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’”).
