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BEDE

COMMENTARIA IN SCRIPTURAS

SACRAS,

NUNC PRIMUM IN ANGLIA,

OPE CODICUM MANUSCRIPTORUM,

EDITIONUMQUE OPTIMARUM

EDIDIT J. A. GILES, LL.D.,

ECCLESIÆ ANGLICANE PRESBYTER,

ET COLL. CORP. CHR. OXON. OLIM SOCIUS.

VOL. I.

COMMENT. IN VETUS TESTAMENTUM.

LONDINI:

VENEUNT APUD WHITTAKER ET SOCIOS.

MDCCCXLIV.

PREFACE

ΤΟ

VOL. I. OF THE COMMENTARIES.

THE present Volume commences the series in which will be contained the Theological Commentaries of Venerable Bede. He who studies them with care, will be surprised at the comprehensiveness with which the author treats his subject. Originality, indeed, in the general outline, is hardly to be expected; for Bede professedly based his explanations on the Commentaries of the early Fathers; but in handling the individual parts and details, there is much of that quaintness and love of allegory which is conspicuous in all Bede's writings. These, however, are points which the reader may be left to discover for himself; nor shall we any longer detain his attention from our author, whose Commentaries on the Old Testament are contained in this and the two following volumes.

In principium Genesis, usque ad nativitatem Isaac, et ejectionem Ismaelis, libri IV.

This work, of which a portion only, under the title of Hexameron sive de sex dierum creatione, is found in the folio collections of the works, [Bas. iv. 1-26. Col. iv. 1-18.] and in the Bibliotheca Patrum, where it is ascribed to Junilius Afer, [see Dallæus de Vero Usu Pa

VOL. VII.

a

trum, Gen. 1656. p. 16, and Sixtus Sinensis Bibl. Sanc. Col. lib. iv. p. 218, c.] was first made complete by Wharton, who, in his reprint [4to, Lond. 1693] of Bede's Opera quædam Historica, first published by Ware, Dub. 1664, inserted the supplementary portion from an ancient MS. in the library of Lambeth Palace. It was about the same time published in Martene's Thesaur. Anecdot. v. 115. Smith, Baronius, and Wharton, divide the work into four books, but in some of the manuscripts it is comprised in three.

The treatise is dedicated to Acca, Bishop of Hexham, and contains an interpretation of the first twenty chapters of Genesis, and ten verses of the twenty-first. It is here reprinted from Martene's Thesaurus, which is more full than the edition of Wharton, as the editor has not been able to collate any fresh manuscripts.

De tabernaculo et vasis ejus, ac vestibus Sacerdotum,

libri III.

This is an allegorical commentary on Exodus xxiv. 12, to xxx. 21. It occurs in the folio editions of the works, [Basil. iv. 1166–1280. Col. iv. 838-916.] and is called in the catalogue of Sixtus Sinensis, lib. iv. p. 219, A. Expositio in Exodum a xxiv. capite usque ad trigesimum, de tabernaculo, &c.

The present edition is based on a collation of the Basle printed text, with four MSS., the first of which, preserved in the British Museum, [Reg. V. F. vi.] has been collated as far as the end of the first book: the second and third are manuscripts found in the public library at Boulogne sur Mer; the former of these has been collated from the words "Comedetis vetustissima veterum," near the end of the first book to the end of the second book; the latter, which is less correct, from the beginning of the third book

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