Thursday, December 9, 2021

Bogdan G. Bucer (Eastern Orthodox) on "The Theological Value of Exegetical Ambiguity"

The following is taken from Bogdan Gabriel. Bucer, "The Son of Man and Ancient of Days: Re-Envisioning Daniel 7," in Bucer, Scripture Re-Envisioned: Christophanic Exegesis and the Making of a Christian Bible (The Bible in Ancient Christianity 13; Leiden: Brill, 2019), 228-29:

 

The Theological Value of Exegetical Ambiguity

 

The history of interpretation also knows another way of using Daniel 7. A number of early Christian writers are not interested in determining which trinitarian hypostasis is represented by “the Ancient of Days” and prefer to see in this phrase a reference to divine eternity. Sometimes the same writer can show a certain ambiguity. Theodoret of Cyrus, for instance, explains that “the phrase ‘Ancient of Days’ conveys God’s eternity,” the white hair and resplendent clothing his “innocence and holiness, righteousness, providence, care, judgment,” and the river of fire and the myriads of angels God’s “power”; [55]. yet, he also adds that a christological application of the enthroned Ancient of Days “would not be out of place.” [56]

 

Perhaps the most relevant example is found in the annotated Ps.-Areopagitic Corpus. The anonymous fifth-century monk, possibly a bishop, well-versed in Neoplatonic philosophy but also in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature, offers an interpretation of the “Ancient of Days” as a general reference to God’s being eternal and the origin of all time and eternity. [57] Nevertheless, his mid-sixth century scholiast, the learned bishop John of Scythopolis, chooses to steer Dionysius’ theological reflection towards a christological interpretation of the Ancient of Days. [58]

 

Notes for the Above:

 

[55] Theodoret of Cyrus, Comm Dan. 7 (Greek text and English translation in Robert C. Hill, Theodoret of Cyrus: Commentary on Daniel [Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2006], 186/187).

 

[56] Theodoret of Cyrus, Comm Dan. 7 (Hill, 188/189): “if … you think there is a reference to the Lord’s promise to the apostles, ‘Twelve thrones will be placed, and you will take your seat and judge the twelve tribes of Israel’ [cf. Mat 19:28], it would not be out of place, the promise of the reality being reliable.” The enthroned figure, then, can signify Christ as eschatological judge: “This is what blessed Daniel clearly taught us, prophesying the second coming of the Savior, clearly calling him Son of Man on account of the nature he had assumed, coming on the clouds in keeping with his own promise to bring out his authority and receiving as man honor and rule and kingship from the Ancient of Days” (190/191).

 

[57] Ps-Dionysius the Areopagite, DN 10.2–3 (PTS 33:215–217; trans. Colm-Luibheid, 120): “They call him Ancient of Days because he is the eternity and time of everything, and because he precedes days and eternity and time…. The two names, ‘Ancient’ and ‘New,’ reveal that he goes forth from the beginning of the world through all things until the very end. Each name, as my divine sacred-initiator says, conveys the notion of the primacy of God’s being, Ancient signifying that he is first from the point of view of time, Young signifying that he is primary in the context of number, since the first one and those near it have primacy over the more advanced numbers…. One can take eternity and time to be predicates of God since, being the Ancient of Days, he is the cause of all time and eternity. Yet he is before time and beyond time and is the source of the variety of time and of seasons. Or, again, he precedes the eternal ages, for he is there before eternity and above eternity, and ‘his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.’ Amen.”

 

[58] Scholion to DN 10 (PG 4:385A; trans. in Paul Rorem and John C. Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus: Annotating the Areopagite [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998], 237): “‘Omnipotent’ and ‘Ancient of Days’: God appeared to Daniel as a hoary old man with a head white like wool, for which reason he is called the Ancient of Days. He is younger than a hoary old man when as a man he appeared to Abraham with the angels (Gen 18:1–8), and as a youth (cf. Mark 16:5).” Since Daniel 7 is here associated with a christological reading of Genesis 18 (a strand of interpretation current for some five centuries before being gradually replaced by a trinitarian one), one may assume that the scholiast reads Daniel 7 in the same way—that is, identifying the Ancient of Days with Christ. As a matter of fact, the next scholion (not by John of Scythopolis, possibly by Maximus) comments Ps-Dionysius’ phrase “ancient and new” by simply quoting Heb 13:8 (“Jesus Christ yesterday and today and to the ages” and adding “for ‘today’ is newer than ‘yesterday’”).