HistoricalChristian.Faith

An Ancient Homily on Holy Saturday on the Intermediate State

Dates: c. 300 (date and authorship disputed) · Wikipedia (Epiphanius of Salamis)
Summary: An anonymous Greek homily for Holy Saturday — transmitted under the name of Epiphanius of Salamis but spurious, and of uncertain date — gives the descent its most celebrated dramatic voice. On the day Christ lies dead, "there is a great silence on earth," for the King "has fallen asleep in the flesh" and gone down to seek Adam "as for a lost sheep," to wake the imprisoned dead and lead them up. It is one of the fullest early narrations of the harrowing of Hades as the rescue of the first parents.

Claims & evidence

The "great silence": God has died in the flesh and descended to the dead

Something strange is happening — there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

— Homily for Holy Saturday (In sancto et magno Sabbato; Pseudo-Epiphanius), English from the Roman Office of Readings for Holy Saturday. The homily's whole frame is the intermediate state: Christ's body rests in the tomb while, in the realm of the dead, the decisive work of liberation is under way.

Christ descends to seek and raise Adam and the captive dead

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve … The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. … He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: "Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light."

— Homily for Holy Saturday (Pseudo-Epiphanius), Office of Readings. Christ then commands "all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise," and promises Adam not the earthly paradise but a throne in heaven: "I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven." The descent is precisely the emptying of the holding-place of the righteous dead — the motif weighed on the descent to the dead argument page.

Notes

• Author and date are genuinely uncertain. The homily survives among the works ascribed to Epiphanius of Salamis (d. 403), but the attribution is spurious — scholars label the author "Pseudo-Epiphanius" — and the date is disputed, with estimates ranging across the fourth century and later. The Greek text is printed in Migne, Patrologia Graeca 43, cols. 439–464 (In divini corporis sepulturam … et in Domini descensum in infernum). The "c. 300" placement here is an approximate, conventional slot for an undatable but early witness; the homily is listed under its work rather than a securely dated author, like the Odes of Solomon and the hymn ascribed to Ambrose.
• The homily is best known today because it is read in the Roman Catholic Office of Readings on Holy Saturday, and it is a touchstone of the Eastern liturgical tradition of Christ's descent (the Anastasis / harrowing-of-Hades icon). Its value as a witness is the vividness with which it states, as settled devotion, that between cross and resurrection Christ went down to free Adam and the captive dead.
• It develops the same descent-and-deliverance picture as Eusebius ("descended alone, but rose with many") and Cyril of Jerusalem (the redemption of the righteous imprisoned since Adam), in narrative rather than catechetical form.