The book of Job presents its readers with a profound drama concerning innocent suffering. Such honest, forthright wrestling with the problem of evil and the silence of God has intrigued a wide gamut of readers both religious and nonreligious.Surprisingly, the earliest church fathers showed little interest in the book of Job. Not until Origen in the early third century is there much evidence of any systematic treatment of the book, and most of Origen's treatment is known to us only from the catenae. More intense interest came at the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth.The excerpts in this Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture volume focus on systematic treatment. Among Greek texts are those from Origen, Didymus the Blind, Julian the Arian, John Chrysostom, Hesychius of Jerusalem, and Olympiodorus. Among Latin sources we find Julian of Eclanum, Philip the Priest, and Gregory the Great. Among Syriac sources we find Ephrem the Syrian and Isho'dad of Merv, some of whose work is made available here for the first time in English.In store for readers of this volume is a great feast of wisdom from the ancient resources of the church with fresh relevance for today.
Manlio Simonetti (1926–2017) was a widely acknowledged expert in patristic biblical interpretation who taught at the University of Rome and at the Augustinian Patristic Institute in Rome. He is the author of several books and Bible commentaries, including Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church: An Historical Introduction to Patristic Exegesis.
Marco Conti (PhD, University of Leeds) is professor of medieval and humanistic Latin literature at the Ateneo Salesiano and lecturer in classical mythology and religions of the Roman Empire at the Richmond University in Rome.
Thomas C. Oden (1931–2016), was the general editor of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture and the Ancient Christian Doctrine series as well as the author of Classic Christianity, a revision of his three-volume systematic theology. He was the director of the Center for Early African Christianity at Eastern University in Pennsylvania and he served as the Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Theology at The Theological School of Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Oden was active in the Confessing Movement in America, particularly within the United Methodist Church and was president of The Institute for Classical Christian Studies. He suggested that Christians need to rely upon the wisdom of the historical Church, particularly the early Church, rather than on modern scholarship and theology and said his mission was "to begin to prepare the postmodern Christian community for its third millennium by returning again to the careful study and respectful following of the central tradition of classical Christianity."
