Isaiah: The Fifth Gospel
In Winter of 2004, I followed a graduate course on Eastern Christian Hermeneutics and Exegesis in the Prophecy of Isaiah. It was taught by an excellent man and professor, Fr. Andrew Onuferko. At the time he was also the Acting Director of the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at Saint Paul University, Ottawa. One section of the course highlighted the early Church and their use of the only Scriptures they knew of at the time – what we Christians now call the Old Testament. The author, John Sawyer in his excellent book, The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity, notes that the early Christians used Isaiah extensively in their evangelizing efforts, even informally creating a ‘Gospel narrative’ – something very much akin to what we now know as the Four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Sawyer proposes such a Gospel narrative in a collection of verses of Isaiah woven together. I have reproduced it below for your marvelling!
Behold a virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son (7:14 LXX, Vg), a rod out of the stem of Jesse (11:1). His name shall be called ‘Immanuel’ (7:14), ‘Wonderful counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace’ (9:6), Key of David (22:22), the Christ (45:1 LXX, Vg). To us a child is born (9:6). The ox knows its owner and the ass its master’s crib (1:3). The gentiles will come to your light and the kings to your rising … they shall bring gold and incense (60:6). The idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence (19:1). Behold my servant … in whom my soul delights (42:1). The spirit of the Lord will rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding … (11:2). By the way of the sea, beyond Jordan and Galilee of the nations (9:1), the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor… (61:1). Surely he has taken our infirmities and borne our sicknesses (53:4). Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened … then shall the lame man leap like a hart (35:5-6). The glory of the Lord is risen upon you (60:1). He shall be a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation (28:16), but also a stone of offence and a rock of stumbling to both the houses of Israel (8:14). He said, ‘Go and tell this people, Hear indeed, but understand not …’ (6:9).
I will weep bitterly … because of the destruction of the daughter of my people (that is, Jerusalem 22:4). Say to the daughter of Zion, Your saviour comes (62:11 LXX, Vg). My house will be called a house of prayer for all people (56:7). My servants shall eat but you shall be hungry, my servants shall drink but you shall be thirsty … (65:13). Ho everyone that thirsts, come to the waters … (55:1). He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter (53:7). The government (that is, the cross bearing the inscription ‘King of the Jews’ on it) shall be upon his shoulder (9:6), and there shall come up briars and thorns (5:6). I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to those that pluck out the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting (50:6). He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities (53:5). From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness, but bruises and sores and bleeding wounds (1:6). He was numbered between the transgressors … and made intercession for the transgressors (53:12). They made his grave … with a rich man (53:9). His tomb will be glorious (11:10 Vg). Now I will arise, says the Lord, now I will lift myself up, now I will be exalted (33:10). Then shall your light break forth like the dawn (58:8). Seek the Lord while he may be found (55:6). Behold my servant shall understand, he shall be exalted and lifted up (52:13 LXX, Vg); he shall be high and lifted up (6:1). I will set a sign among them … I will send survivors to the nations, to the sea, to Africa and Lydia, to Italy and Greece, to islands afar off, to those who have not heard about me and have not seen my glory; and they will proclaim my glory to the nations (66:19).
John F. A. Sawyer. The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 49-50.
Papamike,
This is beautiful, but at the same time, I think it could be a little dangerous.
Was it Marcion who had proposed something similar with integrating all the Gospels into a single text?
These are all wonderful sayings, but I think that the context of the scripture has to be maintained in order to understand the full beauty and revelation of the texts.
Good point, Mike. I have taken this piece and presented it out of context.
Here is a little more of the text for context:
The most remarkable fact about patristic perceptions of Isaiah is the way in which, to use Jerome’s words again, the book of Isaiah contains ‘all the mysteries of Christ … born of a virgin, worker of famous deeds and signs, who died and was buried and rose again from hell, the Saviour of all nations’. The process of relating the Gospel stories to Isaiah and the prophets which was begun in the Gospels, is now carried much farther. On the one hand, new texts are discovered to describe events already recounted in the Gospels, while, on the other, new details in the story, not found in the Gospels themselves, are added on the authority of scripture. When we see the extent of this process in terms of the range of text used and the ingenuity of the interpreters, the conclusion that authors turned with special enthusiasm and expectation to the Fifth Gospel, seems inescapable. In the words of one modern authority on the period, ‘Jesus Christ was interpreted less in terms of the Gospels than in those of the messianic prophecies of Isaiah’. The author of the Epistle of Barnabas, for example, quotes Isaiah (not Paul or Jesus) to prove the error of Jewish understanding of texts on circumcision, sabbath and the like, and Justin Martyr, in arguing the case for the truth of scripture, in effect tells the whole Gospel story in the language of the prophets, mainly Isaiah.
To illustrate this the following ‘Gospel narrative’ has been constructed entirely from quotations from the ‘Fifth Gospel’, selected from the countless Isaiah passages that are regularly applied in ancient and mediaeval Christian literature to the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The process was already well developed in the first century, as we have seen, but it gathers momentum over the centuries, fuelled by patristic commentaries such as those of St Jerome (c.342-420), completed between the years 408-410, in the West and St Cyril of Alexandria (died 444) in the East. It reaches its climax in such works as the remarkable Ysaye Testimonia de Christo Domino, attributed to the influential Isidore of Seville (c.560-636) and the mediaeval Biblia Pauperum. Isidore’s polemical De Fide Catholica ex Veteri et Novo Testamento Contra Judaeos, which we shall discuss more fully in another context, is also dependent more on Isaiah than on any other part of scripture.
Behold a virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son (7:14 LXX, Vg), a rod out of the stem of Jesse (11:1). His name shall be called ‘Immanuel’ (7:14), ‘Wonderful counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace’ (9:6), Key of David (22:22), the Christ (45:1 LXX, Vg). To us a child is born (9:6). The ox knows its owner and the ass its master’s crib (1:3). The gentiles will come to your light and the kings to your rising … they shall bring gold and incense (60:6). The idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence (19:1). Behold my servant … in whom my soul delights (42:1). The spirit of the Lord will rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding … (11:2). By the way of the sea, beyond Jordan and Galilee of the nations (9:1), the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor… (61:1). Surely he has taken our infirmities and borne our sicknesses (53:4). Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened … then shall the lame man leap like a hart (35:5-6). The glory of the Lord is risen upon you (60:1). He shall be a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation (28:16), but also a stone of offence and a rock of stumbling to both the houses of Israel (8:14). He said, ‘Go and tell this people, Hear indeed, but understand not …’ (6:9).
I will weep bitterly … because of the destruction of the daughter of my people (that is, Jerusalem 22:4). Say to the daughter of Zion, Your saviour comes (62:11 LXX, Vg). My house will be called a house of prayer for all people (56:7). My servants shall eat but you shall be hungry, my servants shall drink but you shall be thirsty … (65:13). Ho everyone that thirsts, come to the waters … (55:1). He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter (53:7). The government (that is, the cross bearing the inscription ‘King of the Jews’ on it) shall be upon his shoulder (9:6), and there shall come up briars and thorns (5:6). I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to those that pluck out the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting (50:6). He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities (53:5). From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness, but bruises and sores and bleeding wounds (1:6). He was numbered between the transgressors … and made intercession for the transgressors (53:12). They made his grave … with a rich man (53:9). His tomb will be glorious (11:10 Vg). Now I will arise, says the Lord, now I will lift myself up, now I will be exalted (33:10). Then shall your light break forth like the dawn (58:8). Seek the Lord while he may be found (55:6). Behold my servant shall understand, he shall be exalted and lifted up (52:13 LXX, Vg); he shall be high and lifted up (6:1). I will set a sign among them … I will send survivors to the nations, to the sea, to Africa and Lydia, to Italy and Greece, to islands afar off, to those who have not heard about me and have not seen my glory; and they will proclaim my glory to the nations (66:19).
It is really quite extraordinary how complete the story of the life of Christ, told almost entirely in the words of Isaiah, can be. The ‘Fifth Gospel’ version of the story actually contains virtually all the details that are in the other four, as well as some like the ox and the ass in the nativity scene, the shattering of the idols in Egypt and some of the more lurid details of the passion narrative, which are not. Some of them are more far-fetched than others, some obviously depend on the Latin or Greek versions rather than the original Hebrew. There are many more, omitted from the above anthology only because they would not fit verbatim into the narrative sequence. They include references to the treachery of Judas in 3:8-11 (‘it shall be ill with him, for what his hands have done will be done to him’), the agony in Gethsemane (33:7), and the well-known winepress imagery from 63:1-3 which will be discussed later in relation to mediaeval passion iconography.
John F. A. Sawyer. The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 48-50