st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

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156 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
CHAPTER
XL
COMMENTARIES ON HOLY SCRIPTURE.
FROM the importance of the subject of this chapter,
it
might seem to have deserved an earlier considera
tion. The space taken up by the works included
under it
amounting together to nearly one-half of
all published by Lequien 1 is so great, that we may
be thought to have postponed too long our notice of
Damascene as a commentator on the Bible. The
reason is
simply that there is but little of his own in
these expositions. In the first of the works in ques
tion, the "Loci
Selecti,"
he only professes to be
giving extracts from the commentary of St. Chrysostom.
In the other two, the Sacra Parallela,"
he does no more than group together passages of
Scripture on consecutive topics, and add short
illustrations of them from other writers. The nature
of these works will be explained more fully presently
:
what has been said may account for the precedence
given to other compositions of Damascene, at first
Migne s ed., vol. ii., pp. 439-1588, and vol. iii., pp.
9-544. An abridgement only of the last of the three works,
the Parallela Rupefucaldina," is printed by Lequien, because
he considers it to be substantially the same work as the pre
ceding one. It bears its name of from
"Rupefucaldina" the manuscript containing it having been given to the Jesuits
College at Clermont by Cardinal Rochefoucauld.