Tractates on the Gospel of John
INTRODUCTION 25 events in the liturgical calendar; references to known historical events;^-' allusions to contemporary heresies; and the biblical texts used.*^' Zarb does divide the Tractates into the two groupings. The first group contains bitter attacks on the Donatists, all of its sermons are rather lengthy, and there are many chronological references; these homilies were actually delivered. In the second group, however, all the sermons are brief and there are no chronological references to prior sermons. Zarb maintains that, because of certain phrasings in them, these sermons were dictated for later reading to the people rather than extemporaneously delivered.
(36) From references to a Pax Ecclesiae and to the intervention of the Emperor against the Donatists, combined with vague allusions to Pelagianism, he suggests a date for the first group between 411, the year of the Conference at Carthage
78. For example, mention of the Lord's day or a phrase like hesterno die ("yesterday") or a sermon on a particular feast day, as that of St. Lawrence on August 10 {Tractate 27), or the date of Easter.
79. The obvious example of the finding of the relics of St. Stephen mentioned in Tractate 120.4. 80. The main battling against the Manichaeans took place before 398; in these sermons Manichaeism is referred to, but is not of any considerable importance. Against Donatism, from 392 to 404 Augustine tried gentle persuasion; from 404 to 4 1 1 comes the period of vigorous combat, and after 4 1 1 the heresy wanes. Pelagianism appeared in North Africa in 41 1 and Augustine at first attacked it obliquely and somewhat gently; but in 416 he openly assails and condemns the heresy.
81. In DDC 2.15.22 Augustine indicates that he prefers the Itala to other Latin translations, although both that text and its meaning are in doubt. Some see the term Itala as a code name for all pre-Vulgate Latin versions known collectively as the Old Latin, or as one branch of the Old Latin, the Italian rather than, e.g., the African, or as the north Italian variant adopted by Augustine under the influence of Ambrose, or Jerome's Vulgate itself; and some would emend the text or eliminate the term altogether. A good brief account is found in B. Metzger, The Early Versions of the New Testament (Oxford,
1977), 290-293. Metzger does not mention the work of C. Milne, A Reconstruction of the Old Latin Text or Texts of the Gospels Used by Saint Augustine (Cambridge, 1926), perhaps because he does not discuss the DDC reference to the Itala or because his book is simply an application of the well known work of F. C. Burkitt, The Old Latin and the Itala (Cambridge, 1896). Milne maintains that after the publication of Jerome's Vulgate in 383 Augustine adopted that version, but in the period 385—400, which Milne studies and which predates the Tractates, he frequently quoted from the African version, and he gives a book full of examples from the New Testament. He does suggest that there