The Questions on the Octateuch (review)

These two volumes are the first in a new series which is planned to include in each volume a version of the original ancient text. Theodoret’s text is Greek, but the official announcement of the series also promises Latin, Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, and Georgian. Catholic University of America Press is undertaking an ambitious and praiseworthy project. Students and other readers will value the translations, while scholars can look forward to forthcoming volumes with expectations of tools for research in the literature of the early church.

The Greek text behind this translation of Theodoret’s work is a revision by Petruccione (P.) of the text found in Theodoreti Cyrensis Quaestiones in octateuchum, published in Madrid in 1979 by N. Fernandez Marcos and A. Sàenz Badillos. In the introduction P. first describes the previous editions of Theodoret’s Questions on the Octateuch and discusses the manuscripts used in the Madrid edition. The historical material is a useful guide to the history of this text and to the developmental vagaries of textual criticism as such. The discussion of the manuscripts and of the actual composition of this text is helpful, although incomplete, because P. does not incorporate a complete study of the textual criticism that lies behind his edition. P. is well aware of this issue, for he states that this is not a “thoroughgoing revision” (1.lxxiii). Limitations of space in an edition such as this one can cause problems, but they do not negate the basic value of P.’s work.

Although the Madrid edition is a critical edition, and indeed the first critical edition of this writing of Theodoret, it was allowed to appear with a large number of errors, typographical and otherwise. In his revision P. explains that he undertook to correct as many of the misprints as possible, which he has usually, if not always, done. There are very few variant readings offered in this text, so one would have to return to the Madrid edition for a full apparatus criticus. P. was obviously not attempting to present a strictly critical text for scholarly use, since he states that his intent is rather to make the Greek text intelligible to the modern reader in terms of Greek sentence structure and the meaning and argument of the text. For this reason, he says, he “repunctuated throughout,” and as a result there are “hundreds of changes” (1.lxxvi). P. expresses the “hope that this will be judged a competent editio minor to the editio maior of our predecessors” (1.lxxiii).

For many years Theodoret was known and studied primarily for his involvement as a representative of the Antiochene theological tradition in the Christological controversies that surrounded the general councils of Ephesus (431 C.E.) and Chalcedon (451 C.E.). In recent years, however, translators such as Robert C. Hill (H.), who translated these volumes, have made his Old Testament exegesis available in English. In The Questions on the Octateuch Theodoret does not write a commentary, but employs questions and answers both of which he himself composes. In his extensive introduction, H. shows that Theodoret is faithful to the Antiochene tradition in his exegesis and that he wrote this work late in his life. A number of the issues Theodoret raises here are not, H. points out, germane to modern exegesis, nor would certain elements of his method be acceptable today. But the historical and critical method that he employs in following the Antiochene tradition can produce some useful results.

Since the unique contribution of this new series is the presentation of original texts, this reviewer has focused primarily on the Greek, for the value of the series will largely depend on the quality of the ancient texts that it offers. P. provides a useful introduction and has produced a Greek text, which...