Monday, January 17, 2022

Gretchen Kraehling on Hippolytus's Commentary on Daniel and the Identity of the Ancient of Days

  

Hippolytus, Fragmenta in Danielem (PG 10:684)

 

One of the earliest commentaries on the Book of Daniel is by Hippolytus (ca. 170–ca. 236), who discusses the identities of both the Ancient of Days and a figure named “One Like the Son of Man,” who appears in Dan 7.13–14. Two separate editions of this text by Hippolytus exist, and each offers a different identification of the Ancient of Days. The Greek text provided by Migne states that the Ancient of Days was a revelation of “the Lord and God and Master of All, [who is] Christ himself" (PG 10:684). However, Migne’s text was based on an edition by Mai, who did not

consult all of the extant manuscripts of Hippolytus’ Daniel commentary (A. Mai, Scriptorum veterum nova collectio, I.2 (Rome: n.p., 1825), 166–221. Important among his omissions were the manuscripts in the Vatican). As a result, the word “πατηρ” (“Father”) is missing from Migne’s text. This omission makes it seem that Hippolytus identified the Ancient of Days as Christ.

 

In a later edition of Hippolytus’ commentary, Bonwetsch corrected Mai’s errors and provided an emendation based on all the extant copies of Hippolytus’ work. In Bonwetsch’s edition, Hippolytus writes that the Ancient of Days “is, for Daniel, nothing more than the Lord, God and Master of All, the Father of Christ himself.”6 Hippolytus also comments on the meaning of the name “Ancient of Days” by explaining that it refers to one who makes the days old, one who is the creator of time but is not made old by the passage of time. This idea, first expressed by Hippolytus, so far as we know, will be echoed by several other writers. (Gretchen Kraehling, "The Eastern Christian Exegetical Tradition of Daniel's Vision of the Ancient of Days," Journal of Early Christian Studies 7, no. 1 [Spring 1999]: 140-41)