The literal sense of Scripture was primary for exegesis associated with the scholarly school of Antioch founded by Diodore of Tarsus († AD 392) and exemplified by his two most famous students Theodore of Mopsuestia (AD 350-428) and Saint John Chrysostom (AD 347-407). To come to the literal sense of a passage it must first be historically contextualized. As one great proponent of the school, Saint Cyril of Alexandria († AD 444) puts it, “for us to have precise knowledge…the conditions when the events occurred and what the situation was when the words were delivered”1 must first be elucidated. In the rhetorical nomenclature of late antique literary analysis, this contextualization is called the ύπόθεσις (hypothesis)—the historical/literary context, theme, or narrative setting. This exegetical a priori was common to all Patristic hermeneutics including the allegorically focused Alexandrian school and its most prolific representative Origen of Alexandria (AD 185-254). The Antiochenes likewise sought, after thoroughly seeking to establish the historical context, to unfold a fuller reading of a given text. The fact that both schools display a more-than-literal sense in no way implies that there is essentially no difference between them. The theological underpinnings of how and why a more-than-literal interpretation can and must emerge is fundamentally different. Today it is common to read past these differences in an attempt to recover Origen as a theologian and exegete. However, I believe this reading obscures and misrepresents the real and irreconcilable theoretical differences of these schools and their respective doctrines of inspiration upon which their hermeneutic is built. The aim of this presentation is to explore some salient features and theoretical underpinnings of Antiochene hermeneutics as contracted with Alexandrian methods.
The aim of Antiochene historical contextualization is to uncover what is called σκοπός (skopos)—the author’s purpose, objective, or the basic thrust of the texts. This is modeled by Cyril who his begins commentaries on the prophets “by situating them (as far as he is able, given his imperfect formation in this regard) in their historical situation…and identifying their particular purpose, [or] σκοπός.”2 The fact that Cyril was an Alexandrian, later Pope of that ancient See, and bitter theological rival of Antiochian Christology is significant. He reveals familiarity with the Alexandrian hermeneutical tradition, but he does not follow it, even taking issue with his Alexandrian predecessors. As Robert Hill notes in his introduction to Cyril’s commentary on the Twelve Prophets, “his most distinctive characteristic is an approach to biblical texts that, unlike those of some of his local predecessors, consistently and deliberately takes account of the factual and historical situation…an approach we associate more with Antioch.”3 The Antiochene method was by no means a local phenomenon and was shared throughout Greek, Syriac, and Latin-speaking Christian antiquity.
The central feature of the Antiochene hermeneutic is a concern for ἱστορία (historia)—history. That is, the historical reality in which a biblical text was written.4 Cyril in his commentary on the prophets is not principally interested in the apologetic, doctrinal, and devotional potential of isolated verses but in the “fortunes of the people of Israel and Judah in the centuries before and following the exile, and in the details of the message” thus setting him apart from his Alexandrian peers in particular, “who could downplay that story.”5 However, it is important to note that the “concern for ‘history’ among the Antiochenes had more to do with respecting narrative integrity and rightly understanding the biblical author’s intent than with historicity in the strict modern sense.”6 Not every text was “historical” in its genre nor could every text be historically contextualized with any kind of certainty. The Antiochenes were not only concerned with how the texts can fit into a narrative flow but likewise, the narrative and literary contours and propensities of the text itself. Thus, a more careful descriptor of this exegesis is historical/literal.
This recognition of literary style and ability to locate the theological significance dependent upon it is aptly displayed by the Syriac Father Saint Ephraim of Odessa (AD 373). Again, the locality of Ephraim and his Syriac rather than the Greek intellectual milieu is a significant testimony to the extensive application of this style of hermeneutics.7 Indeed, the Syriac Fathers provided what the Syriac scholar Sebastian Brock describes as a much-needed “third strand” of our link to Christian antiquity.8 For this link “with Palestinian Aramaic…means that the early Syriac literature, and especially its poetry, is far closer to the Jewish and biblical roots of Christianity than are early Christian texts in Greek and Latin…especially relevant when one comes to the understanding and interpretation of the biblical texts.”9 Thus, Ephraim in his Semitic milieu could better recognize the literary form of given texts often missed by his Greek contemporaries.
Likewise, he was a master at utilizing various literary forms, with their differing aptitudes and possibilities, to maximize his intended end. He masterfully utilized the Semitic poetic form called madrase (like its Hebrew cognate) as a vehicle of extended biblical reflection filled with typology, simile, metaphor, and analogy. Yet his discursive works, the turgama (again in keeping with its Hebrew cognate targum), are more of an expanded interpretive recapitulation of the text than a strict commentary.10 His proper commentaries are dramatically different in tone and content and surprisingly free of excessive typologies and more-than-literal interpretation. For he hardly used typology for which he was so renowned (as a poet) as an exegetical tool. Instead, typology in Ephraim, and in Antiochene style exegetes more broadly, is more a method of biblical theology than exegetics. It is not something deployed to explicate the meaning of a text; but rather a way of making connections between texts as they fit into an overall pattern or narrative of God’s covenantal engagement in history. The typology in Ephraim’s poetry or Church hymnography in general presupposes a great deal of familiarity with Scripture—a preliminary founding achieved via literal exposition. He is very conscious of his choice of literary form and its suitability to the given purpose.
To use one often-noted example, the Crossing of the Red Sea is not about Baptism. It has its own meaning in the narrative structure of the Exodus and within Israel’s theological reflection and memory. But we do see God’s soteriological action (redemptive creating anew) consistently connected to a water motif in Scripture. Thus, the Exodus can be a ‘τύπος’ of Baptism. The soteriological implications of the Crossing of the Red Sea elucidated by its typological connection cannot arise without an a priori understanding of the Crossing in its purely narrative context and buttressed by the same theme resonating through the biblical narrative. It is not a simple matter of two instances of the element of water being arbitrarily associated. Typology presumes that the things or motifs that serve as typological connectors are already understood in their own terms and only upon this foundation can theological reflection be drawn out. Thus, it is about making illuminating connections, not exegesis.
In this way, and unlike allegory (ἀλληγορία—words mean something different than what they say) the intended meaning of the text is not negated but a fuller reading can emerge rooted in the patterns of the Divine Economy. Typology deals with synchronic rather than diachronic readings wherein an emphasis on divine authorship does not obstruct the intention of the human author. Allegory on the other hand, as will be developed further, can negate the intended meaning by imposing upon it imaginative more-than-literal meanings—atomized and arbitrary, not rooted in a totality of historical thematic development—supposed to be those intended by the divine author. Ephrem does not make extensive use of typology in his biblical commentaries because, at least for him, typology is not an exegetical tool but a method or delivery mechanism of biblical theology. In his commentary, he is chiefly aimed at understanding the literal meaning. Thus, Ephraim is firmly identified within the Antiochene exegetical school given his “emphasis on the obvious sense of the words of Scripture;”11 an approach that provides the very foundation of his poetry. He is a typological theologian but an Antiochene exegete, the former presupposing the latter.
Cyril. Commentary on the Twelve Prophets: Volume 1. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 32.
Cyril. Twelve Prophets, 9-10.
Robert Hill. Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, Vol. 1, 5.
That is, the presumed dating. Investigating the actual contextual situation (or situations) that a given text developed in as explored in historical and form criticism is constant with their aims but beyond their methodological purview.
Hill, 22.
William Yarchin. History of Biblical Interpretation (Michigan: Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2004), 77.
Admittedly we are using what the scholar Richard Perhai regards as a “broad” classification of the Antiochene school. Perhai, 34-36. And with him we would reject the inclusion of the Cappadocian Fathers. But it must be acknowledged that the Syriac Fathers shared the same Antiochene approach to Scripture as their Greek speaking coreligionists. The Antiochene approach is rooted both in the rhetorical traditions of Late Antiquity and the Semitic milieu in which it emerged.
Sebastian Brock (Trans.). Treasure-House of Mysteries: Explorations of the Sacred Text Through Poetry in the Syriac Tradition. (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2012), 11.
Brock. Treasure-House of Mysteries, 12.
Cf. Saint Ephrem the Syrian: Selected Prose Works (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1994), 41-45.
Saint Ephrem the Syrian: Selected Prose Works, 47.