04.The Debt of Irenaeus to Justin Martyr
IITHE DEBT OF IRENAEUS TO JUSTIN MARTYR
IF we are to proceed with safety in forming a judgment as to the relation between Justin and Irenaeus in respect of the matter which they have in common, it will be necessary not merely to consider a number of selected parallels, but also to examine the treatment of a particular theme in the two writers. Let us set side by side, for example, c. 32 of Justin’s First Apology with c. 57 of the Demonstration. Justin has been explaining to his Roman readers who the Jewish prophets were, and then giving a list of the chief things which they expressly foretold concerning the coming of Christ. Then he proceeds thus:
Moses then, who was the first of the prophets, speaks expressly as follows: There shall not fail a prince from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until he shall come for whom it is reserved: and he shall be the expectation of the Gentiles; binding his colt to the vine; washing his robe in the blood of the grape. It is your part then to make careful enquiry and to learn up to what point the Jews had a prince and king of their own. It was up to the appearing of Jesus Christ, our teacher and the expounder of the prophecies which were not understood, namely how it was foretold by the divine holy prophetic Spirit through Moses that there should not fail a prince from the Jews, until he should come for whom is reserved the kingdom. For Judah is the ancestor of the Jews, from whom also they obtained that they should be called Jews. And you, after His appearance
Now the words He shall be the expectation of the Gentiles were meant to indicate that from among all the Gentiles men shall expect Him to come again----which you yourselves can see with your eyes and believe as a fact: for men of all races are expecting Him who was crucified in Judaea, immediately after whose time the land of the Jews was conquered and given over to you. And the words Binding his colt to the vine and Washing his robe in the blood of the grape were a sign to show what was to happen to Christ, and what was to be done by Him. For the colt of an ass was standing at the entrance to a village, tied to a vine; and this He commanded His disciples at that time to bring to Him; and when it was brought He mounted and sat on it, and entered into Jerusalem, where was that very great temple of the Jews, which afterwards was destroyed by you. And after these things He was crucified, that the remainder of the prophecy might be accomplished. For Washing his robe in the blood of the grape was the announcement beforehand of the passion which He was to suffer, cleansing by blood those who believe on Him. For what is called by the divine Spirit through the prophet (His) robe means the men who believe in Him, those in whom dwells the seed from God, (that is) the Word. And that which is spoken of as blood of the grape signifies that He who is to appear has blood indeed, yet not from human seed, but from a divine power. Now the first power after God, the Father and Lord of all, is the Son, the Word: of whom we shall presently tell after what manner He was made flesh and became man. For even as the blood of the vine not man hath made, but God; so also is it signified that this blood shall not be of human seed, but of the power of God, as we have said before.
Moreover Isaiah, another prophet, prophesying the same things in other words said thus: There shall rise a star out of Jacob, and a flower shall spring up from the root of Jesse, and on his arm shall the Gentiles hope. The points that strike us at once in this passage are these:
(1) The well-known Blessing of Jacob is cited as the prophecy of Moses, who is called the "first of the prophets."
(2) The quotation is abbreviated, and Justin comments on it in its abbreviated form.
(3) The statement that Judah was the ancestor of the Jews, and that from him they got their name, is on a par with many such explanations which Justin makes for the sake of his Roman readers.
(4) That the Jews had no prince or king of their own after the time of Christ, and that their land was conquered and ruled by the Romans, was a good point of apologetic and one which his readers would fully appreciate.
(5) We are somewhat surprised that "the expectation of the Gentiles" should be referred to the second coming of Christ.
(6) The statement that the ass’s colt was tied to a vine is not found in our Gospels.
(7) Washing his robe in the blood of the grape easily suggested our Lord’s passion; but that His robe should be those who believe on Him seems to us far-fetched.
(8) Equally far-fetched is the explanation of the blood of the grape as pointing to blood made not by man, but by God.
(9) The combination of Balaam’s prophecy with words of Isaiah, and the attribution of the whole to Isaiah, strikes us as a strange piece of carelessness.
Now let us read c. 57 of the Demonstration. After a few prefatory sentences in which he notes certain points regarding Christ which are the subject of prophecy, Irenaeus goes on:
Moses in Genesis says thus: There shall not fail a prince from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until he shall come for whom it remaineth: and he shall be the expectation of the Gentiles: washing his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape. Now Judah was the ancestor of the Jews, the son of Jacob; from whom also they obtained the name. And there failed not a prince among them and a leader, until the coming of Christ. But from the time of His coming the might of the quiver was captured, the land of the Jews was given over into subjection to the Romans, and they had no longer a prince or king of their own. For He was come, for whom remaineth in heaven the kingdom; who also washed his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape: His robe as also His garment are those who believe on Him, whom also He cleansed, redeeming us by His blood. And His blood is said to be blood of the grape: for even as the blood of the grape no man maketh, but God produceth, and maketh glad them that drink thereof, so also His flesh and blood no man wrought, but God made. The Lord Himself gave the sign of the virgin, even that Emmanuel which was from the virgin; who also maketh glad them that drink of Him, that is to say, who receive His Spirit, (even) everlasting gladness. Wherefore also He is the expectation of the Gentiles, of those who hope in him; for we expect of Him that He will establish again the kingdom.
We may now take our nine points one by one:
(1) Here again the Blessing of Jacob is cited as the prophecy of Moses; and a little earlier (§ 43) we find the words: "Moses, who was the first that prophesied."
(2) The text of the quotation is the same as in Justin: but the words about binding the colt to the vine are omitted, and the remainder of the passage is given without abbreviation, as in the LXX.
(3) That Judah is the ancestor of the Jews, who got their name from him, is found in Irenaeus; and the actual words would seem to have been taken over from Justin. The statement is somewhat superfluous in a book written for a fairly well
(4) Justin’s words are: meq’o$n eu)qu_j doria&lwtoj u(mi=n h( gh~ ’Ioudai/wn paredo&qh. The translation of the first part of the parallel in Irenaeus is obscure: but it is possible that the phrase "the might of the quiver was captured" is no more than the translator’s attempt to make something of doria&lwtoj. If so, it would appear certain that here also Irenaeus was practically writing out a sentence of Justin, only changing u(mi=n into toi=j (Rwmai/oij.
(5) The expectation of the Gentiles is here also explained of the Second Advent; and the word "kingdom" is offered, as in Justin, as the unexpressed subject of w{| a)po&keitai.
(6) The passage about the ass’s colt is omitted both from the quotation and from the interpretation. Irenaeus has it in IV, xx. 2, where he quotes, again as from Moses, the whole section (Gen. xlix. 10-12), ending with: laetifici oculi ejus a vino, et candidi dentes ejus quam lac. He then goes on: "Let these persons who are said to investigate all things search out the time at which there failed prince and leader from Judah, and who is the expectation of the Gentiles, and what the vine, and what his colt, and what the robe, and what are eyes and teeth and wine; and search out every point;
(7) and (8) reappear in Irenaeus, and it is most natural to suppose that he took them over from Justin. He has a point of his own when he goes on to add to the interpretation of the blood of the grape the gladness produced by the wine. It seems to be introduced without any obvious reason, until we observe that the words which follow in the passage in Genesis tell of the gladness of the eyes produced by wine (laetifici oculi, etc. quoted above).
(9) In c. 58 Irenaeus proceeds at once to the quotation of Balaam’s prophecy, as follows: "And again Moses says: There shall rise a star out of Jacob, and a leader shall be raised up out of Israel." He does not make the combination with Isaiah which we find in Justin; nor does he attribute Balaam’s words to Isaiah. It is however to be noted that in III, ix. 2, where he quotes the passage as here, he does attribute it to Isaiah: "Cujus et stellam Ysaias quidem sic prophetavit: Orietur Stella ex Jacob, et surget dux in Israel." On this coincidence in error Dr Rendel Harris remarks (Testimonies, I. p. 11): "Justin shews us the passage of Isaiah following the one from Numbers, and the error lies in the covering of two passages with a single reference. It is clear, then, that Justin’s mistake was made in a collection of Testimonies from the prophets, and that the same collection, or one that closely agreed with it, was
Another example of a whole section drawn from Justin Martyr will be found in cc. 44 f. Here it is the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew to which Irenaeus is indebted. The whole of these two chapters should be read consecutively: but the chief parts must be given here. Irenaeus cites Gen. xviii. 1 ff., to show that it was the Son of God who spake with Abraham. This is Justin’s view also, but the nearest parallels come after the quotation of Gen. xix. 24. At this point Irenaeus says: And then the Scripture says: And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven: that is to say, the Son, who spake with Abraham, being Lord, received power to punish the men of Sodom from the Lord out of heaven, even from the Father who rules (or is Lord) over all. So Abraham was a prophet and saw things to come, which were to take place in human form: even the Son of God, that He should speak with men and eat with them, and then should bring in the judgment from the Father, having received from Him who rules over all the power to punish the men of Sodom.
Justin had said (Dial. 56 ad fin.): "And He is the Lord, who from the Lord who is in heaven, that is, from the Maker of all things, received (power) to bring these things on Sodom and Gomorrah, which the narrative recounts, saying: The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah
After this Irenaeus goes on at once as follows (Dem. c. 45): And Jacob, when he went into Mesopotamia, saw Him in a dream, standing upon the ladder, that is, the tree, which was set up from earth to heaven; for thereby they that believe on Him go up to the heavens. For His sufferings are our ascension on high. And all such visions point to the Son of God, speaking with men and being in their midst. For it was not the Father of all, etc. (See below.) This idea that Jacob’s Ladder was "the tree" (cu&lon), that is to say, the cross, is found in Justin (Dial. 86), among a number of other types equally strange to us: "It says that a ladder was seen by him; and the Scripture has declared that God was supported upon it; and that this was not the Father we have proved from the Scriptures." Irenaeus again expands the comment in his own way, but he recurs to the theme "It was not the Father." For it was not the Father of all, who is not seen by the
Now the words "in a very small space" are clearly reminiscent of Justin. For in Dial. 127 he says: "Think not that the unbegotten God Himself came down or went up from anywhere. For the unutterable Father and Lord of all has never come any whither," etc. "How then should He either speak to any one, or be seen by any, or appear in some very small portion of earth (e0ne0laxi/stw|)?" Cf. Dial. 60: e0n o)li/gw| gh~j mori/w| pefa&nqai.
These repeated coincidences, in large matters and in small, make us feel that Irenaeus was very familiar with Justin’s writings. Everywhere he goes beyond him: but again and again he starts from him. The advantage to be gained by the recognition of the dependence of Irenaeus upon Justin may be illustrated from c. 53 of our Treatise. The Armenian text here presents several difficulties, probably from corrupt transcription. The original cannot have been very easy to understand; but when we read with it c. 6 of Justin’s Second Apology some points at any rate are cleared up. Irenaeus has just quoted Isa. vii. 14 ff., following the LXX with slight variations:
Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: behold, the virgin shall conceive and shall bring forth a son, and ye shall call him Emmanuel: butter and honey shall he eat; before he knoweth or selecteth the evil, he chooseth the good:
We must pause here for a moment to quote some parallel words from Irenaeus himself (III, xxv. 2). He has quoted the same Scripture, and in commenting upon it he says: "Et manifestat quoniam homo, in eo quod dicit: Butyrum et mel manducabit; et in eo quod infantem nominat eum; et priusquam cognoscat bonum et malum: haec enim omnia signa sunt hominis infantis." In my translation I have written: "this is the custom also for one that is born." But the Armenian text has: "this is the error also of one that is born." I have accepted Mr F. C. Conybeare’s simple and attractive emendation sovoruthiun, "custom," for moloruthiun, " error." 5 We now return to our passage: And His name is two-fold: in the Hebrew tongue Messiah Jesus, and in ours Christ Saviour. And the two names are names of works actually wrought. For He was named Christ, because through Him the Father anointed and adorned all things; and because on His coming as man He was anointed with the Spirit of God and His Father. As also by Isaiah He says of Himself: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me: wherefore he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. And (He was named) Saviour for this, that He became the cause of salvation to those who at
Having disposed of these preliminary difficulties, we note some curious matters that remain for consideration. What is the point of saying, "names of works actually wrought"? Is there any parallel to the explanation of "Christ" as "He through whom the Father anointed"? And why does our author lay stress on the cure of the sick as the explanation of the name "Jesus"?
Let us now look at the passage of Justin to which we referred at the outset (Ap. II, 6):
Now a name imposed on the Father of all, unbegotten as He is, is an impossibility. For he to whom a name is applied must have one older than himself who has imposed on him the name. Father and God and Creator and Lord and Master are not names: they are appellations derived from benefits and works (e0k tw~n eu)poii+w~n kai\ tw~n e1rgwn).
Here we see the force of what Irenaeus had said about the naming spoken of by Isaiah, as indicating the manhood of the promised Child of the Virgin. The Unbegotten has no name, in the strict sense: there was none before Him to impose a name on Him. The Begotten, when begotten as man, has
Here Justin is explaining that "Christ" is a name indeed, but more than a name. It is a designation derived from a work, just as the designation God is derived from a work (cf. e1rgwn above, and pra&gmatoj). What then is this work? The anointing which made Him the Christ is something which to Justin’s mind occurred before His coming as man. He was anointed that through Him God might order (or adorn) the universe. The sense of the words is fairly plain, if it be somewhat surprising. But the construction of the Greek at the crucial point is at least awkward. The words are: Xristo_j me
kata_ to_ kexri=sqai kai\ kosmh~sai ta_ pa&nta di’ au)tou~ to_n qeo_n le/getai. Long ago Scaliger proposed to read kai\ xri=sai, instead of kexri=sqai. This would mean: "in respect of God’s both anointing and ordering all things through Him." The emendation found little favour with the editors of Justin, until the discovery of the Demonstration. Now it seems likely to find a wider acceptance in view of these words of Irenaeus: "For He was named Christ because through Him the Father
Jesus, on the other hand, offers both the name of a man and the significance of Saviour. For, as we have already said, He has become man, born in accordance with the counsel of God the Father on behalf of the men that believe on Him and for the overthrow of the demons: and this you can learn at the present time from what takes place under your eyes. For many possessed of demons, in the world generally and in your own city, have been healed and are still being healed by many of our men, the Christians, who exorcise them by the name of Jesus Christ, crucified under Pontius Pilate, though they could not be healed by all the rest of the exorcists.
Jesus is a man’s name, familiar enough to Greek readers of the Bible from having been given by Moses to his successor whom we call Joshua. It also has a significance: for it means Saviour. As Swth&r to the Greeks suggested specially the giving of health (swthri/a), Justin finds a connexion between ’Ihsou~j and i1asij, "healing." You can see this to-day, he says: for the Christians who use the name of Jesus Christ, crucified under Pontius Pilate, can heal when no one else can (mh_ i0aqe/ntaj i0a&santo kai\ e1ti nu~n i0w~ntai).
Turning back to the last words of the passage quoted above from Irenaeus, we note that the same interpretation of "Jesus" is in his mind, even
We have now to consider a passage in which the help to be gained from Justin is not so clear. In c.43 we read: "This Jeremiah the prophet also testified, saying thus: Before the morning-star I begat thee; and before the sun (is) thy name; and that is, before the creation of the world; for together with the world the stars were made."
Here we have a composite quotation, made up from two different Psalms and attributed to the prophet Jeremiah. The words of Ps. cx. 3, which are familiar to us in the form " The dew of thy youth is of the womb of the morning," were understood by the LXX to mean " From the womb before the morning-star I begat thee" (e0k gastro_j pro_ e9wsfo&rou e0ge/nnhsa& se). In our passage the phrase "from the womb" is dropped; and thus the text can be the more easily applied to the pre-existent Son of God. We feel the difficulty of combining the two phrases when we find Tertullian (Adv. Marcion. V. 9), who applies the passage to our Lord’s human birth, constrained to interpret "before the morning-star" as meaning while it was yet dark, and offering various proofs from the Gospels that Christ was born in the night. The second half of our quotation is a
It is obvious that the two texts have been drawn together by a recollection of the parallel phrases "before the morning-star" and "before the sun." But again, in the neighbourhood of the latter, we find "before the moon," in the difficult verse (Ps. lxxii. 5): kai\ sunparamenei= tw~| h(li/w|, kai\ pro_ th~jselh&nhj genea_j genew~n. We shall see that in other writers this phrase also is drawn in.
We may now consider the use made of these texts by Justin Martyr. In his Dialogue with the Jew Trypho (c. 45) he speaks of Christ, as "the Son of God, who was before the morning-star and the moon" and was incarnate and born of the Virgin. This is not exactly a mixed quotation, but we see how readily phrases from the two Psalms are combined. Then in c. 63 he quotes "that which was spoken by David: In the brightness of thy holy ones, from the womb before the morning-star I begat thee:" and he comments thus: "Does this not show you that from of old (a!nwqen) and through a human womb the God and Father of all was to beget Him? "Here there is no combination of texts: but in c. 76 we have the three texts brought together, though "the morning-star" is not mentioned: "And David proclaimed that before sun (Ps. lxxii. 17) and moon (Ps. lxxii. 5) He should be begotten from the womb (Ps. cx. 3), according to the counsel of the Father."
If, as we may well believe, these passages of Justin were familiar to Irenaeus, it is not difficult
Dr Rendel Harris also quotes from the Syriac writer Bar Salibi:9 "David said: Before the day-star I begat thee. And before the sun is his name, and before the moon." From these and other parallels he concludes that Irenaeus made use of a common body of proof texts contained in a very ancient book of "Testimonies against the Jews."
Irenaeus goes on to attribute to Jeremiah a yet more strange quotation: "Blessed is he who was, before he became man." The German translations render the last words differently: one of them has: "before the coming into being of man (vor dem Werden des Menschen):" the other has: "before through him man was made (bevor durch ihn der Mensch warde)." We have however an exact parallel to the construction in the Armenian rendering of the words "before he knoweth" in c. 53. The Greek there is pri
h2 gnw~nai au)to&n (Isa. vii. 15); and we may suppose that here it was pri
h2 genhqh~nai au)to_n a!nqrwpon. No such text is to be found in any book now known to us which is attributed to Jeremiah. Dr Rendel Harris has been the first to point to its occurrence in a slightly different form, and again as quoted from Jeremiah, in Lactantius (Divin. Inst.
[Note to the online text: pp. 24ff which deal with Justin and Irenaeus on the Holy Spirit have been omitted]
[Footnotes moved to the end and renumbered]
1. 1 The Armenian translation of Bks. IV and V, found in the same MS. with our treatise, is a valuable aid for the criticism of these books.
4. 1Published with a translation by the same editors inTexte u. Untersuchungen,xxxv. 2.
5. 1I had at first thought that a comparison of the passage quoted from III, xxv. 2 pointed to the loss of some words from our text, and that we might emend thus: "[and in that he said:Before he knoweth good or evil;] for this is the uncertainty also of one that is born." But I doubt whethermoloruthiuncould be toned down to mean "uncertainty." Moreover in what follows it is thenameon which stress is laid.
6. 1He does so in the notable passage II, xlix. 3, of which Eusebius has preserved the original Greek.
7. 1Printed by Zacagni,Monumenta,p. 292 (Rome, 1698).
8. 2We have, "thy name "in Clem. Alex.Exc. ex Theodoto20: To_ ga_r pro_ e9wsfo&rou e0ge/nnhsa& se ou#twj ecakou&omen e0pi\ tou~ prwtokti/-stou qeou~ lo&gou, kai\ pro_ h(li/ou kai\ selh&nhj kai\ pro_ pa&shj kti/sewj to_ o!noma& sou.
9. 3Harris,Testimonies, p. 15. See also on p. 45 a quotation from an anti-Mohammedan tract: "His name endures before the sun and moon throughout all ages."
