Introduction
INTRODUCTION
HIS IS THE FIRST of several volumes containing the series of 67 homilies composed by St John Chrysostom on the entire book of Genesis. Before the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when those editions of the homilies appeared on which our present text rests, the Genesis series had been thought to contain only 61 homilies, but fortunately the missing ones have been recovered.' This first volume, for reasons of length, contains the first seventeen homilies, bringing Chrysostom's commentary up to Gn chapter 3 verse 19, a significant enough moment but so early in his text as to suggest that, as often happens with preachers, he will have to increase his pace to treat of the whole book, which is his intention. Later volumes will complete the remaining threequarters of the series of homilies.
(2) In addition to this series of 67 homilies, there is extant another small series of 9 sermons on Genesis by Chrysostom.
The first 8 of these comment likewise (though more generally) on the early chapters of Gn, and in places the resemblance is verbatim. The ninth seems somewhat different, but because of its patriarchal material has been placed with this short series. These sermons are not translated in the present work.
I. B. De Montfaucon, whose text and introduction J. P. Migne reproduces in his 1858-60 Paris edition, debates the testimony of Photius, ninth century scholar and successor of Chrysostom in the see of Constantinople, to the number 61; the internal evidence of the present Homily 33, which acknowledges that an intermission had occurred after Holy Week till Pentecost, suggests that Photius has lost five homilies when he claims that only 27 were delivered during Lent.