The Biblical Commentaries

Before he was the architect of the Nestorian controversy, St. Cyril of Alexandria was, above all, an exegete. The greater part of his literary output is a vast body of commentary on Scripture, almost all of it written before 428 and dogmatically anti-Arian in thrust rather than anti-Nestorian. This file surveys that corpus: the great Commentary on the Gospel of John, with its anti-Arian defence of the Son’s consubstantiality and the seeds of his eucharistic theology of the life-giving flesh; the Commentary on Luke, surviving largely in Syriac and pastoral in character; the two monumental Pentateuch works, On Adoration and Worship in Spirit and in Truth and the Glaphyra, which read the Law as a veiled prophecy of Christ; the commentaries on Isaiah and the Twelve Prophets; and the character of Cyril’s exegetical method — Alexandrian theoria with a relentlessly Christological centre — together with Robert Wilken’s caution that this exegesis is inseparable from Cyril’s theology and his stance toward Judaism.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

The Scale and Dating of the Exegetical Corpus

It is a distortion of perspective, encouraged by the drama of 428–433, to remember Cyril chiefly as a controversialist. By sheer volume the dominant labour of his life was the interpretation of Scripture, and the bulk of that labour was finished before Nestorius was ever heard of. The great commentaries — on John, on Luke, on the Pentateuch, on Isaiah and the Minor Prophets — belong to the first phase of his episcopate and earlier, and their controlling polemical horizon is not Nestorius but Arius: they defend the full divinity and consubstantiality of the Son against a subordinationism that was still a living threat in the Egyptian church (McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy, 9–11; Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, 4–5). Anti-Nestorian accents do appear in Cyril’s exegesis, but characteristically in works written or revised later, and they are the exception. The exegetical Cyril is first and foremost an heir of Athanasius carrying on the Nicene fight on the terrain of the biblical text.

This dating matters for reading him. The Christology that would later be hammered into the mia physis and the hypostatic union is already present in the commentaries in solution — implicit, exegetically derived, not yet forced into the precision that controversy demands. To read the commentaries is to watch Cyril’s mature dogmatic instincts forming out of the discipline of the text rather than out of conciliar combat.

The Commentary on the Gospel of John

The Commentary on the Gospel of John (In Joannem) is the masterpiece of Cyril’s exegetical corpus and one of the great patristic commentaries on the Fourth Gospel (PG 73:9–1056; PG 74:9–756; CPG 5208). It runs to twelve books and survives complete in Greek except for books seven and eight, which are lost and only partly recoverable from the catenae — the medieval chains of extracts in which fragments of otherwise vanished commentary were preserved (Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, 96–98). It was englished in the nineteenth century by P. E. Pusey (Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church 43, 1874) and T. Randell (LFC 48, 1885), and excerpts are translated in Russell’s Cyril of Alexandria.

The work is, dogmatically, anti-Arian from beginning to end. John’s Gospel — with its prologue on the Word who was God, its “I and the Father are one,” its insistence that to see the Son is to see the Father — was the natural battleground on which to defend the Nicene confession, and Cyril works it verse by verse to establish the Son’s full divinity and consubstantiality with the Father. The commentary is roughly contemporary with his two dogmatic-Trinitarian treatises, the Thesaurus de sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate (PG 75:9–656; CPG 5215) and the Dialogues on the Trinity (De sancta Trinitate dialogi, PG 75:657–1124; CPG 5216), so that the same anti-Arian project is pursued in parallel through exegetical and through systematic-dogmatic forms.

Two further things make the John commentary pivotal. First, it contains the seeds of Cyril’s later Christology: the single-subject reading of the incarnate Word, the logic that will become the hypostatic union, is already at work in his handling of the Gospel’s union of the divine and the human in the one Christ. Second, and most consequentially, his exegesis of John 6 lays the foundation of his eucharistic theology of the life-giving flesh (sarx zoopoios): because the flesh of Christ is the very flesh of the life-giving Word, to receive it in the Eucharist is to receive incorruption and life (PG 73, on John 6; McGuckin, 184–185). This theme is treated fully in the eucharistic file of the next section; here it is enough to register that its taproot is the John commentary, written long before the controversy that would make Cyril’s name.

The Commentary on Luke

The Commentary on Luke (PG 72:476–949; CPG 5207) is a different kind of work in both genre and transmission. It is not a continuous scholarly commentary but a series of homilies — the surviving collection runs to roughly 156 sermons — preached on the Lukan text, and it is therefore more pastoral and festal in character than the John commentary, closer to the pulpit than the desk. Its survival is one of the curiosities of Cyril studies: the Greek is largely lost, and the work comes down to us chiefly in a Syriac translation preserved in the Nitrian manuscripts of the Egyptian desert monasteries — above all British Library Additional MS 12,165 — with the Greek recoverable only in fragments through the catenae (Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, 12). The standard English, R. Payne Smith’s A Commentary upon the Gospel according to S. Luke (Oxford, 1859), was made not from a Greek original but from this Syriac.

Because the homilies were preached over a span of years, some of them carry anti-Nestorian Christology and so belong, at least in their delivered or revised form, to the later period — a reminder that the neat division between an early anti-Arian exegete and a late anti-Nestorian controversialist is a generalization with exceptions. But the dominant register of the Luke homilies is catechetical and devotional: Cyril the bishop instructing and feeding his congregation on the festal mysteries of the Gospel.

The Pentateuch and Alexandrian Typology

Cyril’s two great works on the Pentateuch are the fullest display of his exegetical art, and both are governed by a single conviction: that the mystery of Christ is hidden in the letter of the Law and must be drawn out by theoria, spiritual contemplation. They stand squarely in the Alexandrian tradition of allegory and typology that runs from Philo through Origen to Athanasius (Wilken, Judaism and the Early Christian Mind, 69–92).

The first is On Adoration and Worship in Spirit and in Truth (De adoratione et cultu in spiritu et veritate, PG 68:133–1125; CPG 5200), a work in seventeen books cast as a dialogue with a certain Palladius. Its theme is taken from John 4:24 — true worship “in spirit and in truth” — and its argument is that the entire cultic and ceremonial law of the Old Testament, its sacrifices, priesthood, tabernacle, and feasts, is not abolished but spiritually fulfilled in Christ: the letter of the rite gives way to the spiritual reality it prefigured. The second is the Glaphyra (Glaphyra in Pentateuchum, PG 69:9–678; CPG 5201) — the title means “elegant” or “polished comments” — a work in thirteen books (seven on Genesis, three on Exodus, and one each on Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) that draws the figures of Christ out of the Pentateuchal narratives, reading the patriarchs and the events of the Law as types of the Saviour. Together the two works pursue complementary halves of the same programme: On Worship takes the ritual law, the Glaphyra the narrative, and both find Christ as the hidden centre of the whole.

Isaiah and the Twelve Prophets

Cyril’s prophetic commentaries complete the corpus and share its method. The Commentary on Isaiah (PG 70:9–1450; CPG 5203) is one of the few complete patristic commentaries on Isaiah to survive, though it has never received a modern critical edition. The Commentary on the Twelve (Minor) Prophets (PG 71:9–1058; PG 72:9–364; CPG 5204) survives complete in Greek and has been translated by Robert C. Hill as Cyril of Alexandria: Commentary on the Twelve Prophets (Fathers of the Church 115–116, Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2007–08). Both are early works in Greek, and both read the prophetic text Christologically and typologically, finding in the prophets the announcement of the mystery later unveiled in the Gospel.

The Character of Cyril’s Method

Cyril’s exegesis is Alexandrian in the precise sense: it proceeds by theoria, the contemplative discernment of the spiritual sense that the literal text both veils and points toward, and its centre of gravity is unwaveringly Christological. The whole of Scripture, Old Testament and New, is for Cyril a single book about Christ; the Law and the Prophets are the shadow, the Gospel the body that casts it. This sets him in deliberate contrast to the Antiochene school — the line of Theodore of Mopsuestia and, in his own register, John Chrysostom — with its greater attention to the historical and grammatical sense and its suspicion of unrestrained allegory. The contrast is not absolute; Cyril attends to the letter and is no mere allegorist of Origen’s most speculative kind. But the governing impulse is to move from letter to mystery, from type to fulfilment.

Robert L. Wilken’s Judaism and the Early Christian Mind supplies the indispensable caution. Cyril’s exegesis cannot be read as disinterested spiritual reading: it is bound up with his theology and with his stance toward Judaism. The typological move that finds Christ hidden in the Law is, in Cyril’s hands, simultaneously a supersessionist argument — the spiritual fulfilment in Christ is set against and over the literal, “Jewish” observance of the letter, and the contemplative reading carries a polemical edge against contemporary Judaism (Wilken, Judaism and the Early Christian Mind, esp. 1–68, 93–142). To read the commentaries well is therefore to hold two things together: their genuine theological depth and contemplative power, and the entanglement of that exegesis with a theology of Israel that the modern reader must name rather than absorb.

See Also

• Against Julian — the apologetic companion to the commentaries within Cyril’s literary output
• Eucharistic Theology — the John 6 exegesis of the life-giving flesh worked out fully
• Life in Christ — the spirituality that grows from Cyril’s reading of Scripture
• Mia Physis and the Hypostatic Union — the Christology whose seeds lie in the John commentary
• St. Athanasius — the Alexandrian anti-Arian exegetical line Cyril inherits
• St. John Chrysostom — the Antiochene exegetical contrast
• Church Fathers — the patristic framework of authoritative interpretation

References

• Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of John (In Joannem), 12 books (books 7–8 lost), PG 73:9–1056 and PG 74:9–756; CPG 5208; trans. P. E. Pusey (LFC 43, 1874) and T. Randell (LFC 48, 1885).
• Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke (homilies, surviving largely in Syriac), PG 72:476–949; CPG 5207; trans. R. Payne Smith, A Commentary upon the Gospel according to S. Luke (Oxford, 1859), from the Syriac.
• Cyril of Alexandria, On Adoration and Worship in Spirit and in Truth (De adoratione et cultu in spiritu et veritate), 17 books, PG 68:133–1125; CPG 5200.
• Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch (Glaphyra in Pentateuchum), 13 books, PG 69:9–678; CPG 5201.
• Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Isaiah, PG 70:9–1450; CPG 5203.
• Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Twelve (Minor) Prophets, PG 71:9–1058 and PG 72:9–364; CPG 5204; trans. Robert C. Hill, Cyril of Alexandria: Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, Fathers of the Church 115–116 (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2007–08).
• Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus de sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate, PG 75:9–656; CPG 5215; and Dialogues on the Trinity (De sancta Trinitate dialogi), PG 75:657–1124; CPG 5216 (critical ed. SC 231/237/246).
• John A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2004).
• Norman Russell, Cyril of Alexandria (London: Routledge, 2000).
• Robert L. Wilken, Judaism and the Early Christian Mind: A Study of Cyril of Alexandria’s Exegesis and Theology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971).