Ecclesiastical writer

Professor Alexander Lopukhin

1852–1904 · 19th–20th c. · 13 works

The complete Explanatory Bible (Tolkovaya Bibliya) — Alexander Lopukhin’s verse-by-verse Russian Orthodox commentary on the whole of Scripture, in modern English and read free on Royal Archives.

Alexander Pavlovich Lopukhin (1852–1904) was a Russian Orthodox biblical scholar, theologian, and church historian, professor at the St Petersburg Theological Academy. Born into a clerical family in the Saratov province, he graduated from the Academy in 1878 and served for several years as a chaplain to the Russian embassy church in New York before returning to teach comparative theology and, later, ancient civil history at his alma mater. His American years bore fruit in a series of pioneering Russian studies of religious life in the United States — among them Religion in America, Roman Catholicism in America, Life Across the Ocean, and an account of the centenary of the Orthodox mission in North America.

A tireless populariser of biblical learning, Lopukhin founded and edited several influential periodicals and reference works. His greatest undertaking was the Explanatory Bible (Толковая Библия) — a verse-by-verse commentary on the whole of Scripture, Old and New Testament, gathering the fruit of patristic interpretation and nineteenth-century scholarship for a broad Russian readership.

Lopukhin did not live to finish the project: he reposed in 1904, and the work was completed by his collaborators and continued under his name, appearing in successive volumes through 1913. The Explanatory Bible remains one of the most widely consulted Russian Orthodox biblical commentaries and has long been in the public domain.

Sources: Azbyka.ru — Александр Павлович Лопухин