The Authenticity of the Recently Discovered Letter Attributed To Cyril of Jerusalem

Abstract

In 1976, S. P. Brock published a description of a Syriac manuscript which appeared to be a previously unknown letter of Cyril of Jerusalem.' The following year saw the publication of the complete text contained in the ms, together with an English translation.2 Brock concluded that the document was not a genuine letter of Cyril, but a forgery made a generation or so after Cyril's death. Brock's opinion has been widely accepted, and some of the objections to the document's authenticity have been stressed by others.3 Its status as a forgery now seems unquestioned, and the letter's author has begun to be referred to as pseudo-Cyril of Jerusalem.4 The purpose of this article is to challenge what appears to be rapidly becoming a received opinion. The document in question is in the form of a letter written by Cyril shortly after the earthquake which allegedly brought to a halt the attempt made during the reign of the Emperor Julian to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem. The purpose of the letter seems to be to assure its readers that the Jerusalem Christians are safe, and it gives a brief account of the events that took place in Jerusalem immediately following the earthquake. The ms is dated as recently as 1899, but Brock found several reasons for concluding that it had an early original, and this was confirmed when he discovered another copy of the first half of the letter in a 6th century ms, also Syriac, in the British Library. There are some differences between the texts of the two mss, although they are not such as to suggest that one is closer to the original than the other; nevertheless, in quoting from the document I shall follow the 6th century ms as far as Brock's paragraph 7, where its text ends, and the 19th century ms thereafter. The validity of the arguments that follow is not affected by this choice.