Geoffrey Greatrex: An unnoticed Greek fragment of Severus of Antioch

In the second letter of his exchange with Julian of Halicarnassus in the 520s, the exiled patriarch Severus of Antioch devotes an inordinately long section to demonstrating that there is no inconsistency between Paul and James as to the relative importance of faith and works. This letter is to be found both in a translation into Syriac by Paul of Callinicum and in an independent Syriac translation in the ‘Miscellaneous History’ of Pseudo-Zachariah of Mytilene (ix.13). A very similar discussion of this passage is also to be found in the Catena in epistolas catholicas, ed. J.A. Cramer (Oxford, 1840), where it is left unattributed. We propose to show that it represents a hitherto unidentified fragment of Severus’ work in Greek.