BOOK IV. The following is contained in the Fourth Book of the words of Answer to the Greeks .
Proem (Introduction to ten attacks by the Philosopher) 117
The Christian (Introduction to his answer in eight chapters) 117
Chs. i. and xi. Concerning how it is said: The fashion of this world passeth away 118
Chs. ii. and xii. How it is said : We which are alive shall be caught up in the clouds 121
Chs. iii. and xiii. How he says: The Gospel shall be preached in all the world 124
Chs. iv. and xiv. How the Lord speaks to Paul by a vision, and how it befell that Peter was crucified 126
Chs. v. and xv. What is the meaning of: Take heed, for many shall come saying, I am Christ ? 127
Chs. vi., vii. and xvi . What is the meaning of the judgment in the Apocrypha? How it is said: The heaven shall be rolled together as a scroll, and the stars shall fall as leaves. 129
Chs. viii., ix. and xvii . What is the meaning of the leaven, the mustard seed, and the pearl? How it is said: Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes. 133
Chs. x. and xviii. What is the meaning of: They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick ? 136
Chs. xix. and xxv. (With brief Introductions to the next six questions and answers by the Philosopher and the Christian.) What is the meaning of: But ye were washed, but ye were sanctified ? 138
Chs. xx. and xxvi. What is the meaning of the Monarchy? 143
Chs. xxi. and xxvii. What is the meaning of the angels having immortality ? What is the meaning of the tables being written with the finger of God? 145
Chs. xxii. and xxviii. How the Godhead was made flesh in Mary and was born 149
Chs. xxiii. and xxix. How it is said : Thou shall not revile gods 151
Chs. xxiv. and xxx. What is the meaning of the resurrection of the flesh ? 153
Fragment quoted in Greek by F. Turrianus in the sixteenth century 164
Further quotation from the same author, which is probably a translation of Macarius 165
Index [omitted] 167
NOTE.---When passages in the Apocriticus are referred to by page and line, the numbering is that of the Greek edition, and not of the translation contained in this book.
INTRODUCTION
AN introduction to the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes cannot be written on the ordinary lines. This is the first time that it has been introduced to English readers, and those who wish to study it in the original Greek will find it very difficult to obtain a copy of the only edition. My own study of this obscure and neglected author has probably been more lengthy than that of any one outside Germany, and it is therefore a great pleasure to share with others the result of it. He is still surrounded with so much uncertainty that it is impossible to offer final conclusions with regard to him, but he is full of an interest which is in many ways unique, and his work not only affords a critical problem which should prove fascinating to many besides myself, but also contains much that is both interesting and novel. The Apocriticus really presents us with two separate works, for the questions of a heathen objector are in each case quoted verbatim before the "answer" is given. As the objections represent an attack on the Scriptures in detail, and undoubtedly reflect the philosophy of Porphyry, the famous Neoplatonist of the third century, the reproduction of them preserves for us a form of anti-Christian literature in a fulness which has no parallel. I have therefore translated them without any abbreviation. The answers have proved too lengthy to give in full, but, rather than offer a mere selection, I have translated the most important parts, and given the rest in the form of a summary.
Such is the chequered history of the work, that the author's name, date, and country have always been a matter of doubt, while the dialogue which he claims to |10 be reproducing in his book has generally been considered a mere literary device. It was rescued from oblivion by its use in a bitter controversy in the ninth century, after which there is no mention of it until the sixteenth, when its use was again controversial. When its genuineness was then called in question, the only Manuscript was found to have disappeared from Venice. Nothing more is heard of the book until 1867, when a Manuscript was found in Epirus, and taken to Athens. It was collated by a young French scholar, who died before it could be published. The destructive criticism of a series of German scholars reduced its importance and checked the study of it. While I was myself talking of another collation, a German scholar sought it at Athens and found that the Manuscript was not in the Library, but in private possession, with the risk of being lost. The only edition is increasingly difficult to obtain, and there is a danger of the Apocriticus again sinking into oblivion. I therefore greatly welcome this opportunity of making it more widely known.
THE NATURE OF THE APOCRITICUS.
It may be stated at the outset that it was originally a work in five books, and claims to represent a dialogue between Macarius and a heathen philosopher, which took place on five successive days. The Athens MS. is mutilated, beginning in Chapter VII of Book II, and ending in the middle of Chapter XXX of Book IV. A fragment of Book I has been preserved in Nicephorus, and I had myself the good fortune to discover a fragment of Book V in Turrianus. The questions are mostly objections to selected verses of the Gospels, Acts, and Pauline Epistles, but one or two concern the Old Testament, and some in the later part are purely doctrinal. There seems some sequence in their subjects, |11 Christ's miracles being first attacked, and then His words, the chief charge being that of inconsistency. There follow like charges of inconsistency against S. Peter and S. Paul, and then objections are brought to such doctrines as the Incarnation, the Monarchy of God, and the Resurrection. The fragment from Book V suggests, that the latter part dealt with some of the more inward doctrines of Christianity, such as justification by faith. The method of the book is to give about seven objections in a series, and then their respective answers, with a few words of introduction in each case, especially at the beginning of each book.
THE HISTORY OF THE APOCRITICUS TO 1867.
The book seems to have disappeared until the ninth century. This is not to be wondered at when the anti-Christian blasphemy of the questions is remembered, which might have caused its suppression under the edicts of Theodosius II or Justinian. Possibly the survival of the copy then brought to light was due to the fact that it had as frontispiece a portrait of the author in ecclesiastical vestments. In the Iconoclastic controversy, those who were in favour of the destruction of images garbled a quotation from it as a support to their position. Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople, in answering them, had some difficulty in finding out anything about it. He was able to show that his opponents had used it wrongly, but regarded it with little favour on the ground that it was inclined towards heresy. His importance, however, lies in the fact that he also quoted a fragment from the first book, which has not been preserved otherwise. It contains part of the answer of Macarius to an objection to the miracle of the woman with the issue of blood, in which the story appears that she was a great woman of Edessa named Berenice, and that a bronze statue in that city still commemorated her healing. |12
The Apocriticus next appears in the sixteenth century, when it was one of the favourite weapons in the patristic armoury of the Jesuit Franciscus Turrianus (De la Torre) in his controversy with the Lutherans. He not only quotes from all the extant books, but makes a quotation from the lost fifth book. He gives the author's name as Magnetes, and places his date soon after A.D. 150. His opponents in the Eucharistic controversy refused to believe that there was such a book, and when search was made in S. Mark's Library at Venice, the MS. was nowhere to be found, though mentioned in the catalogue. Little is heard, about the book in the centuries that followed. Boivin, of Paris, considered the author to have been a younger contemporary of Athanasius. Magnus Crusius, a Gottingen professor, believed his opponent to be none other than Porphyry the Neoplatonist, and placed the work at the end of the third or beginning of the fourth century. He held that neither of the author's appellations was necessarily his proper name, as of course Macarius Magnes may simply mean "The Blessed Magnesian."
ITS HISTORY SINCE 1867.
In 1867 a MS. of the Apocriticus was discovered at Athens, and on the death of its first editor, C. Blondel, it was finally published by his friend Foucart, but without an introduction. This was supplied the next year by Duchesne, who believed that the Athens MS., was identical with the one lost three centuries before at Venice. As other evidence has been added since his time, this theory cannot now be accepted. He thinks |13 the author was from Magnesia, but locates his abode as near Edessa, giving him a date between A.D. 300 and 350. Concerning his opponent he makes the brilliant suggestion that he was the well-known Hierocles, who was something of a Neoplatonist philosopher, and a follower of Porphyry, but was also governor of Bithynia, and perhaps also at another time of Palmyra. This man wrote two books called Philaktheis Logoi (often simply referred to as Philalethes, or "Friend of truth"), and after addressing them "not against the Christians but to them," he became an instigator of the terrible persecution of the Christians which broke out under Diocletian in A.D. 303. I have found much to substantiate this theory, and shall therefore refer again to its acceptance.
However, a series of German critics refused to date the work from the fourth century, and identified the author with the Macarius, Bishop of Magnesia, who was at the Synod of the Oak in A.D. 403, and accused Heraclides of Ephesus of heresy in his following of Origen. This new German theory was really an old French one, which had been suggested by Le Quien nearly two centuries before. There is much to be said against it, as I have shown in my articles on this subject in the Journal of Theological Studies . It is quite impossible to repeat in this short introduction the arguments on this and many points, so I venture to refer the reader to what I have already written elsewhere. In 1911 Harnack took up the subject, and set forth lengthy arguments for the theory that the heathen objector is Porphyry himself, and actually suggested that it affords material for an edition of his lost treatise in fifteen books against |14 the Christians. But he has to admit that in any case the Apocriticus simply contains a series of excerpts from Porphyry made by a later anonymous writer, and that Macarius did not know they were from Porphyry, or he would not in one of his answers have referred his opponent to Porphyry's book De Abstinentia as an authority. With regard to the answers, Harnack accepts the theory of a later date, and puts aside my arguments in favour of, the earlier. For the many weaknesses in his theory, and the difficulties which may be better overcome by other explanations, I must again refer to what I have already written. The only other recent contribution to the subject was made by Schalkhausser, who searched for the solitary MS. of the Apocriticus in the National Library at Athens, and made the strange discovery that the MS. had been the property of the late librarian Apostolides, who had left it to his widow, and it was now not to be traced. It may be mentioned here that ten short fragments remain of another work of Macarius, his Homilies on Genesis. The only place where they are all to be found together is an appendix to the treatise of Duchesne. They contain the word Monogenes, which is the sub-title of the Apocriticus, as a title of God the Son. And the allegorical method used, including the interpretation of the coats of skins, shows the same following of Origen as we see in the rest of Macarius.
THE HEATHEN OBJECTIONS IN THE APOCRITICUS.
Nowhere else does so detailed an attack on Christianity remain to us. It evidently comes from one who is not merely engaged in the vulgar work of trying to destroy the faith; for he claims a higher morality, and writes as |15 a philosopher. And the modern character of many of his attacks, and of some of his actual arguments, give his work more than an antiquarian interest. These assaults of long ago, which were successfully parried by a champion of the faith, may have a reassuring effect upon those who think that their religion has never met with such plausible assaults as to-day. They reflect the master-mind of Porphyry, the great Neoplatonist philosopher, but even Harnack admits that they are borrowed from him by some smaller man, who thus popularised his work. This is exactly the case of so many who speak and write against the Church to-day. And the most recent tendency of those who refuse to accept the Christian faith is to approve at least in some sense of its Founder Himself, but deny that the Church has either the power or the right to interpret Him to the. world. The objections before us are mostly to the human side of the faith, and are directed against the Evangelists rather than the Leader whose words and deeds they profess to recount, and against the unreasonableness of the Apostles and their teaching rather than that of Christ. We will take the theory as substantiated that the author was Hierocles, who attacked Christianity with the pen before he tried to destroy it with the sword of persecution. Harnack has given unintentional support by showing that the Apocriticus is really to be divided into two parts, after iii. 19, though the author has concealed the division. This is a new argument for the theory that he is using the two books of the Philaletheis Logoi, or Philalethes, of Hierocles. But there are other problems connected with the Apocriticus which this theory helps to solve. For instance, Duchesne adduces an inscription as proving that, before his governorship of Bithynia in A.D. 304 he had been in office at Palmyra. Now Macarius came from Asia Minor, but when he points his opponent to the effects of the faith, it is to Syria that he turns, especially to Edessa and Antioch. |16 Again, we find that in the Apocriticus the life of Christ is belittled by adducing that of Apollonius ofTyana, whose miracles were said to be superior, and who, instead of humbly submitting to death, "spoke boldly to the Emperor Domitian and then disappeared." Eusebius himself wrote an answer to Hierocles, in which he says that Apollonius was thus adduced, and gives a statement of Philostratus about him, saying, "He says that he disappeared from the judgment-seat." Lactantius gives similar testimony, for in writing about Hierocles he speaks of Apollonius "who, as you describe, suddenly was not to be found at the judgment-seat, when Domitian wished to punish him." It may be added that, whereas the language of theobjector in the Apocriticus has nothing in common with the extant words of Porphyry, there are a few sentences given by Eusebius as occurring verbatim in the Philalethes of Hierocles, in which, out of eleven words of a distinctive kind, no less than seven are found in the Apocriticus.
THE DATE OF THE APOCRITICUS.
Upon the date of Macarius depends the question as to whether a real dialogue underlies his work or not. If such is the case, we must place him at the beginning of the fourth century, though he may have written his book years after the dialogue had taken place. Critics have been so unanimous in declaring that the book was written long afterwards, and that its form is a mere literary device, that I do not like to make an assertion to the contrary. But at least I would plead that, unless other considerations make such a date impossible, there is a strong suggestion of reality about the dialogue described |17 as in process. For the questions as well as the answers sometimes contain indications of a dispute; and a study of the author's remarks, made from time to time in the dialogue, shows him to have been either an unusually skilful simulator of doubts and fears which were not his, or a man giving a record of what had actually happened, though doubtless using the book into which Hierocles had already put the questions that he had raised in the debate. But, in any case, if Macarius is writing long after Christianity had ceased to be an unlawful religion, why should he adopt such a trembling attitude before his opponent, and need to brace himself continually against a nameless dread which nearly overwhelmed him ? All is explained if it is reminiscent of a contest with a man who shortly afterwards became "prime mover in causing the persecution." But this is not in the least like the language of Christians who faced opponents in later years. If the battle is only a literary one, and the Christian is showing, before a world in which the stigma of Christianity has been removed, how he got the upper hand, why should he cringe so before the heathen, as though he were making a desperate effort to uphold a humble and popular cause ? This was not the way to represent the relation of Christian and heathen a century later for the edification of fellow-Christians. If this be all literary padding, why is it of this kind ?
A few suggested indications of date may now be added.
1. Twice it is stated that 300 years have passed since Christianity began. But this is in the words of the heathen, not of Macarius, and in any case a round number does not count for much, especially in days before time was reckoned by the Christian era. |18
2. In the other direction the date is limited by the statement that "many rule the world," and the taking of Hadrian as an example of a "monarch," for the Empire was divided among two Augusti and two Caesars in the year A.D. 292.
3. Macarius gives a short list of some of the peoples of the earth who had not yet heard the preaching of the Gospel. They not only include some of the Ethiopians, but also Mauretania, which had certainly heard the Gospel long before the end of the fourth century.
4. He also has a list of heretics, which does not extend further than the Manichaeans, and makes no mention of the Arians. It is true that some have thought that the latter are meant by Christomachi (iii. 14, p. 91), but they are further defined as "sharers in judaistic folly," and seem to refer to the Monarchians.
5. But in the eyes of all German critics other considerations have been considered enough to brush these aside. The Trinitarian doctrine of the book has been considered as belonging to a period some time after A.D. 325. It is true that there is a passage on the baptismal formula which contains the words "that the name of three Persons in one substance may be recognised." But two points should be considered; ---this is not the ordinary use of the words u9po&stasij and ou0si/a in the book ; and the whole passage is contained in twenty-three lines which are extraordinarily inappropriate to an argument with a pagan, with whom the argument has just been about the Monarchy of the one God. Brief theological phrases replace the usual diffuse style of Macarius, and the possibility is suggested that the words are a later interpolation, inserted for the instruction of Christians, not for the defence of the faith.
The other consideration is suggested by the likeness |19 of some of the words and arguments of the Apocriticus to some of the fathers of the fourth century, notably Gregory of Nyssa. But an examination reveals the fact that the passages are mostly of a character which express ideas common in the fourth century, so that the theory that Macarius borrowed in each case cannot be substantiated. For instance, the language of Macarius about our Lord enticing the devil to attack Him in the Passion, and Satan, like a fish, gulping down the bait of His humanity, and so being caught by the hook of His divinity, is much like that of Gregory. But a close parallel is found in a passage of Rufinus, and another in Amphilochius. And indeed the latter, in introducing it, uses the unusual title Monogenes in speaking of Christ; but this is the alternative title of the Apocriticus itself, and probably was originally the chief one. So that he may . have used the title because he was borrowing from a book of that name. But as a matter of fact the simile dates back to Origen ( Comm. in Psalm xxii.), and the idea is present in germ in Ignatius, Ad. Eph. xix.
For a further discussion of the date, I must refer to what I have written elsewhere. If German conclusions are to be accepted, it is about A.D. 410. But sufficient has been said to show that there are many objections to this, and that it is quite possibly a century earlier. Of course this makes a great deal of difference to the importance of the answers.
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE APOCRITICUS.
In spite of the ambiguity of his double name, we may safely speak of the author as Macarius, and regard Magnes as a place-name, meaning "the Magnesian." |20 The question still remains whether the latter implies that he was Bishop of Magnesia. The fact that there was such a bishop, whose name was Macarius, has naturally suggested an identification of the two. Photius records that this Macarius came forward at the Synod of the Oak in A.D. 403 as one of those who accused Heraclides of Ephesus of heresy, his offence consisting of an undue following of Origen. But it is difficult to see how such a charge can have been brought by the author of the Apocriticus, who is himself steeped in Origenism. Not only was this the conclusion arrived at by Nicephorus, when he studied the book in the, ninth century, but it is obvious to any one who looks at it. And it is a complete puzzle why such a man should have thought it necessary to represent himself as having a desperate encounter with a heathen philosopher of a hundred years before, and facing his long-forgotten arguments in fear and trembling. And internal evidence is against the fact of the author having been a bishop. When his opponent says that, if to "drink any deadly thing" cannot hurt a true believer, this ought to be made a test in the choosing of bishops, there is no attempt at personal defence in the answer. And, after giving examples of great bishops of former time and the power of their prayers, he refers to those of his own day in a way that seems to indicate that he himself bore no such exalted position in the Christian community. It is true that Nicephorus called him a "Hierarch," and said there was a portrait of him on the MS. of his book, in which he was robed as a priest, but this does not prove anything. And it is evidently not in Asia Minor that the Apocriticus was written. It is not only that, as already |21 stated, he points his opponent to the East, and particularly to Antioch and Edessa, and that he once uses the Persian word "parasang" as a measure of distance. But, when he gives a list of countries which had not yet heard the Gospel, he locates Ethiopia as south-west, which implies that he was as far eastward as Syria. And yet he shows a special interest in Asia Minor also. In his list of heretics, in which he refers exclusively to those of the East, he speaks of Montanus of Phrygia, and Dositheus of Cilicia, and he shows a knowledge of the Encratites of Asia Minor, which suggests that those regions were familiar to him. He also knows details of other natives of those parts, such as Aratus, the astronomer of Cilicia, and Apollonius of Tyana, about whom he adds further facts to those mentioned by his opponent. When he mentions the heroes of the Church, there is one about whom he gives details, namely, Polycarp of Smyrna, concerning whom he records stories like those given in the Vita Polycarpi, which may have formed a local tradition. It is true that he turns to the West for the rest of his list, which has led Duchesne to the surmise that the author had visited Rome. And he recalls traditions about both S. Peter and S. Paul at Rome, which might suggest that he was linked with that part of the world, were it not that he speaks elsewhere of the Romans as "a barbarian race." Whether all this accords with the authorship of such a small-minded man as the Macarius of the Oak, who accused another of the same tendency which is so plainly seen in the Apocriticus, is very doubtful.
It must be remembered that the title "Of Magnesia" does not necessarily imply that he was bishop there. It is often used of the locality whence a man derived his birth or upbringing, as is the case with Joannes Damascenlus, or John of Damascus. It seems better to picture |22 the author as a man bearing the very common name of Macarius, who was not a bishop, but came from Magnesia, and, after perhaps having travelled as far as Rome, had settled in Syria at the time that he wrote his book. As he makes no attempt to connect his opponent with Syria, and only refers him to those regions in an entirely natural way, there is no reason for thinking that his language is merely part of a literary device. And a reason for the neglect of his work from the first may find an explanation in the fact that his theology was entirely different from that of the schools of Antioch or Edessa which were flourishing during the fourth century. His allegorical method of interpretation, which is even fuller of Origenism than that of Origen himself, would have been distasteful to the theologians of the neighbourhood, which would explain the fact that his book seems to have been unappreciated, and allowed to pass into oblivion, the only MS. of it to be found in the ninth century possibly owing its preservation to the portrait which formed the frontispiece. Whether he wrote in the first decade of the fourth century, or at a later period, is impossible to decide with certainty. Harnack has evolved an elaborate theory of there being two men who are responsible for the heathen objections in the book, namely, Porphyry and an anonymous author who made excerpts from his book and issued them in the form of an attack on the New Testament and its teaching. Perhaps therefore I need not apologise for a similar attempt with regard to the answers, though in this case it is the earlier and not the later authority who is anonymous. I can imagine an Origenist writing a work, not far into the fourth century, in which he faced, probably by name, Hierocles and the arguments which he had brought against the Scriptures in his Philalethes, |23 a real dialogue being conceivably the foundation of his work. He was living in the East, but had visited Rome, and was also well acquainted with the eastern part of Asia Minor. He was a really great exponent of the Christian faith, and worthy to be ranked with some of the great fathers of that century. His work was seized upon by Macarius Magnes, the Bishop of Magnesia, who is heard of in A.D. 403, and worked into its present form, the original division of the two books of Hierocles being quite obscured. Nothing leads us to expect any great originality or literary talent or powers of Catholic exegesis from this Macarius. It well accords with what we know of him, that he should simply arrange another man's work. He carefully suppresses the names of both Hierocles and the man who had answered him, and alters just enough to make it appear a work of his own time, perhaps changing "200 years" into "300" (as Harnack suggested), and making the Trinitarian doctrine more definite when opportunity offered. He does not trouble to change the locality from the East to Asia Minor, nor to add to the list of earlier heretics, but it is perhaps he who is responsible for the details about a local hero, Polycarp of Smyrna. As an opponent of Origenism, he would not have used such methods himself, but he allowed those he found to remain in their place. He may have curtailed the number of questions and answers to suit his purpose, which would explain the occasional failure of sequence in the questions, to which Harnack has called attention. It is surprising that so weighty a work was not carefully preserved by the Church. But if, in addition to the fact that it contained blasphemous objections to Holy Writ, it bore the name of an obscure bishop, of whom what was known was not particularly to his advantage, it can easily be understood how it was soon forgotten and was very nearly lost to posterity. The above theory of authorship is merely a suggestion ; I leave it to others to improve on it. |24
THE TITLE OF THE WORK.
The double title is a strange one, "Monogenes or Answer-book to the Greeks ( Monogenh&j h2 'Apokritiko_j pro_j 3Ellhnaj .)" Its very strangeness may have produced the further title found in the Athens MS., viz. "An account of the disputed questions and solutions in the New Testament" ( peri\ tw~n a0poroume/nwn e0n th~| kainh~| Diaqh&kh| zhthma&twn kai\ lu&sewn lo&goj ), with the added mention of five books. Neumann long ago suggested that the title is to be transposed as "Monogenes or Apocriticus to the Greeks," and this is tacitly accepted by Bardenhewer. But the further suggestion that the title Monogenes, as applied to God the Son, was probably made more use of in the first part of the work, now lost, is not borne out by the fact that of the seventeen times the word occurs in the extant books, fourteen are in six chapters of Book III. I prefer to think that the first part of the title was Apocriticus, as given in the MS., and I would offer the following explanation of Monogenes to the Greeks. If we consider the opponent's book to have been "Philalethes, to the Christians," it is natural that the answer should bear a name reminiscent of it. There is a certain amount of similarity between the word Philalethes (friend of truth) and Monogenes (Only-begotten), though the second is infinitely higher, and points to Him on whom reliance is placed for the answers. So we can understand the choice of such a title, with a further address "To the Greeks," to correspond to the dedication "To the Christians" in the earlier work. It may be added that there is a suitability in this dedication in each case. For Hierocles is said to have addressed his book "To the Christians, not against them, and in the objections the second person plural is often used in addressing the hearers, as |25 well as the singular, which is directed against a single opponent.
THE LITERARY RELATIONS OF THE APOCRITICUS.
This part of the subject must be dealt with briefly. Let us begin with the Scriptures.
In the questions, quotations occur from Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, the Psalms, and Isaiah, and also from the four Gospels, Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, and the Apocalypse of Peter. With regard to the apocryphal book last mentioned, the fact that "its popularity seems to have been almost confined to the less-educated class of Christians," helps to explain how one came to know and quote it who only knew Christianity from outside.
In the answers, there are quoted, independently of the questions, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, 1 and 2 Kings, Job, the Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Habakkuk, and also the four Gospels, Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, 1 Thessalonians, and 1 Timothy. Thus, in the New Testament, Ephesians is the only book quoted which had not been used in the questions. It is probable, but uncertain, that Macarius shows a knowledge of 2 Peter, but it is strange that, in answering the objection from the Apocalypse of Peter about the destruction of heaven and earth, he passes by the obvious parallel from 2 Peter iii. 12, and chooses that from Isaiah xxiv. 4. His attitude towards the Apocalypse of Peter is non-committal, but his substitution of similar passages from canonical Scriptures seems to suggest that it did not form part of his canon. With regard to the text used, the quotations on both sides seem to have been mostly made from memory. But |26 Hierocles uses the text of Codex Bezae in quoting Mark xv. 34 as "My God, my God, why hast thou reproached me?" and also in John xii. 31. In the latter case Macarius follows him, but adds that there is another reading "Now shall the prince of this world be cast down" instead of "cast out" ( ka&tw for e1cw ). This is the reading of the Old Syriac and some of the Latin versions. Passing from the Scriptures; we may note that Macarius makes several indirect references to Apocryphal literature and legendary stories. His statement that milk flowed from the wound at the martyrdom of S. Paul, is also to be found in Pseudo-Abdias and Pseudo-Linus. The latter was translated into Latin in the fourth century, so it may well have been previously known further East. The Acts of Paul and Thecla is referred to in ii. 7, p. 6, when, in speaking of the way the Gospel divides kinsfolk, Macarius gives as an instance the parting of Thecla from her mother Theocleia.
As he is so steeped in the spirit of Origen, we shall expect to find considerable indebtedness to the similar apologetic works in which Origen had answered the attacks on the faith made by the heathen philosopher Celsus. There are at least four objections to the Gospel which are identical in their respective opponents, but in each case the defence of Macarius is entirely different from that of Origen, and although the Contra Celsum must have been known to him, he does not seem to have used it in writing his Apocriticus. But it is with the writers of the fourth century that most similarities have been found, and it is the suggestion of the indebtedness of the Apocriticus to its literature which has inclined so many to relegate the work to the following century. There is no doubt that its explanation of the Passion as |27 a deception of the devil, wherein Christ surrounded the hook of His divinity with the bait of His humanity, is the same as that of Gregory of Nyssa, Rufinus, and Amphilochius, but it has already been stated that the idea dates from an earlier time, and so the fact of dependence must remain unproven. In the case of the suggested similarity between the list of heresies in Macarius and one in Epiphanius, it does not look as if either borrowed from the other.
THE TEXT AND MSS. OF THE APOCRITICUS.
We do not now know the whereabouts of a single MS. The Athens MS., which was at first generally considered to be identical with the Venice MS. which disappeared in the sixteenth century, was fortunately collated by Foucart and Blondel while in the National Library at Athens, before it passed into private possession by being left by the curator Apostolides to his widow. It is a paper MS. of the fifteenth century, and is described by Duchesne as badly written, with many gaps. Its accuracy can only be tested by comparing it with the fragments which are quoted by Nicephorus and Turrianus, and a few MSS. containing fragments. In every case, many mistakes and corruptions are revealed in the Athens MS. And besides this, Blondel has had to alter obvious blunders on every page, or to note that they have been corrected by a later hand. Nor is the text always to be trusted in the form in which he has been content to leave it. In the translation which follows, I have suggested a few obvious emendations, but more remains to be done, and, as the MS. is necessary for the purpose, it is particularly unfortunate that its present whereabouts is so uncertain.
This side of the Apocriticus was discussed at length a few years ago by Schalkhausser, who confined himself to the textual problem, and did not touch the literary |28 one. He carefully sets forth the quotations preserved in Turrianus from the Venice MS., to prove that it was not the Athens MS. which he had before him. After a very lengthy discussion of the problem, he adds a piece of evidence (p. 112) which, if it is to be relied on, is sufficient in itself to prove the point. It seems that the Athens MS., which only contains three out of the five books of the Apocriticus (and even they are mutilated at both ends), consists of one hundred and twenty-five leaves, but an ancient catalogue reveals the fact that the Venice MS., which was complete, contained only one hundred and four.
Schalkhausser also cites certain other MSS. which contain the famous chapter (iii. 23) on the Eucharist, which is the most familiar and oftenest-cited passage in the Apocriticus. At the end of it they add the story of the convincing of a doubting brother, which is plainly an interpolation. Linked by a colon or a hyphen to the final words of the chapter that "that which is eaten remains unconsumed," comes the abrupt commencement of a narrative. "A certain brother was in doubt concerning the things which were consecrated, saying that they were not the Body and Blood of the Lord, but types of these things." It proceeds to tell of the vision he had, while the deacon was reading the Gospel, of the heavenly Child slain and offered for food, of his inability to eat the flesh thus given, and of its being turned into bread as a concession to man's weakness. There seems no doubt whatever that the story is a mere insertion, of a later date than Macarius. Perhaps some one who reads this may recognise the source from which it comes. But the fact of there being such an interpolation adds point to my own suggestion with regard to the passage about the Trinity, where there is a sudden change of style, and the use of seemingly post-Nicene terms for "Person" and "Substance." If the Eucharistic chapter tempted some one to interpolate, the passage on Baptism |29 in the name of the Trinity may well have done the same.
THE THEOLOGICAL AND APOLOGETIC VALUE OF THE APOCRITICUS.
We may set aside the charges of heresy brought against the work by Nicephorus, who was biassed by its use by his opponents. He specifies the particular dogma in it derived from Origen as being the non-eternity of punishment, and in iv. 16, p. 187, we find a second and better beginning postulated of "the whole nature and substance of created things." He speaks of Christ in one place as of Him "Who seemed to be subject to human affections" (iii. 8, p. 68), but other passages are entirely opposed to anything Docetic. In one passage (iii. 14) he speaks of His manhood as having become divine after the Passion, but if his language is heretical, he is following his master Origen. The Virgin-birth is regarded by his opponent as well as himself as an essential part of the faith (iv. 28). The power of Christ's atoning death is set forth in iii. 9 and 14, and His Resurrection and appearances are shown in ii. 19 to rest on the power, not of men, but of God. His Ascension and present ubiquity are discussed in iii. 14, His Godhead and His manhood being for ever indissoluble. Allusion has already been made to the very definite Trinitarian passage in iv. 25.
With regard to the Church and the Christian life, iv. 25 and iii. 23 are of the chief value. The water of Holy Baptism has the power to cleanse from the stain of evil, nor is it the fault of the Giver if this grace is abused. The Eucharist is the plainest explanation of Christ's words about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, and is far more than a mere type. Bread and wine are produced from the earth which He made, and so bread is already in a mystical sense His flesh. But the bread of the Eucharist is not ordinary bread, but is "tilled in the blessed land of Christ."
In spite of its present obscurity, I believe the |30 Apocriticus to rank as one of the great apologies for the faith. Others deal with outlines, but Macarius is unique in his defence of details, and, except for his frequent use of allegory, his answers are mostly sound in the light of to-day. It is a great thing for a man to answer so many cunning objections without involving himself in inconsistency. He shows his readiness to meet his opponent on his own ground, and an absence of narrowness which ought to appeal to the modern reader. For instance, when the Mosaic books are discredited as written long after Moses, he accepts a later date without any weakening of their authenticity (iii. 10). In answering the charge of discrepancies in the Gospels, he replies that details of expression are not the criterion of the truth of a fact, and in such narratives as those of the Crucifixion, the varied accounts may be truthful, and yet reflect the suspense of the crisis, the very strangeness of which had unnerved all who were present.
One is tempted to multiply illustrations of the teaching and methods of Macarius, but it is better simply to refer to the pages which follow. There are some who will look in them chiefly for the pagan objections of his opponent, which have a special value of their own apart from the answers.
I have thought it best and handiest not to follow the plan of giving about seven questions in succession and proceeding to give the answers. This involves much turning of pages in order to read the corresponding answer after each of them. I have therefore placed each question and its answer together, irrespective of chapters in the book. The only drawback to this is that it makes the little exordium with which Macarius begins each fresh series, seem somewhat out of place.
Let me conclude by saying that my great hope in writing thus on Macarius Magnes is that many to whom his name has meant nothing will regard him with interest henceforth, and that those who know something of the Apocriticus will be induced to study it again for themselves, and possibly to help in the solution of those interesting problems which are still raised in connexion with it.
THE APOCRITICUS OF MACARIUS MAGNES