A comprehensive historical survey if patristic exegesis. Simonetti examines the changing understanding of the Word of God in the early Church, and describes the individual authors and 'schools' who wre active in this development. First there is a study of the role of Scripture in the infant Church. Simonetti describes the use of Scripture in orthodox circles, drawing comparisons from the Gnostic world. There follows an examination of Eastern exegesis in the 4th and 5th centuries (Eusebius, the Antiochian School, the Cappadocians, and later developments in Alexandria), and an examination of...

The Gospel of Matthew stands out as a favorite biblical text among patristic commentators. The patristic commentary tradition on Matthew begins with Origen's pioneering twenty-five-volume commentary on the First Gospel in the mid-third century. In the Latin-speaking West, where commentaries did not appear until about a century later, the first commentary on Matthew was written by Hilary of Poitiers in the mid-fourth century. From that point the First Gospel became one of the texts most frequently commented on in patristic exegesis. Outstanding examples are Jerome's four-volume commentary and...