Research Catalog

Title

Commentary on Revelation / Bede ; translated with an introduction and notes by Faith Wallis.

Author

Bede, the Venerable, Saint, 673-735

Publication

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2013.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Wallis, Faith

Description

xv, 343 pages; 22 cm.

Summary

The Commentary on Revelation is Bede's first venture into Biblical exegesis - an ambitious choice for a young monastic scholar in a newly Christianized land. Its subject matter - the climax of the great story of creation and redemption, of history and of time itself - adds to the Commentary's intrinsic importance, for these themes lie at the heart of Bede's concerns and of his achievement as a historian, exegete, scholar, and preacher. But Bede was also a man of his age. When he penned the Commentary around 703, speculation and anxiety about the end of the world was in the air. According to conventional chronology, almost 6,000 years had passed since creation. If for God 'one day...is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day' (2 Peter 3:8), the world was destined to last six millennia, corresponding to the six days of creation. The end, then, was close. Bede vigorously opposed the temptation to calculate the time of the end. The Commentary argues that Revelation is not a literal prophecy, but a symbolic reflection on the perennial struggle of the Church in this world. At the same time, the young Bede is starting to shape his own account of how the end-times would unfold. This translation, prefaced by a substantial Introduction, will be of interest to students of medieval religious and cultural history, of Anglo-Saxon England, and of the history of Biblical exegesis in the Middle Ages."--Book Jacket.

Series Statement

Translated texts for historians ; volume 58

Uniform Title

• Expositio Apocalypseos. English
• Translated texts for historians ; v. 58.

Alternative Title

• Bede, Commentary on Revelation
• Expositio Apocalypseos.

Subject

• Bede, the Venerable, Saint, 673-735
• Bible. > Early works to 1800

Genre/Form

• Commentaries.
• Early works.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 292-308) and indexes.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

• 9781846318443 (hbk.)
• 1846318440 (hbk.)
• 1846318459 (pbk.)
• 9781846318450 (pbk.)

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library