Book Review: Eight Sermons on the Book of Genesis

St. John Chrysostom: Eight Sermons on the Book of Genesis edited and translated by Robert Charles Hill.

This year in my personal religious studies, I've been focusing on one book of the Bible with a book of commentaries. I've tried to vary what kind of commentary I've read and chose a mixture of Biblical books. For the letters of Paul to the Corinthians I chose a volume from a series that draws together ancient Christian writers and commentators.

Since I was aware I'd need more commentaries later in the year I kept an eye out for any one person that seemed interesting and insightful to me. John Chrysostom was such a commentator and I noticed that many of the remarks he made that I liked came from commentaries on Genesis. After some research I found a small collection of just eight homilies on Genesis. This review is in response to that collection.

This volume proved to be not quite what I was looking for. First, it turns out Chrysostom preached two different series on Genesis. This was a short eight sermon series given during lent. His other series went through the whole book and was much longer. I had seen such volumes in my search but had not been interested since those I turned up initially had a rather high price tag and even cheaper ones came in more than one volume, all with many more pages than I wanted to tackle. It would have been wiser to have chosen one of those. This series confines itself to the first three chapters of Genesis.

Chrysostom proves to a minister much like others I've encountered who seems to spend more time on other sections of the Bible or topics than the verses that his sermon is supposed to be centered on. Much of the thrust of these sermons is focused on charitable giving a worthy topic but not one that leaps to the mind when one reads the first three chapters of Genesis.

Chrysostom also reveals some of his ancient prejudices by excoriating Eve for her actions in the garden while going on to gloss over and dismiss the sins of the patriarchal fathers such as Noah. The commentator feels sure that there were no women in the audience for these sermons. He uses various clues to establish this, and he notes that with no women in the audience Chrysostom didn't have to face anyone over his remarks about Eve's deficiencies. While this maybe true it doesn't make the ancient father any more endearing for his prejudice just a bit more cowardly.

Chrysostom does also hit some interesting points that remind me very much of current themes in protestant churches today. He calls on his audience of men to go home and be able to expound the topic he has taught them in their homes. He calls on them to create a small church in the home. His target home is probably a bit larger than the one envisioned by those in the modern patriarchal movement with servants included but his ideas remind of theirs.

In all I can say I understand why Chrysostom was known as golden tongue. His sermons are clear and simple with no passages that are difficult to understand. It maybe this owes itself to Mr. Hill's translation, I'm afraid I don't know.