Reading the Old Testament in Antioch (review)

This book provides a solid scholarly introduction to the treatment of the Old Testament found in the surviving written and preached commentaries of the four greatest Antiochene fathers: Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, John Chrysostom, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus. Hill elaborates a systematic account of their peculiarly Antiochene approach, while attending to their frequently negative reactions to interpretation practiced in Alexandria and elsewhere. The author always shows these Antiochenes putting their explicit principles of reading to work on particular Old Testament passages. However, he sometimes uses quotations that appear not to support the point he is making. For example, Hill takes as a rewriting and amending of the text Theodore's furnishing of narrative details which he believes Jonah 3.5 logically and silently presupposes (76, 95, 181).

The author begins by situating the four fathers' treatment of the Old Testament within their use of their formal education in the pastoral transmission of the Christian faith in the cultural and ecclesiastical milieu of the Antiochene dioike\sis. The second chapter furnishes a good account of these Antiochenes' canon and favorite books of the Old Testament. Here reference to the Apostolic Constitutions 8.47.85 should have inflected Hill's claim that the Antiochene canon omitted Esther (23). After a clear and persuasive chapter on the four Antiochenes' theologies of God's communication through Scripture, a fourth and final introductory chapter helpfully details what scholarship knows of the access Antiochenes had to the Old Testament and of the versions used by Diodore, Theodore, John, and Theodoret.

The heart of the book begins with a chapter demonstrating the ability and interest (more frequently inability and disinterest) each of these four fathers displayed in establishing and critiquing the biblical text as well as in examining its authorship and history. The next chapter presents an extremely useful discussion of the dating, authenticity, and editions of the surviving Old Testament commentaries of the four authors. Here Hill could have at least mentioned Ursula and Dieter Hagedorn's edition of Chrysostom's Job commentary extracted from the catenae. He then discusses the Antiochenes' effort to clarify the obscurity of the Old Testament by taking account of the sacred writers' literary genres, life situations, theological approaches, and purposes. This chapter shows clearly the value and limitations of the four fathers' Greek rhetorical education. Hill's next chapter cogently demonstrates that from the time of Diodore to that of Theodoret, Antiochene hostility toward a sense beyond the historical decreased. While the author rightly opposes in these four chapters those who would make any of these fathers modern exegetes avant la lettre, he risks accepting his opponents' anachronism as the common field of battle. Noting the "little interest" on Theodoret's part "in any liturgical Sitz im Leben of the psalms in the manner of a Mowinckel" contributes little to our understanding of the bishop of Cyrrhus (125).

Chapter 9 shows the four Antiochenes' preference to exclude arguments over the central tenets of the creed from their Old Testament commentaries, and it provides solid evidence of Theodore's, John's, and Theodoret's readiness to include developments in the moral life within these works. The next chapter plausibly argues that Antiochene Christians wanted their preachers to apply the Old Testament text to their spiritual lives but did not expect to find such lessons in written commentaries. Hill here argues effectively that his four Antiochenes did not take their ex professo commentaries on the Old Testament, preached or written, as the occasion for commenting on mysticism, "the intimacy of relationship with Christ" (191). The final chapter brings together the entire book into a convincing account of the overall treatment of the Old Testament in the surviving commentaries of the four Antiochene Fathers. The author helpfully explains the way their reading of the Old Testament fit into their general approach to other aspects of the Christian life.

Some of Hill's claims about what is typically Antiochene seem questionable...