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Defining Christ: The Church of the East and Nascent Islam. By Marijke Metselaar. Late Antique History and Religion 19. Leuven: Peeters, 2019. xii + 464 pp. $132.00 hardcover.

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reflection on this controversy. Jerome shows his readers that his own use of 1 Cor. 7 closely parallels Paul’s use of Old Testament passages. Hunt thinks that Jerome’s defense of… Click to show full abstract

reflection on this controversy. Jerome shows his readers that his own use of 1 Cor. 7 closely parallels Paul’s use of Old Testament passages. Hunt thinks that Jerome’s defense of his exegesis attempts to turn allegations about lying and misrepresenting Christian teaching into a more general discussion about literary ethics and the way it shapes relationships between texts and readers. These are original and thoughtprovoking insights. Hunt dissents from Duval’s vindication of Jerome’s exegesis over Jovinian’s. Over the years, I have become more and more receptive to this type of rehabilitative analysis that seeks to do greater justice to ancient “heretics.” For me, this applies to the “Orthodox” treatments of Origen, Eusebius, Rufinus, Jovinian, Pelagius, and Julian of Eclanum. In chapter 9, Hunt discusses Jerome’s Epistle 129 to Dardanus, a letter very seldom discussed, and also his work On Famous Men. In an interesting section, Hunt compares Jerome’s words with Origen’s fifth homily on Luke, where Zechariah’s loss of words is a type, a mark on the history that reveals the ordering of events as the arena of God’s action. In the conclusion, Hunt restates his thesis that in antiquity learning was inherently an ethical education and mimetic. For Jerome, it is through reading the language of scripture that human beings come to know themselves as creatures. The Christian life is a response to this moment, an unfolding product of this literary encounter. A meeting with scripture is a meeting with the Word working in this world of time and matter. Jerome adheres to these ancient concepts and embeds literary production within a much wider economy of mimesis focused on the Incarnation. To my mind, Hunt’s book is a successful experiment in the application of modern literary approaches to an ancient theological writer. Theology and exegesis reap benefits from the resulting insights.

Keywords: hunt; jerome; defining christ; history; christ church

Journal Title: Church History
Year Published: 2021

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