly, that we might show in what, and to what extent, the wits of the sophists have departed from that neat, pure, and graceful antiquity, in which Homer especially reigns: then also how much they have harmed the youth, who, while they profess skill in the Greek language, and write against these authors, do not introduce nor demonstrate those things which are falsely said, so that the youth might follow what is approved and accepted; and might flee the rest with care, and avoid them as rocks in the open sea. Nay, even where the training of the judgment of the youth is concerned, they rank them with others of good note. Wherefore, some other things, as each shall come to our mind, taking account indeed of the chapters and passages, especially barbarisms and solæcisms, and those most especially which we have omitted above, we shall incidentally cast into this chapter, so that those who have not learned to be wise by themselves, being warned by us, may observe these and other things in such writers. Let them distinguish them in the vocabularies from the others: let them consult the diligence of the youth, but especially imitation, which is a great part of education, in this way. For he who of his own accord does not see these things, or does not grasp them, it is the next thing that he should learn to believe and to obey those who warn him. Such things, not a few, can be noted in the books of the Dionysiacs: which, as if they were riches or treasures of Greek, those who do not understand what is Greek, what is sophistic, what is corrupt, what is emended, are accustomed to refer to: just as the excellent Petrus Cuneus has clearly shown the outstanding ornament of these letters also. For as the philosopher says rightly from Hesiod: *He who himself understands everything is best:* *He is also noble who obeys one who speaks well.* For of the rest, as the same man rightly adds, it is to be despaired. What the evangelist said in the first chapter, verse 15, "John bears witness of him," our author said: *Hagnos Iōannēs pistōsato martyra phōnēn* (Pure John confirmed the witness voice), and that not in Greek and inaptly. For he did not understand the force of the word which he was using, as do Chrysostom and others who speak purely, when they say: John [attests] the manifestation of the Word and the truth concerning him to the
A point of rendering testimony. But our author, wanting to mean, "to establish the testimony," uses *pisteuo* ["to believe"] as if it were synonymous with *keisthai eis ti* ["to be positioned/fixed towards something"], and *einai keklimenon ten marturian* ["the testimony being inclined"]. There is nothing more un-Greek than this. But perhaps something has already been said about this before. Therefore, I desist. Regarding what the evangelist said in the same chapter, verse 42, "We have found the Messiah, which is translated, the Christ," our author expressed it thus:
"We have found the wise Messiah; B the God-man Christ is heard [called] among the Jews in the Greek tongue."
At least he should have said *akouei* [as "is called"]. "We have found the Messiah, who is called Christ," which is Greek, or so it is said. For *akouei* in this place is that which Severus the theologian, in reference to Isaiah, says is "translated into the Greek language." Common usage would say, "translated into Greek, it is Christ," or "it is called." Surely, if one were to say *akouetai esthlos* ["he is called noble"] in Greek, or *akouetai Christos* ["he is called Christ"], unless one is utterly ignorant of Greek, one would never escape the mark of the grammarians. And yet, he speaks this way more than once, as in chapter 8, verse 20: *gazophylax hothi choros akouetai* ["the treasury where the place is called"], he said: to omit other passages. But the whole passage is most intricate: *Christos Ioudaioisin akouetai Helladi phone*. For why does he say it is so said by the Jews, yet why does he place [that which is] the translation, which is not Hebrew, but Greek? As if you were to say, "He who to the Jews is Christ, is called by a Greek word." This is doubtless most inept. Nothing is less Greek than what is read in the same chapter at verse 46:
"Having found [him] beneath the broad-leaved oak,"
when he meant *hupo drui* ["under the oak"], which, because of the Hebraisms that they use in this way, could be referred to the idioms. And what follows in the same verse is also as far from Greek as can be. For when the evangelist had said, "Of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote, we have found Jesus the son of Joseph," 534 he, that wise man:
"Moses, of primal origin, wrote in the inspired book, 'We have found'."
As if *epigraphein* ["to inscribe"] the Messiah in the book were the same as *graphein peri tou Messia* ["to write about the Messiah"], when to say "to inscribe the Messiah" means that he who is about the Messiah, and with this inscription, edits the book. Nor is what you have in the same verse Greek: *hosioio boomenon huion Ioseph* ["the son of Joseph, touted by the holy one"], just as he speaks not once elsewhere, as in chapter 21, verse 1:
"Peter was, who before was dubbed by the name Simon."
For *boomenos* is not for the Greeks *ho kaloumenos* ["the one called"], which is utterly ridiculous, but rather he who is *periboeitos* ["renowned"] or *poluthryllētos* ["much-talked-of"]—that is, he who is famous and known. And thus Nazianzen, in *De vanitate vitae*:
"Among cities, the greatest, touted by the common tongue."
The evangelist says, "That a marriage took place in Cana of Galilee," chapter 2, verse 1, that is, that the nuptials were celebrated in the city itself, which he places in Galilee. He says the nuptials were *amphi pedon Kananaion* ["around the Canaean plain"]. As if this occurred not in the city, but in the district, or around the Canaean fields, or in a part of it, not in the city. For who would say *amphi pedon Kananaion* for what is "in the city of Cana"? To omit that *Kanaion* should have been said, as noted above. Saint John in the same chapter, verse 6, says: "There were set there six stone water jars according to the purification of the Jews," by which he implies that the jars were destined there for the washing of the Jews. For that *to keisthai* ["to be set"] is commonly used this way, no one is ignorant, unless he knows not how to write or speak Greek. Our author expressed this thus, as if the water jars 535 were lying down, or were ruined by a wall, or lay cramped:
"On the mutual wall, placed in rows, the twin-yoked amphorae were six, holding three measures."
*On the wall.* If someone were to say *einai epi nēō* ["to be upon the temple"], wanting to be understood as *en tō nēō*, which is "to be in the temple," I would imagine that he was committing a solecism in good faith. Nor do I change my opinion, even if our author, chapter 2, verse 23, said:
"Upon the God-built temple He was, and distributed seats in Jerusalem."
For he who explains it as *para tō naō* ["beside the temple"] is washing a brick [wasting his time]; nor is anyone ignorant that the Lord did in the temple what the Jews reproached him for. David was *epi oikō* ["at the house"] when he saw Bathsheba: for the Jews used to walk on the roof. The Lord was *epi naō* ["at the temple"] when he was carried by the devil to the pinnacle of the temple. He was *en naō* ["in the temple"] when he cast out the money-changers. Of which the evangelist treated; Nonnus speaks here. And what was the reason why our author, in place of what the evangelist said, "he was in Jerusalem," said "he was *epi naō*"? Rightly, as a solecism, nay, as he himself speaks, most ineptly, the great Scaliger B noted, because in that chapter at verse 12 it is read:
"The King did not linger, hearing [of] the Canaean plain,"
since an ellipsis has no place here. For who would say *dethunein Hellada* ["to linger in Greece"] for what is "to dwell or tarry in Greece"? How differently speaks the king of poets:
"Nor did Paris linger in the high-roofed houses."
Who four times never used this word in this way. For *dethunein* is *enchronizein* ["to tarry"], as is explained by the grammarians. 536 Therefore, *dethunein en pedō*, "to tarry in the plain," the Greeks say. And he did not understand that some things are used by the tragedians, the greatest part of whose splendor is constituted by the *soloikophanē* [things that look like solecisms], the *huposoloika* [things somewhat incorrect], the *soloika* [solecisms], the *anarmosta* [unfit], and the *anakoloutha* [inconsistent]; which are wisely avoided by the rest. Which he never avoided: and of what sort many words and structures are, I could note here. It is a solecism when, in chapter three, verse 16, he said:
"Thus God loved the world, that he... the Son,"
when it should have been said, *hōs porein*, *hōs didonai* ["as to give"], or *hōste edōke* ["so that he gave"], as the evangelist said: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son," which is Attic. For which he [Nonnus]:
"For thus the scepter-holder on high loved the manifold wandering world, that he gave his only-begotten Word as a helper of lights to the four-yoked world."
In chapter four, verse 9, he did not say what he wanted, and less than he ought, when for the evangelists' "For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans," he put instead:
"For the Jews, mongrels, did not associate with law/custom, To live with one another, or Samaritans."
For who would say, "For the Jews or Samaritans did not associate with one another," when he means, "For the Jews and Samaritans did not associate with one another"? Which also Scaliger had noted. For the critics who excuse this from other places in Nonnus do nothing. In the same chapter, verse 40, when he said:
"And the King rested by the neighboring spring, And quickly he went to the city,"
he wanted this: "And having rested by the spring, afterward he went to the city." Truly most ineptly. For to omit other things, who would say *pauein* ["to cause to stop"] for *anapauesthai* ["to rest"]? For *pauein* of the comic poets is something far different. Therefore, I shall say *epausato tou poreuesthai* ["he stopped going"], or *poreuomenos* [was going]. *Pauein para pēgē* ["to stop by the spring"], meant as *anapauesthai* ["to rest"], 537 I shall not say. And he errs around the principles, he who is ignorant of this. The critics who saw this substituted *pāsin*: "And to all the King [rested] by the neighboring spring." And since they saw nothing less than the passage from this emendation, they added a verse of their own. That one, namely:
"To those gathered and praying, he granted their prayer."
So gladly did they show off their poetry to us, to whom it was new that Nonnus did not speak Greek; concerning which not even beginners ought to doubt. And so that they may not doubt, we think it is their interest to [be careful] in every matter.
For as age has its own proper season, so too does it have its own maturity in man, which the Latins sometimes call *statan*, a term the Latins use to describe one who has reached that stage of life in which, as it is stated among the Rabbis regarding the Psalm [note: Ps. 117 or 118, typically considered in this context], a man reaches the stage of standing in learning, because he can then distinguish between good and evil. The Evangelist calls this maturity *hēlikia* (age). And he understands this when in chapter 9, verse 23, he says: αἰτία τούτῳ οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ εἶπον, "He is of age (*hēlikian echei*), ask him." He inappropriately and incorrectly applied the term *perimēketon* to this age, as if one were to say in Latin "very long." Poets use this word to express continuous quantity or length. For it is written there: *She has ripe measures now, grown very long.* First, how can this describe age? Why apply to it a word for *measure*? Does this word not always signify excess? It is ridiculous that in the same chapter, verse 39, the holy Scriptures say: *But they lie turned in the tablets, crying out my witness to the interpreter of my myth.* As also in the same chapter, verse 45: *Another accuser convicts you in the tablets.* This is as if someone were to dare to call the scripts of the Romans, in which 538 they were accustomed to use *graphis* (styli), *graphia*. For what the Hellenists meant when they said that the calf which Aaron made was done *en graphidi* (in or by a style), not even our own people understood. Nor does this have any place here; it is an idiom, but clearly an absurd one, and alien to the Greek language, as when in chapter 6, verse 2, he said for *charin teinein*: *Always stretching grace to the Begetter of life,* instead of what Greeks would say: *charin legein* (to speak grace). But because he had read *cheira teinein* (to stretch out the hand), by which they offer thanks or pray, he said *charin teinein* (to stretch out grace) instead, although the Evangelist means something else; on which see above, if I am not mistaken.
It is absurd that when at chapter 7, verse 2, it is said by the Evangelist, *"Ἦν δὲ ἐγγὺς ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἡ σκηνοπηγία"* (the feast of the Jews, the *skēnopēgia*—that is, of the tabernacles, which the Hellenists so elegantly named thus), he called it *pēgnumenais skēnēsin epōnumon* (named after the pitched tents). B If this were true, the feast itself should have been called *klisias pēgia*. Although *klisia* is sometimes explained by grammarians as *skēnē* (tent), it does not follow that every *skēnē*, and especially that from which *skēnopēgia* is derived, is a *klisia*. The first mention of the pastoral tent, which is historically a Chaldean word, is in Genesis 4:20, where Jabel is said to be the first to establish that which is called *pater tōn en skēnais* (the father of those who dwell in tents). Where the Hellenists prudently rendered it, *en skēnais ktēnotrophōn* (in tents of cattle-breeders). In the Chaldean, the traces of the Greek word are expressed. Moreover, mention of such a tent is made in Deuteronomy 16:16 and elsewhere, where you find this feast.
Such a tent among them is called *succa*, not *skēna*. For *succa*, which used to be made from the fronds of those trees which the Hebrews describe specifically, is now known to all. Plutarch thinks they were woven from palm branches and ivy, because, in his opinion, those days were consecrated by the Jews to Bacchus. For *sub succa*, that is, in a tent woven of branches, that race was also accustomed to celebrate among the Greeks: just as his orgies were also wont to be observed *sub succa*. Whence that saying of Flaccus: *I will not, fair Bassareus, shake you unwillingly:* *Nor will I snatch you [from beneath] the open sky, covered in various fronds.* Indeed, the Greeks, who had transferred all foreign things to themselves, especially from the East, and were ignorant of their origins—and had received the Bacchic feasts in particular from Cadmus—when they did not understand the word *Bacchus* itself, which they celebrated *sub succa*, formed it from the fig; and from this they created the *Sykinos Dionysos*. C Concerning this, Herodotus and others should be consulted; we, however, God willing, will say more about Horace later. They thought, therefore, that it was so called *apo tēs tychēs*, though it was undoubtedly 1192 so called from *chag hassuccoth*, that is, *tēs skēnopēgias*, because he was worshiped under a tent. Hence the scenes of the comic and tragic poets, which were initially woven from fronds for the sake of that god. For what else but *succoth* did the ingenious poet describe when in his books *On the Art of Love* he said: *The branches which numerous palaces once bore,* *Simply placed, the scene was [a booth] without art.* Add that the custom of drinking *sub succa*, or *hypo skēnas*, flowed down from Syria and the East to the Greeks, as did other things. Let the King of Syria be an example, Benhadad, who, in the first book of Kings, chapter twenty, is said by the Hebrew to have been drinking *sub succoth*. Which the Hellenists call *en skēnais*, or *en sokchōth*. *“He was drinking, he and all the kings who were with 540 him in the tents.”* And then, *“And the son of Ader, drinking and getting drunk in Sokchōth, he and the kings.”* Nor is there doubt that Homer, who owes much to the Chaldeans and Syrians, but especially regarding words, derived his *thalas* hence. For the feast of Tabernacles is called by them *chana demetlayya*. And Benhadad himself is said to drink *hypo thalias*, under arbors.
It is absurd and unworthy of a learned Grecist that at chapter 7, verse 22, he called the iron which those who circumcised used, *thesmophoron*. D *For which reason Moses, as the law-bearer, gave the cutting of iron,* When God Himself, as the author of circumcision, is the *thesmophoros*, the iron which they used in circumcision was *tou thesmou* (of the law). And it was not always even iron, since they used stone blades, as is known from the history of Zipporah and Joshua. So much so that the Greek translators of Joshua, chapter 21, 42, call them *machairas petrinas* (stone knives), and in the same book, chapter 1, 24, 50, when they wish to speak of Joshua being buried. Concerning which, the edition of the great Masius should be consulted. But how many things there are that we cannot digest! In the same place it is said: *And by a certain primeval law,* *When the light of the seventh day comes, of the familiar dawn,* *You circumcise the newborn, o Word, with iron.* For what is more ridiculous? He says, *peritemnete phōta*, that is, *andra* (a man), which is a male of mature age. And yet he calls the same one *artigene* (newborn), that is, recently born. I omit that he speaks of the circumcision of those who had completed the seventh day of life. For the Lord speaks here of that circumcision. And from this comes the force and weight of the argument: which he himself expressed no less. And yet he says *phōta*. As if *arsen* (male) and *anēr* (man) were the same, when the one 541 signifies sex, and the other a finished stage of age.
Therefore, the Evangelist is cautious: *“And on the Sabbath you circumcise a man.”* For which, if he had said *boy*, it could be endured. For that he be a man who has completed the seventh day, and that he be a man whom he himself calls *artigene* (newborn), that is, recently born—whom [he] persuades—who in full age, in the forum, and elsewhere, performs the duties of life, although they prattle about his origin! And the usage of speaking teaches this. He committed a solecism, to be excused by no color or oratorical art, when, at chapter 6, verse 12, he said: *But whoever shall keep faith with me, having a sound mind, never walks* *With wandering feet in the shadowy cone of mist.* *But let them shine, having within him the companion* *Of the unwavering light of Life, firm.* So that not without cause the mark of highest indignation has been written by the great Scaliger in the manuscript of that most learned man, Gerard Vossius. For who is such a beginner in Greek that he does not know *kataugazein* is the same as *photizein*? Hesychius says: *Kataugasas*, that is, *photisas* (having illuminated). Wherefore that which the Evangelist said: *“But he shall have the light of life,”* [Nonnus] said most incredibly in an absurd way: *“But let them radiate,”* which
A is as if it were *schedazein* (to scatter), which is used concerning a routed enemy, and *diasporizein*, which corresponds to the children of God who were scattered and divided into all parts of the earth. This so displeased Scaliger that he placed a note of indignant spirit in the margin, which I omit for the author’s sake. Let us illustrate this with an example: Epiphanius, when he deals with the Essenes, says that the Jews lived scattered (*diesparmenous*) in the borders of Judea and Samaria, yet at the same time they came together to Jerusalem 544 to celebrate the feasts. If anyone here were to say they lived *eskedasmenous* (scattered), he would surely say nothing, nor would he be speaking Greek. It is likewise inept that he said *perësai es heortën* (to pass into the feast), when he could have found *elthein* (to come). *“What do you think,”* says the Evangelist in the same chapter, verse 56, *“that he will not come to the feast?”* For which our poet says: *“Will this mortal be unable to pass into the festal assembly?”* Which is a Homeric cacozelia (bad affectation); in Homer he had read *pylas Aida perësai* (to pass through the gates of Hades). For it is another matter concerning the tragedians, who use many words that an epic poet must avoid. And who would deny the solecism committed in that passage, *“And for the inhabitants before Pascha to come, before the altar to kindle”* [text refers to line numbering], when he meant *anaptesthai* (to be kindled)? For *anaptein* (to kindle) is something quite different, which even boys do not ignore, or at least ought not to ignore. Surely an altar *anaptetai* (is kindled), a priest *anaptei* (kindles). Antipater was not ignorant of this, when he said concerning a torch: *“But if having kindled it, he prays, I will shed a divine light.”* And what did he mean in the same chapter, verse 12, *“And having leaned the elbow of his hand, back-turning, about the uttermost circle of the table, he said”*? For we thought B *palamën* meant the palm, and *agkōna* the part of the arm, or lower leg or foot? For *agkōn* (elbow) is what both Hippocrates and the Latins call *cubitum*. And Galen says, *“Cubitum, the olecranon, which is also the agkōn,”* whence *kyditizein* in Epicharmus, *“to strike with the agkōn,”* as the grammarians observe. I think, however, that he has abused it, as a Hellenist is wont to do, who in the penultimate chapter [of the Old Testament], in that place: *“And his arms were strengthened,”* had rendered it *brachionas cheirōn autou* (the arms of his hands), for which today we have *neura brachionōn* 545 *cheirōn* (the sinews of the arms of his hands). As if it were a new thing for the arm to be put for strength and power among the Hebrews. And had he not read that passage of Isaiah above: *“And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”* In chapter XIII, verse 24, when the Evangelist said: *“Simon Peter therefore beckons to inquire who it might be of whom he speaks,”* for this our poet said: *“Who was he for whose sake he spoke,”* which seems to be an idiom of a deficient language. Thus in chapter VII, verse 12: *“But of the wandering ones, if I said any tale for the sake of earthly works,”* for *epichthoniōn peri*. So now, *“Who was he for whose sake he spoke,”* instead of *peri hou eipen* (of whom he spoke). Inept and anacoluthon is that which he said in chapter XV, at verse 22: *“If I had not come by the life-sustaining journey of the Father, to all I should have told a path of godliness, they would not have had blameworthy sin.”* When it should have been *ei më ikanon egō* (if I had not come), or *ei më ikanon kai enne pon*. For the Evangelist said: *“If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have had sin.”* What of the fact that it pleased him to say *megalon* (great [adverbially]) when he meant *megan* (great)? For thus in chapter XVIII, verse 22: *“To him, speaking to him, dost thou answer, great one, the High Priest?”* Perhaps because he had understood the dictum from Aeschylus, *megale Zeu* (Great Zeus). As if many things were not permitted to tragedians which do not befit an epic poet. I too, if it were necessary, might say *ō megale Zeu*, yet I would not say *megalon* in an epigram. And so the Peliades prophets, more ancient than Phemonoe, according to Pausanias, sang: *“Zeus was, Zeus is, Zeus shall be, O great Zeus.”*
A That is, *ho on, ho en, ho erchomenos*, as the divine John expressed the name of the three times, Jehovah. But he likewise said it twice. For he who says *archierea, megalon hierea* says: and he who says *megan archierea*, says it in the same way. And the Hebrews are satisfied to have said *cohen hagadol*, that is, great priest. Nor is *ameibesthai tina* to answer in Greek, but to speak in myths. Wherefore he would have said it better: *Tois d' enepon su megan moi ameibeai hegemonia;* For although *hegemon* is one thing, and *hiereus* is another, nevertheless among the Jews today, when they speak of the Roman pontiff, *hagadol*, he is called *hegemon megas* by a Greek word, as with Benjamin and others. And very ineptly, regarding verse 29 of the same chapter, when the evangelist had simply said: *“Then Pilate went out to them,”* instead of that, he says: *Kai Pilatos tachuergos tes exelase aules.* For he said *exelase* when the poets would say *podas exelase*. As Apollonius: *E proterose tachus podas elasen hippos.* Just as he drives *apenen*, from the chariot. As the most refined Periergetes: *Alla gar elaskousin hupozeuxantes apenen Choren eis heteren.* For, placed absolutely, it is a solecism. Certainly, no one who understands Greek would dare to use *Pilatos exelase* to mean that Pilate had gone out or departed. Furthermore, unless all reason and usage of writing fail me, no one should say *kukloun stephanon kephale* [to encircle the crown on the head], but on the contrary *kukloun kephalen stephano* [to encircle the head with a crown]: he who speaks of a crown placed on the head, or to be placed on the head. And yet, in the following chapter, comm. 2, he said: *Stemma nothon basileos ekuklosanto karenō.* But no greater fault can be committed by an interpreter than if he says something other than what he is interpreting: just as it is inept if the author conceives one thing in his mind and expresses another in his speech. Hence *axuron*, in which our author blunders so often, B a shameful fault, and truly a scab of language, whether it arises from ignorance or from ambition. You have a noble example of this in chapter nineteen, comm. 31. Where the evangelist says: *“For that day of the Sabbath was a great day.”* But what *megale hemera* is, two of the greatest geniuses of this age have already taught, as one who says *megalen hemeran* in that sense, and *proeortion* and *proparaskeuen*, or *prosabbaton*, because the Passover here includes both the Sabbath and itself. For all these things were required for that *megale hemera*, on which the Passover and the Sabbath concurred. Our author, because he had read in Homer that *athesphaton* sometimes denotes an intensification of time (as when nights are long, such as winter nights are called *athesphato*), sometimes denotes an abundance (as when a great abundance of food or wine is called *sitos e oinos athesphatos* by Homer), used such judgment that he thought *athesphaton hemeran* was the same as *megalen hemeran* here. And so, for those words of the evangelist which we have already mentioned, he substituted: *en gar ekeine Pasin Ioudaioisin athesphatos ennomos eos.* Than which nothing less appropriate to the mind of the author could have been said by him. For who would understand from that the first day of Unleavened Bread, or the great Sabbath? What Jew, learned in Greek, would understand *gadol*, or a feast thereby? Why at least did he not say: *en gar ekeino Emar, to mega pasin Ioudaioisi kaleitai.* For *ennomos eos* can be said of any Sabbath, any feast: but no Sabbath is called *megale hemera* by itself. *Athesphatos*, however, is something else entirely! And, as I said, it cannot even be said of a feast in Greek. It is clear that, when our Lord rose, he had triumphed over his enemies and ours, over the devil, over the pains of the cross and hell, and finally over death itself. He who wanted to say that Mary Magdalene had come to anoint the Lord, who would not appear in the tomb, as he was after the triumphal resurrection, called him *nekun phuxelin*, that is, a fugitive. Of whom, as of some others, he should have spoken among his attributes. Thus, however, he says: *eremaies de chameunes Hapsato, masteuousa nekun phuxelin aleipsai.* But that which the Latins called a deserter of his ranks in battle, the Greeks called *phuxelin*, and indeed, as Porphyry wished, *para to pheugein tas phax*, [along with fleeing the ranks]. See therefore, with what judgment he called the Lord *phuxelin*—after all the mockeries, the terrors of death, and finally, after having courageously conquered death itself—because he did not appear in the tomb! Hesychius: *Phuxelin, fugada, deilon, phugopolemon*. And *phuxelidas*, cowards, to omit not only that, but the sense in which he intended it, is false. C For he had not come to anoint an absent one, but a present one. For the purpose, or the intent, of the most holy woman, indicates *to masteuein*, although I do not use this word here. Therefore he again introduces something other than what he intended. How much better, however, he would have said: *speudousa maten nekun endothi tumbou, Edē anegromenon thanatou kruoentos, aleiphein!* Some things exceed all measure and reason. For who would say *hupo ten trapezen dainusthai*, when he wants to say to eat food at a table, as is usually done? For nothing of the sort happens under the table. Where, as it is in the Gospel, the dogs possess the kingdom. And yet our author in chapter twenty-one, comm. 13: *Eois d' ekeleue mathetais, Deute palin, dainusthe mies hupo kukla trapezes.* Of which kind many things, as they are throughout, and especially in the first part, have been observed by us, I will refrain from the hand. For it is enough to have paved the way for the youth. But neither did he take much account of time in the syllables. In which he sometimes did equal things to the Christian Latin poets, as when he lengthened the middle syllable in *Ierosoluma*: when *Ierosoluma* can be said comfortably. Which, however, we may grant him. Such is, chapter 5: *En de tis eupoiētos en endrō probatikē, etc. Eurutēs asaminthos.* 2: Such is in chapter six, comm. 1: *Ennepe· kai metepeita perēn Tiberiados halmes. Nel poluklēdi tamōn antōpion hudōr.* Such is in the same chapter, comm. 13: *Summigeōn eplēse dōdeka kukla kophinōn.* For as necessity sometimes demands that such things be borne in foreign words. But regarding the word *kophinos*, Aristophanes and others could have taught him. For in Greek it is *kophinos*, which is *formie* to the Latins. The most noble Glossary of Stephanus: *Formio, kophinos; parektē de apo tou Hellenikou, hōs Hesiodos*. Such is in the same chapter, last commate: *Diabolos neos allos en opsigonoisin akouōn.* Where I prefer to hear the excuse of the critics than to follow their judgment or the poet's. Such is in chapter twelve, comm. 3: *Pistikēs tria metra phatizomenēs apo nardou.* For that it was a foreign word, although he did not know it, he did not believe, as I suppose. Be that as it may, the Greek time must be preserved in it, so that there is not even a doubt. And in chapter nineteen, commate 17: *550 Phatizomenoio kraniou.* In which he might be seen to have followed the accent, which is usual in Latin words of Greek origin. As when Prudentius said: *Tamen paterno in pectore Sophia callebas prius.*
not idols by war could they be compelled to yield. A If this were not neglected in other matters. But it is time now to join it with our own, the last verses of which are thus:
Wherever in order a man might inscribe for mortals So many newly-wrought books, Not even the shapeless, boundless world Do I suppose could contain them.
In which passage, who that is even moderately learned in Greek will concede that *aeirai biblous* ("to lift up books") can be used in the sense where S. John said *choresai ta graphomena* ("to contain the things written")? For what he said, "nor do I suppose the world itself could contain the things written," is the same as if a Hellenist would say *ouch hikanon ton kosmon tois graphomenois* ("the world is not sufficient for the things written"): as in Joel, chapter two, "Who shall be sufficient for it?" which the Syrian here has followed word for word. But the Hebrews express *to choreisai* ("to contain") in this sense with their own word. For the evangelist with great urbanity and in his own manner alluded to Amos, chapter vii, comm. 10: *lo tuchal haarets lechul eth-kol-dibraw* — "the land would not be able to bear all his words," although there the word is a little bit different from *choresai*. Hence the Hellenists have said *hypenenkai* ("to bear"). But the Jews, when they write familiarly to their own people, use the Hebrew word thus: as when it is said *a cunt, hlk, membrana non caperet* ("a place, a container, would not hold," that is, *ouk an choreseie*), "my love," or anything similar. But the Targumists, to whom the evangelist always looks, had used the word *kuhl* in the place of *chul* in Amos; which word denotes "to conclude" or "to embrace." Elegantly, therefore, did he say *choreisai*, unless he referred this to the capacity of the mind: whence Theophylact also said *noesai* ("to understand"). But what has this to do with *aeirai*? Or who would understand, if I should say in Greek, *Kosmos tas biblous aeirai ou dynatai* ("the world is not able to lift up the books"), when I wish to be understood as saying that the world is not sufficient for containing books? But I will say what the fact is. I do not doubt that the interpreters who had applied to this place that which is in the Gospel, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear (*bastazein*) them now," as this same locus is cited by Theophylact. Because, therefore, *bastazein* is sometimes the same as *aeirai*, but in Hellenistic usage it is used for *katalabein* ("to comprehend"), not in Greek: he wished *aeirai* or *katalabein* to be the same to the Greeks. In which, in my judgment, as for the most part heretofore, he was deceived. But enough of these things. And this is our opinion regarding the ancient author, removed from all bitterness of words or spirit. In which matter others have extolled the interpretation and the very things themselves with the highest praise; others have deemed the genus of speech close to or equal to Homer. How far I depart from them, lest anyone hereafter be deceived, I have shown thus far, inflamed by the sole love of truth and antiquity, as much regarding the speech as the things.
TO THE READER
I have always thought that it matters for the praise and estimation of a noble and upright man that no one should be ignorant of those through whom he has progressed, or by whom he has been aided. We have therefore used two of Scaliger's codices; the one from the edition of Henri Estienne, the other from that of François Nans. In these, that great man had annotated certain things in his own hand, of which we have mentioned almost all in their proper place. One of these was supplied to us by the most noble and most illustrious Janus Rutgersius, our most pleasant kinsman, B *ho makarites* ("the blessed one"), whose memory no joy, no grief, will erase from our mind. The other [was supplied by] the most celebrated man and of diffuse erudition, Gerard Vossius. What we have found in them, although we have already said we have referred the most important parts to their own places, lest anyone complain that we are unmindful of the benefit, and that we might gratify the learned in this way also, we have deemed it right to set forth here.
In the Stephanus codex chapter ii, comm. 7, to that verse *hydatos akretoio phileutios epleen aure*, it was annotated in Scaliger’s hand *epleen*. And in the following verse, for *Oinōpē d' ekeleseu Anax semantori phōnē*, *Oinōpē*. Which two were annotated in the Nansian codex in a different hand. In the same Stephanus, chapter ii, comm. 1, for *yostlaneōn Pharisaiōn*, it was emended to *noostlaneōn*. Chapter ibid., comm. 7, for *kai mē thambos echēte*, *kai mē thambos echē se*, which Nansius had himself annotated in the margin of his own codex. Ibid. cap., comm. 12, for *peiseontes eppareiēs*, in both. Comm. following *peisesthe*. In the following comm., for *aēthei sarka synaptōn*, *aēthei*. Chapter iv, comm. 9, for *adomenois stomatessin*, *azomenois* or *aidomenois* was written, which were annotated thus in the Vossian Nansianus. Chapter ibid., comm. 12, for *pedotrophes horkion hydōr*, *pedotrephes*. Chapter v, comm. 4, for *hopē kekaymenos anēr*, it was written *kekakōmenos*. Chapter ibid., comm. 9, for *epōmida lektron aeirōn*, *epōmidi*, in both codices. Chapter ibid., comm. 16, for *ekteleon ergon akanthais*, *ahtais*, in both codices. Chapter ibid., comm. 28, for *pantothen aissousi*, *aixousi*, in both codices. Chapter vi, vers. 1, for *peran Tiberiados halmēs*, *Tiberitidos halmēs*. Chapter ibid., comm. 14, for *kai polys allothen allos eniache*, *aniache*, in both. Chapter eodem, comm. 22, for *ei mē nēs mia mounon anemploos*, in the margin *anekploos* was written in both. Chapter eod., comm. 25, for *alloi nēas elontes*, *alloi nēas helontes* etc. Chapter eod., comm. 40, for *Hystatiēs hote phengos*, it was written, *Hystatiēs pote phengos*. Chapter eod., comm. 55, for *Zōē gar pelen eidar etētymon*, as it was read in the Stephanus edition, it was written, *Zōēs gar pelen eidar etētymon*, etc. Chapter vii, comm. 1, for *hosie chairontes elethrō*, in both it was so written in the margin *dolou*. Ibid. cap., comm. 3, for *Ophra metastrepsantes*, *metastrepsantos*. Ibid. cap., comm. 22, for *Artiyene dochliō*, as it was read in the Steph. cod., *Artiyene dochliū* was written, as, according to the author's mind, others read. Chapter vii, comm. 24, for *homilēsēte parethōrō*, which was read badly in that codex. *homilēsete*, it was emended: for which others have *homilēsē*. Chapter cod., comm. 48, for *Hotti theos poiētos alexēthēs Samareitais*, *"Hotti neos poiētos* C *alexēthēs Samareitais*, in both. Comm. following *pro Dais-monos ou methepei melaniphronos*, *Methepei me daiphronos*, it was emended. Chapter ix, for *parast-eichōn de keleuthou*, *parasteichōn de keleuthon*, in both. Chapter cod., comm. 7, for *Hydōr stellomenoio pro-ōnymon ek seo pompēs*, it was emended *pros-ōnymon*. Chapter x, comm. 3, for *Pōta poimainein prokalizetai*, *poimainōn*. Chapter xi, comm. 36, for *Kai tines athrēsantes eniachon*, *aniachon*, in both. Chapter xii, comm. 11, for *epe paros ēde thymō*, it was written *hōde*, in both. Ibid., comm. eodem, for *katharon neon iste kai autoi*, *katharoi noon este kai autoi*. Chapter eodem, comm. 17, for *Hērios, kaiper ephute*, it was written *kai ken ephute*. Chapter eod., comm. 20, for *oinōpi rathamingi*, *oinōpei*. Ibid., comm. 27, for *daēmoni neymata pempōn*, *daēmona neymata*. Chapter xv, comm. 2, for *touto diatimēsei*, it was emended, *diatimēsei*, in both. Chapter eodem, comm. 6, to that *Ampelēn mimēma*, in the margin it was inscribed, *imo klēmatóen*. Chapter eod., comm. 10, for *Desmon emēs philotētos hypo phrenas aien aejei*, *Desmos emēs philotētos hypo phrenas hymeas* et, in both; and in the following verse, for *Hōs ken*, *hōs kai*, in both. Chapter eod., comm. 22, to that, *Ei*
not of the Father [it was] capable, [but] of the Father capable, Jews, the mixed multitude, were joining by law. To live with one another, from the air, He sends [it] Himself, He sends Himself. Pregnant of voice, pregnant of voice. I wish for all to be in one, into all those, they consulted about the myth, [or] in mind. Where the widely-scattered nations of men dwell, [it is] being sailed into, of the rose-fingered, [or] rose-fingered. Beyond the brine of Tiberias, beyond the brine of Tiberias. Simon went up, [or] went up. Near his own, within. And God dwelt with men, [as] He tabernacled. He came before me, he was before me. This lamb of God, who is in heaven, walks [as] lamb of voice. Having found beneath a leafy oak. The King did not delay, hearing the Canaanean ground, following the fashioned shape of wood [as] thorn, of brass. For they were not conversing, or Samaritans, the Samaritans to the Jews. Neither do you have a vessel, from which--from which to draw, vessel. Having brought the self-voiced finger to the silent nose. How do cities bristle with white vine-yards? Gray, vineyards. Cities allegorically. And to all the King, the King paused. That someone may say, They denied the genuine, and received the spurious that appeared. Having taken other ships. And the bold one wishes to be openly. Where the scattered verses of the Panhellenes, in which the peoples used to perform an annual remembrance. And with clubs, unbranded. He offered bitter vinegar mixed with hyssop. Indian aloes. A
GREEK INDEX TO DANIEL HEINSIUS’ SACRED EXERCITATIONS
(The numbers indicate the columns where they are expressed in larger type in the text.)
A Abaccheuton (unconsecrated), what it is 113. Agathosyne (goodness), grace 305. Agapetos (beloved), Monogenes (only-begotten), in which name the Lord was baptized 135. Angeloi (angels) wakeful 29. Angelos (angel) in Malachi 87. Angelos, that is, prophet 515. Agenor (manly), a middle term, but which generally draws praise 193. Hagiasma to Kyrio (sanctification to the Lord), inscription of the crown of holiness 198. Hagios (holy) of God, Hebraism 226. Hagios (holy), proper name of the Holy Spirit 202. Ankon (elbow) 544. Hagnismos (purification), what it is 356. Hagnoi (pure) who are 203, 204. Aeiresthai dia kolpou (to be lifted through the bosom), B little grammatically spoken 362. Athestatos emera (boundless day), Nonnus for “great day” 547. Athena, when used 26, 27. Aiboi (alas), 8. Aithos (fiery), color 159. Aithos, Bacchus; ibid., who is so called 160. Aithiops (Ethiopian), color 160. Aima kochlou (blood of the shellfish), Nonnus erroneously for “juice of purple” 490. Aimata (bloods), what it is 217. Aitiai (causes), or titles of the wicked 485, 486. Aion (age), for “world” 191. Akantha (thorn), for “serpent” 128; for “crown” ibid. Akersekomoi (unshorn) who are 109. Akeryktos (unproclaimed) of the Messiah 85, 86. Agroypnia (wakefulness) of the Pharisees 93. Anchithronos (near the throne) and synthronos (co-throned) differ 172, 174. Anchithyroi (near the doors) wickedness and virtue 173. Anchiporon asty (near-paved city), imperitably 162. Adelphotheia (brotherhood), condemned by the ancients, expressed by Nonnus 459. Aidomena (matters sung), of the philosophers, what it is 115. Adynamia (weakness), in those who do not believe 384. Aeirai biblous (to take up books), to go toward, to ascend 550; to seize 551. Akolouthia (sequence), by Nonnus neglected; in the first chapter 283, 284; place in the sixth chapter, the series of whose narrative is very poorly understood and explained by Nonnus 393. Akouein (to hear), to be; or “to perceive” 327. Anti tou (instead of that), “to believe” 327. Akouetai (is heard), Messiah; akouei (hears); akouetai (is heard), Messiah; akouei (hears); akrisia (indiscrimination); akron pareidos (tip of the cheek), Nonnus what, and wrongly 496. C Alabastron (alabaster), or marble 455. Alapaos omichle (vacant mist), whether correctly 180. Alexikakos (averting ill), epithet of Hercules 92. Aletheia (truth), as ambiguous 215. Aletheia, in double speech 439. Aletheia, and atrekeia, whether they are the same 218, 308. Aletheia and dikaiosyne (righteousness), in the Hellenists the same 213, 219. Aletheia and typos (type), opposite 353. Aletheia and charis (grace), what it is 300. Alethes (true), what it is 214, 219. Alethes and apseudos (true and unlying), faithful 450. Alke (strength), power, authority 543. Alla (but), the voice among Syrians and Rabbis how used 383; for amen amen 475. Allelendeta (interconnected) and perallēla (parallel) names, what they are to the Theologians 190. Allelouia, whence 12. Aloe, Indian 518, 520; of the Red Sea D ibid.; whence agallochon 519. Alsos (grove), whence 22. Aloth, ibid. Hamartein gymne te kephale (to sin with naked head) 554. Hamartia (sin), iniquity 416. Hamartia menousa (remaining sin); toward death 354, 355; that in the hand is pride 354, 555. Hamartolos (sinner), euphemism of the woman who anointed the Lord; and what it is 455. Hamartolon pathe (sufferings of sinners), scourges which are called 359. Ameibein (to exchange), what it is 39, 40. Ameibesthai tina (to exchange with someone), if “to be exchanged” is what is meant…
GREEK INDEX
A 546. ἀμειφθέντα, *quid* 39, 40. ἀμὴν, ἀψευδὲς καὶ ἀληθὲς, πιστόν, 450. ἀμνὸς ἐχέφρων 105; λάλος, *ibid.* ἀμπελόεν πεδίον, *quare Jacobo tribuitur* 148. ἀμφὶ πέδον Καναναῖον, *pro*, in urbe Cana, *perperam* 534. ἀμώμητος, *de Deo male* 91. ἀναβαίνειν, *quid* 347. ἀναγέννησις, *regeneratio* 346. ἀναγνῶναι, *pro unde* 30; *pro*, εἰδέναι 542. ἀνάγνωσις, εἰ ἐξήγησις 404, 405. ἀναδυομένη, *regeneratio* 346. ἀνάκτισις, *regeneratio* 346. ἀναξυρὶς, βράκα 529. ἀνάψαι, *pro* ἀνάπτεσθαι, *solacismus* 544. ἀνειμένος, *sermo, virtus paraphraseos* 239. ἀνηγμένα, *scripta quæ* 273. ἀνθερεὼν, *quid* 251. ἀνθρωπότης, Adam 196. ἀνιπτόποδες ἱερεῖς 94. ἀνομία, *aliud ac* ἁμαρτία 416. ἄνομοι, λῃσταὶ 487. ἀνάστητοι κόλποι, *male* 118. ἀνάστητον βέρεθρον, *male* 117. ἀνταρσία, *quid* 488. ἀντάρται 485, 488. ἀντιτάσσεσθαι τῷ Θεῷ 355. ἀντίτυπος βροντῇσι, *Nonno excogitatum* 457. φωνὴ, *qua* 113. ἄρινα 483. μάχαιρα 483. Κυρ, *Nonno* 483. οἱ πολυόδους σίδηρος, *Nonno* 483. ἀοσσητὴρ σίδηρος, *Nonno idem* 514. μάχαιρα 483. ἀπ' ἀρχῆς 65. ἀπελθεῖν, εἰ διελθεῖν, *digredi, ire, redire* 370. ἄπνευστον, *pro* ἀπνεύματον, *male* 99. ἀπνοίᾳ, *laborare ibid.* ἄπνους, *Galeni et Heracliti ibid.* ἀποδοχὴ, ἡ πίστις 289. ἀποκρίνεσθαι, *Hellenistis quid* 358. Ἀπόλλων, *unde dictus* 19. ἀπόλοιπα, *quid* 375. ἀποστάται, *qui* 187. ἀποστάτης, διάβολος 599. ἀποφαύσεις, *quid* 375. ἀποχωρήσεις, *quid* 375. Ἄρης, *unde* 24. ἀρνοφάγοι ἱερεῖς, *parum caute* 123. ἄροτρον, *Nonno quid* 79. εἰ ἀροῦν, *verbi, fœda et obscana translatio* 222. ἀροῦν, *ibid.* ἄρουρα, *male de urbe et regione* 94. ἀῤῥωστεῖν 433. ἀρσενόπαις Ἰάκωβος 150. ἄρτι 182. ἀρτιχόρευτος, *quid* 150. ἄρτοι κριθώδεις, *pro* κρίθινοι 167. ἄρτος ἐπιούσιος, ὁ ἐπαύριον 316, 317. ἄρτος ὕστατος, ἔνθεος, θέσκελος 464, 465. ἀρχέγονον βάπτισμα 76. ἀρχὴ, *origo* 159. ἀρχηγὸς θεολογίας, *quis* 273. ἀρχιερίας ἀναιδέας, *Nonnus quod dixit, notatus* 195. ἀρχιμάγειρος 572. ἀρχιτρίκλινοι οἰνόπται 535. ἄρχοντες Ἰουδαίων 124. ἄρχοντες τοῦ ναοῦ, *et Seniores* 125. ἄρχων βασιλικός 372. ἀσάμινθος, κολυμβήθρα, *pro male, et quid* 237, 375, 376. ἀσαρχία, *quid* 144. ἀσθένεια, *usu Rabbinorum facta* 249; *male a Nonno dicitur* 433. ἀστὸς καὶ πολίτης 76, 94. ἄστυ καὶ πόλις 76. ἀτρεκίη καὶ ἀλήθεια, *num eadem* 218, 308. αὐδή, ὁ λόγος, Orpheo, et theologis 73; *unde vox ista* 74. αὐτογένεθλος, εἰ αὐτογενὴς, *de Deo male* 67, 87, 30. αὐτόγονος, *de Deo* 69, 90. αὐτολόχευτος Θεὸς, *male paganis* 89. αὐτοπάρακτος, *de Deo male* 88. εἰ αὐτοποίητος, *de Deo male, et quid* 68, 89, 90. αὐτοτελὲς τῆς ὑποστάσεως 81. αὐτοτέλεστος 80. αὐτόφυτος, *quid* 382. αὐτοὼν 68. ἀφ' ἑαυτοῦ, *unde* 50. Ἀφροδίτη, *unde* 50. Ἀφροδύτη, *ibid.* ἀφωρισμένοι, *qui dicantur* 109. ἀχάρακτοι, *quid* 178. ἀχάρακτος ὀπωπή, *caligo cur* 161. ἄχρονος 65. ἄχροος, *B ex errore Hellenistarum confusa* 184. ἀψευδὲς καὶ ἀληθὲς, πιστὸν 450.
B Βάδ, *ex errore Hellenistarum confusa* 184. εἰ βὰρ, *ibid.* βαδδὶν, βύσσινον ἔνδυμα, *Nonnus absurde appellat, et Hellenistis ibid.* βπΐα, *id est, quid* 96. ὄρπηκας κόρυμβα 454; κάλυνθρα, *ibid.* βάκχος, κλαυθμὸς 9. βαπτίζεσθαι, *ex errore Hellenistarum confusa* 184. βαπτισμὸς, εἰ καθαρισμὸς 356. βάρ, *οἱ βάδ* 184. βασιλέως, *nomen pro Messia* 391. βασιλεύειν, ποεῖν βασιλέα 590. βασιλήτος ἀνήρ, *quis* 372. βασιλικός, *cujus meminit evangelista, quis* 371; *ibid.* τὴν πρώτην ἀπὸ βασιλέως διέπων ἀρχὴν 372. βασιλικὸς ἄρχων, *et in eo Erasmi hallucinatio* 375. βασιλίσκος, *in interpretatione* 256. βάσις, *quid* 551. βαστάζειν, *quid* 150. βερσαβεὲ, *in jure* 500. βηματικαὶ ἡμέραι, *quid* 271, 431. βίβλος, *Hebraismus* 226. βίβλος ἀμοιβάς, *quod peccatum* 354, 355, 498. βίβλος θεμίστων 507. βλασφημεῖν, εἰ βλασφημία, *qui* 20. βορεασμοὶ, *Hellenistarum ibid.* βορρᾶς, *Hellenistarum* 23. βουνὸς, *Hellenistarum* 23. βοώμενος, *pro καλούμενος, male* 534. βράκη, *quid* 529. βραχίονες χειρῶν 544. βροντᾷν θεολογίαν 275. βροντὴ 455, 157. βροντῆς παῖς καὶ υἱὸς, *Joannes ita dictus, et* 1202 et *quare* 275, 276, 277. βροντόπαις, *et* βροντόφωνος, *Syris quid* 192. βροτοειδὴς, *unde desumptum* 85. βρῶμα, *unde* 252. βυκτάων ἀνέμων, *unde* 23. βωμοὶ, *et* Γαῖα Ἰουδαίων, *et* Hierosolyma 138.
Γαιήοχος, *Neptuni epitheton* 92. Γαλιλαῖος, οἱ Ναζωραῖος, *promiscue Nonno usurpatum* 110. γείτονες, *evangelista qui* 420. γενέσθαι, οἱ γένος ἔχειν, *pro Patre* 308. γενέτης, *illud Filio proprium, hoc commune* 189. γεννᾶσθαι καὶ ἐκπορεύεσθαι, *diversa* 189. γέννησις καὶ ἐκπόρευσις, *regeneratio* 346. γέννησις ἡ ἄνωθεν, *idiotismus* 418, 419. γένος ἔχειν, *quid* 290. γεραίρειν, *et* γῇ Ἰουδαίων, *et* Hierosolyma 138. γλυφή, οἱ γραφὴ, *ex Græcorum lingua apud Targumistas Chaldæos* 199, 504. γλυφή δακτυλίου, *quid Hellenistis* 504. γοοπλανεῖς Φαρισαῖοι 545, 546. γράφειν, *quid* 199, 504. γραφὴ, οἱ γλυφὴ 199, 504. γραφίδες 537; Γραφαὶ ἅγιαι; ἐν γραφίδι, *factus vitulus* 558. γυμνοῦσθαι, *de amphoris, Hebraismus* 227.
Δαῖς, *quid Græcis poetis* 192. δέειν, καταδέειν, συμπλέκειν, *de eodem* 511. περιτιθέναι, *de eodem* 511. δεῖνα 7. δεξαμεναί, κολυμβήθραι 376. δέρμα, *et* δέῤῥις τριχίνη, *et* linea vestis 529. δέχεσθαι, *perperam Nonno pro λαμβάνειν* 477. δηθύνειν Ἑλλάδα, *incongruum* 535. διὰ Μωσέως ἐδέθη 304; δουλικόν 306; διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐγένετο, *authen-ticum* ibid. διαζώννυσθαι, *vox Nonni interpretatione interpolata, et qualis* 240. διάβολος, ἀποστάτης 399; ἄρχων τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, *cum ratione a Domino, Nonno absque ratione dictus* 193. διάβολος, *Judas quomodo dictus* 170. διασκορπίζειν, εἰ σκεδάζειν 545. διασπορὰ Ἑλλήνων, *Europæa, Asiatica, Hellenistis eadem* 207, 405. διελθεῖν, εἰ ἀπελθεῖν 370. διηγεῖσθαι, καὶ ἐξηγεῖσθαι 213, 219. δικαιοσύνη, *et* ἀλήθεια, *Hellenistis eadem* 213, 219. δικαιοσύνην, χάριν, ἔλεος, ποιεῖν, *isodunounta* 305. δικαίων πάθη, θλίψεις, *quibusdam dictæ* 359. Διόνυσος, *unde dictus* 10; *Aigyptios theos* 123; *unde dictus* 123; *Syncinus* 559. διορίζοντα, *quid* 375. διπλᾶ, *qua* 41, 46.
διψαλέα, a Satyr epithet 115. διψάς, a Satyr epithet ibid. δίψιος ὥρη, 368. διώνυμος, ineptly attributed by Nonnus to Thomas 438; διώνυμος Thomas 466. δοκησισοφία, of a certain person 265. δόμος Θεοῦ, for the temple of the Holy Spirit 188. δόξα, what it is 215, 292. δόξα, or honor 243, 459. δόξα Θεοῦ καὶ τοῦ Κυρίου, 293, 295, 296, 297; in thunder, in a voice 456; by Cyril, divinity 294; εἶπεν ἡ δόξα, a formula of the Rabbis 294; the ineffable name ibid.; the presence of God, ibid., and κατασκήνωσις concerning divinity 293, 297, 323, 324, 337, 338; the Cross 408; one in martyrdom 409; the presence and majesty of divinity 293, 336, 337. δόξα Υἱοῦ, a passage concerning it 291. δόξης, the worst interpretation of the word 336, 480; the true, ibid. δόξῃ, or divine majesty, a location assigned by Hebrew teachers above the tenth sphere 337. δοξάζεσθαι, a homonym 215. δοξάζεσθαι or δόξα, concerning miracles 356. δοξάζεσθαι, to be perfected 408. δοξασθῆναι, posited concerning the Son of God 297, 298. δορά, what it is among the Hellenists 142. δορὰν ἐκδέρειν, to strip off a skin, ibid. δορίδες, what they are 484. δουλεία ἀλλόφυτος, what it is 414. δουλεία, service (latreia) 476. δουλείαν προσφέρειν, in a non-Hellenic way, concerning sacrifice, ibid. δοῦλοι Δαβίδ, soldiers of David, from the Chaldean usage 371. δοῦλοι πολέμου, in the Syriac and Chaldean, ibid. δοῦλος βασιλικός, in the Syriac and Chaldean, ibid.; royal prefect 372; royal prince, ibid. δουρατέη ἀκάνθη, what it implies 128. δράκων, the apostate 21. δύναμις, authority, might 545.
Ε Ἐὰν μή, in that passage, "The Son can do nothing of himself," etc., how much it has vexed theologians 382, 383. Ἑβραῖοι, sojourners in Nonnus, Jews in John 197. ἐγγίζοντες or those who are near, evangelists are neighbors 420. ἐγγύς for εἰς, incorrectly 220. ἐγκαινισμοί, private and public 426. ἐγκλεισταί, who they are 109. ἔγκλημα καθοσιώσεως 298. ἕδρη or throne 173. ἔθηκα, I have planted 473. εἶδε καὶ ἐπίστευσε 525. εἶδος, what it is in Nonnus 201. εἶδος ἄμβροτον, concerning the body of the Lord 200, 201. εἰλαπινάζειν, what it is 217, 218. εἶμα ἄμβροτον, what it is in Nonnus 202. εἰ μή, in the passage, "The Son can do nothing of himself," etc., how much it has vexed theologians 383. εἶναι or to hear 221. εἶναι ἴσα Θεῷ, or its efficacy 349. εἶναι κεκλιμένον ἐπὶ τοίχῳ, instead of lying for something, absurdly 335. εἶναι ἐν μορφῇ 349. εἶναι or to grow 68. εἰπεῖν πρὸς ἑαυτούς, and toward one another 402; toward another neighbor 403. εἶπεν ἡ δόξα, formula of the Rabbis 294. εἷς, of the Hellenists 29. ειραφιώτης 14. εἰρήνη, ambiguous 215. εἰς, incorrectly translated as ἐγγύς 220. εἰσόχε, Nonnus for ἵνα 419. ἐκκεντεῖν, of the Hellenists 517. ἐκπορεύεσθαι καὶ γεννᾶσθαι, the former common, the latter proper to the Son 189. ἐκπορευτῶς καὶ υἱικῶς, a note of distinction, ibid. ἐκπόρευσις καὶ γέννησις, different, ibid. ἐκτετυπωμένον γραφίδι 504. ἐκ τῶν Φαρισαίων, what it is 124. ἐκφράσεως, a species of paraphrase 239. ἐλάσσων, for χείρων, Hellenist usage 145. ἐλαύνειν, what it is 392. ἐλαύνειν ἀπήνην 546. ἐλέγχειν, ambiguous 216. ἐλελεῦ ἴακχε, whence 12. ἔλεος, justice, grace, to do, all equivalent 305. ἐλεύθεροί ἐσμεν, οὐδενὶ δεδουλεύκαμεν 414. ἐληλακότες ἐς παιδείαν 392. ἐλίσσειν, what it does not mean 529. ἐλλελειμμένη, ellipsis in speech 312, 358. Ἕλληνες, Syrians, nations, Gentiles 404, 455. ἐμβριμᾶν τινι, what it is 440; John used this word in the Hellenistic sense, the other evangelists used it properly 449. ἐμβριμᾶν τῷ πνεύματι, or to trouble oneself, equivalent, ibid. ἔμπρακτα ἴσια, what it is 272. ἐν, of the Hellenists 30, 31. ἐν ἀῤῥήτῳ ἀρχῇ, what it is 60. ἐν ἀρχῇ, what it is 6. ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος, not rightly understood 59, 60. ἐνδοξάζεσθαι, concerning miracles 356. ἐνεδρεύοντες, robbers 486. ἐν, used in Nonnus for ἐπί 575, 335. ἐν εὐκαιρίαις, Hellenistic 388. ἐν καιροῖς, Hellenistic, ibid. ἐν κρυπτῷ 401. ἔννομος ἕως 547. ἐνοχλίζεσθαι 433. ἐν παρρησίᾳ εἶναι, what it is 400. ἐνσαρκωθῆναι 81. ἔντερον, belly 31. ἐν χειρί, Hellenistic 304. ἕνωσις σχετική, of Nestorius 291. ἐξ αἱμάτων, what it is 217. ἐξελθεῖν ἐκ τοῦ μηροῦ 15. ἐξηγεῖσθαι καὶ διηγεῖσθαι 312; what it is 313. ἐξήγησις or reading 404, 405. ἐξηγηταί, who they are among the Athenians 311. ἐξήλασεν, for "he drove out the feet," non-Hellenic 546. ἐξηρεύξατο ὁ Θεὸς τὸν αὐτοῦ Υἱόν, Tatian and Theophilus 126. ἐξιλασμός, sin-offering heifer 357. ἐξιλαστικὴ θυσία, sacrifice 350. εἶναι ἐπὶ νηῷ, for in the temple, inconveniently 535. ἐξουσία, power, might 545. ἑορτὴ τῶν θαλίων 540; of harvest 369.
ἑορτῆς θεσμός, for feast 426. ἑορτὴν καινίζειν, for to celebrate the dedication, absurdly, ibid. ἐπαναφερόμενος, concerning the Holy Spirit, among the Syrians 323. ἐπαύριον, after these things 320. ἐπενδύτης, what it is 527, 528. ἐπήλυδες, Nonnus erroneously for neighbors 420. ἐπί, for ἐν 375, 435. ἐπιγράφειν τῇ βίβλῳ, wrongly instead of writing about something 554. ἐπιδημία τοῦ Κυρίου, the saving presence 288. ἐπιδήμιοι, who they are 197. ἐπιθυμία, for homicide and similar things 176. ἐπιλαμβάνειν, in discussing 500. ἐπιμοιρᾶσθαι 524. ἐπιούσιον, what it is 317. ἐπιστόμιον, tunic 506. ἐπισυμβεβηκότα, of God 213. ἐπιφέρεσθαι 322. ἐπιχέειν γῆν 524. ἐπονομάζειν τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Κυρίου 498. ἐπωμίς, or shoulder 164. ἐπώνυμος, or namesake 197. ἐργάζεσθαι, what it is 380, 397. ἔργον, coin 482. ἐργοπόνος, incorrectly of the Son 71; epithet of Minerva, ibid. ἐρεείνειν, or to need, what it is 373. ἐρέπτειν, what it is 217, 218. ἐρεύγεσθαι λόγον, a Hebraism 228. ἐρευθοῦν ῥέεθρον, a Hebraism 228. ἐρημοπολίτης, John 75. ἑρμηνεῖαι, a species of interpretation 232, 233. ἔρνος, what it is 518. ἐρυγή, the Son of God, said 127. ἐρυθραῖος, Edom 520, 521. ἔρχεσθαι εἰς τὸν κόσμον, what it is in Hebrew 288; ἐπὶ γαῖαν, that it is not Greek, ibid. ἐρωτᾷν, what it is in Euthymius 373. ἑσπέρα, evening 31. ἑστηκὼς ἐνώπιον τοῦ βασιλέως 577. ἐς φύσιν οἴνου ποιεῖν, a Hebraism 227. ἐτάραξεν ἑαυτόν 248. ἐτήτυμα, which are 195. ὅτι ἅπαξ, ὅτι μικρόν 458. εὐάζειν 8; pagan usage 92; concerning the feast of Pascha, imprudently 192. εὐεπίφοροι, Nonnus and Euripides regarding certain words 191. εὐντος, whence Bacchus is named 8. εὐκρόκαλος, and other things that are appropriate to the sea, concerning the lake 168. εὐλογεῖν, of the Hellenists 498. εὐξάμενοι, who they are 109. εὐοῖ 8. εὑρίσκειν, what it is 241. εὐφημεῖν, of the Attics 498. εὐχαριστία, for blessing 396. ἐφύμνιον 295, 296. ἔχειν ἀλκήν, for to have power, worthless 542. Ζάθεον, what it is 521. Ζεύς, whence 14. ζῆν, whence, ibid. ζητεῖν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ Πατρὸς, καὶ ζητεῖν τὴν τιμήν 387. ζήτησις, a disputation, among the judges
A and the disciple of John concerning baptism 358. ζωῆς, of life, it revolves 422. ζωὴν ἔχειν, to have life, what it means 421, 424. ζώνη (girdle) 528; skin-girdle 140, 141; another garment and tunic B ζωοῦν (to vivify), what it means 425.
H Ἡ πρὸ καὶ, incongruous 536. ἤθη περιμήκετος (custom long-drawn-out), erroneously 537. ἡγεμονικὴ γενεά (sovereign generation) 277; ἡγεμών (leader), or priest 546. ἡγιασμένοι (sanctified) 109. ἠθοποιία (characterization) of paraphrase 259; ἦθος of paraphrase 259; which was taken from Nonnus ibid. ἤκουσας (you heard), in the manner of the Hebrews, for 'you are accustomed to hear' 433. ἡλικία (age), what it means 60, 537. ἡμεροβαπτισταὶ (day-baptizers), Pharisees 96. ἦν (was), what it means 65. ἡνίοχος (charioteer), Christ 102. ηὐγμένοι (shining), who they are 109. ἦχος (sound), misuse of the word 502.
Θ Θαλίαι (banquets), feasts 540. θαλύσια, a pagan word 92. θαυμάζειν (to wonder), what it means 387. θεάνδρος 82. θεάνθρωπος (God-man) ibid. θεηγόρος (God-speaking), C regarding the Son of God, used wrongly 127; regarding John, correctly 127. θεῖος (divine), regarding the Son of God 127; θέμις (custom/law), whence 307; θέμις or law 307, 308. Θεογενὴς (God-born), what it means 183. Θεοδέγμων (God-receiver), used erroneously by Nonnus 163. Θεοειδής (God-like) 83. θεολογεῖν (to theologize) 274. θεολογία (theology) of the Only-Begotten, as the beginning of the Gospel of John, so called 274, 275. θεολογία καὶ οἰκονομία (theology and economy) 275, 274. Θεολογίαν βροντᾶν (to thunder theology) 273. Θεολόγος (theologian), why John is 265, 273, 274. θεοπρεπῆ, divine works of Christ 183. θεοπρεπῆ, writings, which ones 273. θέορτος (God-feast), something other than θεοπρόπος 182. θεοσυνέργητος (God-cooperating), John is so called 278. θεότης σωματική (bodily deity) 300. θεοφόρος (God-bearer), wrongly regarding Christ 127. θεόφυτος (God-planted), regarding the Son 69. θεράποντες (servants) of Ares, in Homer 371. θέρος (summer), for 'harvest', carelessly 367. θέσκελος (divine/wonderful), regarding the Son of God 197. θεσμός (law/ordinance), for 'law' 431. θεώμενοι, or θεωροῦντες (those viewing), the evangelists are called 'neighbors' 420. θεωρεῖν (to view), commonly used by the Hellenists 470. θλίψεις (tribulations) or scourges, what they mean 359. θρασὺς (bold), regarding Peter and John, as regarding Jude, used through 'lack of judgment' 187. θρόνος (throne), or seat, unequal terms 173. θύα, θύειν (to sacrifice), θυάρπαξ (greedy for sacrifice) 16. θυά; a pagan word 92. θυγάτηρ Ἰερουσαλήμ (daughter of Jerusalem) 183. θυηπολίη (sacrificing), Pascha 183. θυιὰς ἑορτή (maenad festival), regarding the feast of Pascha, imprudently 122.
I Ἰδοὺ ἄνθρωπος (Behold the man) 496. ἱεούδ, among the Phoenicians, 'only-begotten' 135. ἱερὰ τράπεζα (holy table), what it means 354. ἱερεῖς καὶ Λευΐτας (priests and Levites) 314. ἱερεὺς, or ἡγεμών (leader) 546. ἴκανον μὲν ἱκάνων, incoherent 545. ἱκανὸς τοῖς γραφομένοις (sufficient for the things written) 550. ἱμάς (thong), what it means 93. ἱμάτιον (mantle/garment), concerning the body of the Lord 202. ἱμάτιον, what it means 547. ἵνα (that), in [the phrasing] εἰσόκε, changed in Nonnus 419. ἰσότης Θεοῦ (equality of God), form of God 549. ἰσουργία (equal-working) of the Father and the Son 467. ἰσοφυὴς (equal-natured) 65. ἰχθύες ὀπταλέοι (roasted fish), very ineptly 167. Ἰωσὴφ θεοειδής (Joseph God-like), not rightly said, while he is despised 170. D
K Καθαίρειν (to cleanse), regarding baptism 557. καθαρισμὸς (cleansing), something other than καθαρμός 355; why they are confused 357; baptism is 356; 'juvenile' of sin 357. κάθαρμα or καθαρισμὸς 555, 556. κάθαρσις (purification), regarding baptism 357. καθ' ἑαυτὸν (by himself), ἀφ' ἑαυτοῦ (from himself) 382. καὶ (and), confirmatory 348. καινὴ ἐντολὴ (new commandment), which one and how said 185. καινίζειν ἑορτήν (to renew a feast), for 'to celebrate the inauguration', absurdly 426. καινίζειν θεσμόν (to renew an ordinance), what it means ibid.; οἶκον ibid. καινὸν (new), from the Hebrew manner, what it means 185. καιρὸς (time), in Hellenistic, for 'opportunity' 388. κακοῦργοι (evildoers), robbers 486, 487. κάλαμος (reed), in Hebrew, what it means 511. καλὸς (good), for 'agathos' (virtuous), Hellenistic 115. κάλπιν διὰ κόλπου ἀείρειν (to lift the pitcher through the bosom) 150. καλύνθρα, palm branches 454. καμεῖν (to toil/make), for 'to do', a pedagogism 542. Καναναῖον πέδον 155. Καναναῖον, for Καναῖον (Canaanite), incorrectly 531. καταβαίνειν (to descend) 116; regarding the Holy Spirit 323; εἰ μένειν, the word for divine majesty and presence 323, 324. καταδέειν, δέειν, συμπλέκειν, περιτιθέναι (bind, tie, entwine, put around), concerning the same 511. κατὰ καιρὸν, for κατὰ καιρὸν τοῦτον (at this time) 577. κατὰ καιρὸν, Hellenism 388. κατασκήνωσις (tabernacling), what it means 291. κατασκήνωσις καὶ δόξα (tabernacling and glory), to which they belong 337, 338. κατασκήνωσις, the 'shekhinah' of the Chaldeans 297, 293, 295; joined with 'glory' 293, 297, 323, 324. κατασκήνωσιν καὶ μονὴν (tabernacling and dwelling), the Jews attribute to the prophets 324. κατάστικτος (dappled/spotted), spotted 120. καταυγάζειν (to shine down), for 'to have the light', a solecism 541. κάτω δρυός (beneath the oak), wrongly for ὑπὸ δρυΐ 533. κατελθεῖν (to come down), in Hellenists, what it means 117. κατεσκήνωσεν (he tabernacled), and 274. Κέδρος and Κεδρὼν (Kedron), confused by Nonnus 194. κεῖσθαι (to lie), translated incongruously by Nonnus 535. κειρίαι (grave-clothes), what they mean 445. κεκοπιακὼς ἐκ τῆς ὁδοιπορίας, εἰ πεπαυμένος ὁδοῦ (having labored from the journey, if he has ceased from the way) 361. κένωμα (emptiness), in Aquila, the same as 'void' in Theodotion 179; assigns both to the earth 179. κεχαλασμένος ἐς πτύχα μηρῶν (loosened into the fold of the thighs), what it indicates 529. κιθάρα (lyre) and ψαλτήριον (psaltery) 508. κίνησις (motion) and ταραχὴ (disturbance) 378. κλαυθμὸς (weeping), that is, Bacchus 9. κλέος (glory/fame), for 'glory', incorrectly 292. κλῆμα (vine-branch) with cluster, confused 191. κλισία (couch/tent) 538. κλισιοπηγία (tent-pitching) ibid. κνήφ, what it means to the Egyptians 20. κοινόβιοι (coenobites), how called among the Jews 109. κολαφίζειν (to buffet) 495, 495. κόλαφος (buffeting), whence named 495; a certain pedagogue ibid. κολυμβήθρα (pool), what it means 237, 375, 376. κονδυλίσαι (to knuckle), κολαφίσαι (to buffet) 495. κόνις (dust), what it means 179. κόρυμβα (clusters), Nonnus: palm branches 454. κόρυμβος (cluster), what it means 191; 'polyptorthos' (with many pods), is it rightly so called? ibid.; confused with the 'vine-branch' ibid. κόσμος ἀέναος (ever-flowing cosmos), so called by Nonnus 190; and 'aeon' for the same 191; John, what he means 471. κόφινος (basket), 'formia' 549. κρανίου τόπος (place of the skull) 196, 198. κρίνειν (to judge), ambiguous 216. κρίνειν κατ' ὄψιν (to judge according to appearance) 401, 402. κρίσις (judgment), ambiguous 215. κρότος (din), a pagan word 92; regarding the feast of Pascha 122. κτίζειν κτίσμα (to create a creature), regarding a miracle 421. κτίσμα (creature), generation 346. κύαθος (cup/ladle), instrument of libations 152. κυβιτίζειν (to tumble) 54. κύβιτος (tumbler) ibid. κυκλάδες ὧραι (cyclic hours) 114. κυκλίσκος (little circle), ring 172. κύκλος (circle), to physicians, 'period' 171. κυκλοῦν κεφαλὴν στεφάνῳ, εἰ στέφανον κεφαλῇ (to encircle the head with a crown, or a crown on the head) 546. Κύριος δόξης (Lord of glory) 246. Κύριος ὁ Θεός μου σύ (You are the Lord my God) 526. Κυρίου δόξα (Glory of the Lord) 295, 296, 297. κώλα σχοινοτενῆ (rope-like limbs) 256. κώμη (village), to Hellenists, what it means 435. κῶμος (revel), a pagan word 92.
Λ Λαγόνες (flanks/loins) 528. λάϊνον (stony) or λαϊνεον 121. λαλεῖν ἐν τῇ διανοίᾳ (to speak in the mind) 405; to one's own soul ibid. λάλος (talkative), for 'audieis' (vocal), wrongly 103. λαμβάνειν (to take), Hebrew, what it means 476. λαμβάνειν εἰ πορεύεσθαι (to take to go), regarding the mode of existence of the Holy Spirit 476. λαοσσόος (people-moving), John, wrongly 77. λάσιον (shaggy) or 'hairy' 144. λατρεία (divine service), δουλεία (slavery/service) 476. λαχμὸς (lot/destiny), Nonnus, what it means 507. λάχος ἡμέρας (lot of the day) 502. λέγειν (to say), instead of 'to think' 72. λειποθυμοῦντες (fainting), breathless 99. λεκάνη (basin), bath 377. λέκτρον (bed), epomis (shoulder-piece), wrongly by Nonnus 164. λέντιον (towel/linen cloth), 'sindon' in Syriac 184. λέξις (diction) and μῦθος (fable), confused by Nonnus 500. λέξιν περιστρέφεσθαι (word turning around), what it means 499. λεπτολάχανον (fine herbs) 145. λεπτοσκευασμένα (finely fashioned) ibid. λεπτοφυὴς (fine-grown), garment 142, 145. λεπτοφυὴ qua (fine-grown) 145.
A Levites and priests 314. To speak with a white [λευκάδι] voice, what it means 179. To whiten the thought 479. To speak or say things most white, ibid. Thieves: who they are in the Syrians 486; lawless ones 487; false prophets, ibid.; a word whose usage became current among the Chaldeans 229. A soldier armed 487. Flasks [λήκυθοι]: correctly omitted by Apollinaris in his interpretation of the Psalms 257; accustomed to being received with laughter 240, 241. Flask [λήκυθος], what it means 258; not distinguished from a paraphrase by Nonnus, ibid.; examples 238, 240, 241. Lemma, a species of prophecy 429. Taking [λήψις], what it means for the Hebrews 476. Stony 121. Stony [λιθῶδες], what it means, ibid. Pools, swimming pools 376. Sea of Tiberias, called "Sea," by Hebrew usage 176. Libra, what kind of word 521. Spear [λόγχη], what it means 546. And spear [λόγχη] or dagger [μάχαιρα] confused by Nonnus 515. Oracle, prophecy 429. Word [λόγος], what word this is 274. Word [Λόγος], Son of God, previously called by the Chaldeans 72. Word, that prophet 289. Word, prophecy 429. Libation [λοιβὴ], erroneous sense of 154. To loosen the sandal, what it means 98.
M To be effeminate 433. Marble or alabaster 453. To seek 548. Scourges or tribulations, what they mean 359. Peter's dagger 483. Dagger attributed to Agamemnon by Homer 484. Dagger [μάχαιρα] or spear confused by Nonnus 515. Dagger, what it is, ibid. B Wanton hair [μαχλὰς χαίτη], which our poet 452, 453. Great Zeus 545. Great day, what it means 547. Great [μεγάλον] for "great" [μέγαν] 545. Magnanimity, wrongly used by the Greeks for majesty 293. High priest [μέγαν ἀρχιερέα], ineptly said 545. Interpreted in place of names 329; examples, ibid. Interpretation [μεθερμηνευόμενον] of Didymus, not a proper or family name 465. Word "drunkenness" [μέθης], how used by the Hellenists 111. Those who transfer 186. To be drunk, what it means 111. Wedding songs of drunken fall 114. Temple of God, for the temple of the Holy Spirit 188. To remain, property of the Holy Spirit 187, 188, 323. To remain, ambiguous 212, 213; what it means 389. Articulate [μέροπες] 105. To change, what it means 39. Offices of the changer 58, 217. Change 57; what it means 38; what kind of interpretation method 236; example, ibid. Metabolic, a species of interpretation 247.
Those who remove 186; who they are among the geographers, ibid.; among the astrologers, ibid.; among the theologians 187. A foreigner, imprudently applied to the Holy Spirit 186. Those who depart 187. Translations, a species of interpretation 232, 233. Translational, a species of interpretation 247. Sojourners, who they are 186. Measurer or measure 334. Sheepskin, what it means 140, 141, 142. "Let us not tear," interpretation of the passage 507. Measures 528. Dwelling and tabernacling, the Jews attribute to their own prophets 324. To make a dwelling, to remain, to inhabit 188. Only-begotten, an attribute of divinity 295. Only-begotten, a word odious to Arius 136; in all symbols, councils, and synods concerning the divinity of the Son, maintained against the theory of "brother-gods" 132, 133; Ieud among the Phoenicians 135. Only-begotten and beloved-child 150, 136. Form, what it is 348, 349, 352, 471. Form and figure, opposed 355. Form of God, equality of God 349. Myths, dogmas of the heretics 74. Myth, a word used through Hebraism 227. Myth and diction, confused by Nonnus 500. Myth instead of "Word" regarding the Son of God, wrongly 71. Myth impiously used for "Word" 192, 220, 408. Myth-maker [μυθοτόκος], Greece; not so the Heart of the Lord 192. Mysteries of Bacchus, imprudently applied to the feast of Easter 122.
N Nazarene or Galilean, used interchangeably by Nonnus 110. Nazirites, who they are, ibid. Nazirite, who he is 198. Nazoreans, who they are 109. Nazorean, mystical inscription 198. Stream of wine, for wine 157, 158. Spikenard 451. Casket [ναρθήκιον], from whence R. Elias derives it 446. Corpse [νέκυς], the fugitive, concerning the resurrected Christ 548. Newly dancing 182. Intelligent and intelligible 102. Illegitimate citizens 186. Law and justice 307, 308. Law, the Greek word used by the Syrian and Targumists 308; what it means 451. Law, of the Psalms 480. Mind-wandering Pharisees 346. Disease [νοῦσος], circular, Nonnus's term for paralysis 171. Periodic diseases, ibid. To pierce, to stab 516.
1208 Way [ὁδὸς], far-reaching, wrongly 150. To inhabit, to remain 188, 571. Habitation [οίκησις], wrongly used for tabernacling 291. House and tent 147. Economy and theology 273, 276. House, "eternally guarded," a Hebraism 226. Faithful house, concerning Solomon's temple 450. House, wrongly for tent 291. Wine-tasters or head-waiters 335. Wine or strong drink 148. Wine-colored tunic, why Nonnus calls it so 505. Oispai, what it means 513. Gadfly, Nonnus denotes it as "stumbling block" 219. Oisypai, what it means 513. Omens 18; to consult omens, ibid. "My Lord and my God" 526. To howl 7. Coeval and co-evality, what it means 66. Homilies, a species of interpretation 232. Co-throned and fellow-throned 173; indicates connaturality 174. Similar, what it means 351. To be made similar, to be [God], 350; to be made equal, ibid. Likeness, form, ibid. Likeness of man, shape of man 349. Likeness of God, God 351. Similarly, what it means 384. Homousion and homoiousion 17. Conterminous with Judea, Jerusalem so called by Nonnus 400. Homophoitos, wrongly used of the Son of God 92. Noun and verb, what they mean to Plato 57. To name the name of the Lord, what it means in the Law of Moses 493. To store behind, what it means 107. Opisthanomion, what it means 111. Those who carry behind 107; whom Nonnus has understood 109. Younger, what it means 184. Where David was, i.e., born 409; the prophet 515; the error of the Jews concerning him 316. Vision, knowledge 309. Vision against someone, a species of prophecy 429. Orgies, pagan word 92. Orgies, loud-clapping, imprudently applied to the feast of Easter 122. Shoots [ὄρπηκες], Nonnus's word 454. Orphic poems, when they were written 42. Holy [ὅσιος], called Lord 399. Ossa, what it means 251. When then he was raised from the dead, explained by Nonnus as the ascension 341. "That" [ὅτι] for "as" or "so that," a solecism 536. "That my first he was," a Hebraism 248. "That you do these things," an elliptical discourse 338. We have served no one, that is, we are free 414. He cannot do, what kind of Hellenism 383. He did not entrust himself to them 541. Yellow, what it signifies 160; proper color of wine, ibid. Sword, Nonnus uses "dagger" 485.
Yellow [Ξανθόν], what it signifies 160; proper color of wine, ibid. Sword [ξίφος], Nonnus's "dagger" 485. O Metabolic, a species of interpretation 217. Oaristys, the first of the Jews 358. No man [Οὔτις ἄνθρωπος], to whom no one his own [looks], Hebr. proverb 113.
A thus, "he sat thus by the spring" 361. Dead creatures (ὄρεις) which 128. Creation of the eye 179. Apsigonos, "late-born" 154, 155. Opsimos (late) B as "late-born" 131. Opson (relish) what 244. Opson and optaleon are confounded 167. "He who is, who was, and who is coming" 545.
II. Passions of the just, tribulations, so called 359; of sinners, scourges ibid. Childish miracles of Jesus 243. Sons of David, soldiers C of David, to the Hellenists who 371. Son of the king, royal official 571. Elbow of the palm (hand), ineptly 544. Palinora (wandering back) stars 187. Panhellenes, Nonnus calls the Hellenists, incongruously 403. All (partes), for "all races of men" 457. Derivatives, which 55. Paradises, that is, gardens 519, 520. Paradise for the place of the blessed 128; "well-wooded," wrongly 129. Paraclete, the word's use among the Chaldeans 229. To take, to obey 289; what [it means] in Matthew 290. Paramerion (near the thigh), a dagger 483. Time of the Preparation (paraskeue) 501, 502. Plucking of the beard 494. Paraphrases, a species of interpretation 252. Paraphrastic kind of interpretation 247. Assessors (paredroi), gods 173; magistrates sitting together 174. Paraboli (digression), a kind of interpretation 247. Sojourner (parepidemos), who 188. Sojourners (paroikoi), who 197, 420. Dwellers nearby, who 197. Present ones (parontes), the evangelists are called neighbors 420. Boldness (parrhesia), the word's use among the Chaldeans 229, 400. To speak boldly, what 400. Paronyms, which 53, 55. Bridal chamber (pastos), what 358, 359. To strike with the palm, by Nonnus, what 494. To cause to rest (pauon), in very inept fashion, "to rest" 556. To bubble over (paphlozein), what 500, 501. Penos, pistos, pistikos, ibid. To tempt, what 339. Temptations, to the Hellenists, which 451. Dove (peleias), a species of dove 119. Having ceased from the way, "that is, having grown weary from the journey" 361. Believers (pepisteukotes), a word wrongly accepted by Nonnus 415. Veil (peplos) 528. To pass through (peresai) for "to arrive," inept 514. Peridromos, what 108. To circle the rim of the head 107. To acquire (peripoiein), what 423. Superfluous (perisson), what the evangelist [means] 422, 424. Dove (peristera), a species of dove 119. Turning around, the word 422. Turning of the word "life," ibid. To put on (peritithenai), by the Hellenists, what 310, 541. Peter, being interpreted 528, 529. To be naturally (pephykenai) or to grow 68. Spring and well 149. Table (pinax) for a title 504. Those believing (pisteuontes) or those who have believed argue a difference of faith 174. Pistikos or pistos 450. Faith (pistis), the acceptance 289. Temporary faith 539, 541. "Tested (piston) by the waters," what to the Hebrew teachers 452. Tested, true, and unfailing 450. To test (pistoun) the witness, for "to bear witness," wrongly 533. To wander (planasthai) 15. To speak broadly (platyazein), what 500, 501. Devices of breadth 55. Pleistobolinda (dicing game) 507. Plexeidion, what 108. To be fulfilled, how the Scripture is sometimes said [to be] 480. Small boats by which they crossed the lake of Tiberias, how termed by the Syrians 166. Ambiguity of the word "Spirit" (pneuma), the cause of error 212. Spirit (pneuma), "having groaned in the spirit" for perturbation 440; for the Holy Spirit, ibid. 443; for reasonable mind 441; for himself 442. Holy Spirit, passage: "For the Holy Spirit was not yet" 124, 408; why by Nonnus [called] "paternal" 411, 443; and wrongly "pure" to him 220. "Swift-footed" (podas okus) of Homer, whence borrowed 51. Pothoblēta (desired) works, what to the Silentiary 175. Pothoblētoi (desired) cares, wrongly 175. To do something in the name of the Father, or of God 427. To do into the water, wrongly 158. Created (poiētos) god, not God 176. Created (poiētos) Samaritan, that is, apostate 177. Poikilos (various), what 120. Poikilophanes (of various appearance), what 120. To shepherd (poimainein) for "to feed" (boskesthai), a solecism 542. Shepherd not being [a shepherd] 425. City (polis) and town (astu) 76. Politeia (citizenship), what 75. Many believed 541. Polyklēeis (many-keyed), ineptly concerning a small boat 166. Many-formed universe, wrongly 130. "Many-toothed" (polyodous) iron and dagger (aor) to Nonnus the same 514. Polysema (of many meanings) 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215. Polyspereis or many 47. Polytrētos (many-holed), who 528. Polytropos (many-turned) is a neutral word indeed, but generally drawing [to itself] praise 193. Polyōpos (many-eyed), who 528. Pompimoi (those who escort), who are so called 46. Pontos (sea) for a lake, wrongly 395. Voice of fornication, wrongly accepted by the theologians 416. To travel on the earth, what 288. To travel or to take, concerning the mode of existence of the Holy Spirit 476. Practical (praktikē) generation of Christ 272. Things (pragmata) or deeds (praxeis) 50. Deeds or things 50. Sheep-gate (probatikē), what 375. Provoker (proboleus), in respect to whom God the Father himself can be called [so] 189. Forerunner (prodromos) or general, [concerning] related 87. Proeortion (pre-festival) 547. Preparation (proparaskeue) 547. Before the Sabbath (prosabbaton) 547. According to time, according to an hour 388. Prossymbebekota (things that have come to be besides) of God 213. Respect of persons (prosōpolēpsia) in the Law 402; "to fear the person" in the Law 402. According to an hour, according to time 388. Prophet with a riddle 315; error of the Jews concerning him 316; "tested" (pistos), of that great one 450. John the first-angel (protangelos), wrongly 85. First of me (prōtistos mou), a solecism 300, 305. First or first-appearing 47. First 501, 502. Ptorchos (shoot/scion), what 191. Basin (pyelos), bathtub (asamins) 237, 376. Last hour (pumatē hōrē) 114. Puxion (writing tablet) for a title 504. Fire (pur) of violent fever 433; yellow (xanthos) 159.
P Rapis (sandal), sole, footwear 494. To strike (rapisai), what 493, 494, 495. Rapisma (slap) to the jurisconsults, what 494; to Claudian, ibid. Rethron erethison (stream stimulating), for wine 157, 158. Rhema (word/utterance), a genus of prophecy 429. Pouring of salt (rhous halmēs) for a lake, wrongly 595. Rhopalon (club) in the fustuarium (military punishment) 489, 490.
S Salem (peace) deep-waving 139. Samaritan place, that "he is a Samaritan" 176. Sunides (syneidēsis) to the jurisconsults, what 505. Flesh (sarx), a word used in many ways 211. Meanings (sēmasiai), a species of interpretation 252. Sign (sēmeion), from which the serpent was suspended 353. Iron-bearing nails (sidērophoroi gomphoi) 48. Sikera (strong drink) or sikēs, what 148. Silioi (flat-nosed), or blind 528. Simon, what 520; thence Simon to Nonnus 328. Sisoē to the Hellenists which 107, 108. To be scandalized, by Nonnus wrongly returned 474. Scandal (skandalon) to Nonnus, called "oistros" (gadfly) 219. Skedazein (to scatter) or diaskorpizein 543. Skelokopia (leg-weariness) 514. Tabernacle (skēnē) 147, 538. Tabernacles (skēnōpēgia) 538; as called by the Syrians 540. Days of the Feast of Tabernacles consecrated to Bacchus 539. To tabernacle (skēnoun), what 290. Skenōsis (tabernacling) or "glory," concerning the divinity, joined 293, 297, 323, 324. Hard fabric 185, 184. Succoth, in Succoth, under the tents 559. Wise (sophos), the word used by Nonnus without usage 491. Band (speira), for the army of the temple, how it is said by Nonnus 194; wrongly "band of chief priests" 195; "of the captain of the temple" 195. To sow (speirein) flaws (elattōmata), concerning Christ, what 114. Spondeion, an instrument for libations 152. Libation (spondē) 152.
A Statistasai 485, 488. Stasis, what 488. Statisintai 488. Stavros and stavrou typos, from which the serpent was suspended 354. Stavroun, and hypsoun, the same in Syriac 353. Steichein chthona, a solecism 545. Stephane, what 108, 111. Stephein basilea, concerning Roman usurpation 503. Stiktai melessi peleiades, incorrectly 119, 120. Stikton, what 120. Stichos, what 256. Stoai, what in Hellenistic 375. Stoibades of Mark 454. Stole, what 144. Stratēgoi tou hierou, elders 194; use of the word 195. Stratēgos, the usage of the word with the Chaldeans, facts 229. Stratiē, ho ithynōn stratiēn, who 372. Stratos ouranou 126. Stratos, what in Nonnus 194. Strouthizesthai 513. Synkathedroi, magistrates 174. Syzygia, concerning the Persons 468; syzygiai, what 85. Sykinos Dionysos, why he is so called 539. Symballesthai, heurein 241. Symbebekota, what they are 50. Symplekein, dein, katadein, peritithenai, concerning the same 511. Symphyes, whence it is proved concerning the Person of the Son 174. Synadelphos and monogenēs, contradictions 189. Synthronos and anchithronos, different things 172, 174; the same as homothronos 173; it indicates symphyes 174. Synthronos hedrei, incorrectly concerning the Son 69. Sphairōtēr, what 98. Sphingesthai, concerning those who are healed of paralysis 379. Sphragida tithenai,2 what it means for Hellenists 398. Sphragizein, what 398. Schēma anthrōpou, omoiōma anthrōpou 349. Schēma, something neglected and despised by Hellenists 351. Schēmata endeias 243, 284, 285. Schēmata parabolika 264; by critics anexergasta 244; example 244, 245. Scholia, a species of interpretation 232, 233. Sōmatikē theotēs 500.
T. Tameia, what 375. Tachyplokamoi, who 109. Tarassein heauton, and embrimasthai tō pneumati 442. Tarassesthai tō pneumati 462. Tarachē, or kinēsis 378. Tekna porneias, idolaters 417. Teleiousthai, doxazesthai 408. Temachia, to aid the memory of some work 260. Tetramēnos therismou, which part of the year 369. Tē epaurion 316, 319.
B Tēlygetēs, regarding man only 134, 136. Tēlygetēs as monogenēs 130, 136. Ex te tē tritē, the words of chapter 2, to what they refer 520. Tiberētis limnē, not grammatically 168. Tiktesthai, what 346. Timē, for doxa and majestatis Dei, incorrectly 243, 292, 459; for exousia, an idiom of Nonnus 228. Tokeus, for pater, erroneously 220. Trephesthai en skēnē, what 147, 148. Trērōn, whence 121. Tribōn, what kind of garment 142. Trisagion 294. Tropoi tēs hyparxeōs, not to be confused, as Nonnus does 189. Trochēlatēs, comic 107. Trōgein, ambiguous 217. Typos and alētheia, opposites 353.
Y. Hydation aitein 363. Hydōr leukon 159; xanthon, incorrectly 158, 159; orkion, arkion 150. Hyetos kai phōnai 456. Hyies Achaiōn 404. Hylikōs kai ekporeutōs, a note of distinction 189. Huiothesia entelestatē 221. Huios gērous, for a wise man among Hellenists, why 134. Huios doxēs 297. Hypagōn, what 453. Hypagoreuomena 271. Hypagoreuein, what 270. Hypakouein, what in Hellenistic 476. Hypakoe, lēpsis 476. Hypagoreuseis 271. Hypenengas, what in Hellenistic 550. Hyperthe kai enerthe phoreos, inept 504, 505. Hypanemion, ineptly concerning the Holy Spirit 101. Hypnos egersimos, for the death of the Lord 526. Hypokritēs 402. Hypomnēmata, a species of interpretation 232; their authors 233. Hypo tēn trapezan dainysthai, anellēniston 548. Hypourgos, concerning the Son 70, 127. Hyssōpos, for ōissos, corruptly 513. Hysteron proteron, noted by Augustine 417. Hypsoun, concerning the cross 355, 411; concerning glory, Nonnus 412; hypsousthai 215, 515.
Φ (Phi). Phagein, ambiguous 217. Phaneis, for ōn, incorrectly 174. Phelmouni, whence 7. Pherallēla kai allēlendeta onomata, things which theological [works] 190. Pheredeipnos, to whom this epithet is due 167. Pherōnymoi, who 195. Pherōnymon, ineptly for epōnymon 197. Phthora, the use of the word by Andrew the monk 206. Philakrētos, a satirical epithet 113. Philalēthēs, who is so called particularly 239. Philos epistēthios, that is John 278. Phlazein, what 501. Phoibazein, what kind of word it is, and whence it is derived 447. Phoibasmos and hagnismos 148. Phoitan, what 92. Phoitētēres, who are so called 92. Phōnai, places where [the sounds] are committed 181. Phōnios olethros, the sickness by which Lazarus died 181. Phonos, to ek phonou haima 181. Phonoi, homicides 181. Phrear ilyoen 149. Phrear kai pēgē 149. Phrear horkismou or horkou 150; horchion 151. Phyesthai and einai 68. Phyesthai and pephykenai 68. Phyxēlis, concerning the resurrected Christ 548; who is properly so called ibid. Physas, Father 69. Physis, ousia 68. Physis and opsis, opposites 155. Physis hydatos, pyros, etc. 155. Physis chionōtos, for water, incorrectly, ibid. Phytourgos, what 146. Phōnai kai hyetos 456. Phōnē, what in Hellenistic 277; tonitru 455; vox Dei, vox excellens ibid.; filia vocis 457. Phōs, concerning the three divine Persons 287. Phōta artigenea, ridiculous 540; for arsena 541.
X. Chairete, what in Hebrew 215. Chaitē machlas, which [it is] to our poet 453. Chalannē 106. Charin anti charitos 305. Charin, eleos, dikaiosynēn, poiein, equivalent 305. Charin, sto, peri, an idiom of deficient Hellenism 545. Charin titainein, for charin legein, anellēniston 558. Charis kai alētheia, what 500. Cheein gēn 524. Cheir aplē, palm 493. Chernips 152. Chionoun, nivare 156. Chitōniskos 528, 529. Chthonios keneōn, to which the blind eye is carried, what in Nonnus 179. Chitōn lasios 142; different from the garment made of camel's hair 143. Chitōn polytrētos 528; daidaleas 528. Chionōton hydōr, what 156. Choē 152. Choros, en chorostados hēmar heortēs 227. Chous androgonos 180. Chrēma and ergon 482. Chrēma or chrēmata 482. Chrisin, it also designated royal institution, and long preceded 391. Chysis 152; gapotos 152. Chysis oinou, for oinos 158. Chysis, concerning the stars 158. Chysis phyllōn 158. Chutēs gēs ē psamathou tuchein 524.
1213 χώρα Ἰουδαίων [country of the Jews], and Hierosolyma 138. Χωρῆα, what this is among the Syrians 550; Theophylact 550. χωρὶς, [apart] from itself 382. χώρος, concerning the treasury, an inept Hellenism of Nonnus 228.
INDEX LATINUS. Ψαλτήριον καὶ κιθάρα [Psaltery and lyre] 508. ψιλὰ, what this is 145. ψιλοκομμένα, what this is 145. Ω Ω of the Greeks, of the Syrians, kametz 501. ὠλέκρανον 544. ὥρα, [opportunity] 388. 1214 ὥρα τρίτη καὶ ἕκτη [third and sixth hour] 501, 502. ὥρην τιταίνεσθαι, unclear 502. ὥς, from this particle [arises] the heresy 297, 298. ὡς σοφὸς εἶπε [as the wise man said] 7.
INDEX LATINUS TO THE EXERCITATIONS ON DANIEL HEINSIUS’S SACHAS
A Abaddon, that is, Apollo 19. Abba, father 38. Abdemelech, what it is 372. Ablution, baptism, among the Syrians 376. Ablution’s place, κολυμβήθρα [pool] 370. Abolla, what garment this is 142. Abraham, a sojourner (παρεπίδημος) and a stranger (μετανάστης) 188. Where he sacrificed 366. Abstract nouns, use of, instead of concrete 53. Abundantly to have, what this means 421. Accidentia [accidents] 52. The name of accident among the Hebrews 53. Aceti vas [vessel of vinegar] applied to the cross, what use it had 511, 512. Actions, which are described by the poet in an epic poem, division of 34. To the fire of the wise to warm oneself, an old Hebrew saying 484. Adam, a word used by the Hellenists 196. Ἄνθρωπος [man] 196. Addereth, what garment this is 143, 145. Again once, yet a little while 458. Adjectives in -ώδης or -ενος 167. Adon, the sun 31. Adoni, salutation of the sun, ibid. Adonis 8. Why he is a companion of Venus 31. To adore and to sacrifice 151. Field at the pool (κολυμβήθρα) healed, of what kind 379. Egyptians’ custom in exhibiting the unbaptized 463. Age, about which a man is said to stand in knowledge 537. Aeon, concerning eternity 66. Agallochum, whence named 519. Dreams concerning it 520. To act authentically (αὐθεντικῶς) and condescendingly (συγκαταβατικῶς) 427. Lamb, laolxh Ouyla [?], 356. Alapa [slap], whence named 495. Alaph, ibid. White dove in the East 120. White color, suffused with light 160, 161. To allege, the custom of citing parts of books, customary among Hebrews 259. Alogi, heretics 319. Alpha and alapa, whence named 495. Altar, what it is 334. Ambiguities of John 240, 241. Ambiguities of words, a property of the Hellenists 210, notable examples 210, 211. Distinction of ambiguous words 206. Ambire, χωρεῖν [to hold/contain] 551. Ambrosius’s hallucination 228. Friend of the bridegroom, he who stands (ὁ ἑστηκώς) 358. Andreas, brother of Peter by the same womb (ὁμογάστριος) 201. Andronicus Rhodius, an old paraphrast 233. Angels instead of God, because they are his ministers 378. Hellenists place angels in the stead of God 378. Angel of death 378. Angel, what it is to the Chaldeans 277. Anhelare and to seethe (παφλάζειν) 501. Soul and spirit instead of itself 442. Annas and Caiaphas, in what way preeminent priests 483. Ring, κυκλίσκος [small circle] 172. Year, cycle, ibid. Antonius Augustinus’s opinion on Ulpian examined 225. Antonomasia, next to apposition 55. Aonia, whence 22, 27. Apollinarius, his marvelous brevity in rendering the Psalms by paraphrase 256. Apposita or attributes, what they are 40, 41, 42. Their definition examined 48, 49. Wrongly restricted to substances alone 48, 49. A heap of attributes is inept 64. Audaces [the bold], that is, braggarts 137. Aurora and evening, confused by Nonnus 502. Aroi 8. Axiom, what it is to the Stoics 57. The foundation of dialectic, by the same 55.
B Baal Shamayim, sun 31. Baca, what it is 7. Bacchus’s epithets 43. History 6, etc., name, nativity 13. Arms, from the East 14. Priests from the same 15. The same as Osiris 8, 123. Celebrated under the booths (succah) 539. Bacchic [elements] of Nonnus 6, 34. Bacchic words concerning the feast of Passover, imprudently usurped 122. Baal-Zaphon, God of the Egyptians 123. Baptism of John the Baptist and of Christ, what difference the ancients established 100. Baptism, in whom it was first used by John; and what use it had among the Jews 358. Baptism of the Lord, not described or commemorated in order by John, but touched upon by John the Baptist 318. Baptism, called a cleansing (κάθαρσις) 357. Baptists, in what way the Lord [is ignorant of ...], 325, 326. Beard plucking 494. Bariach, what it is 21. Barabbas’s crimes 483. Bassarides, bassareus, bassaru, basser 16. To strike the mouth with a sole or slipper 494. Beelsames, lord of heaven, the sun 51. Benedictions 396. Bethlehem, called a village (κώμη) by the Hellenists 435. Bethsaida, fatherland common to Philip with Simon and Andrew 331. Not correctly expressed by Nonnus 331. Drinking custom under the booths (succah) 539. Binaria, what they are 41. Bir, a Hebrew word 38. Twice dead, who they are 190. Boanerges, whom they are so called, and why 276, 278. Bom, what it is 23.
LATIN INDEX
A Boeotians, Sicilians, Syrians, on the term *to platynsein*, in what vowel it consists, 501. Boraach, what it is, 20. Bordati, the supplement of, is examined, 250, 251, 252, 253. Boreach, a Hebrew word, 20. Boreas, its left-hand omen, 20. Boriach, a Hebrew word, 21. Brachium (Arm), what it is to the Hebrews, 545.
C Cabiri, whence they are so named, 25. Cadam, what it is, 25, 32. Cadmelus, whence named, 25. Cadmus’ arrival in Boeotia, 7; his name, 7; the origin of things and sciences in Greece from him, 6. Cadmon, 7, 32. Cadmoni, *he deina* (such a one), 7. Cadmoni, what it is, 7. Caecae (the blind), considered as profane and sinners, they said he was created from conjecture, what the cause may have been, 421. A passage concerning him, 178. The blind man healed was a beggar, 420. Born without eyes, according to the opinion of the ancients, 178. Calatura (engraving), how it is said by the Hellenists, 504. Caiaphas, is he rightly called *theopropos* (prophet), 181. Caiaphas and Annas, how they were supreme priests, 485. Cain, the son of the devil, 418. Calais, whence, 21. Calami (reeds), the word, 199. Calceatus (shod) or discalceatus (unshod), how the Lord walked, 98. Calceum (shoe), servants used to loosen it for the Jews, 98. Camar, what it is, 25. Camerarius (chamberlain), 369. Camil, a Hebrew word, 25. Camillus, whence, 25. Camiri, whence named, 25. Cana of Galilee, 155. Concerning its miracle, the doubts of the ancients, 213. Canaf, what it is, 20. Cananaea, what it is, 7. Cananaei, who they are, ibid. Cananas, used wrongly for Canaeus, 155. The Chapters of the Evangelists, how many they are for the ancients, 257. Their division and modern distinction, unknown to the ancients and Nonnus, 255. These are different from theirs, 257. That of Suidas and Theophylact, 258. That of Cyril, Prodromus, 259. That of Gregory, 258. That of Cyril, 260. That of the Syrians, 260. That of Bede, 262. The distinction of the chapters of Acts, 262. Epistles to the Romans, 262. Galatians, Apocalypse, 263. The division of the sixth chapter of John according to the Syrian method and the Catalogue of Theophylact, 258. Its *akolouthia* (sequence), rendered by poetic paraphrase differently than by Nonnus, 342. The head of the ointment, 451. The word Carnis (flesh), how variously used, 211. Casaubon, 280, 507, 510. Casmilus, whence, 25.
Casti (chaste), who they are, 203. Casum (case), how the Hellenists express it, 430. Catalogus, *biblos*, 271. Catena (chain) in Greek on the prophet Isaiah, not yet published, 295. Catena of Theodoret, not yet published, 195. Cecespita, what it is, 483. Cedem, 7. Cedron, the torrent as described by Nonnus, 194. It could be crossed by a ford, 194. How it is named in Syrian, 194. Cemarim, what it is, 25. Cepha, whence, 331. Cephas and Peter, 329. Chaiim tobim of the Jews, 115. Chalana, a city, 106. Chalne, a city, 106. Character of the Father, scripture, 314. Charassare (to engrave), 489. Chares, an Eastern word, 24. Charisius, definition of attributes, 48, 49. Chasida, a Hebrew word, 24. Cherub, what it is, 102. Chomerini, priests of Moloch, 448. Chrysostom noted, 292, 365, 366, 379, 384, 428, 440. The name of Christ, imposed by his mother, to argue that he is *apatōr* (fatherless), 407. The author of *Christus Patiens*, corrected, 516. Christ, the charge of crime common with robbers attempted against him, 488. Christ. Why John used a passage of Isaiah to prove the divinity of Christ, 460. Whether and how he wept. The ineptitudes of Nonnus, 459. In what name he was baptized, 135. Why he was joined with robbers, 485. Christiani, *hoi tēs theias aulēs* (of the divine court), 105. Chuppa (nuptial canopy). He who stands at the chuppa, the friend of the bridegroom, 358. Cilci, what it is in Chaldean, 145. Cinyra, who he is, 32. Cingulum (girdle) of mortification, what it is to Jerome, 141. Circumcisio (circumcision). The ambiguity of Nonnus regarding its day, 401. Citare (to cite). The method of citing parts of books used by the Hebrews, 259. Coelum (heaven), what it is to the Syrians, 317. Cogitare (to think), Hebrew, 72. Cogitatio mala (evil thought), *alymata*, 217. Color *alōgos* (irrational), what it is, 159. Color of water, and it is separable, 156. Changed into wine according to the opinion of Nonnus, and confused with [the concept in] the Latins, 161. Especially by the Hebrews, 161, 162. Columba (dove), worshipped by the Samaritans, and circumcision celebrated in its name, 366. Composita (things compounded), that is, *dipla*, 41, 46. Concertatio (contention) of two regarding the name of *theologos* (John), 265. Concludere (to conclude), *chōrein*, 550. Condylus, what it is, 493. Contemplatio (contemplation) of names, the beginning of learning according to Epictetus, 206. Corban, 475. Corona Sanctitatis (crown of holiness), what it is, 198. Corpus Domini (body of the Lord), the term sometimes used by Nonnus and the ancients, 202. Cranium Adami (skull of Adam), 196. A fable of the Hellenists, 196 and 197. Crastinus (tomorrow). The custom of the Hellenists when they speak of the morrow, 316, 317. *Aoristos* (aorist) used by the Hebrews, 319. Creare (to create), how it is used by the Hebrews, 421. Crimen majestatis (crime of treason), 298. The perversity of intending the crime of treason in the time of Tiberius, 497 and 498. Crinis (hair) cut in the shape of a wheel, what it is to Sidonius, 108, 109. Votivus, what it is, 108. Critice (criticism), what it is and of what kind, 5, 126. What its study is like, 164. The contempt of critics, 265. Diligence in distinguishing ambiguities, 206. Princes in theology, 279. Crux (cross). The size of the cross to which the Lord was affixed, 511, 515. Crux from which the serpent was suspended, 353, 354. Crux, the peculiar punishment of the Romans, 488. Crurifragium (breaking of legs), *skelokopia*, 514. Cultellarius, 483. Cultri (knives) in circumcision, 540. Victimarii, 483. Cum corde suo (with his heart), Hebr., for *secum* (with himself), 403. Cum pompa (with pomp), used by the rabbis, 401. Cunaeus, 532. Cyclus (cycle), a year, 172. Cynicorum vestis (garment of the Cynics), what it is, 142. Cyrilli error (the error of Cyril), 441.
D Damascus, called *kōmē* (village) by the Hellenists, 435. Dei majestas (majesty of God) and presence, by what word it is expressed in Chaldean, 187. Depalmare, what it is to the ancients, 493. Deus (God) put by Nonnus for the Father, and wrongly, 367. For an angel, by the Hellenists, 378. The Chaldeans assign his miracles to angels, 378. God in thunder, in voice, 456. Diabolus (devil), the father of Cain and the lie, 418. Dialectica (dialectic) of the Stoics, 206. Its parts, 206. Dicere ad cor suum (to say to his heart), what it is, Hebrew, 72. Didymus, 329, 438. Diei partes (parts of the day) according to the Greeks, 502. Dii (gods) unknown to Homer, 43. Dionysiaca of Nonnus, 6. Their disposition, 34. Disputed regarding it, and how, 88, 89. Dioscoridis epigramma (epigram of Dioscorides), not yet published, 203. Dioscuri, who they are so called, 10.
LATIN INDEX
Disciples of the Lord, 117. Disputation, ζήτησις (inquiry), concerning baptism, between the Jews and the disciples of John, 358. Divinations from serpents, 18. Divinity of the Son. Passage concerning it, 291. Signs of divinity, 300. They said among themselves, that is, to one another, 403. The circuit-journeys and visits of the Lord, κυκλώσεις καὶ ἐπιδημίαι, 456. House of doctrine, 147. Definition of the attributes of the Gift, 49. Arctic dragon, 21. Dryads, whence so called, 22. Dyscolos (difficult or ill-tempered), false prophet in Juvencus, 427.
E Eden and Edom confused by Nonnus, 520. Edom, ἐρυθραῖος (red), 520, 521. Effatum, what it is to Apuleius, 57. Breakers-in, λησταί (robbers), 486, 487. To wail (ejulare), 7. Ela, what it is, 22. Eleleus, whence so called, 10. Hallucination of the Elijah rabbis, 18. Ellipsis, σχήμα ἐνδείας (figure of deficiency), 245, 244, 215. Dedications (Encaenia). Passage concerning dedications very poorly understood by Nonnus, 425. Statement (enuntiatum), what it is to Cicero, 57. The praise of epic poetry, in what it consists, 35. The license of epic poets is not the same as that of tragic poets, 544, 545. Epigram of an old poet not yet published, 195, 196. Epiphanius’s fatigue in the passage concerning the baptism of the Lord, 321. Epithets, attributes, appositions, 41, 42, 48, 52. Erasmus’s ignorance of Hebrew letters led him into error, 271. His error, 373, 428. Errors of the learned, 381, 438. To be (esse) in God, what it means, 60. Evan, 8. Evangelist the virgin, 411. The custom of the Evangelists, who sometimes condense certain matters, 404. Gospel of Paul, 270. Of Peter, 270. Of Mark, Luke, 270. Summary of the Gospels, from the Florentine Manuscript, 266. [1218] A Empress Eudocia’s poetic paraphrase, την ἐξαήμερον (of the six days of creation), 246. Praise of the same from Photius, 246. Euphemisms, 411, 453. Euthymius’s error, 440, 441, 460, 463. Evohe, evoi, 8. To palpate (expalmare), what it meant to the ancients, 493. Ezof (hyssop) of the Hebrews, 513.
F Diversity of crimes, punished by diverse penalties, 485, 486. Falckenburgius, editor of the Dionysiaca, 1, 36. False prophet called dyscolos in Juvencus, 427. False prophets, λησταί, 487. Fariotus, a soothsayer (hariolus), 31. Fas, what it is, 308. Fever (febris), what it is, 433. The injury of a happy vow, in Claudian, what it is, 494. Women who anointed the Lord, how many, 452. Thigh (femur), an obscene part to the Hebrews, 13. Fen, what it is, 30, 51. Iron, σιδηροφόρον (iron-bearing), inept, 540. Fig tree. Under the fig tree, what it means, 332. That the protoplasts sinned, the opinion of the Hebrews, 333. Why Philip was acknowledged by the Lord and called, 333. Fir, what kind of tree it is in Egypt, 333. Faith, what it is, 527. Faith from the Kabbalah, 527. Evil figment (figmentum malum), αἵματα (bloods), 217. Figure and μορφή (form), or species and truth, opposed, 553. Daughter of the voice (filia vocis), 277. Daughter of the voice, what it is, 455, 456. Son of the free, 414. Of the noble, 414. Son in the Father, the exposition of the principle refuted, 62, 63. Sons of Israel, 404. Fircus, a he-goat (hircus), 31. Flagellation. The violence that was employed in it, 507. Yellow (flavus) color, 159, 160. Barley (hordeum), for fordeum, 31. Form of the gods, gods, 349. Of wolves, wolves, 350. The name of form, 53. Basket (xóφινος), formio, 549. To prune branches (frondes stringere) and to lop, 475. Frutinal and Fruti, 30. The fugitive Christ, Nonnus reborn, 548.
G Gabbatha, 500. Gæsa, 487. Gaisa, ibid. Galilee, that is, the time between the Passover and the Ascension, 154. The Galileans, ταναπλόκαμοι (with long-flowing hair) and ἀκερσεκόμοι (with unshorn hair) according to Nonnus, 109, 110. Philochristoi, or lovers of kindness (φιλόστοργοι), according to the same, 155. Galilean, for Nazarene, in Nonnus, 198, 454. Garizim and Moria, the mountains confused, 365, 366. Cheeks (genae) blushing into a citizen, of whom it is said in Claudian, 494. Nonnus puts the genus for the species, 498. Germ of God, that is, the Messiah Jehovah, 336. Golgotha, what it is, 198. Gladiolus in circumcision, 540. Stoned along with Joshua, 540. Glory of God in the thunder, in the voice, 456. Gorionides, a Hebrew writer, 193. Couch (grabatus), 164. Grace, Θεοτόκος (Mother of God), 26. Greece, the names of places, mere names of the East, 7. The most learned of the Greeks, Origen, 279. Deliria of the jacks (graculorum), 18, 26, 28, 468, 469. Grammarians noted, 52, 53, 89, 151, 307. The use of the stylus and pen (graphium) formerly forbidden to the Romans, 488. Footpad (grassator), a robber (λῃστής), ibid. Grace and truth, what they are, 500. Gregory of Nazianzus in interpreting βάσις (base/foundation), 236. Gregory of Neocaesarea (Thaumaturgus) in Ecclesiastes, the most laudable paraphrase, 255. Which is now inscribed as a Metaphrasis, 255. Noted however, uselessly ascribed, 256.
H Inhabitants of the streets, who they are according to Kimchi, 420. For God to inhabit, what it means to the Chaldeans, 187. Many voices of heretics removed, 127. Hallelu-iah, Hebrew voices, 12. Haoni, what it is, 22, 27. Haphiara, which the Lord interpreted in Isaiah, 405. Harmon, what it is, 24. Harmony, whence derived, 24. Hares, a voice of the East, 27. Hartung’s emendation, 449. Hatthanaa, 27. How much the ignorance of Hebrew letters imposes, 271. Hebraisms noted in Nonnus, 226. Helilu, what it is, 20. Hellenisms of the first chapter, 223. Idiotic error of the Hellenists, 169. Who are called Hellenists, 207, 403. Hellenistic language, different from Greek, 210. Hellenistic in canon law, 225. Hermenopulus’s interpretation against Arius, 302. Heros, a voice of the East, 27. Hesychius, what kind of author, 116. Yet noted, 89, 131, 184. Emended, 108, 375, 376. Hexapla of Origen, 208. Jerome, the most learned of the Latins, 279. Yet noted, 428. Jerusalem and the region of the Jews, 'Ιουδαίης (of Judaea), called by Nonnus, 400. To which tribe it pertained, a controversy among the Jews, 400. Homer’s division, 260. Comparison of Homer and Nonnus, 551. Homer’s death from the indignity of riddles, 221. Homonyms of John, 210, 211. Distinction of homonyms, 206. Homonymy of words, a property of the Hellenists, 210. Notable examples, 210, 211. Hour of heat, what it is to the Hebrews, 368. The hour at which the Lord was affixed to the cross, 501. Horace, about to be produced by Heinsius, 539. Hymn of Cosmas on the Nativity of the Lord, 298, 296. Hyssop. The passage concerning hyssop most vexing, 510.
I Iacchus the mystic of the Athenians, 11. Iah, a Hebrew voice, 11, 12. Idioms, 418. Idols, what they are, 425. Idolater, children of fornication (τέκνα πορνείας), 417. Fornicators, ibid. Fire for fever, in the Syrians and Chaldeans, 433. The wicked twice dead, 190. Tamer of the Indians, Bacchus, 11. Inscription of the sacred work of Nonnus, 37. Inscriptions of books from the beginnings, 60.
Inscriptions, method of, used by the ancients, 35. Inner sense, called by the Hebrews [that which] is left to the interpreter, 244. Interpreter, what sort he ought to be, 118. His duty in explaining the notions of words, 212, 219. The greatest vice, 546. He must be careful not to put the genus for the species, 498. An axiom of critics concerning him, 247. Interpreter errors, and *parermēneiai* (misinterpretations), whence, 210, 369. Interpretation, types of, 247. Confused by Nonnus, 247. Method of interpretation which the ancients used, 232. And its various types, 232. The purpose of interpreting the Sacred books, especially of the New Testament, 229, 230. Neglected by Nonnus, 229, 230. Interpretation, what it is, 57. Interpretations of certain passages, 244, 245, 271, 277. Intincta, what is meant by [the term among] the ancients, 463. Wine, its exhibition removed, 464. Invinis [sacred], 113. Ir, of the Chaldeans, 29. Iris, 27, 28. Whence, 29. Isaac, where he was offered, 366. Isaiah the prophet, [regarded] by the ancients as among the evangelists, 405. Isthenis, a term used by the rabbis, 434.
J James, the apostle, called Boanerges, 276, 278. James and Esau, 146. Why mention of the former is made in the Samaritan history, 364. Minister of learning, 147. Boys, 150. Jansenius, 440. Jehovah, what kind of name, 338. A name of three tenses, 545. Job, what kind of writer, 312. John the Baptist, an imitator of Elijah, delicate [in the style of] Nonnus, 140. "Angel," in the Menoeceus, 86. Voice, 388. His testimonies, 284, 185, 286. Times divided by the evangelists, 285. John the evangelist, leader of theology, 275. Thunder, 276, 277. Son of thunder, 275, 477. Loud-voiced, son of thunder, 276, 277. Boanerges, 276, 278. Friend of the heart, 276, 278. True [one], called, 239. That he constantly looked to the Chaldean interpreters and the Targumists, 61, 289. How observant he was of the divine economy, 504. In how many ways he saw God, 310, 311. Called *thrasys* (bold) and at the same time "friend of the heart," absurdly, 137. The sequence of John neglected, 308, 311. The inscription of his Gospel among the Syrians, 266. How that which is preached is said [to be], 269, 270. Called Theology, 275. Begun by some at the second chapter, 320. How its beginning is mentioned, 274, 275. The beginning and the concise brevity, 274, 275. Periods, what kind, 276. Virtues in John's discourse, 230. Praises, 264, 265. Passage compared with a passage of Job, 312, 313. Text defended from corruption, 435, 438. Truth, 311. Joseph, why his mention is in the Samaritan history, 561. Judah, the bread extended to him, whether the same as the sacred [bread], 465. To Nonnus, sacred and a sacrament, 464. Judah [the] traitor, how considered, 170. Bold, bold-handed, headstrong, 137. Jews, among them communion of drink and food, 363. Used to using perplexed locutions, 500. Jews and Samaritans, 414, 417. Jews who Judaize in the name of the Son of God, 297. The cavil of the Jews and the perverse interpretation of the law which they brought against the Lord, noted, 499. Error concerning the prophet "the one called by eminence," 316. Faith, what kind, from R. Maimonides, or Rambam, 425. Custom in weddings, 358. In burying and after burial, they are placed before God, 378. Wicked words concerning the murder by which they kill a Christian, 475. Sycophancies, *kakoscholia* (bad-spiritedness) and ineptitudes, whence, 210. Notable examples, 211. Judgment in the punishment of the Lord, whether it was [held by] the Romans, 489. Judgment of things, what it is, 56. Julian the Apostate's malignity, 283. Justice [of the tribunal], not of the bench but of the judgment seat, of Pilate, 500. Justice and judgment, what they are in a most obscure passage of John, 216. Young ox of sin, *katharismos* (purification), 357. *Exilasmos* (expiation), 357.
K Keleph, what it means to the rabbis, 495. Kalaph, Hebrew, what, 495. Kalpha, how it is accepted in the Targum, 495. Kametz of the Syrians, Greek omega, 501. Kitin Mizri, what, 184.
L To labor, what [it means], 71. Basin, *asamithos* (tub/bath), 576. Tearful god, Bacchus, 8. Tearful poem, tragedy, 8. Greasy wool and their use, 512. The most learned of the Latins, Jerome, 276. Thieves, a discussion of them and the custom of the Jews in punishing them, 485, 486. Who [are meant] by the Latins, 488. Higher washing, what [it is] to the Hebrews, 576. Lecythi, 317, 319, 393. Embassy sent to the Baptist, 314. Of the Pharisees, regarding them, the error of Nonnus, 93. Law, 306, 307. Law given on the mountain, 22. Excluded from bringing the law, 305. Law, *lepsis* (taking), *hypakoē* (obedience), 476. The hinges of the law, 305. Studious, how it is said, 414. Nonnus states that it was given not by God but by the Father, 306, 308. Libation and victim, 152. Children, who [are they] to the Jews, 414. Liberty, regarding it, paradoxes, 414. The purpose and scope of this book, 551. Sacred books, *nomos* (law), 451. *Engrinomenoi* (those judged fit), ibid. Illicit license, 220. Wood of paradise, 519. Linen garment and skin, 529. Who are the linen-clad priests, 184. Linen cloth with which the Lord girded himself, *skleron hyphasma* (hard fabric) [in] Nonnus, 183. Garment of Osiris, 183, 184. Linen of Egypt, what, 183, 184. Listin armed, 487. Livia, who, 119. Passage on the divinity of the Son, 291. Obscure passage of John, 216. Another, corrected, 513. Passage concerning the heavenly and earthly things, not correctly understood by Nonnus, 125. Opinion of the ancients concerning it, 125. Passage concerning the Holy Spirit omitted, 249. Passage which heretics abuse against the Holy Spirit, 282. Passage of the Holy [Spirit] with the Father and the Son, which Nonnus accepts regarding the procession, 477. Passage [in] Numbers ch. 24 examined, 519. Passage of Zechariah, "They shall look on him whom they pierced," 516, 517. [Passages] returned, 65, 91, 99, 103, 130, 153, 164, 223, 242, 245, 252, 291, 317, 329, 331, 342, 359, 380, 388, 393, 397, 408, 423, 458, 502, 546, 547, 548. Passages of Isaiah negligently rendered by Nonnus, as also other passages from the Old Testament, 458, 459. Passages explained and illustrated by interpretation, 244, 245, 300, 324, 356, 401, 402, 405, 406, 411, 416, 418, 419, 424, 440, 468, 506. Ignorance of passages and regions noted, 139. Second washing, what it is to the Hebrew teachers, 452. Lamps in the temple until the morning time, 388. Superstition of groves to be abhorred, 21. Light illuminating and the illuminated, 79. Purification of children by fire, *pyrizein* (to burn/purify by fire) 447, 448.
M Magdalene, the sinner, 453. Master of butchers, who, 372. Militia, 372. Majesty of God, 456. *Homoiosis* (likeness), 351. Ill rendered, 459. Majesty, for God himself, king, emperor, 298. The Greeks lack the word for majesty, 298. Maimonides, rabbi, 415, 419. Curses are diminutions of the good, 396. Manzer, who, 225, 226. Error of the Manichaeans, 85. Manna, *artos aphthitos* (incorruptible bread), rather incautiously, 168. For it rotted, 169, 170.
Manus excelsa, sin, unto death, 354. Manus passa, *cheir haple* (simple hand), 493. Manuscriptum Florentinum, and excerpts from it, 226. Rutgersianum, 369. Maran, what it is in Syrian, 17. Marat, what it is, 495. Maron, Marom, whence, 17. Marcus, interpreter of Peter, 270. Mare, what it is to the Hebrews, 328. Erythraeum and Indicum, 518. Maris attributed to the lake, negligently added, 168. Marianus, poet and paraphrast, 233. And his varied paraphrase, 233. Masius, 540. Error of the Massalians, 309. Mebaccoth, Bacchantes, 9. Megil ephod, 506. Melota and zone (sheepskin and girdle), 140, 141. Memallelin, memallelon, whence, 15. Memento that we are dust, 524. Mendici, called inhabitants of the streets, 420. Meretricum proprium to wear one's hair [long], 453. Messiae, name of power, 592. Messias and king are often confused, 336. Metanastae Iazyges, 186. Patriarch, 188. Micatio of fingers, in Nonnus *lachos*, 507. Milites regis, as said by the Hellenists, 371. Mimallonides, whence named, 15. Minister of erudition, Jacob, 147. Miracles, why more often performed by the Lord on the Sabbath, 379. Miracle of the loaves, where performed, 394. Delineation of places, 395. Moloch priests, *chomerim*, 448. Money-changers, 482. Moran, what it is in Syrian, 17. Morbus of him who was healed at the pool, of what kind, 379. Morbus of Lazarus, called by Nonnus *astheneia*, 181. Moria mountain confused with Mount Gerizim, 365, 366. Mors Domini extenuated by Nonnus, 482. Moses, a man not insignificant (*aner ou tychon*), said by Longinus, 230, 231. Motus of the dove, in the passage concerning the Holy Spirit, in what words expressed and with what success, 322. Mulieres who anointed the Lord, how many, 452. Multiplication, cause and formula, 596. Mumia of sepulchers, 518. Mundus, called eternal by Nonnus, 190. Musae, whence named, 22, 23. Musar, Hebrew word, what it is, 22, 23. Myrrha, what it is, 32.
N. Nachas, what it is, 18. Nansius supplemented what was passed over by Nonnus, 249. Judgment, 253. Nardus spicata, whence thought of, 451. For *spicata*, 451. Nathanael, how a true Israelite, 531. Sub ficu (under the fig tree), 235. Natura rei, as essence, 155. Natura puerpera, as corrupt, 222. Nazaraeus coma, *opisthokomion* in Nonnus, 11. Nazarenus, confused with Nazarenes by Nonnus, 109. Nazarenus, for it Nonnus puts Galilaeum, 454. Nechasim, what it is, 18. Ner, sun; hence *narthikion* of Elias, 446. Nesec, 152. Error of Nestorius, 291. Nezer, what it is, 198. Niches, what it is, 18. Nicodemus was not a priest, 124. Opinion of the ancients concerning him, 125. Nin, Hebrew word, 38. Noga, Venus, 31. Nomen of accident, Hebrew, what it is, 55. To do in the name of the Father, and to call upon the name of the Father, are different things, 427. To pronounce the name of God, what a crime, 498. Nomen *doxes*, *dedoxasmenon* (glorified), wonderful, ineffable, 297. Nomen formal, what it is, 53. Nomen ineffable, *doxa*, 294. Nomen into which the Lord baptized, 135. Nomen *per se*, 53. Naming in circumcision, proper to the Fathers, 466. Non noram eum, formula, 326. Nonna, what it is, 38. Nonnus adds what he did not find, 471. Conversely, he passes over what exists, John, 5, 378. Many things he omitted because he could not grasp them, 248, 436, 441, 443, 455. And for other reasons, 248, 249. What he omitted, these were supplied by Nansius, ibid. What he does not omit, he mutilates, 412, 431, 436, 441, 443, 455, 499, which he himself does not understand, and explains badly, 114, 244, 245. What he says, he does not understand himself, 382. He brings in something other than what was intended, 548. Nonnus emended, 150, 163, 178, 199, 200, 282, 335, 346, 365, 377, 380, 399, 445, 462. Nonnus *eu-onicopos*, lapsed, 246. He interpolates the text, joins things that the evangelists joined, 518. *Sullamtinus* critic in Syriac, 500. Nonni *acholasia* (intemperance), 238, 239, 240, 242, 243, 246, 247, 258, 392, 497. *Akrasia* (incontinence), 111, 118, 153, 199, 203, 204, 222, 237, 238, 328, 346, 376, 511, 542, 546, 547. *Alogistia* (unreasonableness), 110, 121, 152, 199, 466. Ambiguities, 245, 401, 472. Anachronism, 539, 540. *Anakoloutha* (ungrammatical sequences), 471, 535, 545. *Anarmosta* (incongruous things), 325, 288, 303, 307, 362, 381, 397, 472, 500, 502, 527, 532, etc., 542, etc., 544, 546, 548, 550. *Asistata* (inconsistent things), 325, 367, 471, 503, 526. *Atonemata* (errors), 444. Insolence and audacity, 462, 477, 478, 501. Cucozelia, 173, 174, 201, 222, 252, 253, 257, 258, 396; errors, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 57, 58, 60, 114, 128, 158. Errors, 168, 169, 171, 175, 184, 191, 194, 197, 237, 241, 314, 328, 339, 340, 341, 354, 369, 384, 393, 394, 397, 400, 409, 415, 418, 419, 425, 426, 433, 436, 437, 438, 462, 463, 465, 466, 468, 469, 485, 496, 504, 521. Errors in quantity of syllables, 349, 550. Comparison with Homer, 551. Heretical locution, 384. Hebraisms, when none in the evangelist, 224, 307, 482, 533, etc., 538, 545. Ignorance and lack of skill, 6, 10, 26, 116, 168, 292, 303, 304, 314, 375, 425, 443, 457, 476, 477, temerity and imprudent locution, 186, 192, 194, 200, 287, 288, 324, 401, 408, 477, 478, 524. Hallucination in the number of disciples, 117. Absurdities and ridiculous things, 393, 431, 439, 443, 466, 467, 504, 505, 528, 532, 533, 534, 535, 536, 537, 538, 540, 542, 544, 545, 546. Negligence in filling a defect of discourse, in a clear matter luxuries, 242, 243, 244, 246, 247. Intemperance regarding commas or verses, 256. Shamelessness, 80. Lapsus, 369, *metaballein* error, and how badly the ratio of interpreting succeeds for him, 237. *Metempla*, inconstancy and vanity, 422, 425, 437, 514, 515, 523, 528. Negligence, 199, 200, 238, 242, 245, 249, 256, 282, 307, 308, 315, 324, 346, 367, 379, 381, 387, 388, 394, 395, 418, 454, 458, 459, 474, 502, 504, 507, 510, 511, 527. Nomen, 37, 38. Obscurity, 221, 222, 401, 418, 499. Works, 6. Pedagogisms, 541, 542. As in words, so in the complexity of discourse, *parelermeneiai* (misinterpretations), 220, 223, 241, 304, 306, 309, 311, 328, 339, 354, 403, 422, 436, 458, 469, 472, 474, 525, 527. Ratio of interpreting by the same words, 215, 216, 217. Pleonasms, 474, 477, 503. Rusticity, 347. Security and lack of thought, 104, 165, 182, 190, 306, 308, 315, 324, 375, 377, 381, 502. Solecisms, 242, 532, etc., 536, etc. Tautology, 241, 545. Verses which are missing, whether lost, 243. Refutation of vices in interpreting, 224. Note by which the masters of the Hebrews distinguish the testimonies of others, 286. Nunc scio, what formula, 326. Nowhere dwelling, mendicant, 420. Nysa. Fables about it, 11. Error of Nyssenus and Optatus from the ambiguity of a word, 212. O. Ob, that is, Apollo, 19. To chide usually, 494. Octapla of Origen, 208.
LATIN INDEX
Odyssey, how far preferred to the Iliad, 35. Œsipus, 512, 513. Offa of Judah, A whether it is the same as the sacred, 465. Sacred and sacrament in Nonnus, 464, 465. Oni, what it is, 22. Onomacritus, called Orpheus, 42; later than Homer, 43. Onus, a class of prophecy, 429. Divine works ascribed to angels, 277. Works D θεογενῆ (god-born), incorrectly called the Lord's miraculous works, 183. Τὰ θεοπρεπῆ, 183. Opis, a city, 449. Opistice, what it is, and whether it should be so read in the Evangelist, 449. Error of Optatus and Nyssenus arising from the ambiguity of a word, 212. Oratio ἐλλελειμμένη (elliptical), 319, 338. Orgia, of Bacchus, under the booth (succus), 539. Origen, most learned of the Greeks, 279. Origo, what it is, 159; for sapor (savor), 279. Corrupt origin in man, ἁμαρτία (sin), 217. Hymns of Orpheus, that is, of Onomacritus, what they are like, 42, 43. Osiris, who he is, 8, 123.
P
Pædagogismus, what it is, 541. Paganism, to be dismissed, 92. The dangerous imitation of pagans, 173, 174. Palma (palm/hand), χεὶρ ἁπλῆ, 493. Spathe of palms, bore the form of a scepter, 454. Paradoxa of the Pharisees, 414. Paradox concerning liberty, 414. Paralysis, what it is, 379; twofold, 171. How stated by Nonnus, 171, and for what reason, 172. Paralytics, δεδεμένοι (bound), 579. Paralytic healed at the pool, 379. Paranymph, ὁ ἑστηκώς (he who stands), 558. Paraphrase, to what end, 243; to be distinguished from a lekythos (oil flask), which Nonnus neglects, 238. It is a species of ἐκφράσις (description), 239. Its virtues, 239. Most noble method of interpreting, 39; B and μεταβολή (transformation), 39. Paraphrase on the Ethics of Aristotle, 256. Parascha, 405. Parnas, pastor, governor, 424. Parody of the Evangelist, 388. Parschiol, smaller ones, 259; larger, 259. Paschal feast, what sort, 122. Θνησίμη (deadly), 483. Pastor (shepherd) of nothing, 425; of vanity, 425; of an idol, 425. Pathar, what it is, 330. Pater (Father). To act in the name of the Father, and to call upon the name of the Father, are different things, 427. Father is the eternal [Father] of the Son, 61. First person, 69. Male γενεῆς (of birth), 308. How he is named with respect to the Holy Spirit, 189. Why the Lord mentions him in the dissertation with the Samaritan woman, 567. Patriarch, μετανάσται (emigrants), 188. To sin arrogantly, presumptuously, with a haughty mind, with head uncovered, 554. Γυμνῇ κεφαλῇ (with bare head), 480. Pentecost, ἑορτὴ θερισμοῦ (feast of harvest), 369. At the feast of Pentecost, the waters of the bath were troubled at Jerusalem by Bethesda, 377. Perada, peredin, an Italian word used by the Jerusalem Targumists, 330. Periods, μονόκωλοι (single-membered), περιωδευμέναι (periodical), συνεστραμμέναι (compact), 276. By the hand, a Hebraism, 301. To be perplexed with one's own words, 500. Perplexity, a proverb of Uziel concerning it, 500. Persons of the Trinity, tria ἐμπρακτα (three realized things), 272. Pethar, what it is, 330. Pethen, a Hebrew word, 18. Sword of Peter (μάχαιρα), 483. Name, 329, 330. Pharisees, ἀγρυπνοῦντες (watchful), 93. Given to ablutions, 93. Ἁμαρτωλοί (sinners), νουπλανείς (misled in mind), 124. What kind of sect, the nearest to the Romans, 414. Pharisaic σκυθρωπία (gloominess) and affectation, 545. What the dress of philosophers is, 142. Phul, a bean; hence Apulia, 446. What the right of Pilate is, 500. Pirnus, ἡ ζωή (life), 424. Pis of the Syrians, what it is, 450. Piscina (pool) superior, what it is among the Hebrews, 576. Pithron, what it is, 330. Pito, which is the word of Elias R., 18. Ploni almoni, ὁ δεῖνα (such a one), 7. What kind of poet one ought to be, 118. Poets unskilled in the Greek C and Hebrew languages, Ἑβραΐζοντες (Hebraizing), 225. Poets and judges of poets are not made, but born, 254. Political verses, among the later Greeks, which are they, 182. Positive for the comparative among Hellenists, as καλός (good) for κρείσσων (better), 115. Predicate, how the Gospel of John is to the Syrians, 269, 270. Prefects of the people, how they were called, 194, 195. Presence of God, 456. Prayers of the Jews at table, 12. First of the unleavened bread, 547. Primus (first), what it is for the Latins, 301. Prince of the army, 372; of the soldiers, 372. Beginning of erudition, according to Epictetus, what it is, 206. The Father as the beginning of divinity to the Son, 62. Error of Priscian, 52. Prophet, that is, ὁ λόγος (the word), 289. Who is a prophet, 432, 316. How they are said to have seen God, 309, 510. Prophecy of the οἰκονομία (dispensation), 182. Verses of the Hebrews about it, 182. Classes of prophecy, 429. In it, three things are to be considered, 430. Purpose of this book, 531. Properties, what they are for Hebrew masters, 42. Proteus, who he is, 329. Nearest to the King, how so called, 372. Explanation of Psalm LXXXII, 431. Purple, as used by Nonnus, 491, 496; by Pliny, 496. Purple garment, Horace's λήκυθος (flask), 258. To prune (putare) and to strip branches, 473. Pythian Apollo, 19. Whence Pytho, 18.
R
Rabbinical ineptitudes in the origin of Greek or Roman words, 446. Rambam, Rabbi, 415, 419. Raptores, ἁρπακταί (snatchers), 487. Realist, 237. Regalim, or two feasts in one four-month period of the year, 369. Regeneration, 546. Kings anointed long before, 391. Kingdom, how it was transferred to the Lord, 391. Requirements for sacred studies, 279. Division of things into ἄπνοα (inanimate) and πνεῦμα (spirit), 70. In this, the negligence of Nonnus, 70. Resurrection. A passage concerning the resurrection explained by Nonnus from the ascension, 341. Rex (King), in the Chapters of the Fathers, who is called so, 414. King and Messiah are often confounded, 391. Ros (dew), a word of the Orient, 27. Use of rubellium (red) wine in the Orient, 115, 116, 226. Praise of Rutgersius, 236, 250.
S
Saba, an ambiguous word, 11. Whence Sabasius is named, 11. Sabbath. "And ye circumcise on the Sabbath," etc. Interpretation of the place, 401. Great Sabbath, 547. Patriarchal sackcloth, 144. Christian priests, because they cut around the corners of their heads, how they are called by the Jews, 109. Priests, Levites, Israel, what they are, 331. Priests of Moloch, chomerim, 448. To sacrifice and to adore, 151. History of the Samaritans, 561. Samaritans and Jews, 414, 417. Whence the Samaritans derive their origin, 361. Their foreign cult, 366. Custom, as regards their origin, 364. Sammael, an evil demon, 14. Sanchuniathon, a theological writer of the Phoenicians, 31. Sara under the chuppa (bridal canopy), 359. Use of the word Satan, 399. Whence Satyrs, 16, 17. Scaliger, 280, 377, 502, 510, 518, 535, 536, 541, 443. Scandal, what it is, 474. Whence comedies took their rise, 539. Pastoral scene, 558. Schaddai, an ineffable name, 297. Schecar, a Hebrew word, 148. Schecina, what it is, 188, 292, 293, 295; Scina, 538. Scope of this book, 531. Whoredom and servitude objected against the Samaritans by the Jews, 417. Whoredom, for the Hebrews, rabbis, and Targumists, what it is, 417.
Scourgers, idolaters, 417. Scribal method, 199. Sculpture, as termed by the Hellenists, 504. Sear, what it is, 145. Secina, 538. "With him," i.e., with his own heart, 403. Sedition, a crime common to Christ and the robbers, 488. Seirim, gods, what kind, 123. Semala, Semal, Semel, and Semele, 14. Elders of the people, how designated, 194. Septenary verses, to Varro, which, 182. Septentrio, what it denotes in Hebrew, 20. Septuagint translation, 207. A fable and vanity detected now for the first time, 207, 208. Septuagint translation interpolated in the passage of Zechariah, 516, 517. Burial rite, 522, 524. The law of the Athenians concerning it, 522, 524. The nature of the burial and sepulchre of the Lord, 522, 524, 525; of Abraham, 522. Sequence of what is said by Fabius, 41. Series, βίβλος, 271, 272. Discourse, ἀνειμένος (relaxed), the primary virtue of a paraphrase, 239. The word of God, to whom it is made, the prophet, 432. Serpent of Moses, of what kind, 128. That from which it was suspended, as stated, 353, 354. Serpents, οἰωνοί, 18. Worshipped by the ancients, and above all, by the Phoenicians, 19. Servant of the king, 372. Servants, who they are for the Jews, 414. Properly, regarding the sin reigning, 416. Servitude, and the whoredom objected against the Samaritans by the Jews, 417. "Thus, thus he stood on the summit of heaven," Virgil, 362. "He was set thus at the spring," 361. Sica, μάχαιρα (dagger), 483. Sichar, whence, 148. Of the Sicilians, Boeotians, and Syrians, the *platyasmos* (broadening of speech), in which vowel it consists, 501. Signs requested by the incredulous, how they are designated in Hebrew, Chaldean, and Hellenistic, 339. Silentiarius, an elegant poet, noted, 175. Simple, he believes all things, 416. Sin and Zin, two deserts, 169. Sinear, what in Hebrew, 144, 145. Situlosa (droughty) Apulia, 368. Salutation of the sun, 31. Drowsiness. Defenses against it, 95. Soph-pasuk, 255. Species and figure, opposites, 353. Spirit and soul, for himself, 442. Holy Spirit, of the Son of God, incorrectly stated, 127. From the Father, how, 189. "Proceeds from the Father, and receives from the Son," 476. The Father's, or of the Father, Nonnus's pleonasms, 441. Heretics against the Holy Spirit, error, 468, 469. Holy Spirit, that is, prophetic, 324. The gift of the Holy Spirit is *ametameletòn* (irrevocable), and anything but *metastatikòn* or *apostatikòn* (changeable or apostatic), 180. His presence and constancy, how expressed in Chaldean, 187. Proper name, which, 202. Force and invasion, expressed in various ways, 323. Spirit over the waters, a type of baptism, 76. Sponges applied to the cross, for what use, 512. To stand, concerning age, 537. Concerning intransitive verbs in Hebrew, 543. Thomas, ineptly called *diōnymos* (two-named), 438, 466. Thrasones, whence, 137. Thyades, whence called, 16. Thyrsus, whence, 14. Thysius, 269, 293, 294. Titles, or *aitiai* (causes) of the criminals, 485, 486. Title, what it is, 564. Why the title of the cross is called *tripictus* (thrice-painted) by Prudentius, 199. Thunder, 277. Thunder, φωνή (voice), 455. Passing children through fire, 447, 448. Tonsure, *kyklōdòn* (in a circle), 107. Stoic diligence in the notation of words, 206. Strato, the comic poet, 106. Use of styles and writing forbidden to the Romans of old, 488. Substance, how called according to Varro, 49. Their division, 49, 50. Succa, a stage/scene, 538. Sudar, a term used by the Syrians, 444, and Hebrews, 444, 446. Use of the object in the burial of the Jews, 447. Sudarium, what it is, 445. Sudra, what it is, 446. Suidas noted, 89, 102, 131. Summa genera (highest genera), 50. Summus, for *summate*, 304. Synagogue and temple confused by Nonnus, 249, 420. Of the Syrians, Boeotians, and Sicilians, the *platyasmos*, in which vowel it consists, 501. Tabernacle, a type of whose, 147. Targumin, the term that the Jews use, 233. Targumist. That John looked perpetually to these, 289. Tatian, an ancient writer, 126. Tecupha, Hebrew, what it is, 114. Temples of the spirit, a mark of constancy, 188. The army of the temple, the *speira* (band) of the high priests, 194. Temple of the Jews, of what kind, 163. Temple and synagogue confused by Nonnus, 249, 420. Time, *diōion*, 368. Time, *hinika ekporeuontai hai hydreuomenai* (when the water-drawing women go forth), Nonnus errs regarding the Ascension, 426. Times of J. the Baptist, divided by the evangelists, 285. Land of the Jews, called a hostel/homestead for the Lord, 138. Third person plural of verbs, how used in the Hellenistic manner, 473. Testimonies of John the Baptist, 284, 285, 286. Tetrapla of Origen, 208. Thammuz, who, 9. Thasi, color of an animal, 162. Thenaa, 27. Thea, or *theas*, what it is, 15. Themistius, an ancient paraphrast, 233. Theodoret, a work not yet edited, 495. Theology, what it is, 263. Theomim, which words are so called, 466. Theophylact noted, 428, 441. Thirza, a Hebrew word, 146. Thomas and Didymus, 329. Tragic license, 544, 545. Tragedy, a tearful poem, 8. To translate. Jerome's advice on translations, 247. Tribe, for race, a Hebraism, 227. Triclinium, a term used by the Syrians, 335. Tripudium, in the singular meaning, 227. Tunic of skin, and the rough garment, 143. Tunic of Christ, reaching to the feet (talaris), 504, its border, 504. To howl, 7. Anointing of the Messiah, instituted by private persons, 392; anointing after supper, as expressed by the rabbis, 452; anointing for kingdom and crown, 391, 392. Head of the ointment, what it is, 451; ointment of the head, what it is, 451; how ointment was accustomed to be applied to a king, 392. Universe, what it is, 80. Most illustrious cities, called *kōmai* (villages), 455. City, what it is, 400. Utenhovius, commentator on Nonnus, 1. As the proverb of the ancients says, 7. "Go in peace," 524. Woe, 8. Veil of the face of Moses, *sudra*, 446. Ven, what it is, 31. Venus, whence named, 30; *syndromos* (companion) planet of the sun, 31. Venus of Lebanon, 29. True measure, that is, just, 219. Intransitive verbs are said to "stand" in Hebrew, 543. Words and voices of Horatius, what they are, 57. Truth and figure, opposites, 353. Truth and grace, what they are, 300. Versions, what they are, 39. Bucolic verses, 251. Verses of the heads (chapters), that is, *commata* (sections), 225. Verse, *logoeidēs* (word-like) of what kind, 251. Verses, *holodaktyloi* (dactylic throughout) frequent in Nonnus, 250. *Spondiazontes* (spondaic verses) everywhere excluded in Nonnus, 250. *Versus supoleti*. Judgment concerning them, 248, 249, 250. Distinction of verses is not necessary, nor to be superstitiously observed, 263. Evening and morning, confused by Nonnus, 502. Garments rent in the flagellation, 507. Garment of Elijah, John, Peter, Paul, 140, 141, of the prophets, 142, of those repenting (*metanoountōn*), of philosophers, Stoics, 145, *metanoētikē* (of repentance), *askētikē* (ascetic), 145. Standard, from which the serpent was suspended, 354.
Vicarius regis (King’s Vicar), as mentioned, 372. Victim and sacrifice, 152. Seeing God, what it means, 309, 310. Virgin evangelist, 411. Diverse species of visions, 310. Vile voice *peristréphetai* (revolves), 422. Vile creator invoked by Jews before a meal, 337. Calf made *en graphidi* (in the writing), 558. Words, what they mean to Varro, 49. Infinite words of Greek, Roman, Italic, Gallic, Hispanic, Syrian, Chaldean, and rabbinic origin in use, 229, 446. Interpretation of Hellenistic words to be sought not from Greek, but from elsewhere, 206. Voice of God, thunder, 277. Testimony of Majesty or divine presence, 456. Wouwerius, 208. Xylaloe, 519. Zin and Sin, two deserts, 169. Ziegler’s error, 395. Zupha of the Arabs, 513.
TO THE READER
Since it is not our intention to publish the entire Dionysiac poem—which Nonnus wrote while still a pagan, as it seems, or, as others maintain, in mockery of paganism—we first exhibit the arguments of the poem, which the most learned editor of the Dionysiacs wrote out in French; we provided his Preface above, with his own kind permission. Afterwards, we have transcribed the author’s Invocation along with the entire thirteenth book as a specimen. EDIT. Patr.ARGUMENTS OF THE DIONYSIACS
A**First book.** Invocation. The abduction of Europa. Typhon steals the thunderbolt. The ruse of Cadmus.
**Second book.** Disorders on earth and in heaven. Combat between Jupiter and Typhon. Death of Typhon. Jupiter announces his destiny to Cadmus and reveals the future to him.
**Third book.** Cadmus departs from Cilicia and lands at Samothrace. The palace of Electra. Cadmus tells Queen Electra of his origin. The reply and advice of Electra. Mercury sent by Jupiter.
**Fourth book.** Harmonia refuses Cadmus. Discourse of Venus in the form of Pisinoe. Persuaded, Harmonia loves Cadmus and follows him. Their travels. Cadmus’s struggle against the dragon of Dirce and against the inhabitants of Aonia.
**Fifth book.** Construction of Thebes. Wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia. Gifts of the gods. The four children of Cadmus; their marriages. Aristaeus. Actaeon: his death upon returning from India. Jupiter’s love for Proserpina.
**Sixth book.** Anxieties of Ceres: her visit to the divine Astraeus; she hides her daughter. Union of the dragon and Proserpina. Birth of Zagreus, the first Bacchus: his death. Vengeance of his father Jupiter. The fire and the deluge.
**Seventh book.** Lamentations of Time. Jupiter consoles him and announces the birth of the second Bacchus. Semele: her clandestine union.
**Eighth book.** Jealousy of Juno: she addresses the goddess Apaté, takes the form of Semele’s nurse, and sows envy and pride in her. Semele, consumed on earth, ascends to the heavens.
**Ninth book.** Jupiter as father and mother. Birth of Bacchus. The daughters of Lamos receive him. Ino, wife of Athamas, his true nurse, entrusts him to the care of Mystis. Madness of Ino: her absence.
**Tenth book.** Fury of Athamas. Return of Ino; her flight; she throws herself into the sea with Melicertes. Adolescence of Bacchus. The satyr Ampelus: their common exercises, their games.
**Eleventh book.** Struggle in the waters. Death of Ampelus. Affliction of Bacchus. Eros seeks to console him and recounts the misfortunes of Carpos and Calamus.
**Twelfth book.** The Season of the vintage goes to Phanès to know the future. Ampelus becomes the vine. Joy of Bacchus. Another legend about the origin of the grape. Drunkenness of the satyrs.
**Thirteenth book.** Counting of the mortal army of Bacchus: the Boeotians; the Phocians; the Euboeans; the Athenians; the inhabitants of Aegina, Crete, Arcadia, Sicily, Libya, Cyprus, Lydia, Phrygia, and Samothrace.
**Fourteenth book.** Counting of the divine army of Bacchus: the Cabiri; the Telchines; the Corybantes; the Centaurs; the Cyclopes; the Aegipans; the Sileni; the Satyrs; the Bacchantes; the Bassarids. Battle of the Astacid lake. The river turned into wine.
**Fifteenth book.** Drunkenness of the Indians; they are taken prisoner; Astrais, their leader, retreats before Bacchus. The nymph Nicaea and the shepherd Hymnos. Death of Hymnos. His flocks mourn him.
**Sixteenth book.** Vengeance of Eros. Bacchus’s love for Nicaea. His amorous complaints. He surprises her. Furies and regrets of Nicaea. She gives birth to Telete. Foundation of the city of Nicaea.
**Seventeenth book.** Bacchus leaves Maeonia. Hospitality of the shepherd Brongos. Battle in the mountains. Bacchus, the victor, arrives at the banks of the Orontes. Suicide of the Indian Orontes. Submission of Blemys, leader of Ethiopian Arabia.
ARGUMENTS OF THE DIONYSIACA
A Eighteenth Book. King Staphylus; his son Botrys; his wife Methe. The palace of Staphylus; his splendid hospitality; his death in the absence of Bacchus. The return of the god. His grief. Mourning of the royal house.
Nineteenth Book. Bacchus consoles Methe and Botrys. He institutes games in honor of Staphylus. The poetic contest between Oeagrus and Erechtheus. The challenge of pantomime and dance between Maron and Silenus, who is changed into a river.
Twentieth Book. Bacchus, incited by Discord, takes the road to India. He takes Methe and Botrys with him. He passes through Lebanon and arrives at Nysa, the dwelling-place of Lycurgus. Lycurgus pursues him and disperses the Bacchantes. The god takes refuge in the Red Sea.
Twenty-first Book. Combat of Ambrosia against Lycurgus and her metamorphosis. Lycurgus imprisoned by the nurses of Bacchus. His furies. His deliverance. His blindness. Bacchus leaves the sea. Mission and return of Pherespondes, the god’s ambassador, to Deriades. Ambuscade of the Indians.
Twenty-second Book. March of the army of Bacchus. Defeat of the detachment of Indians in ambush, revealed by an Indian hamadryad. The troops of Bacchus deploy. Splendor of the god. Exploits of Oeagrus, Erechtheus, and Aeacus.
Twenty-third Book. The enemy submerged; an Indian kills himself; the army prepares to cross the Hydaspes; anger of the river; threats of Bacchus. Conflagration of the waters. Ocean, to make it cease, calls Tethys to his aid.
Twenty-fourth Book. Supplication of the Hydaspes; it is changed into wine. Clemency of Bacchus. Crossing of the river. Mourning of the enemy. Complaints of the Indian widow. The feast of the army. Venus, emulating Minerva.
Twenty-fifth Book. Invocation of the poet to Homer and Pindar. Comparison of Bacchus with Perseus, Minos, and Hercules. Attis brings divine arms on behalf of Rhea. Description of these arms, Moria and Tylos.
Twenty-sixth Book. Minerva, in the form of Orontes, awakens Deriades and excites him to combat; enumeration of the Indian army. Genealogy of Deriades, its supreme leader.
Twenty-seventh Book. The armies deploy. Harangue of Deriades; harangue of Bacchus. Jupiter calls Apollo, Minerva, and Vulcan to the aid of his son; the gods choose sides.
Twenty-eighth Book. The charge sounds; the melee begins; Corymbas the Indian. The elephant of Deriades' chariot is killed. Courage of the Athenians. Exploits of the Cyclopes.
Twenty-ninth Book. The combat continues; great deeds of Hymenaios; he is wounded; Bacchus heals him. The army pens the Indians between the Hydaspes and the city. Dream of Mars; he departs from the battlefield to keep watch over Venus.
Thirtieth Book. Morrheus attacks Eurymedon, whom his father Vulcan defends. The Hydaspes protects Morrheus, who falls upon the Bacchantes. Death of Tectaphus. Juno excites B Deriades. Bacchus retreats. Minerva leads him back to the melee.
Thirty-first Book. Juno addresses Proserpine, who lends her the aid of Megaera; she sends Iris, under the form of Night, to Sleep, to entreat him to lull Jupiter to sleep. She asks Venus for her girdle.
Thirty-second Book. Juno decks herself with the girdle: her conversation with Jupiter; their union. The combat redoubles. Bacchus is seized by the rage breathed into him by Megaera, and goes astray. The Indians have the upper hand; all the Greek captains retreat, except Aeacus.
Thirty-third Book. The Graces weep before Venus, who sends Eros to the aid of Bacchus' army: he inflames Morrheus for Chalcomedusa. Amorous complaints of the Indian warrior. Fright of Chalcomedusa, whom Thetis reassures.
Thirty-fourth Book. Agitations of Morrheus. The combat recommences. The hero takes prisoner a large number of Bacchantes whom he gives to Deriades. Punishment of the prisoners. Chalcomedusa lures Morrheus far from the fray. The Bassarids are driven toward the city, where Deriades imprisons them.
Thirty-fifth Book. Defeat of the Bacchantes. Chalcomedusa and Morrheus. Mercury delivers the Bassarids. Awakening of Jupiter and his wrath. He wills that Juno cure Bacchus of his frenzy. Bacchus is restored to the combat, and excites the courage of his army.
Thirty-sixth Book. Combat of the gods. Mercury pacifies them. Melee of the satyrs and the Indians. Deriades attacked by Bacchus. The transformations of the god. The Rhadamanes build ships for maritime warfare. The truce.
Thirty-seventh Book. Funeral ceremonies. The pyre of Opheltes. Games around the tomb. The chariot race. The boxing match. The wrestling. The foot race. The discus. The prize of the bow. The simulated combat of two warriors.
Thirty-eighth Book. The war reignites. Presages. Episode of Phaethon recounted to Bacchus by Mercury. Description of the zodiac. Phaethon guides the chariot of the Sun. Disorders of the sphere. He is struck by lightning and becomes the celestial Charioteer.
Thirty-ninth Book. Fleet of Bacchus. Deriades gathers his own. Harangues of the two captains. Prayers of Aeacus to Jupiter and of Erechtheus to Boreas. Naval combat. Morrheus wounded. Fire-ship of the Cabirus Eurymedon. Conflagration of the fleet. Deriades flees.
Fortieth Book. Minerva excites and deceives Deriades. He dies in the waves of the Hydaspes. Lamentations of the princesses. End of the Indian war. Bacchus dismisses his army, and comes to Tyre. Its description. Hercules Astruchiton. Invention of navigation. Origin of the city of Tyre. Its fountains.
Forty-first Book. Description of Beroe. The nymph Beroe, daughter of Venus and Adonis. Her mother consults the tables of Harmonia regarding her destiny, and prays Eros to inflame Neptune and Bacchus for her.
Forty-second Book. Passion of Bacchus for Beroe. He disguises himself as
a hunter, then as a gardener, and declares his divinity and his love. Neptune loves and admires Beroe. Venus is alarmed by their rivalry, and orders a friendly struggle between the two lovers of her daughter. Forty-third Book. The divine army of Bacchus advances against the divine army of Neptune. Harangues of the two captains. The melée. Complaints of Psamathe. Jupiter stops the fight, and adjudges Beroe to Neptune. Eros consoles Bacchus. Forty-fourth Book. Bacchus arrives at Thebes. Troubles of the Thebans. Dream of Agave. Rages of her son Pentheus. He arms his subjects. Invocation of Bacchus to the Moon. The god, in the form of a bull, presents himself to Autonoe during her sleep. Forty-fifth Book. Delirium of Agave. Tiresias and Cadmus adopt the cult of Bacchus. Reproaches of Pentheus. Reply of Tiresias. The Tyrrhenians. The giant Alpos. Violences of Pentheus. Prodigies in the city of Thebes. B Forty-sixth Book. Bacchus in the presence of Pentheus, who, by his advice, disguises himself as a woman to spy on the mysteries. Pentheus is torn to pieces by the Bacchantes. Complaints of Agave, of Autonoe, and of Cadmus. Bacchus betakes himself to Athens. Forty-seventh Book. Bacchus in Attica. Icarius, his daughter Erigone; their end. Ariadne on the island of Naxos. War of Bacchus against Perseus in the Argolid. Death of Ariadne. The seer Melampus as peacemaker. Forty-eighth Book. The Earth incites her sons against Bacchus. Battle of the giants: they are conquered. The god fights and marries Pallene. Aura insults Diana, who implores Nemesis. Frenzy of Aura; her death. Her son Iacchos. Apotheosis of Bacchus.
NONNUS. DIONYSIACA. BOOK ONE.
The first book shows Jupiter in the form of a bull, ravisher of a nymph, and the sphere shaken by the hands of Typhon.
(1) Recount, O Goddess, the generative breath of the fire-bolt of the son of Saturn, the nuptial spark as the vanguard of a burning blaze, and the lightning which presided over the union of Semele. Tell of the double birth of the twice-born Bacchus, him whom Zeus raised as a liquid babe from the fire... C
(1) A learned critic, M. Ouvaroff, president of the Academy of Sciences of Saint Petersburg, and correspondent of the Institute of France, who before me attempted to rescue Nonnus from oblivion, but who did not push this literary fantasy to the point of translating him, goes into ecstasies over the beginning of the poem.
"This exposition," he says in German, "gives already a precise idea of the manner of Nonnus; for it contains a great part of his properties: artistic and harmonious versification; the superabundant and fantastic character of the description; the varied mixture of phenomena and their erudite complication; the original arrangement of words; the return of certain chosen expressions; finally the witty sallies which govern the whole work, and the sublimity which borders on grandiloquence, are already to be recognized there. The poet has promised a varied song; he will keep his word."
"It must be remarked here with what art Nonnus designates in advance the various myths that he is going to represent. The assimilation with Proteus is particularly ingenious. Bacchus appears at first, sometimes as Zagreus, the son of the Dragon, the enemy of the Titans; sometimes as the son of Semele, raised in the bosom of Rhea; then in the Indian form. Further on, it is the birth of the third Bacchus (Iacchos), then the Homeric myth of Lycurgus, finally the known history of Icarius. The poet, to use his own expressions, is truly a Proteus himself."
I cannot, I will confess, on this occasion make my enthusiasm march in step with that of M. Ouvaroff; I am willing to agree with him that the Egyptian poet paraphrased three lines of Homer in order to make the diverse destinies of his hero spring forth; but I find in such an exposition only a degree of grandiloquence perhaps much more pronounced than in the rest of the epic; and it is impossible for me to forget, even in favor of my author, the precepts of Aristotle and Horace, so well repeated by Boileau: "Let the beginning be simple, and have nothing affected."
"Nonnus," said the too-severe Cunaeus, well before Boileau himself, "committed a grave fault in his beginning; he fell into the ridiculous vice that the ancients call the *parenthyrse*. This happens when the writer grows heated without cause, bubbles over and loses his temper all alone, while those whom he wishes to move only laugh at him or yawn. The exordium must always be D mild, temperate, and modest. When one becomes inflamed at the very first without having prepared others for it, one looks like a mad or drunken man among sensible and sober people."
As for me, setting aside the obscurity of the over-erudite images which disfigure this epic frontispiece, I am struck, from the outset, by the mother-idea adopted by the poet; it seems that he has taken it upon himself to undermine at its base the whole philosophical system that the Emperor Julian had wished to make prevail in that same century. Nonnus leads Bacchus, of Greek origin, to the Indies to civilize them, while Julian brings this same Bacchus from the Indies to enlighten Greece. The passage where the rhetor, master of the world, treats of the allegories of the Bacchic cult, is too curious not to find its place here.
"... Semele was learned in divine things. Indeed, she was the daughter of Cadmus the Phoenician, born of that nation whose science the god of oracles attests in these terms: 'The Phoenicians have taught many routes that lead to the immortals.' - Semele was the first..."
A Bacchus, whom Jupiter snatched, all humid yet, from the flames, the imperfect product of an uncompleted maternity. Both father and mother at once, the god prepared for him, with his own hand, masculine entrails [1] in the incision of his thigh; for he did not forget that, in another painful birth, he had already himself caused to spring forth from a tumor of his brow, Minerva, resplendent and all in armor.
O Muses, bring me the ferules [2], agitate the
I conclude from this that the spirit of Nonnus had already detached itself from those profane myths whose origins he was going to celebrate. Indeed, the invocations of Homer to the Muses and the gods of Olympus proceed from a truly religious sentiment and a believing heart. The Latin poets, following his example, epic or semi-epic, have submitted to this usage which became the rule, perhaps more from discipline than from faith. But Nonnus, a slave in his turn to the formula, appears to me, in this prolonged exordium, to laboriously develop his subject, even at length obscuring, in spite of himself, with metaphysical terms the mystery of the birth of Bacchus, as if he had already detached his convictions from the cult of mythology, and reserved all his adoration for the verses of Homer. In a word, when he illustrates the old falsehoods, still dear to the imagination of the peoples, with all the prestige of tradition, he shows himself already, it seems to me, disgusted himself with the fables which are soon to dissipate before his eyes in the light of the Gospel.
[1] Masculine entrails. — It is the same word in Euripides: *arsena tande bathi nēdun*. (Bacch., v. 530.) "May the body of your father be for you a maternal womb." It is thus that a recent translator has stifled under a periphrasis the excessive crudity of the poet.
[2] The ferules. — The stalks of ferules were consecrated to Bacchus, either because their hollow stem served to carry the fire of sacrifices, just as, according to Hesiod (Theogony, v. 558), Prometheus used it to steal fire from heaven; or, as Pliny holds (book XXIV, c. 1), because this herb, harmful to animals, is loved by the ass, mount of Silenus, and cherished by Bacchus. Plutarch gives two other reasons. The first, entirely material: it is, he says, that these ferule-rods, being at once solid and very light, support the elderly and the unsteady guests without tiring their hand; and that if, in the drunkenness of the meal, they come to strike one another with them, they do themselves no harm. The second motive is entirely philosophical: in giving as an attribute to the god of wine oblivion and the ferule, antiquity intended that one should pardon by forgetting the excesses of the cup, or at least that they should be followed by insignificant and almost puerile punishments.
Apropos of this proverb which Plato cites in the most sublime of his dialogues (Phaedo, § 69): "There are more ferule-bearers than Bacchus," Erasmus indulges in a quite amusing sally. "This means that many men have more reputation than virtue. Indeed, not all those who wear the doctor’s cap are theologians. Not all those who take the title are poets. Not all those who have the cowl are monks. Not all those who attend the offices are Christians. Not all those who have the Golden Fleece are nobles. Not all those who do not yet have the coif are virgins. Not all those who gird the crown are kings, nor are all those who have the crozier and miter bishops, nor are all those popes whose tiara signals holiness. Not all those at last who show an eagle on their standards are generals. It is not, as Plutarch says, either the cloak or the beard that makes the philosopher." (Erasmus, Adag., p. 234.)
A and into your hands give the thyrse chanted of Dionysus; but touch the dance, near the island neighboring the Pharos; set for me the Proteus of many turns, so that he may appear, wearing a varied form, since I am striking up a varied hymn. For if he creeps like a dragon, coiling in a trail, I will sing the divine struggle, where with an ivy-clad thyrse the fearful tribes of the snake-haired giants were slaughtered; and if he should bristle as a lion, shaking his neck-hair, I will shout the Bacchus-cry, stealing the breast of the lion-rearing goddess upon the arm of grim Rhea; and if, aloft in a stormy leap of his feet, he rushes as a leopard, changing his many-crafted form, I will hymn the son of Zeus, from where he slew the race of the Indians, when he rode upon the chariots of leopards and elephants; and if he should liken his body to the form of a boar, I will sing the son of Thyone, longing for the boar-slaying Aura, the mother of the third Bacchus, born later, sister of Cybele; and if he should become as mimicking water, I will sing Dionysus, entering the gulf of the sea to avoid the onrushing Lycurgus; and if he should tremble as a plant, straining with a false rustling, I will remember Icarius, from where at the Bacchante’s winepress the grape was crushed by the feet of the competitive treader.
B Give me the fennel-stalks, O Mimallones; and instead of my accustomed garment, tighten for me round my chest the dappled fawn-skin, full of my Maronian nectar, nectar-like; and let the foul skin of the seals be kept for Menelaus at the hands of the sea-dwelling Eidothea and Homer. Give me the cymbals and the shields; and bestow the double-flute to another, lest I stir my Apollo; for he refuses the breathing echo of reeds, because of Marsyas, whom, having convicted him of being a god-fighter, he skinned...
A while stripping all the limbs of the impious shepherd, and stretched his skin upon a tree and made of it a swollen wineskin, to punish his provocative flute. Begin then, O goddess, the wandering searches of Cadmus.
DIONYSIACA, BOOK XIII
I shall tell in the thirteenth book of the numbering of the army, and of the warrior heroes gathered around Dionysus.
Zeus the father soon dispatched Iris to the divine stalls of Rhea, to announce to the war-loving Dionysus B that with his avenging thyrsus he should drive from Asia the arrogant race of those Indians who know no justice; that he should vanquish in a naval battle the horned son of a river, Deriades the king; and that he should teach all nations the joys of nocturnal dances and the vine-fruit of the vintage.
Iris, rushing impetuously on her wind-swept, beating wings, arrived at the entrance of the resounding cave of the lion-taming goddess C and fixed a voiceless step. With mute silence, she reined in her mouth, and, near the queen of the mountains, she stood bowed. As she bent low, with suppliant lips she kissed the feet of Rhea. At a nod from the august divinity, the Corybantes conducted Iris to the bowls of the divine table; she marveled to drink there this new liquor which charmed her and intoxicated her; then, her head heavy with the fumes of wine, the messenger disclosed to the son of Zeus D, who was present, the will of Zeus:
"Valiant Dionysus, your progenitor commands you to exterminate the impious race of the Indians. Take in your hands the warrior thyrsus, and merit Olympus by your exploits. The immortal court of Zeus shall not receive you without trials, nor shall the Hours open to you the gates of heaven until you have labored. Hermes only with difficulty came to heaven, once he had with his wand killed the herdsman Argus, flashing with eyes from his feet to his hair, and had loosed the bonds of Ares."
• Preliminary observation. In epic matters, all the processes of Homer make him. His enumeration, which prompted so many voluminous dissertations, started by being a law unto itself. It is by the authority of this code of primitive geography that Mycale was adjudged to the inhabitants of Miletus, Calydon to the Aeolians, and that Solon, the wise Solon, seized Salamis legitimately; it is again in imitation of these poetic archives that Herodotus, a Homeric narrator so to speak, reviewed the army and fleet of Xerxes before recounting the great war of the Greeks and Persians. So if Virgil, Lucan, Statius, and even Silius Italicus, the versifying historian, have reproduced this movement of the epic without displeasing us, if Tasso, Ariosto, Camoens, Ercilla, Milton, Klopstock, Fénelon, and Voltaire, in repeating it, allow themselves to be read without regret, why disdain the enumeration of Nonnus? Is it because it is written in Greek verse as harmonious and didactic, if not as simple, as that of Homer? or because it dates from the fourth century, an epoch systematically neglected and ignored? Be that as it may, I must well admit that Orpheus and the enterprise of the Argonauts, Homer and the war of Troy, even Hesiod and his theogonic enumeration, often present themselves to the memory of Nonnus in his review of the peoples gathered under the standards of Bacchus, or rather of the nations that were then favored by the culture of the vine; and yet these facts, according to mythological traditions, must have been subsequent to the expedition of Bacchus into the Indies, if one dared to assign a precise epoch to such fictions. I add that these anachronisms, in the *Dionysiaca*, are mingled with many others even more striking, of which the *Iliad* could have given no example, since Homer wrote a short time after the combats he celebrated. Now, this chronological confusion is saved from time to time only by the repetition of the words *πάρος*, *ποτέ*, *τότε* of the Greek text—beforehand, one day, then—which are quite insufficient to rectify dates or at the very least to designate a century; but, despite everything, a true interest of erudition attaches to these imaginary legends which connect to very positive notions of ancient geography. After this preliminary observation, I enter into the matter.
A Delphine. Your father himself, the first of the gods, the great Jupiter, did not occupy the throne of the stars without fatigue, for he had previously chained the assailants of Olympus, and buried the Titans in the caverns of Tartarus. When you will have suffered, like Apollo and Mercury, you shall also have as your heritage the dwelling of the airs as the prize of your labor.
She spoke, and returned to Olympus. Immediately Rhea, the universal mother, sent forth as a herald to assemble her troops, Pyrrhichus, the dancer with the noisy tambourine; he is charged to proclaim the war and to announce its preparations. Pyrrhichus traverses all the regions of the eternal world, and forms from the most diverse elements the army of Bacchus; he gathers the generations of Europe, the nations of Asia, and leads them all together to the voluptuous Lydians.
But this heroic race of warriors so different, the hairy satyrs, the generation of the centaurs, the tribes of the Sileni with legs bristling with hair, and the phalanxes of the Bassarides; tell them yourselves, O Muses of the Corybantes! for to enumerate the multitude that Bacchus rallies under his spear, ten tongues would not suffice me, nor even ten voices of bronze. To celebrate their leaders, I shall call to my aid Homer; Homer, haven of all beautiful language. And what! do not navigators, wandering in their vagabond course, also implore Neptune for help?
And first, at the call of the god of the thyrsus, hastened Actaeon. He has, to do honor to their common origin, left his fatherland, Aonia, which seven rivers traverse. The phalanxes of Boeotia follow him. These are the citizens of Thebes of the beautiful towers, of Onchestus, seat of Neptune, of Peteon, Ocalee, Erythrae, of vine-clad Arne, whose
B Delphine — the serpent Python, as Apollonius of Rhodes has said (book II, v. 706). Without doubt, because it was born from the corrupted mud, left at Delphi after the deluge of Deucalion, or else, because in testimony of Apollo's victory, the scaly skin of Python surrounded the tripod of Delphi.
C Imitation of Homer — Here Nonnus is proud; he follows step by step the traces of Homer, the complete haven of beautiful language, as he calls him himself; for, after having recoiled, like him, before the task of describing such a multitude, and wished for the ten tongues and the ten voices of bronze, he invokes the Corybantian Muses in place of the Olympian Muses, and begins also the catalogue with Boeotia. There he repeats the names of the localities cited by Homer with such exactness that the text of the Iliad has served me to restore the text of the Dionysiacs. Thus, it is evident that the name of Arne, which begins both verses 58 and 59, must be suppressed in the first, where it has slipped in through the carelessness of a copyist, and must be replaced by Onchestus, which Homer endowed, as it will be here after my correction, with a temple of Neptune. Then instead of [Greek omitted], I read: [Greek omitted]. And I have had no other trouble to restore the measure of the verse than to remove the conjunction [Greek omitted], just as it appears in several of the hemistichs that precede or follow. Nonnus has nevertheless pruned from the Homeric Boeotia, not without doubt Hyria and Aulis, which one finds again in the second class of the Boeotians under the orders of Hymenaeus, but indeed Eteonus, Glisas, Eutresis; and he adds only D Ascrea, to bring a well-merited compliment, moreover, by Hesiod. I would also make a slight inflection to a letter of the Meleone of Nonnus, which will thus become the Medeone of Homer. One might also think that the three cities omitted by our poet did not exist any longer in his time, or even that there remained no longer in the fourth century, in Boeotia, but a very small number of the cities named by Homer and repeated by Nonnus.
— a height without trees; and its temple of Neptune is private of trees also: but poets embellish everything. ([Greek omitted].)
near the road from Thebes to Anthedon, does not sound very high in antiquity, says Eustathius; one knows only that it received its name from a certain Peteon. I have pushed my researches further than the learned archbishop of Thessalonica, and I wish to see, in this certain Peteon, the king Peteos, son of Orneos and grandson of Erechtheus, who, chased from Athens by Aegeus, established himself in Thessaly. He was the father of Menestheus, the skillful charioteer, who commanded the Athenians under the walls of Troy, and who, chief of the faction of the Pallantides, reigned in Athens after Theseus.
— Stephen of Byzantium, because it was the shortest road to go from Thespiae to Thebes.
is the mother of the Ionian colonies of this name, if one must believe Strabon, and not some bold critics, his modern contradictors.
A *Arne, rich in grapes* (7), rejoicing in Dionysus; and those who inhabited Mideia, and the famed small towns of Hilesion, and Scolos, and Thisbe, with its seaside harbor of Aphrodite, and the plain of Schoenos, and Eleon with its pastures, and Copas, with its glorious ground, where I hear it is celebrated for rearing eels, and is still named for its lake; and woody Medeon, and those who occupied the fertile Hyle, the long-legged nurse of the cobbler Tychios; and the wide-stretching ground protected by a chthonic pit, named after the later chariot of Amphiaraus.
(7) *Arné.*—Arné, with many grapes (πολυσταφυλος), is here again under the same qualification (βοτρυόεσσαν), the country proud of Bacchus. The imitation is complete. Arné, the second city of Boeotia, took, later on, the name of Chaeronea, from Cheron, son of Apollo. It saw the triumph of Philip over the Athenians, of Sylla over Mithridates, gave birth to Plutarch, and it hides itself now under ruins where neighboring shepherds shelter their goats, and which, because of this, they call Caprènes.
(8) *Midée.*—Midée, as if by way of compensation, the obscure Midée, which, in the mythological epoch, a single verse of Homer has saved from entire oblivion, has yielded its place to Livadia of a quite modern celebrity.
(9) *Hilesia.*—Hilesia, which must have owed its name to the proximity of the marshes (ἑλος), has left no trace.
(10) *Scolos.*—Scolos, famous in antiquity, since a proverb ordered one to flee its outskirts, Scolos, whose ruins Pausanias himself could not see, shares with Hilesia the epithet of "famous." I should have said "famous" (plural); B for, in the thought of Nonnus, they do not appear to me to acquire celebrity except by reason of the praises of Demetrius of Phaleron, and consequently at the price of an anachronism. In Homer, he says, the names "of the Boeotian cities, imperfect or ignored, take, from their harmonious agglomeration, a certain grandeur and some importance." (*On Elocution.*)
(11) *Thisbé.*—Thisbe, which Homer designates as the favorite sojourn of doves, is seen on the shores of the Gulf of Corinth. It is the port where maritime Aphrodite gathers her most beautiful doves (ἐϋτρήρωνα). And, in effect, the port of Thisbe, now Gianiki, is girdled by rocks where the birds of Venus make their nests in great number: *Dionæis avibus circumsona Thisbe.* (Statius, *Theb.*, bk. VII, v. 261.) Lactantius asserts that Jupiter gave oracles at Thisbe by means of doves, no doubt as at Dodona.
(12) *Schœnos.*—The city of Schoenos, which is placed near Scolos, as in the verses of the *Iliad*, although eponymous from Schoeneus, the father of Atalanta, sees its plain traversed by the Schoenos, the Morikios of today, a very small river, if one judges by its name. The reeds that give it its name generally grow only at the edge of small, slow, or weak watercourses, for they are uprooted and carried off by great rivers.
(13) *Eléone.*—Eleone is still one of those villages, born of the marshes, which seem to appear on the poetic map only in favor of their melodic name and their euphony.
(14) *Copé.*—Copae, a small city near the lake to which it gave or borrowed its name, was renowned for its eels, unknown to Homer. He mentions, however, the eels of the Scamander, which have seemed excellent to me also. The Copaic eels gained great favor at the tables and markets of Athens. The Boeotians, by an ancient tradition of which they could not render an account, (was it therefore by reason of their quality as Boeotians?) sacrificed them to the gods by way of victims: "There are, in effect," says Pausanias, "where one finds the largest and the most exquisite." (Και μεγέθει μέγισται, καὶ ἐσθίειν εἰσὶν ἥδισται). And Archestratus, the partisan of Epicurus, adds in verses worthy of being recorded by gastronomes: "The eel of Lake Copais and of the Strymon is large and of marvelous thickness; it surpasses in succulence all the rest, and it is, in my opinion, the queen of feasts." Κωπαῖοι καὶ Στρυμόνια, μεγάλαι τε γάρ εἰσι, καὶ τὸ πάχος θαυμασταί. Όμως δ' οἶμαι βασιλεύει πάντων τῶν περὶ δαῖτα, καὶ ἡδονῇ ἡγεμονεύει.
(15) *Médéon.*—Medeon, which Homer (ἐϋκτίμενον) calls well-built, does not appear here except as loaded with thick shrubs (λάσιον). C It had been founded by Medeon, son of Pylades and Electra.
(16) *Hylé.*—Hyle, like Copae, owes its name to a small lake which discharges into the western strait of Euboea, but under the open sky, and by the river Ismenos, while the overflowing waters of Lake Copais head there by underground channels.
(17) *Tychos the armorer.*—Hyle was the fatherland of the armorer Tychos, who made the shield of Ajax, similar to a tower (ἠΰτε πύργον). And Nonnus here makes allusion to verse 220 of the seventh chant of the *Iliad*. Tychos, whom Homer immortalized, was that same worker in leather of Neon-Tychos on the shores of the Hermos, with whom the sublime beggar, in his misfortunes, found generous hospitality, and made his first verses: "Honor the stranger who has neither resources nor asylum, O you inhabitants of the city, high and charming, which Cyme brought to birth on the regenerated slopes of Mount Sardene, whose summits cover themselves with shade; O you all who drink the delicious water of the deep Hermos, divine river, birthed by the immortal Jupiter."
(18) *The chariot of Amphiaraus.*—The plain of Amphiaraus designates the city of Harma. It is there that, in his flight, Amphiaraus, terrified, and his chariot (ἅρμα) were swallowed together into an abyss opened by Jupiter. "For the children of the gods," says Pindar, "are terrified also by the terrors that the gods send." Ἐν γὰρ δαιμονίοισι φόβοις φεύγοντι καὶ παῖδες θεῶν. (*Nem. od.* IX, v. 61.)
(19) *Thespiae.*—Thespiae, to which is adjacent Cacosi, according to the geographer Meletius. And is he not the best authority for this part of Greece that he had long inhabited, traveled through, and studied? Thespiae had no longer, in the century of Cicero, other title to curiosity than the Cupid of Praxiteles: *Cupidinem illum qui est Thespiis, propter quem Thespiæ visuntur : nam alia visendi causa nulla est.* (In Verr. act. II, lib. IV, c. 2.) The Roman orator forgets the famous fountain of Thespiae, which, according to Pliny, gave to women the
A city of the Thespians, the deep-breasted Plataeans, / And the well-watered Haliartus, which the streams of the Helicon / Divide in the middle; and those who held Anthedon, neighbor to the sea, / The small town of the immortal fisherman / Glaucus, dweller of the waters; and craggy Ascra, / The eloquent fatherland of the tireless poet, / And the holy city of Graea, and of spacious Mycalessus, / A name mirroring the throat of the gorgon Euryale, / And the Nisaean land, and the eponymous city of Coronos.
failing to borrow the equivalent from him, following his custom, all the while reproducing Hesiod’s humor against his own country through the term *duspemfelon*. It might suffice for me, moreover, to banish irrevocably from the Greek text the word *dafnhessan*, to observe that it is found five verses away, and this time very justly applied to Apollo.
(25) *Graea.* — Graea, which is known to the ancients as Tanagre and to the moderns as Sicamino, gave its name to Greece, having received it itself from Tanagra, daughter of Aeolus or Asopus, as the famous Corinna, born within its walls, would have it. The nymph Tanagra was nicknamed the Old Woman (*Graia*), for having reached an extreme old age. The citizens of Graea were called *Graikoi*; hence the Greeks of our day, whether they derive their origin from Graea, or from a distinct *Graecos* inhabiting Graea; and they have kept this name through the centuries, even after the etymological city (*hieron asty*), the sacred city, has disappeared.
(26) *Mycalessus.* — Nonnus has here, to the advantage of Mycalessus, reproduced Homer's epithet *euruchoron*, of the wide plains; he added to it an etymological commentary to trace the appellation of Mycalessus back to the lowing of a gorgon (*muchêma*); but he is, on this point, in contradiction with Pausanias, a more grave authority. The latter reports the national legends and asserts that Mycalessus took its name from the prophetic heifer which, while guiding Cadmus toward Thebes, came to low in that spot.
(27) *Nisa.* — Is this Nisa, *zafên*, because one saw there a temple of Bacchus? Nonnus says the fields of Nisaea, and, involuntarily no doubt, he thus indicates a territory other than that of the Nissa of the Iliad. I have indeed, in the past, to reach Nisaea, the port of Megara, traversed for nearly an hour smiling countrysides that my guide called the plain of Nisaea. On the other hand, there is no city of Nisa in Boeotia, which Strabon the great geographer, an adorer of Homer, has difficulty admitting. It is desired then to see, in the Nissa of the Enumeration of the Iliad, the hamlet of Isos, of which there remained yet some ruins in the time of Strabon. But, whether Nonnus recoiled before the controversy, or whether he wished to distance himself from Homer, which I could not believe, the fact remains that on this occasion, in citing the plain of Nisaea, he has transported a name from the Megarid to Boeotia.
(28) *Coronos.* — Coronos, founder of Coronea in Boeotia, was, like Haliartus, son of Thersander, “that hero honored in the struggles of young men and in warlike combats.” (Pindar, Ol. II, v. 76.) Coronos was adopted by Athamas, finally cured of those long furies of which we have just moaned in the tenth cantos; and his city became famous later by the battle where Agesilaus defeated all the forces of Greece combined against him. Xenophon was present among the vanquished and has left us the most vivid and striking tableau of it. Coronea was fertile in wheat, as Glisas was in wine. Homer named them both; but Nonnus has suppressed the latter.
A Under the leadership of Actaeon, the Boeotians made their way to the eastern regions; and his ancestor [(29)], the god of the laurel, prophesied victory to the young hero.
The second part of the Boeotian army was drawn up under the orders of Hymenaeus of the rich hair; he had only a scarcely discernible beard, and, still very young, he was cherished by Bacchus. A warrior with white hair followed him to watch over him; his name was Phoenix [(30)]. Thus, Laocoon once embarked on the Argo, the ship of Jason, to accompany Meleager to Colchide and to sail with him. Such was elegant Hymenaeus, in the flower of his adolescence, when he prepared for the war of the Indies. On both sides of his cheeks, a mass of hair, a match for his age, stirred, and the combatants of his own time obeyed him. These were the inhabitants of the citadel of Aspledon [(31)], of Orchomenus, the city of Minyas, where the grove consecrated to amorous dances is found; Orchomenus [(32)], which the goddess Charis never abandons; those who inhabit Hyria, whose soil, an asylum for the gods, has received the name of the hospitable Hyrieus [(33)]. It is there that the giant...
Feracem Messe Coroniam, Baccho Glisanta colentes. (Stace, Theb., l. VII, v. 308.)
We see it; the happy times predicted by Virgil in his fourth eclogue had not arrived, those times when all lands were to bring forth all fruits, *Omnis feret omnia tellus*. We were at that point in Coronea, and we will long remain subject to this more positive axiom of the Georgics: *Nec vero terræ ferre omnes omnia possunt*. (Liv. II, v. 109.)
(29) *Actaeon*. — This Actaeon, killed and buried in the fifth book, then reappearing at the head of the Boeotians in the thirteenth, would have greatly embarrassed me had I not remembered that, by this very verse 302 of the Vth book, Nonnus announces in advance that Actaeon, whose death he recounts, will wage the war of the Indies. It seems to certain critics that the Egyptian poet, a great lover of fabulous chronicles, did not content himself with a single adventure for each of his heroes; and that after having sacrificed Actaeon to the wrath of Diana, as Apollodorus, Euripides, and so many others wish, he resurrects him by his own authority to send him with Bacchus into the Indies. The verse which brings about this double situation has, in effect, every appearance of having been slipped in after the fact into the final mortal narrative, solely to justify Actaeon’s presence in the army, as if Nonnus had improvised it later to figure in his census. I wish at least to draw from this rather confused myth two or three moral conclusions for my own benefit. And first, I say with Theocritus, in an utterly allegorical sense: "Feed dogs, then, so that they may devour you," *Θρέψαι κύνας, ὡς τὸ φάγοντι*. (Idyll. V, v. 38.) Then I maintain with the mythologist Fulgentius, a contemporary of Nonnus, that curiosity gives its partisans more sorrows than pleasures: *Curiositas semper periculorum germana, detrimenta suis amatoribus novit magis parturire quam gaudia*. (Fulg., Myth., liv. III.) Next, I recognize with Natalis Comes (the learned Venetian Noël Conti) a great danger in meddling in what does not concern us and in penetrating the secrets of others: *Admonemur præterea per hanc fabulam ne simus nimis curiosi in rebus nihil ad nos pertinentibus, quoniam multis perniciosum fuit res arcanas aliorum cognovisse*. (Nat. Com., Myth., liv. VI.) Finally, with Palaephatus, the interpreter of incredible facts, I advise not to forget about serious business while hunting. This ancient writer represents Actaeon to us under the traits of a negligent and dissolute farmer; and he draws close in this to the thought of a celebrated modern publicist: for M. the Baron d'Ekstein makes of the two Actaeons (the two princes of Thebes and of Attica, merged into a single king) an "Actaeon-Actaeus," representing under these two names the cultivated and cultivable soil or coast (*ἀκτή*); and since there was also more than one Actaeon, *neque vero unus tantum fuit Acteon* (Nat. Com., ibid.), he gives to the one the agricultural department of fertile Attica, and to the other the hunt of uncultivated Boeotia. This is all I know to say to try to cast a certain glimmer through so many shadows.
(30) *Phoenix*. — If Phoenix, tutor of Hymenaeus, is a person, and even a name borrowed from Homer, Laocoon and Meleager are allusions to the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes. Laocoon: *Τὸν μὲν ἄρ᾽ Οινεύς* *ἤδη γηραλέον κοσμήτορα παιδὸς ἴαλλεν.* (Ch. I, v. 194.)
(31) *Aspledon*. — The citadel of Aspledon, son of Neptune and Midea. It was later called Eudeielos, to designate its happy exposure to the slopes of the evening and to the rays of the setting sun. This epithet, which Homer consecrated to Ithaca (*Ἰθάκην εὐδείελον*) (Od. IX, 20), has received more than one interpretation; it designates at once a very distinct point, highly visible to the eye, which is perceived from afar, and an occidental height, illuminated by the last fires of the day.
(32) *Orchomenus*. — This is the Orchomenus of King Minyas. Homer praises its opulence (Il., IX, 381), and Montesquieu attributes it to the commerce of the Propontis and the Black Sea, whence comes the fable of the Golden Fleece. (Espr. des lois, XXI, 7.) King Eteocles built beautiful monuments at Orchomenus, among others, a temple to Gratitude (*Χάρις*), to thank the gods for his riches. This is what Nonnus alludes to. Great constructions, if one is to believe Strabo, are the proof of great fortunes; "for," he says, "one can only give much when one has much; the vase which fills or empties according to need can be considered as always full." (P. 415.)
(33) *Hyrie*. — Hyrie, the homeland of the Hyrians. Hyrieus was the most hospitable of men, according to Palaephatus, *φιλοξενώτατος*. He received Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury in his small house, *exiguam casam*.
A Orion, born of three fathers who knew not marriage, sprang from the maternal breast of Earth; when the accumulated urine of the three generative gods transformed into a spontaneous product, it impregnated the furrow of a fertile ox-hide, and caused to grow within flanks of leather a mortal whom no union had begotten. And those who occupy the hospitable fields, where the Greeks gathered, stony Aulis B, the dwelling of Diana, where the irritated goddess accepted on her mountain altar the sacrifice of a false Iphigenia. A fawn of the hills was consumed there by the sacred fire, a deceptive image of the true, vanished Iphigenia. It was she whom the cunning Ulysses had brought to marry Achilles before the war, and from this comes the belief that Aulis is the conciliator of the nuptials of Iphigenia, who never married. From that moment, a wind favorable to the ships of the Greeks blew, struck without sound a motionless surface, and submitted the rebellious breeze to the king who murdered a hind. Later, after having traversed the air and landed in Tauris, the young nymph learned there the inhospitable laws of the horrible cauldrons, and sacrificed humans there. But, very close to the homicidal altar, she recognized and saved her brother Orestes, pursued by his terrors even upon the seas. Such was the innumerable troop of the Boeotians, who followed Hymenæus to the war of the Indies.
To these were joined, near the fatidic rock of Delphi, the Phocians, their neighbors, those who inhabited the region of Cyparissus C (35), and Hyampolis (36), whose name is that of the... (Ov., Fast., book V, v. 500). These gods, in reward, granted him an heir he no longer hoped for, because he was a widower. The text says the rest, and says it only too well; for it is difficult to render it honestly in French. (Pudor est ulteriora loqui, Ov., ibid.) To extract myself from so bad a predicament, I yield the pen to Voltaire, much less modest than Nonnus: "One day Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury, traveling in Thrace, entered the home of a certain king named Hyrieus, who gave them good fare. The three gods, after having dined well, asked him if they could be of service to him in some way; the good man, who could no longer have children, told them he would be much obliged D if they would make him a boy. The three gods began to p..... on the hide of a freshly flayed ox. Thence was born Orion, of whom they made a constellation known in the highest antiquity..." (Volt. Dict. philos. art. Allégories.) I interrupt this cynical account, which is going to end in an impiety. In short, Orion is derived from that strange origin, and has lost the first letter of his name, which recalled it too crudely. *Perdidit antiquum littera prima sonum.* (Ov., ibid.)
Now, if, regarding the word Búpons, which I had to substitute for yaíns, to remain faithful to the legend, one were to become formal about my undertakings against the integrity of the *edition princeps* of Antwerp, a reproduction so exact of the most faulty manuscript, I would observe that Graefe allowed himself many other liberties against the Leipsick edition, and that he harvested, during his lifetime, many praises for this fact: when the scholars have consented in majority to read the *Dionysiaca*, I hope that they will be equally grateful to me for all the trouble I have taken to dispel some of the clouds that formed such deep darkness around this epic, so famous, and I have nothing to add to Nonnus, who is here the abbreviator of Euripides.
A The Aonian [maiden] who, they tell me, lifted her proud neck toward heaven, and strove with Tritogenia in beauty. Those too who possessed Pythone, and the steep-sided threshing-floor, and Crissa, celebrated in song, and Daulis, and Panope, having Bacchus as a neighbor; for Apollo, the laurel-god, joined the Parnassus of double peaks, his own inheritance, with his brother Dionysus. And to the gathering multitudes, the Pythian prophetic rock clamored, and the tripod sounded of its own accord, and the babbling surge of the unsilenced Castalian spring bubbled toward the wise stream.
The shield-bearing Corybantes, nurses of the growing Dionysus, adorned the phalanxes of the Euboeans; they who, having the Phrygian gulf beside mountain-roving Rhea, encircled the infant Bacchus still with ox-hides—he whom they once found among the crags, a horned babe covered in a purple robe of wine-color, where Ino had placed him in the care of Mystis, the nurse, mother of the corymb.
All these, then, came from the island celebrated in song: Prymneus, and Mimas with the glancing feet, and mountain-running Acmon, and Damneus, and Ocythous, the shield-clanger, with whom traveled, running alongside the Idaean, Melisseus, nimble of crest. These, whom Socos, father of the wanderer, once possessed by the foolish goad of impiety, had driven from his native land with their six-fold mother; but they, fleeing, came to the Gnossian soil. And they were wanderers back again from Crete to Phrygia, and from Phrygia to Athens, foreign dwellers sharing the same hearth, until Cecrops destroyed Socos with the avenging bronze of Justice. And leaving behind the land of wave-beaten Marathon, they bent their homeward steps to the sacred soil of the Abantes, the earth-born race of the elder Curetes, for whom the music of flutes, the life of the clashing of well-sounding swords, and the rhythmic circles of feet and shield-bearing dance were the concern.
(37) Pythone. — Pythone. This is the name given to Delphi as it aged, and that says it all. (38) Crissa. — Crissa! At this magic name, I suspend my scholarly researches, and I transport myself in spirit to those enchanted shores where I once plunged into the waves that go to bathe Corinth. Crissa, I loved your gulf with its sparkling tides, your horizon of azure, those summits of Parnassus and Pindus that dominate you, those isolated sails that slowly skirt your desert shores, just as one loves nature and her grand scenes in the spring of life. I did not think then that one day I would have, for my only enjoyment, the imperfect pleasure of retracing the memory of it in these commentaries, and of contemplating it from afar, still, through the shadows of the past. I return prosaically to my course of mythological geography. (39) Daulis. — ‘Daulis, homeland of Philomela and Procne: It is there,’ says Thucydides in his severe style, ‘that women performed the deed of Itys; and from this memory it follows that many poets name the nightingale the bird of Daulis.’ (Book II.) (40) Panope. — Panope, according to Pausanias, cannot be called a city, when it has neither palace for magistrates, nor gymnasium, nor theater, nor public square, not even a perpetual fountain. These are houses hollowed out in the rock, or rather mountain huts in ravines. Such was the homeland of Epeius, the maker of the Trojan horse. (41) Mystis. — I cannot resolve myself to let Mystis enjoy in peace the motherhood of Corinth, and this word seems to me of base alloy. Corinth, founder of the city of that name, was the son of Jupiter or of Pelops. One does not know who his mother was. I prefer to read *korumbou* instead of *korinthou*; it would be to sign in this way the *corymbes*, those garlands of ivy or vine that adorn the hair of Bacchus and the Bacchantes. Mystis, the ordainer of Dionysian feasts and customs, Mystis, whom we have seen in the 9th chant (verse 120) invent the ornament of the *corymbes*, should only figure here as the mother of the garlands, and has nothing to do with Corinth, city or hero. (42) Socos. — Socos, the Vigorous, who borrows so unsuitably his name for an epithet of Mercury, the powerful preserver (Iliad, book XX, v. 72), was without doubt one of the primitive kings of Euboea; one also finds, in the Iliad, a Trojan named Socos, noble, generous, avenger of his brother, who falls, like him, under the blows of Ulysses (book XI, v. 458); but he had nothing in common with the inhuman husband of Combe. (43) Combe. — I cannot believe that it is a question here of Combe, the daughter of Ophius, whom Ovid recalls: *Ophias effugit natorum vulnera Combe.* (Metam., book VII, v. 383.) She invented bronze weapons and received the name of Chalcis [bronze-maker], which she bore in Euboea. But this Combe, the armor-maker, had had a hundred children, and her fecundity became proverbial, whereas the Combe of Nonnus had only given birth to seven offspring. We return to Homer, after having strayed from him for a moment, and we arrive at the lands of the troops commanded by the Corybantes.
A With them appear the warlike sons of the Abantes, who inhabit the beetling Erétrie B, Styra, Cérinthe, and the famous Caryste, where the temple and arid plain of Jupiter are found. The citizens of Acré; Acré, where the waves of Cape Géreste thunder, which never cease, and Tycha, and the mountain of Cotylée, and the banks of the Cirès, and the hill of Marmarie, and the plain of the venerable Ægée. Beside them comes to take its place the people whose fatherland is Chalcis. It is the metropolis of these Hellopians, whose hair unfolds behind the head. Seven chiefs command them; but they all have one heart for war; they invoke, on an altar lit with fire, the stars that inhabit the path of the zodiac, and they divide their troops into as many battalions as they number stars of the Pleiades.
Erechtheus, insatiable for combat, enrolled the Cecropides; he is of the illustrious race of this Erechtheus of noble children, who, in his virginal retreat, lit by the fires of sacrifice, Minerva the virgin, born of herself, the chaste nurse, approached with her virile breast; she rocked in her timid and inexperienced arms this son of Vulcan, when the unhappy spouse, deceived in his desires, caused the spontaneous germs of his burning loves to penetrate the womb of the earth.
The troops gathered from Attica appear then. Athens in its entirety, adorned with helmets, C excites the fury of its warlike children who run to the fray with lance and sword. Under their martial march, the Phalerum port resounds, and the city... D
A of the golden cicada (56), which reveals their autochthonous origin, multiplies upon the elegant braids of their hair. With him come the cultivators of the fertile plain of Oenoë (57), of the slopes of the neighboring Hymettus, motherland of the bee (58), and of the mounds of Marathon, shaded by an olive forest (59); the citizens of Cytheros (60), and of the port of Minerva, Brauron (61), the maritime, where is the tomb of Iphigenia, of the Thorician plain (62), and of the rich Aphidna (63), and those who hold the land of Ceres, the august mother, Eleusis (64), where the priests of the goddess of the beautiful ears and the heavy baskets boast of descending from Triptolemus; the divine Triptolemus who, lashing the spotted flanks of the dragons yoked to the chariot of the sheaves of Ceres, once guided these monsters through the midst of the airs. Many old men of Acharnae, brandishing here and there their iron weapons (65), extend them to their children to prepare them for combat. Such is the army B of the Athenians, whose chief is Erechtheus; Siphnos (66), of the same city, comes to his aid.
Aeacus (67) also left his Aegina; it is he whom Jupiter, the aerial eagle, the winged spouse of Aegina, deceitful bird, caused to be born by uniting with the daughter of Asopus after having ravished her. The name of Aeacus had come to him from this union; and more than any other...
(56) The golden cicada. - The Minerva, adorned with a helmet, and the golden cicada, are borrowed from the medals of Athens. (57) Oenoë. - Oenoë, and not Oenone, is a city on the borders of Attica; Thucydides C informs us that because of this situation, the Athenians fortified it to make it a rampart against their neighbors of Boeotia and Euboea. Oenoë, moreover, city of wine, finds its place here better than Oenone, city of the Troad, namesake of the neglected lover of Paris. Here, etymology decides; and, although lavished by Nonnus, the etymology is not without authority. More serious authors have paused there. Did not Plato himself, without departing from our subject, claim that wine is called *oinos*, in Greek, because it makes the majority of drinkers believe they have wit who do not have any. D *Oinos*, because it makes one think one has wit among those drinking who do not have any. (Plato, Cratylus.)
(58) Hymettus. - I will say of the Hymettus as did Pomponius Mela of Athens, their capital: *Clariores quam ut indicari egeant*. And I add, with him, Brauron, Thorice, formerly cities, now only names. *Olim urbes, jam tantum nomina.*
(60) Cytheros. - Celeos, whom I confuse here to dethrone him, obviously usurps over Kytheros, a village of the Pandionid tribe, and on the other hand, Celeos, as we shall see later, reigned at Eleusis, which Nonnus is going to name. Now, in his enumeration, he has the habit of designating the names of the cities themselves, and rarely their namesake kings or the heroes who had sprung from them.
(61) Brauron. - I glimpsed the location among some ruins near the sea, when I looked around me from the top of a mound of Marathon, and when I trampled under my feet the bones and arrows of the Persians.
(62) Thorice. - Thorice, a village of the Acamantid tribe.
(63) Aphidna. - Aphidna, of the Leontid tribe, celebrated for its silver mines.
(64) Eleusis. - Eleusis can be passed over in silence, like Athens, and without more inconvenience.
(65) Acharnae. - Acharnae, the borough of the Oenoid tribe, where iron weapons were manufactured, and which Aristophanes immortalized. These numerous old men of Nonnus remind me of Thucydides. "Acharnae," says he, "is the most considerable borough of Attica," *χωρίον μέγιστον τῆς Ἀττικῆς τῶν δήμων καλουμενῶν*. (Thuc., book II). "Acharnae, renowned in ancient times for its heroes," says Pindar: *Ἀχαρναὶ δὲ παλαίφατον εὐάνορες*. (Pind., N. m., od. II.)
(66) Siphnos. - Siphnos, whom our poet gives as a colleague to Erechtheus in the command of the troops of Athens, appears there, without doubt, in his capacity as son of Sunios, which Dionysius of Byzantium attributes to him on the authority of a certain Nicolas. (Could it not be the learned Nicolas of Damascus?) The eponymous father of Cape Sunium gave birth to a child eponymous of the island of Siphnos. That is in order; but I was forgetting all these topographical etymologies with the aspect of the great landscapes, the day when, heading towards the Sunium promontory that I wanted to approach, I left behind me the hills of Siphante, the ancient Siphnos, and its fertile country sides which cover gold mines, celebrated in the past, lost today. What I then found most striking about this island was the muslin mask that the Greek women of Siphanto, outdoing the Turkish ladies, have borrowed from them; these bands, hiding tightly and under a sort of thick and flattened network the mouth, the nose, the forehead and the eyebrows painted, it is said, with the blackest colors, allow one to perceive only the white of the eyes. I had met at Constantinople, at the promenade of the Field of the Dead, one of these living mummies, and I could have believed her escaped from these same tombs that surrounded us.
(67) Aeacus. - Is it Aeacus (Aeacus), as Nonnus wishes, or the Earth (Aia) of which he was one of the most skillful administrators, as other archaeologists pretend, which is the root of the name of Aeacus? Be that as it may, he deserved, by his love of justice, divine honors; and he went to govern after Aegina, in the kingdom of shadows, the Elysian islands.
*Ereptum stygiis fluctibus Eacum* *Virtus, et favor, et lingua potentium* *Vatum divitibus consecrat insulis.* *Dignum laude virum Musa vetat mori :* *Caelo Musa beat.* (Horace, l. IV, od. 8.)
A ...eager to assist his brother Bacchus. He instructed in the art of combat these phalanxes of Myrmidons, who were originally ants, always pressed to run upon the earth with their many feet; until the moment when the prudent Jupiter gave a superior form to this lowly insect born of the soil. The battalions thus arose fully armed; and all at once the silent swarm, sprung from the earth, this ant of another nature, became a body endowed with human form and with speech. Aeacus was their leader. On his rich shield, as a sign of his origin, he had traced the intelligent bird, the emblem of Jupiter, which carries off a woman in its caressing talons; one also saw there the river consumed by the thunderbolt, and on its banks, the sad and plaintive Nymph, even though an inanimate image, looking sideways at her father, the unhappy Asopus, with his slowed current, as if she were mourning his fate: she seemed to say: "Your victory over my father is therefore the first pledge of your love."
Asterios, who is distinguished by his beauty, commands the Cretans of many tongues. He is as lovable as he is valiant. The nymph Androgeneia (68) of Phaestus (69), forgetting her maidenly wisdom, and yielding to the love of Minos (70), had formerly brought him into the world in her palace of Cydonia (71); now he leads to Bacchus the people of the hundred cities, and in this way honors the race from which his father is descended. Minos, in fact, had the same origin as Cadmus, and was a cousin of Semele. All these diverse combatants obeyed this single leader. The warlike inhabitants of Cnossus (72) and of Lyctus (73), united with the troops of Miletus (74). With them armed the numerous citizens of Gortyn (75), of Rhytium (76), of the fertile Lycastus (77), of the territory of Phaestus-Cydonia, which Tournefort has recognized as the modern Canea.
(68) Androgeneia. — Androgeneia was from the city of Phaestus-Cydonia, which Tournefort recognized as being modern Canea. B (69) Phaestus. — Phaestus, conquered and destroyed by the Gortynians (Polybius, bk. IV), had been famous for the innate taste of its inhabitants for banter (Athenaeus, bk. VI), and Cydonia was a colony of the Samians who built temples there. History speaks thus through the mouth of Herodotus (bk. III), while mythology holds that Cydonia and Phaestus were founded by Phaestus and Cydone, fathers-in-law, brothers, or sons of Minos.
(70) Minos. — But what was Minos, whose wisdom passed into a proverb, when, as the legitimate spouse of Pasiphae and of Crete, the personified Crete, he seduced Androgeneia, and forced, by the fear of his violence, the nymph Dictynna to cast herself into the sea?
(71) Cydonia. — Nonnus begins by establishing at the first rank of his Cretan nomenclature the cities that Homer cited himself.
(72) Cnossus. — The great city (Homer, Od. XIX, 178), abode of Minos, where the tomb of Jupiter was. Long the capital of the island, it had to yield this honor to Gortyn and Cydonia. Later, Cnossus, in its decadence, saw the birth of Strabo. And I cite this torch in gratitude, which illuminates me in my dark investigations.
(73) Lyctus. — Lyctus, an inland city, well-built (Iliad, XVII, 611), colony of the Lacedaemonians (Aristotle, Polit., bk. II, ch. 8), and home of Idomeneus: *Lyctius Idomeneus* (Virgil, Aen., bk. II, v. 401).
(74) Miletus of Crete. — Miletus, metropolis of another more famous Miletus. This hero or this village primeval of Crete also gave their name to the ruins that I saw on the banks of the Rhyndacus, in Bithynia, between Loupat and Mikalitza; my geographical maps, in default of my guide, indicated them under the ancient name of Miletopolis.
(75) Gortyn. — Gortyn, a great fortified city (Iliad, bk. II, v. 646), which shared with Cnossus the primacy and the political importance; it is now a forgotten village, which the terrestrial river of the Lethe still traverses.
(76) Rhytium. — Rhytium, which the multitude of scolopendra made them abandon, if one is to believe Aelian, who says that they also forced the settlement of this city to move (Hist. anim., bk. XV, ch. 26). It is, without doubt, this little venomous scorpion, which is so common in the Orient, where it travels during the humid seasons.
(77) Lycastus. — Lycastus, whose whiteness, or to say it better, its clayey soil in Homer (*arginhoessa*), no more than its fertility in Nonnus (*eukarpoto*), have been able to save it from time. I would have wanted to find some affinity between this epithet of Homer, "whitening," and the nymph Arges, "white," about whom Plutarch speaks. She was native to Lycastus or Lyctus; Jupiter carried her off, and transported her to the mountain Argillos, in Egypt. Now, this clayey mountain of the banks of the Nile, I take pleasure in recognizing as the chalky Mokattam, which dominates Cairo. In any case, Lycastus already existed no longer when Strabo wrote in its vicinity. Soon, neglecting Phaestus, of which he has already made mention regarding Androgeneia, after having exhausted the treasure of Homeric Crete, our poet borrows no longer from anything but his own resources. C D
A of the high-crested city of Gortyn were armed, and inhabitants of Rytion, and of fruitful Lycastus, and of the land of Idean Zeus, and the dwellings of Thennae, and the plain of Cissamos, and the fair cities of Cytaeum. Such was the leader who came from Crete. As he advanced, shedding a prophetic brightness with hotter rays, the star of Ares, his namesake, shone, a herald of future victory; but having conquered in battle, he felt a strange, unaccustomed goad; for he was relentless. He was not destined, after the strife of the Indians, to see the ancestral cave of Ida, that shelter of Erinys, but he preferred a life of exile. Instead of Dicte and his Cretan citizenship, he took up residence in Scythia, and having left behind old Minos and Androgeneia, being a man of wisdom, he went to the barbarian nations of the Colchians. He named them Asterians, and gave the Colchians a Cretan name, to whom nature alone provided foreign laws. Forsaking the ancestral Cretan herd of the nurse-maid of Amnisos, he drank, with human lips, the strange water of the Phasis.
Only Aristaeus came slowly, the last of the others, of those who inhabited the land bordering on the land of Greece, he who from the many-holed hives of sweet honey lifted his proud neck, and contended with wine-pouring Dionysus for the prize of honey-sweet victory. The dwellers of Olympus were judges for both; but the son of Phoebus, offering the freshly-flowing juices of the hives to the immortals, missed the honey-sweet victory; for the gods, having received the thick stream of the honey-loving bee, quickly felt a sharp satiety from the unpleasing dew. And the satiety was the third cup of the blessed; and they did not taste the fourth cup when it was mixed, though they were very thirsty; but delighting their minds with the rain of Bacchus, with its fine drops, B of Jupiter the Idean (78), of the soil of Thenae (79), of the plain of Cissamos (80), and the fair walls of Cytaeum (81).
Such was the chief of the army that came from Crete. When he marched, the star of Mars, his namesake, sparkled and, with more ardent rays, threw a prophetic light as a precursor of victory. But after his triumph, Asterios was seized by a strange taste for an unaccustomed country, and did not wish to see again, after the war of the Indians, the warlike cave of the rocks of Ida, his paternal home. He preferred the life of an exile; instead of Dicte (82), the citizen of Gnosos settled in Scythia. He abandoned old Minos and Androgeneia, and came, a civilized man, among the barbarian populations of Colchis, where they sacrifice guests; he called them Asterians, and thus gave a Cretan denomination to these same Colchians whose strange laws nature alone ordained. Then, renouncing the paternal waves of the Amnisos of Crete, which had seen his childhood, he drank, in his maturity, the foreign water of the Phasis.
Of all those who inhabited the regions bordering on Greece, Aristaeus alone came without eagerness and even as the last. Proud of having invented honey and hives with a thousand compartments, he had disputed in vain with the god, creator of the vine, for the prize of the sweetest beverage. All the inhabitants of Olympus, as many as there be, were their judges. The son of Phoebus presented them with the nectar freshly flowed from the combs; but the victory escaped him; for, upon receiving this thick product of the prolific bee, the immortals were soon disgusted by the insipid drink; they tired of it from the third cup, and the most thirsty refused to touch it when it returned full for the fourth time; while they delighted C to draw in long draughts the limpid liquor of Bacchus, and drank it incessantly for a whole day. In their drunkenness, they marvelled one after another at the sweetness of the place, the importance of which has no more been altered by the centuries than its spelling. A manuscript bears, instead of Cisamos, Dictamos, which was a city of Crete, and was also called Dictynna, always in memory of the nymph Dicte or of the famous Dittany.
Et le dictame idois, qui par le daim mangé, Ne guarit seulement son flanc endommagé Par le trait gnosien; ains promptement rejette Contre l'archer voisin la sanglante sugette. (Dubartas, Trois. jour de la semaine, l. 1, p. 1286.)
(81) Cytaeum. — Cytaeum has passed for having disappeared under the city of Candia: its harmonious name has faded before the modern word, and yet, despite the negation of Tournefort, it is truly Greek, from *chandax*, ditch; this name was given to it by the Saracens, who fortified it in the ninth century; and Candia, which communicated its softened, but barbarian, appellation to the whole city, has designated, for a long time, the divine island that we have just traversed in the company of Homer and Nonnus.
(82) Dicte. — I cannot forget the pleasure that the sight of this mountain gave me, when, after a stormy night spent among the reefs on the great waves of the Carpathian sea, I found soft breezes and calmed waves under the shelter of the mountains of Crete; finally, when, on a day of the most burning dog-days, gliding slowly over the waters almost at the shade of the shore, I contemplated the black firs of the summits of Dicte, and, lower down, its arid rocks and its picturesque promontory.
1259 NONNI PANOPOLITANI …of this beverage, and joyfully called for one cup after another; and they drank in the wine, that charm of the imagination, an indefatigable gaiety. Jupiter, no doubt, admired the works of the bee, the drops of honey, and the ingenious multiplication of the swarms, the invention of Aristaeus; but he gave the palm to the liquor of Bacchus, for it eases pains. And it is thus that Aristaeus, ill-cured of his spite against his happy competitor, came so slowly to the war of the Indies, and departed tardily from the sojourn of Cyllene, the dwelling of Mercury; for he had not yet inhabited the first island of the Meropes (83). He had not yet softened the inflamed vapor of the hours of drought and brought the beneficent breaths of Jupiter, the vanquisher of evil. He had not yet, keeping watch under a garment of iron, for the brilliance of the devouring constellation, halted and lulled to sleep, throughout the night, the fire of the Dog Star (84); thanks to him, now the winds refresh the world with their light breaths, while she launches fire and aridity from her burning throat. He still dwelt in the plain of Parrhasia. The wandering people of Arcadia, who feed on acorns, followed him into battle, as did the possessors of the banks of the Ladon (85), of the great sacred woods of the Lycaeum (86), of craggy Stymphalus (87), and of the towns sung by the poet: Ripe (88), Stratie (89), Enispe (90), Mantinea (91), and finally Parrhasia (92) to the great [city…].
1260 for the whole day they drank the flow of soothing wine. And drunk with sweet wine, one gazed at another, Desiring from one another a second cup with pleasant spirit, Having insatiable joy from the mind-delighting wine. And Zeus admired the works of the honey-dripping bee, And the cunning travail of the honey-loving birth, The gift of Aristaeus; and to wine-pouring Dionysus He granted to take the first-fruits of the victory over toil. A Thence Aristaeus traveled slowly toward the story of the Indians, Late in arriving, having previously snatched away the victory of anger, Leaving the midday seat of Hermes on Cyllene. For not yet had he settled in the former Meropian isle, Not yet had he stopped the fiery steam of the thirsty season, Bringing the life-giving breeze of Zeus, the averter of evils, Nor, iron-clad, watching for the gleam of the star, Holding back the Dog Star of the scorching fever, Did he soothe the night, while even yet the thirst-inducing fire, Hurling heat through the ether with a burning throat, Is cooled by thin breezes in gentle breaths; But still he dwelt in the plain of Parrhasia; and as he went, The acorn-eating, wandering Arcadian people were stirred, They who held the Ladon, and the fair groves of the Lycaeum, And craggy Stymphalus, and the much-sung little town Of Ripe, and Stratie, and Mantinea, and Enispe, And wooded Parrhasia, where is the plain of the goddess.
(83) The island of the Meropes. — It is in the island of Ceos that Aristaeus reigned, disgusted with Boeotia after the death of his son Actaeon. Nonnus, in designating it by the name of the island of the Meropes, borrows this epithet from the Homeric hymn, Κῶς τε πόλις μερόπων ‹ἀνθρώπων› (Hymn. to Apoll., v. 42), and confuses Ceos with Cos, the fatherland of Hippocrates. Alas! the most minor Turk of our day makes the distinction, since Cos is still under the Muslim yoke, while Zea, modern Ceos, depends upon the kingdom of Greece. Be that as it may, Aristaeus, benefactor of this island, was worshipped there under the invocation of Jupiter Aristaeus. B One observes regularly at Ceos, Cicero tells us, "the rising of the Dog Star, to conjecture from it the good or bad influences on the course of the year." (Cic., De divin., book I, ch. 57.) (84) Aristaeus and the Dog Star. — Nonnus recalls here summarily some of the benefits of Aristaeus, which he detailed in the fifth book. He repeats a whole line and a hemistich of his preceding description, and, even in this, he has the example and the excuse of Homer; then, he returns complacently to the invention of honey and the raising of bees. "The bee," says Eustathius, in a judicious and witty remark, "has a real affinity with poetry, by reason of all the trouble that its composition gives it, as by the sweetness of its work, and the industrious regularity of its labor. Poetry takes its share of duties quite similar and of these same fatigues. For, without labor, nothing beautiful." — Οὐδὲν γὰρ τῶν καλῶν πόνου χωρίς. (85) The Ladon. — Lasion, unknown in Arcadia, is going to disappear in my text and in my translation beneath the floods of the Ladon, the famous Ladon, of which so much has been said through all the centuries, but of which one no longer says, as did Pausanias: "It passes for the most beautiful of all the rivers of Greece, and even of barbarian lands." It is true that, higher up, the ancient archaeologist, almost always exact and positive in his judgments, attributes this superiority to the limpidity of its waters. "One would be wrong," he adds, "to believe this river important enough to have islands similar to those of the Danube or the Po, when they are at most large [no more than a small ferry]." (86) The Lycaeum. — Mount Lycaeum, from which I have seen the peaks dominate southern Arcadia from afar and lower themselves abruptly toward Messenia, is still one of those mountains endowed in the East with the title of Olympus. Et cum Cyllene gelidi pineta Lycæi. (Ovid, Met., v. 217.) These pines of the Lycaeum and Cyllene have given way to thorny shrubs and a stunted vegetation. Polybius says, in effect, that its surroundings are abrupt and difficult, δυσχωρίας. C (87) Stymphalus. — Nonnus qualifies it as "craggy"; Polybius, in fact, says that its surroundings are abrupt and difficult. (88) Ripe. — As for Ripe, I will hardly understand whence would come the isolated celebrity with which the Greek text qualifies it, and here is what Strabon said of Ripe, as of (89) Stratie, — and of (90) Enispe and its neighbors: — "They are difficult to find; and if one found them, that would be of no use, for they are deserted." It is forbidden to me to push my commentary further on this point; I give only to these three towns, of which certain detractors have wished, in spite of Pausanias, to make islands of the Ladon, the common epithet of ἀειδομένας τε πολίχνας instead of ἀειδομένην τε πολίχνην which is found in the singular in the text, and that signifies that these three towns have been already celebrated by Homer, the poet par excellence. (91) Mantinea. — Mantinea, Homer’s "lovely" (ἐρατεινή), has ceased to be so in Nonnus, who has disinherited it of every attribute, despite its titles to glory. Fr. Hardouin, who commented on Pliny, as I am trying to comment on Nonnus, makes it [a city of Jupiter]. (92) Parrhasia. — Founded by Parrhasius, son of Jupiter. Ancient city which also poetically gives its name to Arcadia. Lupercal Parrhasio dictum Panos de more Lycæi, said Virgil, who sometimes also sought the etymological meaning.
A ...the stillness of the primeval birthplace of Rhea, and the plain of Pheneus, and the city of Orchomenus, Orchomenus rich in flocks, the abode of the Aphidantes; and those who held Arcadia, the city of Arcas, whom his mother Callisto once bore to Zeus; and his father, having set him in the sphere of the stars, called him the tempestuous Herdsman. So great was the host that Aristaeus armed with the Arcadian spear, leading nomad hounds into the fray for men fighting—he whom Cyrene, another huntress Diana, destroyer of lions, bore to the love of Phoebus, when the fair Apollo had carried her through the air, upon his raptorial and nuptial chariot, into the midst of the sandy wastes of Libya. And while he was still hastening, leaving behind the prophetic laurel, Apollo the father himself armed him with his own hands; and he gave to the boy a bow, and fitted a damascened ox-hide shield to his arm; and he fastened the hollow quiver, hanging down along his back by a raw-hide strap. And after him came Achates, darting arrows from Sicily, and his fellow-councillors, shield-bearers, followed him, and the people of the Cossyrians, and a great host of the Elymi, and those who [the Palici...
[Translational note: The following is an account of the commentary following the Greek text.]
(96) Arcas. — And here, finally, is this founder of Arcadia, who, upon departing with his mother Callisto to the celestial sphere, left his name to his native province, and his tomb at Mantinea: his remains were transported there from nearby Mount Maenalus, according to the terms of a Delphic oracle, expressed in this rather prosaic verse: B *Where Arcas lies, from whom all are called by name.*
(97) Achates. — Here Nonnus seems to have let himself go, and to be swimming without a cork; for Homer did not send the slightest Sicilian deputation to the siege of Troy; but Virgil will soon be there to rescue him; and, in the first place, this Achates who commands the Sicilian troops seems to me to be purely a reminiscence of the Aeneid. Moreover, my voyage to Sicily in the year 1840 enables me to rectify the topographical notions of Nonnus, or rather to repair the errors of his copyist. It is not the promontory of Pelorus that bears a frowning head; it extends, on the contrary, toward the Strait of Messina and the rocks of Scylla, a long sandy beach perfectly in conformity with the description Nonnus gives of Cape Pachynus, which, for its part, does not present to the sea the ground of a peninsula (νησαῖον δάπεδον), but rather a steep hill. It is sufficient, therefore, to reconcile the Greek text with geographic accuracy, to leaf through the last pages of my *Twenty Days in Sicily*, and to ensure here that the two promontories, Pachynus and Pelorus, change places with each other.
(98) The Cossyrians. — I cast aside without pity the Cillyrians, a people that has never been part of any Sicilian or other region, however little known, from the first rank that this census had offered them, and I was going to put in their place, in the Greek text, the Lilybaeans, whom, without this correction, Nonnus would have passed over in silence. Now, it seemed to me that he was too good a geographer and too accurate a nomenclator to separate, in the thirteenth book, one point of the triangle from the other two points, and Lilybaeum from Pachynus and Pelorus, when he had already united them in three. C
(99) The Elymi. — Eryx and Segesta were the capitals (Thucyd. I, ch. 2.—Silius Ital., book XIV, v. 46).
A
Those who surround the temple of the Palices (100), those who inhabit Catane (101), a maritime city, neighbor to the Sirens (102). These Sirens, whom the rosy-cheeked Terpsichore saw born from her union with her horned spouse, the impetuous Achelous (103); and the possessors of Camarina (104), where the mobile Hipparis (105) vomits noisily its winding waves, and the sacred city of Hybla (106), and those who live near Etna, where fire-craters cause to spring forth from the bosom of the scorched rocks the incandescent flames of Typhon's bed, and those who spread their habitations over the brow-laden Pachynus, the peninsula lengthened toward Pelorus, where the sea beats the shore, and the Sicilian Arethusa (107), where creeps the traveler Alpheus, who goes into exile all laden with the crowns of Pisa. He carves a path for himself through the waves, rolls, a slave of love, on the surface of the seas, a wave which their bitterness never corrupts, and preserves its flame always burning beneath the coolness of the floods.
With them comes Phaunos (108). He has left this prodigious plain of Italy, dominated by a double summit which is branded by fire (109). Circe, united to the king of the seas, son of Saturn, bore him; the enchantress Circe, the sister of Aeëtes, who dwells at the edge of the forests, in the obscure and circular depths of a palace of rocks. The Libyans also enrolled themselves. They dwell in the B
(104) Camarina, — which one sees from so far, *Camarina procul* (Virgil, *En*., III, 70). (105) Hipparis, — river or stream vaulted by Pindar (*Olymp*. V). (106) Hybla — and its bees, rivals of Hymettus. (107) Arethusa — finally, sung by so many poets; and regarding all these melodic Greek names, I refer all my readers again to these same *Twenty Days in Sicily*, if they are sufficiently hungry for commentary not to be content with those which precede or will follow. As for me, I could not tire of them. For, finding myself useless to this century, I throw myself back into that one; and I am so spellbound that these old things interest and impassion me. (Montaigne)
Nevertheless, since I have, ten years in advance, written on Sicily all that can aid in the understanding of the text of Nonnus, clear enough in this place, I ask permission, to procure a diversion for my mind and my pen, to translate another Greek poet besides, and to say with the sententious Theognis: « And I too, I once went to Sicily; I too, I have seen the fields covered with the vines of Euboea, and Sparta, illustrious city which the Eurotas bathes, laden with reeds. Everywhere I have been welcomed with kindness. And yet these foreign lands have never given me enough pleasure to make my heart forget that nothing is better than the fatherland. »
(108) Phaunos. — This designation of Italy has nothing precise nor satisfying, whether one keeps the word *pyrisphragiston*, sealed by fire, or whether one adopts *pyrisphragiston* (sic), swollen by fire, more intelligible in French than suitable in Greek. There would always remain the enigma of the three points, *trilophon*, or of the three summits: by substituting *dilophon*, the two summits, which nears more closely the edition of Falkenburg and consequently the original manuscript, one could see the Apennines, whose peaks, if they are not double, look at least onto the Italian plains on both sides. But it is more probable that, by an anachronism pardonable in a poet, Nonnus wished to designate the campaigns of Naples, and the two heads of Vesuvius, which, in his time, already counted three centuries of ravages, but which did not exist for Phaunos. (109) The summits of fire. — It is in this sense that... C D
the learned commentator of the bronzes of Herculaneum has resolved the difficulty, in translating this passage thus: Fauno vien dopo, dagli arsicci campi D'Italia, ove due teste inalza un monte Fauno di Circe figlio, e del gran Giove. (Bronzi, t. II.) And yet, there remain to me some scruples concerning this epithet, *trilophos*, which we have already encountered (book VI, v. 329), applied to the country of the Tyrrhenians, and which, instead of Vesuvius and Monte-Somma, could designate the Alps and their continuation, the Apennines, under the varied aspects of their summits and their slopes. A (110) The hill of the Graces is found in Herodotus (book IV, § 175), and the river Cinyps, cited further on, descends from it to run for very little time toward the sea, like all the torrents of Northern Africa, other than the Nile. (111) Maurousia. — It is Maurusia, the country of the Moors, *gens Maurusia*, of which Iarbas, spurned by Dido, is the king in the Aeneid. Nonnus designates here by his epithet, *eremonomos*, the nomadic Moors of whom Dionysius the Periegetes makes this remarkable description: “It is in these deserts that the innumerable tribes of the nomads extend and disperse themselves.” B dwelling in the cities near the clouds—those that Cadmus founded in the course of his travels on the western edge of the world. For, carried away by the blasts of contrary winds, it was there that he dwelt for a long time with the nymph of Thrace, his companion in navigation, Harmonie, still a virgin. Her beauty, which fame makes to be the cause of combats, had armed all the neighboring rivals. The Libyan army had surnamed her his Charis: the charming daughter of the Bistonian land flourished, in fact, like a mortal Charis; and is there not in Libya a hill of the Graces also? (110) Foolishly consumed by the desire to carry her off, the people who live in the deserts of Maurousia (111) rose up entirely in their horrible fury; it was a barbarous war. But Cadmus made the lance of the Libyan Minerva vibrate in his marriageable hands, and fought to defend his spouse Harmonie; he was aided by Jupiter, Mars, and Venus, and put to flight the entire race of the Ethiopians of Hesperia. Thus antiquity tells it. It is there that, near Lake Tritonis (112), the charming Harmonie was united for the first time to the vagabond Cadmus. The Hesperidian nymphs made the song of Hymen heard. In their gardens, Cypris and Eros, to adorn this happy marriage, hung a golden vine over the nuptial bed, a dowry well worthy of such a love; and, in their opulent retreat, Harmonie, as well as Cadmus, crowned their hair with this rich foliage, in place of the accustomed rose. Laden with these golden gifts offered by the golden Venus, the bride appeared even more beautiful. It was then that the Libyan Atlas, her maternal grandfather, wakening the joyful sounds of the celestial lyre, made the sphere that rested on his bowed shoulders turn in the dance; and with a voice brought close, he sang the song of the wedding of Harmonie. In memory of his spouse and of this amorous union, Cadmus founded on the land of Libya cities to the number of one hundred (113), and endowed each of them with inaccessible ramparts dominated by towers of stone: grateful for these benefits, their warlike inhabitants present themselves in the first ranks to take part in the wars of Bacchus. They had left the lands near to the Moon when it comes to be born (114), and the retreats C where they live on the shore and in the middle of the forests, seeking in the hunt their miserable existence, for they do not know how to split the earth with the plow; they never hear the pleasant sound of the chariot, nor the lowing of the oxen that return to the stable. They graze themselves in the midst of the oaks, without knowing the ear of grain, without understanding the harvest. (112) Lake Tritonis. — It is also the lake or the river Tritonis, situated, like the garden of the Hesperides, in the vicinity of the ancient Atlas. (113) The hundred cities of Libya. — It is thus that, by the foundation of a hundred Libyan cities, Cadmus was to accomplish the prophecy of which Herodotus speaks. "A Triton," he says, "announced to Jason, cast by the tempest onto the coast of Africa, that one day the Greeks were to build one hundred cities on the banks of Lake Tritonis." Τότε ἑκατὸν πόλιας οἰκῆσαι περὶ τὴν Τριτωνίδα λίμνην Ἑλληνίδας, πᾶσαν εἶναι ἀνάγκην. (Herod., book IV, ch. 179.) (114) The Moon when it comes to be born. — I had to renounce the commentary that Graëfe promised us on this verse; for, having been awaited for thirty years during his life, it will not appear after his death; I therefore establish the text thus: *Τηκομένης ναίοντες ἐδέθλια γείτονα Μήνης.* It would be a question here, according to my conjectures, not of the moon, but of the island of Mena, situated in Lake Tritonis, and inhabited by the ichthyophagous Ethiopians. D
C of the prophetic oracle of the horned god. There, the Hesperian Jupiter, hidden under the name of Ammon and in the form of a ram with triply-coiled horns, once announced the future with his prophetic mouth. Then came the cultivators of the banks of the Chremetes, the sandy and arid plain, neighboring the waters of the Cinyps, the Auschises and their companions the Cabales, favorites of Mars, whom the valley of Zephyr nourishes. Such was the numerous population of the hundred cities. Crategon commanded them. Anchinoe, daughter of Chremetes, had brought him into the world in the plain which her father the river waters, after her fleeting union with Psyllos the senseless; Psyllos, the antagonist of the gods, whose crops the Notos, the scorching wind, had one day dried up with its consuming vapors. Immediately, transporting Mars and his sparkling helmets upon the sea, Psyllos had gathered a swarm of maritime warriors to raise a vengeful struggle against these devastating winds; he intended to sacrifice the burning Notos, and to the sound of shields, he brought a powerful fleet near the Aeolian islands. At the sight of his madness, the winds also armed themselves, attacked his vessels with their resounding tempests, agitated all their gathered breaths together, carried them away, and buried beneath the sea Psyllos as well as his troops.
(Diodorus, Book III.) I have moreover, to support my version, Bochart, who would wish to read *athomenes* (burning [plain]), by reason of these expressions of Diodorus: "Mene possesses great vents of fire," (*ἔχει πυρὸς ἐκφυσήματα μεγάλα*); he is supported himself by Triller (*Crit.*, Book I, ch. VI), who proposes *liquentis*, of a melting island; and if I adopt this latter reading, it is because it resembles more the term of the manuscript, *tiktomenes*, and better explains the error of the copyist.
(119) Crategon. — Crategon, son of Force, is a character totally unknown in Greek mythology, and belongs without doubt to some legend of Egypt or Africa that Nonnus will have gathered on the spot.
(120) Psyllos. — Psyllos, the senseless, is taken here probably to personify national imbecility. "The wind of the south," says Herodotus always, "having dried up their cisterns, the Psylli held council among themselves, and resolved, by a unanimous consent, to make war against the wind of the south (I report what is said in Libya). Arrived in the deserts, this same wind began to blow and buried them under the sand." One reads on this subject in the *Mémoires de littérature de l'Académie*, vol. X, p. 437, regarding the tradition of the Psylli buried by the winds of Africa in the sands of the desert: "Nonnus outdoes all this marvel in the XIII book of his Dionysiacs, where, making the enumeration of the peoples who accompany Bacchus in his expedition of the Indies, he supposes, on the occasion of the Psylli, that one of their kings, to avenge the death of his son, equipped a fleet against the wind of the south, that he landed at the Aeolian islands with the design of attacking it there, and that the winds, armed for their defense, submerged the king Psyllos with all his vessels. Is it not admirable that this king goes to seek in the north the wind of the south? For the Aeolian islands are to the north of the Great Syrtis; but it is something about which Nonnus has little embarrassed himself." I have at heart to whitewash my poet of the unjust imputations of M. l'abbé Souchay. There is nothing extraordinary nor inconsistent in that Psyllos, to extinguish the devastating river of his campaigns, and not to avenge the death of a son, of whom neither the fable nor the Egyptian poet have spoken, went to attack the winds at their home, in their kingdom and their citadel; it is a tactic approved in all times and, moreover, those who find it ridiculous should they not remember that Nonnus has made of Psyllos a senseless man?
A
The phalanges of the Cyprians are under the orders of Agapenor (121) and of Lapithos of the beautiful hair. Many warriors follow them; these are the happy inhabitants of Sphecia (122), which the sea bathes in its roundness; Cyprus, divine retreat of the loves with rapid wings; Cyprus, honored by the name of the primitive Cypris, and of which Nereus, tracing the contours with the point of his maritime trident, made the shape similar to the dolphin, his companion. For, at the moment when the productive and divine dew, mixed with a powerful germ, fertilized the foam of the seas, and created from it the goddess of Paphos in the regions of Cerastid Cyprus (123), it was a dolphin that ran, in its prudent instinct, on the surface of the waves, and supported there Venus seated on its back; the possessors of the plain of Hylate (124); of the walls of Chytros (125); of Tamase (126); of Tembros (127); B
(121) Agapenor. — From Libya to Samothrace the journey would be long and the transition abrupt. And yet all the texts of Nonnus, both printed and manuscript, agree in bringing us back to Samothrace to send us back immediately to the island of Cyprus. This movement, contrary to the ethnographic order, surprised me. And the more I reflected upon it, the more I became convinced that there was a strong transposition of the text. I believe I have done well to repair it. To this end, I have transported the thirty-eight verses that separate Psyllos the Libyan from Agapenor the Cypriot (from 392 to 431), to the end of the enumeration, three verses before the end of the book, that is to say under the numbers 527 to 565. In this way, the reader passes quite naturally from Egypt to Cyprus, which is the usual route; and he will have very little road left to travel to return from the summits of Mycale to Samothrace. Thereby, Nonnus will have imitated the Homeric order, which, without enjambment, always goes from one neighboring province to the other. He will have, in addition, to crown his nomenclature, reserved the memory of the first singer of the world, and placed the end of his enumeration under the patronage of Orpheus, as the invocation to Homer makes it the end. These good effects will have cost him nothing, for his part, and for me, only a few figures changed in the pagination of the leaves.
It is by an identical procedure, but with a lesser transposition of the text, that I have placed the Mygdonians after the Phrygians; verse 514 seemed to order me to make this reform; and since the army of the Indies meets in Mygdonia, the Mygdonian contingent had to close the catalogue. I have only made Caunos and Orpheus appear after it, whose personal adventure or memory Nonnus wanted to recall for us, and thus to crown his long enumeration with a sort of poetic episode. Now my conjectures and my procedure of reclassification, which have pushed Samothrace to the end of the book, have received a perfect confirmation from a manuscript consulted at the Vatican by my friend, M. the Count Ad. de Caraman, in 1854. It is the Regina copy, which belonged to Queen Christina of Sweden, where the final verse 562 directly follows the enumeration of Samothrace, as common sense had prematurely indicated to me. C
We are now therefore at the island of Cyprus; and first of all I eliminate from the Greek text that valiant Litros of whom no one ever heard (Λίτρος ἀγήνωρ), and I substitute for it the famous Agapenor, who, after the siege of Troy, was thrown by the tempests onto the island of Cyprus where he founded Paphos. Ἐκοσμήτην Ἀγαπήνωρ εὐχαίτης τε Λάπηθος. I use for this effect, to re-establish the rhythm, the dual gender, just as Homer taught me in an entirely similar occasion: Τῶν μὲν ἄρ᾽ Ἀμφίμαχος καὶ Θάλπιος ἡγησάσθην. (Iliad, II, 620.)
(122) Sphecia, — literally, the island of Wasps; and further on,
(123) Ceraste, — the Horned one, by reason of the multiplicity of its capes, are varieties of the primitive names of the island of Cyprus reunited in a single line by Lycophron; I add that Stephen of Byzantium did not understand it, and that he is not without excuse, given the habitual obscurity of the Alexandra (Lyc., verse 447). Then I come to
(124) Hylate, — which also figures in Lycophron, and which is the city Dyle or Hylate, consecrated to Apollo. There has never been in the geographical dictionaries, and especially it has never remained in my traveler's memory, any other — than *The grand tower of Sestos, Where Hero, for love, so dared.* (Marot.)
I am therefore going, in place of this Sestos, a stranger to the island of Cyprus, which the Greek text carries, to propose Chytros, now Citria, or Cythere, or Palæo-Chytro, if one believes the judicious d'Anville; Chytro, whose honey rivaled that of Hymettus (Diophanes, Geop., book XV). I do not know if, in this circumstance, I am not letting myself be carried too far by my old leaning for Citria, and if I am not committing a grave topographical error; but I see, and I would like to see everywhere again, this delicious valley of Cythera, with which my imagination is imprinted; watered by the waters of the high and abundant spring of Mount Panacre that we are going to encounter further down, it is shaded by orange trees always in flower and in fruit. It is there that, after a whole day of poetic fatigues in these picturesque hills, I received at the house of the rich Hadji Pétraki the most relaxing hospitality. It was this same Peter the Pilgrim whom I was to recognize, three years later, poor, exiled, almost mad, in the streets of London, and whose misfortunes M. de Chateaubriand helped me to relieve. I stifle these reminiscences which make my thought return, with a sigh, toward a happier age; D
(126) Tamase. — Certainly it ought not to be far from Chytri, since Ovid affirms that it is the best region of the island. *Telluris Cypri pars optima* (Met., book X, v. 545); no doubt by reason of the abundance and the quality of its copper mines (Strabo, book XIV).
(127) Tembros, — another dependency of Apollo Hylate, is cited in a verse of the Bassarica of Dionysius the Samian, which Stephen of Byzantium has preserved for us; and this verse confirms the name of the following city Erysthée, which Græfe seems disposed to contest.
A and a sanctuary thick with trees of Panacrus, dweller of the mountains. B And from Soli came a numerous host, and from Lapethus, which they later named after the leader who at that time gathered the people, and who died in the turmoil of the wine-press [or, in the din of the fray] and was buried, leaving his name to the citizens. And those who held the city of Cinyrea, still named for the stones of the ancestral Cinyras, and the plain of the seat of Urania, named for the ethereal void, because it fostered citizens radiating like the form of the stars of heaven. And those who held Carpasia, a sea-beaten floor of earth, and Paphos, the wreath-bearing harbor of the delicate Loves, the landing-place of Aphrodite rising from the waters.
(128) Erysthée — belongs to Apollo the physician, or savior (from *Erúomai*, I save), worshipped in Cyprus for having healed Venus of her love after the death of Adonis, without a doubt, adds a malicious chronicler, while trying to replace him.
(129) Mount Panacrus. — These three cities, packed into a single verse of the *Dionysiaca*, bring me back, in spite of myself, to Mount Panacrus which dominates them. Meursius, on the faith of Nonnus, had called it Panarcius (*Cyp.*, lib. I, p. 42); but Abr. Berkelius, in commenting on Stephen of Byzantium, substituted Panacrus there. Instead of this latter name, which I thought belonged to a mountain in Crete, I would have in my turn willingly qualified it as Mount Phlacrus, "Bald Mountain" (*Chaumont* in French), if Nonnus had not boasted of the thickness of its forests. For, to be truthful, I have seen only bushy thickets and vigorous shrubs, in full vegetation in the month of June, on these heights of Mount Panacrus, bristling with rocks and sharp peaks.
(130) The Solons — (book V, § 110), are designated by Ptolemy as inhabiting the northern slopes of the island. "Departing from Egypt," says Plutarch-Amyot, "Solon passed into Cyprus, where he had very great friendship with one of the princes of the country named Philocyprus, who was lord of a city, not very large, in a very strong position, but in a harsh, meager, and sterile country. Wherefore Solon counseled him that it would be much better to move it from that place into a beautiful and fertile plain which was below, and there to rebuild it larger and more pleasant than it was: which was done at his persuasion; and he himself was present, having entire superintendence of the building of the city, which he helped to arrange and order very well, as much for pleasure as for strength and safety, so that many people came from elsewhere to live there. And he, to honor Solon, called his city Soli, which before was called Aipeia."
(131) The Lapeths — or Lapithes, named later after this Lapithus, who commanded the Cypriot battalions with Agapenor, were to the north of the long mountain which divides the island into two regions and two climates: the charming city of Lapethe, thus designated by a verse of Alexander of Ephesus (*Steph. Byzant.*), *Kai himeroessa Lapēthos*, is today the wretched hamlet of Lapito.
(132) Cinyras. — Cinyras, thus called after Cinyras, incestuous father of Adonis, whom maritime Cyprus saw filled with riches by the divinity; and the wealth that the divine hand spreads is the most lasting. (Pindar, *Nem.*, 8.)
(135) Urania. — I did not at first recognize the city Urania, namesake of the celestial sphere. I thought I had found some traces of it in this invocation of Catullus, from which some critics have even chased it: "O Venus," he says, "you who honor with your presence holy Idalia, Ouria/Urania, Amathus, etc." But I later encountered a satisfactory explanation of it by half. Meletius asserts that in the neighborhood of Carpasia is found, brought together as in the *Dionysiaca*, the plain *Oura boos*, "tail of the cow"; and it is indeed the eastern extremity of the island whose shape one has sometimes compared to a heifer. The learned Archbishop of Athens turned Strabo’s *Boosoura* in this way; and I see no inconvenience in it. But Nonnus, frightened no doubt by the vulgarity of the image, must have sought a more elevated etymology; and it seems to me that, in his turn, he has carried it too high, since, by a strong hyperbole, he makes of its inhabitants as many stars. Moreover, *Ouraboos* would have its counterpart in ancient and even modern geography: one knows more than one promontory called "Bull's Head," Bucephalus, not to mention the charger of Alexander; and the Delta formed by the two branches of the Nile below Cairo is also called "the belly of the cow" (*Batn el-Bakhara*) in the language of the Fellaheen. Nevertheless, I must think that Nonnus borrowed his Urania, like the following city, from Diodorus Siculus, who makes it one of the conquests of Demetrius.
(134) Carpasia — (and not Crapasia as Græfe wishes it) was founded in the eastern part of the island by Pygmalion, brother of Dido, and king of the city of Tyre which was almost opposite on the continent.
(135) Paphos. — Everything is said about Paphos, if it is not that the torrent from which it drinks some drops of water is this same one.
(136) Satrachus — where Venus and Adonis would be today quite embarrassed to bathe during the season, prolonged in the island of Cyprus, where
A for she has very often flooded the son of Myrrha, her spouse, with the waters of this river, when he gives himself over there to the pleasures of the bath. Finally, the States of ancient Perseus, where Teucer, fleeing Salamis and the anger of Telamon, was one day to found a second Salamis B (137), more famous than the first.
The voluptuous phalanxes of the Lydians flocked together. Those who occupied Cimpsos (138) with its rich pebbles; and the haughty Itone (139); and the vast Torebie (140); and the nurse of Plutus, Sardis (141), pregnant with subterranean opulence, contemporary of Aurora; and the Earth, which the clusters of Bacchus adorn, where this god, while yet a child, filling a cup with the juice of the vine, poured it for the first time to Rhea, and in memory named the city Cerassas (142); and those who had as their portion the slopes of Hoanie (143); and the currents of the Hermus (144); and the waves of the Metallos, whose yellow treasures cause the silt of the Pactolus to gush forth and shine in its waters; and the multiplied ranks of the Stataliens (145).
One bathes there in the open air. And yet this river Satrachus must be the same as the "Barbaros river," with a hundred mouths, which has no need C of rains to fertilize Paphos. (Eurip., Bacch., v. 404.) As for the rest, Paphos, though no longer the capital of the island, is still its most famous city.
(137) Salamis, Lapithos, and Paphos form the first three sections that Cluvier, the most learned geographer of modern times, determined for the island of Cyprus. The fourth alone is missing in the census of Nonnus; and it is Amathus. One will notice here that the verse of Nonnus, "where once Teucer, etc.," is the literal translation of Horace: *Teucer Salamina patremque Cum fugeret.* (Liv. 1, od. 7.) Teucer, brother of Ajax and creator of Salamis, was luckier than Helenus, brother of Hector; the latter founded on the shore of Epirus only a weak simulacrum of his country: *Parvam Trojam simulataque magnis Pergama,* while Teucer established in Cyprus a city much more considerable than his tiny fatherland. "And these Cyprian cities," cries the chorus of the Persians in the enumeration of the countries subject to Darius, "Paphos, Soles, and Salamis, whose metropolis is now for us the cause of so many tears." (Aeschylus, Persians, v. 895.) Before having traveled in a few hours all this island of Salamis, neighbor to Athens, I had followed in its transformations the other Salamis of Teucer, from its antiquity, begun under the names of Coronis and Constantia, up to the last, which was Famagusta: and I saw the ruined ramparts of this city of the Venetians whiten at the end of the long plain of Cyprus when I was hunting francolins in the beds of torrents bordered with oleanders.
(138) Cimpsos. — I should have had to give up on Cimpsos, and search for a replacement for it among the Lydian cities, which are rare or at least little known, if I had not finally met it, city or country, in a verse of Lycophron (verse 1353) between the Tmolus and the Pactolus. Tzetzes names it without adding anything. Meursius and Potter neglected it in their commentaries on the unintelligible Alexandra, perhaps by reason of a certain appearance of strangeness that this word carries in itself, and I do as they do. Now M. Dehèque, who has devoted himself recently with such happy patience to guessing the riddles of Lycophron, has not stopped any more than I at Cimpsos.
(139) Itone. — Itone is also a city of Lydia, said Etienne de Byzance, when he speaks of the Itone of Thessaly; that is all I know about it. I have nevertheless discovered in the Pharsalia a certain Itonus who, at first, minted silver and struck coinage: *Primus..... Fudit et argentum flammis aurumque moneta Fregit.* (Lucan, l. VI, v. 402.) This primitive monarch must have been of Itone in Lydia, if even his name did not naturally signify "Itonian." "Of all the peoples that we know," says Herodotus, "the Lydians were the first to make, for their use, coins of gold and silver" (book I, § 94). The metals brought by its rivers or produced by its soil abounded therein.
(140) Torebie. — Torebie, whose name our poet has softened by favoring the meter of his verse, was founded by Torrhebus, son of Atys, like Lydos, and both of them gave their name successively to the region; but Lydos left his own to it. Their sister Torebie was loved by Jupiter and had a son, Carios, who, for his part, gave this name to one of the mountains of the country.
(141) Sardis. — Sardis, D whose soil was heavy with silver and gold, *euvdinous*, was truly the nurse of Plutus, chthonic god of subterranean riches, for it was the capital of the kingdom of Croesus.
(142) Cerassas. — Cerassas, a region associated with Bacchus, takes its name from the verb *kérannumi* (I pour or I mix the wine), source of so many other etymologies. It must have been situated on the slopes of Tmolus, father of generous wines. *Firmissima vina, Tmolus et adsurgit quibus.* (Virg., Georg., l. II, v. 97.)
(143) Hoanie. — Hoanie is a city of Lydia, cited in the Bassarica of Dionysius and nowhere else, which we have lost to my deep regret, for they would have thrown great light on my investigations. Etienne de Byzance, who recalls them, qualifies it as a city; here it is a mountain.
(144) Metallos. — Metallos is a source or an affluent of the Pactolus which explains itself.
(145) Stataliens. — The Stataliens seem to me to constitute, with the Arimi of the Iliad, a single and same people where Typhoeus lies overturned (book II, v. 763), Typhoeus the volcano, personified.
A It is there that, vomiting the burning exhalations of the flaming thunderbolt, Typhoeus had set fire to the surrounding region. Under the swirling vapors of his fires, the summits of the steep peaks, dried out by devouring sparks, crumbled into ash. Then, leaving the perfumed temple of the Lydian Jupiter, a priest appeared, unarmed, to fight with his dominating word and to subject to obedience the son of the Earth; a penetrating word which replaces the sharp iron. His lance is his intrepid mouth; his sword is his tongue; his shield is his voice. From his inspired throat he brings forth these words: "Stop, wretch!" B Immediately the incandescent giant, chained by the magical power of the invincible word, stops and trembles before this man armed with the lance of intelligence; and, better than iron, these avenging words become shackles. Never had the terrible two-hundred-armed Typhoeus shuddered before the arrows of the thunder as much as before the powerful magician whose mouth launches an eloquent shaft; struck by these sharp words, he groans under the cutting edge of the voice; and already scarred by the thunderbolt, already pierced by a spear of fire, he has encountered the fire of thought, even more burning: he is struck by a blow that leaves neither blood nor trace behind it, and he succumbs; then he forcibly suspends his march, solidifies, plants his monstrous feet in the bosom of his mother, and takes root there... But all these things, time has accomplished among the primitive men.
Beside the valiant Lydians ranked the Phrygian peoples; the inhabitants of Boudée; of Telmesse, a celebrated city, adorned with its beautiful trees and the shades of its vast forest; of Drésie, and of the banks of the Obrime, which mingles its waters with the winding course of the Maeander; of the land which bears the name of Doias; the possessors C of Celanae...
(146) Etymology of the Stataliens. — This etymology is found further on in verse 485 of this same chant of the Dionysiacs: Στῆθι, τάλαν. "The word is the weapon of Apollo," said Himerius, Λόγος δὲ ἄρα τὸ βέλος Ἀπόλλωνος (ap. Plut., p. 113). And as one topic leads to another, I cannot help but apply to Nonnus and to myself, his humble translator, what M. Boissonade says so judiciously of this Himerius and of M. Wernsdorf, his collector: "Some readers of a taste too severe, perhaps, and too disdainful, will not thank him overmuch for all the pains he has taken to make us read, as completely as possible, a declaimer of the Lower Empire. But good minds know that nothing is to be despised; that one must carefully collect and conserve even the smallest remnants of antiquity, that monuments illuminate one another, and that those which one would sometimes believe oneself entitled to neglect become precious by the light they can shed upon the most beautiful masterpieces." (Boissonade, Biog. Univ. art. Himérius.)
(147) Boudée. — Boudée is cited in the Iliad as a well-inhabited city, εὐναιομένη. Was it in Thessaly, in Boeotia, or in Macedonia? I wish to believe with Nonnus that it was also in Phrygia; and it could have some analogy with this stop of Scipio, Beudos quod vetus appellant, which Titus Livy mentions (book XXXVIII, ch. 15).
(148) Telmesse. — Téménie is a Phrygian city on the borders of Lycaonia. That is all that Stephen of Byzantium says of it; and Strabo does not mention it. The celebrity which Nonnus attributes to it vanishes before this almost unknown name. But if, instead of Téménie, we read Telmesse or Termesse, which must have been neighboring, a city quite different from this other Telmesse or Telmisse whose ruins I believe I have seen in Lycia, the meter of the verse will lose nothing by it; and since, according to the testimony of Cicero, it had an excellent school of haruspices (qua in urbe excellit aruspicum disciplina), and furthermore it has been praised by Herodotus, Arrian, St. Clement of Alexandria, and St. Gregory of Nazianzus, the epithet ἀειδομένην would thus find its just application, and the great sacred woods, εὔσχιον ἄλσος ἀρούρης, would have their reason for being (if I dare, on such a subject, to express myself in such a modern way) in the agros uberrimos maximeque fertiles (Cic. De div., lib. II, ch. 42), whose fertility favors the experiments of D divination.
(149) Drésie. — Drésie is yet another of these insignificant localities that the poet Denys in his Bassarica had alone designated. Could it be the homonymous homeland of the warrior Dresos who fell under the blows of Euryalus, at the beginning of the sixth chant of the Iliad?
(150) Obrime. — The river Obrimos has another ending according to Pliny, Obrimas. Titus Livy speaks of its sources, near which Seleucus went while traveling from Apamea to meet Scipio.
(151) Doias. — Doias is a borrowing by our poet from Apollonius of Rhodes. "The plain of Doias," says his scholiast, "is near three cities inhabited by the Amazons, according to Pherecydes the historian: Lycastie, Themiscyra, and Chalybe." Not being able to retrace its location, I admire at least its euphony.
A They inhabited the broad-flowing streams and the auspicious river Orgas. With them joined those who were allotted to dwell in the cities near the Sangarius and the Epictetus region of the land, whose chief leader, having left behind the serpent-haunted Dirce, was Priasus, a settler in the Aonian land. For when rainy Zeus flooded the plain of Phrygia, pouring down high-coursing water in rainy seas, and the oaks were hidden, and in the thorn-bearing glens the thirsty hills surged like rivers—then, abandoning his moist dwelling, covered by the rain, and flowing with a dry-roaming, spear-casting roof, Priasus migrated to the gulf of the Aonian land, escaping the death-bringing, rainy water of Zeus. Yet always, while shedding tears among men of another land, he remembered the Sangarius, and sought the familiar spring, drinking the alien water of the Aonian river. But at last, Zeus the Highest calmed the snow-heavy swell and the watery necessity, and from the heights of Sipylus he drove back the water from flooded Phrygia; and the Earth-Shaker moved the whole stream away with his trident into the deep chasms of the unfathomable sea, and the precipices were laid bare of the resounding snow. B And then, leaving the Aonian land, Priasus, the far-thinking, entered his own fatherland; and his heavy-kneed father, with the supporting pull of his arm, he snatched up in his homecoming embrace—he whom, for the sake of his pious deeds, the great Zeus rescued from the rainy destruction—him whom they call the Torrential. From the Phrygian gulf, the high-minded warriors gathered around Priasus. C
(152) Célène. — Célène, which has since become Apamea, is situated at the foot of Mount Signia, which is surrounded by the three rivers Marsyas, Obrimas, and Argas. This connection and this proximity, which Pliny attests, have been a marvelous resource for clarifying one of the most jumbled lines of Nonnus. I have therefore set aside the version of Cunaeus, *hiera rheumata Gorgous*, [sacred streams of Gorgo], that of Falkenburg, *Daeochria*, and even that of Graefe, *hicastēria Gorgous*, [judgments of Gorgo], just as obscure; and, persuaded that my poet, a partisan to excess of complete reminiscences and prolonged images, did not wish to separate the river—
(153) Orgas. — ...named one next to the other, I give to the first the Greek ending *os*, just as Nonnus proceeded with regard to its neighbor, instead of *as*, the presumed product of Caria in the barbarian language, *Karōn barbarophōnōn* (Homer, *Il.* II, 867). Then, having noticed that Strabo speaks of its slow and tranquil course, *prāon kai malakon*, I have composed from all these elements, or rather I have restored to the text these words: *hilaou rhoou Orgous* [the auspicious stream of the Orgas]. Finally, emboldened by my own initiative, I have changed in the same line the epithet *chrysochōrous*, which Graefe finds stupid, and his own *chrysopphorous*, which seems to me equally ill-suited to Célène, for that of *euruchoros*, spacious, which seems to me more suitable for a city bathed by three rivers and destined to bear later the name of Cibotos, the universal ark. Such is and will remain my reasoning on this line 517, until some new commentator or reader of Nonnus tries to overthrow it; but the one and the other are very rare.
(154) La Phrygie Épictète. — I claim again to be entirely right when I strip the land of Elespide, which is an enigma to all scholars, and make of it the soil of Epictetus. Phrygia-Epictetus in fact comprised the greater part of the cities that the Sangarius waters in its upper region, and before it moves closer to the Euxine.
(155) Priase. — The rain of Jupiter (*Dios ombros*) was among the Greeks an excessive, diluvial rain, of which the king of the gods reserved the privilege to himself alone; he could lend his thunder and his storms to Pallas to punish the second Ajax, to Juno to persecute Aeneas, but he kept his rain for himself. Now, as Theognis says, Jupiter cannot please everyone, whether he lets loose his rains or keeps them back. And it is from there that comes the *Métayer* of La Fontaine:
*Whether he had heat, cold, fine weather, or the north wind,* *In short, from the dry or the wet . . . .* *Jupiter consents. The contract passed, our man* *Acts as king of the air, it rains, it blows, and he makes in short* *A climate for himself alone. . . .*
I ask permission to interrupt the course of my meteorological observations in favor of a few lines of this episode of Priasus. The same eyes that have justly softened at the image of the Greek of Virgil dying on the land of Latium with the sweet memory of Argos, will they not have a tear for Priasus, weeping at the memory of the Sangarius and regretting the source that had been accustomed to quench his thirst? The epithet applied to this exile who thinks backward, *histeropomnēs*, does it not have here, I dare say, a sublime expression? Let us agree: these three lines, so melodious and so touching, which stop the reader of their own accord to make him sigh, and are so well engraved in his mind, redeem the dryness of a nomenclature and compensate for many asperities.
A Gadius and Stamnus armed the Indians for the fray, they who strike the earth with rhythmic soles. And seeing this dancing army leaping and bounding, you would say their leader was conducting his armed men in a chorus, and not into battle. It is the Mygdonian lyre that regulates their march with a dance-song. Its sounds, instead of leading them in rounds, precipitate them into the mêlée. Amorous reeds are for them warlike trumpets. The double flute of Berecynthus resounds; and the tambourines, struck on both sides by their noisy hands, clang beneath brass rattles.
The son of Asterios, who marches in the army on a different side from his father, Miletus, at the flower of his youth, stands beside Bacchus. His brother Caunos accompanies him: Caunos, still quite young, leader of the Carians; he guides them to the war of the Indies; he has not yet experienced this fatal and deceptive love which destiny reserves for him and which his innocent sister must inspire in him; he has not yet celebrated and invoked in his songs Juno, herself a sister and companion of Jupiter, image of this fraternal union which he is one day to desire so ardently; he has not, near the others of Latmos, where Phoebe never sleeps, envied the tender loves of the Moon, intoxicated with desire for her spouse Endymion, who sighs beneath the neighboring rock. Byblis is still the chaste Byblis. In his innocence of these baneful passions of the same blood, Caunos has only yet learned the hunt; and the nymph, at the departure of her amiable brother, has not yet lost her form to her tears, and made the currents of a plaintive spring gush from her inanimate body.
With Miletus, and under his orders, hastened the warriors of Mycale and the inhabitants of the banks of the Meander, whose tortuous course crosses subterranean abysses before crawling out into the daylight.
Then came in a crowd the warriors of Samothrace, robust and sturdy like the Titans. It is their king Hamathion who sends them; Hamathion, slowed by old age, with a thick beard and white hair. With them, the inhabitants of Myrmeke, on the sea, and of Mount Saoce, B and the flowery Saoce.
A and the land of Tempyra, and the groves of the Odrysians with their green fields, a thick brushwood of trees, and divine Zerinthos of the sleepless Corybantes, a foundation of the fabled Persis, where there are orgiastic haunts of the torch-bearing maiden; and those who dwelt by the many-angled foundation of the land, and those I hear of by the neighboring sea, the paths of subterranean Poseidon. So many allied ranks came; and they established the kindred progeny of primeval Electra. For there, Harmony, a race of the sky, blood of the sea, was given as a wedded wife, without a dowry, to Cadmus by Ares, Zeus, and Cytherea, the protectors of the gods. B To these arrayed with Dionysus of the thyrsus, Electra, the seventh star, rose through the ether, a favorable sign for the struggle; and around the victory, the echoing voice of the Pleiades resounded, gracing Dionysus who brought the blood of their kinswoman, and giving the army similar courage. And as they came, Ogyros led them, a second Ares to Ares, Ogyros with his head held high, having the image of the Giants. His body was wholly unyielding; and from his head and the muscle of his neck, locks reaching the back, like thorny hedgehogs, flowed down to his loins; he had a long neck, of girth like the neck of a rock, having the savage customs of his fathers. C Nor did any other man braver than he come to the eastern battle of the Indians, apart from Dionysus; and he swore an oath by Victory that he alone would destroy the entire Indian land with his spear.
[Notes appended to the text] (163) Tempyra. — On the faith of Ovid, who claims that Samothrace is not far from Tempyra, *Saltus ab hac terra brevis est Tempyra petenti*, I erase from the Greek text *Tesmérios*, which has never counted in the topography of Thrace, and I insert *Tempyra*. Alas! Ovid knew the place of his exile only too well. He visited Tempyra; and from there, taking leave of the faithful boat that had brought him across the seas of Greece, he did the rest of the journey on foot, no doubt to arrive at Tomes as late as possible. *Nam mihi Bistonios placuit pede carpere campos.* (Tristia, I. X, v. 23.)
(164) The Odrysians. — I cannot discover a trace of the sacred woods of Physiade that the manuscripts carry. I have replaced it, on my own authority, by *Odrysiade*, of which Bacchus bore the surname, and of which Stephanus of Byzantium, as if on purpose to come to my aid, is pleased to indicate the feminine gender, which suits my version so well. I had thought for a moment that Callimachus would lend me *Physadie* for the occasion, which he does not know what to do with (*Hymn to Pallas*, verse 47), for his commentators have been unable to find it anywhere; but Physiade is a fountain in Laconia, and Physiadé or Odrysiade is a forest of Thrace D exposed to the winds, of the fields of Tympyra (163); of the sacred forests of the Odrysians (164), of rich meadows shaded by groves; of divine Zerinthos (165), abode of the Corybantes who know no sleep. It was built by the famous Hecate Perseis (166), where are the rocks consecrated by her festivals and her bloody ceremonies; and those who inhabit Brisia (167), on the shores of a land with so many promontories, and the country neighboring the sea that I have been told is called the paths of subterranean Neptune (168).
Such were the fellow-citizen battalions who obeyed, issued from the same tribe, to the generation of the primitive Electra. It is in their fatherland that Jupiter, Mars, and Venus had granted as a legitimate spouse, Harmonie, race of the heavens, lineage of the sea, to Cadmus their auxiliary, even though he had no dowry to offer her. While these populations were arming themselves in favor of the god of the thyrsus, Electra, the seventh constellation, rose in the sky, a happy augury of the combat. The reverberating voice of the Pleiades, in honor of their sister whose descendant was Bacchus, repeated the songs of victory and redoubled the intrepidity of his battalions. Ogyros guided their march: Ogyros (169), a second Mars in the combats; Ogyros, who carries his head high and the appearance of a giant. His strength never tires. His hair, similar to the prickles of hedgehogs, falls on the nerves of his neck, on his back, and down to his flanks. His outsized head lengthens like the point of a rock; he keeps from his country the barbaric customs; none surpasses him in the exploits of the eastern war, if it is not Bacchus. And he has sworn by Victory that, he alone, he would annihilate under his spear the legions of all India.
(165) Zerinthe. — Zerinthe is, in Lycophron, a city of Thrace, consecrated to Hecate; and a verse of the obscure Cassandra served me to explain an enigma of Nonnus. (166) Hecate, Perseis. — The terrible Hecate was indeed called Perseis, for she was the daughter of Perses and Asteria. (See Hesiod's Theogony.) *Ibat ad antiquas Hecates Perseidos aras.* (Ovid, Metam., I. VII, v. 61.) (167) Brisia. — Finally *Brotios*, which I have uselessly searched for in the treatises of ancient geography, becomes Brisia, a tribe of Thrace, which Nonnus could not conveniently forget; for the nymph Brisa, his namesake, was one of the nurses of Bacchus; and for this motive also, Bacchus was surnamed Briseos. (168) The paths of Neptune. — It is not without difficulty that I have corrected these denominations of Thrace; I find more easily in my memory, no doubt not the location of this underwater city, so to speak, than the map of the unfortunate Riga has shown me, and of which Nonnus says only the vulgar surname, but at least its topographical attributes. I have seen in the gulf of Enos, by the edge of the sea, similar escarpments. The poet's description also reminds me of the paths suspended over deep seas and hollowed out in the rocks of Santorini, like the approaches to Ithaca that Homer described with their monstrous rocks and their steep paths (ἀτραπιτοί τε διηνεκέες, — πέτραι τ' ἠλίβατοι), Homer, Odyss., XIII, 195. (169) Ogyros. — Ogyros, whom the old Hamathion, after the apotheosis of Electra, placed at the head of his
A troops, in sending them to the army of Bacchus, was doubtless a chieftain of Thrace. His stature is like that of the giants who dwell in the high mountains of Rhodope; he is a second Mars, the national divinity of the place. Finally, he is a barbarian just like the Thracians, and his name, which is not found in Greek annals, is as barbaric as he is.
(170) Pimplée. — Orpheus receives here a special and well-merited mention. Nonnus detaches from the enumeration of the tribes subject to the giant Ogyros, Pimpleia, the fatherland of the Star of Thrace, and he gives to Oeagrus, the father of the first chanter in the world, a special place among the heroes. Pimpleia is situated at the foot of Mount Olympus, and to-day forms part of Thessaly; but in ancient times, the boundaries of Thrace extended that far.
(171) Epilogue to the enumeration. — I ask grace, in ending this long topographical commentary, for the memories of my travels in the Orient which have slipped into it as I wrote, and almost in spite of myself. Certainly, I do not seek to pride myself on the advantage that I have been able to draw from my Levantine excursions for the interpretation of the [enigmas or allusions of Nonnus.] B Poor profit, a stern critic recently said to me, poor profit applied to a mediocre poet! Is it a sufficient compensation for all your fatigues during these pilgrimages so difficult then? — To that I replied, first, that this labor was a pleasure. Fatigue if you like, but my fatigue is dear to me; then, that, dedicated to the great writers of Greece and especially to Homer, for I was not thinking then of Nonnus, this voyage had been for me what it has remained since, a true delight.
As to my torments as a commentator regarding these verses of technical geography, I could console myself with malice by reflecting that the poet, the author of these troubles, experienced at least as much in composing them; but I prefer to believe that his efforts and mine will not have been completely unproductive, and that, if the ethnographic notions of Nonnus cannot, like those of Homer, enter into a Hellenic code, they will at least cast some light on several points hitherto obscure in the history of nations.
NONNUS' COLLECTION AND INTERPRETATION OF THE HISTORIES MENTIONED BY ST. GREGORY NAZIANZEN.
Vide hujusce Patrologiæ tomum XXXVI, Operum S. Gregorii Nazianzeni tom. II.
ADDENDA
(Col. 533.)ORDER OF THE PRE-SANCTIFIED OF THE HOLY FORTY DAYS.
(OFFICIUM DE MYSTERIIS ANTE CONSECRATIS SANCTAE QUADRAGESIMAE.) (Goar, Eucholog. p. 187.)After the priest has given the blessing (1), and the proemiac psalm (2) has been recited stichologically (3), after the exclamation (3) we chant the [psalms] "To the Lord" (4).
Notes.
A *The observance of the Lenten fast, established by the firmest authority of the apostolic canons, was guarded by the ancients of the Greeks with such great care lest it be rashly violated, that even some—guided, I might say, by a religious or perhaps superstitious zeal—feared to receive the holy elements of communion during the time of the Forty Days, lest they bring force upon the fast. Furthermore, since the times of fasting, as Zonaras testifies in canon 52 of the Council in Trullo, were instituted primarily for mourning and for the expiating of sins with inner sorrow of soul, while the duties of sacrificing bring with them and introduce festival celebration and the solemnity of spiritual joy; lest the alacrity of the sacrifice be disturbed by sadness, or the mourning necessary for the Forty Days be taken away by the joy of the sacrifice, the Fathers of the Synod of Laodicea, in canon 49, prohibited, with due religious caution, the offering of the holy bread—that is, the sacrifice of the Mass—during the period of the Forty Days, except on Saturdays and Sundays, and likewise forbade the B celebration of the festivals of the martyrs with festal Masses and offices: "It is not fitting to offer bread in the Forty Days, except only on Saturday and Sunday." And canon 51: "It is not fitting to celebrate birthdays [of martyrs] during the period of the Forty Days, but it is necessary to hold the commemoration of the holy martyrs on Saturdays or Sundays." But since the divine duty of sacrificing was omitted for the duration of the entire week, and lest the daily sacrifice seem removed from the midst, or the heavenly food seem denied to famishing souls, it was decided by the Fathers of said synod, or by other bishops of the East, that at vesper time, and within the very office of Vespers—the time at which it is permitted to break the fast—a simulacrum of the liturgy, or at least a notable part of it, should be exhibited, and the divine bread proposed in the church; and that office, by which it [the Sacrament] having been previously consecrated and sanctified, would be distributed and consumed, they ordained to be called the "Order of the Pre-Sanctified of the Holy Forty Days." And thus its institution was not something new in canon 52 of the Council in Trullo, but rather one finds a more pressing and diligent recommendation of an already established rite: "On all the days of the holy fast of the Forty Days, except for Saturday and Sunday, and the holy day of the Annunciation, let the liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified take place."Nicetas Pectoratus the Studite, a hieromonk, can shed light on the foregoing, although he speaks with the impetus of ignorance and in a spirit of error, babbling against the praiseworthy custom of the Roman Church: "You have been accustomed to perform the complete offering of the Mass on every day during the holy days of the fast." (He is speaking to the Latins, and soon, having cited the apostolic canon commanding the fast, he adds): "Serving, therefore, and fulfilling the administration of the holy Mass at an hour other than the third hour of the day, at which the Sacrifice was proclaimed to be offered, how do you observe the fast until the ninth hour of the day, breaking it at the time of the celebration of the Mass? By no means. But if this is impossible C ...
(1) After the priest has given the blessing: These words: "Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, always, both now and ever." (2) The proemiac psalm serving as the beginning of many offices is the one that says: "Bless the Lord, O my soul," etc. (3) Stichologically recited: It is said to be when it is recited by verses. (4) "To the Lord": The Gradual psalms are called this because the first of their psalms begins with these words, "To the Lord."
Addenda
AGradual Canticle. To the Lord when I was in distress, I cried out, etc.
Various Readings. Notice on the Manuscripts
The text which I follow and present was published at Venice in 1638. But since I could find no complete manuscripts in my own country, save for fragments of liturgies, a few prayers, rites of ordination, and the Canon of Methodius on the lapsed widely scattered in the Royal Library, necessity compelled me to seek them from elsewhere. Thus, I offer not a quantity that I have neglected, but a selection I have sought out. The first of these, a very ancient one, believed by the very learned and distinguished Leo Allatius to exceed in antiquity even the eighth century, was transferred from the library of the Florentine convent of St. Mark of the Order of Preachers to the court of the eminent Cardinal Barberini. It is said to have belonged to one of the assessors of the Council of Florence, by whom it was left there, and after some years it became the property of a certain noble citizen, being given by him to the said convent; this is testified to me, among many other witnesses, by an inscription still present on the initial flyleaves: "33, of the first bench. Masses and the entire office of prayers according to Basil, of the convent of St. Mark of Florence of the Order of Preachers. From the inheritance of Niccolò de' Nicoli." And because the right passed from the convent of St. Mark to the eminent Cardinal Barberini, I have decided to call it, throughout this work, the Barberini of St. Mark, for the sake of indicating both it and its difference from other Barberini manuscript euchologia which I have used.The second is the patriarchal Euchologion, which, as Arcudius writes in *Concordia*, Book VI, ch. 5, was given during the Council of Florence by the Greek priest Gregory Vari (Cretensis) to the cardinal priest Julian of St. Sabina, as is noted in the cardinal's own hand at the bottom; Bessarion, the cardinal, having been presented with it, subsequently became abbot of Grottaferrata and bequeathed it to that same monastery to be kept, after his death. The third is Allatius's, and its characters, in the opinion of Allatius himself, represent the antiquity of the fourth century back. In my judgment, it was written by the order or hand of Germanus, bishop of Amathus and supreme primate of the Greeks on the island of Cyprus, living in the year of the Lord 1260; the evidence for this opinion is, first, that it exhibits almost nothing besides pontifical duties, and in the pontifical matters it does contain, it prefixes the name of said Germanus everywhere, and furthermore contains the acts of a provincial synod celebrated under him; and also that it has kept intact, from the year 1287 until this day, a transsumpt of a bull of Alexander IV translated into Greek, which defended said Germanus from the harassment of Latin bishops; and finally, that it celebrates the name of the Palaeologi, rulers of the Orient at that time, in the *Stauropegion* office.
The fourth manuscript seems to be of the same age, from the aforementioned monastery of Grottaferrata, presented to me as a gift by the Reverend Father Basilius Falasca, procurator general of the monks of St. Basil to the Supreme Pontiff, a man most highly commended for his Greek letters and monastic discipline; this is by no means the work of the Eastern Greeks, but of Westerners—that is, those living in the southern parts of Sicily or Magna Graecia—by any casual judge. For Sicily mentions such princes as Ruggero, Roberto, etc., and bishops such as Orlando, Ansegiso, etc., which are Latin names; and they call the king not *Basileus* (for this name the Greeks use only for the emperor), but *Rigas*; and furthermore, it includes an order of the sacraments of baptism, marriage, and extreme unction, either conformable to or accommodated to the use of the Latins (which the Western Basilians themselves do not deny, whether performed by their ancestors or by certain individual bishops ignorant of Greek affairs). Where I have used this, I have called it the Cryptoferratense of Falasca. Another euchological volume of the same monastery was named by me the Cryptoferratense of Bessarion, after the one who gave it and who presided over the monastery. The fifth is another ornament of the Barberini library, which I therefore call the second Barberini, or marked by the number 88. I pass over other manuscript fragments, both from the library of the same eminent cardinal and those offered to me by the diligence of friends; for instance, the Mass of Basil rolled up in the manner of the ancients, found in the aforementioned monastery of Grottaferrata, at the bottom of which it is clearly written: "This holy liturgy of the great Basil was written in the year 6510 [which is 1041 after Christ's birth], November 15, by the hand of Arsenius of Achrida, a sinner; may all who read it offer a prayer."
(α) "Gradual Canticle": The Morelli exemplars, which regarding the present office lack this title, were offered to be compared before each psalm.
Notes
B ...that it is impossible, you will be punished with a curse. (The schismatic is ignorant of the difference between the natural and ecclesiastical fast, and imposes on the Latins as if they were transferring from Mass to the table in the Greek fashion.) Thus, then, receiving us on the Sabbath and the Lord's Day, apart from the third hour of the day, in which the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples, by offering sacrifice, we sanctify within them the gifts, in which we consecrate sufficient for the entire week: but on other days of the week, according to the time of the ninth hour of the day, finishing all the ministry of the day, at the conclusion of the Vesper service, we priests, with the deacons, make an entrance, carrying only the censer. And after the readings of the prophets, making the prayers established by the great Basil, and transferring the gifts from the table of proposition, we pray with them. Furthermore, saying also the prayer handed down to us by the Lord, we exalt the pre-sanctified Bread, and we give the pre-sanctified holy things to the saints; and united in the communion of the Bread and the Cup of the mysteries of Christ, giving thanks to God, we dismiss them and depart, we (the monks) taking from the congregation a common meal, by means of leaves, legumes, and warm water, for those who wish. These things he says, and more; in which he errs, thinking that the private Council of Laodicea is able to set a law for the whole Church, or that the reprobated Trullan [Council] can direct the Roman Church, the teacher of all. But the Supreme Pontiff Innocent I, one hundred years after the Laodicene synod, and almost three hundred before the Trullan, privatizes the Church from the celebration of Mass only on Great Friday and Holy Saturday: It is clear, as he says in Epistle 4, ch. 1, c. 4, that the Apostles were in mourning on those two days, and hid themselves for fear of the Jews. Which, beyond doubt, is why they fasted on the two days mentioned, so that the tradition of the Church holds that the sacraments are not to be celebrated at all on those two days. Humbert, Cardinal of Silva Candida, says many things against Nicetas, though not all appositely, in Vol. IV of the *Bibliotheca Patrum*. By what reason the Roman Church abstains from the celebration of sacred rites on Holy Saturday (for what is called Mass on that day precedes the night of Easter) and how it makes use of the pre-sanctified on Great Friday, is taught by the expositors of ecclesiastical rites, Alcuin, Amalarius, and others. But concerning the pre-sanctified of the Greeks, there is much in Matthew Blastares in the *Syntagma*, under the word "Tessarakoste."A Song of the steps. I lifted up my eyes to the mountains, etc. Song of the steps. I was glad at those who said to me, etc. Song of the steps. To you I have lifted up my eyes, etc. Song of the steps. Had it not been that the Lord was with us, let Israel now say, etc. Glory. Song of the steps. Those who trust in the Lord are as Mount Sion, etc. Song of the steps. When the Lord brought back the captivity of Sion, etc.
B Song of the steps. Unless the Lord builds the house, etc. Song of the steps. Blessed are all who fear the Lord, etc. Song of the steps. Often they have attacked me from my youth, etc. Glory. Song of the steps. From the depths I have cried to you, O Lord, etc. Song of the steps. O Lord, my heart has not been exalted, etc. Song of the steps. Remember, O Lord, David, etc.
C Song of the steps. Behold now, what is good, or what is pleasant, etc. Song of the steps. Behold now, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, etc. Glory. Now and ever. Alleluia three times. But for "O Lord, I have cried," we set ten verses, and we chant the *idiomelon* of the day twice, and the *martyrikon*, and the three *prosomoia* of the Triodion, and from the Menaion three others for four verses. Glory. Now and ever. *Theotokion*, or *Stavrotheotokion*. But if at that hour a Triodion is not to be found, he says the present *idiomelon* and the rest.
Notes. Glory. This alone brings in what is related to it. To this likewise the following must be subjoined: "To the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Now and ever, and to the ages of ages." Alleluia. For "O Lord, I have cried." *Idiomelon*. A *troparion* having its own melody. The *eirmos* on the other hand permits others of its own standard to be adjusted to it. *Martyrikon*. Understand again [a troparion] composed in praise of the martyrs. *Stichera prosomoia*. Verses "similar" consist of an equal number of syllables, so that they may be chanted in the same tone: just as with stanzas of the same meter, whether in Greek or Latin. Meursius interprets it as a song which is divided into three parts, which they called *odai*, but incorrectly. For since *ode* is a "song," who speaking correctly would say that a "song" is divided into three "songs"? D Therefore, writes Gretser (vol. III, *De Cruce* book IV), it receives the name from three odes: the Greeks indeed distinguish the book by this title, although it contains more than three odes. It retains, however, the name of Triodion because of the first Triodia to be chanted in honor of the Holy Trinity during Quadragesima, the author of which—whose footsteps others followed thereafter—is said to be Cosmas of Jerusalem. In Quadragesimal offices the Greeks use the song "Alleluia" more frequently and repeat it, and they indulge in chanting it more easily, as they recognize that that season requires more prolonged divine praises; they also take it up in funeral rites for the dead, and so it is an argument among them not for joy, as it is for the Latins, but rather of mourning, compunction, and devotion. How vainly, however, Michael of Constantinople boasts of his offices on account of that word, see Baronius, year 1057, number 29. When psalm CXL, "O Lord, I have cried," is recited—understand the mode: and it is, says the learned Ligaridius, to be recited in a voice peculiar to itself, grave, and harmonious, as if having a melody of its own.
A *Versus similares. Tonus primus.* Spiritual, brethren, taking up the fast, speak not with your tongues deceitfully, nor place a stumbling-block before your brother as an occasion for sin; but by repentance adorning the lamp of the soul, let us cry out with tears to Christ: "Forgive us our transgressions, O Lover of mankind." *Then the Martyricon.* Most famous martyrs, you were not hidden by the earth, but heaven received you. The gates of paradise were opened to you, and having entered within, you enjoyed the tree of life. Intercede with Christ, that peace and great mercy may be granted to our souls. *Other similar verses. The same tone. Most famous martyrs.* Let us desire the fast of the soul, which withers the most troublesome passions by the help of the Spirit, and strengthens us to perform godly deeds, and sends the mind upward to heaven, and procures the forgiveness of those things wherein we have sinned, bestowed by the merciful God.
*Notes.* Regarding the Triodion and the remaining ecclesiastical books, the most learned Leo Allatius has written more fully and excellently in a short work soon to be published. — *Menaion.* The volumes containing the Offices of each month distinctly are called *Menaia*. Therefore, Meursius ineptly interprets "Canticum" according to custom. There is no small distinction between *stichos* and *sticheron*; the former is a short verse taken from Scripture, and especially from the Davidic psalms, while the latter is a verse composed by an ecclesiastical hymnographer, though in a more prolix sentiment, and indeed according to the norm of longer periods. And for the sake of noting this distinction, I have translated *stichos* as "versiculum" (short verse) and *sticheron* as "versum" (verse) everywhere in this volume. B Always understand the *modulum* (melody) in honor of the Virgin Mother of God, produced after the heresy of Nestorius without the addition of "Theotokos" (Mother of God). There is also another melody of the Cross and of the Mother of God, containing their joined praises, or at least a mixed and truer mention. C ...and its argument, singing out many things that ring false, so that it utters nothing that might refresh the mind and sense. Therefore, *echos*, in Greek ecclesiastical chant, is properly the same as "tone" in Latin. Now the Greeks have their eight tones, from which the book is called *Octoechos*. The first four tones have obtained a simple naming, *echos* alpha, the first; *echos* beta, the second; *echos* gamma, the third; *echos* delta, the fourth. The four later ones receive a different denomination: for the fifth is and is written *echos* plagios alpha, the first oblique tone; the sixth is or the second oblique tone. The third is called *echos* barys, the "grave tone," on account of the delay and the gravity of the voice during its chanting. The last is *echos* plagios delta, the fourth oblique tone; concerning which those skilled in music, and those taught in its speculative theory, are to be consulted. D ...verses are understood to be chanted in the Mass of the Presanctified, after the prayer of the third antiphon, where the preceding rubric and all things that follow here have their proper place. Truly observe that this first verse, if the proper one is lacking due to a scarcity of books, corresponds to that which is called *tes hemeras*. Whence it deals with the fast; the second is composed in praise of the martyrs; the others are four similar ones, especially three, carrying the title *prosomoia* in that, consisting of an equal number of syllables, they are also to be chanted to one and the same song. (8) *Most famous martyrs.* If it is not fitting, as was seen above, from the council of Laodicea, can. 51, to celebrate the Nativity of the martyrs or their memory on days other than Saturdays or Sundays during the time of Lent, why do the Greeks openly commemorate the martyrs with this melody on every day, even in the offices of the Presanctified themselves? Because the canon forbids the holding of any private solemnity, lest they detract from the honor due to the saints, they perform the celebration of all together on the Saturday preceding Sexagesima, and renew the memory of all on each day with the praised melody. Balsamon confirms the first part of this answer, writing in the Trullan canon: ...and the memorials of the saints. I believe, however, that the monasteries that are perfect and follow an accurate way of life, on account of the present canon (by which martyrs are forbidden to be celebrated more solemnly in Lent) sing and read the canons, and the *martyria* (that is, the sacred memorials) that occur during the whole of Lent, before the week in which one abstains from cheese. Truly, not less than by tradition, the very reading of this *module* supports this. (9) *Most famous martyrs.* This title indicates that the next verse is to be chanted for the same reason as the preceding one, *Most famous martyrs*. But why is this considered a form of chanting rather than the other? I answer that the Greeks in their churches for the most part lack musical books marked with notes, yet they keep the more common hymns or *moduli* (melodies) fixed in their memory according to the norm of the tones, and in the likeness of all these, they chant the rest of the same meter or *prosomoia*: and for this reason, they prefix their first words to others as a title, and these are called *eirmoi*, because the chant of those that follow is derived from them, and they draw them into the norm of their own chant.
A Similar. Having spent all my life disgracefully, O Lord, with harlots, wretched as I am, like the prodigal, I cry out with compunction: Heavenly Father, I have sinned; be propitious, save me; and reject me not, who have wandered far from Thee and am now destitute of divine works.
Other similar verses, Tone 4. Thou hast given a warning. Grant me compunction, and release from evils, and amendment of life, now that I am plunged in the passions of the body and have moved far from Thee, O God, King of all, and have no hope from anywhere; and save me, the prodigal, through Thy great goodness, O Jesus almighty, the Savior of our souls.
B Similar. The divine Moses, through fasting, being purified, beheld the One desired. Emulate Him, therefore, O my humble soul, and strive in the day of abstinence to be cleansed from evils, so that thou mayest behold the Lord, who grants thee remission, and propitiation, and deliverance, being good and a lover of mankind.
Glory. Both now. Of the Theotokos. Entrance. Prokeimenon. Tone 4. I have trusted in the mercy of God forever. Verse. Why dost thou boast in malice, O mighty one?
Genesis reading. Noah was six hundred years old, and the flood of waters came upon the earth. And Noah entered, and his sons, and his wife, and the wives of his sons with him into the ark, because of the water of the flood; and of the clean birds, and of the clean cattle, and of the unclean birds, and C of the unclean cattle, and of the reptiles crawling upon the earth, two by two. From all things they entered unto Noah into the ark, male and female, as the Lord God had commanded Noah.
Prokeimenon. Tone Plagal 1. When the Lord turned again the captivity of His people. Verse. The fool hath said in his heart.
Proverbs reading. My son, if thou becomest wise for thyself, thou shalt be wise also for thy neighbor. But if thou turnest out to be evil, thou alone shalt draw [the consequences]. D A son well-instructed shall be wise, and he shall use a foolish minister [as a servant].
He who leans upon falsehoods, this one shall shepherd the winds; and the same shall pursue winged birds. For he has left the paths of his own vineyard, and has wandered from the axles of his own husbandry. He travels through a waterless place, and a land appointed for thirsts; and he gathers fruitlessness with his hands. A foolish and bold woman becomes wanting in bread. She does not know shame; she sat at the doors of her own house on a chair, B conspicuous in the squares, calling those who pass by on the way, those who are directing their own paths. Who is most foolish among you? Let him turn aside to me. And to those lacking understanding she exhorts, saying: "Touch gladly stolen bread and drink sweet stolen water." But he does not know that earthly ones perish at her hand; and she meets those who are on the stair of Hades. But spring away; do not linger in her place, nor fix thine eye upon her; for thus thou shalt pass through alien water. And abstain from alien water, and do not drink C from an alien fountain, that thou mayest live a long time, and years of life may be added to thee.
Then is said, "Let my prayer be directed," and thereafter the divine liturgy of the Presanctified is performed.
DECLARATION OF THE DIVINE LITURGY OF THE PRESANCTIFIED
In the holy and great Lent, when the priest intends to perform the Presanctified, at the offertorio...
Notes
(13) *Explanation of the divine liturgy.* It is not an explanation, but in my judgment a total confusion and disorder of the divine liturgy of the Presanctified, which neither explains nor comprises whatever relates to it. It would have been better indeed, from the titles placed above, from the present, and from what is to be read below, to compose one single series of the liturgy, rather than to have gathered in a perturbed manner and without order the readings in the aforementioned parts, certain rubrics here, and others in the following parts, along with the rest that make up this liturgy. My mind would certainly have D chosen to place all things well-arranged in their proper place, had I not remembered that I was to act the part of an interpreter and scholiast, not an author and corrector. If you wish, Reader, consult the various readings of the Morellian copies mentioned above; since they contain a better disposed series of all things, they will also provide greater satisfaction to the mind regarding the present rite.
(14) *In the holy and great Lent.* Great is the Lent among the Greeks, whether you consider the account of abstinence, or the time in which they prepare for it, or finally the time when it is confessed along with the other fasts occurring throughout the year. They fast for seven weeks, and two are set aside for undertaking the great Lent. The Sunday which for us is Septuagesima, among them is called *Prophone* (the announcement), publicizing the fast to be observed at the preceding time, and during the whole following week, and also on the fourth and sixth days, as also those preceding Septuagesima, it permits meat. It does so by refuting the error of the Armenian Tetradites, who imitate the fast of the Ninevites at this time and assume another rejected by the Church, about which Balsamon speaks at length in canon 69 of the apostles. That week, therefore, is the *Carnisprivium*, and the one following it is also a Sunday, "Cheese-eating" or "Cheese-week," because although meats have been removed, it is still permissible to eat eggs and dairy, concerning which the Triodion says: But concerning the "Cheese-eating" week, some say that Emperor Heraclius ordained it, though it was formerly a meat-eating week; for while campaigning for six years against Chosroes and the Persians, he vowed to God that if he should prevail against him, he would change this and set a middle path between fasting and feasting: "Cheese-eating."... The first day of the week following Sexagesima, they begin the fast more strictly, and until the celebration of Pascha they abstain from fish and oil, except on the feast of the Annunciation and Palm Sunday, from whatever must be tasted. Even though they think they should not refrain from squill, oyster, crab, octopus, cuttlefish, and other such bloodless creatures, as being alien to the nature of perfect fish and not afflicting the stomach with crudity or baseness, just as with dried fish roe and those salted in the sun. Therefore, concerning the late dinner Andronicus the Elder was taking according to Nicephorus Gregoras, lib. 11, cap. ult., "All things were served in earthenware,"...
"… A On the Sunday offering, he does as is customary. And after breaking the first bread, and sacrificing (15), and piercing it, he breaks also the other breads (16), saying over each one, "In memory," "As a sheep," and "It is sacrificed," and "One of the soldiers." Then he pours wine and water into the holy chalice, saying the customary prayers; and he covers it with the sacred veils, and offers incense, saying the prayer of the Oblation; and thus he begins the divine Liturgy, and completes it as is the custom.
When he is about to sign (17) the breads, he says, "Make [of] this bread." In the singular number, as Christ is one, not as some ignorantly say, "these breads." And when he is about to elevate, he elevates them all together, and breaks the first-offered bread, and puts the portion into the holy chalice, and pours in the warm water, as is the custom. Then, having taken the holy spoon (18) B
Note.
C Ter in the year shall one be granted the enjoyment of the divine mysteries. Once at the salutary resurrection of our God and Savior, second at the Dormition of our spotless Lady the Theotokos, and third on the days of the Nativity of Christ, because the fast, and the profit resulting from it, has preceded. Regarding the reason and observance of these fasts, see Zacharias of Crete, called Marapharas, in the treatise added to the end of the Horologion. D(15) *Sacrifice*. The Greeks perform the ceremony after the consecration has been made, when the priest says, "Make this bread," as above in the Chrysostom Liturgy, fol. 77. But that it is here enjoined that the priest should not speak of the many consecrated breads in the plural number, *these breads*, but in the singular, *this bread*, Arcudius approves, lib. 3, cap. 17. For the mode of speaking, he says, is very common, so that we say "this bread" not only of one loaf, but also of many: whence Mark the Evangelist, having prayed in his Liturgy that God might send the Holy Spirit upon *the breads* (because many oblations were set forth), immediately adds: "That He may make the bread indeed, the body," etc.
(16) *Other breads*. Several breads are offered, or at least they are cut, so that they may become presanctified. For those particles which are kept, writes Arcudius, lib. 2, are larger, and the matter of that dry sacrifice ought to be honorable, and such as can be easily handled. For indeed, many ceremonies are performed around it, it is also divided, and it is put into the chalice; and he who desires to communicate must be a partaker of it.
(17) *When he is about to sign.* The Greeks perform the ceremony after the consecration has been made, when the priest says, "Make this bread," as above in the Chrysostom Liturgy, fol. 77. [Note: The text here repeats the core of the preceding argument regarding the singular 'bread'].
(18) *Spoon*. Genebrard translates it as a flesh-hook; the *labis*, however, is a spoon, and we have brought forth the reason for the name.
with the right hand, he dips it into the holy blood; and with the left hand he takes each loaf, and brings in the holy spoon, dipped with the holy blood (19), and touches it to the holy bread in the form of a cross on the part where the cross was imprinted (20) under—
Notes.
(19) *Dipped with the holy blood*. Arcudius, who ought to combat only the errors of the Greeks, attempts through excessive zeal to condemn at times their tolerated customs, and especially in book 2, chapter 17, in his response to the ninth argument of Symeon, and then in chapter 56, he formally rejects the custom by which the Greeks, for the sake of the Presanctified or for the sick, lightly dip the consecrated bread to be reserved afterward in the life-giving blood of Christ, that is, in that spoon, on no other grounds than the example of the Roman Church. Indeed, although the holy Roman Church—that it might set itself as a lesson and example to all its members, free from every suspicion of error or abuse—is able to do so, nevertheless, foreign customs, provided they are approved or tolerated, are nowhere to be rashly rejected or condemned by the private judgment of anyone; and as for the intinction of the consecrated bread, customary among the Greeks in the species of wine, it has willed that it be tolerated until now, and its reasons—if not of manifest consensus and approbation—are at least not to be reproved of tolerance. First, because this rite is not a modern institution among them, but received from Fathers much earlier than our own age. Second, because for the consolation of souls, and for the customary reception of the Eucharist under both species, they can with that same confidence handle the sacred species of the blood with which the supreme pontiffs [handle] those infected with the heretical taint of the bishops; and it is established that Pope Theodore, subscribing to the condemnation of the Monothelite Pyrrhus, diluted his ink with the blood of Christ, and, as Ciaconius recounts in his Life, he either received or left to posterity a similar example of condemning adversaries of the faith. Why, therefore, should it not be permitted for the Greeks, not for destruction but for the benefit of the soul, to moisten the consecrated bread with blood, even though those species must be dried afterward? If you say they are dried, and therefore completely lost and perished, and thus the divine matter is treated too profanely: they reply immediately that the substance of the wine, with all fluidity and moisture removed (since these are accidents occurring without corruption of the subject), can be maintained, and as easily as the nature of the bread if it be dissolved by liquid, and rendered fluid; but indeed the common sense of the Church and the theologians is that the sacred species of bread, cast into consecrated wine and dissolved by its moisture, and flowing like it, do not recede from their original nature, and therefore can exist equally with the nature of the wine, so to speak, even though its more subtle parts exhale in the applied heat, with the remaining denser and thicker parts, thickened by dryness, staying alone; which then, when cast into wine, are dissolved, reawakened, and emerge anew, always retaining their prior nature, containing the blood of Christ as before, and exhibiting it to those receiving: for this condensed part which we perceive is no less, for the integrity of the wine, than that which we contemplate; nor is it more alien to the nature of wine than coagulum (which no one fails to see is milk changed) is to milk, from which consequently the whey exudes, or, if you would say it better, it is resolved into the milk itself. But although, in my judgment and with the agreement of many, it is more likely that the species of wine, with excessive heat pressing upon them (for the Greeks religiously dry the intincted bread with a dish placed on a brazier, not in an oven or on a hearth as Arcudius claims) and with excessive dryness conquering the nature of the wine, are completely lost; not, however, on this account is the stigma of rashness and irreligion to be rashly branded upon them if they celebrate their Presanctified [Liturgy] with bread intincted in this way; for since they are accustomed to receive communion under both species of bread and wine, they do not seem to introduce anything against the law of custom—to which (whatever Arcudius may argue to the contrary in the aforementioned book 2, chapter 56) the holy Roman Church does not compel them to renounce—since they do not wish the species of wine to go sour by keeping them too long, nor do they judge that the whole bread should be infected by them; at least they lightly dip it in part and in the shape of a cross upon the crumb, so that they may both observe the accustomed rite of communion as far as the nature of the elements in which it is taken permits, and by this intinction they signify more expressively not only the blood shed from the body, but also the body itself, intincted and immersed in its own blood. Nor does it condemn the Greeks, this thought which is objected regarding the vanishing species of wine: for toward the utility of men, which the use and consumption of the sacraments respects, yields whatever is sacred and divine therein; and Basil, attending to this alone, did not fear to command that a particle of communion, kept for the longest time, be buried with him, according to the custom then in force. And although the deeds of the saints are not to be drawn into example without selection; where, however, they obtain use, they are not to be punished with a more severe sentence without mature examination of judgment: nor does it proscribe the rite of the Greeks mentioned, as Arcudius reports, in the testimony of Armenopulus in *Epitome of Canons*, section 4, title 6, where he feels: "That the Presanctified are not to be smeared by the spoon with the Lordly blood, in the instance of reserving them, the blessed John says more accurately, as is also done in our Great Church." That the Presanctified are not to be smeared by the spoon with the Lordly blood while they are to be kept, the blessed John hands down more accurately, as is also done in our Major Church. Indeed, these very words argue that even then this custom was widespread everywhere except in the Great Church, which—though John, a patriarch of uncertain number (not the Faster, as Arcudius falsely assumes, because he was earlier than the Trullan synod that instituted or confirmed the Presanctified, [and] could not have recognized the well-digested order of those later than Gregory II or Patriarch Germanus)—had struggled to prohibit. Nevertheless, its strength, as time progressed, obtained more and more, nor is it read as having been revoked by the supreme head of the Church before the schism, nor reproved after it at the Council of Florence, where matters of lesser moment were discussed, for the reason that, beyond everything produced thus far, those species of sacred wine do not rashly or by a profane reason perish, but either adhere to the species of the bread afterward and remain joined to them, or certainly perish in them, are refunded into them, or at least are not in any way torn away from them in their own demise.
(20) *Under the part*. That is, in the lower part of the bread, where the priest who is sacrificing, and for that reason is called the one who immolates, imprinted the cross; *sub mica*, under the crumb; for the outer side of the sacred bread is the crust, marked with the seal (*sphragis*). Furthermore, Genebrard wrote *Psychian* in Latin, he did not interpret it; he ought to have said the crumb (*micam*), by which name Paschasius, in book 11 *On the Body and Blood of the Lord*, was not afraid to call the sacrament of the Eucharist.
A in the same *ciborium* (21). Then he takes the others, and does likewise for each one, and gathers them all together into the *artophorion*. Afterwards, the priest prays as is customary, and gives communion as is customary, and fulfills the divine mystery as ordained. But when he is about to perform the Liturgy of the Presanctified, having entered the sanctuary, he puts on his priestly vestments, only making the sign of the cross and kissing [them], and saying nothing (22) except "Let us pray to the Lord" for each of the garments. And the deacon, having obtained the opportunity, goes out. The priest exclaims, "Blessed be the kingdom of the Father." And immediately the *ecclesiarch* (23) [says], "Come, let us worship," three times, and the introductory psalm is recited. The priest, meanwhile, recites the prayers of the *lychnikon* (24). After the completion of the psalm, the *synapte* is said by the deacon, and after the exclamation, the *stichologia* is recited, that is, "To the Lord," with prostrations at the "Alleluia." At each antiphon, a B small *synapte* is offered by the deacon and an exclamation by the priest. When the *stichologia* has begun, the priest departs to the holy *prothesis*, and taking the presanctified bread from the *artophorion*, he places it with great reverence on the holy *diskos*, putting also wine and water into the holy chalice as usual, keeping silence and saying nothing (25), and taking incense, he incenses the asterisk and the veils, and covering them, saying nothing at all, not even the prayer of the *prothesis*, even if it be found in some copies; but only, "Through the prayers of the holy Fathers." For this sacrifice is already presanctified and completed. After the *kathisma* [and] "Lord, I have cried," according to the tone of the *idiomelon* of the day, we stand ten verses and repeat the *idiomelon*; then the *martyrikon*, the three *prosomoia* of the Triodion, C and the three of the Menaion, repeating one. Glory. Both now. *Theotokion*. Entrance without the Gospel (26). And when he is about to say the Gospel...
that is, on the day when the memorial of the finding of the head of the Forerunner is made, or that of the forty holy martyrs, on the feast of the Annunciation, and in Holy Week, then he performs the Entrance with the Gospel. Deacon: Wisdom, stand upright. The Light of lights. Deacon: Let us attend. A Sacerdos: Peace be to all. Deacon: Wisdom. The Reader says the *prokeimenon*, and the reading from Genesis follows, and the second *prokeimenon* is subjoined. And after this the deacon exclaims: Command. The priest then, taking the censer and the candlestick with the candle in his right hand, stands before the holy table, and having made the sign of the cross, says: Wisdom, stand upright. The Light of Christ appears to all. The Reader [adds] the reading from the Proverbs, and the proverb. And after the completion, the priest says: Peace be to you. Deacon: Wisdom. The Chanter [sings]: Let my prayer be set forth (Dirigatur), etc. First verse: O Lord, I have cried out. Second verse: Set, O Lord, a watch. Third verse: Do not incline my heart. After these are finished, we make three prostrations; then the deacon [recites] the *ektené* (the fervent supplication), and the rest.
As for the Great Entrance, "Now the heavenly powers" is said. The prayer of the Cherubic hymn is not said, but the priest, while censing, recites the fiftieth psalm; and after the procession and carrying out of the holy gifts, the "Now the heavenly powers" being completed, we make three prostrations, being uncovered (27). The priest removes the veils from the holy gifts and covers them with the *aer*. But when he is about to elevate the holy Bread, B he does not uncover the holy things, but with those divine gifts still covered, the priest inserts his hand with great fear and touches the holy Bread with reverence and awe, while the deacon says: Let us attend. The priest intones aloud: The Presanctified holy things are for the holy. And the rest is to be performed according to the customary manner.
THE DIVINE LITURGY OF THE PRESANCTIFIED
(28). Deacon says: Bless, Master. And the priest [says] aloud:C [Variatione lectiones omitted]
D [Notes omitted]
A Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
This divine liturgy is said only on fast days of Lent, as it is contained in the Typikon. The priest and the deacon enter and vest, reciting such prayers as are also in the liturgy of Chrysostom. Afterwards they take the censer, and cense three times with reverence where the holy Bread may be reserved, saying, "God, be merciful to me." Then the priest takes the holy Bread with the proper reverence and places it on the holy paten at the prothesis, saying, "I believe, O Lord, and I confess." Then, censing the aer, he places it on top, saying nothing, but only with reverence; likewise also with the covering. And into the holy chalice he pours wine and water as much as suffices, saying nothing, and with the covering he covers it, as is the custom, along with the aer with reverence, and comes to the holy table, making three prostrations, saying, "God, be merciful to me"; and he kisses the holy Gospel and the holy table; and the deacon says: Bless, Master.
The priest changes, and sets aside a particle, whether two, on the holy paten, moistened with a single drop from the holy chalice of the Sunday, and casting blood and water into the krater, he says: "One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water, and he who saw it has borne witness, and his testimony is true." And he censes, saying the prayer: "We offer incense." B And thus the deacon begins: Bless, Master. The priest takes the holy Gift and places it on the paten, saying nothing; and when he places the liquid, he says: "Blood and water which gushed forth our salvation; always, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages." The deacon says: "Let us pray to the Lord for the prothesis of the holy gifts." The priest says the prayer: "O Lord our God, send forth to us power from your holy height, and strengthen us to offer to you an unbloody sacrifice, a presanctified sacrifice, for the glory and praise of your Christ, always, now and ever." Then the deacon says: "Let us pray to the Lord." And censing the holy things, the priest says the prayer: "We offer incense to you." And censing the sanctuary and the people, the ninth hour being completed, then the deacon says: Bless, Master.
Concerning the lives of the saints: They say that it was he who ordained C what is called the liturgy near the Romans during the days of the fast, which is kept near to them even unto this day.
Notes. ... [and as for the rest] nor can Nicetas make Basil the inventor of this order, even if, since the Council of Laodicea prohibited the mass from being celebrated in Lent, Basil might be later; yet it is certainly not known before the Trullan Synod that those who published the Presanctified [Liturgy] had introduced it into the churches of the East; whence, the assertion of Nicetas being partly rejected, it must be inquired whether this work can be ascribed to anyone known by the name of Gregory. Indeed, the Greeks narrate that it was handed down to them by the Fathers, [and that] Gregory, D while acting as legate in the East, marveled at the intermission of the Mass during Lent, and not tolerating such a cessation of divine [service], advised that the Presanctified [Liturgy] be received, and handed down their office to the Church, to which statement Maximus the Kytherian bears witness in his writing dated the twelfth of March, speaking in common words about Gregory. Truly they say that this was the very person who carried the law that among the Greeks (who call themselves Romans, the empire having been translated to them) the mass should be said on the days of the fast, which indeed is observed among them to this day. But since the error of the Greeks is remarkable, by which Baronius himself does not deny he was occupied in the year 726, number 31, in that they have named both Gregory the first and the second, as much by the similarity of his name, as by their pious inclination of mind toward them, and by the benefits received, and by the writings published by the first, and also by various sermons and epistles sent into the East by the second; so let the dignity of the name, but also the deeds and writings of the one, be indiscriminately ascribed to the other, so that, as Baronius proves by the witness of one most learned Patriarch Gennadius (to whom I would gladly add Zacharias, the interpreter of Gregory’s Dialogues into the Greek tongue, to be read as the same, and under the same Baronius in the year cited, the epistles of Gregory the second are referred, the title of which attaches the surname to him, just as to the former), it renders it entirely uncertain to which Gregory...
A And the prooemiac psalm is said by the aforementioned monk; and after the prooemiac psalm, the deacon says: In peace let us pray to the Lord. For the peace from above. For the peace of the whole world. For this holy house. For the archbishop B. For this holy monastery. For favorable weather. For those who travel by sea or land. That we may be delivered from all [affliction]. Help, save, have mercy, and preserve us. [Commemorating] our all-holy, immaculate, most blessed one. The priest exclaiming: For to Thee is due all glory, honor, and worship, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen. C Prayer of the first antiphon. O Lord, compassionate and merciful, long-suffering and full of mercy, hearken to our prayer, and attend to the voice of our supplication. Work in us a sign for good. Guide us in Thy way, that we may walk in Thy truth; gladden our hearts, that we may fear Thy holy name; for Thou art great, and doest wondrous things. Thou art God alone, and there is none like Thee among the gods, O Lord, powerful in mercy and good in strength, to help, to comfort, and to save all who hope in Thy holy name. The deacon: Again and again in peace let us pray to the Lord. D
Help, save, have mercy. Of the most holy, immaculate. For Thine is the dominion, and Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. A Prayer of the second antiphon. Lord, do not rebuke us in Thy wrath, nor chasten us in Thine anger, but deal with us according to Thy gentleness, O Physician and Healer of our souls, guiding us to the haven of Thy will; enlighten the eyes of our hearts unto the knowledge of Thy truth; and grant us that the remainder of the present day be peaceful and sinless, and all the time of our life, through the intercessions of the holy Theotokos, and all Thy saints. The deacon: Again and again in peace let us pray to the Lord. Help, save, have mercy. Of the most holy, immaculate, most blessed. With a loud voice: For Thou art a good and man-loving God, and unto Thee we ascribe glory: to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen. Prayer of the third antiphon. Lord our God, remember us sinners and Thy useless servants when we call C upon Thy holy and worshipful name, and do not put us to shame from our expectation of Thy mercy, but grant us, O God, all our petitions unto salvation, and count us worthy to love and fear Thee with all our heart, and to do Thy will in all things. The deacon: Again and again in peace. Help, save, have mercy. Of the most holy, immaculate. With a loud voice: For Thou art our God, a God of mercy and of sal- D
salvation, and to Thee we send up glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen. A
And is chanted the *Lord, I have cried*. And the deacon [(κ)] censes according to the rite. And the entrance is made with the censer.
Prayer of the Entrance
Evening, and morning, and at midday we praise, we bless, we give thanks, and we entreat Thee, Master of all, O Lord Who lovest mankind; direct our prayer as incense before Thee; and incline not our hearts unto words of malice, but deliver us from all who hunt our souls: for to Thee, O Lord, our eyes are turned, and in Thee have we hoped; do not put us to shame, O our God. B
For to Thee is due all honor, glory, and adoration, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
When the choir has finished the melody, the deacon says, [(y)]
Various readings
...as in the preceding prayer. But after the exclamation, the Cryptof. adds the prayer as below. Morelliana, Cryptof.: Then is said the Psalm, *Lord, I have cried*, to the tone of the verses of the Triodion; likewise the dismissal, and the Theotokos melody: Barberinum: The priest or deacon censes first the prothesis, then the holy bread, then the holy table, and the whole sanctuary, and the temple, with all the people. But after the Psalm, *Lord, I have cried*, he chants the melody of proper chant from the Triodion, which is proper to that day, C a verse from the Martyrs, and from the Menaion. And while they are chanting *Glory to the Father*, the priest goes out with the incense and candles, and they make the entrance, as is the custom, and the priest says this prayer secretly: *Evening*. Then the entrance with the candelabra; the priest says the prayer. And the chanter the sticheron, the Hagio-politican, and with the same tone, *Glory. Both now. Theotokion.* And he goes out to make the entrance to the pillars of the church, and: *Evening and morning. Our entrance, O Christ our God, into Thy propitiatory, by cleansing from all defilement and evil conscience, D and vouchsafe that our prayer may ascend as incense before Thee, through the intercessions of the holy Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary, and of all Thy saints, For to Thee is due.* After the prayer he blesses with his hand, the priest, and says: *Blessed be the entrance of Thy holy ones always, now and forever, and unto the ages of ages.* Exclaiming: *For to Thee it is due.*
The deacon says: *Wisdom, stand upright.* The people: *O Joyful Light.* Let us attend. *Peace to all. Wisdom.* Then the *prokeimenon* of the lessons is announced, that is, of Genesis. And after the lesson from Genesis, the deacon goes out with a candle and censer. And the chanter says the *prokeimenon* of the Proverbs. Then the deacon says: *Wisdom, stand upright. The Light of Christ shines for all.* And then the *Proverb*. It is necessary to know that *Wisdom, stand upright. The Light of Christ shines* is said from the fourth day of the fast.
The deacon or the priest says aloud: "Wisdom, stand upright." And the reader says the *prokimenon*, and the *Genesis*, and after the completion of this, the priest holding the candle with the censer in his right hand, says aloud: "Wisdom, stand upright; the Light of Christ shines for all" (29). And the reader says the *Proverb*. And after "Let my prayer be directed" (aa), the deacon says: "Let us all say with our whole soul, and with our whole mind, let us say: O Lord Almighty, the God of our fathers, we pray Thee, hear us and have mercy. Have mercy on us, O God, according to Thy great mercy, we pray Thee, hear us and have mercy." A And the rest as usual.
*Prayer of the fervent supplication* (bb).
O Lord our God, accept this fervent supplication from Thy servants, and have mercy on us according to the multitude of Thy mercy; and send down Thy compassions upon us, and upon all Thy people, who await the rich mercy that comes from Thee.
*Exclamation.*
For Thou art a merciful and man-loving God, and unto Thee we send up glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.
B (aa) After "Let my prayer be directed." After the *Proverb* is finished, the cantor says the first verse in the second tone: "Let my prayer be directed as incense before Thee; the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice, hear me, O Lord." The people chant the same: "Let my prayer be directed." The cantor says the second verse: "O Lord, I have cried unto Thee, hear me." The choir: "Let my prayer be directed." The cantor says the third verse: "Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, and a door of enclosure around my lips." The choir: "Let my prayer be directed." The fourth verse: "Incline not my heart to evil words." The choir: "Let my prayer be directed." And again the cantor: "Let my prayer be directed." The choir: "The lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice." And he rises again to incense and chant: "Let my prayer be directed," and the rest. The Gospel is not said.
C After all this, the priest says secretly. The exclamation. And after the fervent supplication, the priest: "For..."
D *Notes.*
(29) *The Light of Christ shines for all.* The triple ratio is, by moving the Greek priest, so that before the Epistle, or rather the *Genesis*, is read in the office of the Presanctified, he may show the lit candle to the people, or carry it alone, as Nicetas Pectoratus related above in number one, at the first entry. First, because when the catechumens are soon to be expelled from the church, for this office during Lent, in which they are prepared for the illumination, under the symbol of earthly light placed before their eyes in the church, Christ is manifested, who is the true light that illuminates every man coming into this world: so that, receiving the fullness of his light in baptism, they may be made more certain by this voice, *The Light of Christ shines for all.* Second, because when the lamp is provided for men by God as a nocturnal light, the evening act of thanksgiving, and (as was observed in the number above) when the present office is performed at the ninth hour, the time for them to be lit in the usual manner not yet being at hand, another candle is brought out in the church lit, which bears the type not of earthly and nocturnal light, but of the spiritual and heavenly splendor of Christ lurking under the sacrament, and kindles faith of Him in all souls, with these words: *The Light of Christ shines for all.* Third, because since the reading of the Gospel precedes the consecration in the Mass, just as the preaching of Christ precedes the passion, since there is no consecration in the Presanctified, neither is there a reading of the Gospel; Christ himself, however, exhibits himself present in the sacrament of the Presanctified not so much by word as by deed, and for his own recognition, in his place and in the symbol, he substitutes light, and the priest supports him with his voice, saying: *The Light of Christ shines for all.*
A *Diaconus.* Pray, ye catechumens, to the Lord. Let us, the faithful, pray for the catechumens, that the Lord may have mercy upon them. Instruct them in the word. Reveal to them the Gospel. Unite them to His holy catholic [Church]. Save, have mercy, help, etc. Catechumens, [bow] your heads.
*Prayer for the catechumens before the holy oblation.* O our God, the creator and maker of all things, who willest that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, look upon Thy servants, the catechumens, and redeem them from their ancient error and the deceits of the adversary, and call them to eternal life, illuminating their souls and bodies, and counting them worthy of Thy rational fold, upon which Thy holy name has been invoked.
*Elata voce.* That they also with us may glorify Thy most precious and magnificent name, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and always, and unto the ages of ages.
*Diaconus.* All ye catechumens, depart; catechumens, depart; as many as are catechumens, depart; let no catechumen remain. All ye faithful.
Again and again, in peace let us pray to the Lord.
These things alone are said until the third and fourth week. But from the Wednesday which is the middle of the Lenten fast, after the words have been pronounced: *That they also with us*, etc., these diaconal petitions are said.
All ye catechumens, depart; catechumens, depart; ye who are called to baptism, depart; pray, ye who are called to baptism. Let us, the faithful, pray for our brethren preparing for the holy illumination, and for their salvation, to the Lord. That the Lord our God may strengthen and confirm them. May He illuminate them with the illumination of knowledge and piety. May He account them worthy of... B C D
and may He strengthen them. May He enlighten them with the illumination of knowledge A and piety. May He account them worthy, at the opportune time, of the laver of regeneration, the remission of sins, and the garment of incorruption. May He regenerate them by water and the Spirit. May He grant unto them the perfection of faith. May He gather them into His holy and elect flock. Save, have mercy, help, and protect them, O God, by Thy grace. You who are approaching the illumination, bow your heads unto the Lord.
Prayer for those preparing for holy illumination
Manifest, O Master, Thy face upon those who are preparing for holy illumination, and who desire to shake off the pollution of sin; enlighten them through faith, strengthen them in hope, and perfect them in charity; render them honorable members of Thy Christ, who gave Himself as a ransom for our souls.
Exclamation.
For Thou art our sanctification, and unto Thee we send up glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and always, and unto the ages of ages. B
*Deacon*.
You who are to be illuminated, come forward; you who are to be illuminated, come forward; as many as are catechumens, depart; let no one of the catechumens remain. As many as are the faithful, let us again and again pray in peace unto the Lord.
Thus far what is said from the fourth day of mid-Lent.
First Prayer of the Faithful
O God, great and praiseworthy, who through the life-giving death of Thy Christ hast translated us from corruption unto incorruption, do Thou deliver all our senses from the mortal state C of being subject to the perturbations of passion, setting over them as a good guide the inward reason. May the eye be turned away from every evil sight; may the hearing be inaccessible to idle words; and may the tongue be purified from unseemly speech. Purify our lips which praise Thee, O Lord; make our hands to abstain from evil deeds, and to perform only those things that are well-pleasing unto Thee, while securing all our members and our mind by Thy grace.
*Deacon*.
Help, save, have mercy. Wisdom. D
Exclamation.
For unto Thee belong all glory, honor, and worship, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the holy Spirit, now and always, and unto the ages of ages.
Again and again, let us pray in peace unto the Lord.
Second Prayer of the Faithful
O Master, holy and supremely good, we beseech Thee...
who art rich in mercy, that Thou wouldest be propitious unto us sinners, and make us worthy of the reception of Thy only-begotten Son and our God, the King of glory. For behold, His immaculate body and life-giving blood, at this present hour entering in, are about to be set forth upon this mystical table, invisibly escorted by a multitude of the heavenly host, of which do Thou grant us a blameless communion, that through it, our eyes of the mind being enlightened, we may become sons of light and of the day. A Deacon: Receive, save, have mercy. Wisdom. B Exclaiming: Through the gift and grace of Thy Christ, with whom Thou art blessed, together with Thy all-holy, and good, and life-giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. And there is chanted C the Nunc virtutes. And the entrance of the holy things takes place. After which the deacon says: Let us complete our evening prayer unto the Lord. Let us beseech the Lord for the gifts here proposed and sanctified, the holy things [presented]. That our gracious God, who has received them into His holy and supercelestial D and rational altar for our sins as a sweet-smelling savor, may send down upon us in return His divine grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit, let us pray.
Various Readings
(mm) Morelliana, the peaceful petitions ; the deacon as in the others. (nn) And there is chanted: The choir chants, "Now the powers of heaven invisibly worship with us. For behold, the King of glory enters. Behold the mystical sacrifice, perfected, is escorted. Let us draw near with faith and fear, that we may become partakers of life eternal. Alleluia." The Priest [says] the prayer: "O God, who hast visited us in mercy and compassions, O Master Lord, who hast granted us, Thy humble and unworthy servants, confidence to stand before Thy holy altar, and to offer unto Thee this rational and unbloody sacrifice for our sins: look upon me, Thy useless servant, and according to Thy clemency blot out my transgressions; purge my lips and my heart of all defilement of flesh and spirit; and render me meet to serve in this liturgy by the power of Thy Holy Spirit, and receive me who draw near to Thy holy altar by reason of Thy goodness. Be pleased, O Lord, that these gifts brought unto Thee by our hands may be acceptable, Thou condescending to my weaknesses; and do not cast me away from Thy presence, nor abhor my unworthiness; but have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy great mercy, and take away [my] iniquity; that I may draw near blamelessly before Thy holy glory, and be deemed worthy of the protection of Thy only-begotten Son, and not be found a rejected and sinful servant. Yea, O Master Lord Almighty, hearken unto my supplication. For Thou art He who workest all in all, and from Thee do we all seek the aid." The priest censes the holy things, and kisses the aer, worshipping, and says: "Like the prodigal son, I also have come, O Compassionate One." And he takes the holy things, as is the custom, with reverence, and goes out with torches going before, and says: "May the Lord God remember all of us in His Kingdom, always, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages." And immediately he enters into the holy table, and sets down the holy things, worshipping and censing with all reverence; and the aforesaid hymn being completed, the deacon begins: "Let us complete." The choir: "Lord, have mercy." (pp) These and the following are wanting in Barber. In the Morellian copies, however, it is added to every prayer: "The choir: Lord, have mercy."
to his holy, supercelestial, and A intellectual altar, for an odor of spiritual fragrance, may he send down upon us divine grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit, let us pray. For our deliverance from all affliction, wrath, and necessity, let us pray.
The priest offers the prayer (qq).
O God of ineffable and invisible mysteries, with whom are the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge, who hast revealed to us the ministry of this service, and hast appointed us sinners through thy great love for mankind to offer unto thee gifts and sacrifices for our own sins and for the ignorances of the people; do thou, O invisible King, who doest great and unsearchable, glorious and extraordinary things, of which there is no number, look upon us thy unworthy servants, B who stand before this holy altar as before thy Cherubic throne, upon which thy only-begotten Son and our God rests through the present fearful mysteries; and do thou deliver us and thy faithful people from all impurity, and sanctify all our souls and bodies with an abiding sanctification; that with a pure conscience, an unashamed face, and an enlightened heart, partaking of these divine sanctifications, and vivified by them, we may be united to Christ himself, our true God, who said: "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I in him;" so that thy Word dwelling in us and walking with us, O Lord, we may become a temple of thy all-holy and adorable Spirit, C delivered from all the devil’s wiles, whether wrought in deed, in word, or in thought; and let us attain to the blessings promised to us, with all thy saints who have pleased thee from all eternity.
Deacon: Succor us, save us, have mercy. An entire evening, perfect and holy. An angel of peace, a faithful guide. Pardon and remission of sins. That which is good and convenient for our souls. The remaining time of our life. A Christian ending to our life. The unity of the faith and the communion. D
Exclamation: And make us worthy, O Master, that with boldness and without condemnation we may dare to call upon thee, the supercelestial God, as Father, and to say.
The people: Our Father (ss).
Exclamation: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
Priest: Peace to all. Deacon: Let us bow our heads unto the Lord. The priest, bowing, prays. O God, who alone art good and compassionate, who dwellest in the heights and lookest upon the humble, look with a compassionate eye upon all thy people and preserve them; and deem us all worthy to partake, without condemnation, of these thy life-giving mysteries. For to thee we have bowed our heads, awaiting the abundant mercy from thee.
Exclamation. By the grace and mercies and love for mankind of thine only-begotten Son, with whom thou art blessed, together with thy most holy, and good, and life-giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.
Priest prays. Attend, O Lord Jesus Christ, our God, from thy holy dwelling-place and from the throne of the glory of thy kingdom, and come to sanctify us, who dwellest on high with the Father and art invisibly present here with us; and deign to impart to us, by thy mighty hand, thy most pure Body and precious Blood, and through us to all the people.
After this prayer, the priest and the deacon C bow down three times, saying: O God, be merciful to me a sinner. The priest, while the divine gifts are covered, putting forth his hand, touches the life-giving bread with reverence and great fear. And the deacon saying: Let us attend, the priest exclaims: The Preconsecrated Holy Things to the saints. Then having unveiled it, he completes the communion of the divine gifts.
Various readings.
(uu) Morelliana answers, and adds, The deacon having therefore bowed his head a little, and seeing the priest worshipping, he also worships himself. (vv) The priest prays secretly. And he says three times, O Lord, thou shalt open my lips; and my mouth shall declare thy praise. (xx) After the prayer. Let us attend. And censing, he says: I will extol thee, O my God, my King. And lifting up the bread, he says: Let us attend. The Pre-consecrated Holy Things to the saints. The people: One is holy. And the communion is said: O taste and see that the Lord is good. Alleluia. The deacon: Fill, O Master. The priest having taken a portion from the bread, puts it into the chalice, saying: The fullness of the Holy Spirit. The priest, the prayer We give thanks. One is holy, one Lord, Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the Father. Amen. For he does not lift up the bread. Then having uncovered it, he completes the communion of the divine remains. And both the priest and the deacon and the choir perform and say the same things as in the liturgy of Chrysostom. The Pre-consecrated Holy Things to the saints. And he takes a portion from the holy body, and puts it into the chalice, saying: The fullness of the Holy Spirit always, now and ever. Communion: O taste and see. Prayer after the communion. We give thanks.
A When the communion is completed, and the holy relics have been removed from the holy table, the priest prays.
We give thanks to Thee, O Saviour of all, O God, for all the good things which Thou hast bestowed upon us, and for the communion of the holy Body and Blood of Thy Christ; and we beseech Thee, O Master, Lover of mankind, keep us under the shadow and covering of Thy wings, and grant us until our last breath worthily to partake of Thy sanctifications, for the illumination of soul and body, for the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven.
*The Deacon*B. Stand upright! Having partaken of the divine, holy, immaculate, immortal [mysteries]. Help, save, have mercy. The whole evening perfect, holy.
*Exclamation.* For Thou art our sanctification, and to Thee we send up glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
*Prayer behind the ambo, said aloud.* O Almighty Master, who in wisdom hast created all creation, who through Thy ineffable providence and great goodness hast brought us into these all-venerable days, for the purification of souls and bodies, for the moderation of passions, for the hope of the resurrection; Thou who, through forty days, didst provide tables and divinely-inscribed letters to Thy servant Moses: grant also to us, O Good One, to fight the good fight, to complete the course of the fast, to keep the faith undivided, to crush the heads of the invisible dragons, to be revealed as victors over sin, and without condemnation to attain to worship also the holy resurrection. For blessed and glorified is Thy most honourable and magnificent name, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
*Prayer while the holy things are being gathered.* O Lord our God, who hast led us into these venerable C days...
and made us partakers of Thy terrible mysteries, unite us to Thy rational flock, and show us to be heirs of Thy kingdom, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
The priest goes out, and standing in the accustomed place, distributes the blessed bread; and finally he performs the dismissal. The end of the divine Liturgy of the Presanctified.
Another very brief and most ancient Missal from the Barberini collection of the Order of St. Mark of the Preachers.
ORDER OF THE LITURGY OF THE PRESANCTIFIED
At Vespers, after the readings, and the "Let my prayer," and "Lord, have mercy," the prayer for the catechumens over the presanctified gifts is said. O God, our God, etc. B Prayer for those prepared for baptism. Shine forth, O Lord, etc. First prayer of the faithful. O God, great and praiseworthy, etc. Second prayer of the faithful. O holy Master, etc. And when "Now the powers of the heavens" is finished, the priest prays: O Thou of the ineffable, etc. C The priest: Peace be to all. The people: And with thy spirit. The deacon: Bow your heads. The priest prays: O God, who alone art good, etc. The deacon: Let us attend. The priest: The presanctified holy things are for the holy. The people: One is holy, one is Lord, etc. Prayer after communion: We give thanks to Thee, etc. The deacon: Let us depart in peace. The people: In the name of the Lord.Various Readings
Barberinum: Another prayer behind the ambo. O God, the hope of all the ends of the earth, who hast ordained Thy holy days of fasting through the Law, and the prophets, and the evangelists, to be aids to cleansing and salvation; grant that we all may perform the course of the fast acceptably, maintain our faith unshaken, and keep Thy divine commandments blameless unto the end. Command an angel of peace to guard our goings and comings, to make our steps secure, and to direct them into the paths of Thy righteous judgments. Accept this holy season of our fasting and genuflexions; recompense us with spiritual blessings and Thy benefits, that having obtained mercy, we may render glory to Thee; to the Father, etc.(ddd) The Morelliana and the Cryptographic codex premise this; the priest says the Psalms: "I will bless the Lord," and "I will exalt Thee, O Lord my God." Glory to Thee, O God, our hope, O Lord. Glory, honor, and adoration, and majesty to the Father. The people: I will bless the Lord. The priest: The blessing of the Lord be with you always. He performs the dismissal.
(eee) He performs the dismissal. The Morelliana and the Cryptographic codex add: He writes the dismissal itself: Christ our true God, through the intercessions of our all-laudable Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, of the precious incorporeal and heavenly powers, of the precious prophet, and forerunner, and Baptist John, etc.