THE ASCENSION AND THE VISION OF ISAIAH Avaparex.?a, "Opacces 'Haatov), although for a long time lost to the world, was a work well known to the ancients, as is indicated by the allusions of Justin Martyr, Origen, Tertullian, and Epiphanius. The first of these writers (Dial. c. Tryph., ed. Par., p. 349) refers to the account therein contained of the death of Isaiah, who was sawn asunder with a wooden saw a fact, he adds, which was removed by the Jews from the sacred text.' Tertullian also (De Patientid) among other examples from Scripture, refers to the same event ; and in the next (the 3d) century Origen (Epist. ad African.), after stating that the Jews were accustomed to remove many things from the knowledge of the people, which they neverthe less preserved in apocryphal or secret writings, adduces as an example the death of Isaiah, who was sawn as:ender, as stated in a certain apocry phal writing, which the Jews perhaps corrupted in order to throw discredit on the whole.' In his Comm. in Matt. he refers to the same events, ob serving, that if this apocryphal work is not of sufficient authority to establish the account of the prophet's martyrdom, it should be believed upon the testimony borne to that work by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. xi. 37) ; in the same manner as the account of the death of Zechariah should be credited upon the testimony bome by our Saviour to a writing not found in the common and published books (Kolvois Sean unmenes. pOXims), but probably in an apocryphal work. Origen cites a passage from the apocryphal account of the neartyrclom of Isaiah, in one of his Homilies (ed. De la Rue, vol. iii. p. to8). The Apostolical Constitutions also refer to the apocry phal books of Moses, Enoch, Adam, and Isaiah, as writings of some antiquity.
The first writer, however, who mentions the Ascension of Isaiah by name is Epiphanius, in the 4th century, who observes (Hares. xl.) that the apocryphal Ascension of Isaiah was adduced by the Archonites in support of their opinions respecting the seven heavens and their archons or ruling angels, as well as by the Egyptian Hieracas and his followers in confirmation of their heretical opinions respecting the Holy Spirit, at the same time citing the passage from the 'Apaparoc6o to which they refer (Ascens. of Isaiah, ix. 27, 32-36 ;
xi. 32, 33)• Jerome also (in Esai. lxiv. 4) ex pressly names the work, asserting it to be an apo cryphal production, originating in a passage in the .N. T. (1 Cor. 9). St Ambrose (opp., p. 1124) cites a passage contained in it, but only as a traditionary report, plerique ferunt' (Ascens. Is., v. 4-8) ; and the author of the Impev'ect Work on Hatt., a work of the sth century erroneously attri buted to St. Chrysostom (Chrysost., oisp., horn. 1.), evidently cites a passage from the same work (Ascots., i. t, etc.) After this period all trace of the book is lost until the ith century, when Eu thymius Zig,abenus informs us that the Messalian heretics made use of that abominable pseudepi graphal work, the Vision of Isaiah.' It was also used (most probably in a Latin version) by the Cathari in the West (P. Moneta, Adv. Catharos, ed. Rich, p. 218). The Vision of Isaiah is also named in a catalogue of canonical and apocryphal books in a Paris MS. (No. 1789), after the Quasi, et Rest. of Anastasius (Cotelerius, P. P, Apost., PP. 197, 349). Sixtus of Sienna (Bibl. Sanct., 1566) states that the Fi:rion of Isathh, as distinct from the Anavasis (as he calls it), had been printed at Venice. Referring to this last publication, the late Archbishop Laurence observes that he had hoped to find in some bibliographical work a fur ther notice of it, but that he had searched in vain ; concluding at the same time that it must have been a publication extracted from the Ascension of Isaiah, or a Latin translation of the Vision, as the title of it given by Sixtus was, Visio admirabilis Esaim prophetm in raptu mantis, gum divinm Trinitatis arcana, et lapsi generis humani redemp tionem continet.' Dr. Laurence observes also that the mode of Isaiah's death is further in accordance with a Jewish tradition recorded in the Talmud (Tract yebammah, iv.); and he supposes that Mo hammed may have founded his own journey through seven different heavens on this same apocryphal work. He shows at the same time, by an extract from the Raboth, that the same idea of the precise number of seven heavens accorded with the Jewish creed.