There have been so many vindications of Origen in recent years that a book which explains, as this one purports to do, how he came to be condemned at all seems more than timely. Banev undertakes to show that Theophilus triumphed by the use of rhetoric, an art which in his time was regarded not as a form of intrigue but as a courtesy to one's hearers and a proof of one's intellectual qualifications. He rightly observes that Paul himself, employing the tools of rhetoric without being able to name them, set the example to Christian orators (pp. 54–9); at the same time he compiles a useful dossier of the handbooks that were used to train men of a certain class in the art of public speaking. An analysis of prose passages from Theophilus reveals that, whether or not he knew the Rhetoric of Aristotle at first hand, he understood its precepts well enough to reinforce his proofs from reason by appealing to known authorities and working upon the passions of his audience. Cyril's assault on Origen is found to observe the fourfold scheme prescribed by Aristotle: first the lusis or dissolution of the counter-plea, then the epikheirêma or statement of one's own case, then the ergasia or proof and so to the enthumêma, or concluding demonstration (p. 130). An enthymeme contains an unspoken premise: the art of the prosecutor is to insinuate a premise which is not shared by his opponent, but is likely to be accepted without reflection by his audience so long as it is not expressly stated. Thus, by relying on presuppositions which were norms of orthodoxy in his own day but not in Origen's, Theophilus can maintain that his teaching on prayer subordinates the Son to the Father (pp. 154–5), that he belittles the Holy Spirit (p. 158) and that his notion of a universal fall of souls into bodies implies that Christ's soul too has fallen (pp. 142–3). Having shown that Theophilus was always a respected figure in ascetic literature, Banev concludes that, rather than co-opting monasticism for his own ends as Athanasius did (p. 191), this patriarch gave a voice to the collective abhorrence of Origen's intellectual temerity, his resistance to authority and the heresies that follow unavoidably when his teachings are grafted on to post-Nicene doctrines. This argument, I fear, is an enthymeme whose premise eludes me. If he were the demagogue that some take him to be, Theophilus will certainly have professed to speak for the whole religious community of Egypt, and if he were the rhetorician that Banev takes him to be, the whole community will have believed him; to conclude from his success that he was nothing but a rod in the hand of the multitude is to take this master of eloquence at his word, which is surely what Banev himself has taught us not to do.