Augustine and the Bible (review)

Abstract

Handsomely printed and bound, this collection follows The Bible in Greek Christian Antiquity, edited and translated by Paul Blowers, as the second in a series of English translations and adaptations of the French-language history of biblical interpretation, Bible de Tous les Temps. In the case of the present volume the chapters in the French edition are organized thematically to highlight Augustine's functional use of the Bible in various settings--his preaching, the letters, the liturgy, polemics, and so on. In this English version, however, Pamela Bright has happily restructured the order of most of the essays to reflect the chronological unfolding of Augustine's career. We get a sense of how he matured, how the vicissitudes of his life and work generated his changing approaches to scripture, and were, in turn, affected by those changes. Emphasized most is the formative period of Augustine's "initiation" to scripture, particularly as this led up to his first efforts to formulate a hermeneutic in the early books of On Christian Instruction. In that work he introduced the seven mystical rules for interpreting scripture of the Donatist Tyconius, thereby registering the substantial influence on himself of the exegetical traditions of the north African Church. Several essays assess the extent of this influence, and the degree to which Augustine really understood and valued it. Consideration of his use of Scripture in debate with Manichees, Donatists, and Pelagians follows, with a concluding non-chronological cluster of essays on Augustine's use of scripture in his pastoral work. So that the reader never wanders far from Augustine's actual words, Bright has included a short selection either from the Confessions or from one of Augustine's sermons in each of the four subdivisions of the volume. Rounding out the whole, and greatly enhancing the volume's usefulness for ongoing work, is a substantial bibliography by Charles Kannengiesser of scholarly work on Augustine's exegesis of the last fifty years.