Early Church Fathers
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81 i.e. no other name. See note on 'Agennhtoj, p. 100.
85 Oehler has restored gnwstikwn from his Codices, and notices that Cotelerius, Eccl. Gr. Monum. tom. ii. p. 622, had made the same change. Gulonius translates Gnosticorum. But the Editt. have gnwristikwn.
87 Ps. xxiii. 1; Ps. lxxx. 1. Cf. S. John xxi. 16, John xxi. 17.
94 Gen. xviii. 12; Gen. xxi. 6.
95 he, i.e. Basil. "God's nature can be looked at in as many aspects as corn can (i.e. in its growth, fructification, distribution, &c.)."
96 He, i.e. Basil. The words o Eunomioj, here are the additions of a copy st who did not understand that eipen referred to Basil, or else fhsin must be read with them. Certainly tauta eipwn below must refer to the same subject as eipen.
97 diaforouj dexesqai epinoiaj. Oehler has rightly omitted the words that follow (dia te taj ennoiaj), both because of their irrelevancy, and from the authority of his mss.
98 Indestructibility. Such terms ("not-composite," "indivisible," "imperishable") were the inheritance which Christian controversy received from the former struggle with Stoicism. In the hands of Origen, they had been aimed at the Stoic doctrine of the Deity as that of corporeal Spirit, which does not perish, only because there is no cause sufficient. "If one does not see the consequences of such an assertion, one ought to blush" (in Johann. xiii. 21). The consequences of course are that God, the Word, and our souls, made in His image, are all perishable; for all body, in that it is matter, is by the Stoic assumption, liable to change.
100 to nohma. There is a lacuna in the Paris Editt., beginning here, and extending to "ungenerate," just below. Oehler's Codices have supplied it.
105 Compare with this view of Eunomius on the sacredness of names, this striking passage from Origen (c. Cels. v. 43). "We hold, then, that the origin of names is not to be found in any formal agreements on the part of those who gave them, as Aristotle thinks. Human language, in fact, did not have its beginning from man. Any one can see this who reflects upon the real nature of the incantations which in the different languages are associated with the patriarchal names of those languages. The names which have their native power in such and such a language cease to have this influence of their peculiar sound when they are changed into another language. This has been often observed in the names given even to living men: one who from his birth has been called so and so in Greek will never, if we change his name into Egyptian or Roman, be made to feel or act as he can when called by the first name given. ...If this is true in the case of names given to men, what are we to think of the names connected in some way or other with the Deity? For instance, there must be some change in translating Abraham's name into Greek: some new expression given to `Isaac, 0' and `Jacob 0': and, while he who repeats the incantation or the oath names the `God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, 0' he produces those particular effects by the mere force and working of those names: because the daemons are mustered by him who utters them: but if on the other hand he says, `God of the chosen Father of the Crowd, 0' `of the Laughter, 0' `of the Supplanter, 0' he can do nothing with the names so expressed, any more than with any other powerless instrument. ...We can say the same of `Sabaoth, 0' which is used in many exorcisms: if we change it to `Lord of Powers, 0' or, `Lord of Hosts, 0' or, `Almighty, 0' we can do nothing ..."-and (46), "This, too, is the reason why we ourselves prefer any degradation to that of owning Zeus to be Deity. We cannot conceive of Zeus as the same as Sabaoth: or as Divine in any of all possible meanings. ...If the Egyptians offer us `Ammon, 0' or death, we shall take the latter, rather than pronounce the divinity of `Ammon. 0' The Scythians may tell us that their Papoeus is the God of the Universe, we shall not listen: we firmly believe in the God of the Universe, but we must not call him Papoeus, making that a name for absolute Deity, as the Being who occupies the desert, the nation, and the language of the Scythians would desire: although, indeed, it cannot be sin for any to rise the appellation of the Deity in his own mother tongue, whether it be the Scythian way or the Egyptian."
106 Reading keraire, according to Oehler's conjecture, from Iliad ix. 203. All the Codd. and Editt., read kekaire, however. The Editt., in the Homeric words which follow, show a strange ignorance, which Gulonius has reproduced, viz. Phocheiri, Poudese, Ische! (for fu xeiri, Douphse, !Iaxe.)
112 The words here attributed to Isaiah are found in Job ix. 9 (LXX.): and Orion in Isaiah xiii. 10 (LXX.), with "the stars of heaven;" and in Amos v. 8 with "the seven stars."
113 For Aseroth perhaps Mazaroth should be read. Cf. Job xxxviii. 32, "Canst thou lead forth the Mazaroth in their season?" (R.V.) and 2 Kings xxiii. 5, "to the planets (toij mazourwq)," i.e. the twelve signs of the Zodiac.
114 'Amalqeiaj keraj. So LXX. for the name of Job's third daughter, Keren-happuch, for which Symmachus and Aquila have Karnafouk, i.e. Horn of purple (fucus). The LXX. translator of Job was rather fond of classical allusions, and so brought in the Greek horn (of plenty). Amalthea's goat, that suckled Jupiter, broke its horn.
"Sustulit hoc Nymphe, cinctumque recentibus herbis
Et plenum pomis ad Jovis ora tulit."-
Ovid, Fasti, v. 123.
115 Isaiah xiii. 21. kai anapausontai ekei seirhnej, kai daimonia ekei orxhsontai, "and ostriches shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there" (R. V.). The LXX. render the Hebrew (bath-jaana) by seirhnej also in Isaiah xxxiv. 13, Isaiah xliii. 20: and in Micah i. 8: Jeremiah i. 39. Cyril of Alexandria has on the first passage, "Birds that have a sweet note: or, according to the Jewish interpretation, the owl." And this is followed by the majority of commentators. Cf. Gray-
"The moping owl doth to the moon complain."
But Bochart has many and strong arguments to prove that the ostrich, i.e. the strouqo-kamhloj, or "large sparrow with the long neck," is meant by bath-jaana: it has a high sharp unpleasant note. Cf. Job xxx. 29, "I am a companion to ostriches" (R. V.), speaking of his bitter cry.-Jerome also translates "habitabunt ibi struthiones;" and the LXX. elsewhere than above by strouqia. Gregory follows the traditional interpretation, of some pleasant note; and somehow identifies the Greek word with the Hebrew.
118 Rom. xvi. 25.-On Eunomius' knowledge of Scripture, see Socrates iv. 7. "He had a very slender knowledge of the letter of Scripture: he was wholly unable to enter into the spirit of it. Yet he abounded in words, and was accustomed to repeat the same thoughts in different terms without ever arriving at a clear explanation of what he had proposed to himself. Of this his seven books on the Apostle's Epistle to the Romans, on which he expended a quantity of vain labour, is a remarkable proof." But see c. Eunom. II. p. 107.
119 prosoyin, the reading of Oehler's mss.: also of Pithoeus' ms., which John the Franciscan changed into the vox nihili proshyin (putredinem), which appears in the Paris Editt. of 1638.
120 These words are in S. Basil's first Book against Eunomius.
122 Cf. Ps. xliv. 4, and Ps. xlviii. 14, with Ps. lxxiv. 12.
123 Valentinus "placed in the pleroma (so the Gnostics called the habitation of the Deity) thirty aeons (ages), of which one half were male, and the other female" (Mosheim), i.e. these aeons were co-eternal with the Deity.
124 barbaroi here being not opposed to "Greeks" must imply mere inability to speak aright: amongst those who claimed to use Catholic language another "barbarism," or "jargon," had arisen (i.e. that of heresy, whether Platonist or Gnostic), different from that which separated the Greeks from the Jews, Africans, Romans alike. Hesychius; barbaroi oi apaideutoi. So to S. Paul "the people" of Malta (Acts xxviii. 2-4), as to others the Apostles, were barbarian.
126 alloktwj autou taj toiautaj otomfwdeij adianohtouj fwnaj ...proj to sumban apoptuontoj.
127 ekbalwn tou logou sxeseij tinaj kai paraqeseij. Gulonius' Latin is wrong; "protulit in medium."
128 Reading eiper to aploun with the editt., which is manifestly required by the sense.
129 sunhqeiaj, lit. usage of language. Cf. Plato, Theaet. 168 B, ek sunhqeiaj rhmatwn te kai onomatwn. It is used absolutely, by the Grammarians, for the "Vulgar dialect."
130 thj kata fusin sxetikhj shmasiaj.
132 The Latin is wrong here, "secundum rerum intellectarum distinctricem significationem;" for nooumenwn without the article must be the gen. absol. Besides this the mss. read paratasin (not parastasin).
134 This may mean "short-hand" i. e. something difficult to decipher. See Book I. vi. note 10.
135 eulabeian tina prospoihton kai epilhpton.
