Journal of Early Christian Studies

In this volume, Hughes Oliphant Old traces homiletical style, lectionary use, and biblical interpretation through Greek, Syriac, and Latin church fathers. He shows how several trends epitomize the era, especially the adaptation of classical oratorical methods and the flowering of expository methods drawn from the synagogue. Readers learn that the history of patristic preaching can be read in terms of these two approaches serving various theological and liturgical interests. More complicated lectionary models gradually replaced the lectio continua, as illustrated in a chapter devoted to the Jerusalem lectionary in the fifth century. Increasing use of liturgy as the object of preaching forecasted this trend. The author thinks such liturgical commentary was symptomatic of growing ritual excess. A third matter typifying patristic preaching was the pervasive use of stenographers in copying the spoken word. Old argues that the fathers knew the difference between oratory and literature, and often did little to improve their manuscripts before publication.

Among the Alexandrians, Old reviews Cyril and Hesychius of Jerusalem, the three Cappadocians, and Cyril of Alexandria. Dismissing impressions that allegory reigned in their preaching, Old pinpoints the demise of biblical preaching in Cyril of Jerusalem’s catechetical sermons and his use of the initiation rite as the object for discourse. For Old, Cyril’s stress on seeing and understanding the rites contradicted a more authentic focus on “hearing,” yet one doubts that Cyril or his contemporaries would find such distinctions legitimate. Old excuses Ambrose for approximating such a travesty, believing he “would have quickly jumped back from this path had he possessed even the slightest premonition of where it would lead” (p. 324).

With the Cappadocians, the festal style of preaching came into vogue, and Old speculates that they devised a calendar for the Greek church. As is generally known, Basil of Caesarea used the expository schema inherited from Origen and the synagogue to explicate passages verse by verse and relied upon the lectio continua method. He and the two Gregories also used Greek oratorical style, including panegyric, especially to defend Christmas and Epiphany celebrations against Arian opponents. The dialectical crafts of oratory lent themselves to theological argumentation, and Gregory of Nazianzus, the “Christian Demosthenes,” used oratorical methods in defending Nicene faith and its liturgical celebrations. Cyril of Alexandria and Hesychius both turn out to prefer grammatical-historical methods to allegory, while the latter moderated festal and expository modes according to occasion and audience

Chapter two explains the origins of the lectionary in fifth-century Jerusalem. Etheria’s journals provide information on the lessons read during Lent. However, not until a generation after Etheria is a festal lectionary extant. Old views this development as part of efforts, like Cyril of Jerusalem’s mystagogical preaching, [End Page 328] to reactualize salvation history and so recast Jerusalem Christianity after the ethos of a mystery cult.

A chapter on the Antiochenes John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Theodoret of Cyrus, discusses how their generally historical-grammatical approach yielded persuasive styles. John Chrysostom’s characteristic moral exhortations were typically joined to his scriptural expositions, though their connections were not always apparent, as when he links the creation of horses implied in Genesis and the bad habit of Christians attending horse races. Chrysostom’s moralism was tempered by his appreciation for Hebrew rhetoric and the linguistic flair of the prophets.

Chapter four, on Syriac preaching, explicates Semitic homiletical poetry as its characteristic contribution, and surveys Ephrem of Nisibis, Narsai, and Philoxenus of Mabbug. Jewish affinity was reflected in the Syriac stress on the Old Testament in its lectionaries. Drawing upon Baumstark’s study of the Syriac lectionary, Old shows how the lectio continua in place was gradually curtailed in favor of a calendar based on festal pericopes.

Under Stoic influence, the Latin fathers sought a simple rhetoric in contrast to the florid styles of the East, an exception being Ambrose of...