The Title of the Apocriticus
The double title is a strange one, "Monogenes or Answer-book to the Greeks (Μονογενής ἢ 'Αποκριτικὸς πρὸς Ἕλληνας.)" Its very strangeness may have produced the further title found in the Athens MS., viz. "An account of the disputed questions and solutions in the New Testament" (περὶ τῶν ἀπορουμένων ἐν τῇ καινῇ Διαθήκῃ ζητημάτων καὶ λύσεων λόγος), with the added mention of five books. Neumann1 long ago suggested that the title is to be transposed as "Monogenes or Apocriticus to the Greeks," and this is tacitly accepted by Bardenhewer.2 But the further suggestion that the title Monogenes, as applied to God the Son, was probably made more use of in the first part of the work, now lost, is not borne out by the fact that of the seventeen times the word occurs in the extant books, fourteen are in six chapters of Book III. I prefer to think that the first part of the title was Apocriticus, as given in the MS., and I would offer the following explanation of Monogenes to the Greeks. If we consider the opponent's book to have been "Philalethes, to the Christians," it is natural that the answer should bear a name reminiscent of it. There is a certain amount of similarity between the word Philalethes (friend of truth) and Monogenes (Only-begotten), though the second is infinitely higher, and points to Him on whom reliance is placed for the answers. So we can understand the choice of such a title, with a further address "To the Greeks," to correspond to the dedication "To the Christians" in the earlier work. It may be added that there is a suitability in this dedication in each case. For Hierocles is said to have addressed his book "To the Christians, not against them,3 and in the objections the second person plural is often used in addressing the hearers, as well as the singular, which is directed against a single opponent.
Footnotes:
1C. I. Neumann, Jul. Imp. Lib. contra Christ, quae supersunt, pp. 14-23, Lips. 1880.
2Patrologie, 1894, p. 550.
3Lactantius, Div. Instit. v. 2.