ABSTRACT
In 1890 C.P. Caspari, the first editor of the Pseudo-Ephremian Sermo de fine mundi 1 , observed that this sermon in some places shows a very close relation with the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius 2 . In particular the textual correspondences between the sermon's description of the eschatological incursions of the barbarian peoples (the Gog-Magog motif) and the related passages in Pseudo-Methodius are so striking that the existence of some common tradition has to be assumed. Caspari sought to explain the connection by assuming that both works either took their material from a common source or from two very closely related older sources. For both chronological and textual reasons, he rejected the possibility of a direct relation between the sermon and Pseudo-Methodius. Since, in his opinion, the sermon was composed about 627/8 at the latest, whereas Pseudo-Methodius was written after the downfall of the Persian Empire and the beginning of the Arab-Islamic conquests, the possibility that the author of the sermon was inspired by the contents of the Apocalypse is simply out of the question. But the possibility of Pseudo-Methodius’ dependence on the sermon has also to be rejected. The textual evidence from the sermon clearly shows that the passage dealing with the Gog-Magog motif was inserted into the sermon in a way ‘welche deutlich verra_th, nicht nur, dass er hier einer a_lteren Quelle entnommen ist, sondern auch dass er in dieser Quelle dieselbe Oder eine sehr a_hnliche Gestalt getragen hat, wie in den Revelationes’ (scil. of Pseudo-Methodius) 3 .
