Adam Cooper: Drawing Water without a Bucket: Maximus the Confessor’s Scholion on Thal. 41.

Following its original publication, the Responses of Maximus to the priest Thalassius were issued in a second edition, to which Maximus appended a dedicated prologue and an extensive set of footnoted clarifications. In the traditional reception history of the Responses, these footnotes or scholia were regarded as intrinsic to the integrity of the whole work. In this brief clarification of the meaning of ‘Jacob’s Well’ in John 4:6, Maximus presents Scripture as an infinite fountain of divine knowledge. Its wisdom cannot be contained by any ‘bucket’, that is, exegetical study and learning, but overflows to the faithful reader through a gratuitous saturation in which reason stands suspended in the trans-rational experience of God.