Adrian's Introduction to the Divine Scriptures: An Antiochene Handbook for Scriptural Interpretation by Peter W. Martens (review)

The earliest extant book review of Adrian's Introduction comes to us from Photius the First. He observed, "[The Introduction] . . . is useful for beginners" (11). Whatever the patriarch may have meant by this playful remark—was he in earnest or damning with faint praise?—his evaluative category is important. An introduction should be useful. It is a poor introduction that provides misleading information; it is a weak one that focuses on details that are relatively insignificant; a good introduction gives its reader a truthful account of the introduced that accords well with its own reality. In this case, the reality that Adrian seeks to introduce us to is divine scripture. Does he succeed?

Adrian himself is ably introduced to us in Peter Martens's study, critical edition, and translation of the work. Adrian was in all likelihood a grammaticus responsible for the instruction of Christians in scriptural exegesis. He flourished between the 380s and the 560s (19) and stood self-consciously within the Antiochene tradition alongside the likes of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodore of Tarsus. In my opinion, Martens judiciously continues to employ the word "Antiochene" at a time when revisionists are abandoning it. A familial resemblance between Antiochene authors is both defensible and helpful. Martens demonstrates among several of them a shared technical vocabulary for "privileged exegetical procedures," mistrust of allegorical interpretation, and the "same announced goals for exegetical activity," as well as numerous examples of a common understanding of the same scriptural texts (15). Adrian's dependence upon Theodore is especially well-argued throughout the footnotes (e.g., 169n2).

Also very helpful is Martens's study on the content and aims of the Introduction. A useful introduction to scripture was, for Adrian, one that majored on overcoming likely sources of confusion in scriptural language. It supplied the student with a treasury of interpretive categories, mostly of a philological nature, on which to draw in order to resolve ambiguous idioms or "peculiarities" (27). Martens reveals that these peculiarities were understood by Adrian as arising because of the Bible's "Hebrew" literary style (29). This major emphasis on biblical peculiarities is clearly related by Martens to the chief aims of Adrian in composing his Introduction. Above all, he valued the achievement of "precision" (ἀκρίβεια), "fittingness" (τὸ πρέπον), and "clarity" (σαφήνεια) in the interpretation of difficult passages (48–52).

The critical text and translation (124–285) dominate the volume's second half. Martens's text improves upon earlier critical editions, presenting two different recensions of the text and available excerpts from the catenae, each carefully evaluated in light of their likelihood of authenticity. The strength of Martens's edition is his transparency. The stemma of manuscripts is lengthily discussed, and his apparatus is so clear as to make it possible to reconstruct earlier critical editions from it (118). Though Martens's hand as an editor is usually a light one, once or twice I felt that he leaned too heavily on parallel passages in Theodore and Diodore to supply addenda (e.g., the inclusion of "either sharing or" on page 176). On closer inspection, however, the addenda brought out more clearly the obvious sense intended by Adrian. Whether or not the added wording was original, the suggested readings are so clearly marked and so fitting to the overall sense of the passage as to be inoffensive.

The translation is more "word-for-word" than "thought-for-thought." Two examples may illustrate. First, in Adrian's discussion of the sentence, "God spoke in his holy place," he argues that divine speech means divine pronouncement or decree. Martens renders the discussion thus: "Often [scripture says] 'he spoke' with reference to God, instead of 'he pronounced'" (157, emphasis mine). "He decreed" is surely nearer to Adrian's thought here, but Martens stays closer to the literal meaning of ἀπεφήνατο. It requires some time studying the footnote for the reader to realize that Adrian...