Classic Review — Biblia Cum Glossa Ordinaria: Genesis

There’s a harsh but occasionally accurate stereotype about Roman Catholics that their lay people are fairly Biblically illiterate. This has never been a fair stereotype, as the Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible has been popular among English-speaking Catholics since the 17th century. At the same time, highly literate and/or wealthy Catholics could always readily access the Latin Vulgate translation. However, Roman Catholicism formed with a fundamentally different approach to Scripture than Protestantism. Its liturgical practices had no choice but to factor illiteracy into piety.

The collapse of widespread literacy after the Fall of Rome limited access to the Scriptures. St. Jerome’s Latin translation remained available but cost the modern equivalent of five figures to have transcribed. As such, Roman Catholicism rooted its practices in prayer memorization, pilgrimages, rosaries, iconography, and plays to preserve Biblical knowledge for the masses. Unfortunately, the negative stereotype has remained only because there are some lay Catholics who haven’t read the Bible. And occasionally, some fringe or dissident TradCath priests will discourage the laity from reading it lest they develop new heresies. 

Content Guide

Spiritual Content: The book is an extensive commentary on Scripture that takes the word of Scripture very seriously while working to reconcile it with Roman Catholic teachings.
Violence: Some descriptions of Biblical violence and explorations of its significance and symbolism.
Language/Crude Humor: None.
Sexual Content: Some descriptions of Biblical sexual violence.
Drug/Alcohol Use: Some descriptions of alcohol consumption.
Other Negative Themes: None
Positive Content: Challenging and thoughtful exploration of Medieval Christian teachings.

Review

In the past decade, a renewed focus has fallen upon the scriptures in Roman Catholic life. Since 2021, Minnesota’s Fr. Mike Schmitz has hosted one of the most popular podcasts in the world, The Bible in a Year. Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire ministries has also been releasing a multi-volume Bible commentary since 2020 that has sold millions of copies. Additionally, Catholic Bibles like the Didache Bible and the Ignatius Study Bible have sold well in the past decade. Other translations like the New Revised Standard Version, New American Bible, and the New Jerusalem Bible are also popular in circulation.

The Scriptures are seeing renewed interest in American Catholicism, and that is a wonderful thing. Reading the Scriptures is among the most edifying experiences of the Christian life, and discovering or understanding a new bit of scripture for the first time can open your mind in remarkable ways. In light of this, the recent translation of the Biblical Cum Glossa Ordinaria is all the more fascinating, as it marks the first time that one of the most important works of medieval Catholic Bible commentary is now available to the public.

Published by St. Paul Center in August 2023, it comes as the fruit of the ongoing Steubenville movement— the attempt to build a large presence of Traditionalist Catholics near Franciscan University in Ohio. The translation comes from the Medievalist and Texan high school teacher, Dr. Samuel J. Klumpenhouwer. 

What Is The Glossa Ordinaria?

Among medieval scholars, the Glossa Ordinaria was held as one of the most important theological documents alongside St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica and Peter Lombard’s Sentences. Unlike those volumes, though, the Ordinaria did not seemingly form as a singular project but as a project across time. Its origins likely begin in 12th century France, but different editions across time would evolve and expand as access to varying libraries and growingly esoteric material was slowly added into the commentary. (Surviving medieval editions can vary greatly in length and content.)

Any modern reader would likely recognize the Ordinaria as something similar to a study bible, with the text of Scripture placed in the middle in bold red letters and commentary bracketed on both sides of the page. This commentary isn’t merely light unpacking or life application materials but heavyweight commentary from the church fathers, borrowing from commentaries by St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Gregory the Great, St. Bede, St. Jerome, Isidore of Seville, Alcuin of York, and more. These commentaries include everything from extensive notes on Hebrew-Latin translation to entire sections of St. Augustine’s Literary Commentary On Genesis.

This variety often means the commentary is rather eclectic or contradictory. The commentary, though, isn’t meant to be fully authoritative or definitive. It allows the reader to explore the variety of ways that the early church engaged with Scripture, namely through the four senses of scripture exegesis: historical, allegorical, topological (moral), and anagogical (spiritual). As Klumpenhouwer writes, the commentary’s importance forces readers to ask questions they never would’ve considered about Scripture. It offers a deep dive into Masters-level theology by showing the depths of how the greatest minds got caught in the tensions of Scripture:

“Sometimes these conflicts are resolved decisively, but more often it is deemed salutary for the tension to remain. The conflict was valuable as an opportunity for each student to consider the issue anew and thereby come to a deeper appreciation of the underlying harmony of scripture and tradition” (5).

On The Book Of Genesis

This particular edition only compromises about 1/73rd of the full commentary, only covering the Book of Genesis. Thankfully, Klumpenhouwer has chosen a good book to translate, given its importance to ongoing Biblical debates surrounding creationism, modernism, biblical inerrancy, and the relationship of science and faith. The word “Genesis” means origin, but the Book of Genesis is about the origins of much more than man. It isn’t merely the creation story and Noah’s Ark; it is the story of God’s relationship to fallen man. Man sins repeatedly in His presence, but God continues to show man mercy and lay the inevitable path that will create Israel and result in the Incarnation of Christ.

Naturally, the church fathers similarly agonized with modern man over how to apply Genesis 1-3 to our understanding of reality, with their interpretations clashing with the Pagan and philosophical understandings of creation at their time. Some church fathers analyzed them literally and others as metaphors and mystical wisdom. St. Augustine and St. Bede’s commentaries in particular are set against each other in the Ordinaria. The question of Creation and the Fall by themselves are easily the book’s densest section, covering 50 pages of commentary. Comparatively, Noah’s Ark (3 chapters) takes up just 11 pages and Jacob/Joseph (6 chapters) takes up 25 pages.

In the leadup to this review, I prioritized my study of the Ordinaria on three chapters: Chapter 1 (Creation), Chapter 14 (Melchizedek), and Chapter 22 (the Binding of Isaac). While Genesis contains dozens of the most famous Scripture passages — the Fall of Man, Cain and Able, Noah’s Ark, the founding of Israel through Abraham, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the story of Jacob and his 12 sons moving to Egypt — these three chapters stood out as appropriately challenging stories that offered a brief view into the way the Ordinaria approaches commentary.

On Genesis 1

With the chapters on creation covering nearly a fifth of the book’s length, it’s fair to say that its commentary is a bit lopsided. That said, all of the commentators have much to say, more than I can lay out expediently. It is worth picking through some of the highlights. Chief among them is St. Augustine’s commentary on the logic and structure of creation itself, as he spends much of his text interrogating the historical implications of the order of creation. If light existed before the sun, what was it? What is the shape of heaven and the firmament? How do we understand concepts like evening and morning? What was time before the concept of a day was created? Were poisonous animals created before or after the fall?

“If this created light was corporeal, what was it like? Were the sun to go down, we could not see by it because there was yet neither moon nor stars. Perhaps the light was made in the region of heaven where the sun lies, not in such a way that it is the light of the sun, but rather something joined to the light of the sun which could not be distinguished from the sun’s light” (21).

St. Augustine’s commentary here is voluminous but not the sole approach. As Klumpenhouwer notes, this is set against St. Bede’s approach, as he argues that creation could’ve been made simultaneously rather than over six days. Other church fathers dedicate their texts to more esoteric readings. St. Gregory uses the darkness of the first day’s evening as a metaphor for temptation, saying, “Temptation conceals but does not extinguish the light of justice” (22). Isidore similarly discusses the six days of creation through a moral lens:

“Each person has within his works and an honest something like those six days after which he should hope for rest. On the first day he has the light of faith when he first believes in visible things. On account of this faith the Lord deigned to appear visibly. On the second day something like a firmament of instruction is created because he discerns between carnal and spiritual works, just like the firmament between the lower and higher waters. On the third day he prepares and directs his mind to begin the fruits of good works. For separated from the stain and waves of carnal temptations, that is, from the commotion of the sea, he governs his mind like a dry land such that he can now say; I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin” (16).

On Genesis 14

Moving along to something slimmer but no less cryptic, Ordinaria’s commentary on Melchizedek was easily one of the first places where I wanted to spend time. The figure — only mentioned in Genesis 14, Psalm 110, and Hebrews 7 — is one of the most mysterious in Scripture. He’s mentioned as the King of Salem and a priest who serves bread and wine to Abram, loyally serving “the Most High God.” His origins are somewhat cryptic, made more mysterious by the Apostles declaring him an archetypal model of the priesthood and for Christ Himself.

The Ordinaria highlights these connections between Christ and Melchizedek as a direct implication of what the priesthood would represent. Given that Melchizedek’s name translates as “King of Justice” or “King of Peace,” the implications aren’t hard to make. As St. Jerome writes:

“Melchizedek blessed Abram the circumsized and in Abram Melchizedek blessed Levi and thus Aaron from whom the priesthood later descended … As the Apostle says: Thou are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. [The church’s] ministry is not through Aaron and the sacrifice of irrational victims, but in the offering of bread and wine, namely the consecrated Body and Blood of the Lord” (109).

On Genesis 22

Lastly, let’s look at the commentary for one of the Old Testament’s most controversial moments, when God demands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Much modern commentary in this chapter has focused on its polemical value; that the Scriptures were satirizing the common practice of human sacrifice among ancient peoples as something undesirable to the Lord. The church fathers, though, tended to focus on its typological value and its connections to Christ.

Initially, St. Jerome notes the story’s symbolic proximity to the events of the Gospel, suggesting “the Hebrews say this is the mountain upon which the Temple was later built” and noting the symbolic importance of Abraham waiting three days to travel to the place of sacrifice. St. Augustine similarly notes the significance of God’s test, “for a man does not know the strength of his love unless he learns of it through experience.” Alcuin praises Abraham’s faith and trust, noting “Abraham knew with the greatest certainty that God cannot fail, and that even though the boy might be killed, the promise of God would remain safe.” As Isidore argues, though,

“Abraham leading his only son to be sacrificed signifies God the Father … Just as Abraham offered his only and beloved son as a victim to God, so God the Father handed over his only begotton Son for us. And just as Isaac carried the wood in which he was to be placed, so Christ carried the Cross which he would be nailed … Therefore, the ram caught by the horns is Christ crucified” (139).

Conclusion

These quotes are just a taste of the commentary that the Ordinaria provides. Admittedly, these lack much of the coarseness that makes the experience of reading the book so unique. It is hard to translate the book’s complexity and genius into a few paragraphs. Being engrossed in the commentaries, watching them flow across the mind as a first-time reader, is an overwhelming experience. There is so much tension between the glosses. Stringing them together into coherency in the mind is almost impossible for a first-time reader.

Whereas The Bible In A Year and the Word On Fire Bible are designed to be milk to a public starved for the gospels, the Glossa Ordinaria is red meat for theologians and those deep in the faith seeking the depths of Scripture in all of its nuances — word choice, esoteric interpretations, contradictions, and how these all point to traditional theology. It’s theology not meant for the faint of heart.

Dr. Samuel J. Klumpenhouwer’s work in bringing the Glossa Ordinaria to English-speaking readers is a wonderful gift to the world. As an edition, its typeset is beautiful and broadly mimics that of ancient manuscripts, with the biblical text in the center of the page and walled on both sides by commentary. It is a large print-heavy book that won’t fit on most normal-sized bookshelves. Then again, it isn’t just an ordinary book.