The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture– Part Six

Last updated on: January 26, 2016 at 1:52 am by Ben Witherington

The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture– Part Six 2016-01-18T10:53:20-05:00 Ben Witherington

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Eusebius (ca. 260-340 A.D.), is of course best known for his work Ecclesiastical History for which he came to be dubbed the ‘father of church history’. It is only in more recent decades that research has focused more on Eusebius as a Biblical commentator, and still more recently his Isaiah commentary has been unearthed, analyzed and made available (1999). It is clear enough that Eusebius is cognizant of earlier approaches to interpreting the Bible in the Christian tradition, but his teacher was taught by Origen, and so he does indeed stand in the line of the Alexandrian exegetes though he lived in Caesarea Maritima in the Holy Land, and was bishop there. He, like Origen, is concerned with various Greek translations of Isaiah, and textual variants, and he does not think that the deep meaning of the Biblical text necessarily lies right on the surface of the text. He is supercessionist and apologetic in his interpretation of Isaiah, wanting to demonstrate that it was prophesied all along that the church was to be God’s people, though he concedes that before Christ there were faithful Jews who were God’s people. While Jerome was later to accuse Eusebius of lapsing into allegory like Origen, in fact Eusebius focuses on two sorts of senses he found in the Biblical text—literal and spiritual, and sometimes they were intertwined. Childs thinks that Eusebius saw the spiritual sense as a metaphorical extension of the literal sense.
Eusebius demonstrates a clear concern to get at the literal meaning of the text, and interestingly he uses etymology for that task, not to get at a deeper spiritual meaning of the text. As a genuine scholar, Eusebius compared and contrasted four Greek versions of the Biblical text— the LXX, Theodition, Symmachus, and Aquila arguing that the latter was closest to the Hebrew text. This sort of careful scholarship was undertaken precisely because Eusebius wanted to understand the literal sense of the text. His tendency was to prefer the reading which provided the most coherent meaning. Eusebius did not see the spiritual sense of the text as a ‘second’ meaning but rather as the inner and supernatural dimension of the historical events which the text literally reported. For example, the defeat of the Babylonians by Cyrus is shown to be a historical event but the deeper meaning has to do with the defeat of idolatry and the Devil. Both OT and NT and early church events are seen to be prophesied in the Scriptures (including the Roman peace through Constantine). There is much less allegory than in Origen, but references to water and animals usually prompted allegorical reflections, in the former case about baptism or the Holy Spirit. Not surprisingly, he brings a Christian and Christological perspective to the interpretation of both testaments, and Childs avers that this is the hermeneutic that is really driving interpretation for the most part. Childs is right as well that in a sense Eusebius reflects a combination of the Alexandrian and Antiochian approaches to the text, concerned with both the spiritual and the literal meaning of the text. It is interesting as well that after Nicaea Eusebius focused more on realized than on future eschatology (there are less references to the second coming in his Isaiah and later work), seeing the no long persecuted church as the fulfillment of prophecy and the realization of the Kingdom of God on earth. We are on the road to Augustine’s City of God.
There are three works of Eusebius which reveal his approach to Isaiah, the Prophetic Selections, the Proof of the Gospel, and finally his commentary on Isaiah, written in that order, with the last being written somewhere between the time of the first and second sessions of Nicaea, so after 325. Unlike Marcion and the Gnostics, Eusebius sees the OT as fully inspired and speaking always of the Biblical God who is the Father of Jesus. The prophecies in Isaiah receive a literal fulfillment in Christ. In fact Eusebius defends the historical substance and validity of the prophecies, including those in Isaiah.
Eusebius uses the whole of Isaiah to present the Gospel, with texts being applied to everything from the virginal conception (Is. 7.14 of course), to the death and resurrection (Is. 52-53 of course), to the return of Christ and the kingdom come fully on earth (Is. 62-66). We will focus on his interpretation of Is. 7.14 for a moment. He is well aware of the Jewish rebuttal of the Christian interpretation of the text, namely that it refers to an ordinary birth of Hezekiah. He responds: 1) that the LXX translators knew what they were doing when they used parthenos which is more technical than ‘young nubile woman’ (neanis) and anyway Deut. 22.27 shows that even the latter word could mean ‘virgin’; 2) that a normal birth is hardly a ‘sign’ but Isaiah calls it that; 3) Immanuel can hardly be Hezekiah since he was already sixteen when Ahaz began to reign. Whereas Prophetic Selections works its way through Isaiah, interpreting in a Christian manner, Proof of the Gospel sets up theological categories and slots texts into them, providing proof-texts for a Biblical theology. “Eusebius chooses to concentrate on chapters 6,7,8, and 9, which he immediately sets within the context of John’s prologue in chapter 1 and he continues to weave his Isaiah texts with New Testament citations to produce a sort of ‘biblical theology’ of the Incarnation.” In other words, Eusebius is indeed ‘reading backwards’. He starts with John 12.41 which says Isaiah saw Christ glory, and says this (described in Is. 6) with the guidance of the Spirit is what led Isaiah to prophesy Christ’s birth from a virgin, and also in Is.6 the hardening of the Jews, which includes the continual opposition by Jews to the Gospel in the church age. Eusebius also sees a perfect and literal fit between Is. 35 and the ministry of Jesus in which the blind did really receive their sight, as well as a literal fit between Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem and what Is. 9 and 11 say (with help from Micah 5 and Ps. 132).
It is Eusebius, who’s commentary on Isaiah set a precedent, that established the practice of line by line commenting on a Biblical book. In interpreting Is. 2.2-4 coupled with Is. 66.18-23 Eusebius sees a prophecy of universal salvation with the nations flowing to Zion in search of the law of Christ which replaces the law of Moses. Interestingly, in his Isaiah commentary, Eusebius even suggests in his exposition on Is. 7 that some explanation must be given for why Isaiah speaks in the singular ‘you shall call his name Immanuel’ whereas Mt. 2.23 has the plural ‘they will call his name’. Eusebius takes this to mean that the prophecy originally was directed only to the house of David, whereas the plural in Matthew indicates it is now for everyone. Immanuel then becomes a foreshadowing of Jesus. The notion of double fulfillment seems to be in play here. Part of the problem here is that Eusebius seems to take Immanuel to be an actual name, rather than a title or throne name.
Eusebius interprets the stump of Is. 11 to refer to the dead end destiny of the race of David, whereas the shoot of Jesse is a reference to Jesus, humble and poor but equipped with wisdom, understanding and might to rule. Interestingly, in his treatment of Is. 35 in the Isaiah commentary he focuses less on Jesus as a healer, and instead sees the church’s baptism as the bath of regeneration transforming the land. And yet, Eusebius is apparently the first Christian writer to treat the Cyrus prophecy in Is. 44-45 at length in a historical manner (though there are scattered hints in Origen) over against Barnabas, Irenaeus and Tertullian who read ‘to Christ my Lord’ rather than ‘to Cyrus’. Eusebius repeats the legend found in Josephus Ant. 11.1-7 that Cyrus knew the prophecy of Isaiah because it was shown to him by Jews. Interestingly, Eusebius spends much time pondering the Incarnation on the basis of Isaiah, for example he joins Is. 61.1 to 60.22b and sees a reference to the two natures of Christ, one referring to ‘the Lord’ (i.e. the divine side of who he was) and the other to the recipient of the Spirit, and so he interprets Luke’s use of Is. 61 in Lk. 4.16ff. to refer to the divine anointing of Jesus by the Spirit.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

January 25, 2016

The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture-- Part Five

Next Post

January 27, 2016 The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture-- Part Seven

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2026 October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz