Doctrine and Exegesis in Biblical Latin Poetry (review)

This fine book should serve to complement an earlier work published in the ARCA Library in 1985, Michael Roberts’ Biblical Epic and Rhetorical Paraphrase in Late Antiquity (reviewed in Patristics 18.2 [January 1990]: 89). Indeed, Nodes attempts to establish a locus for his work in relation to that of Roberts: where Roberts undertook to demonstrate how the structure of the biblical epics produced from the fourth to the sixth centuries could be explained by reference to the theory and practice of paraphrase in antiquity, Nodes seeks to show how the poets of the period shaped their poems to reflect answers to contemporary theological questions. Both scholars define their field carefully, and in such a way that the reader can enjoy complementary discussions of some of the same poems. Roberts chose to work on the Christian epic poems of the period—three paraphrasing the New Testament, three the Old: from the New, Juvencus’ Evangeliorum Libri IV, Sedulius’ Carmen Paschale, Arator’s De actibus apostolorum; from the Old, the Heptateuchos of the so-called Cyprianus Gallus, Claudius Marius Victorius’ Alethia, and the De spiritalis historiae gestis of Avitus, bishop of Vienne.

Nodes, not confined by genre, analyzes Christian paraphrases of Genesis composed during virtually the same period, and he does so to illuminate the efforts of the “Genesis” poets to teach and to defend both the (now “orthodox”) doctrines of God and the Trinity, and also the Catholic tradition of cosmological reflection on Genesis 1–2. Thus, in addition to the poems of Cyprianus Gallus, Claudius Marius Victorius and Avitus, Nodes considers the Cento of Proba, the short Metrum in Genesim by pseudo-Hilarius, and Dracontius’ Laudes Dei.

Nodes is highly systematic in his scholarship. Apart from an introduction, which sets perspective, and a brief conclusion, he divides his study into two parts: the first part (chapter two) looks for the doctrine of God in the poems, which are reviewed in the chronological order (as well as may be established) of their authors—Proba, Cyprianus, pseudo-Hilarius, Victorius, Dracontius and Avitus; chapter three considers the poets’ cosmological views in exactly the same order. Doctrines are extracted from the poems, then faithfully placed in a historical context through a brief discussion of the literary tradition, to show how far the theology of the poems accords with the tradition established by orthodox writers, and with whom and where it differs. Nodes wishes to place the doctrines in a tradition; only occasionally does he assert direct influence of a particular author upon our poets.

In general Nodes finds that the poets affirm the transcendence and the benevolence of God and respect “Nicene” views on the doctrine of the Trinity. The relation of the second person of the Trinity to the Christ who appeared in history motivates perhaps the most interesting exegesis—both of the poets on Scripture and of Nodes on the poets: Nodes’ analysis reveals the poets as clearly post-Nicene, having little connection to the earliest strata of Christological reflection. Thus in the poets the generation of the Son is disconnected from the work of creation, even though it is Christ who forms the man from the clay in creation; for these poets, too, the Christ who lived in our world was never “without the Father” in heaven. Among cosmological views, we are not surprised to find the poets defending the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo; they also generally follow the exegetical tradition in “understanding God’s creative act as the instantaneous production of the elements followed by a gradual appearance of individual species in a process of unfolding” (so Proba, 81).

Nodes’ discussion of the poets’ cosmological views (chapter three) is perhaps more satisfying than his discussion of the doctrines of God and the Trinity (chapter two), largely because this chapter offers an analysis of entire poems or of clearly-outlined parts of a poem. Here the reader is invited not to...