The Literary Relations of the Apocriticus
This part of the subject must be dealt with briefly. Let us begin with the Scriptures.
In the questions, quotations occur from Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, the Psalms, and Isaiah, and also from the four Gospels, Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, and the Apocalypse of Peter. With regard to the apocryphal book last mentioned, the fact that "its popularity seems to have been almost confined to the less-educated class of Christians,"1 helps to explain how one came to know and quote it who only knew Christianity from outside.
In the answers, there are quoted, independently of the questions, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, 1 and 2 Kings, Job, the Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Habakkuk,2 and also the four Gospels, Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, 1 Thessalonians, and 1 Timothy. Thus, in the New Testament, Ephesians is the only book quoted which had not been used in the questions. It is probable, but uncertain, that Macarius shows a knowledge of 2 Peter, but it is strange that, in answering the objection from the Apocalypse of Peter about the destruction of heaven and earth, he passes by the obvious parallel from 2 Peter iii. 12, and chooses that from Isaiah xxiv. 4. His attitude towards the Apocalypse of Peter is non-committal, but his substitution of similar passages from canonical Scriptures seems to suggest that it did not form part of his canon. With regard to the text used, the quotations on both sides seem to have been mostly made from memory. But Hierocles uses the text of Codex Bezae in quoting Mark xv. 34 as "My God, my God, why hast thou reproached me?" and also in John xii. 31.3 In the latter case Macarius follows him, but adds that there is another reading "Now shall the prince of this world be cast down" instead of "cast out" (κάτω for ἔξω). This is the reading of the Old Syriac and some of the Latin versions.4 Passing from the Scriptures; we may note that Macarius makes several indirect references to Apocryphal literature and legendary stories. His statement that milk flowed from the wound at the martyrdom of S. Paul, is also to be found in Pseudo-Abdias and Pseudo-Linus.5 The latter was translated into Latin in the fourth century, so it may well have been previously known further East. The Acts of Paul and Thecla is referred to in ii. 7, p. 6, when, in speaking of the way the Gospel divides kinsfolk, Macarius gives as an instance the parting of Thecla from her mother Theocleia.
As he is so steeped in the spirit of Origen, we shall expect to find considerable indebtedness to the similar apologetic works in which Origen had answered the attacks on the faith made by the heathen philosopher Celsus. There are at least four objections to the Gospel which are identical in their respective opponents, but in each case the defence of Macarius is entirely different from that of Origen, and although the Contra Celsum must have been known to him, he does not seem to have used it in writing his Apocriticus.6 But it is with the writers of the fourth century that most similarities have been found, and it is the suggestion of the indebtedness of the Apocriticus to its literature which has inclined so many to relegate the work to the following century. There is no doubt that its explanation of the Passion as a deception of the devil, wherein Christ surrounded the hook of His divinity with the bait of His humanity, is the same as that of Gregory of Nyssa, Rufinus, and Amphilochius, but it has already been stated that the idea dates from an earlier time, and so the fact of dependence must remain unproven.7 In the case of the suggested similarity between the list of heresies in Macarius and one in Epiphanius, it does not look as if either borrowed from the other.8
Footnotes:
1M. R. James, Two Lectures on the Newly-discovered Fragments, Camb. 1892.
2Of Apocryphal books, Macarius quotes Bel and the Dragon (Daniel xii. 34) in iv. 12, p. 174, and refers to 2 Esdras xiv. 21-25
3See J.T.S. of July 1907, pp. 561-562.
4See Burkitt, Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, vol. i. p. 449.
5Duchesne, op. cit. p. 37. Also D.C.B., art. "Linus."
6For a discussion of the question, I must refer to what I have written in J.T.S. of April 1907, pp. 408-409. He certainly does not follow Origen's resolve not to use allegorical explanations in answering a pagan (Contra Cels. ii. 37).
7See p. 19, and J.T.S, of July 1907, pp. 550-551.
8J.T.S. of July 1907, pp. 548-549.