Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Michael Lattke on the "Virgin" in Odes of Solomon 19

 Michael Lattke provides the following translation of Odes of Solomon 19:6-8:

 

The womb of the Virgin caught
[it],
and she conceived and gave
birth.
And the Virgin became a mother
in great compassion
and she was in labor and bore a
son.
And she felt no pains/grief,
because it was not useless/for no
reason

 

Commenting on the “Virgin” in this passage, Lattke writes that:

 

In spite of the later Christian equation of the (btūltā) with Mary—and the “son” with Jesus Christ—at the time of composition of the Odes it can be said for certain only that the influential prophecy of Isa 7:14 LXX is behind this verse:

 

. . . δωσει κυριος αυτος υμιν ιδιου η παρθενος εν γαστρι εξει [v. l. ληψεται] και τεξεται υιον, και καλεσεις το ονομα αυτου Εμμανουηλ.

 

. . . the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Emmanuel.

 

This allusion could, of course, have been drawn from one of the many passages that also make use of Isa 7:14 (cf. Matt 1:23; Luke 1:31; Rev 12:1-5). If θ used the equivocal word παρθενος, it could be allegorical, perhaps “truth personified.” Kittel calls this exegesis “adventurism” on Diettrich’s part, there is nothing in this birth mythos to suggest it. It certainly concerns a young woman, who may have been accepted as a “virgin.” There is no question of a “cult,” and as little of the “conception by the Virgin” in any dogmatic sense. The silence regarding any male participant or any sexual intercourse only intensifies the spotlight case on the mythi persona. (Michael Lattke, The Odes of Solomon [Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009], 276)

 

As John Lawrence M. Polis noted:

 

Michael Lattke believes it does not directly refer to Mary and Jesus, but to Isaiah 7:14: the identification of Mary with the virgin and Jesus with the Son would be a posterior Christian interpretation. If he is correct, then we have a pre-Christian interpretation of the ‘almāh of Isaiah 7:14 as a virgin. (John Lawrence M. Polis, The Virgin Shall Give Birth: The Validity of the Traditional Doctrine and Scotist Explanations of Mary’s Cooperation with the Miracle [New Bradford, Mass.: Academy of Immaculate, 2022], 20)