Monday, June 1, 2020

Rolf Furuli on Wisdom in Proverbs 8

While some Trinitarians and even Latter-day Saints believe that Old Testament Wisdom and Jesus were one and the same person (or some similar understanding), this is problematic, both theologically and exegetically. Simon Gathercole, in his The Preexistent Son: Recovering the Christologies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke has a useful chapter dismantling such a Christology (Chapter 8: A Critique of the Wisdom Christology Hypothesis).

 

One problem for those who hold to such a Christology is that the Hebrew verb קנה and related texts used in Prov 8 would denote that even in his premortality (not simply when he took on humanity in the incarnation) was part of the created, not uncreated realm. As Rolf Furuli wrote about this:

 

Athanasius agreed with the Arians that the wisdom in proverbs referred to Jesus Christ, and what is interesting here is that both “create” and “beget/be born” occur in parallel verses. The Hebrew word qänä in verse 22 is, in most instances, used in the Bible with a resultative sense, as, a stative with the meaning “to possess.” Thus, the Vulgate translates, “The Lord possessed me in the beginning.” However, in the Hebrew text there is no preposition with the meaning “in” before “beginning,” and “beginning” is therefore logically an accusative object rather than adverbial. Therefore, the Septuagint translates, “The Lord created me the beginning of his ways.” The Aramaic Targums and the Syriac Peshitta have similar renditions. Using normal procedures for interpretation this can only mean that the wisdom, whatever he/she/it refers to, is not eternal but had a beginning. Athanasius solves the problem of the word “created” with reference to wisdom, whom he identifies with Jesus Christ, by saying that it refers to his incarnation.

 

But what about the words in verse 25 where the wisdom says, “Before the mountains themselves had been settled down, ahead of the hills, I was brought forth with labor pains”? The Hebrew verb hûl used in this verse can mean “to bear a child with pains.” Is this verb the opposite of qänä (“to produce”)? Or, to use the Greek verbs of the Septuagint gennaō (“to beget, into existence, be created”)? Athanasius would have us believe just that. After quoting Proverbs 8:25 he writes: “And in many passages of the divine oracles is the Son said to have been generated [gegennesthai], but nowhere to have come into being [gegonenai].” As a further defense of the Nicene creed, he wrote:

 

He is then by nature an Offspring, perfect from Perfect, begotten before all the hills [Prov 8:25], that is before every rational and intelligent essence, as Paul also in another place calls him “First-born of all creation” [Col 1:15]. He shews that he is not a creature, but Offspring of the Father. For it would be inconsistent with His deity for Him to be called a creature. For all things were created by the Father through the Son, but the Son alone was eternally begotten from the Father, whence God the Word is “first-born of all creation.” (NPNF 4, p. 85)

 

But it is quite clear that hûl in Proverbs 8:25 is a synonym of qänä rather than an antonym.

 

When we look at the way the Bible uses the words “create,” “beget,” “son,” “offspring,” and “creature,” it becomes clear that Athanasius’ claims are special pleading. IN Psalm 90:2, for example, hûl (to bear a child with pain”) and yäläd “(beget, bear”) are used figuratively for the creation of the earth, thus making the words synonyms with “create” instead of antonyms: “Before the mountains themselves were born [yäläd], Or you proceeded to bring forth as with labor pains [hûl] the earth.”

 

In the rest of the Bible, when hûl and yäläd are used literally or figuratively, they almost always refer to that which has been produced. One lexicon says this about hûl, “This idiom may be used to refer to creation or origins on a cosmic scale (Prov 8:24-25) (Gleason Archer, Harris Laird, and Bruce Waltke, eds., Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, vol. 1 [Chicago: Moody Press, 1980], p. 271).

 

In the Bible the word “son” is used with a “biological” or familiar meaning. It may be used figuratively (analogically), but in such situations the literal meaning is always taken as a point of departure. There is no example of the word “son” being used with the meaning “eternal being,” ascribed to it by Athanasius. It is true that Jesus Christ as “son” is contrasted with the angels who are creatures. But this does not contrast their natures, giving “son” in the case of Jesus a sense different from the familiar one; rather, the contrast relates to the quality of Jesus’ sonship, which the Bible stresses in two ways: 1) Before Jesus came to earth he is called the “only begotten/unique son” (Joh 3:16) or the “only begotten god” (Joh 1:18); the epithet “only begotten” implies that there are other sons of God, but this one is special. 2) By means of his resurrection he obtained a special filial relationship with his Father. He “was declared God’s Son . . . by means of a resurrection from the dead” (Rom 1:4), and “he has become better than the angels” (Heb 1:4). We may also note that in Hebrews 2:11 Jesus Christ is said to have brothers, also implying that others are gods of God. (Rolf Furuli, The Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation With a Special Look at the New World Translation of Jehovah’s Witnesses [Huntington Beach, Calif.: Elihu Books, 1999], 133-36)