Annotation CXLVI
”The Lord appointed also other seventy-two.” — Luke 10:1
On the number of Christ's disciples.
Erasmus judges that the Vulgate edition of the Latin translator is redundant in this place, because in it the particle “TWO” [duos] is read superfluously: and he strives to establish this by the authority of the Greek codices, in which only “Seventy” is written; and he says that Ambrose, Jerome, Cyril, Theophylact, and Eusebius (in the first volume of the Ecclesiastical History) agree in the same number. Augustine opposes this opinion, in book 2 of the Evangelical Questions, asserting that the number seventy-two aptly fits the disciples of the Lord — because, as in twenty-four hours the whole world is bathed with the light of the Sun, so the splendor of the most holy Trinity is borne to the whole world through thrice twenty-four disciples — that is, seventy-two. Bede, on Luke, book 3, recognizing the same reading, says that the number of seventy-two disciples bears the figure of the seventy-two presbyters, etc. But because Erasmus insists that Augustine and Bede had faulty codices, and that the truth of the Greek exemplars is to be consulted:
it is worth here subscribing the reading of Epiphanius, a very ancient author among the Greeks, who at the end of the first tome Against Heresies brings forth these [things] concerning the number of seventy-two disciples: “And Christ sent forth also other seventy-two to preach: of whose number were the seven set over the widows — Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus, and before these Matthias, who was numbered in the place of Judas among the Apostles; and after these seven, and Matthias before them, Mark, Luke, Justus, Barnabas, Apelles, Rufus, Niger, and the rest of the seventy-two; and after these, then, all [of them], Paul the Apostle — whom we find that holy Luke, being of the number of the seventy-two, made his follower.” These [are] the words of Epiphanius: which, lest anyone should suspect [them] badly translated, in Greek run thus: “ἀπέστειλε δὲ καὶ ἄλλους ἑβδομήκοντα δύο κηρύττειν, ἐξ ὧν ἦσαν οἱ ἑπτά, οἱ ἐπὶ τῶν χηρῶν τεταγμένοι, Στέφανος, Φίλιππος, Πρόχορος, Νικάνωρ, Τίμων, Παρμενᾶς, καὶ Νικόλαος, πρὸ τούτων ἢ Ματθίας, ὁ ἀντὶ Ἰούδα συμψηφισθεὶς μετὰ τῶν Ἀποστόλων· μετὰ τούτους ἢ τοὺς ἑπτὰ καὶ Ματθίαν τὸν πρὸ αὐτῶν, Μάρκον, Λουκᾶν, Ἰοῦστον, Βαρνάβαν, καὶ Ἀπελλῆν, Ῥοῦφον, Νίγερα, καὶ τοὺς λοιποὺς ἑβδομήκοντα δύο· μετ’ αὐτῶν ἢ πάντας Παῦλον τὸν Ἀπόστολον, ὃς εὑρίσκεται τὸν ἅγιον Λουκᾶν τῶν ἑβδομήκοντα δύο ἀκόλουθον ἑαυτῷ ποιήσας.” Clement, the third pontiff after Peter, agrees in this number, in book 2 of the Apostolic Constitutions, chapter 59. A Greek codex of the Apostolic [Vatican] Library, bearing a wonderful antiquity, corroborates these [readings]. Nor does the authority of the ancient fathers — on which Erasmus chiefly relies — stand against these. For it is likely that those writers, for the sake of brevity, cited “seventy” for “seventy-two”: which we also see done in the first interpreters of the Mosaic Law; who, though they were seventy-two — namely six chosen from each of the twelve tribes — are alleged by all ancient writers under the title of “the Seventy.” So too the Romans, from a zeal for brevity, called their hundred-and-five Judges — three chosen from each of the thirty-five tribes — “the Hundred Men” [Centumviri].