chapter 21 The School of Antioch1 and Its Opponents*

The Origin of the School of

In the Christological controversy that so deeply divided the Church in the fifth century, ecclesiastical and imperial politics did much to make the controversy bitter and intractable. Arguments about the correct interpretation of Biblical texts was what dominated the debates of the assembled , however. -based theology was the central issue. The Alexandrians’ hostility to the theological views held by the Antiochenes was a principal driving force, and , who was of the relatively unimportant city of , thus came to be at the centre of the controversy. He was not only an apologist and ecclesiastical historian, but also a prolific commentator on the Bible.2 As such, he was the principal living theologian of the Antiochene party.3 Christian commentators on the Bible did not feel free to produce their own interpretations. They felt bound by exegetical traditions.4 Insistence on the lit- eral meaning of the Bible was characteristic of the School of Antioch, while the Alexandrians insisted on the validity not only of typological, but also, and abundantly, of allegorical interpretations.5 The Antiochene tradition of biblical exegesis is known as the School of Antioch, but it was actually a succession, rather than a formal school.6 The

* This article was not published previously. 1 D.S. Wallace Hadrill, Christian Antioch, Cambridge, 1982, esp. 27–51. 2 J.-N. Guinot, l’exégèse de Théodoret de Cyr, Paris, 1945. 3 A. M. Shor, Theodoret’s People: Social Networks and Religious Conflict in Late Roman , Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 2010. 4 Hagit Amirav, Rhetoric and Tradition: on Noah and the Flood, Louvain: Peeters, 2003. More generally, especially on the classical background of Christian exegesis: Frances M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture, Cambridge, 1997. 5 The authors of the School of Antioch, as well as Ephrem the Mesopotamian, did in practice make a distinction between typological interpretations of biblical passages as foreshadowing New Testament events and Christian concepts and the much freer allegorical interpretation. While they employed the first, they avoided the second. 6 On the Antiochene exegetical “method,” see L. van Rompay, “Antiochene Biblical Interpreta- tion: Greek and Syriac,” in J. Frishman and L. van Rompay (eds.), The in Jewish and Oriental Christian Interpretations, Louvain, 1997, 103–23.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004289529_022 The School of Antioch and Its Opponents 409 commentaries of Diodorus († c. 390), Theodore of (c. 360–428),7 and Theodoret of Cyrrhus (c. 393–457) clearly belong to this succession, but its origins are much less clear. Recently it has even been suggested that the exegetical tradition originated with Diodorus († 391/2), the teacher of ,8 who was a strong supporter of Meletius, the Nicene contender for the see of Antioch, and an eloquent opponent of the Homoians who in the reign of Constantius controlled of the city’s churches.9 John Chrysostom, the greatest Antiochene of them all, was certainly influ- enced by Diodorus since he had spent some time as a student at Diodorus’s asceterion.10 But he did not initiate the tradition in his Theodoret’s People. Shor has ignored Eusebius of Emesa (c. 300–c. 359), who was much older than Diodorus, yet evidently already belonged to the same tradition, as had already observed;11 Jerome’s assessment appears to be essen- tially correct. No more than a few fragments of Diodorus’s commentary on Genesis have come down to us,12 but such as they are, they confirm a defi- nite relationship to the commentary of Eusebius of Emesa.13 They also show

7 M.F. Wiles, “Theodore of Mopsuestia as Representative of the Antiochene School,” Cambridge History of the Bible, Cambridge, 1970, 489–510. 8 Theodore was a pupil both of the Antiochene sophist and of Diodorus (Socrates, HE, 6.3; , HE, 8.2), as was John Chrysostom. 9 C. Schäublin, Untersuchungen zu Methode und Herkunft der antiochenischen Exegese, Theophaneia 23, Cologne/Bonn, 1974; most recently: Adam Schor, Theodoret’s People, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 2011, 68–70. 10 Socrates, HE, 6.3; Sozomen, HE, 8.2. 11 Eusèbe d’ Émèse: Commentaire de la Geneèse, Texte arménien de l’édition de Venise, fragments grecs et syriaques, avec traduction par F. Petit, L. van Rompay, J. S. Weitenberg, Louvain: Peeters 2011; Jerome, De viris illustribus, 119. 12 J. Deconinck, Essai sur la chaîne de l’Octateuque, avec une édition des commentaires de Diodore de Tarse, qui s’y trouvent contenus, Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études 195, Paris, 1912; also PG 33. 1562–99, which is, however, unreliable: see Abramowski, “Untersuchungen zu Diodor von ,” Zeitschrift für neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 30 (1931): 234–62. 13 On Gen. 1. 2 compare Diodorus: (Deconinck) Fr. 4. 1 and 4. 15ff. = PG 1563C–D, with Eusebius, Commentaire 5a–b (8–9). On Gen. 2.8: compare Diodorus (Deconinck) fr. 12 = PG 1566A with Eusebius, Commentaire 13a (18). On Gen 2. 23 compare: Diodorus (Deconinck) Fr.13. 9 = PG 33. 1566B with Eusebius, Commentaire 18 (p. 24). On Gen. 3.1 (one sentence only) compare Diodorus PG 33. 1566B–1567A with Eusebius, Commentaire 20a (26). On Gen. 22. 12 compare Diodorus (ed. Petit), Collectio Coisliniana, Turnhout, 1986, 204, ll. 1–14 with Eusebius Commentaire 79 (68). For thoughts about the relationship between the exegesis of Diodorus and that of Eusebius, see Ter Haar Romeny, “Eusebius of Emesa’s Commentary on Genesis and the origins of the Antiochene school,” in J. Frishman and