Commentary on Zechariah (Fathers of the Church 111)

A disciple of Origen, whose work on Zechariah reached only to chapter five and is no longer extant, Didymus's commentary on this apocalyptic book illustrates the typically allegorical approach to the biblical text that we associate with Alexandria. "The book of Zechariah" is "the longest and most obscure" of the Twelve
Minor Prophets, Jerome remarked. That may have been the reason why in
386 he visited the Alexandrian scholar Didymus the Blind and requested a
work on this prophet. Though long thought to be lost, the work was
rediscovered in 1941 at Tura outside Cairo along with some other
biblical commentaries. As a result we have in our possession a
commentary on Zechariah by Didymus that enjoys particular distinction as
his only complete work on a biblical book extant in Greek whose
authenticity is established, which comes to us by direct manuscript
tradition, and has been critically edited. Thus it deserves this first
appearance in English. A disciple of Origen, whose work on Zechariah
reached only to chapter five and is no longer extant, Didymus's
commentary on this apocalyptic book illustrates the typically
allegorical approach to the biblical text that we associate with
Alexandria. Even Cyril of Alexandria in the next generation will lean
rather to the historical style of commentary found in the Antiochene
scholars Theodore and Theodoret, whose works on the Twelve are also
extant and who had Didymus open before them. Didymus alone offers his
readers a wide range of spiritual meanings on the obscure verses of
"Zechariah", capitalizing on his extraordinary familiarity with Holy
Writ (despite his disability), and proceeding on a process of
interpretation-by-association, frequently invoking also etymology and
number symbolism to plumb the meaning of the text. No wonder he remarks,
"The reader who understands it is a seer"; such is the richness of the
hermeneutical offering.