The Hippolytan corpus that has come down to us in its initial form contains the work of two or three authors. One of these was Hippolytus of Rome and the other the anonymous author of the Refutatio omnium haeresium. This fairly standard account is followed by Emanuele Castelli (pp. 3–7). His objective however in this important and significant study is to unravel what can be ascertained as to the plan and purpose of one work in the corpus, the De universo, a title that the author in Refutatio x.32.4 claims as his own.
Castelli argues that the two books of the De universo consisted of a first volume on Plato's schools of philosophy and the greater antiquity of the Jews, and the true doctrine of God and of the Logos, and a second on the creation of the universe and of man, and of its final eschatological consummation (p. 41). The passage conserved in the Excerpta constantiniana will support his reconstructed order (p. 43). He supports therefore the order found in the fragments of St John Damascene's Sacra parallela (pp. 40–1) that reflect in turn the order of similar themes in Refutatio x.32–3. Thus he rejects both the contrary theses of Malley and Botte: that Photius’ implied order can be disregarded since the material cited by him is arguably out of sequence due to his challenge to the Josephan authorship (p. 42).
It is on the subject of authorship that Castelli makes a significant and original contribution. Philoponus had no doubt that Josephus was the author though Photius expressed doubts, conceding in the title of Bibliotheca 48 that it was either ’lωσήπου μᾶλλον δὲ Γαίου πρεσβυτέρου … ἐθνῶν Χειροτονηθείς ἐπίσкοπος, as opposed to other names suggested by him ἐν παραγραϕᾶις in his manuscript. But Photius, in his summary of the text, is unequivocal in the attribution to Josephus: he is therefore ambiguous in his identification of the author (p. 32).
Castelli perceptively points out that Photius’ ambiguity arises from his pursuing two, clearly distinct literary approaches: in the first part of chapter 48 his judgement is on literary and stylistic grounds, in the second he is examining marginal testimony: these are two distinct methods of analysis (pp. 36–7).
Castelli is now prepared to ask a new question regarding Josephus’ name and its use as an almost universal attribution for the De universo. It is not possible to dismiss that attribution as a mistake. A confusion of similar names between a Christian and a Jewish Josephus, as Nautin thought, or simply an error due to the material taken from Josephus by the author of Refutatio ix.18.1–28.2 (=Josephus, Bellum Judaicum, 2.119–66), whose description of his own work justifies Photius' title Λαβύρινθος (x.5.1), and who claims the De universo as his own work (x.32.4) (p. 31). Castelli therefore claims that the use of Josephus’ name represents a developing apologetic that proceeds by its own logic as it is adopted by the Christian community. Josephus’ name was important for one particular argument in the De universo, namely the greater antiquity of Judaism over paganism and of Moses being the true teacher of doctrines that the Platonists perverted. Judaism is more ancient and therefore a more valid account of what is true than Greek philosophy, therefore the use of Josephus services his apologetic argument both here as well as in the Refutatio.
Castelli can now connect the use of Contra Apionem 2.156–74 in a fragment of the De universo found in the Excerpta constantiana (tenth century): the author had used Josephus here as he had in the Refutatio and for an identical reason: a Jewish account was far better than a pagan one due to its more ancient credentials (pp. 65–7). Castelli corroborates his thesis by pointing to the use of both passages cited from Josephus in proximity in Porphyry's De abstinentia. Porphyry is citing these from a lost passage in the De universo and thus testifies to the belief in Josephan authorship in the fourth century (pp. 68–72).
Pseudepigraphic claims to authorship were not therefore despairing punts but part of a systematically thought-out apologetic method. Believing that the Testimonium flavianum is an interpolation into Josephus, Antiquitates 18.63–4, Castelli regards this as executed in third-century Rome in the same circles as attributed the De universo to Josephus and part of the same apologetic project (p. 79). Since the attribution to Josephus therefore was as early as within ten years of the publication of the work and the Refutatio, the suppression of the author's true name served also another purpose: it was clear from the contents of the latter that something like a schismatic congregation was being described in opposition to Callistus.
Though I disagree with his characterisation of the author of the Refutatio as an antipope – such a conception is highly anachronistic in terms of the early third century – Castelli is right to see the literary process as part of community reconciliation after conflict, as witnessed by the note in the Liberian Catalogue on ‘Hippolytus presbyter’ and ‘Pontian episcopus’. Here, I believe, is the reason why neither the anonymous Refutatio nor Hippolytus’ Contra Noetum are mentioned in the catalogue on the Statue in the Vatican Library. The documents of the Christological controversy and its compromising settlement are best left in the background, or instead circulated under the name of Josephus.
