This is a collection of eleven papers with an introduction initiated by a unit of the Society of Biblical Literature; they were delivered at the annual meeting of the society in 2009. ‘East’ in the title means Syrian and Greek and includes Origen, Cyril of Alexandria, Hesychius of Jerusalem in Latin translation and the Thomas Christians of Malabar; ‘early’ extends to the eighth century. None of the papers here is outstanding; most were worth publishing. Detailed examples of exegeses in practice and comparison of ‘schools’ are the main constituents; a couple are more strictly on normative theology. I mention, because they surprised, Mark Eliott's paper on the convergence of Hesychius and Ishodad of Merv in the interpretation of Leviticus; and Rajkumar Johnson's on the Malabari Indian tradition which owes something, apparently, to the Cochin Jews. Robert Kitchen on Narsai's interpretation of Jonah and Bryan Stewart's discussion of Origen's exegesis of Leviticus also found something interesting to say. Of note to students of the modern Church: Nicolae Roddy, an ‘Eastern Orthodox scholar’, can write that the separation between Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Christians ‘occurred largely as a result of semantic misunderstandings over the dogmatic formulations of the Council of Chalcedon’. At the level of scholarship is the ancient schism now at an end? The existence of a unit of the SBL dealing with Eastern Christian biblical exegesis is, of course, in itself a sign of scholarly reconciliation: Eastern Christians must take on board some new truths; western biblical exegetes must re-learn some ancient ways.