Robert C. Hill

Psalm 41 (42): a classic text for Antiochene spirituality

Using Ps 41 (42) as a prime example, the author examines the way exegesis typical of the Antiochene school concentrates so excLusiveLy on the historia (the presumed factual basis) for each psalm that, on the whose, the spiritual significance of the psalms tends to be ignored.

Book Reviews: Scripture: The Anchor Bible 19: Isaiah 1-39. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. By Joseph Blenkinsopp. New York: Doubleday, 2000. Pp. xix+524. Price

predictably, not just because an early Isaian commentator like John Chrysostom speaks of his subject as ’the most articulate of all the prophets’, or because the prophetic work has uniquely accumulated a huge mass of critical comment, but for the obvious reason of the traditional division of the text into three sections attributed to different authors. When Blenkinsopp will complete his massive three-fold task is uncertain; one

50.00. ISBN 0-385-49716-4

language scholarship for years to come. Some were eccentric productions : M. Dahood’s three volumes on the psalms, for example, is an interesting experiment in the application of the comparative linguistics of North-West Semitic to a biblical text but it is a bitter disappointment as a commentary on the Psalter. A few (e.g. C. S. Mann on the Gospel of Mark) were so inadequate that they have already been replaced by new contributions (Joel Marcus’ projected two volumes on the same book). Jacob Milgrom’s commentary on the Book of Leviticus is a parade example of the strengths and the weakness of the Anchor Bible project. With the publication of this, the third volume on Leviticus, the author brings his study of this book to a conclusion. One might reasonably ask whether we actually need a commentary of 2714 pages on Leviticus (arguably the most unread of the writings of the Hebrew Bible). This is not a commentary for the faint-hearted, much less one for the educated general reader whom the original editors of the series had in mind. The bibli-

Book Reviews: Isaiah 40-55: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. [Anchor Bible 19A.] By Joseph Blenkinsopp. New York/London: Doubleday, 2002. Pp. xvii+411. Price

In the course of a Homily on Jeremiah 10:23 preached at Antioch, John Chrysostom develops an imposing corpus of hermeneutical principles not unrelated to the moralising spirituality characteristic of the Antiochene School.