The Benedictine Editor
adds the two last words τύπον
παραδηλοῦν
from mss. Roe. Casaub. as necessary to
the construction, and adds the following note. “The text
thus emended is capable of two senses. The first, that the Holy
Spirit came down in the form of a dove, a pure and harmless bird, to
shew that He is Himself as it were a mystic dove in His simplicity and
love of children, for whose new birth and remission of sins at Baptism
He unites His prayers with Christ’s, as Cyril teaches in Cat.
xvi. 20: and that Christ was for the like cause mystically
foreshown in Canticles as having eyes like a dove’s. The
other sense is, that the Spirit descended in the form of a dove on
Christ’s Humanity in order to shew this to be as it were a dove
in innocence, holiness, love of children, and concurrence with the Holy
Spirit in their regeneration.…Either sense is admissible, and
maintained by many of the Fathers: but I prefer the
former.” This interpretation is confirmed by Tertullian
(de Baptismo, c. viii.), who says that the Holy Spirit
glided down on the Lord “in the shape of a dove” in order
that the nature of the Holy Spirit might be declared by means of a
creature of simplicity and innocence.”