Publishers in the new millennium have brought forth reference tools in series: handbooks, compendia, encyclopedias, guides, and companions to subjects variously divided and combined with increased frequency. For the Bible and early Christianity, 2004 welcomed the Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, offering over 300 alphabetical entries, including many on the interpretation of the Bible. That series, devoted to Christian theology, has reached ten volumes. That same year, Brill published the two-volume Handbook of Patristic Exegesis as the start of The Bible in Ancient Christianity series—recognized as the first series devoted to biblical interpretation in the early Christian centuries. Brill has since added twelve monographs. The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation, reviewed here, joins thirty-two-volumes on religion and theology among the Oxford Handbooks where at least six other volumes address aspects of the Bible or early Christianity. Additional similar resources are soon to be available: In 2020, De Gruyter will publish a handbook on biblical interpretation in early Christian North Africa in its series The Bible and Its Reception.

Readers should ask what contribution another new handbook makes. Editors Blowers and Martens point to their aims of treating “the principal issues of hermeneutical theory, exegetical method, and the like” and of orienting readers to features “beyond early Christian exegetical practice itself” (2). Forty-eight scholars contributing mainly individually authored articles have delivered on that promise with authoritative discussions of traditional literary forms and genres, along with serious consideration of the interpretive aspects of poetry, liturgy, and images. The volume, in seven parts, maintains an apologetical aim: to support the recovery of early Christian exegesis from decades of neglect or even disdain, practicing “a sustained engagement with ‘living’ texts . . . as a corrective to the propensity of modern higher criticism to segregate biblical interpretation from the Church” (3).

The broad approach to interpretation is evident from the first part, “Scripture,” which focuses on the nature and content of the Bible. Lincoln Blumell's article, “Scripture as Artefact,” discusses the form of the physical medium as something worthy of interpretation in its own right, “even to the exclusion of the content” (7). Among the considerations is a range of theories about the immediate use of the codex for New Testament texts. Reinhard Ceulemans's discussion of the inevitable impact of translation within and across languages, Joseph Lienhard's theological history of progress toward a canon, and Frances Young's outline of early Christian efforts to uncover Scripture's frequently veiled speech, all respond to special problems of interpretation that arose because the texts were received as God's word.

In the second part, “Interpreters and Interpretation,” Peter Struck undertakes the difficult task of surveying Greek, Roman, and Hellenistic approaches to literary criticism as currents of critical theory—blending allegory, rhetoric, mysticism, and a dash of skepticism—that flowed into the Christian centuries. John Cavadini defends early Christian hermeneutics, wherein “the figurative character of revelation is intrinsic to revelation, not something added” (128). Nor are handbooks a modern creation, as Tarmo Toom's description of various forms of early Christian biblical handbooks reminds readers. Peter Marten's “Ideal Interpreters” discusses exegesis as “a way of life” and interpretation as the process of spiritual development.

Part 3, “Settings and Genres of Interpretation,” represents the greater tradition. Three sections discuss, first, the main textual genres—including commentaries, homilies, scholia, apophthegmata, catenae; second, the liturgical forms of homily and catechesis, considered in their orality; and third, the interpretive elements of liturgical ritual and, outside the liturgy, of narrative and visual media, especially through Robin Jensen's case study of Isaac's sacrifice. While articles on scholia and quaestiones et responsiones can afford to be mainly descriptive, Josef Lössl broaches the broad commentary genre, also managing to assess Greek and Hellenistic Jewish commentaries and the dual tradition among the Latins of commenting with either a philosophical or grammatical emphasis. Andrew Faulkner makes a place for paraphrase and metaphrase, common practices among early Christians that are mostly overlooked today. After asserting that “principally . . . early Christian paraphrase has an exegetical purpose” (310), this important contribution discusses verse paraphrases of the Gospels and Psalms but omits mention of the early Christian epics on the Creation and Fall, where overt exegesis stands alongside allusive paraphrase. The volume's article “Creation” in part 6, “Scriptural Figures and Motifs,” also manages only a scant reference to poetry's role, in Gregory of Nazianzus, but no Latin poets. Likewise, Jeffrey Wickes's substantial article on interpretative elements in hymns and other lyrics features two essential poet-exegetes of the East, Romanos and Ephraim. Absent are Prudentius and Ambrose, the first Latin hymnographers, both earlier than Romanos and equally masterful poet-exegetes.

In part 4, on various Christian interpreting communities and their neighbors, James Paget's chapter on Christianity and Judaism tells a story of Christian polemic and the apparent Jewish disregard of their neighbors: “No Jew . . . wrote . . . adversus Christianos” (344). No article, however, assembles the many strands of Jewish interpretive practices per se, although most articles in the collection allude to them. Part 5, “Scripture in the Life of the Church,” and select contributions to part 6, “Scriptural Figures and Motifs,” continue to deliver on the promise of a broad treatment, addressing major scenes from the drama of salvation history from both testaments, including Exodus, the Sermon on the Mount, Paul, the Cross, and the Fourth Gospel with its influential Johannine Logos theology, to which the image of the Good Shepherd, the focus of much theological commentary, could be added.

Part 7, “Retrievals and Criticisms,” offers strong testimony to biblical interpretation as an intimate process within a community of believers, both ancient and contemporary, so vast as to allow only an inkling. Matthew Levering's expression of hope on the last page summarizes the volume sincerely. This sympathetic handbook, with ample, rarely redundant bibliographies accompanying each article, does far more than catalog individual methods and doctrines; it mirrors the early Christian interpreting communities through far-reaching and diverse discussions sharing a fundamental vision.