A customer for my CDROM of the Fathers wrote to ask if I had a PDF of vol. 2 of Cyril’s Commentary on John, since I had scanned it for my site. Luckily for him I had the chance to look, and found the images first shot.
I’ve now uploaded a searchable PDF of this volume to Archive.org. It’s here:
http://www.archive.org/details/CyrilOfAlexandriaCommentaryOnJohnVolume2Tr.T.Randell
(Or will be in a few minutes)
This was the final volume in the Oxford Movement Library of the Fathers series of translations. The series began in 1838. By 1880 E.B.Pusey was dead, and the movement was history. Yet, somehow, this one last volume appeared, in 1885. It wasn’t published by Parker of Oxford, and it wasn’t edited by Pusey; but the title-page was uniform with it. The last few volumes were unnumbered.
By this time the Ante-Nicene Fathers series was 20 years old. Most collections of the Library of the Fathers were obsolete. Very few of them indeed ever acquired this last, final volume. I obtained this one through the courtesy of Glasgow University Library, who benevolently photocopied it and posted it to me. May their name be ever remembered; for I doubt any other copy of this very, very uncommon book, is ever likely to get scanned.
Volume 1 of the Commentary contained books 1-5. It was translated by Phillip E. Pusey, the crippled son of old Pusey, who predeceased his father. P.E.Pusey edited Cyril’s works, and his editions still have value. But as a translator he was useless, tending to transliterate the Greek. A vicious review, which I have never been able to locate, halted his efforts and he never proceeded further with Cyril on John. The otherwise unknown T. Randell did this volume, and made a nice job of it. It’s far easier to read than vol. 1! It covers books 6-12, although some of those books are lost and only catena fragments were available.
There’s quite a lot of Orthodox interest in this text. Let’s hope this helps make it more available.