170 BOOK REVIEWS

education at a time when it is no longer embedded in the way of life of the majority
of the population.

William R. Shea
University of Padua, Emeritus

Early Christian Readings of Genesis One: Patristic Exegesis and Literal Inter-
pretation. By Craig Allert. BioLogos Books on Science and Christianity. Downers
Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2018. Pp. x + 338. $36.00 paperback.

A lazy hermeneutic can lead to faulty interpretation. A biased hermeneutic, howev­

er, can mug a text of its meaning. In Early Christian Readings of Genesis One Craig
Allert highlights a troubling trend among interpreters of the Church Fathers. Allert
believes theologians and historians have done violence to the Fathers by adopting
irresponsible methods of interpretation that misrepresent the teachings of the early
church—especially the Fathers’ beliefs regarding the creation. While Allert takes
specific aim at early Christian readings of Genesis 1, his book posits a fundamental
hermeneutical method for historians to adopt as they approach the tradition and
teachings of the Church Fathers.
Allert indicts historical theologians who make modern concerns the con­
cerns of men like Basil and Augustine. The consternations of modern theologians
may not, and probably were not, shared by the pastors and leaders of antiquity.
When pragmatism outweighs thoughtful consideration, and ideology constrains
methodology, a misuse and subsequent abuse of the church’s tradition naturally fol­
lows. Allert, therefore, summons theologians and historians to study the Fathers—
indeed, all historical figures—with the lenses of modernity removed. The Fathers,
as creatures of their culture, time, and upbringing, asked fundamentally different
questions than modern thinkers. To attempt to shake out of the Fathers a proof text
for a modern theological debate will not only misrepresent the church’s tradition
but also do a great disservice to the Fathers and their beliefs.
According to Allert, the prime abuses of the church tradition spring from
proponents of the grammatical-historical (GH) exegesis hermeneutic. GH advo­
cates hold to verbal inspiration and the inerrancy of the Bible. The interpreter,
equipped with GIT methods, prizes the intended meaning of a text’s author. This
method seeks a “natural” reading of the text and avoids the pitfalls of eisegesis and
especially “allegory.” Such disdain for allegory is what concerns Allert. GH propo­
nents define allegory as a set of unguided principles or rules that allows for a myriad
of subjective and spiritual interpretations. They then impose that definition on
certain Church Fathers. The problem, according to Allert, flows from a misinter­
pretation of the word “allegory.” Where the modern historian means one thing, the
Church Father understood allegory quite differently. Allert states: “The idea that
allegorical readings are made up or not guided by any principles or rules is simply
an inaccurate assertion” (109).
Allert focuses on the Antiochene (literalist) vs. Alexandrian (allegorist)
hermeneutical controversy. His analysis of the two competing schools provides a
 BOOK REVIEWS 171

fresh, well-developed, and convincing case that shifts the nature of the debate be­
tween the two schools away from literal vs. allegorical. The Antiochene-Alexandrian
debate focused not so much on the question of allegory as on rhetoric and philos­
ophy. Allert summarizes: “Philosophy looked for abstract doctrines through verbal
allegory, while rhetoric looked for solid ethical examples in reading narrative .... To
speak of any sort of grammatical-historical exegesis in antiquity is actually anachro­
nistic” (136—37). Thus, where the Alexandrian tradition adopted a hermeneutical
method of the philosophers, the Antiochenes interpreted texts in the stream of
rhetoric. The divergence between the two schools did not focus on a search for the
authors intended meaning—indeed both schools sought a deeper, figural meaning.
The difference, then, lay in “how Scripture related to its referent” (139). Allert offers
as evidence a textual debate between Origen and Eustathius over Saul’s conference
with a medium in 1 Samuel 28. Origen, the supposed allegorist, read the text plain­
ly and literally, while Eustathius, the literalist, attacked Origen’s plain reading of the
text. The nature of the debate between the two men centered on divergent mentali­
ties over the role of scripture.
Allert spends the rest of his book challenging modern readings of the
Church Fathers, especially those readings which misappropriate the Fathers’ beliefs
on Genesis 1. He examines Basil of Caesarea, the church’s teachings on creation
ex nihilo and the days of Genesis, and Augustine’s teaching on time and eternity.
Under each of these headings Allert adopts a careful examination of the church’s
tradition and shows how literalist/allegorist distinctions do not serve. Indeed, Allert
points at Basil—an oft-quoted source for GH proponents—as one who readily
interpreted texts allegorically. Basil deployed allegory when he believed a certain
passage of scripture necessitated a figural or spiritual interpretation. The keystone of
Basil’s interpretive framework centered on the supremacy of Jesus Christ’s incar­
nation. Indeed, Allert believes the Fathers held an incarnational hermeneutic—a
method of interpretation that viewed the incarnation as the hinge of all history. Ev­
ery verse of the Bible either flowed into Jesus’s birth or from it. As such, the Fathers
interpreted the scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, in light of the incarna­
tion. Thus, when the church discussed issues like creation ex nihilo or the seven days
of Genesis 1, the Fathers’ primary concern centered not on creation science, but on
spiritual depth—the experience of God’s revelation through the incarnation of his
Son. The incarnation, and subsequently, the restoration of humanity through the
incarnation served as the paradigmatic lens of the Fathers’ interpretive framework.
Allert surmises that “the history behind the text does not concern [the Fathers], but
the theologia behind it does” (324).
Aliens book draws the reader into the worldview of the Fathers. His
historiography summons the reader to lay aside modern concerns and questions
that could pollute the meaning of the church’s tradition. While Allert never comes
down on the validity of the GH model or patristic exegesis, he does demonstrate
how the Fathers sought to interpret the scriptures in the line of the apostles and the
New Testament authors. This is, perhaps, the book’s greatest fault: it ends with no
conclusion. It comes to an abrupt halt with no summary, reflection, or imperative
call to historical theologians. Despite this shortcoming, Allert successfully draws his
172 BOOK REVIEWS

readers into the world of patristic exegesis. This book is a must-read for any teacher
of church history.

Cory D. Higdon
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity: Studies in Text

Transmission. By Dirk Rohmann. Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 135. Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 2016. Pp. ix + 360. $140.00 hardcover.

Between A.D. 650 and 680, the Anglo-Saxon nobleman and abbot, Benedict Bis­
cop, traveled to Rome five times. In addition to worshiping at pilgrimage shrines,
Benedict Biscop labored to gather relics, liturgical vessels, vestments, artwork, and
especially books to stock several prominent English minsters. Benedict arranged the
copying of numerous books from the papal library. By the time of the abbots death,
for instance, the library at the abbey of Wearmouth-Jarrow held several hundred
volumes: not only Christian works, but also classical texts by authors such as Cice­
ro, Pliny, Vergil, Lucan, Persius, and Ovid.
As Benedict Biscop’s journeys exemplify, even during its economic and
demographic nadir (roughly 550 to 750) the Latin West maintained a vibrant
book culture. There were still libraries packed with hundreds (though rarely, if ever,
thousands) of codices. There were archives, scriptoria, calligraphers, illuminators,
and long-distance book-exchange. Moreover, the pagan classics continued to attract
readers. The classics were copied widely again only during the ninth-century Car-
olingian Renewal, but this surge would have been impossible without the manu­
scripts, scholars, and latent interest that already existed across Europe.
Indeed, most historians have viewed Christianity as a positive force in the
transmission of the classics. According to this consensus—represented, for example,
by the influential handbook Scribes and Scholars (Oxford, 2014), now in its fourth
edition—Christians preserved the classical texts for pragmatic reasons. The major­
ity of Greco-Roman texts are lost: at least two-thirds of all Latin classics and even
higher numbers for Greek ones. Yet deliberate censorship was rare and focused on
heretical or magical works, rather than pagan literature in general. Classical books
disappeared because few people had the time, interest, and resources to copy them
during the chaotic centuries of the post-Roman world—not because of book-burn­
ings and suppression.
Dirk Rohmann, a research fellow at the University of Sheffield, challenges
this consensus in his recent book. Despite its name, Christianity, Book-Burning,
and Censorship in Late Antiquity is not primarily about censorship or book-burn­
ing. Rohmann admits that he does not attempt to “provide a complete account of
instances of book-burning and bans” (13) during the Later Roman Empire. Sad
that he did not, because Rohmann is a scholar of the Roman Empire, rather than
the early Middle Ages, as his other publications testify. At its best, his writing has
the soft touch of an ethnographer. Indeed, this monograph enthralled me whenever
Rohmann concentrated on reconstructing the social world of Late Roman censor-
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