st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

"
"
"
"
"
DOUBTFUL WRITINGS. 197
has an alien look about it 1 the reader may not
grudge the space devoted to what must have been
read with eager interest (and, we need not scruple to
say, with profit) by many a lonely recluse.
(2.)
If in the foregoing profitable there
history"
was matter for doubt as to the authorship, or the
actual occurrence of the events related, there was yet
nothing which absolutely exceeded the bounds of
probability. The second piece which I have chosen
as a specimen of the writings whose genuineness is
doubtful
the
Panegyric
on St. Barbara" is of a
very different description. The enormes fabulcz that
it contains would tax a credulity the most un
bounded. At the same time, though
I should be
glad to believe that John of Damascus had no hand
in it,
and though
it
may read in some respects like a
distorted imitation of Barlaam and Joasaph,"
it did
not seem right to leave it out of sight. Lequien had
so little doubt of its
being a genuine work of our
author s,
that in the short preface with which he
introduces it, he says that absolutely nothing can
be discovered in the treatise, at variance with the
diction, style,
and manner of John of Damascus.
And a later writer,
2
not likely to be uncritical, is
disposed to admit that the panegyric was really
delivered by him. The preliminary section is cer-
1
Such expressions as v\v yiyvdJaicwv for tyiyvaxr/cf, cicwice for
twKf, and the like, strike one as unfamiliar. On the other
hand some passages, such as the prayer of Joasaph, for example,
(p. 1141), are not unworthy of the John surnamed Chrysorroas.
3
:
Langen "Johannes von Damaskus, p. 238.