29 Ps. xxxix. 5. LXX. upostasij mou (not aiwn, which would be the exact equivalent to the Heb.).
30 Oehler notices that the Paris editt. have not these words, aupnon, anoson: but that John the Franciscan is a witness that they were in his codex (the Pithaltzoean): for he says, "after this follows aupnoj anqrwpoj, which have crept in from the oversight of a not aupnoj copyist, and therefore ought to be expurged:" not being aware that very ancient copies write anqrwpoj anoj, so that anoson is the true reading, having been changed, but not introduced, by the error of a copyist.
33 Ps. xvi. 2. S. Gregory quotes the LXX. twn agaqwn mou ou xreian exeij, which is closely followed by the Vulgate "bonorum meorum non eges," and the Arab. "Thou needest not my good actions." Heb. "I have no good beyond thee."
34 Oehler's reading and stopping are both faulty here, viz., ouk oida peri tinoj legomenon ti koinon exei k. t. l. Manifestly the stop should be at legomenon, and the reading of the editt. para tinoj is right.
35 It is not necessary to change the to here to tw as Oehler suggests. The Munich Cod. omits it altogether. But he has done good service to the text, by supplying from his Codices all that follows, down to "the same sort of argument" (except that the first diagwnizesqai is probably a gloss).
36 The definition of epinoia, i. e. efodoj euretikh twn agnooumenwn, dia twn prosexwn te kai akolouqwn ...to efechj eceuriskousa.
37 Job xxxviii. 36. LXX. Tij de edwke gunaicin ufasmatoj sofian, h poikiltikhn episthmhn.
38 Cf Origen c. Celsum, vi. 65. Celsus had said. "God cannot be named." "This requires a distinction to be made. If Celsus means that there is nothing in the signification of words that can express the qualities of God, what he says is true, seeing that there are many other qualities that cannot be named. Who, for instance, can express in words the difference of quality between the sweetness of a date and that of a fig I Peculiar individual qualities cannot be expressed in a word. No wonder, then, that in this absolute sense God cannot be named. But if by `name 0' we only mean the possible expression of some one thing about God, by way of leading on the listener, and producing in him such a notion about God as human faculties can reach to, then there is nothing strange in saying, that God can have a name."
39 th ecwqen filosofia. Eunomius, in this accusation, must have been thinking, in the qesei and fusei controversy on the origin of language, of Dem critus, who called words "statues in sound," i. e. ascribed to them a certain amount of artificiality. But it is doubtful whether the opinion of the purely human origin of language can be ascribed to him, when we consider another expression of his, that "words were statues in sound, but statues not made by the hands of men, but by the gods themselves." Language with him was conventional, but it was not arbitrary. Again, Plato defines a word, an imitation in sound of that which it imitates (Cratylus, 423 B), and Aristotle calls words imitations (Rhet. iii. 1). But both of them were very far indeed from tracing language back to mere onamatopoeia, i. e. ascribing it to qesij (agreement), as opposed to fusij in the sense of the earlier Greek philosophy, the "essence" of the thing named, rather than the "nature" of the names. Long before them Pythagoras had said, "the wisest of all things is Number, and next to Number, that which gives names." These oracular words do. not countenance the idea that the origin of language was purely human. Perhaps Epicurns more definitely than any taught that in the first formation of language men acted unconsciously, moved by nature (in the modern sense), and that then as a second stage there was an agreement or understanding to use a certain sound for a certain conception. Against this Heraclitus (b.c. 503) had taught that words exist fusei. "Words are like the shadows of things, like the pictures of trees and mountains reflected in the river, like our own images when we look into a mirror." We know at all events here what he did not mean, viz., that man imposed what names he pleased on the objects round him. Heraclitus' "nature" is a very different thing from the Darwinian Nature; it is the inherent fitness between the object and name. Eunomius, then, was hardly justified in calling the Greek philosophy, as a whole, atheistical in this matter, and "against Providence." This fusij, the impalpable force in the things named, could still be represented as the will of the Deity. Eunomius outdoes Origen even, or any Christian writer, in contending for the sacredness of names. He makes the Deity the name-giver, but with the sole object of deifying his "Ungenerate." Perhaps Basil's teaching of the human faculty of 'Epinoia working under God as the name-giver is the truest statement of all, and harmonizes most with modern thought.
44 #H gar. Both Codd. & editt. read so; as Oehler testifies, though he has \H gar.
45 Reading apofainwn as referring to Moses, with Oehler, instead of the conjecture of John the Franciscan apofainousa, in the Paris edit. Even the Pithoean has apofainwn.
46 Ps. xxx. 10 (LXX.). Gen. viii. 21.
48 Or. Cat. c. 1. "For since our nature is liable to corruption, and weak, therefore is our life short, our strength unsubstantial, our word unstable (apaghj);" and see note.
49 Nebel is defined by Epiphanius de pond. et mens. c. 24, as follows, Nebel oinon, oper esti metron cestwn rn (150 pints). The word is merely, a transcription of the Hebrew for a skin. i.e. wine-skin, "bottle." Cf. Hosea iii. 2, nebel oinou (LXX.): Symmachus has askoj.
50 Here is the answer to Eunomius' contention above (p. 270), that "in the earliest of the sacred records before the creation of man, the naming of fruit and seed are mentioned in Holy Writ." He calls Basil, for not observing this, a pagan and atheist. So below he calls him a follower of Valentinus, "a sower of tares," for making the human faculty (epinoia) the maker of names, even of those of the Only-begotten; apparently, as Valentinus multiplied the names of Christ.
55 mhdearxaizein: therefore, if they are not the Divine language, a fortiori this is not. The word cannot possibly mean here "to grow obsolete."
56 hastily improvised. But Origen, c. Celsum iii. 6, says-"Celsus has not shewn himself a just critic of the differing accounts of the Egyptians and the Jews. ...He does not see that it was not possible for so large a number of rebellious Egyptians, after starting off in this way, to have changed their language at the very moment of their insurrection, and so become a separate nation, so that those who one day spoke Egyptian suddenly spoke a complete Hebrew dialect. Allow for a moment that when they left Egypt they rejected also their mother tongue; how was it that, thereupon, they did not adopt the Syrian or Phoenician, but the Hebrew which was so different from both these? ...For the Hebrew had been their national language before they went down into Egypt:" And, i. 16-"I wonder how Celsus can admit the Odrysians amongst the most ancient as well as the wisest peoples but will admit the Jews into neithers notwithstanding that there are many hooks in Egypt and Phoenicia and Greece which testify to their antiquity. Any one who likes can read Flavius Josephus' two looks on the antiquity of the Jews, where he makes a large collection of writers who witness to this." And yet, iii. 7, he goes on to say (what Gregory is here alluding to) that while any way the Hebrew language was never Egyptian, "yet if we look deeper, we might find it possible to say in the case of the Exodus that there was a miracle: viz. the whole mass of the Hebrew people receiving a language; that such language was the gift of God, as one of their own prophets has expressed it, `when he came out of Egypt, he heard a strange language. 0'"
57 kaitij. This reading (and not the interrogative tij, as Oehler) is required by the context, where Gregory actually favours this theory of the lateness of the Hebrew tongue: and is confirmed by Gretser's Latin, "Et nescio quis Prophetae sermo."
60 apodrantej. So also the Paris editt. The Munich ms. has apodrsantej, which form of the aorist is not found at all in classic Greek, and is only used as Oehler notices by Epiphanius (e. g. Panar. liv. 1; lxviii. 4) and a few other writers of a debased style.
64 ta parateqenta par ekeinwn anqupoisw. He does this below. "And we will return to his a argument that even thence we may muster reinforcements for the Truth." Gregory there goes on to show that Eunomius, who attacks the doctrine that the names of God are the result of Conception, and makes their Scriptural use a proof that they are God's own direct teaching, himself seeks to overthrow this doctrine by means of the term Ungenerate, which is not in Scripture: hence, by his own showing, this theory about the Scripture names is not true. The above is the reading of the Munich ms.: Oehler has the vox nihili pareqenta.
71 Job xiv. 1. brotoj gar gennhtoj gunaikoj, oligobioj kai plhrhj orghj.
77 diabeblhtai. The Latin, "vulgo usurpata sunt," misses the force of the Greek. Or "are disliked because of their obvious meaning." Cf. above "even though these words ...seem not above suspicion (diabeblhoqai dokei)." For this use of diaballesqai (to be brought into suspicion or odium), cf. Origen c. Cels. iii. 58, diabeblhmenw proj arethn kai kalokagaqian, i. e. "who has quite broken with virtue and decency?" and vi. 42, where Celsus blasphemously says, that "the Son of God ought to have himself punished the Devil, rather than frighten with his threats that mankind which had been dragged into the quarrel by himself" (toij up' autou diabeblhmenoij anqrwpoij): a passage quite missed in the Latin.
79 #H mikroyuxwn k. t. l. Oehler's stopping here (and accent) is better than that of the Codices. i.e. upokinhseien h k. t. l.