Irish activity in biblical studies can properly be said to have begun with St. Patrick in the fifth century. The saint’s writings rely heavily on scripture, particularly the Epistles of Paul, which Patrick cites effectively to illustrate his own situation as an exile. Apart from Patrick’s writings, the fifth century remains dark, and there is very little literary evidence for most of the sixth. However, towards the beginning of the seventh century, signs reveal that the intensive study of the Bible had been in progress in Ireland for some time. The Old Irish poem Amra Choluimb Chille, believed by many to be an early-seventh-century work, credits St. Columba (Colum Cille, d. 597) not only with regular reading of scripture, but also with editing a copy of the Psalms. Also associated with Columba is the Cathach (Battler), a manuscript of the Psalms which, according to legend, was carried by the saint even into battle. This manuscript survives as "Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, s.n.," assigned variously to the late sixth or early seventh century. Jonas of Bobbio (seventh century) records that St. Columbanus (d. 615) wrote a commentary on the Psalms in his youth. This work, unfortunately, has not been recovered.
The period from the seventh to the ninth century marks the high point of Irish medieval biblical studies, encompassing not only the copying and glossing of biblical books, but also the writing of scriptural commentaries and at least one work of theology devoted to the Bible. Irish gospel books of the seventh century include the Codex Usserianus Primus (Dublin, Trinity College, MS 55 [A.4.15]), which contains an Old Latin text, and the Book of Durrow, which has a Vulgate text. Of somewhat later date (seventh- and eighth-century) are the Book of Mulling, the Book of Dimma, and Codex Usserianus Secundus (The Garland of Howth). The Irish had a predilection for gospel books, as shown by such famous later productions as the mac Regol (Rushworth) Gospels and the Book of Kells. Only the ninth-century Book of Armagh contains a complete New Testament. Apart from psalters, surviving copies of Old Testament books are rare, though countless citations from it prove that it was very well known.
The great gloss collections belong to the eighth and ninth centuries, though the survival of ancient forms of Irish words shows that glossing in the vernacular began very early. The two most famous collections are the Wurzburg glosses on the Epistles of Paul: in Wurzburg, Universitatsbibliothek, MS M.p.th.f.12 (dated to the end of the eighth century or beginning of the ninth); and the Milan glosses on the Psalms (in Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, C. 301 inf., saec. VIII/IX, and Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale. F. IV 1 fasc. 5-6, saec. VIII/IX). The Wurzburg glosses are in Latin and Irish, and belong to different periods, but taken together they reveal the range of Irish knowledge of patristic biblical commentaries. Pelagius is more heavily cited (though not all attributions are correct) than any other authority, but numerous other fathers are quoted or referred to as well: Origen (in Rufinus’s translation), Hilary in the so-called Ambrosiaster commentary, Pseudo-Primasius (Pelagius in the edition of Cassiodorus), Jerome, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Isidore.
The Milan gloss collection is based upon a Latin version of the Commentary on the Psalms (in Greek) by Theodore of Mopsuestia, who was branded as a heretic in the "Three Chapters Controversy." This commentary has been wrongly identified with the lost commentary on the Psalms by Columbanus. The fact that the commentary survives in two early Irish manuscripts in Irish hands is of considerable interest for the Irish role in the preservation of patristic texts, particularly texts of questionable orthodoxy. However, Theodore’s Antiochene exegesis, though known and used in Ireland, never gained advantage over allegory.
While it is true that Irish scholars were intensely engaged in the study of the scriptures, they seem to have been more interested in preserving patristic authorities in florilegia or epitomes than in creating original commentaries themselves. Laidcenn of Clonfert-Mulloe in the seventh century wrote an epitome of Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Iob (Ethics in Job). Sedulius Scottus in the ninth century compiled two florilegia on biblical texts: one on the epistles of Paul (using primarily Pelagius and Jerome), another on Matthew. The so-called Bibelwerk (c. 800) is also in the format of a florilegium. An exception is John Scottus Eriugena, who wrote a truly original commentary on the Gospel of John (as well as a famous homily on the same subject). Another original commentary, assuming it to be Irish and of the seventh century, is of contested authorship. This is the commentary on Mark which has been attributed to a certain Cummean. The work raises a number of theological and ecclesiological questions that were of interest to the Irish in the seventh century: the role of grace versus free will, the idea of a "first grace" (baptism) and a "second grace or mercy" (forgiveness through penance), and the inverse formula of the Eucharist (i.e., Christ’s transfiguring himself into bread and wine, as opposed to a change of substance). The commentary on Mark stands out both for its theological interest and the fact that it is a line-by-line exegesis of a biblical text in the tradition of Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory.
Arguably the most interesting and challenging of all early Irish scriptural works of scholarship is the De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae (On the Miracles of Holy Scripture), composed in Ireland in 655 (as dated by a computistical formula). The author refers to himself as Augustine and claims to be addressing the monks of Carthage. The work addresses the question of miracles as presented in both Testaments as related to the scriptural claim that God rested after creation. "Augustine" ingeniously explains that there is a distinction between the "opus," which God perfected, and "labor," from which he need not cease. Nor does God’s labor interfere with nature. For example, when Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, God did not distort nature, for salt was already present in the human body (in the form of tears, for example). In his preface, "Augustine" pointedly attacks allegorical exegesis and states his preference for the letter of scripture.
Curiously, Pseudo-Augustine’s work made only limited use of the real Augustine. The author shows a general familiarity with the great bishop’s ideas, but rarely cites him verbatim. Such neglect of Augustinian texts is exhibited in other Irish works and compilations prior to the ninth century. The favored authorities of Irish exegesis were Jerome, Pelagius, Gregory the Great, and Isidore. In the earliest period (the time of Columba and Columbanus), the British saints Gildas and Uinniau were treated with special reverence (though more for their pronouncements on the monastic life than for scriptural exegesis).
The use of the Irish vernacular in scriptural scholarship is at least as old as the eighth century, and probably older. Not only is it prominent in the two great gloss collections mentioned above, it was also employed in what might be called "free-standing" works: the "Old Irish Treatise on the Psalter" (c. 800?) and the macaronic "Lambeth Commentary on the Beatitudes" (eighth century?). Irish was also employed by John Scottus Eriugena in his scholia to different books of the Old and New Testaments. The vernacular held a virtual monopoly in Ireland in the tenth and eleventh centuries, when Latin scholarship was in sharp decline. It was the language of numerous new works that found their inspiration as often in biblical apocrypha as in the canonical scriptures. In the ninth century, the Irish on the Continent were noted for their ability to employ Greek in scriptural study. This is shown especially in three manuscripts in Irish hands from the mid-ninth century that contain word-by-word interlinear Latin translations of the Greek texts: St. Gall 48 (Gospels), the Basel Psalter, and the Dresden Pauline Epistles (destroyed in World War II).
Much recent discussion of Irish biblical scholarship has centered on an article by Bernhard Bischoff that attributed a significant number of writings about the scriptures (some commentaries, others not) to Irish scholars active in the early Middle Ages. Bischoff assembled a set of criteria, consisting mostly of verbal formulae and the use of particular writers (especially Pelagius and Virgilius Maro Grammaticus) as indicators of Irish provenance. The validity of these criteria was much debated during the latter half of the twentieth century. However, when such Merkmale can be combined with other types of evidence, such as the use of scriptural lemmas of the Irish type, "Hibernian" spellings, or misreadings of established Irish manuscript abbreviations, they gain in validity.
