Ancient Christian Commentary Series (All 29 Volumes)

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Description

The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS) is a verse-by-verse commentary drawn from the works of the early church fathers. The ACCS allows the living voices of the church in its formative centuries to speak directly to you as together you engage Scripture.

The vast array of writings from the church fathers – including much that is available only in the ancient languages – have been combed for their comment on Scripture. From these results, scholars with a deep knowledge of the fathers and a heart for the church have hand-selected material for each volume, shaping, annotating, and introducing it to today's readers. Each portion of commentary has been chosen for its salient insight, its rhetorical power, and its faithful representation of the consensual exegesis of the early church.

An ecumenical project, the ACCS promotes a vital link of communication between the varied Christian traditions of today and their common ancient ancestors in the faith. On this shared ground we listen as leading pastoral theologians of six centuries gather around the text of Scripture and offer their best theological, spiritual, and pastoral insights.

About this Series

The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS) is a full-scale classic commentary on Scripture consisting of selections in modern translation from the ancient Christian writers presented (in print) in twenty-nine volumes. The patristic period, the time of the fathers of the church from which this material was drawn, spans the era from Clement of Rome (roughly A.D. 95) to John of Damascus (A.D. 645-749). The commentary thus covers seven centuries of biblical interpretation, from the end of the New Testament to the mid-eighth century.

This is a long-delayed assignment in biblical and historical scholarship: reintroducing in a convenient form key texts of early Christian commentary on the whole of Scripture. To that end, historians, translators, digital technicians, and biblical and patristic scholars have collaborated in the task of presenting for the first time in many centuries these texts from the early history of Christian exegesis. Here the interpretive glosses, penetrating reflections, debates, contemplations and deliberations of early Christians are ordered verse by verse from Genesis to Revelation. Also included are patristic comments on the deuterocanonical writings (sometimes called the Apocrypha) that were considered Scripture by the Fathers.

The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture has three goals: the renewal of Christian preaching based on classical Christian exegesis, the intensified study of Scripture by lay persons who wish to think with the early church about the canonical text, and the stimulation of Christian historical, biblical, theological and pastoral scholarship toward further inquiry into the scriptural interpretations of the ancient Christian writers.

The editors have selected for each verse or passage the most noteworthy remarks of key consensual exegetes of the early Christian centuries. There is virtually no portion of Scripture about which the ancient Christian writers had little or nothing useful or meaningful to say. Many of them studied the Bible thoroughly with deep contemplative discernment, comparing text with text, often memorizing large portions of it. All chapters of all sixty-six books of the traditional Protestant canonical corpus have received deliberate or occasional patristic exegetical or homiletic treatment. This series also includes patristic commentary on texts not found in the Jewish canon (often designated the Apocrypha or deuterocanonical writings) but that were included in ancient Greek Bibles (the Septuagint).

While some books of the Bible are rich in verse-by-verse patristic commentaries (notably Genesis, Psalms, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Matthew, John and Romans), there are many others that are lacking in intensive commentaries from this early period. Hence the editors sought allusions, analogies, cross-connections and references to biblical texts in all sorts of patristic literary sources. There are many perceptive insights that can be gleaned from homilies, letters, poetry, hymns, essays and treatises. Succinct, discerning and moving passages both from line-by-line commentaries (from authors such as Origen, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret of Cyr, John Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine and Bede) and from other literary genres are thus included. Out of this vast amount of raw materials, the editors have selected the best, wisest and most representative reflections of ancient Christian writers on a given biblical passage.

From the Preface

Bundle Contents

Contains these two products:

• ACCS Old Testament and Apocrypha
• ACCS New Testament

About the Editor(s)

Thomas C. Oden (1931–2016), was a pioneering theologian and served as the architect and general editor for the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, the first full-scale early Christian commentary on Scripture in the last five hundred years. He was also the general editor of the Ancient Christian Doctrine series and the Ancient Christian devotionals, as well as a consulting editor for the Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity.