Good Essay on the early Patristic bible commentaries

[sirach2v4]

Catholic priest Joseph T. LIenhard is the editor of Volume III of the Intervarsity Press Ancient Christian commentary on Scripture - Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

Legally and technically it cannot be reproduced here, but consider this a recommendation to read his introduction to the volume. In it, he explains the history of early church analysis of scripture, which goes under the name of patristic exegesis.

He explains who the major exegetes were in the East and in the West. He explains how they had education in analysis of ancient Greek and Latin classics, that prepared them for the analysis of scriptural texts.

And, he handily explains how even the early church fathers 1) appreciated the importance of what we now call the Old Testament, and 2) recognized and expressed the importance of a Christological interpretation of the Old Testament.

If you are interested in this subject, Lienhard’s essay is the 15-page version that you might want to start with.

Further, in this essay, his purpose was to explain how the early writers developed their points of view, e.g. what problems they had to confront. In this regard, he shows how an absolute conviction developed for a spiritual interpretation of scripture.

 

[RobbyS]

Is there a link?

 

[COPLAND_3]

I’ve read it numerous times, it is a good read! The ACC series is good to have on the bookself. I do want to mention that some volumes are quite superior to other volumes. It is a team effort and not all on the team produced equal quality. Some volumes provide robust amount of commentary for each passage, while other volumes left huge gaps. And let me mention that many of those gaps could have been filled nicely but were not. One reason they say they didnt is because of the lack of commentary on certain books, but I have been working on some of those books myself and have found many works they could have used on those gaps, such as Genesis-Ruth, in which they could have easily used Theodoret’s and Augustine’s Questions and answers but chose not to.

Another negative I find with the ACC is their main objective, and that is they aimed to provide a resource to give students and idea of how ancient Christians interpreted Scripture, but instead I feel a more valuable objective would have been to first and foremost is to provide a resource that focuses on edification of the Scripture passages. I have seen that weakness in the ACC many times when I have found more edifying and better articulated comments from one of the Fathers than what the ACC has provided.

I am not trying to be negative but I do want to to point out what I feel are the weaknesses are so other dont approach the ACC thinking that its a standard for Patristic exegesis.