Ambrosiaster, a commentary on St Paul's epistles, "brief in words but weighty in matter," and valuable for the criticism of the Latin text of the New Testament, was long attributed to St Ambrose.

Erasmus in 1527 threw doubt on the accuracy of this ascription, and the author is usually spoken of as Ambrosiaster or pseudo-Ambrose. Because Augustine cites part of the commentary on Romans as by "Sanctus Hilarius" it has been ascribed by various critics at different times to almost every known Hilary. Germain Morin^[1] broke new ground by suggesting in 1899 that the writer was Isaac, a converted Jew, writer of a tract on the Trinity and Incarnation, who was exiled to Spain in 378-380 and then relapsed to Judaism; but he afterwards abandoned this theory of the authorship in favour of Decimus Hilarianus Hilarius, proconsul of Africa in 377.

With this attribution Alexander Souter^[2], agrees. There is scarcely anything to be said for the possibility of Ambrose having written the book before he became a bishop, and added to it in later years, incorporating remarks of Hilary of Poitiers on Romans. The best presentation of the case for Ambrose is by P. A. Ballerini in his complete edition of that father's works.

In the book cited above Souter also discusses the authorship of the Quaestiones Veteris et Novi Testamenti, which the manuscripts ascribe to Augustine. He concludes, on very thorough philological and other grounds, that this is with one possible slight exception the work of the same "Ambrosiaster." The same conclusion had been arrived at previously by Dom Morin.

References

Notes

1. ↑ Rev. d'hist. et de litt. religieuses, tom. iv. 97 f.
2. ↑ Study of Ambrosiaster (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1905).

Bibliography

Texts

• Heinrich Joseph Vogels, Vinzenz Bulhart, and Rudolf Hanslik. 1966. Ambrosiastri qui dicitur Commentarius in Epistulas Paulinas. Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum vol. 81, pt. 1-3. Vindobonae: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky.
• Isaac Judaeus, Isacis Judaei Quae supersunt, ed. A. Hoste, CCL 9 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1957), pp. 331-48. The questions were at this time attributed to Isaac the Jew, but now to Ambrosiaster.
• also see links below

Studies

• Souter, Alexander. 1905. ''A study of Ambrosiaster''. Cambridge [Eng.]: The University Press.
• Mundle, Wilhelm. 1919. ''Die Exegese der paulinischen Briefe im Kommentar des Ambrosiaster.''
• Souter, Alexander. 1927. ''The earliest Latin commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul; a study''. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Queis, Dietrich Traugott von, and Augustine. 1972. Ambrosiaster: Quaestiones Veteris et Novi Testamenti. Quaestio 115: De fato. Basel.
• Moreschini, Claudio, and Enrico Norelli. 2005 "Ambrosiaster," in Early Christian Greek and Latin Literature: A Literary History. Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers. vol. 2, p. 296-98.
• Rockliffe, S. 2007. Ambrosiaster's Political Theology. Oxford.

External links

• The text of Ambrosiaster's ''Commentary on the Epistles of Paul,'' taken from Migne's Patrologia Latina vol 17, and attributed to Ambrose, is available here, listed one epistle at a time.
• A less readable put printable PDF version of the Migne "Commentaries" is available from Google books.
• A facsimile of Souter's 1908 edition of the Quaestiones is available from Google books.
• The text of Ambrosiaster's ''Quaestiones'', taken from Migne's Patrologia Latina vol. 35 and attributed to Augustine, is available here.
• A less readable put printable PDF version of the Migne "Quaestiones" is available from Google books.

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