Genesis 1-11 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament, Volume I)

Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture #1

by Andrew Louth (Editor)

The rich tapestry of the creation narrative in the early chapters of Genesis proved irresistible to the thoughtful, reflective minds of the church fathers. Within them they found the beginning threads from which to weave a theology of creation, Fall, and redemption. Following their mentor the apostle Paul, they explored the profound significance of Adam as a type of Christ, the second Adam. The six days of creation proved especially attractive among the fathers as a subject for commentary, with Basil the Great and Ambrose producing well-known Hexaemerons. Similarly, Augustine devoted portions of five works to the first chapter of Genesis. As in previous volumes within the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, the range of comment contained in this volume spans from the first century to the eighth and from East to West, from Greek and Latin speakers to Syriac. This ACCS volume on Genesis 1-11 opens up a treasure house of ancient wisdom that allows these faithful witnesses, some appearing here in English translation for the first time, to speak with eloquence and intellectual acumen to the church today. Especially helpful is the volume editor's provision of Septuagintal alternative readings to the Masoretic text, which are often necessary to understanding the fathers' flow of thought.

Genres: Reference, Theology, Old Testament, Christian, Church History, Biblical, Christian Non Fiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2001

About the author

Andrew Louth is an Eastern Orthodox theologian and priest of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Reviews

[William · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been working through this "Ancient Christian Commentary" series on some of my later Pentateuch reading. When I went back to Genesis for Bray's Genesis 1-11, I decided to pair this with it.

The structure of the book is to present a few verses of Genesis along with a "summary" of the ancient commentary on those verses. That is followed by detailed excerpts from a variety of early church fathers commenting on those verses.

Overall, I would give this a lukewarm recommendation. The book lives and dies based on the commentary excerpts, and they are only so-so. Each is typically only a paragraph or two, which makes it difficult to get more than a flavor of what the author is saying. Still, I'd say 20-30% of them were quite interesting and worth reading even in abbreviated form.

(The "summaries" of the commentary are useless. Each is created by writing one sentence per excerpt and jamming those sentences together in a disjointed way. There's very little reason to read ~8 awkward "summary" sentences, instead of just the 8 short excerpts themselves.)

I think linearly reading through this book was not the best way to use it. A better approach would be to look up specific passages, scan the commentary to see what whets your appetite, and then track down the primary source to read the full discussion in context. I found that latter to in some cases be more difficult than expected, because even though these are extremely ancient texts, some of them apparently were only translated into English recently and so aren't easily findable in the online public domain.

[Chandler Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection of patristic primary readings and interpretations of Genesis 1-11. This work is a fantastic window into the early church’s interpretations of the Old Testament, as well as the similarities and distinctions in the early church’s doctrines of God as Creator, and theological anthropology. Andrew Louth is one of the foremost scholars on the work of John of Damascus, so I was excited that Louth included so many of John’s insights in this commentary. This commentary also introduced me to the writings of Ephrem the Syrian, so now I want to read Ephrem’s “Hymns on Paradise.”

[Светлана · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm surprised at the low reviews on this work. Here is why:

Last year, I decided to read every commentary I could find on Genesis. It was easy to get around 100 in English, from after 1700. Luther was difficult to find in English; Melanchthon is out of print and only in Latin. But I could find almost nothing in English from Church Fathers before 1500. I started looking at Latin sources. After much difficulty, I noticed the Glossia Ordinaria, from the 12th century, but it does not name its primary sources, and I did not find Nicholas of Lyra very enlightening (and the Latin was a little cumbersome). I wanted to read what Lyra read!

I knew (and know) very little about Church Fathers. I could not afford a seminary education. It has been very difficult to get started. The only Church Father I hear about with any frequency is Augustine.

Eventually, I found four relevant works by Augustine, three of them in Latin. I was so excited that I made it through quite a bit of his commentary. And I saw references online to Ambrose' On Paradise, Chrysostom's Homilies on Genesis, Basil the Great's Hexaemeron, Gregory of Nyssa' works on creation, Ephrem the Syrian's commentary on Genesis, and others.

Any one of these was not available online in a citable form or a reputable translation. Altogether, I was looking at hundreds upon hundreds of dollars to collect these important works (only 10 or 12 of them!), whereas I had spent almost nothing collecting 100+ English commentaries.

The ACCS volume on Genesis 1–11 has opened up a wealth to me. After reading the whole volume, I have a very clear direction about which Church Fathers are the most important, readable, and interesting to me.

Some of the interpretations are pretty boilerplate. In quite a few places, they preserve wisdom from Jewish interpretations of Genesis. Others are fresh, Christological readings of the Old Testament that I have never heard before despite reading quite a bit on Genesis.

Other interpretations were mere speculation or tradition, but even these were still interesting as they preserve for us the Fathers' ways of thinking.

I am very much looking forward to reading other volumes from the ACCS and slowly piecing together a library of favorite patristic readings of the Bible, from the best works I discover through ACCS.

[Rob McMonigal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for reading from the old Christian scholars, but the problem is the format of this series. Rather than letting each writer speak about Genesis, the style is chopped up, almost verse by verse, with a paragraph or two from each writer, then moving on to the next verse, and so on. I found it impossible to hold the threads together and it made for slow, distracted reading.

This format might work for others, and there's good material here. It just didn't work for me.

[Henry]

This is a helpful series in which the commentaries of the Fathers on the passages are compiled. One thing to note that I did not appreciate going in is that this series is very dependent on its editor. Quite a lot is gained or lost from the decision of which Fathers to include on which passages.

[Brad Belschner · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've read books in this series before, then you know what to expect. I have found it to be a useful reference.

[Andrew Farr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful in spots. Some good meat around a few bones to spit out here and there

[Diana Kullman · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's enlightening to read the commentaries from several church fathers on the same scriptures.

[Siddhartha Gupta]

Excellent Reference Book

[Jonathan]

None