Church Fathers Archives

Scheck, Thomas, ed. Commentaries on the Twelve Prophets: Volume 1, Ancient Christian Texts by Jerome. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2016. Link to IVP

This new contribution to the Ancient Christian Texts series is the first of three volumes collecting Jerome’s commentaries on the twelve Minor Prophets. Jerome (c. 347-419/20) is primarily known for his Latin translation of the Bible (The Vulgate), but he was also a prolific commentator on biblical books. He was thoroughly familiar with Jewish traditions and brought them to bear on his understanding of the Old Testament. Beginning in 379, Jerome used his considerable linguistic skills to translate Origen’s commentaries and, eventually, to translate and comment on Scripture himself.

According to the introduction, in 392 Jerome wrote his commentary on Nahum, the first of his commentaries on the twelve Minor Prophets. In the next year he finished commentaries Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai and Habakkuk, Jonah and Obadiah were completed in 396 following the Originist Controversy. In the mid-390s a petition circulated to have Origen declared a heretic. Although he translated Origen’s work and was an advocate of his work, Jerome signed this petition and became an outspoken opponent of Origen. Scheck says this can be seen by “occasional outbursts” against origin in the commentaries beginning with Jonah. Nevertheless, Jerome possessed Origen’s twenty-five book commentary on the Minor Prophets “which I hug and guard with such joy, that I deem myself to have the wealth of Croesus” (xxii).

The commentaries are presented in the order Jerome wrote them and a table in the introduction identifies the year he completed each commentary (xvi) and a second table includes order of the commentaries along with Jerome’s other commentaries and his translations of Origen. In preparing these commentaries, Jerome used the text of the Hebrew Bible as his main source, but also the LXX and Origin’s commentaries on the Minor Prophets. The translations were originally made by classics students from Ave Maria University under the direction of Thomas Scheck. The original translators are identified at the head of each commentary. Scheck carefully edited these translations into the final form found in this volume.

A key feature of Jerome’s commentaries is his frequent allusion to both the Old and New Testament. These are identified in the notes and virtually every pages of this volume has at least several allusions to biblical texts. As Scheck suggests, Jerome understood as a unity and thought the best commentary on Scripture is Scripture itself (xxiv). Following Jerome’s translation of the Hebrew Bible he usually gives the Septuagint, commenting on any differences. For example, commenting on Zephaniah 2:3-4, Jerome translates the Hebrew “Seek the Lord, all you meek of the earth, you who have worked his judgment, seek the just seek the meek,” and the LXX as “seek the Lord, all the humble of the earth, work judgment and seek justice.” The LXX reading is interpreted as a reference to “no one else by Christ” because everyone who seeks him will find him, citing Matthew 7:8. This is typical of the commentaries, they are thoroughly Christocentric.

An important feature of this volume is the indices. The first collects references in the text (and footnotes) to historical allusions (the Ebionites, Origen, etc.) or to other translations (Symmachus and Theodotion, for example). There are about ten pages ion the Scripture including allusions to Sirach.

Aside from historical interests, what is the value of reading a 1600 year old commentary on the Minor Prophets? There are a number of allegorical interpretations which attempt to focus a text on Christ or the church which seem to go well beyond the results of a grammatical historical method. For example, commenting on Haggai 2:19-20, Jerome take the pomegranate as a reference to the church. In order to make this point, he alludes to the Song of Solomon 8:1, the bride’s cheeks are compared to a pomegranate and the bride in the Song is allegorical interpreted as the Church. The olive tree in Haggai 2:20 refers to the illumination of Scripture, presumably because olive oil was used in lamps. Modern interpreters would be content to (correctly) read Haggai 2:19-20 as a reference to prosperity returning to the land (when pomegranates and olive trees will flourish again).

This may be an extreme example, but Jerome’s method of reading a given text alongside other texts is a kind of Christological intertextuality which flattens the canon and often creates observations which would be ignored by the traditional grammatical historical method. Perhaps there is good reason to draw two or three texts together as Jerome does, but sometimes the interpretations are strained beyond what my modern mind can bear.

Nevertheless, IVP Academic is to be applauded for once again providing these commentaries to English readers. Like other volumes in the series, the book itself is well-designed and reader friendly.

NB: Thanks to Intervarsity Press for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.

Graves, Michael. The Inspiration and Interpretation of Scripture: What the Early Church Can Teach Us. Grand Rapids, Mich. Eerdmans, 2014. 201 pp. Pb; $24.00. Link

Michael Graves (Armerding Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Wheaton College) is a well-qualified student of the literature of the early church. He is the author of a monograph on Jerome’s Hebrew Philology (Vigiliae Christianae Supplements, Brill, 2007) and he translated Jerome’s Commentary on Jeremiah (Ancient Christian Texts, IVP, 2012). This monograph is focused on how the early church understood Scripture as well as how they interpreted it. In general, the earliest Christians readers of the Bible regarded it as true, but they approached Scripture with methods “very much at home within the cultural context of the Greco-Roman world” (9). That Scripture was “inspired by God” is axiomatic for these interpreters, the implications of the inspiration of Scripture are in many ways different than what a modern reader of the Bible might assume to be the case.

Graves develops twenty “entailments” of the early Church doctrine of inspiration arranged into five chapters. In each chapter he defines his thesis (“Scripture is useful for instruction” or “Scripture has multiple senses,” etc.) In most cases he illustrates how non-Christian writers had similar commitments to their sacred literature, often using Philo or rabbinic literature, and occasionally the Qu’ran. Graves then illustrates the thesis in the writings of the church fathers. Origin, Jerome and Augustine are the often cited, but he demonstrates his thesis with a wide variety of fathers. He then makes a few evaluative comments on how the early church differs from modern approaches to Scripture. For some of his entailments, there is little difference between the ancient and modern views. For some of the hermeneutical sections, however, the difference between modern approaches to Scripture and the early church is quite striking.

First, Scripture is useful. All early Christians not only accepted Scripture as useful for instruction (2 Tim 3:16), but also that every detail of scripture has meaning. Even peculiar or extraneous details could be mined for theological significance. Graves illustrates this with Ephrem the Syrian’s interpretation of the three decks of Noah’s ark in Gen 6:16 as representing the three levels of Paradise. Numbers were frequently allegorized, so that the 318 men who helped Abram in Gen 14:14 represented Jesus, since the abbreviation for Jesus in Greek adds up to 18, and the symbol for 300 is tau, which looks like a cross (24-25). Most modern readers would find little in these methods.

Second, Scripture has a spiritual dimension. Because of this spiritual dimension, divine illumination is necessary to interpret the Bible. Only a believer has the spiritual acumen to understand the various “senses” of Scripture. In fact, the spiritual sense was more important than the literal. Unlike modern readers of scripture who demand close attention to the literal sense (although rarely agreeing on what “literal sense” means), most writers in the early church cared little literal meaning of Scripture. Graves comments that “virtually all Christians in antiquity believed that the Old Testament laws should be understood as teaching spiritual truths instead of practices to be observed (51). Augustine famously said that the Old Testament was death to him when he took it literally, only the spiritual sense made it alive. One of the key ways the early church found spiritual meaning in the Old Testament was to find predictions of the life of Jesus in the stories of the Old Testament. This is of course what the writers of the New Testament did, the earliest writers simply expanded on this method.

Third, the early church recognized that Scripture often employs modes of expression that are sometimes puzzling. There are “riddles and enigmas” to solve, but this is not too different than the approach of Greek readers to their own classical documents. Allegorical interpretation of mythic literature was common, even Homer was allegorized to discover deeper, philosophical meanings. The early church writers believed God hid deeper truths in the Scripture in order to reach people at different levels of spirituality and to encourage people to seek deeper things. Like many post-modern philosophical texts, obscure and enigmatic language was thought to better communicate profound ideas. Unfortunately, many of the earliest writers took this to the extreme of finding “deeper meanings” even in the etymology of a word, especially names. While a modern scholar recognizes creative use of language by the writers of the Bible (such as wordplay), few would be convinced by this method today. Since Scripture employed enigmatic expressions, it ought to be appreciated as fine literature. This was not appreciated early, since in translation the artistry of the original Hebrew was lost, but eventually early church writers described the Bible as artistic and having “marvelous sublimity” (79).

Fourth, Graves deals with the problem of historical accuracy of Scripture. In the twentieth century, the historicity of Scripture has been far more controversial than any of the other “entailments to inspiration” in this book. Recent inerrancy debates concerning the accuracy of the Old Testament (historical Adam, etc.) would make as little sense to the ancient writers as their allegorizing numbers makes to us. Nevertheless, writes such as Augustine and Jerome sought to answer potential objections raised by the pagans. Augustine thought Scripture, “when rightly interpreted, will never contradict what we learn from the natural world, when the facts have been correctly understood” (97). Not only was Scripture factual, it will not conflict with “pagan learning.” This should not be a surprise since most of the ancient writers had typical classical educations in Greek philosophy. Commenting on Genesis 1 Basil said the findings of natural science and Scripture are fully compatible (96). This is would be a remarkable thing to say today, since science dismisses Scripture entirely and (some) conservative Christians dismiss the findings of science as a vague conspiracy against Christianity.

Fifth, Scripture agrees with truth. On the one hand, all of Scripture is consistent and self-confirming. The ancient writers often harmonized details between the testaments since they were committed to the fact that Scripture does not deceive. For someone like Augustine, this means reports in Scripture of David’s adultery (for example) are accurate even if this implies David was far from saintly. Scripture is true, even if some of the characters in Scripture are bad people. Since the focus of Scripture is God, any teaching derived from Scripture ought to be “worthy of God” himself. For a writer like Origen, the stories of Joshua’s slaughter of the Canaanites was disturbing, but his allegorical interpretation of the events brought the teaching of Scripture into harmony with the nature of God.

Conclusion. For some modern interpreters of Scripture, the commentaries of the earliest church are so foreign that they seem of little value. I confess that I struggle to be interested in ancient commentaries and theological texts. At less than 150 pages without the end notes, this book offers a useful introduction to a complex topic for even the non-specialist.

After surveying this material, Graves says that reading the earlier writers of the church offers insight into the “rich and complex reading of Scripture” which “underscores the element of subjectivity involved in interpretation” (147). Every generation of the church has attempted to read Scripture as an authoritative revelation from God, but also to read Scripture within the culture of the day. Perhaps this is the warning of a book like this: what seems to be the proper method of interpretation today may seem strange in a hundred years. What lasts is the commitment to read and apply Scripture as God’s word.

NB: Thanks to Eerdmans for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.