Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament

Archbishop Averky approaches the New Testament first and foremost not as a literary work of antiquity, but as the revelation of Jesus Christ as God in the flesh. Writing in the tradition of biblical exegetes, he provides a commentary that is firmly grounded in the teaching of the Church, manifested in its liturgical hymnography and the works of the Holy Fathers. Analyzing all four Gospels chronologically and simultaneously, he allows readers to see the life of Christ as an unfolding narrative in accessible, direct language. Archbishop Averky's commentaries on the New Testament have become standard textbooks in Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary and have been published in Russia to widespread acclaim. This present collection makes the complete commentary available in one collection for the first time. It is an indispensable addition to the library of every student of Holy Scripture.

“Archbishop Averky was one of the last giants of 20th-century Orthodoxy . . . . [He] was an Orthodox scholar in the unbroken tradition of patristic thought which has come down to us from the ancient Fathers to our own days.”  —Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose), author, The Orthodox Word

Archbishop Averky (Taushev) (1906–1976) was born in Imperial Russia. After the Russian Revolution he taught and served in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Germany before being assigned in 1951 to teach at the Holy Trinity Seminary in New York. Nicholas Kotar is a freelance translator from Russian into English, and a conductor of Russian sacred choral music. Dr. Vitaly Permiakov holds a Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Notre Dame.