“i Saw the Lord”: Observations on the Christian Reception History of Isaiah 6

In the pages to follow I shall examine exegetical, doctrinal, hymnographic, and iconographic productions that illustrate the rich reception history of Isa 6 in early Christianity. It appears that the earliest, Christological interpretation of this text was superseded by a Trinitarian one and that the exegetical shift occurred first in doctrinal and exegetical writings, while hymnography and iconography proved more conservative. In the second part of this article, I argue that the current scholarly concepts fail to distinguish properly between the various types of exegesis involved in each of these cases and that this failure is especially obvious in the case of the earliest and most enduring Christian exegesis of Old Testament theophanies.