In Light and Shadow of Multiple Wholes: How Theodore of Mopsuestia and Jerome of Stridon Read Joel among the Twelve as ScriptureSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/CA5L88XE/tei
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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.Josephine K.DruIn Light and Shadow of Multiple Wholes: How Theodore of Mopsuestia and Jerome of Stridon Read Joel among the Twelve as Scripturehttp://syriaca.org/cbss/CA5L88XEhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/CA5L88XEhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/CA5L88XE2014In recent decades, scholars attempting to explain the Twelve Minor Prophets as a unified collection have identified an apparent paradox in their reception history: the same generations who passed on the tradition that the Twelve are "one book" did not read it as such. Two kinds of explanations are proposed, each with independent parallels in studies of midrash: (1) Modern scholars misinterpret premodern references to "books" by conflating physical and literary unity. (2) Past interpreters allowed competing contexts, such as the wider canon or the individual prophets, to eclipse the Twelve in their exegesis. Collectively, these discussions highlight the importance of asking not merely whether other interpreters read a given corpus holistically but how they did and did not do so, not least in relation to other potential contexts or wholes.
In response, this dissertation sharpens appreciation for the multiple variables involved in reading holistically by bridging biblical and patristic scholarship with a detailed case study. Chapters 2-3 explain the book of Joel as an example of specificity deliberately blurred, a leading member of the Twelve, and a densely intertextual part of multiple collections. Chapters 4-6 analyze and compare two of our earliest surviving Christian commentaries on Joel, by Theodore of Mopsuestia (late 300s) and by Jerome of Stridon (406). While both interpreters treat Joel texts as simultaneously belonging to multiple contexts, they do so in strikingly different ways. Each understands the Twelve and Joel analogously as a distinctive sequence of prophets and a meaningful sequence of passages respectively. But contrasting approaches to relating Old and New Testaments accompany opposite accounts of multiple meanings within Joel.
This project challenges sweeping conclusions that ancient readers' attention to Scripture as a whole overwhelmed attention to individual books or, conversely, that approaching the Twelve as distinct prophets precluded discerning coherence across the collection. It demonstrates the need to investigate how past exegetes understood scriptural unity on a case-by-case basis, allowing for variations between different works on the same text and for each text's presenting interpreters with different invitations and challenges. Appendices include an English translation of Jerome's Joel commentary.
Dru, Josephine K. “In Light and Shadow of Multiple Wholes: How Theodore of Mopsuestia and Jerome of Stridon Read Joel among the Twelve as Scripture.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2014.
Josephine K. Dru, In Light and Shadow of Multiple Wholes: How Theodore of Mopsuestia and Jerome of Stridon Read Joel among the Twelve as Scripture (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2014).Antiochene schoolIV-VII CEJoelOld TestamentProphetsTheodore of MopsuestiaV CEexegesis