Bede: On First Samuel trans. by Scott DeGregorio and Rosalind Love

Abstract

Reviewed by: Bede: On First Samuel trans. by Scott DeGregorio and Rosalind Love Meredith Cutrer Scott DeGregorio and Rosalind Love, trans., Bede: On First Samuel (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019), 572 pp. It is rather remarkable, given the amount of attention that the well-known Northumbrian monk Bede (d. 735) has long received in academic circles, that some of his lengthiest and most innovative exegetical works are only now being fully translated into English. Such is the case with the recent contribution to Bedan scholarship by Scott DeGregorio and Rosalind Love, On First Samuel. Their newest book makes this valuable piece of the prolific monk's oeuvre, which the authors have deemed Bede's "most monumental commentary" (vii), widely available to modern audiences for the first time. As is customary with the Translated Texts for Historians series, the commentary contains a substantial introduction, an extensively annotated, accessible translation, along with two appendices ("Notes on Textual Emendations" and "Interpolations in Book 4") and two indices. The book commences with a laudably well-balanced introduction that is on the whole not so technical as to be esoteric while still engaging thoughtfully, and at times critically, with key Bedan scholarship. The introduction features discussion on the expected topics, including the commentary's sources, historical context, major themes, and Latinity. The highlight for this reviewer, however, was an especially engaging discussion of Bede's distinctive exegetical techniques featured in On First Samuel as part of the authors' broader aim of highlighting aspects of the commentary that distinguished it from Bede's other writings. [End Page 246] Bede was composing On First Samuel in 716 CE, the same year Monkwearmouth-Jarrow's abbot Ceolfrith, having resigned his position, died en route to Rome. For Bede, Ceolfrith's death was such a momentous event that it warranted a lengthy statement in book 4's prologue, helpfully providing a reference point for the commentary's dating. Having firm evidence for a date for at least part of the text's composition makes On First Samuel exceptional among Bede's eighteen extant commentaries. The commentary offers a number of other distinguishing features as well, each explicated to varying degrees by DeGregorio and Love: it is the first complete commentary on 1 Samuel in the Latin or Greek exegetical tradition; it is Bede's longest Old Testament commentary; and it is the only Bedan commentary to feature both a historical chapter heading and an allegorical summary at the start of each of the text's forty-three segments. Perhaps most notably, however, On First Samuel is a commentary boasting some of Bede's most remarkable and inventive exegetical methods, a point the authors analyze at some length. Bede's liberal employment of allegorical exegesis is, of course, commonplace in On First Samuel as it is in his other exegetical writings. However, as DeGregorio and Love note, there are two types of exegesis Bede uses in On First Samuel that are particularly noteworthy: "concordance exegesis" and "impersonation exegesis." While Bede was not the first to utilize concordance exegesis—an exegetical technique often relying on a word that two otherwise unrelated passages may share that causes the verses to be linked in the exegete's mind—DeGregorio and Love observe his anomalous utilization of it in On First Samuel, wherein he employs it "extensively and often inventively" (26). Even more interestingly, the introduction examines an exegetical style that DeGregorio and Love have labeled "impersonation exegesis" (33). This method is one Bede does not employ elsewhere and is seemingly unique to Bede. On First Samuel contains approximately seventy examples of Bede placing the words of Old Testament figures as direct speech spoken by New Testament individuals. Bede does not explain why he took this novel approach to 1 Samuel, but the authors propose a plausible theory: Bede, working on his Song of Songs commentary simultaneously, wherein he follows longstanding tradition of interpreting the Song of Songs as a dialogue between two lovers, saw in On First Samuel the chance to utilize a similarly dialogic method, albeit with a more imaginative approach in On First Samuel than he did in his Song of Songs commentary. DeGregorio and Love's insights pertaining to Bede...