Jesus Christ as True God in 1 John 5:20

1. Introduction
2. Syntactical Considerations
3. Contextual Considerations
 3.1. The True God in Scripture
 3.2. Jesus as "true," "life," and "God" in Johannine Literature
 3.3. The Unity of Father and Son in Johannine Literature
4. Conclusion

1. Introduction 

20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. 21 Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

So reads 1 John 5:20-21 (NRSV). The final sentence of v. 20, however, immediately raises a question in the reader's mind: who is the true God and eternal life? The answer to this question is disputed among New Testament scholars. However, the majority view is that this statement is about Jesus. As Hills explains,

Considerations of grammar suggest that the οὗτος in 5:20f refers back to its immediate antecedent, i.e., to "Jesus Christ" in v 20e, and on this and other grounds the majority of modern scholars with more or less confidence holds that the statement "this is the true God and eternal life" is a christological affirmation.¹

What are the considerations that lead most scholars to conclude that this statement is about Jesus? In this article we will look at the syntax of the verse and situate it against the broader context of 1 John and the other Johannine literature.

2. Syntactical Considerations

In Greek, following the NA28 critical text, 1 John 5:20 reads (with clause f in bold, and transliteration beneath),

οἴδαμεν δὲ ὅτι ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ἥκει καὶ δέδωκεν ἡμῖν διάνοιαν, ἵνα γινώσκωμεν τὸν ἀληθινόν, καὶ ἐσμὲν ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς θεὸς καὶ ζωὴ αἰώνιος. 

oidamen de hoti ho huios tou theou hēkei kai dedōken hēmin dianoian, hina ginōskōmen ton alēthinon, kai esmen en tō alēthinō, en tō huiō autou Iēsou Christō. houtos estin ho alēthinos theos kai zōē aiōnios.

The one significant textual variant is in 1 John 5:20c, where some manuscripts read hina ginōskōmen ton alēthinon theon ("so that we may know the true God" instead of "so that we may know the true one").

The question we seek to answer in this article boils down to identifying the referent of οὗτός (houtos). This is the proximal demonstrative pronoun, equivalent to "this" in English. It can be contrasted with ἐκεῖνος (ekeinos), the distal demonstrative pronoun, equivalent to "that" in English. "This" (like οὗτός) points out something proximal (close to the speaker), while "that" (like ἐκεῖνος) points out something distal (away from the speaker).

Greek demonstrative pronouns contain more information than English ones. οὗτός has a case (nominative) and gender (masculine) that provide clues to its meaning. The nominative case indicates that οὗτός is the subject of the sentence. The masculine gender indicates that the referent is either a male person ("this one") or a masculine noun (which, in Greek, could denote an impersonal thing, such as κόσμος [kosmos, "world"]). There are no impersonal masculine nouns that occur explicitly in the immediate context to which οὗτός could plausibly refer, which leaves us with three possibilities: either οὗτός refers to "the true one" (NRSV: "him who is true"), or it refers to "his Son Jesus Christ," or it refers to some unspecified thing ("this"), in which case οὗτός is masculine so that it agrees in gender with ὁ ἀληθινὸς θεὸς.² The third option is highly unlikely for two reasons: (i) it is unlikely that a monotheistic writer would be comfortable saying that any abstraction "is the true God," even if this is meant metaphorically (e.g., knowing the true one and his Son "is the true God"). (ii) Unlike the comparable statement in John 17:3, there is no explicit statement giving content to "this." Hence, we will limit our attention to the first two possibilities: that the subject of 1 John 5:20f is the Father or the Son.

It must be stressed either of these referents is possible, and therefore we have before us a syntactic ambiguity, which may have been deliberate or accidental on the author's part. That οὗτός is a proximal demonstrative supports the referent being the nearest antecedent, "his Son Jesus Christ" (as emphasised by Hills above). However, while the nearest antecedent of οὗτός is usually the referent (including in the Johannine writings), there are counterexamples. For instance, in John 4:47 ("This one, having heard that Jesus had come from Judea..."), οὗτός refers to a royal official, but its nearest antecedent is actually the official's ill son. 2 John 7 is another commonly cited counterexample.³ It should be noted that, in such counterexamples, the referent is generally made clear in the context.

In 1 John 5:20, "The Son of God" is also the subject of the preceding sentence ("And we know that the Son of God has come...") So the Son is more "proximal" with respect to the writer's use of οὗτός in two respects: he is the subject of the preceding sentence and he is the nearest antecedent noun.

Concerning the usage of οὗτός in Johannine literature, Greek grammarian Daniel B. Wallace points out,

The demonstrative pronoun οὗτός, in the Gospel and Epistles of John seems to be used in a theologically rich manner. Specifically, of the approximately seventy instances in which οὗτός has a personal referent, as many as forty-four of them (almost two thirds of the instances) refer to the Son. Of the remainder, most imply some sort of positive connection with the Son. What is most significant is that never is the Father the referent.⁴

It may be worth noting that, while God (the Father) is nowhere else referred to as "this one" (οὗτός) in the Gospel and Epistles of John, which Jesus commonly is, God is referred to several times using the distal demonstrative pronoun ἐκεῖνος ("that one": John 1:33; 5:19; 5:37; 5:38; 6:29; 8:42).⁵ This suggests that, due to the Father's transcendence, the writer may not be comfortable referring to the Father using a proximal demonstrative pronoun like οὗτός.

3. Contextual Considerations

3.1. The True God in Scripture

All biblical references to a "true God" (including 1 John 5:20-21) set this God in explicit or implicit contrast with idols or false gods. There are three such passages in the Greek Old Testament (2 Chronicles 15:3 cp. 15:8;⁶ Isaiah 65:15-16 LXX cp. 65:11;⁷ Wisdom of Solomon 12:27 cp. 12:24).⁸ This usage continues in the New Testament. Paul the Apostle commends the Thessalonian church, writing,

For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God (θεῷ ζῶντι καὶ ἀληθινῷ), and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming. (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 NRSV)

Coming to the Johannine literature, in Jesus' "high-priestly prayer" in the Gospel of John, he addresses the Father as "the only true God":

And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God (τὸν μόνον ἀληθινὸν θεὸν), and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:3 NRSV)

That Jesus refers to himself here in the third person as "Jesus Christ" (which is without parallel in the Gospels) may indicate that this statement reflects an confessional or liturgical formula used in the Johannine community.⁹ There is no explicit mention of idols or false gods in the context, but the word "only" (μόνος, monos) is an implicit polemic against any other claimants to deity. The adjective ἀληθινός (alēthinos) is also implicitly polemical; in the above passages, it probably means "genuine" or "real,"¹⁰ standing in contrast to other claimants to deity who are not genuine gods but counterfeits. The implicit polemic is similar to that in the more common biblical expression "living God."

Turning to the christological implications of the phrase "true God," both 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 and John 17:3 name Jesus alongside the true God as one distinct from him. However, the statement of John 17:3 also equates eternal life with knowing both the only true God and Jesus Christ, which is remarkable. Would it be contradictory or complementary for the Johannine writer to call Jesus "the true God and eternal life" in 1 John 5:20, given what is written in John 17:3? Answering this question requires a review of Johannine christology, focusing on the terms "true," "life," and "God."

3.2. Jesus as "true," "life," and "God" in Johannine Literature

Jesus is referred to repeatedly using the adjective ἀληθινός in the Gospel of John. He is "the true light" (1:9); "the true bread from heaven" (6:32); "the true vine" (15:1). In the Book of Revelation—which, admittedly, most NT scholars attribute to a different author than the Gospel and Epistles of John—Jesus refers to himself as "the true one" (ὁ ἀληθινός, ho alēthinos) in 3:7 and is later identified in a vision as one called "Faithful and True" (πιστὸς καὶ ἀληθινός, pistos kai alēthinos) in 19:11.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is personally "the way and the truth and the life" (14:6) and "the resurrection and the life" (11:25). God is the ultimate source of life, but gave the Son to have life in himself and to give life to whomever he wishes (5:21; 5:26; 6:57). Jesus is the bread of life (6:48) and the living bread (6:51). In Revelation 1:18, Jesus identifies himself as "the living one" (ὁ ζῶν, ho zōn). Within 1 John, Jesus seems to be equated with "eternal life" in the somewhat oblique opening paragraph, which—in language reminiscent of John 1—says, "this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us" (1 John 1:2 NRSV).¹¹ The Son is also identified with "life" in a kind of synonymous parallelism in 1 John 5:12: "Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life" (NRSV).

Finally, Jesus is repeatedly called "God" (θεός, theos) in the Gospel of John. The Word—who is to be identified as Christ throughout the Prologue—is called θεός in the Gospel's opening verse: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1 NRSV). While θεός lacks the article here, its occurrence at the beginning of the clause (θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος, theos hēn ho logos) means that it should be understood emphatically (since word order in Greek is used for emphasis). The Word is God-with-God. The Word-Son is almost certainly called "God" again in John 1:18 (though there is a shadow of doubt on text-critical grounds). Jesus uses the stand-alone formula ἐγὼ εἰμί (egō eimi, "I am he") seven times in the Gospel (4:26; 6:20; 8:24; 8:28; 8:58; 13:19; 18:5-8). In light of the Isaianic background against which John frames these sayings (especially those in chapters 8 and 13), its meaning is tantamount to "I am God." This is because Jesus' use of this formula is modeled after God's use thereof in Isaiah 40-55 LXX, where God says "I am he" (ἐγὼ εἰμί) and "I am God" (ἐγὼ [εἰμί] ὁ θεὸς) interchangeably.¹²

Then, at the Gospel's climax, Thomas addresses the risen Jesus as "my Lord and my God" (John 20:28). This is probably meant to form an inclusio with the use of theos for the Word in John 1:1,¹³ so that the Gospel calls Christ "God" at the beginning and end of the Gospel.¹⁴ If so, the use of theos for Jesus in the Johannine literature is not incidental but a central theological claim. 

The magnitude of Thomas' confession is sometimes dulled in one of two ways: (i) it is claimed that theos is used here in an attenuated sense, or (ii) it is claimed that Thomas' words are not really addressed to Jesus as such but are a recognition that God is at work in him (cf. John 14:9-11).¹⁵ In favour of (i), it is pointed out that men are called "god/s" in Old Testament texts such as Exodus 7:1 and Psalm 82:6, the latter of which is cited by Jesus in this Gospel when defending himself against the charge of "making himself theos" (John 10:33-36). However, Jesus' argument in 10:34-36 is an a fortiori—if even mere men can be called "gods," how much more the Son of God—and thus does not imply an attenuation of theos as applied to Jesus. Furthermore, in these Old Testament texts it is God who assumes the prerogative to address men as "god/s." This is very different from a monotheistic Jew, Thomas, who knows that the Shema declares "the Lord our God, the Lord is one," addressing another man as "my God" (ὁ θεὸς μου, ho theos mou): literally, "the God of me." Interpretation (ii) is no more persuasive. Unlike John 14:9-11, where the declaration "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" is immediately qualified in terms of mutual indwelling, the Gospel does not qualify Thomas' confession in any way. Moreover, Jesus has been referred to as "Lord" five times already in the resurrection narrative, including once as "my Lord" (John 20:2, 13, 18, 20, 25), so it is improbable that "my Lord" is now directed to the Father. The idea that "my Lord" is addressed to the Son and "my God" to the Father-in-the-Son is untenable once one recognises that "my Lord and my God" is a liturgical formula of the form "my X and my Y" used repeatedly in the psalms, where both nouns X and Y always address the same person, God.¹⁶

To summarise, Jesus is called theos multiple times in the Gospel of John, and a close examination of John 20:28 reveals that he is personally addressed here as ho theos in the fullest sense of that term. To describe Jesus as "the true God and eternal life" in 1 John 5:20, therefore, would be consonant with, and not at all at odds with, the theology of the Fourth Gospel. As I. Howard Marshall writes, "it is fitting that at the climax of the Epistle, as at the beginning and climax of the Gospel (Jn. 1:1; 20:28), full deity should be ascribed to Jesus."¹⁷

By comparison, to describe the Father as "the true God" in 1 John 5:20 would of course also be consonant with Johannine theology (since the Father is called "the only true God" in John 17:3), but would also be somewhat redundant given that the Father has been called "the true one" twice already in this verse.¹⁸ To identify the Father as "eternal life" would be theologically appropriate, but less in keeping with Johannine parlance than to identify the Son with "eternal life." The Father is the ultimate source of life, to be sure, but only the Son is explicitly called "life" elsewhere in the Johannine corpus.

3.3. The Unity of Father and Son in Johannine Literature

Before concluding, it is necessary to comment on a conundrum that arises if we accept the conclusion to which the syntactical and contextual evidence is pointing us, namely that 1 John 5:20f calls Jesus "the true God." How is it that the Father is "the only true God" and yet the Son is also "the true God"?

Of course, providing a definitive, philosophically precise answer to this question would take the Church more than three centuries. This is not our purpose here; we seek only to determine whether there are any proto-Trinitarian hints in the Johannine writings whereby the Father and the Son are identified as in one sense indistinct (and thus one) and in another sense distinct (and thus two).

Firstly, concerning the Gospel of John, there is the famous saying in John 10:30, "I and the Father are one,"¹⁹ which prompts Jesus' opponents to want to stone him for blasphemy, specifically for "making himself theos" (10:33). Multiple recent studies have emphasised the literary relationship between the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4) and John 10:30.²⁰ Lori A. Baron writes,

The significance of this declaration can hardly be overstated: the author invokes the word 'one' (ἕν [hen]) a key word in the Shema, explicitly locating Jesus's identity within the divine אחד [echad]... A potential objection to the idea that John has the Shema in mind here is that Deut 6:4 LXX uses the masculine εἷς [heis] to translate אחד [echad], whereas John employs the neuter ἕν [hen]. But this change is necessitated by grammatical considerations: in the Shema, εἷς [heis] is masculine singular as a predicate nominative of κύριος [kyrios]. εἷς [heis] would be awkward with a compound subject such as ἐγὼ καὶ ὁ πατὴρ [egō kai ho patēr], whereas ἕν [hen] is not awkward...The Evangelist...uses the neuter ἕν [hen], which expresses the idea of one entity. John 10:30 would thus be better translated: 'I and the Father are one thing,' a unity.²¹

She concludes that

While 'the Jews' understand Jesus’ words as a violation of the divine unity, which is embodied in the Shema, the Evangelist frames his Christology in a way that places Jesus within that unity.²²

This notion that the Father and the Son, while distinct persons, are a unity—one God—explains why Jesus is repeatedly called "God" in the Gospel of John, but always in a way that distinguishes him from the Father and acknowledges the deity of the latter. The Word both was with God and was God (John 1:1). Jesus is the only-begotten God in the bosom of the Father (1:18). Thomas calls Jesus "my God" (20:28), but shortly before that, Jesus has described the Father to Mary Magdalene as "my God and your God" (20:17).

Coming to 1 John, scholars have identified a curious phenomenon whereby the author frequently uses verbs and pronouns that are either carelessly or deliberately ambiguous as to whether they are speaking about the Father or the Son.²³ This likely means that, for the author, while the Father and the glorified Son remain distinct, they are "one" to such an extent that it is not important to clarify which one is in view at every turn.²⁴ For Georg Strecker, "the Johannine idea of the unity of the Son with the Father" posited in John 10:30 "can be seen in 1 John in the interchangeability of the personal pronouns":²⁵

For example, when the author says that "your sins are forgiven on account of his name" (1 John 2:12), is he referring to the name of God (last mentioned in v. 5) or that of Jesus Christ (last mentioned in v. 1)?²⁶ Again, several pronouns in 3:1-6 and 3:16 seem to refer to Christ; however, Christ has not been mentioned explicitly since 2:24, while God is mentioned thrice in 3:1-2. Finally, in 1 John 5:14, the readers are instructed, "And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us" (NRSV). This "he" who answers prayer and gives life (as described further in vv. 15-16) seems to be the Son of God, who was the subject of v. 13. On the other hand, it would be more in line with biblical tradition to identify God as the addressee of prayer.

The vagueness seen in references to the Father and the Son in 1 John seems to be a putting into practice of the close unity declared in John 10:30: "Jesus is not saying that he and the Father are a single person, but that together they are one God."²⁷ This would explain how the Johannine literature is seemingly comfortable with calling Jesus "the true God" despite his Father being "the only true God."

4. Conclusion

In view of the foregoing syntactical and contextual considerations, and the wider Johannine theme of the Father and the Son being a unity, we can conclude with Brian J. Wright that 1 John 5:20 is one of the few New Testament texts that, with a "High Degree of Probability," calls Jesus theos.²⁸

If we are not convinced by the evidence and instead adopt the minority position that ὁ ἀληθινὸς θεὸς refers to the Father, we must still concede that this verse contains a very significant instance of the epistle's famous ambiguous personal pronouns. This, in a letter that has christological heresy as a central concern (1 John 2:22-24; 4:1-3), suggests that the author is not concerned that his readers would fall into heresy if they identified Jesus as "the true God."

At the very least, the epistle declines to "walk back" the divine claims about Jesus that had been made in the Gospel of John. More likely, the letter has "doubled down" on the Gospel's divine christology by applying to Jesus the very term used to circumscribe the Father's unique deity in John 17:3, and has thus anticipated the formulation "true God from true God" that would later be used to express the orthodox position.

• 1 Julian Hills, "'Little Children, Keep Yourselves from Idols: 1 John 5:21 Reconsidered," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 51 (1989): 301. This assessment of the communis opinio is now a bit dated, but none of the scholarship that I've consulted since then suggests that this is no longer the majority view.
• 2 Compare αὕτη (hautē) in John 17:3, which is an impersonal proximal demonstrative pronoun that agrees in feminine gender with the noun ζωὴ (zoē): "This is eternal life."
• 3 Here, οὗτός refers to deceivers who deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, but "Jesus Christ" is the nearest antecedent of οὗτός.
• 4 Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 327.
• 5 ἐκεῖνος is also used of the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Johannine literature.
• 6 "And for many days it has been for Israel without a true god and without a teaching priest and without law. And he will return to the Lord, God of Israel, and he will be found to them... And when he heard these words and the prophecy of Adad the prophet, he was both encouraged and he removed the abominations from all the land of Ioudas and Beniamin and from the cities he had gained possession of in Mount Ephraim, and he renewed the Lord’s altar that was in front of the Lord’s shrine." (2 Chronicles 15:3-4, 8 NETS)
• 7 But to those who are subject to him, a new name shall be called, which shall be blessed on the earth; for they shall bless the true God (τὸν θεὸν τὸν ἀληθινόν), and those who swear on the earth shall swear by the true God, for they shall forget their first affliction, and it shall not come up into their heart. (Isaiah 65:15cd-16 NETS)
• 8 For they went astray on the paths of error, taking as gods the most despised and loathsome of animals... For through those animals at which in their suffering they became incensed, which they had thought to be gods, being punished by means of them, they saw and recognized as the true God (θεὸν ἀληθῆ) the one whom before they denied knowing; therefore the utmost condemnation came upon them. (Wisdom of Solomon 12:24ab, 27 NETS)
• 9 "Although John has Jesus speak of himself in the third person, for example, as 'the Son,' it is anomalous that Jesus should call himself 'Jesus Christ.' Elsewhere in the Gospel the name occurs in the Prologue (i 17), a Christian hymn. This verse [John 17:3] is clearly an insertion into the text of Jesus' prayer, an insertion probably reflecting a confessional or liturgical formula of the Johannine church" (Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John XIII-XXI [New York: Doubleday, 1970], 741) .
• 10 "Of God in contrast to other deities, who are not real" (BDAG, 43).
• 11 The opening verses of 1 John are a notorious crux interpretum, since their main subject is referred to with neuter relative pronouns, which cannot refer either to a person or to nouns that feature prominently such as logos (masculine) or zōē (feminine). It is clear that the Christ-event is being described, in some way. Raymond E. Brown describes the syntactical problem and concludes, "Overall, the explanation that best fits the evidence is that the 'what' is to be equated with no specific noun in the Prologue, but refers to the whole career of Jesus, with the neuter functioning comprehensively to cover the person, the words, and the works" (The Epistles of John [New York: Doubleday, 1982], 154).
• 12 Compare Isaiah 43:10 to 43:11, 45:18-19 to 45:21-22; 46:4 to 46:9.
• 13 Raymond E. Brown defends the translation "The Word was God" for John 1:1c, stating, "This reading is reinforced when one remembers that in the Gospel as it now stands, the affirmation of i 1 is almost certainly meant to form an inclusion with xx 28, where at the end of the Gospel Thomas confesses Jesus as "My God" (ho theos mou) (The Gospel according to John I-XII (New York: Doubleday, 1966), 5).
• 14 Bear in mind that the epilogue in chapter 21 was probably added in a later edition of the Gospel.
• 15 The latter interpretation seems to have support from Ernst Haenchen: "the Father is visible in Jesus for those who believe" (John 2: A Commentary on the Gospel of John Chapters 7-21 [trans. Robert W. Funk; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984], 211).
• 16 See "my God and my Lord" (Psalm 35:23); "my King and my God" (Psalm 5:2; 44:4; 84:3); "my God and my Saviour" (Psalm 61:3, 7 LXX).
• 17 The Epistles of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 254 n. 47.)
• 18 Raymond E. Brown agrees with Schnackenburg's earlier argument that "the second sentence of 5:20 has meaning only if it refers to Jesus; it would be tautological if it referred to God the Father" ("Does the New Testament Call Jesus God?", Theological Studies 26 [1965]: 558. The view that οὗτος refers to "the true One" "makes the text rather tautologous: 'we are in him who is true...He is the true God'" (Marshall, The Epistles of John, 254 n. 47.
• 19 The NRSV has, "The Father and I are one," but the translation given here is truer to the Greek, which has ἐγὼ in the emphatic first position.
• 20 Lori A. Baron, The Shema in John’s Gospel Against its Backgrounds in Second Temple Judaism (PhD Dissertation, Duke University, 2015), subsequently published as The Shema in John's Gospel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022); Brury Eko Saputra, The Shema and John 10: The Importance of the Shema Framework in Understanding the Oneness Language in John 10 (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2019).
• 21 The Shema in John's Gospel, 349-50.
• 22 The Shema in John's Gospel, 360.
• 23 Brown, commenting on the specific case of 1 John 2:25, asks, "Does the 'he' (autos) who makes the promise refer to God or to Christ, or even (by intentional vagueness) to both? ... In a previous instance of ambiguity (2:3a) I opted for God, but each case must be decided on its own merits" (The Epistles of John, 358). Judith M. Lieu speaks of "the frequent ambiguity as to whether 'he' (autos) refers to God or to Jesus" (I, II & III John: A Commentary [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008], 215). Terry Griffith notes that "the use of pronouns in 1 John is often so ambiguous that commentators are frequently divided as to whether Jesus or God is the referent" (Keep Yourselves from Idols: A New Look at 1 John [London: Sheffield Academic, 2002], 75). According to D. Moody Smith, "in 1 John there is often a question of which, the Father or the Son, is the antecedent. This is a perennial and difficult problem" ("The Historical Figure of Jesus in 1 John," in J. Ross Wagner, C. Kavin Rowe & A. Katherine Grieb, eds., The Word leaps the Gap: Essays on Scripture and Theology in Honor of Richard B. Hays [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008], 313).
• 24 "It is quite clear that for John the Father and Son are distinct beings, although they belong so closely together that on occasion, as we have seen, it is not clear to which of them he is referring." (Marshall, The Epistles of John, 255 n. 48).
• 25 (The Johannine Letters: A Commentary on 1, 2, and 3 John [trans. Linda M. Maloney; Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1996], 193 n. 44). He gives as examples 1 John 1:5, 6, 7, 10; 2:3-6, 25, 27-28; 3:24; 4:13, 19, 21; 5:6, 14, 15, 20. In similar fashion, he writes, "the author leaves the readers in a state of unclarity about the application of personal pronouns and words of attribution, because he cannot admit any alternative between christology and theology: God is in Christ!" (The Johannine Letters, 82).
• 26 The notion that God will act mercifully for his name's sake is common in the Jewish Scriptures (e.g., 1 Kingdoms 12:22 LXX; Psalm 22:3 LXX; 105:8 LXX; Ezekiel 36:21-22); yet in the NT it is primarily the name of Jesus by which salvation occurs. Moreover, while "God" is the nearest antecedent that was named explicitly, Jesus seems to be in view in 2:6 ("whoever says, 'I abide in him,' ought to walk just as he walked.")
• 27 Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 104.
• 28 Brian J. Wright, "Jesus as ΘΕΟΣ: A Textual Examination," in Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament Manuscripts, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence, ed. Daniel B. Wallace (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2011), 266.

Early Jewish-Christian Christology in the Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus

The Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus (DJP) is a little-known early Christian text that describes a theological dialogue between Jason (a Jewish Christian) and Papiscus (a non-Christian Jew). It does not survive except for a few fragments and summaries preserved by later authors, but is believed by scholars to have been used as a source by later Christian-Jewish dialogue texts, starting with Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho (c. 160 C.E.).¹ The earliest mention of DJP is in Origen's Against Celsus 4.52-53 (written 249 C.E.). The exact title Origen gives to the work is "A Controversy between Jason and Papiscus about Christ".² Origen reports that Celsus had attacked this work in his ante-Christian polemic, which scholars date to c. 176-180 C.E.³

John of Scythopolis (6th century) ascribes the work to Aristo(n) of Pella (an attribution widely accepted by modern scholars), while noting that Clement of Alexandria (late 2nd century) had attributed the work to St. Luke the Evangelist.⁴ Eusebius of Caesarea names Aristo of Pella as a source for his knowledge of the Bar Kochba Revolt (132-135 C.E.),⁵ for which reason scholars typically date DJP to c. 140 C.E. (later than the Bar Kochba Revolt, but early enough to have influenced Justin Martyr and Celsus).⁶

Scholarly knowledge of DJP has grown significantly since the discovery and publication in the early 21st century of a fragment of the text preserved in its original language, Greek.⁷ Known as the Sinaiticus Fragment (due to its discovery at St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai desert), it is contained in a sermon delivered by Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, on 1 January 635, who names the "Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus" before quoting from it at length. Sophronius' sermon asserts that St. Luke the Evangelist wrote DJP. Celsus Africanus (not Origen's opponent) referred to the author of DJP as a Hebrew Christian,⁸ which modern scholars such as Lawrence Lahey accept.⁹ 

That the Jewish Christian author of DJP held a high Christology (i.e., affirmed Christ's preexistence and divinity) is evident from the Sinaiticus Fragment and other surviving fragments. The Sinaiticus Fragment includes the following passage:

Papiscus said, “I would like to learn for what cause you honor the first day after the Sabbath.” Jason answered, “In this way, God commanded this through Moses, saying: ‘Behold! I am making the last things just as the first!’ The last [day of the week] is the Sabbath, but day one after the Sabbath is first, for on it, by the word of God, the beginning of the entire universe took place, as also the scripture of Moses declares, just as God spoke, ‘let there be light and there was light.’ The Logos which came forth from God and made the light was Christ, the son of God through whom all things came to be.¹⁰

Thus, DJP evidently held a Logos Christology similar to that found in the prologue of the Gospel of John. Writing at the end of the fourth century, St. Jerome, in his Hebrew Questions on Genesis , reports that DJP offered a reading of the Hebrew of Genesis 1:1 that begins with "In the Son" rather than "In the beginning":

'In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.' The majority believe, as it is written in The Dispute Between Jason and Papiscus, and as Tertullian in his book Against Praxeas contends, and as Hilary also asserts in the exposition of a certain psalm, that in the Hebrew it is '[i]n the son, God made heaven and earth.' The fact of the matter proves that this is a mistake.¹¹

Although St. Jerome is rightly dismissive of this rendition of the Hebrew text of Genesis 1:1, the point is that it shows that DJP held a pre-existence Christology in which the Son was present at creation. 

Finally, Lawrence Lahey observes that multiple Christian-Jewish dialogues from the fifth and sixth centuries (the Acts of Sylvester and the Dialogue of Timothy the Christian and Aquila the Jew) contain a similar passage in which a Jew offers objections to Christ's divinity on the grounds that the frailties of corporeal existence are unbefitting of God. Lahey notes the resemblance of this passage to material in Anastasius the Sinaite's Hodegos 14 (c. 685 C.E.), who attributes the objections to Philo of Alexandria in a disputation with "Mnason", a disciple of the apostles. Noting that "Mnason" and "Jason" are variant forms of the same name in Greek NT manuscripts of Acts 21:16, that Papiscus is called an Alexandrian Jew (like Philo) by Celsus Africanus, and that Anastasius was probably working from memory in the Sinai desert without access to books, Lahey argues that Anastasius "likely quotes a Jewish reply from [DJP]".¹² The parallel passage in the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila 5.12-17 reads thus:¹³

(Aquila said:) For concerning this Jesus, just as his memoirs contain, in those you call Gospels, we find from where he is, and his parents with him, and how is this one God? But is God suckled or does he grow and become strong? And I will say that which Luke says concerning him. For the point now is  concerning this one who also fled when John was beheaded by Herod, and then was handed over by his own disciple, and bound, and mocked, and scourged, and spat upon, and was crucified, and was buried, but even first also hungered, and thirsted, and was tempted by Satan. Does God submit to these things done by men? But who can see God? Let me not say that he was also handled, and suffered so many things which indeed it is impossible for God to suffer these things; but also sour wine was drunk, and he was fed gall, and was struck on his head with a rod, and was crowned with thorns, and finally was sentenced to death, and was crucified with thieves. I am astonished. How are you not ashamed saying that God himself entered a womb of a woman and was born? For if he was born, he did not then exist before eternity, but also presently where is he?"¹⁴

If Lahey is correct that the above paraphrases an objection from Papiscus originally found in DJP, the substance of the objection implies that the Hebrew Christian apologist Jason was defending a Christology of divine incarnation.

To conclude, then, the surviving fragments of and references to the Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus provide evidence that a Jewish Christian apologist, writing within living memory of the time of the apostles, defended a divine preexistence Christology. It adds an additional nail in the coffin of the idea, popular among unitarian apologists today, that incarnational Christology was a product of Gentile imaginations such as that of Justin Martyr.

• 1 Oskar Skarsaune argues at length for Justin's dependence on DJP (The Proof from Prophecy: A Study in Justin Martyr’s Proof-Text Tradition [Leiden: Brill, 1987], 234-42).
• 2 Henry Chadwick, trans. Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 227.
• 3 François Bovon and John M. Duffy, "A New Greek Fragment from Ariston of Pella's Dialogue of Justin and Papiscus", Harvard Theological Review 105 (2012): 457-65.
• 4 See discussion in Harry Tolley, "The Jewish–Christian Dialogue Jason and Papiscus in Light of the Sinaiticus Fragment", Harvard Theological Review 114 (2021): 1-26.
• 5 Church History 4.6.3.
• 6 Lawrence Lahey, "Evidence for Jewish Believers in Christian-Jewish Dialogues through the Sixth Century (excluding Justin", in Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik (eds.), Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2007), 581-639.
• 7 See Bovon and Duffy, "New Greek Fragment"; Tolley, "Jewish-Christian Dialogue".
• 8 "That noble, memorable, and glorious Dispute occurred between Jason, a Hebrew Christian and Papiscus an Alexandrian Jew; the obstinate heart of the Jew was softened by the admonition and gentle chiding of the Hebrew, and the teaching of Jason on the giving of the Holy Spirit was victorious in the heart of Papiscus." (Celsus Africanus, Ad Vigilium Episcopum de Iudaica Incredulitate, trans. Tolley, "Jewish-Christian Dialogue", 23.)
• 9 "It was written by a Jewish believer, for in contrast to all known dialogues through the sixth century, the Christian participant (Jason), is said to be a Hebrew Christian... If JP had survived, it would be an important source of Jewish Christian theology and of its view of and arguments towards other non-believing Jews" ("Evidence for Jewish Believers", 585-86).
• 10 trans. Tolley, "Jewish-Christian Dialogue", 25.
• 11 trans. Tolley, "Jewish-Christian Dialogue", 22.
• 12 "Evidence for Jewish Believers, 589-91, 601-603. Lahey makes the argument at greater length in another work to which I do not have access ("Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Genuine Jewish-Christian Debate in The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila", Journal of Jewish Studies 51 (2000): 281-96.
• 13 I could not find an English translation of the relevant portion of Anastasius' Hodegos 14, and don't trust myself to try and translate 7th-century Greek. The Greek text and a Latin translation can be viewed at Patrologia Graecae 89.244-48. The substance of the passage is basically the same, consisting of objections to the notion that God became incarnate and thus subjected himself to human weaknesses such as hunger, thirst, bleeding, and death.
• 14 trans. Lahey, "Evidence for Jewish Believers", 602 n. 100.

The Crucified Lord of Glory (1 Corinthians 2:8): A Pauline Image of God Incarnate

In 1 Corinthians 2:6-8, Paul writes:

Now wisdom is what we speak to the mature, wisdom not of this age nor of the rulers of this age who are perishing, but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, hidden wisdom, which God predestined before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age understood; for, had they understood it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. (author's translation)

My past interest in this text mainly concerned the term "the rulers of this age," the identity of whom (transcendent, human, or both) is disputed.¹ However, as I was recently reading R. B. Jamieson's excellent article on the Christological implications of 1 Corinthians 15:28,² I was struck by his observations about the paradoxical nature of this verse. It is one of the few places in the New Testament where Christ's divinity and Christ's crucifiability are juxtaposed, and in that respect, it is perhaps the biblical text that comes closest to speaking of God dying for us. As Jamieson puts it, 1 Corinthians 2:8 speaks of "a single agent, one 'who', who has a twofold manner of existence, two 'whats'. One 'what' warrants Christ’s identification as the one true God; the other renders him crucifiable."³

The crucifiability aspect is obvious enough, but no doubt some readers will take issue with the contention that this passage identifies Christ as the one true God. Jamieson is making this inference on the basis of the full picture of Christ that emerges from 1 Corinthians, such as Paul's partitioning of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4)—and partitioning of roles in creation—between the Father and Christ in 1 Corinthians 8:6, and his ascription of scriptural statements about the divine Lord to Christ in 1 Corinthians 1:31 and 10:26. However, the term "the Lord of glory" (τὸν κύριον τῆς δόξης) in 1 Corinthians 2:8 deserves special attention.

This exact phrase occurs nowhere in the Septuagint; nor is it a translation of a phrase from the Hebrew Bible. However, if we ask the question, "What is a learned Jew like Paul likely to have meant by 'the Lord of glory'?" a conclusive answer emerges.

Firstly, two psalms refer to God as "the King of glory" (LXX, ὁ βασιλεὺς τῆς δόξης) and "the God of glory" (LXX, ὁ θεὸς τῆς δόξης), respectively, and both of these psalms also refer to God as "Lord" (κύριος). Of course, "Lord" (κύριος) and "King" (βασιλεύς) are similar in meaning, with both titles denoting one having dominion and rulership. The title "King of glory" occurs five times in Psalm 23:7-10 LXX (24:7-10 MT):

      7 Raise the gates, O rulers of yours! 

         And be raised up, O perpetual gates! 

         And the King of glory shall enter. 

      8 Who is this King of glory? 

         The Lord, strong and powerful, 

         the Lord, powerful in battle. 

      9 Raise the gates, O rulers of yours! 

         And be raised up, O perpetual gates! 

         And the King of glory shall enter. 

      10 Who is this King of glory? 

         The Lord of hosts, 

         he is the King of glory. (New English Translation of the Septuagint)

What makes Psalm 23(24) particularly relevant to Paul's phrase "the Lord of glory" in 1 Corinthians 2:8, however, is that Paul quotes Psalm 23:1 LXX ("the earth and its fullness are the Lord's") later in the letter, in 10:26, where he almost certainly understands this "Lord" to be Christ.⁴

Psalm 28:1-4 LXX reads,

      1 Bring to the Lord, O divine sons, 

         bring to the Lord glory and honor. 

      2 Bring to the Lord glory for his name; 

         do obeisance to the Lord in his holy court. 

      3 The Lord’s voice is over the waters; 

         the God of glory thundered, 

         the Lord, over many waters, 

      4 the Lord’s voice in strength, 

         the Lord’s voice in magnificence. (NETS)

The divine title "the Lord of glory" is commensurate with the language of both of these two psalms, even if the exact phrase does not occur. And, of course, the broader association of glory with God (including the phrase "the glory of the Lord") is ubiquitous in the Jewish Scriptures.

Besides this, the Second Temple Jewish apocalyptic text 1 Enoch—a composite text containing materials dating from several centuries B.C. to the first century A.D.—refers to God as "the Lord of glory" repeatedly, showing that the use of this phrase as a divine title was established and current among Paul's Jewish contemporaries. The translations below are from the Hermeneia translation of Nickelsburg and VanderKam.⁵ 

Then I blessed the Lord of glory and said, 'Blessed is the judgment of righteousness and blessed are you, O Lord of majesty and righteousness, who are Lord of eternity.' (1 Enoch 22.14)

And he answered me and said, 'This high mountain that you saw, whose peak is like the throne of God, is the seat where the Great Holy One, the Lord of glory, the King of eternity, will sit, when he descends to visit the earth in goodness... Then I blessed the God of glory, the King of eternity, who has prepared such things for people (who are) righteous, and has created them and promised to give (them) to them. (1 Enoch 25.3, 7)

Here the godless will bless the Lord of glory, the King of eternity... Then I blessed the Lord of glory, and his glory I made known and praised magnificently. (1 Enoch 27.3, 5)

And when I saw, I blessed—and I shall always bless—the Lord of glory, who has wrought great and glorious wonders, to show his great deeds to his angels and to the spirits of human beings, so that they might see the work of his might and glorify the deeds of his hands and bless him forever. (1 Enoch 36.4)

The Codex Panopolitanus Greek manuscript of 1 Enoch has τὸν κύριον τῆς δόξης—the exact phrase used by Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:8—in 22.14, 27.3, and 27.5.⁶

The above quotations are all from the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36). Two other distinct compositions within 1 Enoch refer to God as the Lord of glory—the Book of Parables (cf. 1 Enoch 40.3, 63.2) and the Dream Visions (cf. 1 Enoch 83.8)—while the Book of the Luminaries uses the phrase "the Lord of eternal glory" (1 Enoch 75.3) and "the great Lord, the king of glory" (1 Enoch 81.3).

That the phrase "the Lord of glory" is used in 1 Enoch in close association with references to God's kingship and the phrase "the God of glory" (1 Enoch 25.7) suggests that the title "the Lord of glory" is adapted from Psalms 24 and/or 29.

Thus, we have evidence that Second Temple Jewish apocalyptic texts called God "the Lord of glory," drawing on Psalm 24 and/or 29, and we have evidence that Paul understood Christ as the "Lord" of Psalm 24 (23 LXX). Thus, the most reasonable interpretation is that when Paul called Christ "the Lord of glory" in an apocalyptic context in 1 Corinthians 2:8, he meant to refer to Christ as the divine Lord of these psalms.

The juxtaposition of divine Lord and crucified one is Christologically significant, not only because of its inherent paradox, but also because it demonstrates that Paul understood Christ to have been the divine Lord prior to his resurrection and exaltation. This is important, because some interpreters of Pauline texts such as Philippians 2:5-11 assert that Jesus became "Lord" (in the sense of bearer of the divine Name and its prerogatives) only after his resurrection, as a reward from God for his faithfulness unto death. In light of 1 Corinthians 2:8, this reading of Paul's Christology is untenable: Christ was already the Lord of glory when he was crucified. "God highly exalted him and graciously granted him the name that is above every name" (Phil. 2:9) does not refer to a quasi-divinisation of a hitherto non-divine Jesus, but to a reversal of the downward trajectory outlined in vv. 6-8. God publicly vindicates the man Jesus and orders the world to worship him as YHWH (Phil. 2:10-11 cp. Isaiah 45:22-23). Similar reasoning applies to Romans 1:3-4, which some might interpret to mean that Jesus became the Son of God at his resurrection, though we know from other Pauline texts that this was not Paul's view.⁷

In conclusion, in writing in 1 Corinthians 2:8 that the rulers of this age "crucified the Lord of glory," Paul expresses and brings together Christ's humanity and divinity in a bold and striking manner. The notion of the divine Lord dying, on a cross no less, is a paradox that Paul understood would be regarded as offensive or foolish to many in his day, as it is to many in ours.

• 1 "Opinions differ on the precise identity of these rulers. Are these rulers the unseen demonic forces of this world, or simply the worldly rulers, who put Jesus to death? Is there a dual reference, both to earthly rulers and to the demonic forces that inspire them? Whatever the identity of the rulers, the outcome remains the same." (Mark Taylor, 1 Corinthians: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture [Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2014], 88); "scholars are undecided as to whether he is referring to spiritual rulers or earthly rulers" (Adam G. White, Where is the Wise Man? Graeco-Roman Education as a Background to the Divisions in 1 Corinthians 1-4 [PhD Dissertation, Macquarie University, 2013], 153).
• 2 R. B. Jamieson, "1 Corinthians 15.28 and the Grammar of Paul's Christology," New Testament Studies 66 (2020): 187-207.
• 3 "1 Corinthians 15.28," 198.
• 4 Jamieson writes, "This ‘Lord’ is the same Lord whom Paul warns the Corinthians not to provoke in 10.22, in language about YHWH borrowed from Deut 32.21. How might they provoke him? By partaking of the cup and table ‘of the Lord’, and also the cup and table of demons (10.21). Why are these two commensalities incommensurable? Because the Lord’s cup and table enact communal participation in the blood and body of Christ (10.16). The ‘Lord’ in view throughout is Christ. The Lord at whose table the Corinthians feast is the Lord who owns all things because he created all things (cf. 8.6). In 1 Cor 10.26, Paul identifies Christ as the Lord whom Ps 24.1 praises as possessor of all because he is the creator of all" (Jamieson, "1 Corinthians 15.28," 195-96).
• 5 George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012).
• 6 The Book of the Watchers was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, but was translated into Greek in antiquity. At 25.3, this manuscript has ὁ μέγας κύριος, ὁ ἅγιος τῆς δόξης ὁ βασιλεὺς τοῦ αἰῶνος ("the Great Lord, the Holy One of Glory, the King of eternity"), and at 25.7, τὸν θεὸν τῆς δόξης, τὸν βασιλέα τοῦ αἰῶνος ("the God of glory, the King of eternity").
• 7 E.g., "I live by faith in [or, the faithfulness of] the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me" (Gal. 2:20); "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law..." (Gal. 4:4). Matthew W. Bates writes concerning the theological implications of Romans 1:3-4, "the resurrection event was the occasion at which the Son of God, who was in fact already deemed the preexistent Son of God before the resurrection event, was appointed to a new office that was able to be described by the phrase Son-of-God-in-Power" ("A Christology of Incarnation and Enthronement: Romans 1:3-4 as Unified, Nonadoptionist, and Nonconciliatory," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 77 [2015]: 125-26.

Reading Isaiah like an Early Christian (7): "Who can describe his generation?" (Isaiah 53:8)

Addendum (24 September 2023):

When I wrote this article last year, I indicated that the New Testament does not contain any interpretation of Isaiah 53:8b. However, I've since become aware of the possibility that John 7:27 alludes to this passage. There, "the people of Jerusalem" raise an objection to the notion that Jesus is the Messiah: "Yet we know where this man is from; but when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from" (NRSV). Jesus' declares in vv. 28-29 that where he is from is the Father ("you know where I am from...I am from [the one who sent me]"), thus implying a transcendent origin. 

Later in the chapter, "there was a division in the crowd because of him", since some felt that Jesus' coming from Galilee disqualified him from being the Messiah, since Scripture said the Messiah comes from Bethlehem (7:42). So there are two objections here about where Jesus comes from vs. where the Messiah comes from: Jesus' place of origin is known, while the Messiah's is unknown; Jesus' hometown is in Galilee, while the Messiah's is Bethlehem.

It is obvious that those who believed the Messiah was to come from Bethlehem took the idea from Micah 5:2 (cp. Matthew 2:5-6), but what was the proof text for those who claimed that "when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from"? Although the latter part of Micah 5:2 ("whose origin is from of old, from ancient days") is a possibility, in context this seems to refer to the when of the referent's origins, not the where (which the text says is Bethlehem). The best candidate for the text behind the claim in John 7:27 seems to be the one discussed in this article, namely Isaiah 53:8b LXX ("Who can describe his generation?") This connection is noted by a number of post-Nicene Church Fathers, including St. Augustine (Tract in Joannem 31.2) and St. Cyril of Alexandria (On the Gospel according to John 5.653-54). In light of Jesus' reply in John 7:28-29, it is possible that the Fourth Evangelist already hints at a transcendent Christological interpretation of Isaiah 53:8b.

1. The Song of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 52:13-53:12)

2. "Who can describe his generation?" (Isaiah 53:8b)

3. Isaiah 53:8b in the New Testament

4. Early Patristic Interpretation of Isaiah 53:8b

 St. Justin Martyr

 St. Irenaeus of Lyons

 Acts of Peter

 Tertullian of Carthage

 Eusebius of Caesarea

5. Conclusion

1. The Song of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 52:13-53:12)

In this seventh installment of our series on Reading Isaiah like an Early Christian, we delve into what was perhaps the most famous celebrated Isaianic passage of all among early Christians: the Song of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 52:13-53:12).¹ The words of this oracle—much like those of Isaiah 9:5-6 ("Unto us a child is born...")—are assumed by most Christians to be a messianic prophecy. Well, they do not just assume this; they read it in the New Testament. Most famously, in Acts 8:26-35, an Ethiopian eunuch is at a loss to identify the Suffering Servant until Philip explains to him about Jesus. However, at a grammatical-historical level it is by no means obvious that deutero-Isaiah, the author who wrote these words around the time of Cyrus, had a future Messiah in mind. As Rosenberg writes,

Jewish exegesis sees the Servant most frequently as the Jewish people, or its pious remnant, while conservative Christian exegesis insists that he is the Messiah. Modern scholars have attempted to identify the Servant with Jehoiachin or Zerubbabel, with Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or Deuter-Isaiah himself, or with the 'prophet' class as a whole. None of these suggestions is completely satisfactory.²

Thus, we must reiterate a point made in the first article in this series: if we identify as Christians and affirm the authority of the New Testament, we cannot confine our interpretation of the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament) to the literal, grammatical-historical meaning, because the New Testament writers did not do so. If we seek to read Isaiah like an early Christian, we must also examine the Jewish Scriptures mystically through the lens of the Christ-event. This will enable us to find buried treasure: veiled references to Christ and his redemptive work.  To take the Song of the Suffering Servant as an example, the Gospel of John has understood the Servant's "lifting up" (52:13) as referring to the manner of Jesus' death (John 3:14; 8:28; 12:32-34). Paul has understood the rhetorical questions in 53:1 as foretelling that many would reject the gospel (Romans 10:16). Matthew has understood "carried (away) our diseases" (53:4) as foretelling Jesus' healing ministry (Matt. 8:17). Peter has understood "he committed no sin" (53:9) as foretelling Jesus' sinlessness (1 Pet. 2:22-23) and "he was wounded for our transgressions" (53:5) as foretelling the atoning power of his death (1 Pet. 2:24). And so on.

2. "Who can describe his generation?" (Isaiah 53:8b)

Our interest in this article lies in a single clause of Isaiah 53:8. In the MT, it reads, weʾęṯ-dôrô mîy yeśôḥēḥ. Depending how one interprets the noun dôr (period; age; generation [of time or of people]; dwelling-place) and the verb śîâḥ (complain; muse; talk about; meditate; consider) here,³ numerous renderings of the Hebrew are possible: "Who could have imagined his future?" (NRSV); "Who could describe his abode?" (JPS); "Yet who of his generation protested?" (NIV); "And as for his generation, who considered...?" (NASB); "And who could even think about his descendants?" (ISV); "and who shall declare his generation?" (KJV).

The Greek Septuagint (LXX) translation disambiguates the Hebrew, rendering dôr with genea (generation [of time; of people]; race; family history) and śîâḥ with diēgeomai (tell; relate; describe);⁴. thus, tēn genean autou tis diēgēsetai;⁵ "Who will describe his generation?" (NETS)⁶ This rhetorical question is perhaps most naturally read as a futuristic lament, akin to, "Who will [be left to] relate his family history?" However, this is not the interpretation of Isaiah 53:8 LXX that gained currency in the early church. A future indicative verb in ancient Greek can bear a deliberative rhetorical function more commonly associated with the subjunctive,⁷ and thus tēn genean autou tis diēgēsetai could be read as, "Who can describe his generation?"

Compare the following instances where the italicised future indicative verb has a deliberative sense, closer to "can" than "will":

      The heart is deep above all else, 

         and so is man, 

         and who [shall? can?] understand him? (Jeremiah 17:9 NETS)

      Sand of seas and drops of rain 

         and days of eternity—who [shall? can?] enumerate? (Sirach 1:2 NETS)

      For who [shall? can?] say, “What have you done?” 

         Or who [shall? can?] withstand your judgment? (Wisdom 12:12 NETS)

BDAG lexicon notes that genea is "a term relating to the product of the act of generating and with special reference to kinship, frequently used of familial connections and ancestry".⁸ Indeed, the word has a close etymological relationship to gennaō (beget; give birth to). This rhetorical question was therefore ripe for interpretation in line with early Christian beliefs about Jesus' supernatural origin, akin to "Who can describe his lineage/origin?"

 

3. Isaiah 53:8b in the New Testament

This rhetorical question is quoted once in the New Testament, in Acts 8:32-33, where the narrator quotes Isaiah 53:7-8 LXX to explain which passage of Isaiah the Ethiopian eunuch was reading (presumably in Greek). However, while it is obvious from Philip's response that he (and the author of Acts) understand the prophet to be speaking about Jesus, no specific interpretation of the rhetorical question is provided. While numerous NT writers (some cited above) understand the Song of the Suffering Servant messianically, unfortunately no divinely inspired interpretation of the rhetorical question in Isaiah 53:8b is preserved. All is not lost, however, since a number of early patristic writers have left their interpretations on record.

4. Early Patristic Interpretation of Isaiah 53:8b

 St. Justin Martyr

The earliest clear reference—after Acts 8:33—to our rhetorical question in extant early Christian literature is found in Justin Martyr's first Apology, written in the mid-second century.⁹ The apologist declares,

And in order that the prophetic Spirit might make known to us that the one who suffers these things has an ancestry that cannot be described and reigns over his enemies, it spoke thus: ‘Who shall describe his descent? Because his life is removed from the earth, he has come to death from their crimes. (1 Apology 51.1)¹⁰

In his later work, the Dialogue with Trypho, Justin refers to our text no less than five times. It refers to the "mystery of the birth of Christ," which is "inexpressible" (Dialogue 43.3; cf. 89.3); showing that he "did not have mere human origin" (63.2); "that he is not of human generation" (68.4); "that his origin is indescribable, and no mere man has such an origin" (76.2).¹¹ Thus, for Justin, Isaiah 53:8b refers to the virgin birth, but also to Christ having an indescribable "ancestry" (Greek: genos) and being divine ("no mere man").

 St. Irenaeus of Lyons

In his Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, Irenaeus writes:

Then he says: Who shall declare His generation? Lest we despise Him as a man insignificant and of little account, because of His foes and because of the pains of His sufferings, this was said to put us right; for He who underwent all these things has a generation that cannot be declared, for ‘generation’ means His lineage, and that is, His Father is beyond declaration and expression. Recognise, therefore, even this as the lineage of Him who underwent all these sufferings, and despite Him not for the sufferings which He deliberately underwent for thy sake; but fear Him for His lineage. (Irenaeus, Proof of the Apostolic Preaching 70)¹² 

Irenaeus has, like Justin, understood genea in the sense "ancestry" or "lineage," which is indescribable because Christ was begotten by God himself.

 Acts of Peter

The Acts of Peter is an apocryphal acts that focuses primarily on a wonder-working contest between Peter and the heretic Simon Magus. The composition of the text is usually dated to the late second century, although it survives only in a Latin version of the fourth century, whose faithfulness to the lost Greek original is a subject of some debate.¹³

In an exchange in the Acts concerning the deity of Christ, Simon Magus asks, "Men of Rome, is a God born? Is he crucified? Whoever has a master is no God." Peter responds, "Cursed be your words against Christ. You spoke in these terms whereas the prophet says of him, 'Who shall declare his generation?'" (Acts of Peter 23-24)¹⁴ Evidently, this work understands Isaiah 53:8 as attesting to the ineffability of Christ's origin, and thus as refuting Simon Magus' challenge, "Is a God born?"

 Tertullian of Carthage

Tertullian, writing around the beginning of the third century, interprets our text in a slightly more mundane way, as referring to people's inability to recognise Christ in his human condition, rather than to the incomprehensibility per se of his origin:

Then those who pierced him will know who he is, and will smite their breasts, tribe to tribe—because in fact they formerly failed to recognize him in the humility of human condition: ‘And he is a man,’ says Jeremiah, ‘and who shall know him?’ Because also, Isaiah says, ‘His nativity, who shall tell of it?’ (Tertullian, Against Marcion 3.7.6)¹⁵

 Eusebius of Caesarea

Eusebius, in his work Proof of the Gospel, written a decade or less before the Council of Nicaea of 325 (which he attended), anticipates its language about Christ in his interpretation of Isaiah 53:8, which he understands to be about "the ineffable generation" of the Son (Proof of the Gospel 4.15.53).¹⁶ Indeed, this is a very important biblical passage for Eusebius:

I am accustomed to quote in every question that is debated about His Godhead, that reverent saying: 'Who shall declare his generation?' (Proof of the Gospel 4.15.53)¹⁷

The following excerpt captures his understanding of the verse, which is indebted to Origen's ideas on the eternal generation of the Son:

the scope of the theology we are considering far transcends all illustrations, and is not connected with anything physical, but imagines with the acutest thought a Son Begotten, not at one time non-existent and existent at another afterwards, but existent before eternal time, and pre-existent, and ever with the Father as His Son, and yet not Unbegotten, but begotten from the Father Unbegotten, being the Only begotten, the Word, and God of God, Who teaches that He was not cast forth from the being of the Father by separation, or scission, or division, but unspeakably and unthinkably to us brought into being from all time, nay rather before all times, by the Father's transcendent and inconceivable Will and Power. 'For who shall describe his generation?' he says, and 'As no one knoweth the Father save the Son, so no one knoweth the Son save the Father that begat Him. (Proof of the Gospel 4.3.13)¹⁸

5. Conclusion

Although the Song of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 52:13-53:12) was being interpreted Christologically already in the earliest decades of the Christian movement, no canonical interpretation of Isaiah 53:8 LXX ("Who will/can describe his generation?") is preserved in the New Testament. Patristic testimony from the ante-Nicene period suggests that there was an established tradition of reading this question as pointing to the indescribable mystery of Christ's origin.  

• 1 The full passage reads thus in the NRSV: "13 See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up and shall be very high. 14 Just as there were many who were astonished at him—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals—15 so he shall startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him, for that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate. 53:1 Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 2 For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity, and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account. 4 Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases, yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 8 By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. 9 They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. 10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with affliction. When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper. 11 Out of his anguish he shall see; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out himself to death and was numbered with the transgressors, yet he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors."
• 2 Roy A. Rosenberg, "Jesus, Isaac, and the 'Suffering Servant,' Journal of Biblical Literature 84 (1965): 381.
• 3 BDB 189-90, 967.
• 4 BDAG 191-92, 245.
• 5 Joseph Ziegler (ed.), Septuaginta (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), 14:320.
• 6 Trans. Moisés Silva, "Esaias," in New English Translation of the Septuagint, ed. Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 866.
• 7 Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 465.
• 8 BDAG 191.
• 9 There may be an earlier, albeit oblique, allusion to Isaiah 53:8b in the Odes of Solomon, a proto-Gnostic 'hymnbook' usually dated to the early second century. Of the Word of truth, the twelfth Ode says, "And he never falls, but stands firm. And not known (is) his descent nor his way." (Odes 12.6, trans. Franzmann 101). However, while this text may witness to a mystical interpretation of Isaiah 53:8b, the Word in the Odes is an abstract hypostasis not readily identifiable with the person of Christ.
• 10 Trans. Denis Minns and Paul Parvis, Justin, Philosopher and Martyr: Apologies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 209.
• 11 St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ed. Michael Slusser, trans. Thomas B. Falls, rev. Thomas P. Halton (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 118.
• 12 Trans. Joseph P. Smith, S.J., St. Irenaeus: Proof of the Apostlic Preaching (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1952), 93. Irenaeus also quotes our text in his better-known work (cf. Against Heresies 2.28.5). Here, he uses it against Gnostics who claim to delineate in crudely exact terms the manner of the Word's generation by the Father.
• 13 Callie Callon, "Acts of Peter," in Oxford Bibliographies in Biblical Studies (2021). doi: 10.1093/obo/9780195393361-0285
• 14 Trans. J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 527-28.
• 15 Trans. Ernest Evans, Tertullian: Adversus Marcionem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 189.
• 16 Trans. W. J. Ferrar, The Proof of the Gospel, Being the Demonstratio Evangelica of Eusebius of Caesarea (2 vols.; London: SPCK, 1920), 1:201.
• 17 Trans. Ferrar, Proof of the Gospel, 1:201.
• 18 Trans. Ferrar, Proof of the Gospel, 1:168. See also Proof of the Gospel 5.1.14-25.

Reading Isaiah like an Early Christian (6): "I stretched out my hands all day long towards a disobedient people" (Isaiah 65:2)

Introduction

Paul's Use of Isaiah 65:2 in Romans 10:21

 Paul's Understanding of the Kyrios of Isaiah 65:1-7

 Paul's Understanding of "All day long I stretched out my hands"

Early Patristic Interpretation of Isaiah 65:2

 Epistle of Barnabas

 St. Justin Martyr

 St. Irenaeus of Lyons

 Tertullian of Carthage

 Didascalia Apostolorum 

 St. Hippolytus of Rome

 Novatian of Rome

 St. Cyprian of Carthage

Conclusion

Introduction

The opening verses of Isaiah 65 introduce a speech by Yahweh about the rebelliousness of his people Israel:

1 I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask,
    to be found by those who did not seek me.
I said, “Here I am, here I am,”
    to a nation that did not call on my name.
2 I held out my hands all day long
    to a rebellious people,
who walk in a way that is not good,
    following their own devices...  

6 See, it is written before me:

   I will not keep silent, but I will repay;

I will indeed repay into their laps 

7 their iniquities and their ancestors’ iniquities together, 

   says the Lord [Heb. YHWH]; 

because they offered incense on the mountains 

   and reviled me on the hills, 

I will measure into their laps 

   full payment for their actions. (Isaiah 65:1-2, 6-7 NRSV)

Our main interest in this article lies with early Christian interpretation of the first line of v. 2. The Hebrew verb pāraś normally refers to spreading out one's hands in prayer, so the picture of YHWH with his hands spread out in supplication to Israel represents a paradoxical reversal, reflecting the extent of God's efforts to win over his people.¹

The Septuagint Greek translation of Isaiah 65:2a follows the Hebrew closely, except that it adds a second adjective describing Israel: "I stretched out my hands all day long towards a disobedient and contrary people" (exepetasa tas cheiras mou holēn tēn hēmeran pros laon apeithounta kai antilegonta).² The Hebrew verb pāraś has been suitably rendered with the Greek verb ekpetannumi, meaning to spread out, hold out, or stretch out, and with tas cheiras (the hands) likewise suggesting "an imploring gesture";³ it is used in Exodus 9:29, 33 LXX of Moses' intercessory prayer.

In its original context in the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah 65 verses 1-2 are synonymous, both concerning Israel and referring to "the efforts to which God has made to win the faithless back."⁴ The sense of v. 1 is, "Although I was present and would have responded had they beckoned Me, they did not seek Me."⁵ Most interpreters thus take the Niphal forms here as permissive, reflecting God's readiness to be found by his disinterested people. The LXX, however, translates them with an effective sense: "I became visible to those who were not seeking me; I was found by those who were not inquiring about me,"⁶

Paul's Use of Isaiah 65:2 in Romans 10:21

Paul quotes Isaiah 65:1 and 65:2 in Romans 10:20-21 as part of his extended discourse in Romans 9-11 on Israel's unbelief in the Gospel message: 

20 Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, “I have been found by [or, among] those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me [Isaiah 65:1].” 21 But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people [Isaiah 65:2].” (NRSV)

Paul's wording follows the Septuagint, despite some minor changes,⁷ the most significant of which for our purposes is that the words holēn tēn hēmeran ("all day long") have been brought to the beginning of the clause for emphasis. Like the Septuagint, Paul has understood Isaiah 65:1 in an effective sense. This allows him to set Isaiah 65:1 and 65:2 in contrast,⁸ with 65:1 referring to the gracious finding of the message of salvation by those who had never sought it (particularly Gentiles), and 65:2 referring to the rejection of that message by most of Israel.⁹

Paul offers minimal comment on Isaiah 65:1-2, and since he simply attributes the words to "Isaiah," it is not clear whom he understands the speaker to be in this oracle. Commentators on Romans are in seemingly unanimous agreement that Paul understands the speaker to be God,¹⁰ which is understandable given that YHWH is the speaker of this oracle in Isaiah MT. However, I would like to explore the possibility—which admittedly cannot be proven conclusively—that Paul has understood Christ to be the Kyrios (Isaiah 65:7 LXX) who speaks these words.

 Paul's Understanding of the Kyrios of Isaiah 65:1-7

Firstly, although Paul says almost nothing about the text beyond quoting it, it is already certain from what he does say that he is offering an early Christian reinterpretation of this prophetic text—either his own or one that was in circulation.¹¹ This reinterpretation has divided vv. 1-2 into two parts fulfilled by two present-day events related to the message about Christ: "the Jews' general refusal of the gospel" (65:2) and "the Gentiles' eager acceptance of it" (65:1).¹² Thus, it cannot be ruled out this reinterpretation had particularised other aspects of the oracle's meaning to the early Christian setting (including who the speaker is).

Secondly, it is generally recognised by Pauline scholars that Paul makes considerable use of the rabbinic exegetical principle known as gezerah shavah.¹³ This principle entails that two biblical texts that use the same word or phrase can be interpreted jointly, with the meaning of the term in one text informed by the other.¹⁴ A widely recognised Pauline use of gezerah shavah occurs in Romans 4:1-8, where Paul uses the occurrence of the verb logizomai ("count"; "impute") in Genesis 15:6 and Psalm 31(32):1-2 LXX to infer that both passages are about forensic justification.¹⁵ So, what does gezerah shavah have to do with Romans 10:20-21? If we look at Paul's Scripture quotations in Romans 10:5-21 (and even the rest of the book) as a catena—a connected series—we will notice that important terminology recurs in multiple passages. Let us note a couple of interesting parallels.

(i) In Romans 10:6-8, Paul quotes from Deuteronomy 30:12 LXX and interprets the generic reference to "the word" (to rhēma) there to mean "the word of faith that we proclaim," i.e. the gospel. Similarly, Septuagintal references to "bringing good news" (euangelizō, Isa. 52:7) and "our report" (ho akoē hēmōn, Isa. 53:1) are understood to refer to "the word of Christ" (rhēma Christou) in Romans 10:15-17, which—per Isaiah 53:1—some have rejected. Given that we know Paul followed a Christianised reinterpretation of Isaiah 65, would he not have likewise understood words such as "because I called you and you did not answer, I spoke and you misheard" (Isaiah 65:12 LXX) to refer to Israel's rejection of the Christian message?¹⁶

(ii) Another biblical phrase that is key to Paul's argument in Romans 10 is drawn from Joel 2:32(3:5): "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved". Although Paul does not quote the entire verse, it uses the verb euangelizō ("bring good news"), which links it via gezerah shavah to Isaiah 52:7. What is fascinating is that, while in the Hebrew Bible, Joel 2:32 refers to calling on the name of YHWH, Paul understands this "Lord" (kyrios in the LXX) to be Christ, as his interpretation in vv. 9-12, 14-17 makes clear.¹⁷ But the speaker of Isaiah 65:1 LXX says, "I was found by those who were not inquiring about me. I said, 'Here I am,' to the nation that did not call my name." We know that Paul understood these words to refer to the Gentiles' belief in Christ, and by connecting Joel 2:32 with Isaiah 65:1 (gezerah shavah), Paul could have concluded that both prophetic texts are referring to calling on the name of the same "Lord."¹⁸ Since we know that Paul understood this "Lord" to be Christ in Joel 2:32, it is possible, indeed likely, that Paul also understood Christ to be the "Lord" in Isaiah 65:1-7.

 Paul's Understanding of "All day long I stretched out my hands"

Having established the possibility—indeed, likelihood—that Paul identified the Kyrios who speaks in Isaiah 65:1-7 to be Christ, we will be "bold" like Isaiah (Rom. 10:20) and ask further how Paul might have understood the words, "All day long I stretched out my hands," if understood as spoken by Christ. There is admittedly an element of speculation here, but I think some intriguing observations can be made. 

Now, we already established that for the Lord (whether God or Christ) to "spread out his hands" to his people (Isa. 65:2) was an act of self-humiliation, since this was a reversal of the proper order whereby his people ought to "spread out their hands" to him in supplication. Now, Seifrid comments:

In contrast with the LXX, Paul fronts the adverbial expression 'all the day,' stressing God's abiding love for his people. The anthropomorphic language of Isaiah is dramatic and poignant, preparing Paul's readers for his following discussion of Israel's salvation: 'All the day I have stretched out my hands...'¹⁹

But if Christ is the speaker, then Paul is stressing Christ's love for his people, and the language need not be understood as anthropomorphic, since Christ had literal hands. Of course, the "day" when Christ most definitively spread out his hands was the day of his Passion, when in the ultimate act of divine self-humiliation, the One "existing in the form of God" "humbled himself" even to "death on a cross" (Phil. 2:6-8).

Still more can be said. Seifrid adds that 

The expression ["all day long I have stretched out my hands"] indirectly also recalls the suffering to which believers in Christ are exposed according to Paul's citation of Ps. [43:22(44:23)] in 8:36 ('On account of you, we are put to death all the day').

Indeed, the quotation of Isaiah 65:2 in Romans 10:21 and the quotation of Psalm 43:22(44:23) in Romans 8:36 use the same Greek phrase, holēn tēn hēmeran ("all day long"), and Paul brings it to the front of his quotation of Isaiah 65:2 for emphasis. By gezerah shavah, Paul might well have connected these two passages. The full quotation in Romans 8:36 is, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered" (NRSV), which is interpreted as referring to, inter alia, the "persecution" and "sword" to which believers in Christ are exposed. But the comparison to "sheep to be slaughtered" obviously likens the suffering of believers to the suffering of Christ, who likewise "like a sheep... was led to the slaughter" (Isa. 53:7 NETS).²⁰ And this comparison is not lost on Paul, who earlier in the chapter stated, "we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him" (Rom. 8:17 NRSV).

So we have the following hypothetical analogy between believers' suffering and Christ's:

Believers go as sheep to the slaughter [Romans 8:36/Ps. 43:22] //

  just as Christ went as a sheep to the slaughter [Isaiah 53:7] 

Believers are killed all day long [Romans 8:36/Ps. 43:22] //

   just as Christ stretched out his hands all day long (on the cross) [Romans 10:21/Isaiah 65:2]

Lastly, although less relevant to interpreting Paul, it is worth noting that the Gospel of John contains some significant parallels. In John, Jesus' death is described as his being "lifted up" (lemma: hupsoō, John 3:14; 8:28; 12:32-34) and "glorified" (lemma: doxazō, John 12:23; 13:31). These two verbs correspond to Isaiah 52:13 LXX, which says of the Servant figure that "he shall be exalted (lemma: hupsoō) and glorified (lemma: doxazō) exceedingly". It is well established in biblical scholarship both that John is alluding to Isaiah 52:13 and that he is using the verb hupsoō with a double meaning, by which Jesus' physical "lifting up" on the cross was also his "lifting up" in the sense of exaltation.²¹ This use of Isaiah 52:13 LXX by John closely parallels how we are suggesting Paul may have understood Isaiah 65:2 LXX. John has taken a verb from Isaiah 52:13 that originally had a metaphorical meaning (the Servant was "lifted up" in exaltation) and added a second meaning by extending it physically to Christ's crucifixion (being "lifted up" on a cross). In like manner, my suggestion is that Paul may have taken the phrase "All day long I stretched out my hands" in Isaiah 65:2, which originally had a metaphorical meaning ("I patiently implored") and added a second meaning by extending it physically to Christ's crucifixion (stretching out one's hands on a cross all day long). Furthermore, just as stretching out one's hands is a gesture (of imploring), so John also understands Christ's crucifixion as a gesture (of "drawing," perhaps as fish into a net, John 12:32). Finally, just as Paul drew a comparison between Christ's suffering and that of his followers, so John draws an implicit comparison between Christ's being "glorified" in his death (and God in him), and Peter's "death by which he would glorify God"—which, coincidentally, is said to involve Peter stretching out his hands (John 21:18).²²

We have made the case at some length that Paul likely understood Christ as the Lord who speaks the words of Isaiah 65:2 and possibly understood the words "All day long I stretched out my hands towards a disobedient and contrary people" with reference to Christ's crucifixion. Again, neither of these claims can be proven conclusively; Paul simply does not give us enough information about his understanding of Isaiah 65:2 to verify them or rule them out. However, there is enough circumstantial evidence to make them an intriguing possibility.

What is certain is that the next-earliest Christian interpretation of Isaiah 65:2 that is on record does interpret it as a prophecy about the cross, and that this interpretation was widely held in the early patristic period. To this witness we now turn.

Early Patristic Interpretation of Isaiah 65:2

 Epistle of Barnabas

The Epistle of Barnabas is a homiletic text dating to the early second century A.D., probably c. 130, written either in Alexandria or Syro-Palestine.²³ It was not written by Paul's associate Barnabas, and indeed does not claim to have been—it is anonymous. In surveying the Jewish Scriptures for testimony about baptism and the cross, the writer says,

But we should look closely to see if the Lord was concerned to reveal anything in advance about the water and the cross … In a similar way he makes another declaration about the cross in another prophet [cites 4 Ezra 4.33, 5.5, Exodus 17:8-13] … And again in another prophet he says, ‘All day long I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient people that opposes my upright path.’ ... [continues by citing Numbers 21:4-9] (Barn. 11.1, 12.1, 12.4)²⁴

It is clear from the way the quotation of Isaiah 65:2 is introduced that the writer has understood it to be a "declaration about the cross." Interestingly, Barnabas follows the same word order in the quotation as Paul in Romans 10:21, with holēn tēn hēmeran fronted for emphasis. This may indicate that Barnabas is following Romans,²⁵ or that Barnabas and Romans are following a shared early Christian tradition concerning this text.

 St. Justin Martyr

In his Dialogue with Trypho, writing about three decades after Barnabas (but with some material perhaps contemporaneous with it),²⁶ Justin follows the same interpretation:

Isaiah likewise foretold the manner of his [the Lord’s] death in these words: 'I have stretched out my hands to an unbelieving and contradicting people, who walk in a way that is not good.' (Dialogue 97.2)²⁷

 St. Irenaeus of Lyons

Another two decades or so after Justin, the Bishop of Lugdunum (Lyons) writes, 

And again, concerning His Cross, Isaias says as follows: 'I have stretched forth my hands all the day to a stubborn and contrary people'; for this is a figure of the Cross. (Proof of the Apostolic Preaching 79)²⁸

 Tertullian of Carthage

The prolific Carthaginian polemicist wrote his work Against the Jews around the beginning of the third century, another two decades or so after Irenaeus. Once again, he interprets it as one of several biblical prophecies about Christ's Passion: 

From this it is also clear that the city was due to be destroyed at the same time as when its leader was having to suffer in it, in accordance with the writings of the prophets who say, ‘I have stretched out my hands for the whole day to a people who are stubborn and speaking against me and who walk not in a way that is good but after their own sins.’ Likewise in the psalms, ‘They have destroyed my hands and my feet. They have counted all my bones. Moreover, they themselves have seen and considered me’, and ‘in my thirst they have given me vinegar to drink.’ (Against the Jews 13.10)²⁹

 Didascalia Apostolorum 

The Didascalia Apostolorum is a pseudepigraphic church order document, originally written in Greek but surviving only in Syriac. It is usually dated around the beginning of the third century with a Syrian provenance.³⁰ The text says the following about our passage:

For when our Lord came to the People, they did not believe Him when He taught them, but put away His teaching from their ears. Therefore, because this People was not obedient, He received you, the brethren who are of the Gentiles… But concerning the People, who believed not in Him, He said thus: 'I spread forth my hands all the day long to a people that obey not and resist, and walk in a way that is not good, and go after their sins: a people that is provoking before me.' (Didascalia Apostolorum 21.15)³¹

It is certain that the author understood Isaiah 65:2 to have been spoken by "our Lord," Christ, concerning his rejection by the Jews. It is not clear whether "I spread forth my hands all the day long" is taken to refer to the cross or to his imploration of the Jews more generally.

 St. Hippolytus of Rome

Another early third-century work is Hippolytus of Rome's Blessings of Moses, which survives in Armenian and Georgian versions. No English translation has been published, to my knowledge; what follows is my translation of a French translation:

It is possible to hear this also of the future coming of the Lord. For he who on Mount Sinai appeared to Moses, he, with the Angels, will come and save the saints from their persecuting and oppressing enemies, thus sparing those who have hoped in him. For he says: 'All the sanctified ones (are) under your hands' [Deut. 33:3]. For cover and shelter for all, who could it be but the Lord who has stretched out his hands and sanctified all who run to him, as the hen (does) to cover her chicks? [Matt. 23.37] And Ezra, in a prophetic voice, said the same thing: 'Blessed is the Lord who has stretched out his hands and revived Jerusalem!' [4 Ezra 7.27] And, through Isaiah, He rails against the rebels and says, 'All day long have I stretched out my hands to the rebellious people.' And here Moses says, 'All the sanctified ones (are) under your hands, even these are under you.' (Blessings of Moses 320)³²

It seems clear from the reference to the Lord's future coming with the angels and the likely allusion to Matthew 23:37 that "the Lord" here refers to Christ. It is not certain whether Hippolytus has understood Christ to have "stretched out his hands" on the cross or in a more general imploring sense.

 Novatian of Rome

Writing in the mid-third century, Novatian clearly interprets our text with reference to the cross.

(6) For Divine Scripture often mentions things that have not yet been done as already done, because they are eventually going to be done; and it foretells things which are certainly about to happen, not as though they are going to happen in the future, but rather as though they had already happened. (7) In fact, though Christ had not yet been born in the time of Isaiah the prophet, Isaiah stated: ‘For a child is born to us.’ And although Mary had not yet been approached, he said: ‘And I went to the prophetess and she conceived and bore a son.’ (8) Though Christ had not yet made known the divine secrets of the Father, Isaiah stated: ‘And His name will be called the Angel of Great Counsel.’ (9) He had not yet suffered, and the prophet declared: ‘He was led as a sheep to the throat-cutter.’ (10) As yet there had been no Cross, and he stated: ‘All the day long I have stretched out My hands to an unbelieving people.’ (On the Trinity 28.6-10)³³

Novatian writes in Latin, but like the second-century Epistle of Barnabas and like Hippolytus (if the Armenian word order is true to the Greek), his word order in the quotation matches that of Paul in Romans 10:21.

 St. Cyprian of Carthage

Novatian's contemporary in North Africa quotes Isaiah 65:2 in a list of proof texts adduced to prove "That the Jews would fasten Christ to the Cross" (Ad Quirinum 2.20).³⁴

Conclusion

The view that "I stretched out my hands all day long towards a disobedient and contrary people" (Isaiah 65:2) was a prophecy spoken by Christ was widely held in the second and third centuries, from Alexandria/Syro-Palestine in the East to Carthage, Rome, and Gaul in the West. Most of these writers are, furthermore, clear that they understand the prophecy to refer to Christ's crucifixion, the stretching out of his hands on the cross.

We cannot be certain about the origin of this exegetical tradition. It could stem from reflection directly on Isaiah 65:2 LXX, or indirectly via Romans 10:21. However, given what we argued in the first part of this article—that Paul himself likely understood it as a prophecy spoken by Christ and possibly even about the cross—the possibility cannot be discounted that the crucifixion interpretation of Isaiah 65:2 goes back to the Apostle to the Gentiles himself.

• 1 Cp. Isa. 1:15; 1 Kings 8:22, 38; Ps. 143:6; Lam. 1:17. "However, in marked contrast with the other verses, which speak of human supplication vis-à-vis the Deity, here, paradoxically, the Deity is begging for the attention of inattentive humans" (Shalom M. Paul, Isaiah 40-66: Translation & Commentary [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012], 592); similarly, J. Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction & Commentary (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1993), 524.
• 2 The translation follows Moisés Silva's, except that I have translated πρὸς with "towards" rather than "to" ("Esaias," in New English Translation of the Septuagint, ed. Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright [New York: Oxford University Press, 2007], 874). Both are within the semantic range of pros + accusative. Greek text is taken from Septuaginta, ed. Joseph Ziegler (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), 14:355.
• 3 BDAG 307; cf. J. Lust, E. Eynikel, & K. Hauspie, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1992), 1:139.
• 4 Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40-66: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 400); "Admittedly, Isa. 65:1 speaks in the first instance of Israel's disobedience" (Mark A. Seifrid, "Romans," in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. G. K. Beale & D. A. Carson [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007], 665).
• 5 Paul, Isaiah 40-66, 592.
• 6 Silva, "Esaias," 14:355. The Greek terms are emphanēs egenomēn and eurethēn.
• 7 In quoting Isaiah 65:1, the verbal expressions emphanēs egenomēn and eurethēn beginning vv. 1a and 1b have been inverted. The preposition en seems to have been inserted between eurethēn and tois, changing "by those" to "among those," although this is text-critically uncertain. "Among those" would imply that only some Gentiles had found God, not the Gentiles in general.
• 8 "In their original context these words from Isaiah 65:1 (‘I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me …’) seem to refer to rebellious Israel; but, as in his application of the Hosea prophecy, Paul recognizes here a principle which in the situation of his day is applicable to Gentiles, and the LXX wording...lent support to this application"  (F. F. Bruce, Romans: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1985), 207–208).
• 9 "The prepositional phrase πρὸς τὸν Ἰσραὴλ that introduces the final citation in this pericope should be taken as 'in reference to Israel' rather than as a direct address, 'to Israel.' The particle δέ appears again with the sense of 'but,' indicating that the address to the Gentiles in v. 20 shifts to Israel in v. 21" (Robert Jewett and Roy David Kotansky, Romans: A Commentary [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006], 648–649); "πρὸς δὲ τὸν Ἰσραὴλ λέγει, 'but concerning Israel he says'... Paul specifies Israel as the target, thereby making still clearer the point that v 20 referred to Gentiles" (James D. G. Dunn, Romans 9–16 [Dallas: Word, 1988], 626–627).
• 10 E.g., Dunn, Romans 9-16, 626-27; Jewett and Kotansky, Romans, 626-67; Seifrid, "Isaiah," 667; Joseph A. Fitzmyer S.J., Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, (New Haven; Yale University Press, 2008), 600; James R. Edwards, Romans (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 257–258; Richard N. Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 858–860; Douglas J. Moo, The Letter to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 687–688.
• 11 "The historical question of when Isa 65:1–2 was first divided into two parts—the first verse speaking about Gentiles who have responded positively to God; the second verse speaking about the people of Israel who have been 'disobedient and obstinate'—will probably never be answered. It may have been done by Paul himself here in Rom 10:20–21—or, perhaps more likely, by some earlier Christian apostle or teacher in the Jerusalem church or in the congregations of Syrian Antioch" (Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans, 858–860).
• 12 France, Romans, 208. Similarly, "Paul cites the text typologically in precisely this sense: God's dealings with Israel in the past have been recapitulated in the present" (Seifrid, "Romans," 666).
• 13 "Traces of the apostle's Jewish identity can be seen in... the reception of manifold requirements and methods of Jewish biblical exegesis at the time (Qal Wa-homer in Rom 5.9f. and elsewhere; Gezerah shavah in Rom. 4.1-12 and elsewhere, Midrash-exegesis in Gal. 3.6-14 and Rom. 4; typology in 1 Cor. 10.1-13; allegory in Gal. 4.21-31)" (Oda Wischmeyer, Paul: Life, Setting, Work, Letters, trans. Helen S. Heron with revisions by Dieter T. Roth [London: T&T Clark, 2012], 77); "there can be no doubt that Paul does at times employ a Stichwort approach in adducing Old Testament citations (e.g. gezerah shavah)" (James M. Scott, "'For as Many as are of Works of the Law are under a Curse' (Galatians 3.10)," in Paul and the Scriptures of Israel, ed. Craig A. Evans and James A. Sanders [London: Bloomsbury, 1993/2015], 191).
• 14 David Instone Brewer explains that gezerah shavah encompasses two rules. The first is "the definition of an ill-defined word or phrase in one text by its use in another text where its meaning is clearer. It does not attempt to survey all the possible uses of the word or phrase throughout the Scripture but it assumes that the meaning of a word in one text is always the same as its meaning in another." The second is "the interpretation of one text in the light of another text to which it is related by a shared word or phrase. The two texts are often concerned with the same subject, but the existence of the same word or phrase in two texts can suggest a relationship between them even if they are concerned with completely unrelated subjects" (Techniques and Assumptions in Jewish Exegesis before 70 CE [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992], 17-18).
• 15 "in Rom. 4:1-8 Paul combines Gen. 15:6 with Ps. 32:1-2 on the basis of the verb logizomai, which both texts have in common. This is an application of the rule called 'analogy' (gezerah shavah) by the Rabbis." (Klaus Haacker, The Theology of Paul's Letter to the Romans [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 102).
• 16 "The LXX rendering [of Isaiah 65:2] may pick up the concrete expression of Israel's rebellion as it is portrayed in context, which includes dismissal of the 'word of the LORD' (Isa. 65:3-7, 12; 66:3-5; also 59:1-15)" (Seifrid, "Isaiah," 667).
• 17 "if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord... you will be saved...the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him" (vv. 10, 12). Paul pairs the quotation from Joel with one from Isaiah 28:16 about the precious stone of which "the one who believes in him will not be put to shame". This can only be Christ in Paul's understanding; yet Paul identifies the referent of Isaiah 28:16 and Joel 2:32 as the same: "But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard?" (v. 14)
• 18 "The nation refuses to 'call on the name of the (risen) Lord' (10:3-4, 13)—the very charge that the Lord brings in Isaiah (Isa. 65:1b; cf. 64:7)" (Seifrid, "Isaiah," 667).
• 19 "Romans," 667.
• 20 That is, according to the early Christian interpretation of the Servant Song of Isaiah 52:13-53:12, which we know that Paul followed, based on his quotation of Isaiah 53:1 in Romans 10:16 and his quotation of Isaiah 52:15 in Romans 15:21.
• 21 See, e.g., Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 63-67; James M. Hamilton, Jr., God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 414f; Bruce R. Reichenbach, "Soteriology in the Gospel of John," Themelios 46 (2021): 578-81.
• 22 The verb is a different one, ekteinō, meaning "extend" (e.g., to receive irons) rather than "spread out" as ekpetannumi in Isaiah 65:2. So the verbal parallel is not compelling, but it is interesting nonetheless that, for John, an action of extending the hands was suitable language to describe an apostle's death that glorifies God like Christ's did.
• 23 So Bart D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 2:7-8.
• 24 Trans. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, 2:53, 57.
• 25 An early 20th century work on the use of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers rates it as "B" (highly probable) on a scale from A to D that the author of Barnabas knew Romans (A Committee of the Oxford Society of Historical Theology, The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905).
• 26 c. 160 is the usual date for the Dialogue, but Timothy J. Horner argues that the Dialogue was a redacted version of an earlier "Trypho Text," an account of a real dialogue with Trypho, which he dates to c. 135 A.D. (Listening to Trypho: Justin Martyr's Dialogue Reconsidered [Leuven: Peeters, 2001]).
• 27 St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ed. Michael Slusser, trans. Thomas B. Falls, rev. Thomas P. Halton (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 148; see also Dialogue 114.2; 1 Apology 38.1.
• 28 St. Irenaeus, Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, trans. Joseph P. Smith (Westminster: Newman, 1952), 97.
• 29 Trans. Geoffrey D. Dunn, Tertullian (London: Routledge, 2004), 68-69.
• 30 Joel Marcus, "The 'Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs' and 'Didascalia Apostolorum': A Common Jewish Christian Milieu?", Journal of Theological Studies 61 (2010): 600-602.
• 31 Trans. R. Hugh Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum (Oxford: Clarendon, 1929), 185.
• 32 French original: "Il est possible d'entendre aussi ceci de la venue future du Seigneur. Car, celui qui, sur le Mont Sinaï, est apparu à Moïse, celui-là, avec des Anges, viendra et sauvera les Saints de leurs ennemis persécuteurs et oppresseurs, épargnant ainsi (à) ceux qui auront espéré en Lui, (la défaite). Car il dit: «Tous les sanctifies (sont) sous tes mains». Car couverture et abri pour tous, qui peut l’être, sinon le Seigneur qui a étendu ses mains et sanctifié tous ceux qui courent à Lui, comme la poule (fait) pour couvrir ses poussins? Et Esdras, d’une voix prophétique, a dit la même chose: «Béni est le Seigneur qui a étendu ses mains et fait revivre Jérusalem!» Et, par Isaïe, Il vitupère les rebelles et dit: «J’ai étendu mes mains tout le jour vers le people rebelle». Et ici, Moïse dit: «Tous les sanctifies (sont) sous tes mains, et ceux-ci sont sous toi»." (Maurice Brière, Louis Mariès & B.-Ch. Mercier, "Bénédictions de Moïse," in Patrologia Orientalis 27.1-2 [Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1954], 130-31).
• 33 Novatian, The Trinity, The Spectacles, Jewish Foods, In Praise of Purity, Letters, trans. Russell J. deSimone (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1974), 96.
• 34 Trans. A Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1840), 3:56.