Dionysius Syrus (=Dionysius Bar Salibi, =Jacob Bar Salibi), Commentary on Revelation ( extracts ). Hermathena vol. 6 (1888) pp.397-418, vol.7 (1890) pp.137-150; The Expositor 7th series vol. 1 (1906), pp.481-495.
Dionysius Bar Salibi quotes the comments of Gaius and Hippolytus on:
and of Hippolytus on:
6. Revelation 11:2 (Hippolytus on Matthew 24:15-22)
and (from a subsequent manuscript find)
9. Complete introduction of the Commentary on Revelation and the first chapter .
Some additional notes by Roger Pearse
HIPPOLYTUS AND HIS 'HEADS AGAINST CAIUS.'
[By John G WYNN . D.D.]
The extant remains of the writings of Caius, and the scattered notices of him that occur in ancient writers, are so few and meagre, that they serve to raise, rather than to solve, questions concerning him. It may be briefly said, that hardly anything has hitherto been known of him with certainty, beyond the facts that he flourished about the year of our Lord 200, and that he wrote a Dialogue against Proclus, a Montanist leader. I believe, therefore, that many students of the early history of the Church, and of the New Testament Canon, will welcome an accession to the scanty materials out of which the existing acounts of him have been constructed. I propose, accordingly, to give in this Paper a few passages which I have recently lighted on, purporting to be derived from a work in which his contemporary, Hippolytus, controverted his teaching concerning the authenticity of the Apocalypse of St. John.
These passages, five in number, are embodied in the inedited Syriac Commentary on the Apocalypse, Acts, and Epistles, of Dionysius Barsalibi, the learned Jacobite divine of the twelfth century from whose Commentary on the Gospels investigators have learned many valuable facts----notably, the existence of Ephraim's Commentary on the Diatessaron of Tatian, recently confirmed so signally by Moesinger's publication of a Latin translation of the Armenian version. Of each of the five the method is the same. An objection is briefly stated as raised by Caius against some point in which he conceived that the Apocalypse was at variance with the teaching of the Gospels and of St. Paul; and the |398 arguments of Hippolytus, in reply, are given at some length.
Now, of the fragments preserved for us by Eusebius of the Dialogue of Caius, the principal is one on which much dispute has arisen----whether it refers to the canonical Apocalypse. It is as follows :----
'Cerinthus, by means of revelations purporting to have been written by a great Apostle, attempts to impose on us marvels which he pretended were shown to him by angels ; and says, that after the resurrection the reign of Christ is to be on earth, and that men are to inhabit Jerusalem in fleshy bondage to lusts and pleasures ; and being an enemy to God's Scriptures, he declares, in his desire to deceive, that the space of a thousand years is to be spent in a marriage feast.' ( Hist. Eccl. iii. 28.)
From these words the suspicion, prima facie, arises, that Caius may have rejected the Apocalypse from the Canon, and ascribed it to the arch-heretic Cerinthus. Yet, if the passage stood alone, this suspicion might well be set aside. The carnal millennium it describes is utterly unlike the millennium of our Apocalypse; and it seems, besides, impossible that anyone could have imagined Cerinthus to be the author of a book of which the Christology differs so fundamentally from his. But Eusebius, though he does not appear himself to have understood Caius to refer to the Apocalypse of the Canon, cites from Dionysius of Alexandria a statement, that 'some of those before him' had rejected the Apocalypse as the work, not of St. John, but of Cerinthus ; the grounds of rejection being much the same as those alleged by Caius, and expressed in similar, but grosser terms. The obvious inference seems to be, that Dionysius is here referring to Caius, and that he believed the 'revelations' which Caius ascribed to Cerinthus to be the Book of the Revelation, usually received in the Church as written by St. John. And in support of this inference |399 the fact is adduced that Ebediesu, a late Syriac writer ( circ. 1300), in his Catalogue, mentions, among the works of Hippolytus, his 'Heads against Caius. ' What more likely (it may be asked) than that the point of controversy between these contemporaries may have been the authenticity of the Book which the one appears to have called in question ; while the other, as his extant works attest, accepted it with reverence, and studied it with sedulous care ?
Bearing these particulars in mind, we shall better be able to estimate the evidence yielded by the passages of which I proceed to give a translation.
I. The first is as follows :----
[ Rev. viii. 8:
A great mountain was cast into the sea, and the third part of the sea became blood, ]
fol. 3r, line 13)
'On this, Caius the heretic objected to this revelation, and said that it is not possible that these things should be, inasmuch as as a thief that cometh in the night, so is the coming of the Lord [1 Thess. v. 2].
Hippolytus of Rome answered him, and said that, in like manner as God wrought signs such as these in Egypt, so is He to work when Christ appears. And those that [were wrought] in Egypt were partial, inasmuch as a part of the people was subjected there ; but these are to be general, before the judgment, on all the world. Accordingly, by the revelation John declared that there are to be plagues before the judgment, as though for the avenging of the righteous and retribution on the unbelieving, that when involved in these they may not trouble the faithful.
So also the Lord said, There shall be in that day tribulation |400 such as has been none like it [St. Matth. xxiv. 21] ; and Joel, I will shew signs in heaven and on earth, blood and fire and vapour of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the day of the Lord come [Joel ii. 30, 31] ; and Amos, To what end is the day of the Lord for you, for it is dark and not light? in like manner as if thou fleddest from a lion and a bear met thee, or one leaned his hands on a wall and a serpent bit him [Amos v. 18, 19].
The text, that the day of the Lord cometh as a thief, signifies as regards the unbelieving that they are darkness, inasmuch as the faithful are children of light, who walk not in the night [St. John xi. 10; xii. 35, 36 ; Eph. v. 8]. Accordingly, in Egypt this type was completed; for the Egyptians had darkness, but the Hebrews had light [Exod. x. 22, 23].'
II. The second goes on much the same lines----