ACC ~ Matthew 23 v30

WHO SHED THE BLOOD OF THE PROPHETS

ORIGEN: Once the prophets had departed this life, their bodies were in the tomb but their souls and spirits were in the “realm of the living.” Accordingly, the historical narrative of the prophetic writings is to be regarded as the body but their spiritual meaning and the inner truth as the soul and spirit which inhabits history. It is not improper then for us to consider the “tombs of the prophets” to be the letters on the pages of their books, in which the narrative lays as though it were a body placed in a tomb. Those persons therefore who receive and understand the spiritual meaning of the prophetic writings and the truth hidden within them have the soul and spirit of the prophets and are themselves made into a sort of realm of the living prophets. … Those who neither seek nor accept the spiritual meaning but attend only to the simple, historical narrative study the bodies of the prophets in the letters and pages of the books, as though in so many tombs. Such persons were the Pharisees, who were rightly called Pharisees (that is, the “separated”) because they separated the spiritual meaning of the prophets from their bodily history, as though expelling the prophets’ souls from their bodies, killing them and rendering them devoid of soul and spirit. It was also right for the Pharisees to be called “hypocrites,” because they built and adorned only the tombs of the prophets which contained their bodily history, which is to say that they studied only the letter of their writings and books. They did not understand that those who study dead bodies (the historical narrative) may seem to act with reverence toward the memory of the prophets but are in fact being most irreverent. Their attempts to defend themselves against the charge of being associated with “those who killed the prophets” and to prove themselves innocent only add to the crimes of “those who killed the prophets,” thereby filling up the “measure” of the iniquity of their fathers by not believing in Christ, whom the prophets proclaimed not through the historical sense of their writings but through the spiritual sense. COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 27. [1]

[1] GCS 38.2:45-46.

SONS OF THOSE WHO MURDERED THE PROPHETS:

CHRYSOSTOM: And you yourselves continue to do these things in this spirit. Though you may speak to the contrary, you still do them. You say, “If we had lived in the days of our fathers we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.” Yet your own disposition is evident. Even as you are unfolding your intention, you are already expressing it, however disguised. So Jesus adds, “Thus you witness against yourselves, that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets.” If you are the son of a murderer but do not partake of the mind of your father, you yourself are not to blame. But if you do so partake, you have an affinity with his wickedness. THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, HOMILY 74.1. [1]

[1] PG 58:679; NPNF 1 10:445.

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