Historia contra Mythos: Die Schriftauslegung Diodors von Tarsus und Theodors von Mopsuestia im Widerstreit zu Kaiser Julians und Salustius' allegorischem Mythenverstandnis (review)

Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodorus of Mopsuestia are well-known representatives of the so-called Antiochene school of biblical exegesis. Their refusal to accept allegorical interpretation of Scripture and their insistence upon its literal truth put them at odds with Alexandrian exegetes, who, as heirs of Philo and Origen (to say nothing of the Hellenistic Homerists), readily invoked allegory to make sense of improbable or outlandish traditions. The emperor Julian enters this debate because he encountered Diodorus personally at Antioch and wrote a poisonous letter about him. Theodorus, a pupil of Diodorus, later wrote a reply to Julian's anti-Christian tract contra Galilaeos. Since this followed the attack on Julian's work from Cyril of Alexandria more than a generation earlier, it is not impossible that Theodorus was simultaneously replying to Cyril.

The undisputed relevance of Julian to our understanding of Diodorus and Theodorus has naturally impelled some scholars to look to him for an explanation of the hostility of these two exegetes to allegorical interpretation. Julian had himself espoused such interpretation in making sense of the pagan myths that he actively promoted during his reign. His position can be seen in his assault on the Cynic Heraclius and in his treatise on the Mother of the Gods (Cybele). So it was not unreasonable for Alois Grillmeier and Augusto Guida to raise the issue of Julian's influence on Diodorus and Theodorus, whose notorious views supported a Nestorian separation of Christ's divine and human natures. With the encouragement of Hermann Vogt at Tübingen Felix Thome wrote a doctoral dissertation to explore the whole matter.

The book under review is that dissertation. Thorough as it is, it unfortunately fails to make the case, as Vogt himself candidly acknowledges in a preface to this publication. The book ploughs doggedly through all pertinent texts of Julian, Diodorus, and Theodorus, and it also throws in briefly the little treatise on the gods and the cosmos by Julian's contemporary, Salustius. But nothing ever emerges to prove that the Antiochene resistance to allegory had its roots in a reaction to Julian on pagan myths. Julian's religious convictions, and, above all, his work against the Galilaeans were more than sufficient reason for contemporary and later Christians to concern themselves with his views. If Cyril of Alexandria and Theodorus of Mopsuestia went after Julian from different angles, that tells us nothing about any reaction, on the part of either writer, to the emperor's allegorizing. In fact, in a passage that both Cyril and Theodorus cite (Masarrachia frg. 20), Julian makes quite plain that he considers biblical texts not susceptible to the allegorizing he applies to pagan ones. They are simply too silly: he cites Psalms 77 [78], 25 on man's eating angels' bread.

Thome's inconclusive argument is largely developed through the presentation of numerous and lengthy quotations from pertinent texts in German translation. It seems as if he realized that the availability of this material will be the principal reason for anyone, at least in Germany, to read his book. Translations from Greek, Latin, and Syriac are, he says (p. 14), made accessible to a German reader for the first time. He repeats the claim on page 166. Thome has made a full dossier of texts and discussed them intelligently, but his German translations cannot compensate for the absence of a convincing argument.