Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture

The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS) is a twenty-nine volume set of commentaries on the Bible published by InterVarsity Press. The ACCS is a confessionally collaborative project as individual editors have included scholars from Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism as well as Jewish participation. Notable scholars who contributed to the series’ publication include Andrew Louth, Peter W. Ochs, Benedicta Ward, Frances Young, Christopher A. Hall, Gerald L. Bray, and Manlio Simonetti. The ACCS was first conceived of in 1993 and inspired by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. The Methodist scholar Thomas C. Oden, one of the leading paleo-orthodox theologians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, serves as the overall ACCS series editor and the ACCS uses the ecumenically-minded Revised Standard Version of the Bible for its biblical translation. The ACCS covers both the Old Testament and the New Testament, including portions of the deuterocanonical writings which have varying degrees of acceptance among Christian traditions. Its format is such that some volumes contain only a portion of one biblical book (for instance, the ACCS commentary on Genesis is divided between Genesis 1-11 and Genesis 12-50) while other volumes of the ACCS contain multiple biblical books (for instance, Old Testament IV covers Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and 1-2 Samuel). The ACCS was modelled after the Talmud, with Oden explaining that “We are trying to do for the Christian community what the Talmud was seeking to do for the Jewish liturgical memory.” The ACCS’ editorial team employed the latest in digital technology, including Boolean searches, to track down Greek and Latin sources for texts, including many which had not yet been translated into English. The ACCS editors also made use of The Fathers of the Church (85 volumes) and the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (38 volumes), drawing from the church fathers’ various writings, sermons, poetry, and letters. Oden explains that from the array of texts available, editors were “encouraged.