So, a little over a year ago, I started diving deeper into studying God’s word, and the things of faith in general. Since then, I’ve been slowly building a theological library, almost entirely of used books – for the most part gently used (but, sadly, not always) – that I’ve found for cheap. I’ve stumbled upon (or been led to?) some great finds.

Then last summer, in searching for a way to read some of the resources included with my old Windows 98-era Quickverse Bible study program, I discovered e-Sword.

This past December, one of e-Sword’s sister sites, which offers a limited set of commercial add-ons for e-Sword, had a “12 Days of Sales” event leading up to Christmas, and there were some pretty great deals. So the lion’s share of Christmas money ended up getting directed toward that site.

One of the resources I picked up for e-Sword is called the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. It’s quite voluminous – in print it consists of 29 hardcover volumes (at a price of around $900!). The ACCS is basically a specialized take on an already-existing 38-volume collection of writings from the early church fathers, covering the Ante-Nicene, Nicene, and Post-Nicene periods of the early church. That set features the writings of a variety of early church leaders and theologians, from Clement of Rome (fl. cl. 95) to John of Damascus (c. 645-c.749), and includes church fathers such as Origen, Hilary, Jerome, Chrysostom, Cyril, Theodore, Augustine, Chromatius, and many others. That original 38-volume collection was compiled by a theologian named Philip Schaff in the 1800s, and is in the public domain. Those 38 volumes are available as a free download for e-Sword (though, interestingly, competitor Logos Bible Software charges $99 for it).

The ACCS, published in the early 2000s, does something very cool. Using the existing writings of the church fathers, it takes their mentions of particular passages of scripture and organizes those excerpts from their writings into a commentary form. So, for example, if you’re studying the book of Acts, it lists all the comments made by the various church fathers about passages in Acts, in scriptural order. Using e-Sword, if you click on a verse in the Bible pane, the Commentary pane will show what, if anything, the church fathers had to say about that verse.

The scripture commentary in the ACCS is qualitatively different from the modern commentary resources I also picked up during the holiday sales (as well as from the commentaries I’m able to use from my old Quickverse software, and the other Windows XP commentary software I found that features Zondervan’s Expositor’s Bible Commentary series and NIV Application Commentary series). With those early church writings coming from several hundred years before the enlightenment, the ACCS isn’t in the analytical/critical style of modern commentaries. The perspective of the early church fathers hadn’t been colored by modernity, or postmodernity. It’s much more devotional in nature. While some of them occasionally veered a bit beyond the bounds of what eventually became the more formalized and refined theology that guides orthodox believers today, it’s a fascinating – and profitable – look into the theological and devotional perspectives of people who lived much closer to the time of Christ and the apostles.

Christmas season sales allowed me to get the ACCS for e-Sword at a fantastic price. And I can already tell it’s going to be a great investment.