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

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68 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
made the seat of empire. He preceded by a
whole century the Arabic translators of Aristotle,
Mesuch the physician, Honain his pupil, Isaac the
son of Honai n. 1 The great Syriac Lexicon of Bern
stein shows, by the number of words of Greek forma
tion it contains, how much the vernacular had been
enriched by the contributions of writers like Damascenus,
from the middle of the eighth century. It is
this priority in time, along with the application of the
Aristotelian method to Christian theology, that gives
its value to the "Capita Philosophica."
The second work of this is
group the "DeHaeresibus
\
Compendium, or Summary of Heresies. In this there
-
is the least originality of the three, as it is little more
\ than a transcript of a similar work by Epiphanius^ in
-
the fourth century, with some additions by Damascenus
himself. In the introductory letter to Cosmas
he had disclaimed all pretence to originality, so that
we must not misjudge him. Epiphanius, in his work,
had enumerated eighty sects, or heresies, beginning
with what we should hardly class in such a list,
the four states of life mentioned by St. Paul (Col.
iii.
n), as those of the Greek, the Jew, the Barbarian,
and the Scythian. His last is that of the Massalians.
This accordingly re-appears in the work of John of
Damascus, and is followed by an appendix of some
twenty-three or twenty-four more, drawn from Timotheus
Presbyter, and others. The author himself
makes the number to be just one hundred (p. 777) ;
1
"La
Belgique,"
torn, xii., p. 127. See also Mullinger s
University of Cambridge" (1873), P- 92-