Epitome of the Commentaries on the Historical Books of the Old Testament (the Octateuch catena)

Eclogarum in libros historicos Veteris Testamenti epitome (Commentarii in Octateuchum) · Procopius of Gaza · c. 520s-530s (Procopius fl. c. 475-528) · commentary · CPG 7430

Greek · domain: catenae · researched 2026-11-13

Why this is in the register

HOLLIS Primo 'Procopius Gazaeus' (2026-11-13) returns 32 records. The only modern-language rendering of the Octateuch commentary is German: 'Der Genesiskommentar ... Eclogarum in libros historicos Veteris Testamenti epitome' (De Gruyter, GCS n.F. 23, 2016), whose record states it is 'presented along with a translation into a modern language' and is 'Text in German, translated from the Greek original'; the critical Greek volumes are GCS n.F. 22 (Genesis, ed. Karin Metzler, 2015) and GCS n.F. 27 (Exodus, ed. Metzler, 2020), both 'Text in ancient Greek; introduction in German'. No English translation appears in HOLLIS, in ANF/NPNF (which contain no Procopius at all), in Fathers of the Church, Ancient Christian Writers or Popular Patristics. 'Procopius of Gaza commentary on Isaiah' returns only a 2024 multilingual essay collection, 'Procopius the Christian sophist: catenist, compiler, epitomist'.

Only Genesis and Exodus have been critically edited in the GCS series so far, though Procopius's epitome covered the whole Octateuch; the remaining books (Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy-Joshua-Judges-Ruth) survive mainly through the catena tradition and the older Migne text. The German Genesis volume is a translation of the GCS edition, so even the German project currently covers only part of the work. No open-access Greek e-text was located: the Migne PG 87 scan on archive.org is public domain but its OCR is unusable for Greek and its contents could not be page-verified here, so it is not listed as an e-text.

Existing translations recorded

Electronic text

No open electronic text was verified for this work. The Greek/Coptic/Geʿez may exist only in a print or subscription edition (Migne, CSCO, TLG, CMCL).

Scanned witnesses

Scan search: open scan — 1 candidate(s). PG 87a is the only public scan of the Octateuch catena; the GCS critical editions (n.F. 22 Genesis 2015, n.F. 27 Exodus 2020) are in copyright and were not located on IA. Because the Migne text layer has no Greek, ingestion needs tesseract -l grc on column-cropped pages (left Greek, right Latin). No other copy was found: IA title search for Procopius returns only Procopius of Caesarea, and e-rara/MDZ/ONB gave no usable result (MDZ SRU 404, ONB 504).

Harvard Hollis

Hollis query: Procopius of Gaza Epitome of the Commentaries on the Historical Books — 5 record(s); match basis author_title_unquoted.

Sources checked

• https://archive.org/details/patrologiae_cursus_completus_gr_vol_087_1
• HOLLIS search — Eclogarum in libros historicos Veteris Testamenti epitome
• HOLLIS search — Procopius Gazaeus

Cite: Tergwame, “Epitome of the Commentaries on the Historical Books of the Old Testament (the Octateuch catena)” (greek gap dossier), 2026. https://naxiai.com/christian/gaps/greek-procopius-octateuchum