Reinhart Ceulemans: Malachias the Monk on the Numerical Proverbs

A manuscript dated to the fourteenth century and kept in the library of El Escorial (Scorialensis gr. 508) is the only witness to the oeuvre of an author known as Malachias the Monk. This oeuvre consists of three Greek commentaries, none of which have been edited: on Proverbs, on Ben Sira and on the Wisdom of Solomon. Since these writings have received virtually no scholarly attention, almost nothing is known of their contents nor of the author’s identity, exegetical methods, origins, sources etc. The only article that has been written on Malachias (J.R. Busto Saiz, 1985) states that he postdates Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite (6^th century) and possibly hails from Syria.

            Hoping to shed more light on this unknown Greek Christian author, I am carrying out a research project in which I edit and study Malachias’ commentary on Proverbs. One of the investigations that need to be carried out, is to see to what extent, if any, Malachias depended on previous commentaries on Proverbs. Unfortunately, this research is complicated by the fact that most of those earlier commentaries have only survived in catenae and that those catenae have not yet been fully edited nor mapped out in detail. A notable exception are some articles by M. Richard (1972, 1973, 1976), in which he discussed the catena traditions (and provided partial editions of them) with regard to one particular section of Proverbs, namely that of the so-called numerical Proverbs (Prov 30,15-33). These articles can be used to hold up Malachias’ commentary on that section to earlier exegesis.

            In this paper I propose to discuss Malachias’ commentary on the numerical Proverbs and use the results as a way to introduce an unknown author to the scholarly forum. Making use of Richard’s articles, I will confront Malachias’ exegesis with that of earlier patristic authors and assess his level of originality. Doing so, I will show that although he frequently quoted other authors, especially John Chrysostom, Malachias proved himself quite original in his exegesis, especially when it comes to the various critical comments he made on the Biblical text. By means of some examples, I will show that Malachias was quite interested in the various readings of the Septuagint text and that he had variant biblical manuscripts in front of him.