Methodius of Olympus — Commentary on Scripture

Habakkuk 2:20

“When the time is come, you shall be shown forth.” What exposition does this require, if a person diligently direct the eye of the mind to the festival which we are now celebrating? “For then shall you be shown forth,” he says, “as upon a kingly charger, by your pure and chaste mother, in the temple, and that in the grace and beauty of the flesh assumed by you.” All these things the prophet, summing up for the sake of greater clearness, exclaims in brief: “The Lord is in his holy temple.” “Fear before him all the earth.”

ORATION CONCERNING SIMEON AND ANNA 4

Hebrews 1:1

But since there are of arguments myriads of currents and ways, God inspiring us "at sundry times and in divers manners"

Methodius Discourse III. Thaleia

Hebrews 1:3

Of the most beautiful flower; the mother of the Creator; the nurse of the Nourisher; the circumference of Him who embraces all things; the upholder of Him

Hebrews 2:16

That Lord, I say, who in His simple and immaterial Deity, entered our nature, and of the virgin's womb became ineffably incarnate; that Lord, who was partaker of nothing else save the lump of Adam, who was by the serpent tripped up. For the Lord laid not hold of the seed of angels

Methodius Oration Concerning Simeon and Anna

Hebrews 4:14

For I also, taking my journey, and going forth from the Egypt of this life, came first to the resurrection, which is the true Feast of the Tabernacles, and there having set up my tabernacle, adorned with the fruits of virtue, on the first day of the resurrection, which is the day of judgment, celebrate with Christ the millennium of rest, which is called the seventh day, even the true Sabbath. Then again from thence I, a follower of Jesus, "who hath entered into the heavens"

Methodius Discourse IX. Tusiane

Hebrews 9:4

The pledge and earnest of a perpetual priesthood, furnished no contemptible symbol of thy supernatural child-bearing.
On thy account, and the undefiled Incarnation of God, the Word, which by thee had place for the sake of that flesh which immutably and indivisibly remains with Him for ever.

Methodius Oration Concerning Simeon and Anna

Hebrews 10:1

If the law, according to the apostle, is spiritual, containing the images "of future good things"

Methodius Discourse V. Thallousa

Hebrews 10:32

Is the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete, of whom the illuminated

Hebrews 11:10

And the Jews declared that the shadow of the image (of the heavenly things which was afforded to them), was the third from the reality; but we clearly behold the image of the heavenly order; for the truth will be accurately made manifest after the resurrection, when we shall see the heavenly tabernacle (the city in heaven "whose builder and maker is God"

Methodius Discourse V. Thallousa

Hebrews 11:23

For consider what confidence Seth had towards God, and Abel, and Enos, and Enoch, and Methuselah, and Noah, the first lovers of righteousness, and the first of the first-born children who are written in heaven,

Methodius Discourse VII. Procilla

Hebrews 12:15

For the present we restrain its sprouts, such as evil imaginations, "test any root of bitterness springing up trouble"

Methodius From the Discourse on the Resurrection

Isaiah 44:4

For everywhere the divine writings take the willow as the type of chastity, because when its flower is steeped in water, if it is drunk, it extinguishes whatever kindles sensual desires and passions within us, until it renders completely barren and makes every inclination to the begetting of children without effect, as also Homer indicated, for this reason calling the willows destructive of fruit.… For as it is the nature of this tree to bud and grow to maturity when enriched by words, so it is the nature of virginity to blossom and grow to maturity when enriched by words, so that one can hang one's body on it.If, then, the rivers of Babylon are the streams of voluptuousness, as wise people say, which confuse and disturb the soul, then the willows must be chastity, to which we may suspend and draw up the organs of lust that overbalance and weigh down the mind, so that they may not be borne down by the torrents of incontinence and be drawn like worms to impurity and corruption.

SYMPOSIUM OR BANQUET OF THE TEN VIRGINS 4:3-4

Isaiah 45:18

For in reality God did not establish the universe in vain or to no purpose but destruction, as those weak-minded people say, but to exist and be inhabited and continue. Therefore the earth and the heaven must exist again after the conflagration and shaking of all things.

ON THE RESURRECTION 1:8

Isaiah 51:6

But if our opponents say, How then is it, if the universe is not destroyed, that the Lord says that “heaven and earth shall pass away,” and the prophet, that “the heaven shall perish as smoke” and “the earth shall grow old as a garment”; we answer, because it is usual for the Scriptures to call the change of the world from its present condition to a better and more glorious one destruction, as its earlier form is lost in the change of all things to a state of greater splendor, for there is neither contradiction nor absurdity in the Scriptures. For not “the world” but “the fashion of this world” passes away, it is said. So it is usual for the Scriptures to call the change from an earlier form to a better and more comely state “destruction”; just as when one calls by the name of “destruction” the change from a childish form into a perfect adult, as the stature of the child is turned into mature size and beauty.

ON THE RESURRECTION 1:9

Isaiah 52:2

The creation, then, after being restored to a better and more fitting state, remains, rejoicing and exulting over the children of God at the resurrection. For their sake the creation now groans and travails, waiting itself also for our redemption from the corruption of the body, that, when we have risen and shaken off the mortality of the flesh, according to that which is written, “shake off the dust, and arise and sit down, O Jerusalem,” and have been set free from sin, it also shall be freed from corruption and be subject no longer to vanity but to righteousness.

ON THE RESURRECTION 1:8

Isaiah 60:1

Hail and shine, thou Jerusalem, for thy light is come, the Light eternal, the Light forever enduring, the Light supreme, the Light immaterial, the Light of same substance with God and the Father, the Light that is in the Spirit, and that is the Father; the Light that illumines the ages; the Light that gives light to mundane and supramundane things, Christ our very God.

ORATION CONCERNING SIMEON AND ANNA 13

Isaiah 60:3

It is the church whose children shall come to it with all speed after the resurrection, running to it from all quarters. [The church] rejoices, receiving the light that never goes down and clothed with the brightness of the Word as with a robe. For with what other more precious or honorable ornament was it becoming that the queen should be adorned, to be led as a bride to the Lord, when she had received a garment of light and therefore was called by the Father? Come then, let us go forward in our discourse and look on this marvelous woman as on virgins prepared for a marriage, pure and undefiled, perfect and radiating a permanent beauty, lacking nothing of the brightness of light; and instead of a dress, clothed with light itself; and instead of precious stones, her head adorned with shining stars.

SYMPOSIUM OR BANQUET OF THE TEN VIRGINS 8:5

Isaiah 66:7

“Before she was in labor, she gave birth; before her pains came, she escaped and delivered a male child.” Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? The most holy virgin mother, therefore, escaped entirely the manner of women even before she gave birth, doubtless in order that with the Holy Spirit betrothing her to himself and sanctifying her, she might conceive without intercourse with man. She has brought forth her firstborn Son, even the only-begotten Son of God … who on earth, in the Virgin’s nuptial chamber, joined to himself the nature of Adam, like a bridegroom, by an inalienable union, and he preserved his mother’s purity incorrupt and uninjured; him in short who in heaven was begotten without corruption and on earth birthed in a manner quite unspeakable.

ORATION CONCERNING SIMEON AND ANNA 3

Jeremiah 1:5

So, if God still forms human beings, shall we not be guilty of audacity if we think of the generation of children as something offensive when even the Almighty is not ashamed to make use of them in working with his undefiled hands.

BANQUET OF THE TEN VIRGINS 2:2

Jeremiah 18:3-6

The prophet Jeremiah addresses the Jews in these words: “And I went down to the potter’s house. Behold, he made a work on the stones. The vessel that he made in his hands was broken. Again he made another vessel, as it pleased him to make it. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Cannot I do to you as this potter, O house of Israel? Behold, you are like the clay of the potter in my hands.’ ” For I call your attention to this, that, as I said, after human transgression the great Hand was not content to leave as a trophy of victory its own work, debased by the evil one, who wickedly injured it from motives of envy, but moistened and reduced it to clay, as a potter breaks up a vessel, that by the remodeling of it all the blemishes and bruises in it may disappear, and it may be made afresh faultless and pleasing.

ON THE RESURRECTION 1:6-7