Andrew’s use of sources also merits attention. Andrew’s commentary alludes
to a variety of works, canonical and noncanonical.19 Predictably, important patris-
tic figures also appear. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus of Rome, Epiphanius,
Gregory of Nazianzus, and Cyril of Alexandria are prominent.20 Some of their
remarks have survived only in Andrew’s commentary.21 Andrew prefixes the labels
o pe yaq, o paxapio;, or o GeTo? to the names of the fathers, showing his high regard
for them and reflecting an early Byzantine protocol.22 Ironically (perhaps even cyn-
ically), Andrew makes no mention of Oecumenius’s commentary on the Apoca-
lypse—a major sixth-century work that exerted an important and demonstrable
influence on Andrew.23 Andrew draws obsessively from Oecumenius, often with-
out veering from his exemplar in style or content, except in theologically strategic
locations.24
23 Andrew’s commentary mirrors Oecumenius’s commentary in at least 235 sections where
the diction, syntax, and subject matter of the former give strong evidence of borrowing from the
latter. For a full listing of these parallels see de Croote, Oecumenii commentarius, 337-42.
24 Although the practice of “taking over” the language of well-known, important literary
sources would have been quite common in both ancient and early Byzantine literary contexts, the
full significance of Andrew’s appropriation of Oecumenius’s language has yet to be examined fully.
Given the high incidence of textual interplay between the two works, it may not be far-fetched to
see Andrew’s commentary as a fxtptrjcrts of Oecumenius’s commentary. Although Andrew’s true
motives are not explicit, we can speculate that he was offering an alternative to Oecumenius’s per-
ceived monophysitism and Origenist speculations. This, however, must also be examined and
substantiated in a comprehensive manner. (See John N. Suggit, Oecumenius, Commentary on the
Apocalypse [FC 112; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006], 6-13; and
Daley, Hope of the Early Church, 198). The strategic differences between the two commentaries
appear to indicate that Andrew sought to supplant Oecumenius’s work by bringing it into greater
conformity with his understanding of “Chalcedonian orthodoxy.” See Hernandez, “Andrew of
Caesarea and His Reading of Revelation.”
