18. The feast of circumcision.
19. I have not noticed the many verbal discrepancies between him and Aubert, as the Catenists naturally had to make many slight alterations in forming their extracts into a connected discourse.
20. This passage, as far as "the plan of salvation," Mai for the present omits, but afterwards gives it in so different a form, and with such additions, that I think it better to append a separate translation. "Again He paid the half shekel to the collectors of the tribute, although not bound to pay, as being in very truth the Son: but He paid as being made under the law. For He must verily act fully according to the dispensation which He had undertaken for our sakes. And we shall find Him, moreover, even in the payment of the half shekel marked out as a Saviour and Redeemer (?). For the half shekel was a coin stamped with the royal image: and it was paid according to the law for two persons. Behold therefore again Christ represented in the half shekel. For being the image of the Father, the impress of His substance, the coin that came from heaven, He offered Himself as the ransom for the two people, the Jews, I mean, and the Gentiles." This fanciful style of interpretation seldom appears in the Syriac, and is equally rejected in the present case by Aubert's MS.
21. This passage exists among the Syriac fragments, and is important in so far establishing the accuracy of Aubert's text, as it agrees with it in omitting an interpolation of the Catenist, found in Mai.
22. So Justin Martyr's Dial. with Trypho. (p. 201. ed. F. Sylburgii, Heidelb. 1793.) "The ordinance of circumcision, which commanded infants to be circumcised on the eighth day only, was a type of the true circumcision from error and wickedness by means of the resurrection from the dead of our Lord Jesus Christ on the first day of the week. For the first day of the week, while remaining the first of all the days, is, nevertheless, in its relation to the whole circle of the week, called the eighth, and yet continues to be the first." So again, p. 288. "The ark, in which were eight persons, symbolizes by that number the eighth day, on which Christ arose from the dead."
23. The next two or three paragraphs are not found in Aubert, but as they are in Mai's same MS. E, which contains most of the foregoing, and as it is possible that the Copyist of Aubert's MS. in reducing two Sermons into one, made large omissions to avoid the too great length, I have received them into the text.
24. Mai's next extract is from the 15th book of the De Ador. Spir. l. 553 and is omitted.
25. Aubert begins again here. The passage is also in the Aurea Catena, upon Luke ii. 24.
26. A passage follows in Mai, either from E. or H., going over ground already traversed, and probably only a summary gathered from S. Cyril. It is valuable, nevertheless, as shewing how little idea the ancients had of the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin Mary: for it testifies that all women, except the Virgin, ( αἱ ἄλλαι γυναῖκες ,) conceived in sin, ( ἐν ἀνομίαις .)
27. The text is now taken from the Tr. Coll. MS. B. Q. 7. apparently of the 12th century. It is a volume of sermons, and among them has one with the following superscription: Κυρίλλου ἀρχεπισκπ. ἀλεξανδρείας, εἰς τὸν δίκαιον συμεὼν, καὶ ἐκ τῆς ἑρμηνείας τοῦ κατὰ λουκᾶν εὐαγγελίου· κε̃ εὐλο +
I owe my transcript to a friend, himself engaged in collecting and editing the Greek remains of this Father.
28. Mai, whose extracts begin again at this clause, has admitted at the end of the first sentence an interpolation so curious, that I append it: "... and offered what is appointed in the law, a pair of turtles and two young pigeons, the type of temperance and gentleness, as well as also of each kind of life, marriage, namely, and celibacy, of both of which He is the Law-giver. For you may say that the active and more spiritual, who have taken upon themselves the single life, are the pigeons: but that those who occupy themselves with a family and other domestic cares are the turtle doves." As in the unworthy interpretation of the butter, referred to in the note at the end of the 2nd Sermon, it is impossible to say which MS. contains this interpolation, as the letters put by Mai at the commencement of each extract merely mean that those MSS. severally contain more or less of what follows. Immediately afterwards he has another passage, the false philosophy and bad Greek of which confirm its rejection by the two trustworthy MSS. It is to the effect, that Symeon was to be set free from the leaping-ground of life: for life is a ransom and prison. Upon the offering of the turtle doves, the reader may compare S. Cyril's explanation in the De Ador. Spir. Ed. Aub. I. 531. which agrees with the present Commentary.
29. Also in the Syriac. MS. 12,154.
30. The doxology is taken from Aubert, and is identically the same with that which concludes every homily in the Syriac.
31. Mai does not contain the above explanation of the sword that was to pierce the holy Virgin, but in its place has the following adaptation of it: "But to speak more briefly, we affirm that the sword here signifies the temptation like a knife, or even the passion itself brought upon the Immanuel by the madness of the Jews. And so the just Symeon seems to understand, and even to say. For the holy Virgin was all but killed by a sword in seeing Him That was born of her in the flesh crucified. Such also was that said by Zechariah (xiii. 7.): Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, that is, forthwith let the saving passion be enacted, and let the time of the shewing forth of good things come.To this Mai appends the following note: In codice B. f. 31. post σάρκα αδδιτυρ, καὶ ἀμφιγνοοῦσα εἴ γε καὶ θανάτου κρατήσει θανατωθείς : quam particulam de B. Virginis dubitatione circa futuram filii sui resurrectionem cum nec ceteri codices in Cyrillo habeant, nec pietas Christiana admittat, haud immerito praetermisimus: quamquam eadem legitur sub finem predictae homiliae in hypapantem," &c. The danger of such a method of treating MS. authority is shewn by the additional authority of the Tr. Cod., which completely agrees with Aubert, some slight verbal differences excepted.
32. From the Syriac: Ms. 12,151.
33. That is, "the human soul:" for our Lord, being perfect man, had a human soul as well as a fleshly body, as we are taught in the Athanasian Creed, in opposition to the Apollinarian heresy "Of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting." And this human soul was capable of increasing in wisdom. This extract apparently is collected from what precedes.
34. The style of the short extract that follows is entirely unlike Cyril's. Mai says, that the Catenae ascribe it to Origen as well as Cyril.
35. Mai's next extract upon v. 52. may serve as an instance of the manner in which the Catenists joined with the utmost neatness passages from various works. It commences with S. Cyril's Commentary on John i. 14, Op. iv. 96: after which there follow a few lines, which may possibly be from the Commentary on Luke: and finally, we have the 28th assertion of the Thesaurus, Op. v. pt. i. 253. The doctrine of these extracts is nearly identical, all affirming that our Lord's increase in wisdom and stature and grace cannot be said of Him considered as the Word, but either must be understood of the increase of admiration on the part of all who beheld Him, and daily witnessed a fuller manifestation of His glory: or, as the two latter extracts teach, it refers to the human nature. As I have not been able to find the second extract in S. Cyril's collected works,, I give it entire: "And observe, that that which increases in any thing is different from that in which it is said to increase. If therefore He is said to increase in wisdom, it was not the wisdom that increased, but the human nature that increased in it. For as the Godhead day by day unveiled and manifested Itself in Him, He ever became an object of greater admiration to those that saw Him."
36. This fragment is referred by two of Mai's MSS. to Chrysostom as well as Cyril, and by Corderius to Cyril and Basil.
37. The name Joshua, as a corruption of the Jews, (certainly after the time of Josephus, but prior to Jerome, who once mentions it; cf. Com. in Os. I. 1.,) ought to be everywhere rejected; but the ΝΑΓΗ of the LXX. is an error of the copyists for ΝΑΓΝ . The Masorites have twice punctuated the name correctly in the case of Jeshua, the son of Jozadak. (Ez. ii. 2., iii. 2.)
38. The style of this comment, so unlike Cyril's, and the extraordinary conclusion, both suggest caution in attributing to him the latter part of this extract.
39. The next extract is from the Commentary on Isaiah, Op. ii. 506, and is therefore omitted.
40. S. Cyril, whose habit it is to dwell at great length upon practical subjects, as will be seen afterwards in the Sermons from the Syriac, has exhausted two homilies upon John Baptist's lessons; but as they contained no doctrinal statements, nothing has been preserved in the Syriac, and by the Catenists only one extract: and even this in Cramer is referred to Origen.
41. Although the preposition ἐν is occasionally used for the instrument or means, yet this is only admissible where the sense can still be traced back to its proper signification of local presence. And so here: "to baptize," is literally in Syriac "to make to stand," by a metaphor evidently drawn from what was actually the practice of John and the early Church: and "to be baptized" is the simple verb "to stand." Thus v. 21. is literally; "And it came to pass, when all the people stood, that Jesus also stood." And so the passage above is exactly; "I indeed make you to stand in "water;" "He shall make you to stand in the Holy Ghost," &c. And I have therefore in the translation retained "in," as most closely representing the Syriac.