His exegesis served to tide over the difficulty for the time amongst the Hellenistic Jews, and had great influence on Origen of Alexandria and other Alexandrian Christian writers.
[1] The Targums (the most famous of which is that on the Pentateuch erroneously attributed to Onkelos, a misnomer for Aquila, according to Abrahams) were the only approach to anything like a commentary on the Bible before the time of Christ.
Tobiah ben Eliezer, a Romaniote scholar and paytan in 11th century Kastoria (Greece), wrote the Leḳaḥ Ṭov or Pesiḳta Zuṭarta, a midrashic commentary on the Pentateuch and the Five Megillot.
Abraham Ibn Ezra of Toledo (died 1168) had a good knowledge of Semitic languages and wrote learned commentaries on the Old Testament.
He had much influence, and was followed by Wessely, Jarosław, Homberg, Euchel, Friedlander, Hertz, Herxheimer, Ludwig Philippson, etc., called "Biurists", or expositors.
The modern liberal school among the Jews is represented by Salomon Munk, Samuel David Luzzato, Leopold Zunz, Geiger, Julius Fürst, etc.
The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia considers it to be founded on passages in the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul, but heavily influenced by the writings of Alexandrian Jews, especially of Philo.
Origen became the master of many great saints and scholars, one of the most celebrated being St. Gregory Thaumaturgus; he was known as the "Adamantine" on account of his incessant application to study, writing, lecturing, and works of piety.
The writers of the Antiochene School disliked the allegorical method, and sought almost exclusively the literal, primary, or historical sense of Holy Scripture.
When St. Thomas Aquinas was asked by one of his brethren whether he would not like to be the owner of Paris, so that he could dispose of it to the King of France and with the proceeds promote the good works of his order, he answered that he would prefer to be the possessor of Chrysostom's Super Matthæum.
The principal Latin commentators of this period were the Venerable Bede, Walafrid Strabo, Anselm of Laon, Hugh of Saint-Cher, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Nicholas de Lyra.
It is a brief explanation of the literal and mystical sense, based on Rabanus Maurus and other Latin writers, and was one of the most popular works during the Middle Ages, being as well known as "The Sentences" of Peter Lombard.
Anselm of Laon, professor at Paris (twelfth century), wrote the Glossa Interlinearis, so called because the explanation was inserted between the lines of the Vulgate.
Hugh of Saint-Cher (Hugo de Sancto Caro), thirteenth century), besides his pioneer Biblical concordance, composed a short commentary on the whole of the Scriptures, explaining the literal, allegorical, analogical, and moral sense of the text.
Thomas Aquinas (thirteenth century) left commentaries on Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Epistles of St. Paul, and was the author of the well-known Catena Aurea on the Gospels.
Nicholas de Lyra (thirteenth century), joined the Franciscans in 1291 and brought to the service of the Church knowledge of Hebrew and rabbinical learning.
He wrote short notes or Postillæ on the entire Bible, and set forth the literal meaning with great ability, especially of the books written in Hebrew.
A great impulse was given to exegetical studies by the Council of Vienne which decreed, in 1311, that chairs of Hebrew, Chaldean, and Arabic should be established at Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca.
Besides the major writers already mentioned the following are some of the principal exegetes, many of them Benedictines, from patristic times till the Council of Trent: The influx of Greek scholars into Italy after the fall of Constantinople, the Christian and anti-Christian Renaissance, the invention of printing, the controversial excitement caused by the rise of Protestantism, and the publication of polyglot Bibles by Cardinal Ximenes and others, gave renewed interest in the study of the Bible among Catholic scholars.
Controversy showed them the necessity of devoting more attention to the literal meaning of the text, according to the wise principle laid down by St. Thomas in the beginning of his "Summa Theologica".
Alfonso Salmeron, one of the first companions of Ignatius Loyola, and the pope's theologian at the Council of Trent, was a distinguished Hebrew scholar and voluminous commentator.
Juan Maldonato, a Spanish Jesuit, born 1584, wrote commentaries on Isaias, Baruch, Ezechiel, Daniel, Psalms, Proverbs, Canticles (Song of Solomon), and Ecclesiastes.
When Maldonato was teaching at the University of Paris the hall was filled with eager students before the lecture began, and he had frequently to speak in the open air.
Great as was the merit of the work of Maldonato, it was equalled by the commentary on the Epistles by Estius (born at Gorcum, Holland, 1542), a secular priest, and superior of the college at Douai.
For a list of Catholic publications on the Scripture, the reader may be referred to the "Revue biblique", edited by Lagrange (Jerusalem and Paris), and the "Biblische Zeitschrift', published by Herder (Freiburg im Breisgau).
Strauss rejected the authenticity and regarded the miraculous accounts in the Gospels as naive legends, the productions of the pious imaginations of the early generations of Christians.
The views of Strauss were severely criticized by the Catholics, Kuhn, Mack, Hug, and Sepp, and by the Protestants Neander, Tholuck, Ullman, Lange, Ewald, Riggenbach, Weiss, and Keim.
His principal followers were Zeller, Schwegler, Planck, Köslin, Ritsch, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, Tobler, Keim, Hosten, some of whom, however, emancipated themselves from their master.
Besides the writers already mentioned, the following wrote in a rationalistic spirit: Holtzmann, while practically admitting the authenticity of the Gospels, especially of St. Mark, explains away the miracles.
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has presented a unified reference tool to access many commentaries from different traditions in their World Wide Study Bible.