Commentary on the Twelve Prophets

Theodore of Mopsuestia's commentary on the Twelve Minor Prophets is the only one of his Old Testament commentaries to survive complete in its original Greek. Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia until his death in 428, was the leading exegete of the Antiochene school, and he wrote the work as a verse-by-verse exposition of Hosea through Malachi. The date of composition is unknown. The commentary belongs to the Antiochene reaction against the allegorical method associated with Alexandria and Origen, which Theodore considered a way of dissolving the actual words of Scripture into whatever the interpreter wished to find there.

The commentary's central move is to read each prophet first as a historical figure speaking to a historical audience. Theodore asks when the prophet spoke, to whom, and what situation in Israel, Judah, or the surrounding nations his words addressed. He attends to the Greek text and, on occasion, to the differences among the Greek versions. He holds that a prophecy normally has one sense, the one its original circumstances give it, and he is notably sparing in finding Christ in the text. Many passages that other Christian interpreters took as direct predictions of Christ he explains by events in the prophets' own time, such as the return from exile or the careers of Israel's kings. Where he does admit a messianic reference, he argues for it from the text itself, and he treats Joel 2 as fulfilled in Pentecost and Jonah's three days as a type of the resurrection. His introductions to each book set out the prophet's setting and purpose before the exposition begins, and the whole is marked by clear, sober argument rather than rhetorical display.

The work has continued to matter because it preserves the most rigorous patristic example of historical exegesis. Theodore's Christological writings were condemned posthumously at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, and much of his corpus was lost in Greek as a result. That this commentary survived in the original language makes it unusually valuable for the history of interpretation. It remains a standing challenge to the assumption that early Christian reading of the Old Testament was uniformly allegorical, and a useful counterweight for anyone who wants to see how much of the prophets' meaning lies in their own moment.

Who should read this: readers who want to see how a fifth-century Christian read the prophets with attention to history, grammar, and context, including students of patristic exegesis and pastors preparing to preach the Minor Prophets. It is not for those looking for devotional meditation or for a Christ-centered reading that finds the gospel in every verse, since Theodore deliberately declines to supply one.