'Laterculus Malalianus' and the School of Archbishop Theodore (review)

The Latin word “laterculus” meant “small brick” or “tile,” and does not appear to have been used classically in any other sense than for a parcel of surveyed land. In the mediaeval sense as applied to a “listing,” especially a “computus” [Easter calculation table], Theodor Mommsen used the term both for that Laterculus Veronensis [“list of Roman Princes”; MGH AA 9 (1882) I 511–551] dedicated by Polemius Silvius (circa 448) to Eucherius, bishop of Lyons (434–450)—a valuable adjunct to the Notitia Dignitatum which imaged the empire of Diocletian (284–305); and for the presently reedited Laterculus Malalianus [MGH AA 13 (1898) III 424–437]—of a considerably distinctive character, though, by virtue of its translational use of the Greek Chronographia of John Malalas (c. 490–577), containing in its final section (25) a list with years of Roman rulers from Augustus to the ninth of Justin II (44 b.c.e. to c.e. 574).

The text had been edited by Mommsen from the only known manuscript [Vatican, Pal. Lat. 277, dated c. 700], which included works of Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636), though earlier by Cardinal Angelo Mai in an emended fashion, so that its “vulgar” Latin met classical standards, within Patrologia Latina [94: 1161–1174] among the works of the Northumbrian Bede (c. 673–735). The present edition [pp. 119–161, with English translation on facing even pages, and material from Malalas in italics] and detailed commentary [pp. 162–229] make use of a second manuscript [copied about 800 from the Vatican text] found among a miscellany of Greek items [Leiden, Voss. Misc. 11].

While Malalas is nowhere mentioned by name, his Book Ten forms the base of sections 1–11 of this text. Cited are sources Malalas employed: Clemens, Theophilus, Timotheus, and especially Eusebius Pamphilus; and but two others: Ephraem Syrus and Epiphanius. Stevenson has difficulty accepting the first two, since to her “no historical work has survived from either author,” neglecting thereby the chronological lists in Stromateis [I 144.4] and in Ad Autolycum [III 27]. But that point is moot since none of these sources have chronological reliability. The whole brief work is focussed upon an interpretation of the total age of the world to the Passion (6000 years) and of the life of Christ, placing that exactly within the chronology of his Roman world. But it cannot be said that her summary (p. 190f. n. 92), following on Jack Finegan [Handbook of Biblical Chronology (1964)] as she so regularly does, even with a nod to John Knight Fotheringham [“The Evidence of Astronomy and Technical Chronology for the Date of the Crucifixion,” JTS 35 (1934), 146–61], solves once and for all the thorny chronological problems of Jesus’ lifespan. One could prefer the much-neglected Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead [“The Chronology of Jesus’ Life,” ATR 24 (1942), 1–26; cf. Jesus in the Light of History (1942)], who remains the more rigorous historian of the date of the crucifixion, while that of the advent requires a more serious view of the dating of Publius Sulpicius Quirinius as legate of Syria [c.e. 6] than either Olmstead or Finegan, and thus Stevenson [cf. Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed.; 1996), 1455].

Major exegetical annotations beyond the Chronographia of Malalas appear in sections 2, 7, and 8. Respectively, we learn: of the concatenation of events belonging to the Vernal Equinox [calculated “on the eighth of the kalends of April” (= 25 March) and including the precise conception of Jesus, his crucifixion, the creation of the world, the passage of Israel through the Red Sea, the casting down from heaven of the devil and his angels, and the throwing down of James, brother of Jesus, from the pinnacle of the temple], of the chronology of the “flight into Egypt” and return, and of the death of Joseph in the twelfth year of Jesus after the going up to the temple...