The Preexistent Son of God

The Son's Preexistence in the Synoptic Gospels - Part I

2009-02-15T12:10:00.013-05:00

We have seen in the previous articles that the belief in the pre-human existence of the son of God was present among first century Christians, including writers of the New Testament. Most prominently among these writers is Paul, whose influence among the first century churches must have have been strong.

Considering that his writings and his ideas were so influential, one would expect to that the writers of the Synoptic Gospels would have been at least aware of this belief, and even share it themselves - at least Luke, who was a co-worker of Paul.

We will examine these Synoptic Gospels, Matthew's, Mark's and Luke's, for elements of this belief, and in particular, in this first part, the formula used by Jesus in these gospels regarding his coming:

the "I have come" + purpose formula

Here are the ten saying we will examine:

He said to them, "Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there also; for that is what I came for." (Mark 1:38; Luke 4:43)

"But go and learn what this means, 'I desire compassion, and not sacrifice,' for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners." (Matthew 9:13; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:32)

"Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. (Matthew 5:17)

"I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled!" (Luke 12:49)

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34; Luke 12:51)

"For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law" (Matthew 10:35)

"For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." (Mark 10:45; Matthew 20:28)

"For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." (Luke 19:10)

And the sayings of the demons:

"What business do we have with each other, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us?" (Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34)

And they cried out, saying, "What business do we have with each other, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?" (Matthew 8:29)

Jesus uses the "I have come" + purpose formula to sum up his earthly life and ministry as a whole. As Gathercole notes ¹, this formula was not used by people generally - or even by those specially commissioned by God - to sum up their lives' work.

As Gathercole notes further, this formula "is most closely and most abundantly paralleled in the announcements by angels of their coming from heaven". He attempts to provide a background for the Synoptic "I have come" sayings by listing ancient Jewish literature instances where angels do sum up their earthly activity for a particular visit, using this formula. An exception to the identity of these beings would be made in the case of the heavenly Elijah, who uses this formula while coming down on earth for a specific purpose, centuries after his ascension.

Why bring angels into this picture? As noted by Gathercole, Jesus uses this formula to refer to the mission he received from God in its entirety, just like angels do when they use it, summing up the entirety of their mission they were sent into the earthly realm to accomplish. The language used by them refers to their intrusion into the earthly, human realm, and Jesus is known to have himself referred to his mission in relation to this earthly realm (Matthew 9:6; 10:34; Mark 2:10; Luke 5:24; 12:49, 51). And so, the coming of the angels, to fulfill a divinely ordained function - which is the purpose of their mission - corresponds very well with Jesus' coming.

Of course, this does not make Jesus an angel, as it neither makes the angels to be the Messiah. As Gathercole notes, a common heavenly provenance and an analogous coming to the earthly realm do not imply any particular similarity in nature between Jesus and angels.

Angelic Beings using the "I have come" + Purpose Formula

There are many instances in ancient Jewish literature where it is said about angels that they have come to do something, after they have already penetrated the human realm, but where it is not the angel who says this. For example, here's a rabbinic exegetical solution to the puzzle of the identity of the three "men" who meet Abraham near the oaks of Mamre (Genesis 18):

Who were the three men? - Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. Michael came to bring the tidings to Sarah; Raphael came to heal Abraham, and Gabriel came to overturn Sodom. But is it not written, "And there came the two angels to Sodom in the evening"? - Michael came with him to rescue Lot. Scripture supports this too, for it is written, "And he overthrew those cities", not "And they overthrew": this proves it. (b. Baba Metzia 86b).

Gathercole also provides another example from Numbers Rabbah 1.11 ², where God says that:

"the Angel of Death, coming to slay Israel, ... will find the tribe of Levi mixed up with them and will put them to death with the rest of Israel"

Sometimes, not as frequent, there are references to angels coming down, a language similar to that of John's gospel in reference to Jesus. Gathercole provides an example from Exodus Rabbah ³:

"Gabriel came down to deliver Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah"

Later the angel says:

"I went down to save Abraham"

Next we will explore the instances where the angels themselves use the "I have come" + purpose formula.

1-2. Daniel 9:22-23

Daniel 9:20-23 Now while I was speaking and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the LORD my God in behalf of the holy mountain of my God, while I was still speaking in prayer, then the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision previously, came to me in my extreme weariness about the time of the evening offering. He gave me instruction and talked with me and said, "O Daniel, I have now come forth to give you insight with understanding. At the beginning of your supplications the command was issued, and I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed; so give heed to the message and gain understanding of the vision.

3-6. Daniel 10:12, 14, 20; 11:2

Another angel comes to Daniel in a vision, and tells him in verse 12 that:

Daniel 10:12 Then he said to me, "Do not be afraid, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart on understanding this and on humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to your words.

While the angel says his coming is a cause of Daniel's words, it is clear that he has come in order to bring an answer to Daniel's prayers (compare the fact that this verse says Daniel has set his heart on understanding, with 9:2, and the prayers following afterwards), so the purpose of his visit is implicit.

Interestingly enough, this angel continues by saying that the prince of the kingdom of Persia has withstood him for twenty-one days, and so Michael came to help him:

Daniel 10:13 "But the prince of the kingdom of Persia was withstanding me for twenty-one days; then behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left there with the kings of Persia.

Then the angel adds:

Daniel 10:14 "Now I have come to give you an understanding of what will happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision pertains to the days yet future."

And later angel (possibly a different one, see v. 16) asks:

Daniel 10:20 Then he said, "Do you understand why I came to you? But I shall now return to fight against the prince of Persia; so I am going forth, and behold, the prince of Greece is about to come.

Obviously, this angel does not reveal the purpose of his coming because he asks Daniel if he knows it; nevertheless, he provides the answer to this question:

Daniel 11:2 "And now I have come to tell you the truth. Behold, three kings ..."

Note that the expression "I have come to tell you" (kai nun elthon ten aletheian hupodeixai soi) is only present in the Old Greek.

So here again in these instances, the angel is summarizing the purpose of the mission he has to accomplish in the human realm.

7. Tobit 5:5

Tobit tells his son, Tobias, that despite the fact that they have become poor, they still have ten talents of silver which he left in trust with Gabael the son of Gabrias at Rages in Media (Tobit 4:20). He is sending Tobias to get them, and tells him:

Tobit 5:3 "Find a man to go with you and I will pay him wages as long as I live; and go and get the money."

So Tobias went to look for someone acquainted with the roads who would travel with him to Media. He finds Raphael, who is in fact an angel, one who hides his identity from Tobias. The Old Greek text says:

Tobit 5:4-5 And he went out and found Raphael the angel, standing before him, and he didn't know that he was an angel of God; and he said to him [to Raphael]: "Where are you from young man?" And he [Raphael] said to him: "From the sons of Israel, from your brothers, and I have come here to work"

Although Tobias does not know this is the angel Raphael, the readers know this all along, and can readily associate this statement of "I have come" + purpose as an angelic one, of a kind used by other angels in other instances.

Later, Raphael discloses the fact that "God sent me to heal you and your daughter-in-law Sarah." (12:14), and adds:

Tobit 12:18 As for me, when I came to you it was not out of any favor on my part, but because it was God's will.

Now Tobias knows what the reader has known all along, that the "man" who said "I have come here to work" was an angel. Indeed, Raphael came to "work": his is arranging the marriage between Tobias and Sarah, heals Tobit of his blindness and serves a guide to Tobias in order to guarantee the success of his mission, of finding the man with the ten talants.

We then have a case here where the mission of the angel is not merely to deliver a message or to give understanding to somebody. Raphael's mission spans over a considerable amount of time, which he sums up in 5:5 and 12:14.

8. The Sode Raza

Another example comes in the words of the angel named Raziel. This Hebrew text was published by A. Jellinek among others (Das Noah-Buch), who disproves Zunz's theory that the text was composed, not copied, by Eleazar ben Judah of Worms (ca. 1176-1238). Jellinek says the text is closely associated with the Book of Noah, which was written as a sequel to 1 Enoch. He therefore seems to imply that the text has its origins in the Esenne community.

After a prayer of Adam, the angel Raziel appears to him and reveals that his coming serves two purposes:

"I have come to make known to you pure words and great wisdom, and in order to make you wise by the words of this holy book"⁴

9. Apocalypse of Moses

This text is usually thought to have been composed around the 1st century A.D. Eve recounts for her children what has happened in paradise, how she came to sin. In XVI:3 she says that the devil came to the serpent and said:

"I hear that thou art wiser than all the beasts, and I have come to counsel thee"⁵

Again we have an angel coming to earth, using the formula we are examining.

10-11. 4 Ezra 6:30; 7:2

This text is usually dated to the end of the 1st century A.D. The angel Uriel says ⁶:

I have come to show you these things tonight. If therefore you will pray again and fast again for seven days, I will again declare to you greater things than these, for your voice has surely been heard before the Most High; for the Mighty One has seen your uprightness and has also observed the purity which you have maintained from your youth. Therefore He sent me to show you all these things.

Later Uriel says:

"Rise Ezra, and listen the words which I have come to speak to you"

An angel uses again this formula which Jesus uses in the Synoptic Gospels.

12. 2 Baruch 71:3

The text is usually dated as 4 Ezra above. The angel Ramael tells Baruch:

This is the vision which you have seen, and this is its explanation. For I have come to tell you these things since you prayer has been heard by the Most High.

13. Testament of Isaac

This text's date of composition is uncertain. According to some, this text represents a Christianization of a Jewish text, though not a thoroughgoing one ⁷. Gathercole says that "the "coming" saying ... is clearly dependent on the Jewish angel-tradition, whether this particular statement was written by a Jew or a Christian"⁸. The version preserved in the Ethiopic tradition says that Michael tells Isaac:

Be curageous in your spirit, for I come to you from the presence of God in order to bring you up into heaven, into the presence of your father Abraham and all the holy ones ⁹.

So again, an angel saying he has come with a purpose.

14. The Jeremiah Apocryphon

This is a text ¹⁰ that survives only in Coptic and Arabic versions. Harris argues in a 1927 book ¹¹ that this is a Christian text; later, Marmostein disagrees with him and argues for a Jewish origin, saying that the work could be explained only with reference to the Talmud and Midrash ¹². In a more recent work, Kuhn agrees with Marmorstein, saying that apparently, the Christian elements can easily be detached, and that the work is basically Jewish ¹³.

Either way, this angelic tradition of using the formula we examine, is part of this text. In it, Michael speaks to Jeremiah saying in the Coptic version translated by Kuhn ¹⁴:

"Jeremiah, chosen one of God, behold I tell thee: I have come to redeem this people and to take them to the land of their fathers"

The Arabic version ¹⁵ says:

"I have come to you today to save your people, because for this God sent me. Here is what the Lord whom you serve says: 'I have taken pity on this people and I have decided to make it return in its country so that it might glorify me'"

Again, as in the case of Tobit, the mission of the angel is not only to deliver God's message; it is a mission spanning over quite a considerable amount of time, which the heavenly messenger introduces with the known formula, "I have come" + purpose.

15. Numbers 22:32

In Numbers 22:32, an angel stands in the way of Balaam and tells him:

"Why have you beaten your donkey these three times? I have come here to oppose you because your path is a reckless one before me"

As Gathercole notes, it is not absolutely clear if the text has a noun or a verb here, it could be both:

I have come here as an opponent

I have come here to oppose

Either way, a purpose is clearly stated, therefore we have another instance of this formula being used by a heavenly messenger.

16. Targum of Joshua 5:14

Another example Gathercole examines is the Jewish interpretation of Joshua 5:14. An angel appears here to Joshua, and Joshua asks him:

Joshua 5:13-14 "Are you one of us or of our enemies?" He replied, "Neither. I am the captain of the host of the LORD and I have just arrived."

Gathercole notes that the Talmud supplies a reason for this angel's mysterious coming, saying that this being admonishes Joshua:

"this evening you have neglected the regular afternoon sacrifice and now you have neglected the study of Torah" (b. Megillah 3a)

So Joshua asks him "In regard to which you have come?" "I have come now" the angel replies, that is, referring to the study of Torah which Joshua has now neglected. A purpose is therefore attached to this coming.

There is a fragmentary Targum discovered in the Cairo Genizah, written in Palestinian Aramaic, containing another commentary on this episode. The authors of an edition treating this manuscript note that is has some very interesting theological leanings, and so they date it somewhere in the intertestamental period ¹⁶. Here's what this Targum says, in Gathercole's translation:

Joshua fell before him on the ground, and asked him and said to him, "Is it to support us that you have come? Or do you belong to our enemies and seek to kill?" And he said to him: "I have not come to support, and I am not an enemy. But as the angel who is sent from Yahweh I have come to complain because of the evening in which you have neglected the sacrifice, and today you have neglected Torah-study". And he [Joshua] said "For which of these two reasons have you come?" And he said to him, "I have not come to support". And Joshua fell on his face...

Again an example of this formula being used by a heavenly figure.

Midrash Tanhuma to Exodus 23:20 and Joshua 5

This text is dated around the 4th century A.D. When discussing Exodus 23:20, where God tells Moses "I send you an angel", the angel that appeared to Joshua in chapter 5 reappears here:

The Holy One said to Moses: "I am sending an angel before you but not before them". He (Moses) said: "If you send him out before me, I do not want him." But Joshua saw the angel and fell down before him. What did he say to him (in Joshua 5:13)? "Are you for us or for our adversaries?" When he (Joshua) said to him (the angel), "Are you for us?", he (the angel) began to cry in a great anguish: "No, but I am the Captain of the Lord's host. Now I have come to give Israel an inheritance. I am the one who came in the days of your master Moses, but he rejected me"¹⁷.

Again, the angel's mission is not simply to convey God's words, but to help Israel get into the promised land.

20. Testament of Abraham (A)

In the 16th chapter of this text ¹⁸, Michael attempts to take Abraham's soul but fails. The Angel of Death is then sent to try:

Abraham said to him: "Why have you come here?" And Death said: "I have come for your righteous soul". [Abraham answered:] "I know what you are saying, but I will not follow you"; and Death was silent and answered him not a word.

Although the Angel of death does not use the infinitive, "to bring your soul to God", his purpose is implicit in the text; he came to do what God has told him to: "take him and bring him to me".

21. Midrash Rabbah to Deuteronomy 11.10

In this text, God asks Michael to take the Moses' life, but he refuses saying he cannot do that since he was Moses' teacher. Then God asks Sammael, the Angel of Death to do it. He goes to Moses, who asks him why he has come. The angel replies:

"I have come to bear away your breath"¹⁹

Moses' question is reminiscent to Abraham's here. Gathercole mentions that Buhner cites more examples of the Angel of Death using this formula of "I have come" + purpose, among them a story included in Gaster compilation Exempla, where the angel of death is saying to a man called ben Sabar: "I am the angel of death, who has come to take your soul"²⁰. In another compilation, that of Bin Gorion, the angel of death similarly says "My son, I am the angel of death and behold, I have come to take your soul"²¹. Of course, these examples coming from a much later date than the Deuteronomy Rabbah, are of less value.

22. Acts of Thomas

Although this text is Christian, it shows familiarity with the Jewish angelic formula we are examining. A demon tells Thomas "I have come to destroy".

23. Proclus, Discourse 6

Another Christian writing showing familiarity with the Jewish angelology is Proclus' Laudatio sanctae Dei genitricis Mariae, Praise for Holy Mary, Mother of God. A dialog is presented here between the angel Gabriel and Mary. At one point, he tells Mary:

"I have come to report to you the things which have been decreed by the creator of all, and - surely - to interpret to you what has been hidden from all"²²

24. The Hebrew Apocalypse of Daniel

Gathercole indicates that the text is preserved in a late Hebrew manuscript dating from the 10th century ²³. Here's the relevant part:

I, Daniel, stood by the river Hebar, and the dread vision was heavy upon me, and I was amazed. And there came to me Gabriel, captain of the heavenly host, and said to me: "I have come to tell you that the Mighty Holy One commanded me, 'Go, Gabriel, and reveal to Daniel what is to be at the end of days'"

Another example of angels using this formula to show the purpose of their visit.

The Elijah traditions

The expectation that Elijah will return from the heavenly realm was widespread in the Jewish community. As Gathercole notes ²⁴, his coming from heaven was already brought into association with the angels by the rabbis, a fact evident from the discussion they were having about their air speeds:

R. Eleazar b. Abina said furthermore: Greater is [the achievement] ascribed to Michael than that ascribed to Gabriel. For of Michael it is written: "Then flew unto me one of the Seraphim", whereas of Gabriel it is written: "The man Gabriel whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly in a flight etc." How do you know that this [word] "one" means Michael? - R. Johanan says: by an analogy from [the words] "one", "one". Here it is written: Then flew unto me one of the Seraphim; and in another place it is written: But lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me". A. Tanna taught: Michael [reaches his goal] in one [flight], Gabriel in two, Elijah in four, and the Angel of Death in eight. In the time of the plague however, [the Angel of Death, too, reaches his goal] in one. (n. Berakhot 4b)

There is an abundance of references to the coming of Elijah and its purpose. For example:

Rabbi Joshua said ... Elijah will not come to declare unclean or clean, to remove afar or bring nigh, but to remove afar those [families] that were brough nigh by violence ... The likes of these [families] Elijah will come to declare unclean or clean, to remove afar and bring nigh". Rabbi Judah says "To bring nigh but not to remove afar". Rabbi Simeon says "To bring agreement where there is matter for dispute". And the sages say "Neither to remove afar nor to bring nigh, but to make peace in the world, as it is written: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet ... and he shal turn the heart of the fathers to their children and the heart of the children to their fathers (Mal 4:5-6)" (m. Eduyoth 8:7) ²⁵

Interestingly, Jesus states he has come for the opposite, not to bring families together and peace on earth, but bring the sword, and division among the families (Luke 12:51-53).

But the "coming" of Elijah with a purpose is not restricted to a cosmical, eschatological event. As indicated by Gathercole, Strack and Billerbeck provide examples where Elijah comes to help those in distress ²⁶. The earliest reference available is from the New Testament, where the Jews misunderstood Jesus' cry of dereliction, thinking he was calling for Elijah to provide relief:

Mark 15:36 "Wait, let us see if Elijah comes to take him down."

One example Gathercole presents further is that of the exegesis of Proverbs 9:2 in the Midrash to Proverbs. Here Elijah comes to Joshua of Gerasa, who was taking care of the imprisoned R. Aqiba; Joshua asks him who he is, and he replies:

"I am Elijah the priest, who has come to tell you that your master, R. Aqiba, has died in prison" (Midrash Mishle 9).

The dating of this tradition is difficult - although we know R. Aqiba died around 135 A.D. As Gathercole says, one can notice the rabbinic tradition of Elijah having descended from Levi and so being a priest, an idea much disputed in rabinnic circles.

But what is relevant here is that Elijah is presented as intervening into the human affairs even after his ascension to heaven, and use of the formula we focus on is made to present this.

Buhner ²⁷ also indicates an instance where Elijah comes to warn a bridegroom that he will be approached by the angel of death, saying:

"My Son, I am Elijah, and I have come to bring you good news"

In another instance, Elijah tells three men, each of them in a different type of discomfort:

"Listen to me my masters, and do not be anxious. Behold, I have come to rescue you from your toil and your groaning, and you will return to your houses in great glory ²⁸.

To the third man he gives a magic coin which multiplies, but with a condition: he must build a bet midrash, a Torah school. When the man fails to do that, Elijah comes back and tells him:

And moreover, I said to you, "Found a bet midrash" ... But you have rejected ny words... Therefore I have come to you now so that you might return the coin to me.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we have seen that this formula, "I have come " + purpose, is not used by humans in ancient Judaism to sum up the ministry/work of their entire life. It is used nevertheless by heavenly, preexisting beings who enter the human realm with a prior intent, to accomplish something. They do sum up their earthly activity using this formula.

This is the background the Jews had for the use of this formula; they were acquainted with it coming from heavenly beings, who crossed into the human realm with a mission from God; the idea that the one speaking in this way was a pre-existing being, was a natural one. We can see then the writers of the Synoptic Gospels in a different light, against this background. We can perceive what they would have thought about Jesus when he said,

"I have come to preach",
"I have come to fulfill",
"I have come to cast fire on earth",
"I have come to call the sinners",
"I have come to bring the sword",
"I have come to set father against son"
"I have come to serve"
"I have come to seek and save the lost"

¹ The Preexistent Son, p. 113 ^(back)
² See Freedman and Simon, Midrash Rabbah: Numbers (London: Soncino, 1977) p. 17-18 ^(back)
³ See Freedman and Simon, Midrash Rabbah: Exodus (London: Soncino, 1977) p. 220 ^(back)
⁴ Jellinek, Das Noah-Buch, 157 ^(back)
⁵ See the text here ^(back)
⁶ Gathercole's translation ^(back)
⁷ Kuhn, The Testament of Isaac, 425; Stinespring, Testament of Isaac, 904 ^(back)
⁸ p. 125 ^(back)
⁹ Gathercole's translation ^(back)
¹⁰ Not to be mistaken with a text found at Qumram, see here ^(back)
¹¹ A Jeremiah Apocryphon, 137-8 ^(back)
¹² Die Quellen des neuen Jeremia-Apocryphons, 328 ^(back)
¹³ A Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon, 103 ^(back)
¹⁴ p. 316-7 ^(back)
¹⁵ Translated by Amelineau in French, Contes et Romans, 2:144 ^(back)
¹⁶ Fahr and Glesmer, Jordandurchzug und Beschneidung als Zurechtweisung, 109-10, 133 ^(back)
¹⁷ Townsend's translation, from Midrash Tanhuma, Volume 2, Exodus and Leviticus, 123-4 ^(back)
¹⁸ For a translation see newadvent.org; see also The Jewish Encyclopedia and Early Jewish Writings ^(back)
¹⁹ For translation see Freedman and Simon, Midrash Rabbah: Deuteronomy, (London: Soncino 1977), 185. ^(back)
²⁰ page 95 ^(back)
²¹ Mimeqor Yisrael, 354 ^(back)
²² Gathercole's translation ^(back)
²³ Published and translated by Sharf in "Byzantine Jewry", 201-204 ^(back)
²⁴ Page 138 ^(back)
²⁵ Translation of H. Danby, The Mishna, 436-7. ^(back)
²⁶Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrash, 4/2:769-98. ^(back)
²⁷ Der Gesandte und sein Weg, 142 ^(back)
²⁸ Gathercole's translation, from Bin Gorion, Mimeqor Yisrael, 411 ^(back)

Excursus: The Divine Messiah and Ancient Jewish Monotheism

2009-01-22T21:16:00.015-05:00

A previous article was discussing what Paul might have meant when he said Christ was in the form of a god before becoming human (Philippians 2:5-8). It was mentioned that the ancient Jews viewed supernatural beings as being "gods". This article will provide a wider image of this belief, as reflected by the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament.

Strict Monotheism or Jewish Monoteism?

Most of today's religions that promote some kind of monotheism, hold to the idea that there is only one God. All other beings that would be called gods are necessarily false gods. This can certainly be labeled as strict monotheism. But is this only a modern version of monotheism?

As this article will show, the ancient Hebrews had a broader definition. Not only was there one God who created everything, and a lot of other false gods which the nations were worshiping. There was also a third category of gods: the supernatural beings populating the spiritual realm. These gods were not false gods because they were not competing with the one true God for worship, and were not worshiped.

Supernatural Beings

A first example of beings from this category can be found in 1 Samuel. The medium of En-Dor tells Saul what she sees:

1 Samuel 28:13 "I see a divine being coming up out of the earth."

NASB translates divine being but the Hebrew word used by the medium is Elohim, which means god(s). She literally says she sees an elohim, in other words a god, a supernatural being. The medium certainly believed that what she saw was a supernatural being, so she called it a god.

Other people too have seen supernatural beings - for real this time - and called them gods. Here's what happens to Jacob:

Genesis 32:24-30 Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. Then he said, "Let me go, for the dawn is breaking." But he said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." He said, "Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed." Then Jacob asked him and said, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And he blessed him there. So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, "I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved."

Hosea 12:4 makes it clear that the "man" Jacob physically fought with that night, was an angel. He says he has seen "God" face to face. But does the Hebrew text have Jacob saying he saw Almighty God himself? This is a relevant question, since we know that God says:

Exodus 33:20 "You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!"

If we compare the Hebrew text for 1 Samuel 28:13 where the medium says she saw a god, with the text having Jacob saying he saw elohim, we notice they both use the same phrase.

When the Septuagint - a translation from Hebrew to Greek made by ancient Hebrews - translates this verse, it has no definite article before theos, god. The Septuagint therefore has Jacob saying he saw a god, not God Almighty himself, whom nobody can see and live. Similarly, a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into English, made by Jews and published by The Jewish Publication Society, called

The TANAKH, a new translation (into contemporary English) of The Holy Scriptures according to the traditional Hebrew text (Masoretic). The Jewish Bible: Torah, Nevi'im, Kethuvim.

translates Genesis 32:30 (31 in this version) this way:

Genesis 32:31 So Jacob named the place Peniel, meaning, "I have seen a divine being face to face, yet my life has been preserved."

This certainly explains why Jacob didn't die, and why the angel tells him "you have striven with elohim", that is, with "a god" (vs. 28). Again in this verse, the Septuagint translates "a god" and JPS' Tanakh reads "you have striven with beings divine and human".

Also, the text itself indicates that Jacob knew this was an angel and not God himself, since this "man" asks his permission to leave, Jacob wrestles him and asks for his name.

In conclusion, there are strong indications that Jacob said he has seen a god, a supernatural being. Another instance of somebody saying they've seen a god when they've seen a supernatural being, can be found in Judges 13:

Judges 13:20-22 For it came about when the flame went up from the altar toward heaven, that the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame of the altar. When Manoah and his wife saw this, they fell on their faces to the ground. Now the angel of the LORD did not appear to Manoah or his wife again. Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the LORD. So Manoah said to his wife, "We will surely die, for we have seen God."

At first, Manoah and his wife don't know this "man" was in fact an angel of God. But after he ascends in flames, they know it was in fact a supernatural being, an angel of Yahweh. But then they say "we have seen God"!

Is it possible that like in the case of Jacob, they are actually saying they saw a god? The Septuagint lacks again the definite article before theos, allowing this to be "a god", just as the same Septuagint again lacks the definite article before "angel" in the previous verse, where many English translations (like KJV) read:

Manoah knew that he was an angel of the LORD

Just as the Septuagint and JPS' Tanakh say:

Judges 13:22 And Manoah said to his wife, "We shall surely die, for we have seen a divine being."

This particularity of Hebrew thought, designating supernatural beings as gods, can be also seen in other parts of the Septuagint, where there are several instances where the Hebrew translators thought that a certain verse referring to elohim was referring to angels - who of course are supernatural beings. The most well-known instance is Psalm 8:4-5 where NASB says:

What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God [elohim], And You crown him with glory and majesty!

The "English Bible in Basic English" translation says a little lower than the gods, while others like NIV say a little lower than the heavenly beings. Indeed, elohim can be translated as god or gods. The Hebrew translators of the Hebrew Scriptures used the plural, and not only the plural, but translated angels:

"Thou madest him a little less than angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honour" - Brenton's translation of the Septuagint.

They clearly thought that when the psalmist wrote elohim, gods, he referred to angels, therefore viewing angels as gods, because they are supernatural beings, reflecting the power and glory of the Almighty God. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews agrees, quoting the Septuagint:

Hebrews 2:6-7 But one has testified somewhere, saying, "What is man, that You remember him? Or the son of man, that You are concerned about him? You have made him for a little while lower than the angels;

Other instances where the Hebrew idea that angels are gods is reflected:

Psalm 97:7 Let all those be ashamed who serve graven images, Who boast themselves of idols; Worship Him, all you gods [elohim in Hebrew, angels here in the Septuagint].

Psalm 138:1 A Psalm of David. I will give You thanks with all my heart; I will sing praises to You before the gods [elohim in Hebrew, angels here in the Septuagint].

Daniel 2:11 "Moreover, the thing which the king demands is difficult, and there is no one else who could declare it to the king except gods [elohim in Hebrew, angels here in the Septuagint], whose dwelling place is not with mortal flesh."

Interestingly enough in the case of Daniel 2:11, it is indeed the angels who explain the meaning of Daniel's visions - see 7:16, 23; 8:16; 9:23; 10:12, 14, 21.

It is therefore to be noted that ancient Jewish monotheism cannot be identified with today's strict version of it. The ancient Hebrews could designate certain beings as "gods" without being polytheistic. These angelic beings were gods in contrast with fragile and mortal humans, they belonged to the spiritual realm to which the Almighty God also belonged. They were not gods in a religious sense - nobody was trying to worship them - but rather in a sense where their nature was contrasted with the weak material human nature.

But this godly status was not restricted to supernatural beings in ancient Jewish monotheism. Although not as often as in the case of supernatural beings, humans were called gods as well. Psalm 82's Hebrew text says:

1 god stands in the congregation of god, among gods he is judging [...]
6 [god says] "you are gods, sons of the supreme all of you"

This is a psalm where God is admonishing these gods for not judging justly (vs. 2-4). They are humans, because they "will die like men and fall like any one of the princes" (vs. 7), despite being gods. Jesus certifies as well that these gods are humans by quoting this verse in John 10:34, and then adding that these were the ones to whom the word of God came, that is, humans.

Why were the unjust judges of Israel called "gods"? Judging is certainly a prerogative and a privilege of God, one He delegated to the human judges of Israel. They were called gods because they were performing a divine activity.

Supernatural Messengers, Divine Representatives of God

An additional reason for designating angelic supernatural beings as "gods" could be the fact that often, the angels of God are messengers sent to humans, representing Yahweh himself. We will inspect some of the instances where this is the case.

Abraham and the Visiting Angels

Yahweh visits Abraham:

Genesis 18:1-2 Now the LORD [Yahweh] appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. When he lifted up his eyes and looked, behold, three men were standing opposite him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth,

Although it is said that Yahweh visits him, he sees three "men" visiting him. These are certainly angels, as the writer of Hebrews acknowledges:

Hebrews 13:2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.

The text of Genesis itself indicated this. Genesis 18:22 says "the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom"; later, 19:1 says

"Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening".

They were only two now, because after the writer says that "the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom", he adds that Abraham was still standing in front of the LORD:

Genesis 18:22 Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, while Abraham was still standing before the LORD.

Not all three angels proceeded to Sodom, one remained in the company of Abraham. The three angels were representatives of Yahweh, were not Yahweh himself. Nevertheless, they speak as if they are God, saying "I will surely return to you at this time next year; and behold, Sarah your wife will have a son" - 18:10. Verse 13 says that the LORD, Yahweh, asks Abraham something, and then verse 17 reads "The LORD said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?" (also vs. 19-20, etc).

This angel speaks like he is God himself, in the first person. This is possible because it is God himself who speaks through him, just as he told Moses about Aaron:

Exodus 4:15 You are to speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I, even I, will be with your mouth and his mouth, and I will teach you what you are to do.

It was God's words that were coming out of the angel's mouth. Another instance where an angel stands for God himself:

Genesis 22:11-12 But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me."

The angel once again speaks as if God himself speaks. The same thing happens with Hagar, Abraham's servant:

Genesis 16:9-10 9 Then the angel of the LORD said to her, "Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her authority." Moreover, the angel of the LORD said to her, "I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count."

Moses and the Angels of God

The same thing happens with Moses in Exodus 3. The angel of the LORD appeared to him (vs. 2). But it is said that "when the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him" (vs. 4). It is God who speaks, although we know it is an angel of God. Then the angel says:

Exodus 3:6 "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Not only does the angel say "I am the God of you father", but the writer himself notes that Moses was afraid of God. The angel is just a mere stand-in for God. It is God who speaks and who is there present - through his angel of course. Moses speaks to God (vs. 13), and God sends him to the elders of Israel to tell them:

Exodus 3:16 The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, has appeared to me

Christians in the first century knew very well also, as verse 2 says in fact, that this was an angel of God:

Acts 7:30-32 After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning thorn bush. When Moses saw it, he marveled at the sight; and as he approached to look more closely, there came the voice of the Lord: 'I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.' Moses shook with fear and would not venture to look.

While it is said that God gives the Law - including the 10 commandments - to the people of Israel gathered at mount Sinai, the first century Christians knew God did that through angels:

Exodus 19:11, 17-19 and let them be ready for the third day, for on the third day the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. [...] And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently. When the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him with thunder.

Exodus 20:1-4 Then God spoke all these words, saying, "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. "You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. [...]

Nehemiah 9:13 "Then You came down on Mount Sinai, And spoke with them from heaven; You gave them just ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments.

Galatians 3:19 Why the Law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made.

Hebrews 2:2 For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty

Acts 7:53 you who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it.

Again, angelic supernatural beings are acting in behalf of God. Also, when Moses climbs the Sinai mountain, where he spends 40 days in the company of God, it is known by these Christians that God was there with him through an angel:

Exodus 34:2 So be ready by morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to Me on the top of the mountain.

Acts 7:38 [Moses] is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness together with the angel who was speaking to him on Mount Sinai

Liberation from Egypt

God saves Israel from the Egyptian slavery. "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt" He says (Exodus 20:1). It is said that God was going before them in a pillar of cloud by day, of fire by night:

Exodus 13:21-22 The LORD was going before them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them on the way, and in a pillar of fire by night to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.

Numbers 14:14 [...] They have heard that You, O LORD, are in the midst of this people, for You, O LORD, are seen eye to eye, while Your cloud stands over them; and You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.

Nehemiah 9:12 "And with a pillar of cloud You led them by day, And with a pillar of fire by night To light for them the way In which they were to go.

But a bit later, just before crossing the Red Sea with the Egyptians on their tail, we are told that in fact it was an angel of God who was going before them in the pillar of cloud:

Exodus 14:19 The angel of God, who had been going before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them.

Numbers 20:16 'But when we cried out to the LORD, He heard our voice and sent an angel and brought us out from Egypt

Again, a supernatural being acts as a stand-in for God, as God's representative. In the same vein, God tells Moses after they escaped from the Egyptians:

Exodus 33:14 And He said, "My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest."

But just before that, God says how He will do that:

Exodus 33:2 "I will send an angel before you and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite.

Exodus 23:20-23 "Behold, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Be on your guard before him and obey his voice; do not be rebellious toward him, for he will not pardon your transgression, since My name is in him. But if you truly obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. For My angel will go before you and bring you in to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will completely destroy them.

So how did God's "presence" (Exodus 33:14) go with the Israelites? God was present on the road among them through his angelic supernatural being. Isaiah also writes:

Isaiah 63:9 In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them; In His love and in His mercy He redeemed them, And He lifted them and carried them all the days of old.

Other instances where angels stand in for God:

Judges 2:1 Now the angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, "I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I have sworn to your fathers; and I said, 'I will never break My covenant with you

Judges 6:11-12, 14, 16, 20-23 Then the angel of the LORD came and sat under the oak that was in Ophrah [...] The angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him [...]

The LORD looked at him and said, "Go in this your strength and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you?" [...] But the LORD said to him, "Surely I will be with you [...]

The angel of God said to him, "Take the meat" [...] Then the angel of the LORD put out the end of the staff that was in his hand [...] When Gideon saw that he was the angel of the LORD, he said, "Alas, O Lord GOD! For now I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face." The LORD said to him, "Peace to you, do not fear; you shall not die."

Zechariah 3:1-2 Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. The LORD said to Satan, "The LORD rebuke you, Satan! Indeed, the LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you!

Notice how the LORD says to Satan "The LORD rebuke you". Of course, God himself would not say "God rebuke you" since He is the God who would do the rebuking. The LORD that speaks these words is an angel of the LORD who represents the LORD himself.

The Divine Messiah

When the ancient Hebrew translators rendered elohim - "god(s)" - as angel(s) in Psalm 8:5, 97:7, 138:1 and Daniel 2:11, thus revealing their belief that these texts spoke of supernatural beings, they did not stop there, but did the same thing in a text speaking of the Messiah.

Isaiah 9:6 For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God [Angel in the Septuagint], Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

The phrase "Counselor, Mighty God" is translated by them in Greek as: "Angel of Great Counsel". So if they are consistent in their reason for translating "god(s)" as "angel(s)", they might view this Messiah - who is given to Israel by being born as a child - to be a supernatural being.

But this is not necessarily so. The noun "angel" means "messenger" in Greek and Hebrew. The same word is used for human messengers, and for the supernatural messengers of God. So one could argue that this messenger could be in fact simply a human messenger.

That is one possibility, but how probable would this possibility be? Let us not forget what is the starting point of all this: "a mighty god". Were any of the human messengers ever described to be gods? Not really. So the fact itself, that the translators of the Septuagint applied to same treatment to this "god" as to the other "god(s)", these other "god(s)" being viewed as supernatural beings, gives weight to the conclusion that they viewed the Messiah as a supernatural being.

This background then, of ancient Jewish Monotheism, where Hebrews call supernatural beings "gods" although they know there's only one Almighty God and that He is the Creator of these beings, sheds light on some of what is said in the New Testament.

The disciples of Christ Jesus were Hebrews, as was he himself one. They all had this background. Then Thomas' exclamation towards Jesus saying "my ¹ god" (John 20:28), does not step out of the frame of ancient Jewish Monotheism, just as patriarch Jacob and the parents of Samson never did when they called the supernatural messenger sent by God to them as "god". Especially since Thomas received the message Jesus sent through Mary that Jesus has his own God (John 20:17).

The same can be said about John 1:1 where the Word was a god ², and Philippians 2:6 where the preexistent Son was in the form of a god ³.

Another aspect of this ancient Hebrew Monotheism, that these supernatural messengers stand in for God, acting in behalf of God and speaking God's words to the ones they are being sent to, is also significant in the case of Jesus. He says:

John 14:24 the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me.

John 12:49 For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak.

John 14:10 The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.

John 14:24 the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me.

John 17:8 for the words which You gave Me I have given to them

John 17:14 I have given them Your word

Like the supernatural messengers sent in the past, Jesus speaks the words God told him to. In fact, more than a thousand years before his coming, God said that:

Deuteronomy 18:18 I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

Jesus also testifies that he came as a representative of God, just like those angels did:

John 5:43 I have come in My Father's name

In fact, he explicitly says he stands in for God:

John 12:45 45 "He who sees Me sees the One who sent Me.

John 14:8-9 Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us." Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father '?

Matthew 10:40 "He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.

But even when he stands in for God, he explains that "a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him (John 13:16).

Conclusion

In conclusion then, ancient Jewish Monotheism is not identical with today's strict monotheism. No strict monotheist today would call other supernatural beings "gods".

The difference between Ancient Jewish Monotheism and the strict version is defined by two aspects:

Supernatural beings are called "gods". This is probably done to contrast their nature with the weak, physical human nature.
Angelic supernatural beings are often presented as a stand-in for God. They act in behalf of God and their action is ascribed to God (liberation from Egypt for example), and they speak often as if God himself speaks, even speaking in the first person. God puts his words in their mouth.

What is said about Christ Jesus comes in agreement with the above points. His divine status is defined by the context of his time, the ancient Jewish Monotheism.

¹Thomas not only says that Jesus is a god but that he is his god; Jesus was already his master, and Thomas his disciple, therefore Jesus is his god.^{(go back)}

²See Jason Beduhn, Truth in Translation, p. 113 for a discussion on the translation "a god" in John 1:1.^{(go back)}

³See the discussion on Philippians 2:6 here. Paul knows as well that Jesus has his own God (Ephesians 1:3,17 etc) ^{(go back)}

The Pre-Human Existence of Christ Outside the Gospels - Conclusion

2009-01-21T21:24:00.003-05:00

In part I, II and III we have examined some of the books in the New Testament that contain the idea of a personal pre-human existence of the son of God. A common characteristic of all these books is that the writer's topic is not the personal pre-human existence of the son of God. They do not argue for it, they always assume it and employ it in their exhortations.

This means the recipients of these letters shared with the authors this belief, otherwise the writers would not have based their arguments on the pre-human existence of Christ.

Paul's influence on early Christianity cannot be understated. The churches he visited and founded must have been familiar with this preexistence. Those who were associated with him in his missionary work would have been acquainted with his understanding of Christ's preexistence - among them Luke, the writer of the synoptic gospel that bears his name.

In the next articles, we will examine how the synoptic gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke - point to the personal pre-human existence of the son of God.

The Pre-Human Existence of Christ Outside the Gospels - Part III

2009-01-17T22:16:00.013-05:00

It is often said that John's is the only gospel in which the idea of a personal pre-human existence of Christ could somehow find support. It is claimed that in the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, this idea is absent.

In order to appraise the validity of this claim, we will explore what other books of the New Testament have to say on Christ's pre-human preexistence; by doing so, we will determine if it would be likely or not to find any references in the synoptic gospels to Christ's pre-human existence.

The argument is that if we can find the idea of Christ's pre-human existence present before 70 AD, it would be more plausible to find this idea in the synoptic gospels - and one would even expect then to find it there. It would be helpful to see how other Christians viewed this issue, because that would help us put the synoptic gospels into the 1st century context of Christian thought.

The first part of this article reviewed the writings of Paul. In the second part, the epistle to the Hebrews was reviewed. This third part will examine the epistle of Jude and the Revelation of John.

In the Epistle of Jude

Jude 5 Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe.

The question is, which Lord does Jude mean here, to have saved Israel out of Egypt: the Lord Jesus Christ, or the Lord Yahweh, Christ Jesus' Father? The question is relevant because there are many versions of this verse in the Greek manuscripts. Some say Jesus, some Lord, others God.

UBS' 4th edition of the Greek New Testament, on which the majority of the modern translations are based on, chose from all these possibilities the second one, Lord. But the decision was a difficult one. Here's how the committee explains its decision:

Despite the weighty attestation supporting Iesous (A B 33 81 322 323 424^c 665 1241 1739 1881 2298 2344 vg cop^{sa, bo} eth Origen Cyril Jerome Bede; o Iesous 88 915), a majority of the Committee was of the opinion that the reading was difficult to the point of impossibility, and explained its origin in terms of transcriptional oversight (KC¹ being taken for IC²). It was also observed that nowhere else does the author employ Jesus alone, but always Jesus Christ. The unique collocation theos christos (God Christ) read by P⁷² (did the scribe intend to write theou christos, "God's anointed one"?) is probably a scribal blunder; otherwise one would expect that Christos would be represented also in other witnesses. (Metzger, Textual Commentary 2nd ed, p. 657)

[...]

[Critical principles seem to require the adoption of Jesus, which admittedly is the best attested reading among Greek and versional witnesses (see above). Struck by the strange and unparalleled mention of Jesus in a statement about the redemption out of Egypt, (yet compare Paul's reference to Christ in 1 Co 10,4), copyists would have substituted (o) kurios - Lord or o theos - God. It is possible, however, that (as Hort conjectured) "the original text had only o³, and that OTIO⁴ was read as OTIIC⁵ and perhaps OTIKC⁶" ("Notes on Select Readings," ad loc.).

It was indeed a difficult decision, as the D rating was assigned by the committee to this rendering of Lord. They explain what the the D rating means:

The letter A indicates that the text is certain.
The letter B indicates that the text is almost certain.
The letter C, however, indicates that the Committee had difficulty in deciding which variant to place in the text.
The letter D, which occurs only rarely, indicates that the Committee had great difficulty in arriving at a decision.⁷

What is striking about this decision is that it is a purely theological one, based on internal grounds, one that willingly disregards the weighty attestation of the Jesus reading. Three out of five, the majority of this committee, decided that it was impossible for Christ to have been the one who liberated the Jews from Egypt. Despite the fact that "critical principles seem to require the adoption of Jesus, which admittedly is the best attested reading among Greek and versional witnesses". Osborn, the author of the most extensive treatment of Jude 5, also writes:

the former reading has the best attestation among Greek and versional witnesses and ... critical principles require its adoption.8

So let's see the supporting manuscripts for each version 9. God and Christ God are poorly attested.

This is the attestation of the Lord reading:

Codex Sinaiticus (IV A.D.)
Codex Ephraemi C (V)
Codex Athous Lavrensis (IX/X)
Codex Mosquensis K (IX)
Manuscript number 1175 (X), 2138 (1072 A.D.), 1243, 1846, 945 (XI), 436 (XI/XII), 1241, 1505 (XII), 1611 (XII), 630 (XII/XIII), 1292 (XIII), 1067, 1409 (XIV)
Some individual manuscripts of the Vulgate against the majority of the Vulgate
Syriac Harklensis (616 A.D.)
Coptic versions (transl. began III A.D.)
The M group ¹⁰

This is the attestation of the Jesus reading:

Codex Vaticanus B (IV A.D.)
Codex Alexandrinus A (V)
Jerome (420 A.D.)
Cyril (444 A.D.)
Bede (735 A.D.)
Manuscript number 33 (IX), 1739 (X), 1735 (X, has Lord Jesus), 81 (1044 A.D.), 2344 (XI), 424 (XI, later correcting hand), 323, 1241, 2298 (XII), 1881 (XIV), 322 (XV)
The Vulgate (transl. began IV/V A.D.)
Coptic Sahidic and Bohairic versions (transl. began III A.D.)
In the margins, manuscript 1739 (X) attributes this comment to Origen (d. 254): "Jude says in his epistle, 'For Jesus once saved...'"
Ethiopic version (transl. began 500 A.D.)
Old Latin (ar manuscript, XI)

The weight of the external witnesses in favor of the Jesus reading is undisputed by the Committee, but they find it impossible to be the original reading based on internal grounds. The committee has also another argument in favor of Lord: nowhere else does the author employ Jesus alone, but always Jesus Christ.

But this is a rather unconvincing argument, taking into account the shortness of Jude's epistle. In response to this one might answer that almost every time Lord is mentioned, it is in reference to Jesus.

The committee explained the origin of the Jesus reading in terms of transcriptional oversight (KC being taken as IC, see above). In instances where a reading does not make too much sense this could be true. The only problem is, as Gathercole says 11, "a brief examination of the apparatus to NA27 does not seem to give any indication of this"change from KC to IC ever happening. Here's what Bauckham has to say (though he favors Lord):

It should be noted initially that to some extent this textual situation is not unusual, since there are many places, especially in the Pauline corpus, where the text varies between two of the three words kurios, theos and Christos, and in some cases between all three ... What is exceptional in Jude 5 is the reading Iesous which there seems to be no evidence of scribes deliberately substituting for kurios [Lord] or theos [God] elsewhere. - Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives, 308

Gathercole comments on Bauckham's observation saying:

What this means is that "Jesus" is more likely to be original, since kurios is more likely to be replaced by Christos or theos. It is difficult to imagine why a scribe would change KC (kurios) to IC (Iesous).

Gathercole then goes on to say that the change from Jesus to Lord would be understandable since to a scribe it would have appeared odd to use Jesus with reference to an action that occurred prior to Christ's incarnation. So he would have wanted to clarify that not the fleshly Jesus saved Israel from Egypt, but rather maybe a preexistent Lord.

So it is no wonder that 2 (against 3) of the committee thought there are good reasons to adopt the Jesus reading. Gathercole also points out that out of the 3 members of the majority, one was "operating with a very limited range of options, either Lord or Joshua", not Jesus - but Joshua was clearly not the one who got the Jews out of Egypt.

But the internal grounds are not too much against the reading Jesus. One important aspect is what the previous verse says:

Jude 4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

So even if Jude initially wrote Lord, he still could be referring to Lord Jesus Christ, whom he just mentioned. But why would Jude think Jesus in a pre-human state has saved Israel from Egypt? Did not God himself do that? He surely did, but Exodus mentions an angel - literally a messenger in Hebrew - just before crossing the Red Sea:

Exodus 14:19-21 The angel of God, who had been going before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them. So it came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel; and there was the cloud along with the darkness, yet it gave light at night. Thus the one did not come near the other all night. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD swept the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land, so the waters were divided.

Could it be that Jude thinks God saved Israel from their Egyptian oppressors through his Son? If yes, this puts the Son as existing before the Flood, for Jude continues:

Jude 1:6 And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day

For more information on why Christ would be the messenger who liberated Israel from Egypt, see the discussion of 1 Corinthians 10:4 in the first part of these series, and the section "Liberation from Egypt" in the The Divine Messiah and Ancient Jewish Monotheism article.

Conclusion

The evidence for Christ's pre-human existence is not clear-cut in Jude 5, since we do not know with absolute certainty if Jude wrote Jesus or Lord. But there seem to be good reasons to believe he wrote Jesus.

Date of the Jude's Epistle

Jude 1:17-18 But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, "In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts."

Jude reminds the recipients of his epistle of what the apostles told them. As Gathercole concludes¹², perhaps this church received at one time a delegation consisting of some of the apostles. Taking into account that 1 Corinthians 9:5 says that "the brothers of the Lord" were involved then in missionary work, this could be placed in the mid-50s. This would allow for the missionary work of Jude - who was brother of James, and hence of Jesus - to be placed around the fifties.

In the Revelation of John

Revelation 3:14 To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this:

The Greek word translated by NASB as "beginning" is arche, and it has basically two meanings: "beginning" and "ruler". BDAG says about this word:

1. the commencement of someth. as an action, process, or state of being, beginning, i.e. a point of time at the beginning of a duration.
2. one with whom a process begins, beginning fig., of persons: (Ge 49:3; Dt. 21:17, ...)
3. the first cause, the beginning
[...]
6. an authority figure who initiates activity or process, ruler, authority

So different translations have different renderings of this word. Some say "beginning", some say "source/origin", some say "ruler". These are among the ones saying "beginning":

The New American Standard Bible
Geneva Bible 1599
King James Version
Revised Standard Version
American Standard Version 1901
The English Darby Bible 1884/1890
The Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition
English Revised Version (1885)
English Standard Version
New Living Translation
The Bishops' New Testament (1595)
The English Revised 1833 Webster Update 1995
The Tyndale New Testament (1534)
The English Noah Webster Bible 1833

Did John want to say Jesus was the beginning of the creation or the ruler of the creation? It is interesting that, as BDAG points out at number 2, in Ge 49:3; Dt. 21:17, the Septuagint uses arche to say that the first born ofthe family was somebody's arche teknon, that is literally the beginning of [their] children:

Genesis 49:3 Ruben, thou art my first-born, thou my strength, and the first [arche] of my children, hard to be endured, hard and self-willed.

Deuteronomy 21:17 But he shall acknowledge the first-born of the hated one to give to him double of all things which shall be found by him, because he is the first [arche] of his children, and to him belongs the birthright.¹³

BDAG says about the occurance of arche in Revelation 3:14 that "the meaning beginning=‘first created’ is linguistically probable". If John understood it this way, he certainly believes Christ has a pre-human existence, as the first creature of God.

¹ "IC" is an abbreviation for Ἰησοῦς, Jesus in Greek. See Nomina Sacra ^(back)

² "KC" is an abbreviation for κύριος, Lord in Greek. See Nomina Sacra ^(back)

³ o would mean "he" in English in this context. ^(back)

⁴ In the manuscripts there were no spaces; OTIO would be OTI and O, which would mean "that he" in English in this context. ^(back)

⁵ In the manuscripts there were no spaces; OTIIC would be OTI and IC, which would mean "that Jesus" in English. See the previous notes on why IC means Jesus.^(back)

⁶ In the manuscripts there were no spaces; OTIKC would be OTI and KC, which would mean "that the Lord" in English. See the previous notes on why KC means Lord.^(back)

⁷ The Greek New Testament, UBS, 4th ed.^(back)

⁸ "The Text of Jude 5", C.D. Osburn, Biblica 1981, 107-115. ^(back)

⁹ See NA27, UBS 4th ed and Metzger Textual Commentary.^(back)

¹⁰ Manuscripts of the Byzantine Imperial text, plus Codex Monsquensis K (IX A.D.), Codex Angelicus L (IX A.D.) and others - see The Text of the NT by Kurt and Barbara Aland p. 249 for what M comprises.^(back)

¹¹ The Preexistent Son, 38.^(back)

¹² The Preexistent Son, p. 36. He quotes others who estimate as possible a date between 40 and 70 A.D. ^(back)

¹³ Both verses as they appear in Brent's translation of the Septuagint.^(back)

The Pre-Human Existence of Christ Outside the Gospels - Part II

2009-01-13T21:07:00.008-05:00

It is often said that John's is the only gospel in which the idea of a personal pre-human existence of Christ could somehow find support. It is claimed that in the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, this idea is absent.

In order to appraise the validity of this claim, we will explore what other books of the New Testament have to say on Christ's pre-human preexistence; by doing so, we will determine if it would be likely or not to find any references in the synoptic gospels to Christ's pre-human existence.

The argument is that if we can find the idea of Christ's pre-human existence present before 70 AD, it would be more plausible to find this idea in the synoptic gospels - and one would even expect then to find it there. It would be helpful to see how other Christians viewed this issue, because that would help us put the synoptic gospels into the 1st century context of Christian thought.

The first part of this article reviewed the writings of Paul. This second part will examine the letter to the Hebrews, whose author does not identify himself. As it could be seen in the first part, the pre-human existence of Christ is always assumed, not argued for.

In the Letter to the Hebrews

Just like Paul, the writer believes that God created everything through his Son.

Creation of the World through the Son

Hebrews 1:2 in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world¹.

Adopters of the no preexistence theory are arguing about John 1:10 that the Word - through whom the world was made - was merely the word of God, the word saying "Let there be light", and that this impersonal word became later the person of Jesus. But Hebrews 1:2 states clearly that this Word of whom John speaks was not an impersonal utterance of God: this Word is the Son himself. It is through his Son that God made the world. The writer of Hebrews repeats this:

Hebrews 2:9-10 But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, [...] For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.

All things are through Jesus, just as John says, that "all things came into being through Him" (John 1:3). The writer of Hebrews clearly states that this Son was the agent God used to create everything:

Hebrews 1:10 And, "You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of Your hands"

The writer quotes here Psalm 102:25 and applies it to Christ, despite it being addressed by the psalmist to Yahweh, the Father of Christ:

Psalm 102:25 Of old You founded the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands.

Putting this statement together with the previous ones, that the world was made through the Son, by God, we can easily understand what the author of Hebrews does when he attributes the creation work to Jesus: he states that the one executing the order "Let there be light" was Jesus Christ himself. He is the agent through whom God made the light and the world, the one who carried out the creation act. God ordered, and his Son executed.

Therefore, to the author of Hebrews, Christ clearly preexisted, and not only before becoming a man, but before everything else was created!

Partaker of Flesh and Blood

The idea of pre-human existence appears to be the substrate of the following statements:

Hebrews 2:14,17 Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, [...] Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

Notice how these two statements are necessary and relevant if the author thinks the Son existed in a non-human personal form before coming to earth, and how redundant they are if in the author's mind, the Son could never be anything else but flesh and blood! In his mind, the Son who created the world was in a no-flesh-and-blood state before coming to earth, but it was necessary for him to become flesh and blood in order to make propitiation for the sins of the people. This idea is reflected again in 5:7:

Hebrews 5:7 In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety.

If in all his days of existence Christ was nothing but flesh and blood, then what is the point of saying "in the days of His flesh"? What other days other than the ones he was in the flesh would we able to talk about? The writer obviously believes that the days the Son was in the flesh were just one period of his existence.

So what does the writer believe about Jesus' existence, did it began by being born through Mary?

High Priest Forever According to the Order of Melchizedek

Hebrews 6:20 - 7:3 where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham as he was returning from the slaughter of the kings [...] was first of all, by the translation of his name, king of righteousness [...] Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he remains a priest perpetually.

In this part of the letter, the writer intends to deal with Jewish objections to the idea that Jesus could be a High Priest of God. How could he be one, since he was not from the tribe of Levi? Joseph was not a Levite, Mary was not a Levite, Jesus' genealogy therefore is not a Levite one. But according to the Law, only Levites could become High Priests. So, the Jews would argue, how can anyone even suggest the possibility that Jesus might be a High Priest? Jesus was not satisfying the conditions of being one!

That is why the writer of Hebrews brings Melchizedek into the picture. He was like Jesus, without a Levite father, without a Levite mother, without the right genealogy that would have enabled him to be High Priest; but despite this, he certainly was a High Priest of God! The first known High Priest then, was not a Levite, did not have to possess a Levite ancestry, was with no Levite father and Levite mother; and so is Jesus. Melchizedek was like Jesus in this respect, and since Melchizedek was rightfully a High Priest, so is Jesus.

But there are two more elements mentioned by the author that Jesus and Melchizedek have in common: having neither beginning of days nor end of life. These show that there is more involved here than just the lack of Levite genealogy.

It is hard to believe that the writer thought Melchizedek had no beginning of life. Every man has one. But unlike the patriarchs and prominent individuals in the Scripture who the Jews knew who their father and mother was, knew their genealogies, when their lives started and ended - because they were recorded in writing; but there's no written record on all these aspects when it comes to Melchizedek. Melchizedek's birth and death are not recorded, they are unknown. This shows that the writer intends in fact to say that Melchizedek had no known Levite father and mother, no known Levite genealogy - in contrast with every Levite High Priest - and neither known beginning of days nor known end of life.

Did the writer think that Christ as a person had neither known beginning of days nor known end of life? It is unlikely that the writer did not know Christ had a human mother, Mary. He certainly knew Jesus had no human father. He also most probably knew approximately when Christ's human life began, since according to tradition Jesus was about 30 years old when he was baptized; if the writer was not an eyewitness of Jesus, to be able to count the years that have passed since he last saw him, and so to know the year he was born, he would have had access to eyewitnesses or people who had access to eyewitnesses in order to find out, just like Luke did (Luke 3:1).

If the writer believes that the Son who created the world had a pre-human existence - how else would he have created the world? - he can certainly view Jesus as a being that was not brought into existence by a human mother. In this case, he certainly does not know when Christ's life began, because all the Jewish Scriptures say is that his origin is from the days of eternity (Micah 5:2); and finally, Christ also is without and end of life since he continues to live to this day - hence no end of life.

So if the writer knows that the Son had a human beginning - and he most certainly does know that- by being born from Mary, then by saying that the Son is without a known beginning of days he is effectively saying that his human birth was not the beginning of his days, but his days began in fact earlier. Thus, he existed as a person before he became flesh.

Dating the Letter to the Hebrews

The Anglo-American scholarship seems to enjoy a growing consensus on dating this letter prior to the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D.²

The writer speaks in the present tense about the Jewish priests offering both gifts and sacrifices and serving at the altar (8:3-5; 13:10). This could not entirely be in itself a proof that these things were still happening, it could just be a case of historical present, like Josephus and Clement use. But the lack of any reference at the destruction of the temple is significant because it would have helped the writer's argument significantly.

Also, he writes in chapter 10:

Hebrews 10:1-2 For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins?

If the temple wasn't destroyed, the sacrifices would have been still continually offered, they obviously did not cease at the time of the writing. If written after 70, this would be an awkard thing to say. The writer expects his readers to answer with "yes" to this question. Also:

Hebrews 8:13 When He said, "A new covenant," He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.

The writer would have had a much easier job arguing that the Law has expired if he would have mentioned the destruction of the temple and all the rituals centering around it. This verse shows that this did not happen yet, the Law covenant was only "ready to disappear", not disappeared.

Conclusion

As in the case of Paul in part I, Jesus' pre-human existence is always assumed by the writer of Hebrews, not argued for. Just like John and Paul, the writer believes that through the Son the world was made. He participated in the act of creation.

The writer also has preexistence in the background when he says the Son had to partake of flesh and blood, calling his human existence "days of his flesh".

The writer also does not believe Christ's personal existence started by being born from Mary, although it was known among Christians that he was born of a virgin.

¹ The word "world" appears in plural in the Greek text, aionas, and is sometimes translated as "ages". It also occurs in plural in 9:26 (the consummation of the ages) and 11:3 (the worlds were prepared by the word of God).^(back)

² See Simon Gathercole, The Preexistent Son, p. 32 ^(back)

The Pre-Human Existence of Christ Outside the Gospels - Part I

2008-12-29T21:39:00.042-05:00

It is often said that John's is the only gospel in which the idea of a personal pre-human existence of Christ could somehow find support. It is claimed that in the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, this idea is absent.

In order to appraise the validity of this claim, we will explore what other books of the New Testament have to say on Christ's pre-human preexistence; by doing so, we will determine if it would be likely or not to find any references in the synoptic gospels to Christ's pre-human existence.

The argument is that if we can find the idea of Christ's pre-human existence present before 70 AD, it would be more plausible to find this idea in the synoptic gospels - and one would even expect then to find it there. It would be helpful to see how other Christians viewed this issue, because that would help us put the synoptic gospels into the 1st century context of Christian thought.

In this first part, we will inspect the writings of Paul. As it will be seen, the pre-human existence of Christ is always assumed, not argued for.

In the writings of Paul

The strongest proof of Christ's pre-human existence can be found in the letter to the Philippians.

Philippians 2:5-8

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, being made in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man [...]^*

Notice how Christ existed in the form of God before emptying himself of this form, taking the form of a servant, becoming a man.

What does "being made in the likeness of men" mean? Being made translates the same Greek verb that appears in John 1:14, ginomai where John says the Word became flesh. Also, the word translated as "likeliness" is homoioma, and it also means "form" according to BDAG 5296. So this phrase can be rendered as "becoming in the form of men".

Furthermore, there's the last phrase: being found in appearance as a man. The word "appearance" translates the Greek schema, which also means "form" according to BDAG 7204. Also, the Greek text says "as a man", it is phrased this way:

σχήματι [in form] εὑρεθεὶς [being found] ὡς [as] ἄνθρωπος [a man]

So the text literally says: in form being found as a man. Therefore notice how this part of Paul's hymn revolves entirely around the "form". The whole phrase then says:

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, becoming in the form of men, and being found in form as a man [...]

Before discussing what being in the form of God means, let us observe that Christ emptied himself. This is contrary to what the theory of no preexistence says, that Christ's pre-human existence is only in the mind/plan of God, not a personal pre-human existence. By saying that Christ emptied himself, Paul shows Christ's own participation in the process, his personal willingness to become a man in order to save humanity. He acted in a voluntary fashion in order to make salvation possible. This is paralleled by the statement that Christ humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death - vs. 8.

This shows his pre-human existence in personal terms; he existed in the form of God, and decided he will empty himself of this form and take the form of a servant, become a man. This also echoes the statement he made when he enters the human world⁰:

Hebrews 10:5-7 Therefore, when he comes into the world, he says, "Sacrifice and offering You have not desired, but a body You have prepared for me; in whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You have taken no pleasure. Then I said, 'behold, I am coming (in the scroll of the book it is written of me) to do your will, o God.'"

The fact that becoming a man is a voluntary act of Christ is significant, because most commentators that see no pre-human existence in Philippians 2 ignore this crucial fact. Most of their arguments are rather concentrated on what being in the form of God means.

But the phrase being in the form of God is clear enough, despite efforts to make it mean Christ was in the mind/plan of God. It is a fact that the verse actually doesn't say that. One can reach that conclusion if one starts from the idea that Christ could not personally exist but in the mind of God, making this a circular reasoning.

So what does being in the form of God mean? We can understand what it means if we start by noticing that it is said Christ was also, later, in the form of men¹; which undoubtedly means he was a man ².

If being in the form of men is being a man, being in the form of God is being a god. This idea was common in Hebrew thought - and Paul is a Hebrew of course, being taught by the famous Rabbi Gamaliel. In Hebrew thought, supernatural beings were sometimes referred to as "gods". For example, when the medium of En-Dor tells Saul what she sees, she says:

1 Samuel 28:13 "I see a divine being coming up out of the earth."

NASB translates divine being but the Hebrew word used by the medium is Elohim, which means god(s). She is literally saying she sees an elohim, in other words a god, a supernatural being. This particularity of Hebrew thought can be also seen in the Septuagint, where there are at least four instances where the Hebrew translators thought that a certain verse referring to elohim was referring to angels - who of course are supernatural beings. The most well-known instance is Psalm 8:4-5 where NASB says:

What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God [elohim], And You crown him with glory and majesty!

"Thou madest him a little less than angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honour" - Brent's translation of the Septuagint.

Hebrews 2:6-7 But one has testified somewhere, saying, "What is man, that You remember him? Or the son of man, that You are concerned about him? You have made him for a little while lower than the angels;

The other instances where the Hebrew idea that angels are gods is reflected, are these:

Psalm 97:7 Let all those be ashamed who serve graven images, Who boast themselves of idols; Worship Him, all you gods [elohim in Hebrew, angels here in the Septuagint].

Psalm 138:1 A Psalm of David. I will give You thanks with all my heart; I will sing praises to You before the gods [elohim in Hebrew, angels here in the Septuagint].

Daniel 2:11 "Moreover, the thing which the king demands is difficult, and there is no one else who could declare it to the king except gods [elohim in Hebrew, angels here in the Septuagint], whose dwelling place is not with mortal flesh."

Interestingly enough in the case of Daniel 2:11, it is indeed the angels who explain the meaning of Daniel's visions - see 7:16, 23; 8:16; 9:23; 10:12, 14, 21.

It is a well-established fact that the Bible of the first century Christians was the Septuagint ³. Thus Paul was familiar with the light in which the Septuagint presents supernatural beings - as gods. According to this ancient Hebrew way of thinking then, Jesus as a supernatural being can be called a god, being in the form of a god, inasmuch as he can be called later a man, being in the form of a man. As a side note, when the Greek text says Christ existed in the form of God, there's no capital G for "God" in the Greek manuscripts; all manuscripts were written in all capital letters or in all lower case letters. So the text says EXISTED IN THE FORM OF GOD and existed in the form of god. Furthermore, this phrase can be also translated

existed in the form of a god

since the Greek definite article ("the" in English) is missing from the Greek text, and unlike English, which has an indefinite article (a word, an apple) there's no indefinite article in Koine Greek, the language of the NT; the text says

en morphe theou huparchon (ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων)

The Greek definite article is missing from before theou, "god". Frequently, nouns without the definite article are translated "a thing" like in the case of Luke 5:36 where Jesus tells them a parable. Also, there are many places where somebody refers to something of God, where the definite article is present before theou - like Ephesians 5:6: he orge tou theou, the wrath of (the) God.

So if a Greek writer wanted to say "form of a god", he would have wrote exactly what Paul did, without inserting the Greek definite article before "god".

There are many places where virtually the same construction appears, but with an additional definite article:

en + a noun in dative (like morphe, "form"),
+ a definite article in the genitive (tou for example, "the"),
+ a noun in the genitive (like theou - "of (a) god"). That is, like:

en morphe tou theou

An instance would be Genesis 3:19, where the Septuagint says: en hidroti tou prosopou - "in the sweat of the face [of you]".

Or Genesis 23:9, en merei tou argou - "in the part of the land [of you]", etc. This is to show that if Paul would have wanted to make god in Philippians 2:6 to be definite, God, and not a god, which is indefinite, he could have easily added the definite article before "god": en morphe tou theou huparchon. So the translation

being in the form of a god

is legal and in agreement with the grammatical rules of Greek. In fact, it is probable that Paul wrote not that Christ was:

being made in the likeness of men

but:

being made in the likeness of a man

Not men, in the plural, but a man. Why? The oldest manuscript that contains this letter of Paul, P⁴⁶, reads man, in the singular, not men⁴, just as the preceding god and servant are in the singular, as is the phrase after, "found in appearance as a man". Other than P⁴⁶, some Syriac, Coptic and Vulgate manuscripts, Origen, Cyprian, Hillary and Ambrose, read man in the singular⁵.

So if it is man and not men, the parallelism with god and servant is preserved. Christ was in the form of a god, but emptied himself of this form, and came to be in the form of a man, of a servant.

The idea that Christ willingly renounced the high position he held prior to becoming a man, to became a slave - because the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve (Mt. 20:28) - is repeated by Paul in 2 Corinthians 8:9.

2 Corinthians 8:9

2 Corinthians 8:9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.

When was Jesus rich before he willingly became poor? Was Jesus the carpenter⁶ ever rich after he was born through Mary? He once said "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head" - Mt. 8:6.

The fact that he was rich before, but became poor for our sakes, is related to another of Jesus' statements, that he had glory with his Father before the founding of the world - John 17:5.

1 Corinthians 15:47

1 Corinthians 15:47-49 The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.

The theory of no preexistence says that Christ's existence as a person started on earth; but here Paul contrasts the point of personal origin of Adam and Christ. Adam is from the earth, and he indeed started his existence as a person on earth; but Christ is not from earth, that is, he did not start existing as a person on earth. He is from heaven.

The counter-argument is that Christ is from heaven in the sense that he existed in the mind/plan of God, who is in heaven. But Adam existed as well in God's mind/plan before he was created on earth. He could not exist in God's plan after he was created on earth. So Adam too is from heaven. In fact all of us are from heaven. But Adam being from heaven renders Paul's argument useless.

A similar idea of Christ's origin as a person can be found in Romans 10:6-7.

The Letter to Romans

Romans 10:6-8 But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows: "Do not say in your heart, 'who will ascend into heaven?' (that is, to bring Christ down), or 'Who will descend into the abyss?' (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead)." But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" -- that is, the word of faith which we are preaching

Paul's argument is based on Deuteronomy 30:

Deuteronomy 30:11-14 "For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. "It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?' Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?' But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it.

Romans 10:6 is sometimes understood to say that people lacking a solid faith would like to go to heaven where Jesus is now, in order to fortify their faith. But why would they then want to bring Jesus down?

The fact that the going up to bring Christ down does not refer to his present location is showed by verse 7. Who will descend into the abyss, to bring Christ up from the dead? Is Jesus now dead, in the abyss?

It seems that these men's intention was a different one. They wanted to bring Christ down on the earth and they wanted to bring Christ up from the dead (see Mt 12:40) In order for their faith to be stronger, they would have liked to have been eyewitnesses to Jesus' earthly ministry, and to his appearance and ministry after his resurrection. If this is what Paul has in mind, then he is certainly thinking that Jesus came down from heaven, just as he said it in 1 Corinthians 15:47.

Even if this is so, some would argue that Jesus coming down from heaven does not mean he was a person first, in heaven, and then came down; James 1:17 is quoted in support:

Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.

For example wisdom - mentioned by James in verse 5 - is also from God, and being a perfect gift of God, it can be said that it comes down from heaven, from the Father of lights (see James 3:15). But no one would think that wisdom is a person just because it comes down from God. Indeed, no one would think that, but mainly because we already know that the wisdom God gives to his people is not a person. It is never, ever, said about humans that they came down from heaven. God gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, but of none of them it is said even once that they came down from heaven.

Another verse from Romans:

Romans 8:3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh

Granted, God sending someone does not automatically mean this someone existed before in other form. God has also sent prophets to Israel, and they did not preexist. But the question is, of what prophet is it said he was sent in the likeliness of sinful flesh? Why does Paul find this information valuable enough to mention it, if in his mind, the son of God cannot exist in any other form but in the flesh? Wouldn't this make this information redundant? Yes it would, because all humans are flesh.

But if Jesus existed as a powerful spirit before being sent by God, it make sense to mention the fact that God sent his son in the likeness of sinful flesh, in the likeness of humans. This son became flesh (John 1:14); this son came to be (be-came) in the form of men - Philippians 2:7, see above. This is an extraordinary fact, a miracle of God, that was done by God in order for Jesus to be an offering for sin, to condemn sin in the flesh.

In conclusion, the explicit mention of Christ not just being sent, like the other men of God were, but being sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, points to the fact that Christ was in a different "likeness" before he was sent.

The same situation can be found in Galatians 4:4.

Galatians 4:4

Galatians 4:4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law

Again we can see how Paul ties Christ being sent by God, with the nature he was sent in, a human nature. Is it necessary in the case of previous servants whom God sent, to mention they were born of a woman, born under the Law? No of course not, that would have been self-understood in the case of every Jew.

What Paul says about the son being born of a woman and under the law is not redundant, but very significant if Paul knew the Son of God existed in a non-human form before his coming, existed without being under the Mosaic Law. By explicitly mentioning that the son God sent was born of a woman and under the law, the writer shows that in the case of Christ, these two characteristics are highly significant, unlike the case of all other men God has sent to his people, in whose case there was nothing extraordinary that they were born under the law, of a woman. It was necessary for this son to come this way in order to be able to redeem those who are born of a woman and under the law.

1 Timothy 3:16

1 Timothy 3:16 By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, Was vindicated in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Proclaimed among the nations, Believed on in the world, Taken up in glory.

The word translated as revealed here is the Greek phaneroo. According to BDAG, this verb has means:

to cause to become visible, reveal, expose publicly, show or reveal oneself

So no wonder that when used in connection with persons, it always implies their preexistence. Here are some examples:

John 1:31 "I did not recognize Him, but so that He might be manifested to Israel, I came baptizing in water."

John the Baptist says he came came baptizing in water in order for Jesus to be manifested to Israel. And that happened indeed, when Jesus was baptized, John revealed the fact that Jesus is the Messiah: "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (vs. 29). There's no question that when Jesus was revealed as the Messiah at John's baptism, he already preexisted.

Another use of this verb:

John 21:1 After these things Jesus manifested Himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, and He manifested Himself in this way.

Jesus was manifested/revealed/appeared to the disciples after he was resurrected. Obviously, he already existed before that.

John 21:14 This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to the disciples, after He was raised from the dead.

Same idea. Here are other uses of this verb, outside the gospels:

2 Corinthians 5:10-11 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ [...] Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men, but we are made manifest to God; and I hope that we are made manifest also in your consciences.

Ephesians 5:13 But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light.

Colossians 3:4 When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

1 Peter 5:4 And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

1 John 2:28 Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming.

It is obvious then, that when Paul says Christ was manifested in flesh, he viewed him as having existed before in a non-fleshly state.

1 Corinthians 8:6 and Colossians 1:16

1 Corinthians 8:5-6 For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we exist through Him.⁷.

Paul admits that the world has different so-called gods and lords, but in fact there is only one God and only one Lord, the Father and Christ. He supports his statement by referring to the creation of all things. Only the real God can be the source of all things, they are all from Him, and only the real Lord can be the one through whom all these things were made, so the other gods and lords are false because of this.

The appeal to creation to make a point of Yahweh being the only real God was used before Paul by God himself in Isaiah:

Isaiah 44:24 Thus says Yahweh, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, "I, Yahweh, am the maker of all things, Stretching out the heavens by Myself And spreading out the earth all alone

But this verse is also commonly used to raise an objection to Jesus being an agent through whom God created all things. Trinitarians use it to argue that Jesus is the Almighty God because it is said here that no one was with with God when He created all things, and Unitarian adopters of the no preexistence theory use it to argue that Jesus could not be an agent in the creation of all things for the same reason, being said here that no one was with with God when He created all things.

But why ignore the context? The context speaks about false gods, the gods the Jews adopted from their surrounding neighbors and the ones they were making from wood, idols. None of these false gods were with Yahweh at creation! He says "there is no God besides Me" in verse 6, but despite this, God says that the Messiah is a god himself (Isaiah 9:6), and that the unjust judges of Israel are gods themselves (Ps. 82:6, John 10:34-35). It is clear then what God says in 44:24: none of the false gods that the Jews and nations worship were with Him at creation, they are all false gods.

Paul repeats the idea that it is Jesus Christ through whom God created all things, in Colossians 1:16.

Colossians 1:16 For by Him [the Son] all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created through Him and for Him.

Paul therefore is firmly convinced that it was through Christ Jesus that God created all things. He firmly believed Christ had a personal existence way before he became human in the first century to fulfill the act of redemption of the human kind. He existed before everything else was created, and served as an agent through whom God created everything, be they visible or invisible things.

Consequently, Paul believes this son of God was involved in the life of God's people even before coming on earth as a human in the first century, as it can be seen two chapters later in 1 Corinthians.

1 Corinthians 10:4

1 Corinthians 10:1-4 For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea; 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; 3 and all ate the same spiritual food; 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not well-pleased; for they were laid low in the wilderness.

Several explanations have been proposed for how could Christ be the spiritual rock that followed the Jews through the wilderness. Some argue that the rock symbolized Christ, not that Christ in person gave them to drink water.

The Jews going through the sea, and under the cloud (which holds water) , amounted to them being baptized in a spiritual way. They ate a spiritual food because the mana was given to them miraculously. They drank a spiritual drink because the water was miraculously made to come out of the rock (Numbers 20:11).

What is Paul trying to say? He warns the Corinthians not to feel that because they were baptized and were fed spiritually by Christ now, they could do anything, even indulge in immorality and idol worshiping. As an example he presents the ancient people of God, who were baptized at the same time in the same sea and under the same cloud, ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink which was given by the same Christ who is now with the Corinthians; but despite that, "with most of them God was not well-pleased; for they were laid low in the wilderness".

Who gave them miraculously water in the wilderness? Christ did, not the literal rock itself; he made the rock to give water, and Christ was accompanying them in the wilderness. They had Christ with them, and still, with many of them God was not pleased, and laid them low in the wilderness.

So if Christ is not the one accompanying them in the wilderness, catering to their needs, Paul's argument doesn't really work. What Paul says is that Christ was with the Jews and they fell from God's favor. This has to serve the Corinthians as an example (verse 6). Today Christ is with the Corinthians, and they better watch what they're doing - they should not be idolaters (verse 7) and they should not act immorally, because thousands of God's people died because of this (verse 8), despite Christ being with them. They should not test Christ - verse 9:

Nor let us try the Lord, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the serpents.

But who is the Lord they tried? Jesus is frequently referred to as the Lord because God made Jesus Lord (Acts 2:36). Taking into account that Paul just said Christ was accompanying the Jews through the wilderness, is he intending to say they tried Christ, the Lord, in the wilderness?

It is interesting to note that many translations say in verse 9 "Lord", but also many say here "Christ". What gives?

Several ancient manuscripts have different readings here - see NA27. The following read Lord here:

Codex Sinaiticus (IV A.D.)

Codex Vaticanus B (IV A.D.)

Codex Ephraemi C (V A.D.)

Codex Porphyrianus P (IX A.D.)

and several other late minuscules like number 33 (IX A.D.)

104 (1087 A.D.), etc.

Others read God: Codex Alexandrinus (V A.D.), minuscule number 81 (1044 A.D.) and a few others.

Others read Christ:

P⁴⁶ (around 200 A.D., the oldest extant manuscript containg letters of Paul)
Codex Claromontanus D (VI A.D.)

Codex Augiensis F (IX A.D.)

Codex Boernerianus G (IX A.D.)

Codex Athous Lavrensis (VIII/IX A.D.)

and other late minuscules like number 1739 (X A.D.)

1881 (XIV A.D.), etc

the M group ⁸

the Old Latin (IV A.D.) and the Vulgate (VI A.D.)

the Syriac version (V A.D.)

the Coptic version (IV/V A.D.)

Iraeneus - latin translation (395 A.D.)

Origen as quoted in the margin of manuscript 1739 (X A.D.).

NA27, the eclectic Greek text which many translations follow, chose the Christ reading in this verse. Here's the NA27 committee's motivation:

The reading that best explains the origin of the others is Christ, attested by the oldest Greek Manuscript (P⁴⁶) as well as by a wide diversity of early patristic and versional witnesses (Iraeneus in Gaul, Ephraem in Edessa, Clement in Alexandria, Origen in Palestine, as well as by the Old Latin, the Vulgate, the Syriac, Sahidic and Bohairic). The difficulty of explaining how the ancient Israelites in the wilderness could have tempted Christ prompted some copyist to substitute either the ambiguous Lord or the unobjectionable God. Pauls reference to Christ here is analogous to that in verse 4. - A Textual Commentary on the Greek NT, 2nd Ed., Bruce Metzger.

So it is indeed possible that Paul wrote that the Jews tempted Christ in the wilderness. This should not be so surprising, since God told the Jews at the beginning of their journey:

Exodus 23:20-23 "Behold, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Be on your guard before him and obey his voice; do not be rebellious toward him, for he will not pardon your transgression, since My name is in him. But if you truly obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. For My angel will go before you and bring you in to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will completely destroy them.

According to HALOT 5198, the Hebrew word translated as angel literally means "messenger". Notice how this messenger was to be obeyed by the Jews, they should not rebel against him but obey his voice, because he will not pardon their transgression. It is easy to see that this messenger was a representative of Yahweh himself. He says "obey his voice and do all that I say"; so they were to obey the messenger's voice and do all that Yahweh, through this messenger, says. This messenger's person represented Yahweh himself and was His mouthpiece, His spokesperson. Incidentally or not, John says about Jesus the he was the Word.

It is probably this angel who says the following, before Exodus 23:20-23:

Exodus 3:7-8 The LORD said, "I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite.

Verse 2 makes it clear that the speaker is "the angel of the LORD". The angel was not Yahweh himself, but was representing him, just as in the case of the angel who God says in Exodus 23:20-23 that will clear the way to the promised land for the Israelites. This angel is again presented in Exodus 14 as being involved in the liberation of the Jews from the Egyptian empire:

Exodus 14:19-21 The angel of God, who had been going before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them. So it came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel; and there was the cloud along with the darkness, yet it gave light at night. Thus the one did not come near the other all night. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD swept the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land, so the waters were divided.

For more information on this, see the section "Liberation from Egypt" in the The Divine Messiah and Ancient Jewish Monotheism article.

Conclusion

In conclusion, like Simon Gathercole says in his book, Paul employs Christ's preexistence in a number of different contexts, perhaps as early as 48-49 A.D. He puts Christ at the creation of all things, way before he came to earth. He also puts him in the wilderness with the ancient Jews. He says he gave up his godly form to take a human form, he thus was "rich" but became "poor" for our sakes.

One would feel probably the need to ask, why aren't all these Paulian aspects mentioned in the Gospels? One of the gospel writers, John - who has Jesus saying many things and involved in many events the synoptic Gospels lack - said that Jesus told his disciples that

John 16:12-13 "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth;

And the Spirit came after his ascension to heaven (Acts 2). John himself also says at the end of his gospel:

John 21:25 And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.

Returning to Paul, the most striking aspect of this is that he does not argue that Christ had a pre-human existence, he always assumes it. He always uses Christ's preexistence as a base on which he will build a conclusion, an exhortation. That shows that his audience held the same belief, that Christ existed as a person before becoming a human, otherwise none of his arguments would have worked.

It is widely acknowledged that Paul had a great influence on primitive Christianity, so it would be difficult to think that this idea of Christ's preexistence was not also held more widely than some think. Paul's coworkers and his churches must have shared with Paul the same belief. Is Mark of Philemon 1:24, 2 Ti 4:11 and Col 4:10 the one who wrote the Gospel? As Gathercole says in his book (p. 42), much of the 20th century scholarship was dominated by the view that Mark and Paul were entirely independent.

Recently, however, Joel Marcus has commented that "now the tide appears to be shifting, and several scholars have recently contended that Mark should be situated in the Pauline sphere of activity" - J. Marcus, "Mark - Interpreter of Paul", NTS 46.4 (2000), 473-87 (474)

Of course, the association of Paul with Luke is well-known. After all, Luke writes frequently in Acts about "we" ⁹. One would then expect to find references to Christ's pre-human existence in the Gospels as well.

^* NASB introduces an "and" between "bond-servant" and "being made", but there's no "and" in the Greek text - see NA27. Also, NASB omits an "and" between "likeness of men" and "being found" - idem. I've restored these in the above translation.^(back)

⁰ NASB renders in vs. 7 I have come instead of I am coming; nevertheless, the verb heko used here is in the present tense.^(back)

¹ Actually, the oldest manuscript that contains this letter of Paul, P⁴⁶, reads not men but man, in singular. ^(back)

² As others note - like Simon Gathercole, The Preexistent Son, page 25, ftn - the Greek morphe, form in English, refers not to form in contrast to reality, but as a reflection of reality. ^(back)

³ See The Biblical Canon - Lee Martin McDonald, p. 115, 122.^(back)

⁴ See also Philippians, A Greek Student's Intermediate Reader, Jerry L. Sumney, p. 47.^(back)

⁵ See NA27 and A Textual Commentary on the Greek NT, 2nd ed., Metzger, p. 545^(back)

⁶ Mark 6:3.^(back)

⁷ NASB chooses to translate "Jesus Christ by whom are all things" instead of "trough whom are all things". The Greek dia with an object in genitive mainly means through. Other translations render this in 1 Co 8:6 as through, not by - like NIV, New American Bible, American Standard Version, Revised Standard Version, New Jerusalem Bible, etc. The same construction is found in the last part of this same verse, where NASB renders "we exist through Him".^(back)

⁸ Manuscripts of the Byzantine Imperial text, plus Codex Monsquensis K (IX A.D.), Codex Angelicus L (IX A.D.) and others - see The Text of the NT by Kurt and Barbara Aland p. 249 for what M comprises.^(back)

⁹ Acts 16:10-16; 20:6-8, 13-15; 21:1-17; 27:1-8, 15-18, 27-29; 28:1,10-16.^(back)

"You are My Son, Today I have begotten You" Fulfilled

2008-12-25T11:05:00.020-05:00

Acts 13:32-33 states that the promise to the ancient Hebrews was fulfilled as it is written in Psalm 2:7; this is what it says:

Acts 13:32-33 And we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers, that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, 'You are my son; today I have begotten you.'

But the time of this promise's fulfillment is controversial. Here are the three competing views on the time this promise was fulfilled (or on the event that fulfilled this promise):

Promise Fulfilled at the Birth of Jesus

Some argue that the promise made to the ancient Jews was fulfilled at the birth of Jesus, since the Psalm says clearly that Jesus became at a certain date the son of God. When Luke writes that an angel appeared to Mary announcing the birth of Jesus, it has the angel saying that Jesus will be called "the Son of the Most High":

Luke 1:30-32 The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David;

The birth of Jesus allowed all the messianic prophecies to be later fulfilled in him. But what about the fact that Paul says that "today I have begotten you" has been fulfilled by God by "raising up Jesus"?

It is pointed out that this language does not always indicate resurrection, as it may appear at first sight. This expression is used in other places without the meaning of resurrecting somebody from the dead. One example would be verse 22:

Acts 13:22 After He had removed him, He raised up David to be their king, concerning whom He also testified and said, 'I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after my heart, who will do all My will.'

Indeed, this verse does not say that God resurrected David. The Greek word translated as "raised up" is anistemi, and according to BDAG it not only means "to raise up by bringing back to life", but also "to cause to appear for a role or function". Another verse that employs this meaning - and refers to Jesus - is Acts 3:22:

Acts 3:22 Moses said, 'the Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren; to him you shall give heed to everything He says to you'.

The problem with this interpretation is that just because "raising up" may not always mean "resurrection", it does not follow that it means birth. Acts 13:22 does not say that David was born to be king of the Jews, but that God brought him on the scene with the purpose of him being king to them. This happened not when he was born, but when he was anointed by Samuel. That corresponds indeed to the meaning of "to cause to appear for a role or function".

Similarly, Acts 3:22 says about Jesus that God will raise up "a prophet". Was he a prophet in the real sense of the word the moment he was born? Did he prophesy anything as a new born? He became a prophet after his baptism at the age of 30, when God's spirit descended on him.

Another instance of this verb being used in this way is Acts 5:36:

Acts 5:36 For some time ago Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a group of about four hundred men joined up with him. But he was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing.

It is clear that Gamaliel does not talk here about Theudas' birth.

As it is obvious, BDAG says anistemi also means resurrection, "to raise up by bringing back to life". Examples of this usage can be found all over the NT. Here is one:

Acts 2:31-32 [David] looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh suffer decay. This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.

So another problem with the idea of birth as the time of the fulfillment is that the context speaks of Jesus being killed and resurrected, therefore making anistemi mean resurrection highly probable:

Acts 13:28-37 And though they found no ground for putting Him to death, they asked Pilate that He be executed.

When they had carried out all that was written concerning Him, they took Him down from the cross and laid Him in a tomb. But God raised Him from the dead; and for many days He appeared to those who came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, the very ones who are now His witnesses to the people.

And we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers, that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, 'You are my son; today I have begotten you.'

As for the fact that He raised Him up from the dead, no longer to return to decay, He has spoken in this way: 'I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David.'

Therefore He also says in another Psalm, 'You will not allow Your holy one to undergo decay.' For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep, and was laid among his fathers and underwent decay; but He whom God raised did not undergo decay.

For how can 'You are my son; today I have begotten you" be fulfilled at resurrection, please see Begetting at Resurrection.

Promise Fulfilled When Jesus is Brought on the Scene by God

Others argue that the meaning of "raise up" in Acts 13:33 is not the resurrection one, but "to cause to appear for a role or function", another meaning of anistemi. According to this interpretation, the fulfillment of the promise encompasses the fulfillment of every messianic prophecy - the birth, the preaching, the healing, the death and the resurrection.

It is argued that the larger context of Acts 13 is pointing to the identity of Jesus as being the Messiah, but this does not explain how exactly "You are my son; today I have begotten you" is being fulfilled in Jesus being brought on the scene by God, if this doesn't mean his birth.

While Paul says in verse 22 that David was "raised up" by God, therefore being brought on Israel's scene, Paul does not say next that Jesus was "raised up" by God being brought on Israel's scene. He instead says:

Acts 13:23 From the descendants of this man, according to promise, God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus

When Paul wants to convey the idea that Jesus was brought on the scene of Israel as a savior, he chooses to say exactly that: "brought", probably because he does not want create confusion between "raised up" in the sense of being brought on the scene and "raised up" from the dead. In regard to David he can use "raised up" in the sense of being brought on the scene for there can be no confusion here with David's resurrection, everybody knows David was not resurrected.

So the fact that Paul already talked about Jesus being brought on the scene in verse 23 would make verse 33 redundant if it also means that Jesus was brought on the scene. Likewise, verse 33 is again made redundant if the fulfillment of the promise means fulfillment of the messianic prophecies as a whole, because Paul already mentioned the fulfillment of messianic prophecies in verses 27 to 29:

Acts 13:27-29 For those who live in Jerusalem, and their rulers, recognizing neither Him nor the utterances of the prophets which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled these by condemning Him. And though they found no ground for putting Him to death, they asked Pilate that He be executed. When they had carried out all that was written concerning Him, they took Him down from the cross and laid Him in a tomb.

Furthermore, as pointed out above, the immediate context of Acts 13:33 is specifically the resurrection of Jesus, beginning with verse 30, this topic of resurrection continuing well after verse 33, up until verse 37. Therefore it would be more likely that Paul, by mentioning the raising up of Jesus, stays on the subject of resurrecting Jesus from the dead and does not deviate from it.

Promise Fulfilled by God Raising Up Jesus From the Dead

Still others argue that the promise made by God was fulfilled by Jesus being raised up from the dead, not merely "raised up" by being brought on the scene. In favor of this it is argued that the immediate context is the resurrection of Jesus, verse 33 being in the middle of this topic - see above.

It is argued that without the resurrection of Jesus, all God's promises to Israel are in vain, there is no salvation, as Paul said:

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. […] If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. (1 Corinthians 15:13-14 ,17-18)

It is the resurrection of Jesus that makes valid all other promises God made. Without it, not one stands. It is the fulfillment of the resurrection promise (made in Psalm 16:10 and Isaiah 53:10-12) that renders all the other promises made by God as relevant.

It is indeed only the last in a chain of promises related to the Messiah's earthly course, that fulfilled the promise of God. If the "promise" Paul mentions in Acts 13:33 is in fact all the promises of God viewed as a whole, it would be beneficial to see just what "fulfillment" means when applied to something that is comprised of many events, a chain or succession of events.

Fulfillment of a Chain of Events

The Greek word translated as "fulfilled" is ekpleroo (ἐκπληρόω); it is in fact a composite verb, composed of the words: ek + pleroo. Ek means "out" and pleroo means "to make full, fill (full)", so together they literally mean "to out-fulfill" something. BDAG says it means "to fulfill". It also says that another closely related meaning is "to bring to completion".

In the NT it only appears in Acts 13:33. Most of the time, the NT simply says pleroo, without the preceding ek, when it wants to say something is fulfilled, or is filled full. From the way this word is used by the NT and the Septuagint in relation to a chain of events/days/elements, one can determine when exactly the fulfillment of these actually occurs.

Take for example the fulfillment of a number of days, as it appears in the Septuagint (Brenton's translation):

Genesis 29:21 And Jacob said to Laban, Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in to her.

As verse 18 shows, Jacob had to serve Laban seven years, that is 2520 days, in order to marry his daughter Rachel. When were the 2520 days fulfilled? On the first day? The event that marked the fulfillment of these days was the passing of the last day, the 2520^th one. Another example:

Genesis 50:2-3 And Joseph commanded his servants the embalmers to embalm his father; and the embalmers embalmed Israel. And they fulfilled forty days for him, for so are the days of embalming numbered;

Again, the fulfillment of the 40 days was accomplished by the passing of the 40^th day. Just as the last drop of water fills full a glass of water, without this last day, the desired period of time is not fulfilled. The pouring of the last drop of water fills the glass. Of course, each single day before the last one came to pass, they all happened. But the period of time - all the days viewed as a whole - was fulfilled only and only, by the passing of the last day.

Other examples of a period of time being fulfilled can be found at Leviticus 12:4; 25:29, etc...

Another use for this word:

Luke 7:1 When He had completed all His discourse in the hearing of the people, He went to Capernaum.

The translation of pleroo in this case reminds us that BDAG said ekpleroo also means "to bring to completion". Keeping in mind that we start with the assumption that the promise of Acts 13:33 is composed of all the promises of God mentioned in diferent prophecies, let us note that Jesus' discourse was composed of multiple statements. His discourse was brought to completion only by its last statement; the event that brought his discourse to completion was Jesus expressing the last statement in this string of statements. It's not that the previous statements were not expressed by him, it's that his discourse was completed (fulfilled) by the final statement.

Another example of pleroo usage:

John 3:29 He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice. So this joy of mine has been made full.

As verse 26 shows, John the Baptist's joy was made full by the fact that Jesus was baptizing and people were coming to him. It's not that John had no joy in Jesus before Jesus started baptizing, but this joy was made full (filled full, fulfilled) only with the start of Jesus baptizing. Therefore the event that made his joy full was Jesus baptizing and people coming to him.

The same idea is expressed by other verses, which use the same pleroo:

Philippians 2:2 make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

2 John 1:12 Though I have many things to write to you, I do not want to do so with paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to face, so that your joy may be made full.

Paul's joy towards the Philippians was only to be made complete - fulfilled - by them being united; the joy of the recipients of John's letter was to be made full - fulfilled - only by John visiting them in person. It's not that the joy of these two subjects was inexistent, that they didn't have joy, they did have it, but their joy would be only fulfilled by a last missing ingredient.

Therefore, if we are to accept the idea that the promise of Acts 13:33 is composed of multiple messianic promises of God in regard to Jesus' earthly course, mentioned in different prophecies, it is clear enough that when it is said about such a composite structure of elements that it is fulfilled, there's always one last event that fulfills it. In the case of this promise, it is the resurrection.

All promises fulfilled or a certain promise fulfilled?

What if the assumption that the promise of Acts 13:33 is composed of multiple messianic promises of God in regard to Jesus' earthly course, is an incorrect one? What if Paul refers to a certain promise? As an example here's what Matthew once said:

Matthew 12:16-21 and [Jesus] warned them not to tell who He was. This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: "Behold, My Servant whom I have chosen; My Beloved in whom My soul is well-pleased; I will put My Spirit upon Him, And He shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel, nor cry out; nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets [...] and in his name the gentiles will hope".

After Jesus heals a man in the synagogue, many follow him and they are healed too; they are warned by Jesus "not to tell who He was". And this warning is presented as the fulfillment of many messianic activities listed from verse 18 to 21. But this warning does not fulfill all those elements: it does not fulfill the identity of the one chosen by God to be the Messiah, nor God's soul being pleased with him, neither Him putting his spirit on Jesus, nor the proclaiming of justice to the gentiles, neither that in Jesus' name the gentiles will hope.

What this warning fulfills though is only a small part of these things: he will not cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets, in other words, he will not loudly advertise himself as the Messiah. Matthew doesn't in fact want to say that all those messianic activities were fulfilled with this occasion, but just a certain part of them. Is this also true in the case of what Paul says in Acts 13:33? Is Paul referring only to the promise of Messiah's resurrection?

First, let's acknowledge that Paul focuses on Jesus as being the Savior, and the salvation he brings:

Acts 13:23,26 "From the descendants of this man, according to promise, God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, [...] Brethren, sons of Abraham's family, and those among you who fear God, to us the message of this salvation has been sent.

Then in the next verse Paul mentions that those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers fulfilled certain utterances of the prophets by condemning him to death. The next two verses say that in fact all that was written concerning Jesus was carried out by these people just before him being taken down from the cross, so this includes his death as well.

So Paul, after mentioning salvation, focuses on the prophecies that predicted the events surrounding his death: the disciples forsaking him, him being beaten and suffering, being put to death and despite that, living afterwards; Isaiah 53 records all this:

Forsaken by his disciples: "He was despised and forsaken of men [...] All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him." - vs. 3 and 6.
Captured violently and condemned in a trial: "By oppression and judgment He was taken away" - vs. 8
Suffered beatings: "The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. [...] He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth" - vs. 5,7
Killed: "pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; [...] cut off out of the land of the living [...] the Lord was pleased To crush Him [...] He poured out Himself to death" - vs. 5,8,10,12
After death, before resurrection: "His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death [...] was numbered with the transgressors" - vs. 9,12
Resurrected: "He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. [...] He will see it and be satisfied [...] I will allot Him a portion with the great, And He will divide the booty with the strong; Because He poured out Himself to death" - vs. 10-12.

Notice then how Paul is not focused specifically on Jesus' identity as the Messiah; he mentions no prophecies Jesus fulfilled during his ministry that would identify him as the Messiah, but only the ones (vs. 27,29) which have all strictly to do with events surrounding his death and his resurrection; then he goes on speaking of his death, resurrection and the effects of these (the salvation), spending a total of 13 verses on this focus (vs. 27-39).

So what does this prophecy of Isaiah have in common with the fact that Jesus is Savior, with the salvation mentioned previously? The same prophecy mentions this salvation:

He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities [...] The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed [...] the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him [...] He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due [...] He rendered Himself as a guilt offering [...] My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities. [...] He Himself bore the sin of many, And interceded for the transgressors" - vs 5,6,8,10-12

Compare these with these statements:

Jesus “released us from our sins by His blood” (Revelation 1:5). “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses“.

This is the promise Paul is focused on, the salvation. Jesus' death and resurrection fulfilled this promise. As a conclusion to all this talk about his death and resurrection, Paul draws the final conclusion:

Acts 13:38-39 Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses.

In other words, Paul's whole exposition served the role of proclaiming to these Jews the message of salvation from sin and death, the promise of this salvation proclaimed to the ancient Jews by Isaiah being fulfilled by the death and resurrection of Jesus.

According to this line of reasoning, 'You are my son; today I have begotten you" was fulfilled at resurrection, a conclusion strongly supported by the context this statement is found in. For how can this Psalm 2:7 be fulfilled at resurrection, please see Begetting at Resurrection.

Begetting at Resurrection?

2008-12-14T16:11:00.006-05:00

The issue of Jesus' begetting is at the center of the preexistence controversy. When was Jesus begotten by God? Was this son of God begotten once or more than once, and what does that say about the idea that Jesus had a personal existence before he became human?

Unitarian unbelievers in Jesus' pre-human existence believe, as the Bible teaches, that those who died do not exist anymore. Death indeed interrupts someone's existence (as opposed to what mainstream Christendom believes), and resurrection then is the reversal of this state: those who died are being given life again, they are brought into existence.

The same Unitarians believe begetting is the process when a parent gives life to his offspring, brings it into existence. But for some reason, some of them do not believe what happens at resurrection is a begetting, despite the process being the same.

But when the only child of a parent dies, how many children does the parent have? Is the parent still a father to his dead son? Is the dead child still a son to his father? As in the case of humans, the relationship Father-Son ends because the relationship needs two entities. If one is missing, there's no relationship. That is why God can become again Jesus' Father at resurrection.

Here are some arguments in favor of the idea that resurrection from the dead is begetting.

Luke 20:36

Jesus was once asked by some Sadducees a question about the resurrection of the dead. When Jesus describes the resurrected ones, he says:

Luke 20:36 for they cannot even die anymore, because they are like angels, and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

Jesus says that being sons of the resurrection, those resurrected from the dead are sons of God. One of the reasons they are sons of God is because God, through Jesus, resurrected them, gave them life and brought them into existence once more.

Colossians 1:18

The apostle Paul himself says this about Jesus and his resurrection:

He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.

Even in resurrection he has to be literally the first one. Yes, Jesus was the first one to be resurrected to eternal life. Thus, he is described by Paul as being the firstborn from the dead. In other words, he is God's first begotten from the dead, by way of resurrection to eternal life. Yes, God gave him life and brought him into existence by way of resurrection to eternal life, he was born from the dead.

Romans 1:4

Paul says something similar in his letter to the Romans:

who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord

The resurrection from the dead declared him to be the Son of God. But some argue that this verse must actually be understood as saying that God showed/proved that Jesus was his son by resurrecting him, the ultimate proof of Jesus being a son of Him, and not that Jesus became again a son to God because God gave him again life and brought him again into existence. Is that what Paul really wants to say?

When Paul says Jesus was "declared" son of God, he uses the Greek verb horizo (ὁρίζω in Greek). Note how this verb is translated in every instance it is used in the NT:

Luke 22:22 "For indeed, the Son of Man is going as it has been determined; but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!"
Acts 2:23 "this Man, delivered over by the determined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.
Acts 10:42 "And He ordered us to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead"
Acts 11:29 "And in the proportion that any of the disciples had means, each of them determined to send a contribution for the relief of the brethren living in Judea.
Acts 17:26 "and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation"
Acts 17:31 "because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead"
Hebrews 4:7 "He again fixes a certain day, "Today," saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, "today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts."

As it can be seen, this verb is frequently translated as "to determine", "to appoint" (when the above verses employ this verb with reference to Jesus as Judge, horizo is translated "to appoint". Would this mean that Jesus was appointed/determined to be God's son by the resurrection, in other words, by giving him life and bringing him into existence?

Please note that in a total of 37 English translations, this verb is rendered in these ways, by this many translations:

- declare: 15
- proved: 2
- established: 2
- designated: 3
- marked out: 3
- demonstrated: 1
- predestined: 1
- known: 3
- appointed: 3
- shown: 3
- before-ordained: 1

Here they are:

New American Standard Bible:
who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord,

New American Bible:
but established as Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness through resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.

New International Version:
and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.

Geneva Bible:
And declared mightily to be the Sonne of God, touching the Spirit of sanctification by the resurrection from the dead)

New Jerusalem Bible:
was born a descendant of David and who, in terms of the Spirit and of holiness, was designated Son of God in power by resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ, our Lord,

KJV:
And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:

Revised Standard Version:
and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,

Complete Jewish Bible:
he was powerfully demonstrated to be Son of God spiritually, set apart by his having been resurrected from the dead; he is Yeshua the Messiah, our Lord.

God's Word translation
In his spiritual, holy nature he was declared the Son of God. This was shown in a powerful way when he came back to life.

American Standard Version:
who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead; even Jesus Christ our Lord,

Bible in Basic English:
But was marked out as Son of God in power by the Holy Spirit through the coming to life again of the dead; Jesus Christ our Lord,

Bishops' New Testament:
And hath ben declared to be the sonne of God, with power after the spirite that sanctifieth, by the resurrectio from the dead, of Iesus Christe our Lorde.

Holman Christian Standard Bible:
and was established as the powerful Son of God by the resurrection from the dead according to the Spirit of holiness.

Darby:
marked out Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection of the dead) Jesus Christ our Lord;

Douay-Rheims American Edition:
Who was predestinated the Son of God in power, according to the spirit of sanctification, by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead;

English Revised Version:
who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead; even Jesus Christ our Lord,

English Standard Version:
and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,

Etheridge Translation of the NT Peshitta:
and is known (to be) the Son of Aloha by power, and by the Holy Spirit, who raised him from among the dead, Jeshu Meshiha our Lord:

Magiera Peshitta NT Translation:
and was made known [as] the Son of God by power and by the Holy Spirit, who raised Jesus Christ our Lord from the dead,

Murdock Translation of the NT Peshitta:
and was made known as the Son of God, by power, and by the Holy Spirit,) who arose from the dead, Jesus Messiah, our Lord,

New English Translation:
who was appointed the Son-of-God-in-power according to the Holy Spirit by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.

New Living Translation:
and he was shown to be the Son of God when he was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit. He is Jesus Christ our Lord.

New Revised Standard Version:
and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,

Tyndale's New Testament:
and declared to be the sonne of God with power of the holy goost that sanctifieth sence the tyme that Iesus Christ oure Lorde rose agayne from deeth

Webster Bible:
And declared {to be} the Son of God, with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:

Young's Literal Translation:
who is marked out Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of sanctification, by the rising again from the dead,) Jesus Christ our Lord;

Weymouth New Testament:
but as regards the holiness of His Spirit was decisively proved by His Resurrection to be the Son of God--I mean concerning Jesus Christ our Lord,

World English Bible:
who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,

International Standard Version:
and was declared by the resurrection from the dead to be the powerful Son of God according to the spirit of holiness-Jesus the Messiah, our Lord.

The Message:
his unique identity as Son of God was shown by the Spirit when Jesus was raised from the dead

Amplified Bible:
And according to the Spirit of holiness was openly designated the Son of God in power by His resurrection from the dead

Contemporary English Version:
But the Holy Spirit proved that Jesus is the powerful Son of God, because he was raised from death.

New Century Version:
But through the Spirit of holiness he was declared to be God's Son with great power by rising from the dead.

New International Reader's Version:
By the power of the Holy Spirit, he was appointed to be the mighty Son of God because he rose from the dead. He is Jesus Christ our Lord.

Wycliffe New Testament:
and he was before-ordained the Son of God in virtue, by the Spirit of hallowing of the again-rising of dead men, of Jesus Christ our Lord

Worldwide English (New Testament):
He came alive from death. That showed he was God's Son. He had God's power. God's Holy Spirit did all this.

Today's New International Version:
and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.

Some translations which have footnotes for "declare/shown", want to make sure the reader does not miss out on other legitimate renderings of this verb:

NIV: "Or was appointed to be the Son of God with power"
KJV: declared: Gr. "determined"
NLT: "Or and was designated"

Notice how shown/known/proved/demonstrated constitute a minority of renderings, while declared/established/designated/appointed/ordained constitute a majority. There's a good explanation for this. None of the minority meanings are actual meanings of this verb. Here is what some lexicons have to say about the meanings of it:

BDAG: to make a determination about an entity, determine, appoint, fix, set: of persons - appoint, designate, declare
Friberg: of persons appoint, designate; as making a definite plan appoint, decide, determine;
Barclay Newman: decide, determine; appoint, designate
Louw-Nida: (figurative extension of meaning of ὁρίζω ‘to set limits on,’ not occurring in the NT) to come to a definite decision or firm resolve - ‘to decide, to determine, to resolve.’
Lust-Eynikel-Hauspie: M: to establish, to ordain (an ordinance)
Gingrich: determine, fix, set; appoint, designate, declare
Thayer: to determine, appoint
Liddell-Scottto mark out by boundaries; to limit, determine, appoint, lay down, order
Strong: to mark off by boundaries, to determine;

The most basic meaning of this verb according to BDAG (the mother of all Greek-English lexicons) is "to separate entities and so establish a boundary". Other lexicons say the same thing, "mark off by boundaries". Entities are separated by being marked off with the help of boundaries, and so, the entities are defined. BDAG places the occurrence of this verb in Romans 1:4 under this main meaning:

"to make a determination about an entity, determine, appoint, fix, set"

But this meaning has two subsections:

a) of things
b) of persons

Naturally, Romans 1:4 is placed under b), because the verb's object here is a person, the Son of God. Now section b) is defined as:

b. of persons appoint, designate, declare.

Of course "declare" may have different shades of meaning. Which ones are we to consider for Rom 1:4? This lexicon is not merely saying that this verb also means "declare", but it specifies that this is a sub-meaning of "to make a determination about an entity, determine, appoint, fix, set".

One has to put the meaning "declare" in the context of "to make a determination about an entity, determine, appoint, fix, set". Those shades of meaning of "declare" are the valid ones, the ones that have an affinity for "making a determination about an entity, determine, appoint, fix, set". Most of the 15 translation committees that chose "declare" probably had in mind "to make a determination about an entity, determine, appoint, fix, set" when they chose to translate "declare".

Notice how the "declared" in the sense of "showing" Jesus to be a son of God, or "providing the decisive proof" that Jesus is a son of God, fits nowhere in this picture. These have nothing to do with "declare" in the sense of "to make a determination about an entity, determine, appoint, fix, set".

Also, the "appointed" rendering is used by three translations, while one more says in its footnote it can also be translated as "appointed", and another one's footnote says "designated"; two say "established", three more say "designated", fifteen more "declared".

There are good reasons then to conclude that Paul is saying here that Jesus was "appointed" by God to be his son through resurrection, by giving him life again and bringing him again into existence, and not that the resurrection was the ultimate proof of Jesus being a son of Him.

Being appointed to be the son of God is not a new idea. Psalm 2:7 already expressed the same idea.

Psalm 2:7

I will surely tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to Me, 'You are My Son, Today I have begotten You'

Notice how Messiah's status as a son is also the result of a decree. What does a decree do other than appoint/establish/designate/determine somebody to be something?

Is this verse referring to the birth of the son of God as a human? What does the context say?

Verses 1-3 say:

Why are the nations in an uproar And the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, "Let us tear their fetters apart And cast away their cords from us!"

We know exactly when these first three verses, the beginning of this Psalm, were fulfilled; here's what 1st century Christian exegesis said:

Acts 4:24-28 And when they heard this, they lifted their voices to God with one accord and said, "O Lord, it is You who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them, who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David Your servant, said, 'why did the gentiles rage, and the peoples devise futile things? 'the kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.' "For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur.

These verses have their fulfillment, as these Christians said, when "in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur". That is, they are indicating the time when Jesus was arrested and put to death.

Then the psalm continues, showing what happens afterwards:

Psalm 2:4-6 He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger And terrify them in His fury, saying, "But as for Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain."

Notice how the events in this psalm are presented chronologically. First the rulers take their stand against Jesus, arresting him, torturing him and killing him. After that God laughs at them. and after that speaks to them in anger, saying He has installed his king, Jesus. Then Jesus cuts in, saying:

Psalm 2:7-8 "I will surely tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to Me, 'You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. 'Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, And the very ends of the earth as Your possession.

So what is the context of verse 7?, the decree of God saying "You are my Son, today I have begotten you'? The death of Christ Jesus. It is also plain to see that the events presented in this psalm are succeeding chronologically, one after another, up until verse 7. What reason would be there to say that verse 7, the decree, does not also follow chronologically as well, after Jesus' death? No reason at all, especially since God tells Jesus in verse 8 that:

Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Your possession.

This verse is fulfilled chronologically, after Jesus death and after resurrection:

Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth".

Philippians 2:9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth

Acts 5:30-31 “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross. “He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.

If verse 8 is fulfilled after the resurrection, and verse 7 after the death of Jesus, it is only natural to see that the decree of God that appoints Jesus as son again occurs between his death and after events following his resurrection; that is, the decree went out when the resurrection occurred, the act through which Jesus receives again life from his Father, when his Father brings him into existence again, making him His son again, saying to him:

Psalm 2:7 You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.

The context therefore leaves no room for the interpretation that Psalm 2:7 was actually fulfilled at Jesus' birth as a human. On the contrary, it points to Jesus becoming a son again to God at his resurrection from the dead, in harmony with what Paul said in Romans 1:4, that Jesus was appointed, by the decree of resurrection, to be God's son.

In conclusion, the Bible does indeed indicate that what happens at resurrection is begetting, life being given to creatures of God, bringing them into existence. The resurrected ones are sons of God because they are resurrected. Jesus is the first born of the dead by being resurrected to eternal life. Jesus is also appointed son of God by his resurrection. God tells him at his resurrection "You are my son, today I have begotten you'.

NT Objections to the Preexistence of God's Son

2008-12-12T19:20:00.007-05:00

Here are some of the New Testament based objections to Christ Jesus' preexistence (italicized).

As it was the case earlier with the OT verses, these verses do not really address the issue of the pre-human existence of the son of God. They only say that the human son of God was born at a certain time, to Mary. These verses speak of the start of his human existence. That is something that those who accept the pre-human existence of the son of God believe. Therefore, the belief that this son of God existed before as a person, in a non-human state, cannot be contradicted by these objections.

Matthew 1:15-18

Eliud was the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah. [...] Now the birth (lit. origin) of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

The NASB says "birth" but the word used here is a bit stronger than that. It is the word "genesis" which means beginning or origin (like the first book of the Bible). So the origin of this Messiah (Christ = Messiah) is in the womb of the virgin Mary. The inescapable consequence of his origin being in Mary is that he did not literally exist prior to this> (though of course Jesus existed notionally from the beginning–in the mind of God).

The context must be at all times kept in mind, that is, Jesus' existence as a man. Indeed, as a man, Jesus' ancestors are Abraham and David, as a man, Jesus' origin is the womb of Mary. But the origin of the living person of Jesus Christ is much much further back in time:

Micah 5:2 "But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Too little to be among the clans of Judah, From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth [origin] are from long ago,
from the days of eternity." (see Mt. 2:5-6)

According to HALOT 4920 (and Holladay 4382, and Harris' Theological Wordbook of the OT 893d) the Hebrew word מוֹצָאָה, translated by NASB as "goings forth", means "Origin". Messiah's origin, as a living person, is "from long ago, from the days of eternity", not from the 1st century.

Luke 1:31-35

"And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. "He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; [...] and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.

Two points here: (1) Gabriel tells Mary that she will conceive, she will bear a son, and he will be great. The clear implication of this language is that Jesus did not already exist,

Keeping in mind that we are talking about the son of God that became flesh, the clear implication of this language is that the human son of God did not already exist, not that the living person of the human son of God did not already exist.

Furthermore, if he did exist prior to his birth then he was not great. Gabriel says that "he will be great," which means if he already existed he was not great, or else the angel should have said, "he is great" or "he will remain being great" or something to that effect

Sticking to the context again, the angel is talking about a human being. Mary "will conceive in her womb". Preexistentialists do not believe Jesus preexisted as a human being before being born to Mary. So as a human, he was going to be great. He could not have been great as a human, before being born as a human.

The precise reason given for why the child is called the "son of God" is [...] because of the miracle in the womb of Mary.

The conclusion is not mandatory. Why were the other sons of God called "sons of God", because they were born in the womb of women?

Genesis 6:2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.

Genesis 6:4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them.

Job 1:6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them.

Job 38:4-7 "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? [...] When the morning stars sang together And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Matthew 5:9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Galatians 3:26 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

etc...

Acts 1:1

The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach"

If Jesus began to "do and teach" in the book of Luke [...], then Jesus could not have done anything or taught anything before he was born!

The "first account" Luke refers to here is his gospel, where he presented what Jesus began to do and teach on earth, as a human son of God. It is extremely accurate indeed, to say that Luke captures the beginning of what Jesus does as a human being, on earth.

Hebrews 1:1-2

God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.

If the Son were there in the Old Testament times, what was he doing? This text tells us that only in these last days has God spoken through His Son.

Again, careful reading reveals it is not the case. What the author is here focused on, is only the human channel used by God (as opposed to the non-human channel - angels meeting and speaking to Abraham, etc) to speak to these ancient fathers. What the Greek literally says is:

Πολυμερῶς [In various parts] καὶ [and] πολυτρόπως [in many ways] πάλαι [long ago] ὁ θεὸς [God] λαλήσας [spoke] τοῖς πατράσιν [to fathers] ἐν τοῖς προφήταις [in (through) the prophets].

In other words, "In various parts and in many ways, long ago, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets". The writer is concerned only with the human channel because he wants to get to what the human son of God, Jesus, did as well: spoken to us. Yes indeed, only in these last days God spoke to us through his human son, because only in these last days he was born as a human, on earth.

OT Objections to the Preexistence of God's Son

2008-12-09T17:08:00.022-05:00

Here are some of the Old Testament based objections to Christ Jesus' preexistence (italicized).

As it can be seen, these verses do not really address the issue of the pre-human existence of the son of God. They only say that the human son of God was to be born in the future. That is exactly what those who accept the pre-human existence of the son of God believe. Therefore, the belief that this son of God existed before as a person, in a non-human state, cannot be refuted by these objections.

Genesis 3:15

"And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel."

The "one" is to be a descendant of the woman. A descendant is by definition one who comes into existence after the ancestor. Apparently, from the very beginning of this mess, God had plans to fix the problem through the seed of the woman (i.e. a solution from within the human biological chain).

Indeed, the "one" is to be a descendant of the woman, but who or what is this woman? Since this is a prophecy, one would expect it to be given in prophetic language, that is, not literal. Just as the serpent is not a literal serpent, and the seed of the serpent are not little serpents, neither the "woman" is a literal woman. What enmity did God put afterwards between Eve and the serpent/devil? And what did the 1st century Christians think about this woman and its seed? It is clear that the main part of this seed is Jesus. But he has brothers (Heb 2:11-12), who therefore have the same "mother" as him, they're part of the woman's seed. They too will crush the serpent's head:

Romans 16:20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

Who or what is their "mother"?

Galatians 4:26-27 But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother. For it is written, "Rejoice, barren woman who does not bear; break forth and shout, you who are not in labor; for more numerous are the children of the desolate than of the one who has a husband."

Is Eve the heavenly Jerusalem? This heavenly Jerusalem is probably seen in Revelation 12 giving birth to a son:

Revelation 12:1-4, 17 A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; and she was with child; and she cried out, being in labor and in pain to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon [...] And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child. [...] So the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her seed, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

Tthe dragon is identified as being the serpent in vs. 9. Is it plain to see there's enmity between the serpent and THIS woman, not Eve. He makes war with her seed (some translations render "children" instead of "seed", but the Greek word used here is spermatos (σπέρματος) and it means "seed").

Genesis 3:15 does not support the claim against Jesus' pre-human existence.

Isaiah 9:6

"For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace."

The child will be born/given.

That is exactly the same as what those who accept the son of God's preexistence believe. Let us remember, it is not the preexistence of the MAN Jesus Christ that is advocated, but the preexistence of the PERSON of Jesus Christ. As a man, the son of God was given to His people as a child, that is precisely how it happened.

At the time of Isaiah 9 the language used to describe the Davidic Messiah is future tense.

Yes, the human (a "child"!) son of God was yet to be born, nobody disputes that. After all, this verse talks about a human, isn't it? Those who accept Jesus' pre-human existence do not believe he preexisted as a human.

If Jesus already existed we should expect different language here.

No, we should not expect a different language here if the son of God already existed before his human existence since this passage talks about the human son of God. The language perfectly fits the intention to communicate that the son of God will be given to humans as a child, as a human.

Isaiah 11:1-3

"Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, And a branch from his roots will bear fruit. The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him, The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and strength, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And He will delight in the fear of the LORD, And He will not judge by what His eyes see, Nor make a decision by what His ears hear"

The shoot will spring means that a descendant of David (Jesse's son) will be born some day. The whole idea of lineal descent is emphasized by the terms "shoot" and "branch" which are obviously tree metaphors. In other words, this person will come from the line of Jesse. If he already existed independent from the line of Jesse then he would come through but not out from the stump of Jesse.

"Come through" but not "out of"? This sounds more like special pleading. Once again, the quoted verse deals clearly with Jesus' human existence. He as a man literally came out of Mary, who came out of her ancestors, which ancestors came out of Jesse. Yes, as a human, the born child of Mary came out from the root of Jesse.

Take for example a butterfly. One casual observer of its apparent genesis will state that a butterfly comes out from its chrysalis case. But somebody with full knowledge will state that the creature the butterfly now is, did not come out of that chrysalis case, but that this creature was a larva before, a larva that came out of its egg moths ago in some cases. This creature existed way before becoming a butterfly. It doesn't make any sense to say the larva came out of its chrysalis case, it really came from an egg. This creature really preexisted before coming out of its chrysalis case.

The same is said about the son of God. He existed before coming out of Jesse. He only came out of Jesse through Mary when this son of God became flesh (John 1:14), as this creature came out of its chrysalis case, becoming a butterfly.

Psalm 2:7-8

"I will surely tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to Me, 'You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, And the very ends of the earth as Your possession'"

This oracle does not include when this was to happen. The only information given is that on a certain day (i.e. "today") God begets a son who is to rule the world (not just Israel). This means that the day before "this day" the son did not exist. Begotten means for a father to bring someone into existence.

Here is the fulfilling of this begetting:

Acts 13:30-33"But God raised Him from the dead; and for many days He appeared to those who came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, the very ones who are now His witnesses to the people. "And we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers, that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, YOU ARE MY SON; TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU.'

God begets Jesus when He resurrects him, when He gives him life. Indeed, usually "begotten means for a father to bring someone into existence". The dead do not exist anymore, and neither did Jesus after he died. Resurrecting him, God brings him from this non-existing state into existence, giving him life. This, is what Paul - a Hebrew - says. This Psalm has not been fulfilled in Matthew 1:20-23 as some claim, a fact indicated by Paul above - see "You are My Son, Today I have begotten You" Fulfilled

1 Chronicles 17:11-14

"When your days are fulfilled that you must go to be with your fathers, that I will set up one of your descendants after you, who will be of your sons; and I will establish his kingdom. "He shall build for Me a house, and I will establish his throne forever. "I will be his father and he shall be My son; and I will not take My lovingkindness away from him, as I took it from him who was before you. "But I will settle him in My house and in My kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever."

Again, notice the future tense here. One day a descendant of David will be born and he will be chosen by God to rule on the throne of David forever. Was David thinking that an angel, a spirit, or God himself would metamorphose into a human, pose as a descendant, and fulfill this prophecy? Of course not! David is most likely thinking of Solomon (who we know didn’t end up being "the one") or perhaps a distant descendant.

Let's see the fulfillment of this promise. God is talking about Solomon as well, as "David is most likely thinking". Here it is:

1 Chronicles 22:9-10 Behold, a son shall be born to you, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies on every side; for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days. He shall build a house for My name, and he shall be My son, and I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel forever.

1 Kings 5:5 "Behold, I intend to build a house for the name of the LORD my God, as the LORD spoke to David my father, saying, 'Your son, whom I will set on your throne in your place, he will build the house for My name.'

1 Chronicles 28:6-10 "He said to me, 'Your son Solomon is the one who shall build My house and My courts; for I have chosen him to be a son to Me, and I will be a father to him. 'I will establish his kingdom forever if he resolutely performs My commandments and My ordinances, [...] but if you [Solomon] forsake Him, He will reject you forever. "Consider now, for the LORD has chosen you to build a house for the sanctuary; be courageous and act."

1 Kings 2:45 "But King Solomon shall be blessed, and the throne of David shall be established before the LORD forever."

1 Kings 8:20 "Now the LORD has fulfilled His word which He spoke; for I have risen in place of my father David and sit on the throne of Israel, as the LORD promised, and have built the house for the name of the LORD, the God of Israel.

So as a first fulfillment, this future son that will build God a house is Solomon, not Jesus. This prophecy is fulfilled a second time in Jesus, a fact indicated by Hebrews 1:5:

Hebrews 1:5 For to which of the angels did He ever say, "You are my son, today I have begotten you"? And again, "I will be a father to him and he shall be a son to me"?

Notice how the "I will be a father to him" statement is associated with the one saying "You are my son, today I have begotten you". It is only logical. If somebody begets a son, he will be his father. To which begetting is the author referring? As already quoted, Hebrew theology teaches that God's statement "You are my son, today I have begotten you" was fulfilled when He gave Jesus life, at his resurrection:

Acts 13:30-33 30 "But God raised Him from the dead; 31 and for many days He appeared to those who came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, the very ones who are now His witnesses to the people. 32 "And we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers, 33 that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, YOU ARE MY SON; TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU.'

This teaching is further confessed again by Paul in Romans 1:3-4:

Romans 1:3 concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord,

So the future tense in "I will be a father to him" stems from the fact that it is the result of a future action: the resurrection of Jesus, giving him life again, bringing him from nonexistence into existence.