The Authorship of the Apocriticus
In spite of the ambiguity of his double name,1 we may safely speak of the author as Macarius, and regard Magnes as a place-name, meaning "the Magnesian." The question still remains whether the latter implies that he was Bishop of Magnesia. The fact that there was such a bishop, whose name was Macarius, has naturally suggested an identification of the two. Photius records that this Macarius came forward at the Synod of the Oak in A.D. 403 as one of those who accused Heraclides of Ephesus of heresy, his offence consisting of an undue following of Origen. But it is difficult to see how such a charge can have been brought by the author of the Apocriticus, who is himself steeped in Origenism. Not only was this the conclusion arrived at by Nicephorus, when he studied the book in the, ninth century,2 but it is obvious to any one who looks at it. And it is a complete puzzle why such a man should have thought it necessary to represent himself as having a desperate encounter with a heathen philosopher of a hundred years before, and facing his long-forgotten arguments in fear and trembling. And internal evidence is against the fact of the author having been a bishop. When his opponent says that, if to "drink any deadly thing" cannot hurt a true believer, this ought to be made a test in the choosing of bishops, there is no attempt at personal defence in the answer. And, after giving examples of great bishops of former time and the power of their prayers, he refers to those of his own day in a way that seems to indicate that he himself bore no such exalted position in the Christian community. It is true that Nicephorus called him a "Hierarch," and said there was a portrait of him on the MS. of his book, in which he was robed as a priest,3 but this does not prove anything.4 And it is evidently not in Asia Minor that the Apocriticus was written. It is not only that, as already stated, he points his opponent to the East, and particularly to Antioch and Edessa, and that he once uses the Persian word "parasang" as a measure of distance.But, when he gives a list of countries which had not yet heard the Gospel, he locates Ethiopia as south-west, which implies that he was as far eastward as Syria. And yet he shows a special interest in Asia Minor also. In his list of heretics, in which he refers exclusively to those of the East, he speaks of Montanus of Phrygia, and Dositheus of Cilicia, and he shows a knowledge of the Encratites of Asia Minor, which suggests that those regions were familiar to him. He also knows details of other natives of those parts, such as Aratus, the astronomer of Cilicia, and Apollonius of Tyana, about whom he adds further facts to those mentioned by his opponent. When he mentions the heroes of the Church, there is one about whom he gives details, namely, Polycarp of Smyrna, concerning whom he records stories like those given in the Vita Polycarpi, which may have formed a local tradition.It is true that he turns to the West for the rest of his list, which has led Duchesne to the surmise that the author had visited Rome. And he recalls traditions about both S. Peter and S. Paul at Rome, which might suggest that he was linked with that part of the world, were it not that he speaks elsewhere of the Romans as "a barbarian race." Whether all this accords with the authorship of such a small-minded man as the Macarius of the Oak, who accused another of the same tendency which is so plainly seen in the Apocriticus, is very doubtful.
It must be remembered that the title "Of Magnesia" does not necessarily imply that he was bishop there. It is often used of the locality whence a man derived his birth or upbringing, as is the case with Joannes Damascenlus, or John of Damascus. It seems better to picture the author as a man bearing the very common name of Macarius,5 who was not a bishop, but came from Magnesia, and, after perhaps having travelled as far as Rome, had settled in Syria at the time that he wrote his book. As he makes no attempt to connect his opponent with Syria, and only refers him to those regions in an entirely natural way, there is no reason for thinking that his language is merely part of a literary device. And a reason for the neglect of his work from the first may find an explanation in the fact that his theology was entirely different from that of the schools of Antioch or Edessa which were flourishing during the fourth century. His allegorical method of interpretation, which is even fuller of Origenism than that of Origen himself, would have been distasteful to the theologians of the neighbourhood, which would explain the fact that his book seems to have been unappreciated, and allowed to pass into oblivion, the only MS. of it to be found in the ninth century possibly owing its preservation to the portrait which formed the frontispiece.6 Whether he wrote in the first decade of the fourth century, or at a later period, is impossible to decide with certainty. Harnack has evolved an elaborate theory of there being two men who are responsible for the heathen objections in the book, namely, Porphyry and an anonymous author who made excerpts from his book and issued them in the form of an attack on the New Testament and its teaching. Perhaps therefore I need not apologise for a similar attempt with regard to the answers, though in this case it is the earlier and not the later authority who is anonymous. I can imagine an Origenist writing a work, not far into the fourth century, in which he faced, probably by name, Hierocles and the arguments which he had brought against the Scriptures in his Philalethes, a real dialogue being conceivably the foundation of his work. He was living in the East, but had visited Rome, and was also well acquainted with the eastern part of Asia Minor. He was a really great exponent of the Christian faith, and worthy to be ranked with some of the great fathers of that century. His work was seized upon by Macarius Magnes, the Bishop of Magnesia, who is heard of in A.D. 403, and worked into its present form, the original division of the two books of Hierocles being quite obscured. Nothing leads us to expect any great originality or literary talent or powers of Catholic exegesis from this Macarius. It well accords with what we know of him, that he should simply arrange another man's work. He carefully suppresses the names of both Hierocles and the man who had answered him, and alters just enough to make it appear a work of his own time, perhaps changing "200 years" into "300" (as Harnack suggested), and making the Trinitarian doctrine more definite when opportunity offered. He does not trouble to change the locality from the East to Asia Minor, nor to add to the list of earlier heretics, but it is perhaps he who is responsible for the details about a local hero, Polycarp of Smyrna. As an opponent of Origenism, he would not have used such methods himself, but he allowed those he found to remain in their place. He may have curtailed the number of questions and answers to suit his purpose, which would explain the occasional failure of sequence in the questions, to which Harnack has called attention. It is surprising that so weighty a work was not carefully preserved by the Church. But if, in addition to the fact that it contained blasphemous objections to Holy Writ, it bore the name of an obscure bishop, of whom what was known was not particularly to his advantage, it can easily be understood how it was soon forgotten and was very nearly lost to posterity. The above theory of authorship is merely a suggestion; I leave it to others to improve on it.
Footnotes:
1Some scholars have regarded "The Blessed Magnesian" as simply a nom deguerre, or as suggesting an anonymous author, while others have simply written of him as Magnetes.
2He is condemned, particularly with regard to the non-eternity of punishment, of being a follower τοῦ δυσσεβοῦς καὶ ἀποπλήκτου 'Ωριγένους, Nic., op. cit.; cf. Apocr. iv. 16, p. 187, 1. 32.
3Nic., op. cit., στολὴν ἱερέως ἀμπεχόμενον.
4Lumper (ap. Migne, Patr. Lat. v. p. 343) suggests that our author was confused with the Macarius of the Oak, and "hinc fortasse sive fraude, sive ignorantia, Episcopi titulum addiderit librarius, Magnetis vetustioris opus exscribens."
5No less than twenty-four of that name are given in the Diet. Christ. Biog.
6His outlook is more Alexandrian than Antiochene, but had he belonged to Egypt, it is to that part of the world, and not to Syria, that he would have pointed for an example of the growth of monasticism.
7See Nicephorus, tom. i. p. 303 et seq.
8See Nicephorus, tom. i. p. 303 et seq.
9See Nicephorus, tom. i. p. 303 et seq.
10See Nicephorus, tom. i. p. 303 et seq.
11See Nicephorus, tom. i. p. 303 et seq.