By Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J.
Dunwoodie Review 26 (2003): 98-108. Reprinted by permission.

The Bible is probably the last place most Christians would look for a problem.  There it is: bound in black leather, edged in gold, covered with a layer of fine dust.  Is there anything more solid, more trustworthy, less problematic?

Yet the Bible contains a great problem. About 80% of the Christian Bible, the part we call the Old Testament, makes no mention of Christianity.  It was written before Jesus of Nazareth was born and never mentions him.  In fact, the Old Testament is the sacred Scripture of another religion, namely, Judaism.

Still, Christians claim this Bible as their own and call it their Old Testament, and even say that they have the one right key to its interpretation.  This assertion has been called the biggest corporate takeover in history.

It will not do to say that the Old Testament simply represents the pre-history of Christianity.  The history of Egypt and Greece, or Platonic and Stoic philosophy, could just as well, if not better, be called the pre-history of Christianity.  Liturgical practice demonstrates the unique nature of the Old Testament.  When we read the Old Testament during the liturgy, we conclude the reading with the proclamation, "The word of the Lord."  We would not do the same for Thucydides' Peloponnesian War or Plato's Republic.

Hans von Campenhausen, in a book published in German in 1968 [1] and translated into English in 1972, [2]  in a chapter entitled "The Crisis of the Old Testament Canon in the Second Century," describes the problem well. [3]   As Campenhausen writes, for the first Christians, the Bible - that is, the Jewish Scriptures, usually read in the Septuagint translation - were a given, and the young Church's beliefs about Christ were proved from these Scriptures.  But two or three decades passed, and it became clear that the Jewish Scriptures represented not only a source of proof texts for the Church's teaching, but also a problem.  The Jewish Scriptures were an enormous collection of books, and the proof texts were only a few dozen in number.  What was the Church to do with the whole of this body of writings? Three solutions were possible: the Scriptures were temporary; the Scriptures were prophecy; or the Scriptures were irrelevant.

St. Paul took the first approach: the Scriptures were valid, but temporary. For him, the Scriptures were preeminently Law.  He could not, and did not, reject the truth of the Scriptures.  But he came to a new understanding of the Law.  "Now,"  Paul writes, "the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it" (Rom 3:21).  In this one sentence, Paul has taken two crucially important steps.  The commands of the Mosaic law, as such, belong to the past.  Yet the Scripture as a whole speaks of the same faith and the same salvation that Christ brought to all men.  For Paul the Law was valid, but temporary.

Other Christians saw the Old Testament principally as prophecy. This understanding appears as early as the gospels of St. Matthew and St. John, which find single events in Jesus' life foretold by the Scriptures.  Matthew writes, for example: "All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son'" (Mt 1:22-23), or "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it is written by the prophet" (Mt 2:5-6). John writes: "This was to fulfill the scripture, 'They parted my garments among them'" (Jn 19:24), or "These things took place that the scripture might be fulfilled, 'Not a bone of him shall be broken'" (Jn 19:36).

 But another tendency, too, appears as early as some books of the New Testament: the tendency to dispense with the Jewish Scriptures altogether, to have no need for them. Several Pauline letters omit all mention of the Law, and of Scripture in general - for example, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Philemon.  The three epistles of John and the Apocalypse of John never explicitly quote the Scriptures.

As the Christian Church became a church of Gentiles, the relation between Christ and the Scriptures changed dramatically. Jewish converts had first known the Scriptures and then confessed their faith in Christ.  Gentile converts first accepted faith in Christ and then encountered the Scriptures. What was the Gentile church to do with this book - this collection of historical narratives from creation to the Maccabees; this mass of moral, civil, and liturgical law; this collection of prophecies stretching over eight centuries; this accumulation of wisdom literature, some of which appeared to have no place for God; this series of short narratives, some charming, like Ruth, others less so, like Esther; this collection of hymn-texts from the second temple? It was not Law for the Christians.  Was it enough to quote a few dozen verses as prophecies and to ignore the rest? Or, could the Christian Church make this book its own?

The crisis of the Old Testament in the early Church peaked around the year 140. At that time, two positions emerged that embodied the most extreme attitudes to the Old Testament possible in the Church.  They are represented, on one end of the spectrum, by Marcion of Sinope and, on the other end, by the Epistle of Barnabas.  In brief: Marcion interpreted the Old Testament literally, and only literally, and threw it out of the Church. The author of the Epistle of Barnabas interpreted the Old Testament figuratively, and only figuratively, and took it away from the Synagogue.

The Church did not follow either Marcion or Barnabas. But a question remained: how was the Church to make this collection of books its own? The question was answered on two levels, one theoretical, the other practical.

The theoretical solution first appeared in the theology of Irenaeus of Lyons. [4]  Irenaeus was born in the Greek-speaking East but spent his later years in Lyons, in what is now France, and died around the year 200. He set out to refute the teachings of the Gnostics and, in the process, developed the first Christian theology. He integrated the Old Covenant and the New into one great sweeping historical vision, from creation to consummation.  He envisioned an ellipse whose two foci are Adam and Christ. There was no disjunction between creation and redemption but rather a great continuity: what God had begun in Adam he restored and elevated in Christ.

If Irenaeus worked out a theoretical solution, Origen (185-254) worked out a practical one. That is, Origen assured the Old Testament a permanent place in the Christian Church not by an abstract theory but by working his way through the entire Old Testament, book by book, sentence by sentence, and word by word.  Origen provided the Church with the first Christian commentary on virtually the entire Old Testament.  Seldom, if ever, again would there be any doubt that this book had its proper and rightful place in the Christian Church.  Someone might say that Lewis and Clark should have followed a better way across this continent; but the fact remains that they were the first to chart a way; and so it is with Origen.

In our day, commentaries on the Bible are sold by the truck-load.  If anything, we have too many.  Every religious publisher offers one or more series of commentaries, from pamphlets to huge, dreary tomes.  This was true even  in the early eighteenth century, as the Baron de Montesquieu observed.  In his Persian Letters, he has his Persian traveler visit a Catholic monastery, where a friendly father librarian gives the guest a tour.  The visitor speaks:

"Father," I said, "what are those fat volumes which fill the whole side of the library?"

"Those," he replied, "are interpretations of Scripture."

"There are certainly many of them," I answered.  "The Scripture must have been most obscure once, but very clear now.  Do any doubts remain?  Can there still be any contested points?" [5]

The librarian, of course, blushes and explains that the interpretations gave rise only to more, and more bitter, controversies.

It is difficult to imagine a time when there were literally no commentaries on the Bible, a time when you could not go to the library and look up the meaning of a verse, because there were no commentaries to consult.  But, practically, that is the situation that Origen faced when he began to work, around the year 220, on what was to be a life-long study of the Old Testament.

Among the literary genres that dealt specifically with the Scriptures, homilies and commentaries were the commonest, the former the product of the pulpit, the latter of the study.  Another genre used in the explication of the Bible, already familiar to Greek philosophers, was the "Question and Response" format.  Concretely, patristic works on the Pentateuch survive from seven authors, four Latin and three Greek. [6]  These works are, almost of necessity, uneven in their treatment of the text.  A thick book of patristic comments on Exodus 12 could be collected with little difficulty.  In contrast, chapters that simply list names or contain only detailed ritual law received little or no comment from the Fathers.

The seven commentaries are these:

Origen wrote extensively on the Pentateuch, but most of what he wrote is lost.  We do have, in Latin translation, 16 of his homilies on Genesis, 13 on Exodus, 16 on Leviticus, and 28 on Numbers.  Homily 27 on Numbers is noteworthy: it is a tour de force, in which Origen interprets the 42 stopping places of the Israelites in the desert as forty-two steps in the spiritual life, based on the etymologies of the Hebrew names.  Thirteen homilies on Deuteronomy were known in antiquity but are now lost.

The next commentator on the Pentateuch was Augustine of Hippo (354-430).  Around the year 419, he made an intense study of the Heptateuch, the first seven books of the Bible.  Two works of his report the results of this study.  Seven Books of Expressions on the Heptateuch  is a running list of phrases that seemed to Augustine to contain Hebrew or Greek idioms - that is, phrases that were ungrammatical or unidiomatic in Latin.  Augustine also compared several Latin codices of the Heptateuch and reported differences among them.  In Seven Books of Expressions, he offers short explanations of the problems.  He found 213 problems in Genesis, 160 in Exodus, 62 in Leviticus, 127 in Numbers, and 78 in Deuteronomy. 

The second work is entitled Questions on the Heptateuch.   In this work Augustine raises and tries to solve problems of concordance and morality that occurred to him as he read the text.  The work is fascinating, even edifying.  In 419 Augustine, who had just finished his great work On the Trinity and was engaged in the fierce battles of the Pelagian controversy, took time to work his way carefully through the text of the Heptateuch, word by word.  To give some sense of the scope of the work, he has 173 questions on Genesis, 177 on Exodus, 94 on Leviticus, 65 on Numbers, and 57 on Deuteronomy.  Most of his comments are about a paragraph long, but at the end of his questions on Exodus he has an essay on the tabernacle that extends for more than twenty pages.

Another great work of commentary was complied by Paterius (died 604), the secretary of Gregory the Great (ca. 540-604; pope 590-604).  At Gregory's request Paterius compiled a collection of excerpts from Gregory's own writings, especially from the enormous Moral Interpretation of Job, and arranged them as a running commentary on the Scriptures.  In the printed edition, Paterius's commentary has 38 columns on Genesis, 32 on Exodus, 10 on Leviticus, 14 on Numbers, and 12 on Deuteronomy.  For the most part, the comments are pastoral and moral and give practical advice to the clergy on how to carry out their duties.

Isidore of Seville (ca. 560-636), often called the last of the Latin Fathers, was a collector and compiler rather than an original writer. Isidore composed a work entitled Expositions of the Mystical Sacraments or, more descriptively, Questions on the Old Testament.  In this work he treats the Pentateuch, along with Joshua, Judges, Kings, Ezra and Nehemiah, and Maccabees.  Isidore compiled, not a running commentary on the Scriptures, but rather collections of comments on significant topics.

In the Greek East, Origen did not find a successor until the fifth century, when Cyril of Alexandria (ca. 375-444) produced two great works on the Pentateuch.  The first is On Adoration and Worship in Spirit and in Truth in seventeen books.  The work is cast as a dialogue between Cyril and Palladius, although Palladius does little more than agree admiringly with Cyril every few paragraphs.  Cyril's point is to show that the Mosaic Law, which Israel observed according to the flesh, is to be observed by Christians according to the spirit.  Cyril treats much of the Pentateuch, but not in order. 

The New Testament basis for Cyril's interpretation of the Old Testament is the Gospel according to John and the Epistle to the Hebrews.  Typically, Cyril teaches that the tabernacle of the Old Testament is realized in the Christian Church and its institutions, the priests and sacrifices of the Old Testament are realized in the priesthood of the New Covenant, and the laws of clean and unclean apply now to purity of heart and life.  Cyril's other great work on the Pentateuch, in thirteen books, is entitled Glaphyra or Elegant Comments.   Cyril's work takes the form of extended essays on selected topics rather than running commentary.  Following a pattern that is typical of the Fathers, his greatest interest is Genesis (seven books) and then Exodus (three books); Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are each treated in one book.   Cyril offers a persistently Christological interpretation of the Old Testament.

Theodoret of Cyrus (393-460) composed a running commentary on the Octateuch in the question and response format.  Theodoret, who belonged to the Antiochene school, preferred the literal sense and incorporates little allegory into his comments.  The work has 110 questions and answers on Genesis, 72 on Exodus, 38 on Leviticus, 51 on Numbers, and 46 on Deuteronomy.

Procopius of Gaza  (ca. 475-ca. 538) composed a Catena on the Octateuch.  A catena (the word, which is Latin, means chain - that is, passages linked together) made no pretense to originality.   It was rather a running commentary composed of quotations from other authors.  Procopius's work was probably the first catena on the Scripture composed by a Christian.  The Greek text has been only partially edited and printed; the full work is available only in Latin.

Some Examples

It is impossible to summarize this enormous corpus of material.  But some selected examples of the Fathers' exegesis will convey a sense of how they dealt with the books of Moses in the Christian Church.  For practical reasons, my examples will be drawn from the Fathers' writings on Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, since these are the books I have worked on for the past year and a half.

The patristic interpretation of God's name in Ex 3:14 could take up a whole volume.  The RSV translates the Hebrew as  "I am who I am"; the NAB has "I am who am." Some of the Fathers read the name as the Hebrew does; others, both Greek and Latin writers, follow the Septuagint and read it as "I am He who Is."  Origen fits the name into his subordiationist view of the three Persons: all things that exist participate in the Father, who is Being, while all that is rational participates in the Son-Word, who is Reason (Logos), and all that is holy participates in the Holy Spirit.  Thus the name, which Origen translates as "I am that I am," designates the Father as true Being. [7]  Augustine treats Ex 3:14 often, and in quite distinctive ways.  In one instance, he sees it as a demonstration of God's incomprehensibility.  "What mind can grasp, 'I am who am'" he writes.  God then added a name that man could grasp, and said, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." [8]  Elsewhere he interprets the name as describing God's immutability. [9]  A consequence of God's immutability is the fact that we use only the present tense of God, never the past or the future. [10]  Moses, who recorded the divine name, is far superior to Plato; in fact, Augustine opines, Plato must have read the Pentateuch, for the name of God in the Book of Exodus expresses a nobler understanding of God, as immutable being, than Plato ever expressed, and Plato must have derived his thought from Moses. [11]

In other places the Fathers are a little more lighthearted.  A passage like the ten plagues of Egypt gave them the chance to take some digs at their enemies.  Isidore of Seville was a specialist at this.  In the first plague, water is turned into blood.  The waters of Egypt are erratic, just like the dogmas of the philosophers. Blood symbolizes what is carnal, and when the philosophers ponder the causes of things they think carnally. [12]  The plague of frogs humiliated the Egyptians, writes Augustine.  God could have sent lions or bears, but he sent frogs and flies to tame their pride. [13]  Isidore has a different interpretation: for him, the frogs stand for the poets, who croak out their empty and deceptive songs; for frogs are good for nothing but offensive and annoying sounds. [14]  Origen writes that the plague of mosquitoes represents the art of dialectic, "which bores into souls with minute and subtle stings of words and surrounds them so cunningly that the one deceived neither sees nor understands whence the deception comes." [15]  Perhaps because dialectic had declined by his day, Isidore takes over Origen's comment but applies it to heretics rather than dialecticians. [16]  The plague of flies, writes Isidore, stands for carnal desires, for flies are insolent and restless. [17]  The plague visited upon the cattle requites the Egyptians for the pathetic acts of worship they offered to rams, dogs, and bulls. [18]  Ulcers, cysts, and fever represent purulent evil, pride, and rage. [19]  The locusts are either the inconstancy of the human race or the pleasures of  this world in a restless and skittish soul. [20]

The Fathers were also concerned for the literal sense, sometimes in surprising ways.  The master of spiritual exegesis, Origen, warns his readers at one point that not every detail of Scripture has an allegorical sense. [21]    For the Fathers, the "letter" of the Scripture was the words of the Bible before any interpretative tools were applied, even figures of speech.  If all the waters of Egypt were turned into blood, wonders Augustine, what did the Hebrews drink? [22]  And further, why could evil angels make frogs but not lice? [23]  Why could Pharaoh's magicians make serpents but not gnats? [24] Procopius of Gaza makes a painfully minute comparison of the differences in detail between two sets of census figures in the Book of Numbers. [25]  Augustine writes that Deut 18:15, which foretells the future coming of a prophet like Moses, is fulfilled when the Samaritan woman says to Jesus, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet." [26]  For Paterius, the fact that honey and oil have never been known to flow from a rock (Deut 32:13) is a serious theological problem. [27]

The Fathers even appealed to archaeological evidence for the literal truth of the Scriptures.  Thus, they said that the ruts from the Egyptians' chariots could still be seen on the shores of the Red Sea, [28] and the graves of the rebellious Israelites were still to be seen in the wilderness of Sinai. [29]  A word in the LXX version of Exodus led the Fathers to say that Moses invented the art of writing and taught it to the Phoenicians. [30]

The Fathers also had philological resources.  Latin speakers could appeal to the Greek text, and Origen and Jerome (among others) appealed to the Hebrew.  Augustine remarks that pascha is a Hebrew word, but its Greek equivalent is also significant. [31]  Origen can compare the Septuagint and Hebrew texts. [32]  Augustine clarified the gender of a Latin pronoun by consulting the Greek text. [33]

The question of the comparison of the Old Testament with the New comes up often.  For example, Gregory the Great writes that some people consider the commandments of the Old Testament stricter than those of the New, but they are wrong.  In the Old Testament, theft of property requires a fourfold restitution (Lev 6:5), whereas in the New, the rich man is censured, not for taking someone else's property but for not having given away his own (Mk 10:1-23). [34]  Origen wrote that when Leviticus prescribes "You shall eat old store long kept" (26:10), it instructs those who live according to the Gospel and the new, evangelical words to bring forth the words of the Old Testament before those of the New, an anti-Marcionite teaching. [35]  Augustine compares the events of Sinai, which the people feared to approach, with Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon those who had assembled and were waiting.  The old law was written by God's finger upon stone; in the new covenant, the Holy Spirit, the finger of God, writes upon the hearts of men. [36]  Paterius writes that God promises the early rain and the later rain (Deut 11:14); the early rain is the understanding that God gave by revelation in the time of the Law, and the later rain is the proclamation of the Incarnation in the last days. [37]

Augustine and other Fathers are often concerned with moral questions.  For example, at Ex 1:19, the Hebrew midwives appear to lie to the Egyptians.  Augustine does not cover up the fact: the midwives did lie; but since the outcome was good, God pardoned the lie.  Still, they should not be praised for it. [38]  Another case arises when Moses slays the Egyptian.  He had no legitimate authority to do this, neither from God nor from human society.  Augustine will not excuse Moses.  Perhaps he was already called by God, and thus had divine authority; but Scripture is silent on this point. [39]  Or, another instance: when the Hebrew women asked to borrow jewelry from the Egyptians and then kept it, they gave the appearance of dishonesty.  But in this case, Moses had to obey God and leave to God the reason for the command. [40]  Or, in a long passage, Augustine tries to interpret a command in Leviticus (5:1) which orders someone who witnesses perjury to make the perjury known.  What if the one making the perjury known is thereby put in danger of death?  Augustine's answer is that he may reveal the perjury to those who can help the perjurer rather than harm him. [41]  Procopius of Gaza has a long discourse on vows that approaches canonical legislation on the topic. [42]

Paterius, who is excerpting Gregory the Great, regularly finds a pastoral application for a text  - almost any text.  A statement about leprosy that reappears on a garment (Lev 13:57) points to a pattern of sin, reform, and the return to sin. [43]  Lev 19:23 speaks of young fruit trees as uncircumcised, and their fruit may not be eaten.  (The RSV calls their fruit, somewhat more delicately, forbidden.)  To refrain from eating the fruit of uncircumcised trees is to have no trust in our first, weak efforts at leading a good life. [44]  The Nazirite burns his hair (Num 6:18), and we burn the superfluous thoughts of our minds in the flame of divine love. [45]  Moses' going in and out of the tent of meeting (Num 7:89) means that the clergy should study the Sacred Scripture when they are dealing with a pastoral doubt. [46]  The two trumpets of hammered silver (Num 10:2) are the two commandments of charity, love of God and neighbor.  They are silver because the preacher must be a light to his hearers, and hammered because the preacher has suffered tribulation in this world. [47]  When the Scripture forbids ploughing with an ox and an ass together, it urges preachers not to address fools and the wise at the same time. [48]

It should be no surprise that the Fathers discover passages in the Old Testament that they apply to their concerns about Christian doctrine, like the doctrine of the Trinity, or of the Person of Christ.  In the two goats of the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:8), Theodoret of Cyrus sees the two natures of Christ anticipated. [49]  Num 11:17, which reads "I will take some of the Spirit which is upon you," leads Augustine, rather creatively, to distinguish the procession of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity, from the Father and the Son as from one principle, from the gift of the Holy Spirit to human beings, which comes from Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together as from one principle. [50]  Augustine uses Num 31:18, "all young girls who have not known men," to show that Scripture uses the term "women" of virgins, and hence that its application to Mary does not imply that she was not a virgin. [51]  The Shema, too, Augustine writes of Deut 6:4, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord," must refer to God the Trinity; otherwise the Lord Christ would not be God. [52]

Sometimes the Fathers employ simple association.  The tabernacle was covered with veils of blue and of purple.  Blue, for Theodoret of Cyrus, represents the sky, which is more perfect, and stands for the kingdom of God, whereas purple (thus the LXX; scarlet in Hebrew) represents an earthly kingdom, which is punished for transgressions. [53]

Instances of true allegory are rare.  Augustine has one such passage, about the water from the rock in Numbers (20:11).  The wasteland of the desert is this world.  We thirst on a waterless road when we desire justice.  The rock in the wasteland is Christ, a detail that Paul had already added.  Moses struck the rock twice, for there are two pieces of wood in the cross. [54]

Principles of Patristic Exegesis

But enough examples, perhaps too many.  What principles lie behind them? [55]

The Fathers of the Church based their exegesis on affirmations made in faith about the Bible.  For the Fathers, understanding the Scriptures is a grace and a gift that the interpreter needs to pray for. "Methodology," wrote Henri de Lubac,  "is a modern invention.  In the first centuries of the Church, those who explained the Scriptures entrusted themselves to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, without concerning themselves with a preplanned methodology." [56]

A Lutheran theologian once summed up the Fathers' conviction - and his own - about the meaning of the Scriptures in three crisp sentences:

The Holy Ghost is one.

The Holy Ghost is no fool.

The Holy Ghost speaks to me.

The real author of the Scriptures is the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is one.  Hence the Holy Scriptures, taken together, must teach one truth.  As we say in the creed, the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets; the one God inspired the Old and New Testaments, and Marcion was in error.  Moreover, the point of departure for much of patristic exegesis of the Old Testament is the Fathers' belief that the Old Testament is wholly a prophecy of Christ; or, inversely, that Christ is the key to understanding the Old Testament.

 And further, if the Holy Spirit is their author, the Scriptures can never be trite or superficial; the Holy Spirit is no fool.  Origen writes, for example, of Gen 18:8, "Abraham] stood by them under the tree," - "For what does it help me who have come to hear what the Holy Spirit teaches the human race, if I hear that 'Abraham was standing under a tree?'" [57]

The overarching concern of the Fathers was with what the Scripture said to Christian faithful now.  As he begins his spectacular etymological study of the Israelites' forty-two stopping places in the desert as the stages of progress in the spiritual life, Origen writes, "Who would dare to say that what is written 'by the Word of God' is of no use and makes no contribution to salvation, but is merely a narrative of what happened and was over and done a long time ago, but pertains in no way to us when it is told?" [58]  Elsewhere Origen writes, "[The Apostle's] purpose is that we might learn how to treat other passages, and especially those in which the historical narrative appears to reveal nothing worthy of the divine Law." [59]

The Fathers believed that the Scriptures, rightly understood, spoke to them, and to them in their quest for Christian holiness.  Hence, the modern historical-critical method would have made little sense to them.  Historical criticism locates the meaning of the text so firmly in the singular past event that any application of the text to the present - and especially one made in faith - is necessarily seen as a kind of departure from certainty, and hence, at best, suspect.  The Fathers thought just the opposite.  The question the Fathers ask repeatedly is, how does this passage speak to me and help me?

Moreover, exegesis for the Fathers was a fascinating undertaking, one filled with mysteries, surprises, and even puzzles to be solved.  Origen passed on a wonderful image that he learned from the rabbi who taught him Hebrew: the Scripture is like a great house that has many, many rooms.  All the rooms are locked.  At each locked door there is a key, but it is not the key to that door.  The scholar's task is to match the keys to their doors.  And this is a great labor. [60]

In the middle of the twentieth century, much ink was spilt comparing typology with allegory, with the inevitable conclusion that typology is good, allegory is bad.  The distinction is generally forced on the text and finally does not help much.  The best way to put it, perhaps, is that things and events in the Old Testament reminded the Fathers of Christian truths and realities.  Such a process of reminding had already begun in the New Testament.  Water reminded the Fathers of baptism; bread or manna reminded them of the Eucharist; rock or stone reminded them of Christ; wood or a staff reminded them of the cross; a thorn bush reminded them of the crown of thorns, and of the thorns and thistles of Genesis 3.

Moreover, the Fathers regularly find presages of the great doctrines of Christian faith - the Trinity, and the two natures of the one Christ - in the Old Testament.  With regard to the Trinity, they have two distinct ways of interpreting the Old Testament.  For many earlier Greek Fathers, all theophanies of the Old Testament were theophanies of the Son, for the Son is the way God communicates with us.  For Augustine, by contrast, most theophanies are manifestations of the Trinity, and what human eyes see is not the Trinity itself but a material form temporarily created to be seen by human eyes.  In Augustine, all elements of subordinationism and the inclination to tritheism have been overcome.

In regard to the person of Christ, any pair of things, one of which is exalted and the other lowly, may remind the Fathers of the two natures of Christ.  Moreover, they frequently identified Joshua with Jesus, which was made easy by the fact that both names were spelled the same in Greek.  The assumption, of course, was that the Holy Spirit had something to tell us when this name occurred.

Stranger to modern taste is the Fathers' fascination with numbers and etymologies.  But the Fathers thoroughly enjoyed the Bible, and their interest in numbers was, in some ways, akin to modern enjoyment of crossword puzzles.  To give only a few examples: the number one reminded the Fathers of God, two of the two Testaments or the two great commandments, three of the Trinity, four of the gospels, five of the senses or the books of the Law, ten of the commandments, twelve of the apostles, forty of fasting and Lent, fifty of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit, seventy or seventy-two of the Lord's disciples, and so on.

Besides Origen's etymological exegesis of the forty-two stopping places in the desert, etymologies are found frequently.  Many are correct; others are wrong or simply fantastic.  Notable is the bizarre etymology of the Greek word hagios, holy, as being from a, not, and ge, earth, or "not of the earth." [61]

The anthropomorphisms of the Hebrew Scriptures posed a serious problem for Christian exegetes.  Their educated pagan Greek contemporaries had evolved a highly abstract and impersonal notion of God.  When they heard that the Scriptures the Christians accepted spoke of God as having body parts, emotions, and even changes of heart, their reaction was either rejection or ridicule.  Hence the Fathers regularly needed to explain references to God's arm or hand or foot, or to his anger or wrath.  A particularly difficult passage was the one in which Scripture says that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, since it seemed to suppress free choice, which was one of the basic assumptions of Christian anthropology, and to teach a kind of determinism or fatalism.  The third book of Origen's On First Principles, which is the first philosophical treatise ever written on free choice, is based on an exegesis of this text from Exodus.

Some Conclusions

What conclusions can be drawn?  Even in the second century, the Church set the parameters for the authentic interpretation of Scripture.  The Church did not adopt the principles of the Epistle of Barnabas and thereby affirmed that the Old Testament did have a literal sense.  God had shown his face to the Patriarchs, spoken to the Prophets, and made an everlasting covenant with his chosen people.  But the Church also rejected Marcion and said thereby that the Old Testament could not be interpreted only literally, for the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob was also the Father of Jesus Christ, and Christ was the key to the right interpretation of the Old Testament.

Thus, for all it has taught us, the historical-critical method cannot be the only method for interpreting the Bible.  The very way that passages from the Old Testament are chosen for proclamation in the liturgy, usually as complements to the gospel, shows us this.

Nor, however, can we simply repeat the exegesis of the Fathers.  Some of what they wrote about the Bible is beautiful, and profound, and uplifting.  But some of it, too, is trite, silly, or simply wrong.

We are at a point in history where knowledge of the Hebrew language, of the Old Testament books, and of the history of Israel is abundantly available to us.  We are also at a point, I believe, where we are called to renew our spiritual reading of the Old Testament.  Perhaps the fact that the English translation of Henri de Lubac's Exegese Medievale is being published by a Protestant press should tell us something.  The reformed lectionary for Mass, in use since the First Sunday of Advent in 1969,  provides a reading from the Old Testament for every Sunday Mass except during Eastertide.  But have preaching and understanding kept up with the reading?  More than a few theologians have called for an exegese dans l'eglise" - an exegesis in the Church.

I leave you with a question rather than an answer.  Have we found the right home for the books of Moses in the Christian Church?  Or is Moses still a stranger in our midst, as he was in Midian?