Introduction

This Augustinian interpretation of God’s commandment in Genesis 1: 28, ‘‘increase and multiply,’’ as referring to the possibility of multiple interpretation (‘‘exegesis’’) of the biblical text (O’Donnell 1992: 400-1; Muller 1998: 616, 625, 648), is remarkable in at least two ways. First, it confirms what one could call a general characteristic of the epoch of Late Antiquity, namely a strong rise not only in the production of new texts, but also in the renewed effort to interpret old ones. Second, it is a kind of mise-en-abime, since the first chapters of Genesis - presumably the most interpreted texts of the Bible - are very fertile in generating multiple interpretations themselves. Augustine alone interpreted the text five times during his life (Taylor 1982, i: 1-7).

In this chapter, I shall, by way of example, concentrate on various commentaries that deal with Genesis in particular. Since Genesis can be understood as a foundation myth explaining the origins and nature ofhumankind and its relationship with God in the most fundamental way, and therefore as a book containing all principal theological questions in nuce, its interpretation allows exegetes potentially to tackle the entire spectrum of theological issues. The different ways in which the selected authors approached the text will illustrate this.

In Late Antiquity, generally speaking, a species of ‘‘globalization’’ took place, politically, because the empire had reached its widest expansion from east to west,

A Companion to Late Antiquity. Edited by Philip Rousseau © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-11980-1

And intellectually, because the educated elite, facing the rise and influence of new cultural forces, especially of Christianity, attempted to (re)establish some kind of identity. This led to the concentration on a past that was considered to be normative or ‘‘classical,’’ and thus relevant in constituting the ingredients of contemporary identity: the pagans chose especially Homer (Richardson 1980) and Virgil (Murgia 2004) as their cultural Magna Charta, the Christians naturally the Bible (Young 1997: 285-99). Because of the gap in time between the writing and the reading of these texts, the late antique reader’s ability to understand and explain them, and to provide background information, was seriously impeded. Commentaries were urgently needed, therefore, especially in the fourth and fifth centuries. These commentaries were not only helpful for educational and literary purposes; they could also be used by preachers for edification (aedificatio), in a liturgical setting. Indeed, commentaries themselves could be presented in the form of sermons. Apart from the specific didactic function ofexegesis in a school context, interpretation permeated practically every other literary genre: poetry (Otten and Pollmann, forthcoming); legal and philosophical, especially Neoplatonic (Cursgen 2002), treatises; and rhetorical forms, including homilies. In other words, we cannot confine the notion of ‘‘late antique exegesis’’ to the narrow intellectual genre of a learned commentary: it begins to pervade every mode of communication. Augustine makes this point in theoretical form in his hermeneutical handbook De doctrina christiana, where he emphasizes the universality of his Christian addressees and their interpretive activities (4. 18. 37; Pollmann 1996: 69-75).

Because of its essentially communicative, or mediating, function, exegesis establishes a bridge between the text and its readers in their mental and historical situations respectively. Thus, interpreters have to consider, and take into account, the context within which they intend their explanations to be effective, especially historical, social, personal, (church-)political, intellectual, educational, and (to a limited degree) economic. The context also governed their perception of the most suitable literary genre and their choice of an appropriate exegetical method. A broad spectrum of exegetical approaches existed in antiquity, originally deriving from grammar and rhetoric: a text could be analyzed according to lectio (correct pronunciation, intonation, and division of words), emendatio (textual criticism), enarratio (historical, mythological, and rhetorical commentary), and iudicium (judgment of authenticity and value) (Pollmann 2005: 206-7). Later, we have what came to be called the ‘‘fourfold sense of Scripture,’’ justified by the unfathomable fecundity of Scripture: apart from a philological-literal analysis of the text, it included various possible figurative interpretations, namely a moralistic-psychological, an ecclesiastical-institutional, and a typological-eschatological analysis. Rarely were all four senses applied to the same passage, however, and exegetical terminology and approach could vary considerably (De Lubac 1998: 75-159); exegetical terms like figura, allegoria, sensus spiritualis, and so forth are neither univocal nor congruent with modern terminology (Young 1997: 186-213).

This broad spectrum of interpretive possibilities refutes any idea of exegetical naivety or lack of sophistication. On the contrary, practically all methods of interpretation practiced until our own time had already been established in antiquity and were adopted by the early Christians. Although they did not give the Bible a separate ontological status, these Christians were aware of the distinct quality of the biblical text, which was not meant to be a handbook for the natural sciences but the edifying word of God, instructing and guiding God’s human creatures. Accordingly, ecclesiastical writers are not interested in finding scientific information in the Bible (Follin-ger 1999: 256). This sharp distinction is particularly important when it comes to a potential discrepancy between human disciplines and the divine word, as for instance in Genesis (see below). The crucial difference between the ancient methods and the modern historical-critical ones is not their respective methodology - which is partly comparable - but their claim to a supra-individualistic objectivity and to historicity in a quasi-scientific sense (Casurella 1983: 135-6; Young 1997: 206-7; Metzdorf2003: 243-62). Because of their rhetorical upbringing, (late) antique interpreters of texts were much more aware of the need to communicate convincingly to their communities what each text was about, which depended on a close interaction between exegete, text, and audience or readership (Young 1997: 265-84). Finally, the methods, forms, and functions of exegesis, which were very flexible in Late Antiquity, are markers of change and transition: their very presence and acknowledged importance characterize the period itself as lying between a ‘‘not anymore’’ and a ‘‘not yet,’’ reflecting in its rich exegetical output a constant need for redefinition.

The following brief examples of commentary in prose will illustrate some of the features just mentioned. The reader is encouraged to use them as criteria when assessing texts from Late Antiquity that constitute or contain exegesis. The different issue of manuscript illuminations as ‘‘commentary’’ (Wittekind 2004) will not be taken into account here, nor will we consider the Jewish exegetical tradition (Najman and Newman 2004).