More On God as Creator from II Maccabees

Introduction

As I was reading through II Maccabees again, I was struck by the references to God as creator and the Jewish mother’s exact confession of God as Creator in chapter 7.  Regardless of whether chapter 7 was originally in Jason’s history (2:19-23) or an interpolation of the epitomator, the view she confesses is still from the second century BC at latest (see NETS, 503, for details).

Texts Pertaining to Creation

7:23 τοιγαροῦν ὁ τοῦ κόσμου κτίστης ὁ πλάσας ἀνθρώπου γένεσιν καὶ πάντων ἐξευρὼν γένεσιν καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὴν ζωὴν ὑμῖν πάλιν ἀποδίδωσιν μετ᾽ ἐλέους, ὡς νῦν ὑπερορᾶτε ἑαυτοὺς διὰ τοὺς αὐτοῦ νόμους.

Therefore indeed the Creator of the world, the one who formed the beginning of humanity and invented the beginning of all things will give both spirit and life to you again with mercy, as/because now you watch yourselves on account his laws.

7:28 ἀξιῶ σε, τέκνον, ἀναβλέψαντα εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ τὰ ἐν αὐτοῖς πάντα ἰδόντα γνῶναι ὅτι οὐκ ἐξ ὄντων ἐποίησεν αὐτὰ ὁ θεός, καὶ τὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γένος οὕτω γίνεται.

I ask that you, child, after looking into heaven and earth and seeing all things in them, know that God did not make them from existing matter/things, and the race of men came about in the same way.

Some observations that stand out: 1) God invented the beginning of all things, which has to include all matter.  2) This view of creation is the ground for believing that God will raise the dead and supply them again with spirit and life.  Thus the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo functions as the ground for the life in the new creation.  3) 7:28 expresses negatively what was already expressed positively in 7:23: God did not make them (the heavens and the earth) from existing things.

Conclusion

Although these texts are late compared to the rest of the OT, these texts depend on the doctrine of creation contained therein.  The Jews were certainly reading the text that we have, and concluding from it that God created all things and he did not create them from existing matter.  Their interpretation is not inspired, but it certainly enjoys a long tradition, and it is also the conclusion of the Author to the Hebrews in 11:3: Πίστει νοοῦμεν κατηρτίσθαι τοὺς αἰῶνας ῥήματι θεοῦ, εἰς τὸ μὴ ἐκ φαινομένων τὸ βλεπόμενον γεγονέναι and the Gospel of John 1:3: πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν and other place in the NT.

Does Genesis 1:1 Teach That God Created the Heavens and the Earth?

At LXX Studies we will more than likely never be the first to break a story to the public, but hopefully we will be able to offer sound reflection on some of the more newsworthy items from the perspective of the Ancient Versions.

This past week, there was some hype due to an announcement that Ellen Van Wolde has made an argument that concludes something to the tune of “the traditional view that God is creator is untenable now.”  As I understand it, a major part of Van Wolde’s argument concerns the translation of the Hebrew word ברא in Genesis 1:1.  Of course the traditional translation of this word is “to create,” but Van Wolde has suggested that the word in this context should be translated “to separate,” so that the text is not teaching the original creation of the heavens and the earth, but only the separation of the heavens from the earth (see Chris for an apt critique of Van Wolde’s analysis of the Hebrew usage).

What Van Wolde means by the “traditional view” is not clear, but one may safely assume that she has in mind the traditional exegesis of Genesis 1:1 which supports the traditional Jewish and Christian view of creation that God created the heavens and the earth ex nihilo.  I simply want to list the evidence of the Ancient Versions in order to present the traditional exegesis of this verse.

LXX: ᾿Εν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν.  The text can be translated: In the beginning God created/made the heavens and the earth (see LSJ s.v. αρχη for anarthrous examples with prepositions, where the sense is still clearly definite probably because the lexical item naturally assumes only one beginning).  The LXX, then, uses a verb which does not mean “to separate,” but means “to make” or “to create” ( for the latter meaning see s.v. ποιεω A.2 LSJ).  For a thorough listing of translation equivalents for bara’ in the LXX and for what equivalents one would expect to see if the translators wanted to communicate the sense “to separate” see here.  This translation comes from the 3rd century BC (c. 280 BC) and some might wonder if the translators intended to convey that God only formed the heavens and the earth from existing matter by their use of ποιεω.  Although this is possible, only about 120 years later, we see clearly that the Jews are praying to the LORD God as ο παντων κτιστης (“the creator of all”) among other appellations in 2 Maccabees 1:24.  The Jews clearly have an understanding that God created all things in this period of their history and this theology must come from texts such as Genesis 1:1.

Aquila: ἐν κεφαλαιω εκτισεν θεος συν τον ουρανον και συν την γην.  Aquila employs the very specific verb κτιζω “to create” in order to render the Hebrew text.  Note that Aquila is not using the συν preposition in the normal sense “with” so that someone might be tempted to translate the text: God created with the heavens and with the earth or something like this.  Rather, Aquila uses συν characteristically to translate the Hebrew marker of the direct object את.

Symmachus: Not extant

Theodotion: Not extant

Vulgate: In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram.  Jerome uses creo to communicate the idea of creation, not separation.

Peshitta: ܒܪܫܝܬ ܒܪܐ ܐܠܗܐ܂ ܝܬ ܫܡܝܐ ܘܝܬ ܐܪܥܐ܂  P uses a cognate (bra’) to translate the Hebrew text in this verse.  According to the CAL in the G stem this verb may mean “to create” or “to get well.”  The former is clearly the meaning in this context given that the verb is transitive in this context.

Targum: בֲקַדמִין בְרָא יוי יָת שְמַיָא וְיָת אַרעָא׃  The Aramaic Targum uses the same cognate (bra’) as P, which has the same range of meaning in this dialect according to the CAL.

The Ancient Versions speak with one clear voice that God did indeed create the heavens and the earth, not simply the “stuff” in the heavens and the earth, and they certainly did not understand the text to mean God separated the heavens and the earth.

Therefore any argument to the contrary will have to be established firmly on the basis of the analysis of the Hebrew text of Genesis and the Hebrew Bible as a whole, which is Van Wolde’s project apparently.  However, see John Hobbins’ initial critique of Van Wolde’s analysis of the Hebrew Bible here.

HT: Charles

Made the Biblioblog Top 50 Blog (though I’m not in the top 50 :)

Thanks to the guys over at Biblioblog Top 50 for listing this humble blog  among their links and for their post which announced it.  I encourage the reader, who is interested in biblical studies, to check out this blog.  I’m sure there is something there for everyone!

Kingship and Wisdom in Mesopotamia

Concluding his section on the King as Wise Man, Ronald Sweet says,

“The conclusion to be drawn from this evidence is clear.  In Mesopotamian society the king was regarded as possessing an unusually large measure of god-given wisdom, and was thought to manifest that wisdom by performing deeds pleasing to the gods, in particular the building of temples.  The Israelite tradition of King Solomon, the wise king whose greatest achievement was the building of a temple, reflects a similar point of view.”

Concluding his essay, he says concerning the wise man in Akkadian literature,

“Who, on the evidence of Akkadian literature, was the wise man in ancient Mesopotamia?  If the answer is to be decided by a frequency count of claims to wisdom,or by the passion and eloquence of the claims, the answer cannot be in doubt: the king was the wise man par excellence.  Yet only three kings claim to have been literate in two thousand years of Mesopotamian history. The wisdom of kings was therefore not a bookish or intellectual affair.  It was largely a matter of recognizing the supremacy of the gods and performing deeds pleasing to them.  Reverence for the gods was the beginning of wisdom.”

Now, Akkadian literature also knows of “commoners” as wise men (craftsmen, architects and builders, soldiers, cult officials, diviners, exorcists, musicians, physicians, scribes,counselors, teachers[he rejects the meager evidence of this category], and nonspecific). Concerning them Sweet concludes,

“The evidence has also shown that the vocabulary of wisdom was applied to certain classes of the king’s subjects.  What is common to the classes so identified is that they are all in some way professions that required an obvious and special skill, ranging from carpentry through the leadership of armies to vocations requiring mastery of writing.  It is interesting that wisdom terms are not applied to agricultural workers, shepherds, or boatmen, for example.  Such people certainly required professional skills, but they were the widely shared skills of daily life.  If the wise man of Mesopotamia is to be defined as the man who is called wise in Mesopotamia, the definition must emphasize his possession of special know-how, whether in the realm of material concerns or in affairs of the unseen world of the gods.”

(The preceding quotes came from Ronald F. G. Sweet, “The Sage in Akkadian Literature,” in The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, edited by John G. Gammie and Leo G. Perdue, 57, 65.)

Does this picture in Akkadian literature shed any light on the biblical data?  Furthermore, does this evidence aid those who argue that the kingdom/kingship theme runs through all of Scripture, even the wisdom literature?  It seems to me that Scripture also places the emphasis on the wisdom of the king (Proverbs 1:1, Ecclesiastes 1:1; Deut. 17:18-19), but not to the exclusion of others (Exodus 35:31ff, Proverbs 30:1ff; Proverbs 1:8-9:fin? = Homilies of the teacher, which Sweet denied as a category in Mesopotamia?).

Let me know your thoughts on this matter.

Determining Dependency Between Ancient Versions (part 2)

In this post, I comment on the nature of the translation of the Syriac Peshitta (S) in Qoheleth, which is an important consideration when trying to determine whether S is dependent on the Septuagint (G).

The Former Thesis

At an earlier time in research, scholars considered S to be a daughter version of the Septuagint (for this view see G.W. Anderson, “Canonical and Non-Canonical,” in Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. P.R. Ackroyd and C.F. Evans, vol. 1, (Cambridge, 1970), 158-9.), which means they considered S to be a direct translation of G.  What ailed this thesis was that it did not conform to the evidence of S itself. One is not able to read past Genesis 1:1 (ܒܪܫܝܬ ܒܪܐ ܐܠܗܐ. ܝܬ ܫܡܝܐ ܘܝܬ ܐܪܥܐ) without seeing the essential Semitic character of S and its faithful translation of the underlying Hebrew text (M or proto-M).  But however faithful S was to M, scholars still have noted that in some places S seems to be dependent on G, and the challenge was to explain this phenomenon leading to a new thesis.

Determining Dependency Between Ancient Versions (part 1)

I realize I have not been posting frequently, but I can say that I have been making progress in preparation for comprehensive exams, and I have been bringing long standing projects to a close.  One of those projects is my work on the relationship of the Peshitta of Qoheleth to the Septuagint of Ecclesiastes for Peter Gentry’s critical edition of Ecclesiastes in the Goettingen Septuaginta series.  This project began as a seminar paper for Dr. Gentry’s Introduction to the Septuagint seminar at Southern Seminary last Fall and has turned into a contribution to his forthcoming edition.  I hope in the future to publish the entire article, but it will take some time to clean it up for publication.

In the mean time, I would like to comment on some of the salient points of the work in the next few posts.

In this post I will attempt to date the sources.  In the second post I want to say something about the nature of the Peshitta as a translation of the Hebrew Bible (proto MT). In a third post, I want to work through the nature of the dependency of the Peshitta on the LXX.

Google Searches which led to LXX Studies

Although this blog has only been up for a couple of months now, people have found it using a variety of search terms.  Some are to be expected, while others are surprising.

ܥܡܢܘܐܝܠ – “Emmanuel.”  In all of my wildest imaginations, I did not ever think anyone would find this blog by using a Syriac term.  In this case someone found LXX studies searching on that wonderful truth of “God with us” in Isaiah 7:14 in the Peshitta Version.

justin martyr lxx – Whoever searched this phrase most probably knows of the major issues regarding Justin’s version of the LXX in comparison with the Old Greek.  My paper on Justin and Isaiah 7:14 introduces some of the issues involved.

dead sea scrolls isaiah 7:14 – Google is a wonderful search tool since these two ideas do not occur in the same post.  I think I mention the DSS in the Is 53.8 posts and Isaiah 7:14 in a different post.

“seminary papers” baptist – Now this search phrase has me a little interested.  I am a baptist and I do have a page called “seminary papers.”  My guess, however, is that someone probably meant papers in the sense of a “seminary’s records of official correspondence”, not academic papers.

example descriptive text – I have no idea what this means.  I used the phrase “is this text descriptive” in a post, but I have no idea how “example” fits with it.  Again, Google does some amazing things.

The οικια Reference in Job 1.10 and Household Baptisms

I have been posting quite a bit on baptism issues lately (see posts on Acts 16:34 and 2:41), and I’m not really sure why.  I guess I think about the issue while I’m reading the sources and I make a note to come back to certain texts for further reflection.  When I was reading Job 1 a couple weeks ago, the reference to Job and his house struck me because I remembered Lee Irons’ post on this matter here.  Irons is a more acute theologian than I, but he is convinced by Jeremias’ argument that oikos texts in the Septuagint “refer to the immediate family unit, with particular focus on the under-age children.”  Now, one is struck by the impressive list of references, which Irons compiles in his paper; however, what if it can be shown in one clear instance that the oikos formula refers to a household which has no infants in the house?  Would not that reference cause someone to pause before concluding (assuming?) there are infants in every household text in the NT?  Well, that one reference is Job 1:10.  I first commented on this issue on Weedon’s blog, which is another thread worth reviewing, if one is interested in the matter of baptism from a church history perspective.

The Lexis of Acts 2:41 or Who were the First Christian Baptizees?

This study only introduces an argument, which needs more research in the Classical and Patristic periods.  The argument concerns the description of the first baptizees in Acts 2:41.  The book of Acts records the history of the earliest apostolic church.  The question of what is normative in the book of Acts vs. what is only descriptive is a lingering question to ask of this book.  There seems to be components of the book of Acts that may not be normative for Christians today but simply applied to the first century church.  Perhaps, the description of the church community as sharing all of their possessions so that no one was in need may be an example of description, but does not constitute normative practice for the church in all ages and at all times; however, baptism is a normative aspect of the church (Matt. 28:18-20).  Therefore, the book of Acts must shape our doctrine and practice of baptism.  Most do not debate that the book of Acts reveals the subject or the recipient of baptism.  Presbyterians usually look to household baptism texts and conclude that infants of believers ought to be baptized.  Baptists appeal to texts in Acts where the subjects of baptism are reported as having believed and then were baptized.  The book of Acts has many baptismal accounts to examine, but this post is devoted to one aspect of the first account in Acts 2.

Another assumption I have about the book of Acts is that earlier accounts are expanded, while later accounts are abbreviated.  In other words, Luke describes in detail who was baptized in the first few baptismal accounts, while in the later accounts he simply reports that a baptism happened.  He does not explain what happens to the baptized members in later accounts, while in the earlier account he explains that baptism leads to membership in the church for example.

Would the Apostles Endorse Multi-site Churches?

Yes, it’s true that this post has nothing to do with the Septuagint, but it has everything to do with Scripture and its application to our lives and more importantly to the organization of our churches.  I am a member of a Southern Baptist Church and I attend Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY; therefore, I do not speak as an outsider, for Southern Baptists seem to be leading the way in this new invention called multi-site churches along with their slogan, “One church, X number of locations.” See the latest publication from Broadman and Holman on this very issue: Multi-Site Churches.  What follows in this post spawned from some stimulating discussions with some friends of mine in the library.  Although we are at Southern Seminary to learn technical and sometimes seemingly esoteric disciplines, lunch conversations always seem to gravitate towards matters of the local church, and this topic received a number of lunch conversations.

My basic assumption going into this issue is simple: the view that remains faithful to the clear Scriptural directives and can obey those directives practically should be adopted.  Thus any view of the church which would necessarily lead to the disobedience of clear Scriptural directives because of the church’s structure itself should be abandoned.  This assumption rests on the idea that the apostles gave clear commands to the local churches, which were able to be carried out and that these commands are not optional or somehow subsidiary to whatever church model one has adopted.  Rather the apostles would only endorse a church model in which the members were in a position to obey the clear commands of the Lord Jesus.