Didymus The Blind - Works

Works

As a result of his condemnation, many of his works were not copied during the Middle Ages and were subsequently lost. Of his lost compositions we can gather a partial list from the citations of ancient authors which includes On Dogmas, On The Death of Young Children, Against the Arians, First Word, and others. According to Jerome, he also produced a commentary on Origen's First Principles which tried, ultimately unsuccessfully, to interpret an orthodox understanding of the Trinity from Origen's theology. The only work we have extant in its original form is his On The Trinity, discovered in 1759. However, we do have a treatise, On The Holy Spirit preserved in a Latin translation by Jerome. According to Palladius, Didymus also authored an exegetical work on both the Old and New Testaments, mostly believed to be lost. However, a group of 6th or 7th century papyrus codices discovered in 1941 near Toura, Egypt (south of Cairo) include his commentaries on Job, Zechariah, Genesis, and (of uncertain authenticity) on Ecclesiastes and Psalms 20-46. Jerome mentions that his commentary on Ephesians makes of Origen's, but also "gleaned a few things" from Didymus' commentary.

Within the only extant work we have, his Commentary on Zechariah, Didymus shows himself to be a thoroughly intertextual reader of scripture. He moves from the text he is commenting on to a wide variety of other passages, quoting less frequently from the historical books which do not suit his allegorical method. Besides the gift of having a mind like a concordance, he also shows familiarity with philosophical terms and categories of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Pythagoreans (from whom, with Philo, he derives his occasional number symbolism hermeneutic). His works also seem to cite passages from the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament as well as Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Acts of John. According to Bart Ehrman, his canon extended to at least include Barnabas and the Shepherd. It has been suggested by R.M. Grant regarding Origen's similarly expanded canon that while he lived in Alexandria he accepted the broader tradition of the church in Alexandria, but upon moving to Caesarea and finding the books were not accepted there henceforth manifested greater reserve towards them. Why Didymus would not have inherited his teachers later hesitation is unclear. Among his peers his hermeneutical method seems to have been met with mixed reactions. Jerome, who requested his commentary and considered him a mentor, is still baffled by Didymus's use of what he considered apocryphal works. Readers such as Diodore in Antioch found his hermeneutical approach somewhat gratuitous and arbitrary. What none seem to deny, however, is that Didymus was unhindered by blindness in his remarkable ability to recall the sacred text.