Old Testament
Pseudepigrapha
In the Greek Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
the morpho word group is frequently used for the external form of humans
(Sib. Or. Prol. 99; Sib. Or. 3:7, 27; 4:182; 8:366) and other beings, including
supernatural beings. Benjamin longed to see the “figure” (idean) of
Joseph and the “form” (morphēn) of his face,” and through the prayers of
Jacob his father he came to see “his entire figure (idea) just as he was”
(T. Benj. 10:1). On a visit to Tartarus Ezra heard the voices of sinners but “saw
not their forms (morphas)” (Gk. Apoc. Ezra 4:14). Different “forms” (morphas)
of beings will be led down into judgment: the “representations “(eidolon)
of Titans born long ago,” the giants, and then the different classes of the
dead, killed in the flood, eaten by wild animals, or consumed by fire (Sib. Or.
2:230-36). There are different “forms” (morphas) of wild creatures (Sib.
Or. 5:135-36). On the day of judgment “the heavenly luminaries will crash
together, also into an utterly desolate form (morphēn panerēmon)”—in other
words, into formlessness (Sib. Or. 2:200-201). People give form (morphōsantes)
to wooden idols and sing praises to them (Sib. Or. 8:379).
When Death was sent to summon Abraham,
he first “put on a robe of brightness, and made his appearance sun-shaped (hēliomorphon),
and became fair and beautiful beyond the sons of men, being wrapped in the form
(morphēn) of an archangel, his cheeks flashing with fire.” He then put
of “all his comeliness and beauty, and all the glory and the sun-shaped form (hēliomorphon
morphēn) of an archangel, his cheeks flashing with fire.” He then put of “all
his comeliness and beauty, and all the glory and the sun-shaped form (hēliomorphon
morphēn) with which he was wrapped,” and put on instead a tyrant’s robe, making
his appearance “glory and fiercer than every kind of wild animal” (T. Ab. A.
16:6; 17:12-13; cf. 16:12; 18:1). Death is neither an archangel nor the sun,
but he assumes the morphē of these things.
In Testament of Solomon (first to
third century AD) morphē is used for the various forms that demons take:
a pederast, a winged creature, a lion, a woman with the legs of a mule, a
half-horse-half-fish, a giant (T. Sol. 2:3; 4:2; 16:1; 17:1). One demon, when “conjured
by the wise” can take three different “forms” (morphas), including that
of Kronos (15:5). (Andrew Perriman, In the Form of A God: The Pre-existence
of the Exalted Christ in Paul [Eugene, Oreg. Cascade Books, 2022], 70-71)
