Thursday, March 25, 2010

Catena on Jonah almost done

I am just about finished with the catena on Jonah, all I need to do is revise it with a commentary that I am getting in, which is the commentary by Haimo of Auxerre. The catena already has extracts from about 20 different Fathers of the Church. There are complete commentaries on Jonah that I made good use of, that is from St. Jerome, St. Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret of Cyrus, and Theodore of Mopsuestia. I found 7 great extracts from St. John Chrysostom that contributed very well to the project. I can't say that I favored any one commentator, they all provided extracts of equal quality to form one really good commentary on Jonah. I have never read Haimo's commentary on Jonah so I am not sure how many extracts that will come from him, but I am holding out until I get it, which it should be in tomorrow.

After I finish I plan to start back on Acts, and Ishodad of Merv's commentary should be in so I can throw it into the mix of what I already have. The Acts catena is going well, I have found some helpful quotes from Oecumenius from his commentary on Acts, but unfortunately it has not been completely translated into English, and I am only relying on others who have quoted from him and translated what they quote. I would dearly love to have access to his commentary in English, as well as the commentary by Theophylact. I am astonished that the Ancient Christian Commentary did not even asknowledge Oecumenius, Theophylact, or Ishodad of Merv's commentaries on Acts. They did not make much use of Cramer's Catena on Acts. I translated a few extracts from it, but I don't have the time nor the skill to translate the Greek in a reasonable amount of time in order to get the Acts catena done this decade. In my opinion Oecumenius is an excellent Bible commentator. His commentary on Revelation is one of the best I have read, I like it even better than St. Andrew of Caesarea.

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