Early Christian Exegesis
In this corner of the work shop I will take a look at examples of early Christian exegesis, specifically, examples of early Christian use of Old Testament proof texts or testimonia. This is a very interesting and important topic historically and theologically.
To begin with, there have been many books written regarding patristic exegesis. For example:
Charles Kannengiesser, Handbook of Patristic Exegesis: The Bible in Ancient Christianity (Brill, 2006)
Karlfried Froehlich, Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984)
Manlio Siimonetti, Biblical interpretation in the early church: an historical introduction to patristic exegesis (Edingurgh: T&T Clark, 1994
Martin Jan Mulder (ed.) Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988).
My academic work has focused in this area but even more narrowly, specifically upon the earliest Christian use of the Old Testament and the use of Old Testament proof texts in the presentation/development of the earliest Christian doctrines and creeds. I have been specifically interested in these basic questions: “If you could travel back to the first twenty years of the church, that is the time of apostolic Jewish Christianity in Jerusalem and Antioch, what would it look like? What would the teaching sound like? What passages of scripture would be referenced? And then, how did this early Jewish Christianity develop into the Gentile church of the New Testament and the second century?” This interest in Jewish Christianity is the reason for the image of a Hebrew manuscript (a duplication of a manuscript from the Dead Sea Scrolls) above.
Via some historical process, only briefly and partially described in the New Testament, this Jewish Aramaic speaking church with a focus on the Hebrew Scriptures became the Greek speaking church of the Gentiles seen in the second century patristic authors. The role and use of the scriptures in this process is the center point of much of my interest and work.
My dissertation (found here: Dissertation) describes my view of this process in some detail. There are a number of examples of testimonia passages, their early usage, and their role in the transformation of the church. On these pages that follow, I will present some of these passages and their role in the earliest days of Christianity and in the presentation of the Christian faith in the apostolic days of the church.