Hippolytus, for instance, who in
his Commentary on Daniel clearly identifies the Son of Man as the Logos
as the Ancient of Days as the Father, holds a different view in Contra
Noetum:
Surely, he [Noetus] is not going
to say that he was flesh while still in heaven? . . . But there was no flesh
prior to this [Incarnation] in heaven. Who then, was he in heaven but the
fleshless Word (Λογος ασαρκος)? . . . He was talking to himself the name which
is common among men and understood by them; and this—'the Son of man'—he was
called from the beginning with a view to the future, even though he was not yet
a man. Just as Daniel attests when he says, 'I looked, and behold! on the
clouds of heaven there was one coming like a Son of man' . . . And he is
scorned by Herod—he who is the future judge of all the earth; and he is flogged
by Pilate—he who took upon himself our infirmities; and he is made the sport of
soldiers—he at whose side stand a thousand thousands and then thousand times
ten thousand angels and archangels; and by the Jews he is fixed to the wood—he
who fixed the heaven like a vault . . . This is Jesus the Nazarene . . . For
his sake the sun is darkened, the day has no light, the rocks are rent, the
veil is torn apart, the foundations of the earth are shaken, tombs are opened,
and the dead are raised up, and the chief powers deeply shamed. For on the
Cross they beheld him who sets the universe upon in order, and when creation
saw that he had given up the Spirit, it was deep disturbed, and in its
inability to take in his superabounding glory, it grew dark. (Hippolytus of
Rome Contra Noetum 4.10–13; 18.3, 7–8. Greek text and English
translation in Robert Butterworth, Hippolytus of Rome, Contra Noetum
(London: Heythrop, 1977), 52–55, 86–91)
Hippolytus explains first
(4.10-13) that the Danielic Son of Man represents the "fleshless
Logos" who was to become a man. This does not, however, imply that Ancient
of Days stands for the Father, since Hippolytus later (18.3), in a passage of
unmistakeable hymnic ring (32), ascribes the imagery of the Ancient of Days
attended by thousands of angels and myriads of archangels, to the enfleshed
Logos, Jesus Christ. (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], 218-20)
