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Title: Romans (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. New Testament, 6) by Gerald Bray, Thomas C. Oden ISBN: 1-57958-037-8 Publisher: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers Pub. Date: December, 1998 Format: Library Binding Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $60.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.12 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A place to begin
Comment: The ACCS series, of which this volume on Romans is a part, is a place to begin in terms of patristic commentary, not a place to end. If this series had claimed to be an in-depth and comprehensive collection on the Church Fathers' statements on Scripture, then many of the critiques leveled at it would be justified. However, these negative reviews are aiming at a straw man.
The ACCS series provides selected commentary by various thinkers in the early centuries of Christianity regarding the various books of the Bible. Even with its selectivity, these books are hundreds of pages long (compared to the at most thirty or so pages of the actual Scriptural text). To try and be as comprehensive as some reviewers seem to be demanding, the volume on Romans would no doubt have to be at least three large volumes itself.
The series creators hoped these volumes could help encourage cross-denominational discussion with these formative thinkers. It is a starting place for thinking and discussing, not the end. Perhaps the best use of these volumes are as time-savers. Even the best Patristics scholar will not have the location of every comment on a particular Scripture verse by the Fathers right of the top of his/her head. And they may not want to spend the time of going through the index of, say, every volume in the Ante-Nicene, Nicene, and Post-Nicene Fathers series (all, what, 28 of them?). Instead, the scholar can look quickly at this volume from the ACCS, looking to see what various Fathers had to say, then go to the original document to see the topic in context, where the various commentaries can be compared. Certainly, the ACCS volume on Romans is useful for that.
If one is looking for every comment from every Church Father on Scripture, this is not the series for you. But, then again, that's not what this series intended to be in the first place. But, as a starting place for further research, it is excellent.
Rating: 1
Summary: disappointing
Comment: This series is disappointing. I simply did not find the comments from the Fathers very illuminating presented in this context. This was not what I expected.
I would advise anyone who finds modern biblical scholarship unhelpful to immerse himself in the Fathers directly and in the original context. If we then read the scriptures adopting, if only for the moment, their mindset, their presuppositions, and their methods, the scriptures will be openned up to us in a new and fruitful way.
We moderns can find allegorical interpretation, for example, somewhat farfetched. But it is clear to me that some of what the apostles intended to teach cannot be understood from a strictly literal reading of the text. The apostles themselves do not take a concrete, literal approach to interpreting the Old Testament. Imitating the thought processes of the Fathers, who are much closer culturally to the apostles, opens our eyes to more of the New Testament's message.
In the final analysis, it is difficult to fully comprehend the gospel message presented in the scriptures without realizing that the early Church, for which the New Testament was written, believed in baptismal regeneration, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (understood as sacrificial) and the Church as an organic structure put in place by the apostles.
If the authors of this series had fully appreciated this I think they might taken the plunge into the stream instead of dousing themselves with thimblefuls of water.
A final comment on the choice of the RSV. The major defect of this fine translation is the tendency to downplay the messianic implications of Old Testament texts, that is to "recover" some "original" text from the accretions of subsequent interpretations. Many of the texts that are interpreted messianicly in the New Testament are translated in such a way as to obscure rather than highlight this possiblity. A similar problem arises in the New Testament with the choice of "it" rather than "He" for the Holy Spirit. I'm not sure what alternative the editors had for this problem.
Rating: 1
Summary: What a shame
Comment: The translations go on unabated, and I really hate to give this volume a bad review. It is such a good idea. But this terribly abridged and oddly selected series of translations (good translations, I have to say, that is the one star) is not the way to go about it. We need a REAL and BROAD set of ancient Christian commentaries. These won't do.
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