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From The Church Quarterly Review.
FIVE YEARS OF DOCUMENTARY
DISCOVERY.1

Mount Sinai, some leaves of which, as he related, he had been just in time to rescue from a basket of old papers inIN the year 1887 the occurrence of tended for the flames, where two other the Queen's Jubilee gave rise to the basketfuls had previously been conpublication of several historical sum-sumed. We could remember the dismaries of the events of her reign. cussions which sprang out of Cureton's Comparisons were made, from different Syriac publications from the manupoints of view, of the state of England scripts acquired by the British Museum then with what it had been at her ac- from the Nitriau monasteries, in particcession, and persons interested in vari- ular the discussions whether the short ous departments of knowledge were led form of the Ignatian Epistles which he to take note what progress during those published was the true original form, fifty years their favorite studies had and whether the Syriac version of the made. The remark which the occasion Gospels, the fragments of which he suggested to ourselves was that these published, was earlier or later than the fifty years had been unusually fertile in long-received and widely circulated the bringing to light of documents illus- Peshitto. We could remember the distrative of the history of the carly cussions arising out of the publication Church, which had either been previ- of what was at first called Origen's ously unknown or had been supposed Philosophumena," both for the to have perished. We would call to strauge light which it threw on the mind the stir which each successive early history of the Roman Church and discovery had made, and the eager for the materials which it furnished to ness of scholars to appraise the value of the historian of Gnosticism; and, not the new acquisition and to turn it to to mention other "finds," we could reuseful account. We could remember member the intense interest excited the sensation caused in the circles in- when from a library in Constantinople, terested in such news by Tischendorf's the contents of which had been supdiscovery of the great Bible manuscript posed to have been already sufficiently in the Convent of St. Catharine at explored, Bryennius published first a 1 1. (1) Hippolytus and his "Heads against Caius." complete text of the Epistle of ClemTeaching of (2) Hippolytus on St. Matthew xxiv. 15. By the ent, and afterwards the " Rev. J. Gwynn, D.D. Hermathena, vols. vi. and the Twelve Apostles.' So we found materials enough for an article on the

vii. Dublin, 1888-9.

2. Die Gwynn'schen Cajus- und HippolytusFragmente. Von A. Harnack. Gebhardt und Harnack Texte u. Untersuchungen. Band vi. Heft 3. Leipzig, 1890.

3. The Commentary of Hippolytus on Daniel. By the Rev. J. H. Kennedy. Dublin, 1888.

4. Das neu entdeckte vierte Buch des DanielKommentars von Hippolytus. Von Lic. Dr. Edouard Bratke. Bonn, 1891.

5. The Apology of Aristides. Edited and translated by J. Rendel Harris. With an Appendix by J. A. Robinson. (Texts and Studies, etc. Edited by J. A. Robinson. Vol. i. No. 1.) Cambridge,

1891.

finds" of Victoria's reign, which we published in our number for October, 1887. It seems to us now that in the five years that have passed since our article was published the necessity for a supplement to it has arisen. It was a natural question for us to ask, after giving an account of comparatively recent documentary discoveries, whether it was to be supposed we had come to the end of them. Several lost books are known to us by name, and some of them are known to have continued in use quite long enough to make the hope not utterly chimerical that they might not altogether have perished. Yet the discoveries which we had to relate were not of such a nature as of themselves to justify an expectation that we should witness a repetition of them. If a fer

The interest of theological students in the subject of "finds" has been revived by the recent recovery of a considerable fragment of the Gospel according to St. Peter, a work not later than the middle of the second century, but which is so very rarely mentioned by Church writers that we can hardly think it ever had a wide circulation, and

tile field has yielded a rich harvest | years ago. We may refer to the recent there is room to suppose that it will announcement of a discovery in a difwell reward cultivation again; but if a ferent field. The linen bands which man has found a few overlooked nug- swathed a mummy brought from Egypt gets at the bottom of a mine, deserted thirty or forty years ago were found to because supposed to have been worked be marked with characters which no out, he would no doubt do well to one could decipher. Professor Krall1 search for more, but could have little has lately recognized the characters, assurance of a successful result. If and even some of the words, as idenamong the disregarded contents of a tical with those which occur in Etrusbookstall there were now found one of can inscriptions, and as therefore likely the first productions of Caxton's press, to give some aid to the recovery of that the happy finder might exult, but would mysterious language. The linen bands have little reason to conclude that sev- seem to represent one of the lintei libri, eral more treasures of the same kind or, as Macaulay has it, "the verses were likely to be similarly brought to traced from the right, on linen white, light. Now, there are reasons which by mighty seers of yore." forbid us to be very sanguine as to our prospects of new documentary discoveries. One is the keenness of the search that has been already made. The contents of libraries in all the most civilized parts of the world have of late been so well explored that every year it becomes less and less likely that anything should have escaped the search. And those regions which have been therefore it would never have occurred least explored are those where waste and destruction are likely to have had the greatest range of exercise. There is too many a true story of ancient documents allowed to rot uncared for, or actually destroyed as worthless and cumbersome, by ignorant possessors, to permit us to doubt that every year our chance of finding old documents undestroyed becomes less and less, while there is a further doubt whether any old document that we might find would be such as we should much care for. It is curious how many of the valuable discoveries of the present reign have been of the nature of surprises. We believe that if any scholar had at the beginning of the reign made a list of lost documents which he would long to recover, and the recovery of which seemed to him not hopeless, it would scarcely include one of the documents that actually have come to light.

But, in point of fact, the unearthing of lost documents is a process which has not yet come to an end, and the prospect of future discoveries seems to be quite as hopeful now as it was fifty

to us to name this as one of which a copy was likely to be found when better known books have been totally lost. In our last number we were only able to give a short account of the new discovery, and we intimated then our intention of returning to the subject. It seems well before we redeem our pledge to add to the account we gave in 1887 of the documentary discoveries of the preceding fifty years a supplementary account of what has come to light during the last five.

I. The first "find" we have to report not only throws some light on the opinions of an ecclesiastical writer at the beginning of the third century, but, strange to say, was even needed to remove doubts as to his very existence. Catalogues of Church writers of that date now commonly include the name of Caius, a Roman presbyter; yet it is strange how scanty our information is about him, and how hard it would be to confute any one disposed to deny that he was either Roman or a presbyter.

1 Die Etruskischen Mumienbinden des Agramer National-Museums. Vienna, 1892.

1

D

Our earliest information about him re-rived at; but in 1868 Professor Lightduces itself to this: that Eusebius was foot, as he was then, remarking on the acquainted with a controversial dia- great obscurity that hung over the perlogue held in the episcopate of Zephyri- sonality both of Caius and Hippolytus, nus (A.D. 201–219) between Caius and a and pointing out how many of the charMontanist leader, Proclus.1 There is no acteristics ascribed to each were idenevidence that Eusebius knew anything tical, raised the question whether the about Caius beyond what he gathered two might not have been merely names from the dialogue itself; and the next for the same person. True, Caius was writers who mention him Jerome principally known as the author of a and Theodoret - tell nothing about him dialogue against Montanism, which has that they might not have learned from never been ascribed to Hippolytus; but Eusebius. Eusebius gives four extracts Lightfoot pointed out that in Cicero's from the dialogue, which show that it philosophic dialogues the author only had been held in Rome, and warrant us appears as a speaker under the name of in describing Caius as a Roman, in the Marcus, whence he concluded that if sense that he was at the time residing Hippolytus, as was quite possible, had in Rome, but give no authority for de-a prænomen Caius, then, even though scribing him either as a Roman by birth he were the author of the dialogue, his or as permanently connected with the speeches would probably only bear the Church of Rome. Our earliest author- ascription Caius, and persons dependent ity for describing Caius as a presbyter for their knowledge, as most of the is that in the ninth century Photius early. Church were, on what they found states that he found, in a manuscript in the dialogue itself would know no of a work on the universe, the author- other name for the author than Caius. ship of which was disputed, a note that the author was Caius, who was a presbyter of Rome in the episcopates of Victor and Zephyrinus, and who himself was appointed Bishop of the Gentiles (ovv kπíoкоTOV). The real author of the work in question is now generally acknowledged to have been Hippolytus, who resided at or near Rome in the episcopates just mentioned, and concerning whom there is also controversy whether he was presbyter or bishop. With respect to both Caius and Hippolytus there is also some authority for saying that each had received instruction from Irenæus.

But there were two difficulties in the way of this identification. With one of them we need not here concern ourselves; the other was that a late Syriac writer has enumerated, among the works of Hippolytus, chapters against Caius. It was no small triumph of ingenuity to be able to devise a fairly satisfactory answer to so formidable an objection, and the feat was the more remarkable because so little in Bishop Lightfoot's line. For his habitual sobriety of judgment was such that there was no one to whose guidance a student could trust himself more implicitly, and he was ordinarily not to be tempted by the ingenuity of a theory to dispense with severe testing of its

When the newly discovered work against heresies was published in 1857 under the name of Origen's "Philoso- foundations. In this case there was phumena," learned men soon came to an agreement that the work was not Origen's, but that it was written in Rome by a contemporary of Origen's; and a controversy arose between the rival claims of the two learned Roman presbyters of that date, Caius and Hippolytus. An almost unanimous decision in favor of Hippolytus was ultimately ar

'Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 25, vi. 20.
Bibl. xlviii.

the more inducement to accept his solution, because otherwise it was not easy to imagine on what subject two presbyters, both of good repute in the Church of Rome, could find cause to write against each other.

One answer was suggested. Hippolytus was known to have written in defence of the Gospel and Apocalypse

3 Journal of Philology, i. 98.