Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, Volume 1

St. Cyril of Alexandria- Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, Volume 1

The Fathers of the Church series- Vol. 115

St. Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria (412-444), is best known as a protagonist in the christological controversy of the second quarter of the fifth century. Readers may be surprised therefore to find such polemic absent from this early work on the twelve minor prophets of the Old Testament. Another possibly unexpected feature of this Alexandrian commentary is its focus on historical exegesis, which reveals St. Cyril’s serious interest in the fortunes of the people of Israel and Judah in the centuries preceding and following the exile. Unlike his predecessor St. Didymus the Blind, St. Cyril abjures an approach that dismisses the historicity of the text (as in his opening defense of Hosea’s marriage), and he proceeds to other levels of interpretation, moral and spiritual, only after a preliminary examination of the historical.