Luke J. Stevens

Note: To access a downloadable copy of any of the following, click the [download] link (if any). In most cases, these are manuscript versions rather than final print versions. For the latter, or for anything not available for download, you may contact me for a copy (NoSuchLuke@gmail.com). 

Publications

• Luke J. Stevens, “The Evangelists in Clement’s Hypotyposes,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 26 (2018): 353–79, https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2018.0037. [download author’s version]
  Excerpts from Clement of Alexandria’s lost Hypotyposes recounting the scribal activities of the evangelists Mark, Luke, and John puzzlingly differ despite overlapping in content. Actually, what little Clement said of the writing of Mark’s Gospel and of Hebrews is preserved in the Adumbrations, while Eusebius of Caesarea knew the Hypotyposes only through an intermediary given to embellishing paraphrase; furthermore, the claim by John of Scythopolis that Clement ascribed the Dialogue of Papiscus and Jason to Luke arose from a misplaced note on Hebrews. An additional point in the Hypotyposes is hypothesized ascribing the compilation of the Pauline corpus to Luke.

• Luke J. Stevens, “The Origin of the de Boor Fragments Ascribed to Philip of Side,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 26 (2018): 631–57, https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2018.0054. [download author’s version]
  The de Boor Fragments, inserted within a seventh-century epitome of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea, are remarkable for preserving snippets of the lost writings of Papias of Hierapolis, Hegesippus, Pierius of Alexandria, and (as now revealed) Eusebius. A new and expanded edition of the fragments is here provided. Special attention is paid to the fragments on Papias, which until now have been presented misleadingly, one of which apparently comes not directly from Papias but from an early intermediary also used independently by George the Monk. While de Boor tentatively ascribed the fragments to Philip of Side, the evidence is here examined that they originate not from Philip but from two strata: some from early scholia in a copy of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, and the rest added by the seventh-century epitomist whose work has preserved the fragments. The scholia, in turn, likely originated in the lost continuation of Eusebius’s work by Gelasius of Caesarea and were presumably composed by Gelasius himself.

• Luke J. Stevens, “The Two-Volume Archetype of the Pauline Corpus,” Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters 8 (2018): 102–26, https://doi.org/10.5325/jstudpaullett.8.1-2.0102. [download]
  An extremely ancient edition of the Pauline corpus collecting 14 epistles into a pair of rolls, with Hebrews heading the second roll, arguably underlies the text and numbering in Codex Vaticanus. For such an arrangement, a plausible rationale is apparent, mainly involving considerations of length (perhaps further influenced by inclusion of 2 Peter as an epilogue). Furthermore, this lost two-volume edition can explain many difficulties surrounding the early evolution of the corpus. Transitioning to the single-volume codex format motivated the segregation of Hebrews from the public epistles into a distinct group alongside the four pastorals, with Galatians left still before the slightly longer Ephesians, and the resulting well-attested edition and its derivatives account for nearly all witnesses of the corpus. The exceptional 𝔓46 stems from an imperfect attempt to replicate this edition from a two-roll exemplar, while several distinctive features of Marcion’s Apostolicon derived independently from the two-volume edition. Both the titles of the epistles and the “in Ephesus” in Ephesians were absent in the original two-volume edition but were supplied when its contents were incorporated into a larger New Testament compilation. From this two-volume edition, likely assembled by Luke, all subsequent collections of Paul’s epistles have arguably descended.

• Luke J. Stevens, “Did Eusebius Read Papias?,” The Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 70 (2019): 163–83, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flz006. [download author’s version]
  Although the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea is our principal source of information on Papias of Hierapolis and his lost Exegesis of Dominical Oracles, it is here argued that Eusebius knew the work only at second hand. Several Papian fragments preserved elsewhere demonstrate his ignorance, and his citations of the Exegesis consistently differ in style from those of works certainly known to him at first hand. Apparently, the same intermediary that informed him about both Papias’s Exegesis and Hegesippus’s Hypomnemata was also used in the de Boor Fragments, and this intermediary’s author, perhaps Pierius of Alexandria, has handed down further Papian fragments through other works. Eusebius’s lack of first-hand knowledge prevents us from fully trusting the integrity of his summaries, from giving credence to his charges of chiliasm, and from drawing any conclusions from his silence, especially on what Papias may have said about Luke and John.

• Luke J. Stevens, “The Bryennios List and Its Origin,” The Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 71 (2020): 703–6, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flaa095. [download author’s version]
  The Bryennios List, often regarded as the earliest extant Old Testament canon, is here shown instead to originate from an excerpt of Epiphanius’s Weights and Measures in a medieval florilegium, the Doctrina patrum, and thus to have no independent value. Implications are briefly considered.

• Luke J. Stevens, “Twenty-Four Elders: Revelation and the Old Testament Canon in Victorinus and Melito,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 30 (2022): 165–92, https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2022.0012. [download author’s version]
  Melito of Sardis, it is here argued, reported an Old Testament canon of twenty-four books (rather than twenty-five) and went on to link this figure with the twenty-four elders in Revelation. From Melito, Victorinus of Poetovio took up this exegesis and eventually added his own variation; it is from him that the Latin tradition knows of these interpretations, along with the count of twenty-four books. Further grounds are examined for linking the writings of Melito and Victorinus, including especially their relation to those of Irenaeus and Papias. A reconsideration of Melito’s place in the patristic tradition is also urged, with the suggestion that he wrote his Extracts in Rome ca. 150 and was a pivotal influence in the West.

• Luke J. Stevens, “The Four Living Creatures before Irenaeus,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis 98 (2022): 553–87, https://doi.org/10.2143/etl.98.4.3291112.
  Irenaeus’s interpretation of Revelation’s four living creatures links them most prominently with the four canonical gospels. While his is the earliest extant, several variations of this exegesis occur in antiquity. Their relationship is here ascertained through a detailed examination of both the evolving components of the exegesis and the identifiable sources of the respective authors (focusing on Victorinus, Chromatius, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius). This analysis clearly reveals two earlier strata of the tradition, along with how the different versions developed. The exegesis’s origin is traced to a testimonium in the first half of the second century, demonstrating, through interpretation of Ezekiel’s vision of the tetramorphic cherubim, how the Old Testament proclaims both the principal events of Jesus’s life and their fourfold witness by the written gospels.

• Luke J. Stevens, “An Early Source in Anastasius’s Hexaemeron,” Parekbolai 12 (2022): 105–23, https://doi.org/10.26262/par.v12i0.8937. [download]
  The Hexaemeron of Anastasius of Sinai incorporates a wealth of patristic material from the first to seventh centuries, often with explicit (if unreliable) citations, often without parallel, and often at second hand. Within this work, a single lost intermediary can be clearly discerned as the source for most of what pertains to the first three centuries. It provided readings from Origen’s Hexapla and citations of Philo, Papias, Irenaeus, and Clement, while denouncing the Ophites and Manichaeans. It also provided the foundation for the Hexaemeron’s overarching exegetical thesis and probably much of its content. Traces of the same lost work appear in Eusebius of Emesa, John of Scythopolis, and Andrew of Caesarea. Various circumstantial evidence indicates authorship by Pierius of Alexandria.

• Luke J. Stevens, “Cerinthus in the Chapters Against Gaius: Reconsidering the Hippolytan Heresiological Tradition,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 33 (2025): 511–35, https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2025.a977485.
  The lost dialogue known as the Chapters Against Gaius is here identified as neither a genuine work of Hippolytus nor a scholarly figment, but an anonymous work of the mid-third century drawing heavily from various Hippolytan writings. The bizarre assertion of its antagonist Gaius that the gnostic Cerinthus wrote John’s Gospel and Apocalypse, along with the character of Gaius himself and the novel Judaistic portrait of Cerinthus, are all explained as dramatic fictions rooted in specific misreadings and embellished with creative liberties. The details about Cerinthus, as preserved especially in Dionysius bar Ṣalibi, reveal the work’s relation to Hippolytus’s lost Syntagma, the lost Dialogue with Proclus (also probably Hippolytus’s), Dionysius of Alexandria’s lost writings, and the extant heresy catalogues of Epiphanius and Filaster. Our knowledge of the Syntagma is enriched, as additional material from it is identified, along with an early expanded recension drawing from the Chapters. Since one ancient author’s mistake of regarding the contrived controversy within the Chapters as real launched a cascade of misinformation, the ancient reception of the Johannine books deserves reevaluation. Besides disentangling the historical Cerinthus, these findings also illuminate the vexed question of Hippolytus’s literary corpus. 

Reviews

• Luke J. Stevens, review of Papias of Hierapolis: Exposition of Dominical Oracles: The Fragments, Testimonia, and Reception of a Second-Century Commentator, by Stephen C. Carlson, The Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 73 (2022): 373–75, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flac011. [download author’s version]

Translations

• Homily on the Ten Virgins (De decem virginibus). [download]

• Dionysius bar Ṣalibi, Commentary on the Apocalypse. [download]

• Gregory of Elvira, On Noah's Ark (De arca Noe). [download]

• Pseudo-Jerome: On the Heresies of the Jews (De haeresibus Judaeorum). [download]

• Victorinus of Poetovio, On the Creation of the World (De fabrica mundi). [download]

• Martine Dulaey, Victorin de Poetovio, premier exégète latin, CEAug 139–40 (1993).

• Richard A. Lipsius, Die Quellen der ältesten Ketzergeschichte (1875). [download]