Homilies on the Gospel of St. John and the Epistle to the Hebrews

NPNF (V1-14)St. ChrysostomixTHE HOMILIES OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOMARCHBISHOP OF CONSTANTINOPLE,ON THEGOSPEL OF ST. JOHNThe Oxford Translation Edited, with Additional Notes, byREV. PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D.xiPreface to the <strong>Homilies</strong> on the Gospel of St. John.————————————The Benedictine editor has already noticed the principal points in which these <strong>Homilies</strong> differfrom others in which St. Chrysostom comments upon Holy Scripture. They are far more controversialthan is usual with him, and the part devoted to moral exhortation is shorter. This may be partlyowing to the number of passages in St. John which bear on the doctrine of our Lord’s Person andHis Divine and Human Natures. But it seems further that they were delivered to a select audienceat an early hour of the day. For toward the latter part of Hom. XXXI. he contrasts the coolness ofthe morning, in which they were assembled, with the mid-day heat, in which the woman of Samarialistened to our Lord. And the character of the instruction given almost unquestionably marks thehearers as having been less miscellaneous, and less liable to be supposed wanting in points ofcommon duty, than those whom he generally addressed.They do not give their own date, but are referred to by the Author, while still at Antioch, asalready published, in Hom. VII. on 1 Cor. ii. 8. “However, the manner of this way of knowledgeand of that hath already been declared in the Gospel; and, not to be continually handling the sametopic, thither do we refer our readers.” The place is St. John viii. 19 treated in Hom. XLIX.And since the three first years after St. Chrysostom was ordained Priest, A.D. 386–8, seemcompletely filled up, and the <strong>Homilies</strong> in St. Matthew were probably prior to these, it is most likelythat they were not begun before A.D. 390, while those on some of the Epistles of St. Paul seem tohave come after them, and still before the year 398, in which he was removed to Constantinople.6