OTHERS

(Anonymous = "John Drungarius") [ed. Faulhaber 192-6, with parallel prologues to the other major prophets]:

Anyone who uses this book ought to know that I, after much investigation, was not able to find commentaries [hypomnêmata] of the holy fathers dealing with the inspired prophet Ezekiel except in some of their works where said [fathers] mentioned and interpreted some things as it were in passing; I did find [commentaries] of Theodoret and Polychronius, the heretics, and indeed also* [a commentary] of Origen—these I incorporated into this book. But I also found other "paragraphs" not at all bearing the name of the author, which I also inserted, giving these same paragraphs the heading "another" [allos].

Let no one criticize me for having assembled together excerpts or "paragraphs" of heretics; for indeed I did not do this on my own initiative, but rather following our most holy father the archbishop of the most Christ-loving city of Alexander, Cyril, who said in his letter to Eulogius: "One need not flee and deprecate everything the heretics say; for they in many respects they say the same things as we do."

And I thought this also was necessary to say—that not all the interpreters preserved the same ordering principle in their explanations, but rather, one taking up a larger part of the page, another a smaller part in adding the interpretation. Hence the number sitting above [i.e., text-anchor] appears to thwart one who is reading the text and not allow him to proceed further than this.

Therefore, the user ought to read one, two or three numbers in the text and then go through the interpretation; no harm will come from this—on the contrary, much advantage, as the thoughts of the holy Scripture will be more precisely presented to the understanding, and the interpretation will thus follow along in good order.