Page:Nestorius and his place in the history of Christian doctrine.djvu/26

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14
A FRESH INTEREST IN NESTORIUS

that his own name would prevent people from reading it[1]. The Syriac translator therefore had already found the title Treatise of Heraclides in his Greek original. He does not seem to have known anything about the meaning of this title. The vague remarks he makes about Heraclides tell nothing more than anyone might guess without his help. The book itself in its present incomplete condition—about one-sixth of the whole is missing—nowhere explains the title, Heraclides not being mentioned at all. And Nestorius has made no effort to conceal his authorship. The names of the persons which, in the dialogue of the first part of the book, head the single portions of the text, viz. Nestorius and Sophronius, must, it is true, be regarded as later additions—just as the headings of the chapters. But the manner in which the matter is dealt with, especially in the second half of the book, reveals so clearly that Nestorius is the writer, that a pseudonym, as Heraclides or anyone else, could have deceived only those who gave no attention to the contents. Perhaps—that is the opinion of Bethune-Baker[2]—the pseudonymous title is to be regarded as the device of an adherent of Nestorius, to save his master's apology from destruction.

However it may be—the book itself has nothing to do with Heraclides of Damascus. It falls, as the Syriac translator rightly remarks[3], into two parts, the first of

  1. Bedjan, p. 3; Nau, p. 3.
  2. Nestorius and his teaching, p. 33.
  3. Bedjan, p. 4; Nau, p. 4.