{"id":4218,"date":"2010-05-07T13:24:25","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T12:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/?p=4218"},"modified":"2010-05-07T13:24:25","modified_gmt":"2010-05-07T12:24:25","slug":"polychronius-porphyry-and-daniel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/2010\/05\/07\/polychronius-porphyry-and-daniel\/","title":{"rendered":"Polychronius, Porphyry and Daniel"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the 5th century commentators on scripture was Polychronius, brother of Theodore of Mopsuestia (ca. 430 AD).\u00a0 He belonged to the Antioch school of biblical interpretation, who took a fairly literal approach to scripture.\u00a0 His works are lost.\u00a0\u00a0 But the interpreters of that school were used extensively by the compilers of catena-commentaries from the 6th century onwards, and Polychronius was among them.\u00a0 The result is that the Patrologia Graeca<\/em> contains hundreds of pages of fragments culled from these catenas.<\/p>\n

It’s fairly obvious why someone compiling a commentary on scripture from the Fathers would tend to prefer Antioch to Alexandria, literal to allegorical.\u00a0 An allegorical interpretation might be interesting, but as a comment on a passage is much less useful than someone who is dealing directly with what the passage says.<\/p>\n

Polychronius is interesting because he was one of the few Fathers to agree with Porphyry — “the impious Porphyry” as he is universally referred to — on the subject of the date of portions of Daniel.\u00a0 These he considered were additions made in the Hellenistic period, in the times of Antiochus IV Epiphanes.\u00a0 The latter monarch led the attack on Judaism and is the subject of the books of Maccabees.\u00a0 The portions are Bel and the Dragon, Susannah, and the Song of the Three Children.\u00a0 In Daubney’s Three additions to Daniel<\/em> <\/a>I read:<\/p>\n

\n

Polychronius, Theodore of Mopsuestia’s brother, refused to comment on this piece because it was not part of the original Daniel, nor in the Syriac, \u03bf\u00a0 \u03ba\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9\u03bd\u00a0 \u03c4\u03bf\u03c2\u00a0 \u03b2\u03c1\u03b1\u03ca\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2\u00a0 \u03a3\u03c5\u03c1\u03b9\u03b1\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2 \u03b2\u03b9\u03b2\u03bb\u03af\u03bf\u03b9\u03c2.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’ve had a proposal to translate the fragments on Daniel, amounting to some 50 columns of Migne.\u00a0 This is quite a bit, and would cost quite a bit too!\u00a0 I’ve queried whether perhaps we might cherry-pick some of the best bits, solely from a cost-saving point of view.\u00a0 But it’s not an impossible sum.<\/p>\n

The fragments of Daniel were published by Mai in Volume 1<\/a>\u00a0of Scriptorum Veterum Collectio Nova, in part 2, p.105.\u00a0 They start on p.556 of the Google Books PDF.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the 5th century commentators on scripture was Polychronius, brother of Theodore of Mopsuestia (ca. 430 AD).\u00a0 He belonged to the Antioch school of biblical interpretation, who took a fairly literal approach to scripture.\u00a0 His works are lost.\u00a0\u00a0 But the interpreters of that school were used extensively by the compilers of catena-commentaries from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,9,23],"tags":[292,378,889,1287],"class_list":["post-4218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-catena","category-information-access","tag-bible","tag-catena","tag-information-access","tag-patristics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}