Description
Book SynopsisIn the late fourth and early fifth centuries, during a fifty-year stretch sometimes dubbed a Pauline renaissance of the western church, six different authors produced over four dozen commentaries in Latin on Paul''s epistles. Among them was Jerome, who commented on four epistles (Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, Philemon) in 386 after recently having relocated to Bethlehem from Rome. His commentaries occupy a time-honored place in the centuries-long tradition of Latin-language commenting on Paul''s writings. They also constitute his first foray into the systematic exposition of whole biblical books (and his only experiment with Pauline interpretation on this scale), and so they provide precious insight into his intellectual development at a critical stage of his early career before he would go on to become the most prolific biblical scholar of Late Antiquity.This monograph provides the first book-length treatment of Jerome''s opus Paulinum in any language. Adopting a cross-disciplinary app
Trade ReviewIn a veritable torrent of books and articles, he has expounded at length on the agenda, style and sources of this cranky patriarch's many letters. One of the main themes of Cain's intellectual oeuvre is Jerome's aspirational authority, that is, the ways in which he buttressed his sometimes-novel claims against the vociferous attacks of his many critics and rivals. * Scott Bruce, Journal of Ecclesiastical History *
Cain is quite successful in his project of elucidating the thematic content of Jerome's Pauline commentaries, and this volume deserves attention for its many illustrative text-based examples that serve to support its cogent analysis of these various themes. * A. Jordan Schmidt, O.P., Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception Washington, D.C., The Thomist *
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1: A Choice of Epistles 2: The Prefaces: Patronage, Polemic, and Apology 3: Ad fontes: Greek and Hebrew Philology 4: The Ascetic Apostle 5: Orthodoxy and Heresy 6: In Origen's Footsteps: Greek Sources 7: Between East and West: Latin Sources Conclusion
