Reconsidering the Relationship Between (Pseudo-)Didymus’s De Trinitate and Cyril of Alexandria’s Contra Julianum

Abstract

Abstract Cyril of Alexandria’s apologetic treatise Contra Julianum drew upon a wide range of earlier Christian literature, including works by Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, Pseudo-Justin Martyr, and others. The literary relationship between Contra Julianum and the De Trinitate attributed to Didymus the Blind is, however, contested. In this article I re-examine the parallel passages between these two works and argue that Cyril drew directly upon the De Trinitate as he composed Contra Julianum, using that prior work in three different ways. In the light of this finding, I argue that this literary dependency sheds some light on the intellectual and perhaps also social milieu out of which Contra Julianum arose, namely the long tradition of Christian authors who appropriated non-Christian sources for apologetic purposes, including such figures as Origen and Didymus.