Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Psalm 72:17 and 110:3 (LXX: 71:17 and 109:3) being used to Support the Personal Pre-Existence of Jesus by Justin Martyr

Psa 72:17 (71:17, LXX) and 110:3 (109:3, LXX) reads as following (taken from the Lexham English Septuagint):

 

Let his name be blessed forever.

Before the sun his name will remain,

and all the tribes of the land will be blessed in him;

all the nations will bless him. (Psa 71:17, LXX)

 

With you is authority in the day of your might,

with the splendor of the holy ones.

From the womb, before the morning,

I begat you. (Psa 109:3, LXX)

 

Such texts were used to support the personal pre-existence of Jesus in early Christianity. Note the following from Justin Martyr (100-165) in his Dialogue with Trypho:

 

 

And Trypho said, “If I seem to interrupt these matters, which you say must be investigated, yet the question which I mean to put is urgent. Suffer me first.”

And I replied, “Ask whatever you please, as it occurs to you; and I shall endeavour, after questions and answers, to resume and complete the discourse.”

Then he said, “Tell me, then, shall those who lived according to the law given by Moses, live in the same manner with Jacob, Enoch, and Noah, in the resurrection of the dead, or not?”

I replied to him, “When I quoted, sir, the words spoken by Ezekiel, that ‘even if Noah and Daniel and Jacob were to beg sons and daughters, the request would not be granted them,’ but that each one, that is to say, shall be saved by his own righteousness, I said also, that those who regulated their lives by the law of Moses would in like manner be saved. For what in the law of Moses is naturally good, and pious, and righteous, and has been prescribed to be done by those who obey it; and what was appointed to be performed by reason of the hardness of the people’s hearts; was similarly recorded, and done also by those who were under the law. Since those who did that which is universally, naturally, and eternally good are pleasing to God, they shall be saved through this Christ in the resurrection equally with those righteous men who were before them, namely Noah, and Enoch, and Jacob, and whoever else there be, along with those who have known this Christ, Son of God, who was before the morning star and the moon, and submitted to become incarnate, and be born of this virgin of the family of David, in order that, by this dispensation, the serpent that sinned from the beginning, and the angels like him, may be destroyed, and that death may be contemned, and for ever quit, at the second coming of the Christ Himself, those who believe in Him and live acceptably,—and be no more: when some are sent to be punished unceasingly into judgment and condemnation of fire; but others shall exist in freedom from suffering, from corruption, and from grief, and in immortality.” (Dialogue, 45)

 

“For when Daniel speaks of ‘one like unto the Son of man’ who received the everlasting kingdom, does he not hint at this very thing? For he declares that, in saying ‘like unto the Son of man,’ He appeared, and was man, but not of human seed. And the same thing he proclaimed in mystery when he speaks of this stone which was cut out without hands. For the expression ‘it was cut out without hands’ signified that it is not a work of man, but [a work] of the will of the Father and God of all things, who brought Him forth. And when Isaiah says, ‘Who shall declare His generation?’ he meant that His descent could not be declared. Now no one who is a man of men has a descent that cannot be declared. And when Moses says that He will wash His garments in the blood of the grape, does not this signify what I have now often told you is an obscure prediction, namely, that He had blood, but not from men; just as not man, but God, has begotten the blood of the vine? And when Isaiah calls Him the Angel of mighty counsel, did he not foretell Him to be the Teacher of those truths which He did teach when He came [to earth]? For He alone taught openly those mighty counsels which the Father designed both for all those who have been and shall be well-pleasing to Him, and also for those who have rebelled against His will, whether men or angels, when He said: ‘They shall come from the east [and from the west], and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness.’ And, ‘Many shall say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not eaten, and drunk, and prophesied, and cast out demons in Thy name? And I will say to them, Depart from Me.’ Again, in other words, by which He shall condemn those who are unworthy of salvation, He said, ‘Depart into outer darkness, which the Father has prepared for Satan and his, angels.’ And again, in other words, He said, ‘I give unto you power to tread on serpents, and on scorpions, and on scolopendras, and on all the might of the enemy.’ And now we, who believe on our Lord Jesus, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, when we exorcise all demons and evil spirits, have them subjected to us. For if the prophets declared obscurely that Christ would suffer, and thereafter be Lord of all, yet that [declaration] could not be understood by any man until He Himself persuaded the apostles that such statements were expressly related in the Scriptures. For He exclaimed before His crucifixion: ‘The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the Scribes and Pharisees, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’ And David predicted that He would be born from the womb before sun and moon, according to the Father’s will, and made Him known, being Christ, as God strong and to be worshipped.” (Dialogue, 76)

 

A footnote for the above adds the following about Justin’s use of Psa 110:3 (109:3, LXX):

 

Justin puts “sun and moon” instead of “Lucifer.” [Ps. 110:3, Sept, compounded with Prov. 8:27.] Maranus says, David did predict, not that Christ would be born of Mary before sun and moon, but that it would happen before sun and moon that He would be born of a virgin. (ANF 2:236)

 

In case one is wondering about the difference between the MT reading of Psa 110:3 and the LXX, let me discuss here:


The KJV OT (which is dependent upon the MT tradition) reads:


Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, and in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

Brenton's translation of the LXX reads:

With thee is dominion in the day of thy power, in the splendours of thy saints: I have begotten thee from the womb before the morning.


Both “your youth” and “I have begotten you” are spelt using the same consonants, ילדתיך. The difference between these two terms is down to vocalisation, which would have been added by the Masoretes in the medieval period. That the ancient Jews understood the correct vocalisation to be “I have begotten you” is seen in the LXX’s use of the verb, “To beget,” εκγενναω (remember that all translation is interpretation). Why did the Masoretes “fudge,” for lack of a better term, the vocalisation of this passage? Psa 110:1, 4 are the most commonly cited verses in the New Testament to demonstrate Jesus’ being the promised Messiah and the superiority of his priesthood and his once-for-all sacrifice against the priests and sacrifices of the Old Covenant, among other things. “I have begotten you” may have been understood by Christians to be an allusion to a then-future miraculous conception of the Davidic King par excellence, with Jesus being the ultimate fulfilment of this coronation text. In an effort to off-set this as a “proof-text” for the virginal conception, the Masoretes vocalised the term differently than how the LXX translators understood it to be rendered, although it is a rather nonsensical reading.