Hesychius Of Jerusalem

▪ Eastern Orthodox monk

died c. 450

      priest-monk, renowned in the Eastern Church as a theologian, biblical commentator, and preacher. He played a prominent role in the 5th-century controversy on the nature of Christ and was acclaimed as having annotated the whole of sacred Scripture.

      Serving as a priest in the church in Jerusalem c. 412, Hesychius gained repute as a theologian and catechist, so that by 429 he was recognized by chroniclers and the Orthodox Mēnologion (lives of the saints liturgically arranged by month) as the pre-eminent biblical interpreter and teacher of the church in Jerusalem and Palestine.

      Most of Hesychius' writings have been lost, although scholarship in the second half of the 20th century continues to identify more of his works hidden among Greek manuscripts and Latin translations. His biblical commentaries include interpretations of the Old Testament books of Leviticus, Job, Isaiah, and Ezekiel. A celebrated moralistic annotation on the Psalms that had long been attributed to the 4th-century spokesman for orthodoxy, Athanasius of Alexandria, is now acknowledged as Hesychius'. Some earlier commentaries, of probable authenticity, contain germinal terminology of the heterodox Nestorians.

      As a biblical exegete, Hesychius generally followed the allegorical method of the 3rd-century Christian theologian Origen of Alexandria. Hesychius' preoccupation with symbolism led him to deny that a literal meaning could be found for every sentence in the Scriptures. In order to avoid heretical interpretations of Scripture, he rejected such philosophical terms as person, essence, or substance to express doctrine on the nature of Christ. On this point he allowed only the term logos sarkotheis (“the word made flesh”), a biblical concept. Against the diminution of Christ's divinity by Arius and his Antiochene followers, he veered toward the view of the Monophysites.

      Credited with the earliest known liturgical addresses on the Virgin Mary, Hesychius also wrote a church history after 428 that controverted Nestorianism and other heretical beliefs. This text was incorporated into the proceedings of the second Council of Constantinople in 553. The works of Hesychius were published in the series Patrologia Graeca, J.-P. Migne (ed.), vol. 27, 55, and 93 (1866).

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