ABSTRACT
Few of Theodore’s extensive writings have survived intact in his original Greek. The only complete work in Greek is Theodore’s Commentary on the Twelve Minor Hebrew Prophets.1 Considering that both his works and person were anathematized at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, this is not surprising. In fact except for the East Syrian Church, where Theodore’s memory as an orthodox biblical theologian was and still is esteemed, he has been stigmatized as a major Christian heretic.2 When Edward Sachau (1869) published his 73-page collection of Syriac extracts, he began a process of increasing the number of Theodore’s works available in modern languages. Twelve years later, H. B. Swete (1880, 1882) published a Latin translation of Theodore’s Commentary on the Minor Pauline Epistles, with an Appendix containing, with some new additions, those excerpts found in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca. Theodore’s Pauline commentary was able, amazingly, to survive in Latin because, as Swete has observed, it was “originally either anonymous or ascribed, as we find it in our present MSS, and by all the extant writers who quote it, to S. Ambrose” (1880: li-lii). Then Alphonse Mingana (1932-33) published both the Syriac text and an English translation of Theodore’s Catechetical Homilies.3 This was later followed by J.-M. Vosté (1940), who published a Syriac version, with a Latin translation, of Theodore’s Commentary on John’s Gospel.4
