Another Book for Jarrow's Library? Coincidences in Exegesis between Bede and the Laterculus Malalianus

Abstract

As an original composition if the seventh-century archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore of Tarsus, it is reasonable to expect that, writing less than a generation after his death, Bede might have known the Laterculus Malalianus, despite there having been no acknowledgment of the text by him, and no discernment by Bede's readers of its influence on him even up to the present time. Recent analysis of the Laterculus, however, has given cause to reconsider this oversight, as exegetical motifs that appear almost nowhere else across the tradition are developed in the Laterculus and taken up in significant waya by Bede. The purpose of this paper is to set out these exegetical coincidences and propose that, in light of them, the Laterculus Malalianus deserves to be considered among the sources Bede drew on as he set about producing his own considerable work.