Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford Early Christian Studies)

Martens, Peter W.

ISBN 10: 0199639558 / ISBN 13: 9780199639557

Published by OUP Oxford, 2012

About this Item

Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. An apparently unread copy in perfect condition. Dust cover is intact with no nicks or tears. Spine has no signs of creasing. Pages are clean and not marred by notes or folds of any kind.

Seller Inventory # rev9243971812

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford Early Christian Studies)
• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199639558
• ISBN 13: 9780199639557
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Like New
• Weight: 558 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Scriptural interpretation was an important form of scholarship for Christians in late antiquity. For no one does this claim ring more true than Origen of Alexandria (185-254), one of the most prolific scholars of Scripture in early Christianity. This book examines his approach to the Bible through a biographical lens: the focus is on his account of the scriptural interpreter, the animating centre of the exegetical enterprise. In pursuing this largely neglected line of inquiry, Peter W. Martens discloses the contours of Origen's sweeping vision of scriptural exegesis as a way of life. For Origen, ideal interpreters were far more than philologists steeped in the skills conveyed by Greco-Roman education. Their profile also included a commitment to Christianity from which they gathered a spectrum of loyalties, guidelines, dispositions, relationships and doctrines that tangibly shaped how they practiced and thought about their biblical scholarship. The study explores the many ways in which Origen thought ideal scriptural interpreters (himself included) embarked upon a way of life, indeed a way of salvation, culminating in the everlasting contemplation of God. This new and integrative thesis takes seriously how the discipline of scriptural interpretation was envisioned by one of its pioneering and most influential practitioners.

About the Author

Peter W. Martens is Assistant Professor for Theological Studies at Saint Louis University. Prior to arriving in St. Louis he taught at the University of Notre Dame and Yale Divinity School. He specializes in Origen and his legacy, and has wide-ranging interests in the history of biblical interpretation.