3. Exegetical Works

Hippolytus was a very fertile ecclesiastical writer. His exegetical work was specially extensive; only a few specimens of it, however, have been preserved entire, the "Antichrist" and the later commentary on Daniel, and of these only the former exists in the original (in three manuscripts of the tenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries; there is also an Old Church Slavic version of probably the eleventh century). The dependence of its content upon Ireraeus is unmistakable. The Daniel commentary, once the most widely read of his works, is extant from book i. 29 in a manuscript of the tenth century found at Athos, and book iv. is also found in another of the fifteenth, while the whole is in the Old Church Slavic version, besides indirect tradition in the catenae and portions in Syriac and Armenian versions. The book was written not long after a severe persecution, and thus can scarcely belong to the end of Hippolytus's life. A more rhetorical character belongs to the commentary on the Song of Solomon, of which fragments exist in the Old Church Slavic and some also in the Armenian. In the Georgian this commentary appears to have been preserved entire (Germ. transl. by Bonwetsch in TU, xxiii., part 2, 1903). Bonwetsch also edited Hippolytus's exegesis of the Blessing of Jacob and of moms, and of the narrative of David and Goliath (T U, xxvi. Is, 1904). The Greek of the Blessing of Jacob seems to be in existence at Athens. Fragments on Genesis are Preserved in the catens of Prooopius of Gaza, besides one by Jerome, one by Leontius, and three by Theodoret. A fragment discovered by Achelis in an Athos manuscript is the only evidence for the former existence of a commentary on Ruth. Theodoret gives citations from a work on Elkanah and Hannah, and one on the witch of Endor is mentioned both by the inscription and by Jerome. Of the treatise on the Psalms, probably not a complete commentary, the historical introduction is preserved in Syriac, and some fragments in Greek by Theodoret. Some fragments of that on the Proverbs are in the catenve, and a few unimportant ones exist from those on Ecclesiastes and on parts of Isaiah and Ezekiel, while of that on Zechariah nothing remains. There are fragments, again, on Matt. xxiv. and xxv. 24 sqq., which have an eschatological bearing, as had also the commentary on the Apocalypse (of which genuine fragments are extant in Arabic), the "Chapters against Caius" (fragments published by Gwynne, HennaWm, vi. 397 sqq., 1888), and the treatise on the resurrection addressed to the Empress Mammma (a few Syriac and and Greek fragments), mentioned in the inscription. Possibly some fragments of a commentary on the oracles of Balaam belong to Hippolytus. Theodoret has also preserved a portion of a discourse on the two thieves. On the other hand, the sermon on the raising of Lazarus (Greek and Syriac), is of doubtful authenticity, and still more questionable is that on the divine epiphanies, because both form and contents are unlike Hippolytus.

Of the polemical treatises, that against Marcion has entirely disappeared. The "treatise against All Heresies," which, according to Photius, contained thirty-two forms of error, from