Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation
Journal Data
| Type | SOURCE_BOOK |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (GB) |
| ISBN-13 | 9780198718390 |
| Open Library | OL21200771W |
| Total publications | 49 |
| Coverage period | 2019 - 2019 |
| Language | EN |
| Impact factor | 0.061 |
The Bible was the lifeblood of virtually every aspect of the life of the early churches. The essays in this Handbook explore a wide array of themes related to the reception, canonization, interpretation, uses, and legacies of the Bible in early Christianity. A first group of studies examines the material text transmitted, translated, and invested with authority, and the very conceptualization of sacred Scripture as God’s word for the Church. A second group looks at the culture and disciplines or science of interpretation in representative exegetical traditions. A third group of essays addresses the remarkably diverse literary and non-literary modes of interpretation, while a fourth group canvasses the communal background and foreground of early Christian interpretation, where the Bible was paramount in shaping normative Christian identity. A fifth group assesses the determinative role of the Bible in major developments and theological controversies in the life of the churches. A sixth group returns to interpretation proper and samples how certain abiding motifs from within scriptural revelation were treated by major Christian expositors. A seventh and final group of studies follows up by examining how early Christian exegesis was retrieved and critically evaluated in later periods of church history. Along the way, readers will be oriented to the major resources for, and issues in, the critical study of early Christian biblical interpretation.
Scripture and Asceticism
This chapter surveys some interpretative techniques employed by early Christian writers to encourage ascetic renunciation, especially renunciation of marriage and reproduction. These authors, gearing their messages to different audiences, sought to mine passages from both the Old Testament and the New to advance their cause. By use of different exegetical techniques (e.g. intertextual exegesis; appeal to ‘the difference in times’; ‘close reading’…
Graeco-Roman Literary Criticism
The poets in the classical world carried wide authority on questions about the gods, the nature of the world, and the human place in it, and this provoked ancient readers to detailed and subtle reflections on how such profound wisdom might be conveyed through the medium of poetry. This chapter presents an overview of literary criticism in the Greek and Roman world. It sets Plato and Aristotle at the centre, working through core questions of imita…
The Gospel of John
This chapter reviews the significant role played by the Gospel according to John in the early Church, and recent scholarship surrounding this issue. John’s importance in the Christological and Trinitarian debates of the fourth and fifth centuries is widely recognized, but controversy has surrounded the question of John’s use in the Church prior to Irenaeus. This chapter reviews that academic controversy, particularly the longstanding argument tha…
Ideal Interpreters
This chapter examines early Christian accounts of ideal (and less than ideal) interpreters of Scripture. These figures were configured by two spaces in the Late Antique world: the institution of the schoolroom, especially the grammatical and rhetorical training that were directly applicable to the study of Christian Scripture; and the Christian ‘religion’, with its range of doctrinal, moral, and liturgical associations that informed the student a…
Scripture and Martyrdom
The Bible played a foundational role in early Christian reflection on martyrdom. This is most evidently the case with the concept of the imitatio Christi , which was based on many biblical quotations and allusions. Cyprian of Carthage’s understudied To Fortunatus demonstrates that the early Church had a coherent theology of martyrdom as well as a systematic overview of scriptural material supporting it. Moreover, the Bible also provided exempla f…
Sermon on the Mount
This chapter discusses the three main things the early Christian writers found in Matthew 5–7. Those were, first, the Beatitudes with promises of spiritual goods made to what was considered to be a small group of special people, but with the application in city preachers to lay people gaining the goods of peace and order and much more in the life to come. Second, prayer, particularly the Lord’s Prayer with its eschatological orientation still ver…
From Letter to Spirit: The Multiple Senses of Scripture
This chapter offers an overview of patristic theory and practice of both figurative and literal exegesis, as well as of the relationship between them. It argues that for the fathers of the Church, the literal sense of Scripture was not a free-standing independent sense, but was intrinsically related to, and ordered towards, the figurative or spiritual sense(s). Since that is true, the literal sense of Scripture cannot be fully appreciated apart f…
Liturgy as Performative Interpretation
This chapter appeals to the observation by Basil of Caesarea (fourth century) that ‘not everyone knows why’ the Church performs various rituals, to argue that habitual practice often preceded the application of scriptural interpretation. Sociologist P. Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ provides theoretical explanation for how pre-reflective participation in ritual and other communal acts prepared converts to be schooled in rudimentary Christian bel…
Poetry and Hymnody
This chapter traces the development of early Christian exegetical hymnody, and analyses this hymnody in terms of its relationship to Scripture. The chapter falls into two parts: part one argues that by the fourth century, in response to associations of hymnody with heresy, the scripturally allusive hymnic material of earliest Christianity gave way to a type of hymnody which interacted with Scripture in explicit and concrete ways. Part two traces …
Covenants
As a term in the Hebrew Bible, covenant was discussed in early Christian writings initially in the context of polemics with Jews. It served a useful purpose in arguments against heretics who rejected or disparaged the Old Testament as illustrating an unfolding purpose of God. The word continued in comments on biblical passages. The varied applications of the distinction of the covenants reflect the importance of the idea in the interpretation of …
The Cross
This chapter examines the role of the cross in early Christianity, both in constituting Scripture as Scripture and as a privileged locus of scriptural interpretation. It is through the apocalyptic unveiling of Scripture by the cross that the meaning of Scripture is revealed, so that it can be read as Scripture, and the gospel proclaimed on its basis. The cross is also a particularly fertile image, expounded both through scriptural images, from th…
Gnostics and their Critics
The Gnostics primarily engaged in ‘rewritten Bible’: they retold and augmented the stories of Genesis and the Gospels, sometimes seeming to replace the biblical book as much as to explicate it. Valentinus practised a highly allusive form of biblical interpretation, in which the Bible and other literature enabled him to express a vision that was personal and biblical. The students of Valentinus participated fully in the emerging ‘academic’ culture…
Scripture and a Christian Empire
The chapter examines the role of scriptural interpretation in both rationalizing and criticizing the rise of a Christian empire. Special attention is given to Eusebius of Caesarea and his grand vision of the providential union of Church and empire, key biblical elements of which are the discrediting of apocalyptic, the historical fulfilment of prophecy, and the supersession of Judaism. A ‘Eusebius consensus’ became widespread, even on the empire’…
Novels
The ancient genre ‘novel’ influenced early Christian composition and exegesis most purely in the Pseudo-Clementines , the only true ancient Christian novel. The original Pseudo-Clementine novel was idealistic: carefully constructed to work as a believable whole. Accordingly, it pursued exegesis of the Jesus-tradition in a realistic, or believable, manner, as displayed particularly in the explicit regulation of Peter’s lifestyle and mission by the…
Scholia
This chapter provides an introductory overview of early Christian scholia—i.e. brief, preliminary interpretative notes on select passages of Scripture, composed as isolated works or deployed as annotations in manuscript margins. After a cursory comparison with marginal, classical scholia, select Christian scholia are examined. A survey of scholia by Evagrius, Epiphanius, and Origen reveals that these notes had no necessary or fundamental connecti…
Sentences
The classical genre of moral-philosophical wisdom sayings or gnomai was adopted in early Christianity by creating exegetical sentences that rephrased or alluded to biblical texts. These were inserted into existing collections which were edited to highlight Christian moral teaching. The chief example of this genre is The Sentences of Sextus . In early monasticism, especially in the writings of Evagrius Ponticus, pedagogically arranged chains of ex…
Modern Biblical Criticism and the Legacy of Pre-Modern Interpretation
Although biblical criticism in the early modern period is often identified with the rejection of tradition, a closer examination reveals a more complex effort to investigate the literal sense while retaining the authority of Christian culture and Antiquity. This chapter traces the development of early modern biblical criticism in relation to changing attitudes toward early Christian interpreters. Focusing on the Republic of Letters and figures su…
Catenae
The term catena (Latin for ‘chain’) refers to an edited collection of excerpts from traditional exegetical authorities. Such collections are evidenced in various fields and forms in Late Antiquity, but the production of biblical catenae was an enduring and distinctive practice of Byzantine exegesis from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries. Procopius of Gaza ( c .460/70– c .530/538) occupies a significant, if disputed, place in the history of cat…
Exodus
Christian writers of the second and third centuries adopted the figurative interpretation of the Exodus presupposed by the New Testament, adding new figural readings and articulating a theology of the Exodus as spiritual salvation. Tertullian in particular follows the lead of 1 Corinthians 10 and connects Israel’s crossing the sea to baptism. Origen creates a coherent allegorical interpretation of the entire Exodus story by filling out details in…
Early Christian Handbooks on Interpretation
This chapter identifies the types of handbooks of biblical interpretation that are available from the patristic period. It assesses handbooks which summarize the content of biblical books, compare translations, affirm the unity and coherence of scriptural accounts, explicate difficult passages, explain the biblical names of persons and places and their etymologies, provide guidelines for theological interpretation, and comment on various items me…
Divine Discourse: Scripture in the Economy of Revelation
This chapter focuses on the relationship of the Word of God inscribed in Scripture and Word of God incarnate in Christ, both being expressions of God’s revelation and constitutive of the divine oikonomia , and both involving God’s self-accommodation to creaturely limitations. The development of the Christological meaning of Scripture as a whole is traced from second-century debates about the continuing validity of the Jewish Scriptures to the hol…
Catecheses and Homilies
This chapter seeks to draw out the diverse ways in which biblical interpretation was expressed in early Christian preaching and catechetical instruction. Issues discussed include: current theories about the role played by biblical interpretation in the origin and early shaping of the homiletic/catechetical genres, and the fluidity of the boundary between catechetical lecture and homily. Preaching and teaching, it is argued, constituted a primary …
Reception in the Renaissance and Reformation
The retrieval of patristic exegesis made great strides during the revival of Renaissance humanism and the spread of European Reformations. While devotion to the recovery of the early Church writings was primarily an intellectual movement, it was shaped and motivated by distinct social, political, religious, and philosophical developments of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe. Humanists appreciated ancient Christian writings because they soug…
Paraphrase and Metaphrase
This chapter explores paraphrase as a common tool for early Christian exegesis. The first section discusses the definition of paraphrase, its parameters in Antiquity, and its broader use in classical literature and education. The second section looks in more detail at prose paraphrase of Scripture, including discussion of a striking instance of exegetical paraphrase in Greek by Gregory of Nyssa and one in Latin by the orator Gaius Marius Victorin…
Scripture in the Christological Controversies
After its introduction on believing in Christ in accordance with Scripture, this chapter begins its treatment of biblical interpretation in the Christological controversies with methodological matters at stake in assessing early Christianity’s journey from biblical questions to scholastic answers. It then examines the era of the ancient ecumenical councils and select theologians of those times in their increasingly developed Christological schola…
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Scripture and Asceticism
This chapter surveys some interpretative techniques employed by early Christian writers to encourage ascetic renunciation, especially renunciation of marriage and reproduction. These authors, gearing their messages to different audiences, sought to mine passages from both the Old Testament and the New to advance their cause. By use of different exegetical techniques (e.g. intertextual exegesis; appeal to ‘the difference in times’; ‘close reading’…
Graeco-Roman Literary Criticism
The poets in the classical world carried wide authority on questions about the gods, the nature of the world, and the human place in it, and this provoked ancient readers to detailed and subtle reflections on how such profound wisdom might be conveyed through the medium of poetry. This chapter presents an overview of literary criticism in the Greek and Roman world. It sets Plato and Aristotle at the centre, working through core questions of imita…
The Gospel of John
This chapter reviews the significant role played by the Gospel according to John in the early Church, and recent scholarship surrounding this issue. John’s importance in the Christological and Trinitarian debates of the fourth and fifth centuries is widely recognized, but controversy has surrounded the question of John’s use in the Church prior to Irenaeus. This chapter reviews that academic controversy, particularly the longstanding argument tha…
Ideal Interpreters
This chapter examines early Christian accounts of ideal (and less than ideal) interpreters of Scripture. These figures were configured by two spaces in the Late Antique world: the institution of the schoolroom, especially the grammatical and rhetorical training that were directly applicable to the study of Christian Scripture; and the Christian ‘religion’, with its range of doctrinal, moral, and liturgical associations that informed the student a…
Scripture and Martyrdom
The Bible played a foundational role in early Christian reflection on martyrdom. This is most evidently the case with the concept of the imitatio Christi , which was based on many biblical quotations and allusions. Cyprian of Carthage’s understudied To Fortunatus demonstrates that the early Church had a coherent theology of martyrdom as well as a systematic overview of scriptural material supporting it. Moreover, the Bible also provided exempla f…
Sermon on the Mount
This chapter discusses the three main things the early Christian writers found in Matthew 5–7. Those were, first, the Beatitudes with promises of spiritual goods made to what was considered to be a small group of special people, but with the application in city preachers to lay people gaining the goods of peace and order and much more in the life to come. Second, prayer, particularly the Lord’s Prayer with its eschatological orientation still ver…
From Letter to Spirit: The Multiple Senses of Scripture
This chapter offers an overview of patristic theory and practice of both figurative and literal exegesis, as well as of the relationship between them. It argues that for the fathers of the Church, the literal sense of Scripture was not a free-standing independent sense, but was intrinsically related to, and ordered towards, the figurative or spiritual sense(s). Since that is true, the literal sense of Scripture cannot be fully appreciated apart f…
Liturgy as Performative Interpretation
This chapter appeals to the observation by Basil of Caesarea (fourth century) that ‘not everyone knows why’ the Church performs various rituals, to argue that habitual practice often preceded the application of scriptural interpretation. Sociologist P. Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ provides theoretical explanation for how pre-reflective participation in ritual and other communal acts prepared converts to be schooled in rudimentary Christian bel…
Poetry and Hymnody
This chapter traces the development of early Christian exegetical hymnody, and analyses this hymnody in terms of its relationship to Scripture. The chapter falls into two parts: part one argues that by the fourth century, in response to associations of hymnody with heresy, the scripturally allusive hymnic material of earliest Christianity gave way to a type of hymnody which interacted with Scripture in explicit and concrete ways. Part two traces …
Covenants
As a term in the Hebrew Bible, covenant was discussed in early Christian writings initially in the context of polemics with Jews. It served a useful purpose in arguments against heretics who rejected or disparaged the Old Testament as illustrating an unfolding purpose of God. The word continued in comments on biblical passages. The varied applications of the distinction of the covenants reflect the importance of the idea in the interpretation of …
The Cross
This chapter examines the role of the cross in early Christianity, both in constituting Scripture as Scripture and as a privileged locus of scriptural interpretation. It is through the apocalyptic unveiling of Scripture by the cross that the meaning of Scripture is revealed, so that it can be read as Scripture, and the gospel proclaimed on its basis. The cross is also a particularly fertile image, expounded both through scriptural images, from th…
Gnostics and their Critics
The Gnostics primarily engaged in ‘rewritten Bible’: they retold and augmented the stories of Genesis and the Gospels, sometimes seeming to replace the biblical book as much as to explicate it. Valentinus practised a highly allusive form of biblical interpretation, in which the Bible and other literature enabled him to express a vision that was personal and biblical. The students of Valentinus participated fully in the emerging ‘academic’ culture…
Scripture and a Christian Empire
The chapter examines the role of scriptural interpretation in both rationalizing and criticizing the rise of a Christian empire. Special attention is given to Eusebius of Caesarea and his grand vision of the providential union of Church and empire, key biblical elements of which are the discrediting of apocalyptic, the historical fulfilment of prophecy, and the supersession of Judaism. A ‘Eusebius consensus’ became widespread, even on the empire’…
Novels
The ancient genre ‘novel’ influenced early Christian composition and exegesis most purely in the Pseudo-Clementines , the only true ancient Christian novel. The original Pseudo-Clementine novel was idealistic: carefully constructed to work as a believable whole. Accordingly, it pursued exegesis of the Jesus-tradition in a realistic, or believable, manner, as displayed particularly in the explicit regulation of Peter’s lifestyle and mission by the…
Scholia
This chapter provides an introductory overview of early Christian scholia—i.e. brief, preliminary interpretative notes on select passages of Scripture, composed as isolated works or deployed as annotations in manuscript margins. After a cursory comparison with marginal, classical scholia, select Christian scholia are examined. A survey of scholia by Evagrius, Epiphanius, and Origen reveals that these notes had no necessary or fundamental connecti…
Sentences
The classical genre of moral-philosophical wisdom sayings or gnomai was adopted in early Christianity by creating exegetical sentences that rephrased or alluded to biblical texts. These were inserted into existing collections which were edited to highlight Christian moral teaching. The chief example of this genre is The Sentences of Sextus . In early monasticism, especially in the writings of Evagrius Ponticus, pedagogically arranged chains of ex…
Modern Biblical Criticism and the Legacy of Pre-Modern Interpretation
Although biblical criticism in the early modern period is often identified with the rejection of tradition, a closer examination reveals a more complex effort to investigate the literal sense while retaining the authority of Christian culture and Antiquity. This chapter traces the development of early modern biblical criticism in relation to changing attitudes toward early Christian interpreters. Focusing on the Republic of Letters and figures su…
Catenae
The term catena (Latin for ‘chain’) refers to an edited collection of excerpts from traditional exegetical authorities. Such collections are evidenced in various fields and forms in Late Antiquity, but the production of biblical catenae was an enduring and distinctive practice of Byzantine exegesis from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries. Procopius of Gaza ( c .460/70– c .530/538) occupies a significant, if disputed, place in the history of cat…
Exodus
Christian writers of the second and third centuries adopted the figurative interpretation of the Exodus presupposed by the New Testament, adding new figural readings and articulating a theology of the Exodus as spiritual salvation. Tertullian in particular follows the lead of 1 Corinthians 10 and connects Israel’s crossing the sea to baptism. Origen creates a coherent allegorical interpretation of the entire Exodus story by filling out details in…
Early Christian Handbooks on Interpretation
This chapter identifies the types of handbooks of biblical interpretation that are available from the patristic period. It assesses handbooks which summarize the content of biblical books, compare translations, affirm the unity and coherence of scriptural accounts, explicate difficult passages, explain the biblical names of persons and places and their etymologies, provide guidelines for theological interpretation, and comment on various items me…
Divine Discourse: Scripture in the Economy of Revelation
This chapter focuses on the relationship of the Word of God inscribed in Scripture and Word of God incarnate in Christ, both being expressions of God’s revelation and constitutive of the divine oikonomia , and both involving God’s self-accommodation to creaturely limitations. The development of the Christological meaning of Scripture as a whole is traced from second-century debates about the continuing validity of the Jewish Scriptures to the hol…
Catecheses and Homilies
This chapter seeks to draw out the diverse ways in which biblical interpretation was expressed in early Christian preaching and catechetical instruction. Issues discussed include: current theories about the role played by biblical interpretation in the origin and early shaping of the homiletic/catechetical genres, and the fluidity of the boundary between catechetical lecture and homily. Preaching and teaching, it is argued, constituted a primary …
Reception in the Renaissance and Reformation
The retrieval of patristic exegesis made great strides during the revival of Renaissance humanism and the spread of European Reformations. While devotion to the recovery of the early Church writings was primarily an intellectual movement, it was shaped and motivated by distinct social, political, religious, and philosophical developments of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe. Humanists appreciated ancient Christian writings because they soug…
Paraphrase and Metaphrase
This chapter explores paraphrase as a common tool for early Christian exegesis. The first section discusses the definition of paraphrase, its parameters in Antiquity, and its broader use in classical literature and education. The second section looks in more detail at prose paraphrase of Scripture, including discussion of a striking instance of exegetical paraphrase in Greek by Gregory of Nyssa and one in Latin by the orator Gaius Marius Victorin…
Scripture in the Christological Controversies
After its introduction on believing in Christ in accordance with Scripture, this chapter begins its treatment of biblical interpretation in the Christological controversies with methodological matters at stake in assessing early Christianity’s journey from biblical questions to scholastic answers. It then examines the era of the ancient ecumenical councils and select theologians of those times in their increasingly developed Christological schola…