Jerome's Commentarii in Epistulam ad Ephesios belongs to the first burst of exegetical work he produced after settling in Bethlehem. Having left Rome under a cloud in 385 and established himself near Paula's monastic foundations, he turned to Paul, commenting in quick succession on Philemon, Galatians, Ephesians, and Titus. The Ephesians commentary, in three books, is dedicated to Paula and her daughter Eustochium, and its prologue is candid about its method: Jerome says he has read Origen's three volumes on the letter, along with the commentaries of Didymus and Apollinaris, and has drawn on them freely. He worked at speed, and he worked as a philologist, setting the Greek text beside the Latin and remarking on variants and renderings as he went.
The commentary proceeds verse by verse, but its characteristic move is to set more than one reading in front of the reader. Where a passage admits of a plain sense and a deeper one, Jerome reports both, often attributing the second to unnamed predecessors with a formula such as "another says." On Ephesians 1:4, the election of believers before the foundation of the world, he lays out the interpretation that souls existed and were chosen before bodies. On the gathering up of all things in Christ and on God becoming all in all, he rehearses the hope of a universal restoration. On the apostle's teaching about marriage in chapter five, he presses the mystery of Christ and the church, consistent with the ascetic reading of marriage he defended throughout the decade. Throughout, Jerome treats Paul's letter as the authoritative wellspring of Christian cosmology: the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile, the dismantling of the dividing wall, the body growing into the fullness of its head.
The work's afterlife was shaped less by its readers in Bethlehem than by the Origenist controversy that broke out a decade later. When Rufinus sought to show that Jerome had himself transmitted the very doctrines he now condemned in Origen, he quoted this commentary, and Jerome answered in his Apologia contra Rufinum that a commentator's task is to present the opinions of many so that the reader may judge among them, not to endorse each one. The exchange made the Ephesians commentary a test case for what a Christian commentary is and what responsibility an exegete bears for the views he reports. Because Origen's own commentary on Ephesians survives only in fragments, Jerome's work has also become the principal witness through which scholars reconstruct it.
Who should read this: readers of Paul who want to see how an early Latin exegete handled the letter's most speculative verses, and students of Origen and of the controversy that destroyed his reputation. It is not a devotional companion to Ephesians, and readers seeking Jerome's settled theological judgments will find a reporter of opinions rather than a judge.
Commentary on Ephesians
by Jerome
For For students of the Origenist controversy as much as of Ephesians: Rufinus later quoted this commentary to show Jerome had once followed Origen on the pre-existence of souls; Latin only.
Jerome's Commentarii in Epistulam ad Ephesios belongs to the first burst of exegetical work he produced after settling in Bethlehem. Having left Rome under a cloud in 385 and established himself near Paula's monastic foundations, he turned to Paul, commenting in quick succession on Philemon, Galatians, Ephesians, and Titus. The Ephesians commentary, in three books, is dedicated to Paula and her daughter Eustochium, and its prologue is candid about its method: Jerome says he has read Origen's three volumes on the letter, along with the commentaries of Didymus and Apollinaris, and has drawn on them freely. He worked at speed, and he worked as a philologist, setting the Greek text beside the Latin and remarking on variants and renderings as he went.
The commentary proceeds verse by verse, but its characteristic move is to set more than one reading in front of the reader. Where a passage admits of a plain sense and a deeper one, Jerome reports both, often attributing the second to unnamed predecessors with a formula such as "another says." On Ephesians 1:4, the election of believers before the foundation of the world, he lays out the interpretation that souls existed and were chosen before bodies. On the gathering up of all things in Christ and on God becoming all in all, he rehearses the hope of a universal restoration. On the apostle's teaching about marriage in chapter five, he presses the mystery of Christ and the church, consistent with the ascetic reading of marriage he defended throughout the decade. Throughout, Jerome treats Paul's letter as the authoritative wellspring of Christian cosmology: the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile, the dismantling of the dividing wall, the body growing into the fullness of its head.
The work's afterlife was shaped less by its readers in Bethlehem than by the Origenist controversy that broke out a decade later. When Rufinus sought to show that Jerome had himself transmitted the very doctrines he now condemned in Origen, he quoted this commentary, and Jerome answered in his Apologia contra Rufinum that a commentator's task is to present the opinions of many so that the reader may judge among them, not to endorse each one. The exchange made the Ephesians commentary a test case for what a Christian commentary is and what responsibility an exegete bears for the views he reports. Because Origen's own commentary on Ephesians survives only in fragments, Jerome's work has also become the principal witness through which scholars reconstruct it.
Who should read this: readers of Paul who want to see how an early Latin exegete handled the letter's most speculative verses, and students of Origen and of the controversy that destroyed his reputation. It is not a devotional companion to Ephesians, and readers seeking Jerome's settled theological judgments will find a reporter of opinions rather than a judge.
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