Saturday, August 10, 2024

Cyril C. Richardson on the Eve-Mary Contrast in Letter to Diognetus 12

  

If you will bear the tree of this teaching and pluck its fruit, you will always be gathering in the things that are desirable in the sight of God, things that the serpent cannot touch and deceit cannot defile. Then Eve is not seduced, but a Virgin is found trustworthy (οὐδὲ Εὔα φθείρεται, ἀλλὰ παρθένος πιστεύεται). (Letter to Diognetus 12:8, in Early Christian Fathers [trans. Cyril C. Richardson; New York: Collier Books, 1970], 224)

 

It is fairly clear that the author intends to state the common Patristic contrast (cf. Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 100; Irenaeus, Adv. haer. III. 22:4; V. 19:1; Tertullian, De carne Christi, 17) between Eve, the disobedient mother of death, and Mary, the obedient mother of life, in which case the parthenos of the text will be the blessed Virgin Mary. (Ibid., 224 n. 23)

 

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