The Seed in Romans 1:3 and Elsewhere

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Ehrman on Galatians 4:4 and Romans 1:3 and Christ 'born' human

Post by MrMacSon »

Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture

pp.238-9:


Christ: Born Human

For the orthodox, Jesus' real humanity was guaranteed by the [proposition] that he was actually born, the miraculous circumstances surrounding that birth notwithstanding. This made the matter of Jesus' nativity a major bone of contention between orthodox Christian s and their docetic opponents. Marcion, as we have seen, denied Jesus' birth and infancy altogether. In response, Irenaeus could ask, "Why did He acknowledge Himself to be the Son of man, if He had not gone through that birth which belongs to a human being?" (Adv. Haer. IV, 33, 2). The question is echoed by Tertullian, who cites a number of passages that mention Jesus' "mother and brothers" and asks why, on general principles, it is harder to believe "that flesh in the Divine Being should rather be unborn than untrue? " (Adv. Marc. Ill, 11).

In light of this orthodox stand, it is not surprising to find the birth of Christ brought into greater prominence in texts used by the early polemicists. I can cite two instances. In both cases one could argue that the similarity of the words in question led to an accidental corruption. But it should not be overlooked that both passages proved instrumental in the orthodox insistence on Jesus' real birth, making the changes look suspiciously useful for the conflict.

In Galatians 4:4, Paul says that God "sent forth his Son, come from a woman, come under the law" (γενόμενον έκ γυναικός, γενόμενον ύπό υό μυν). The verse was used by the orthodox to oppose the Gnostic claim that Christ came through Mary "as water through a pipe," taking nothing of its conduit into itself; for here the apostle states that Christ was "made from a woman" (so Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. Ill, 22, 1, and Tertullian, de carne Christi, 20). Irenaeus also uses the text against docetists to show that Christ was actually a man, in that he came from a woman (Adv. Haer. V, 21, 1). It should strike us as odd that Tertullian never quotes the verse against Marcion, despite his lengthy demonstration that Christ was actually "born."

This can scarcely be attributed to oversight, and so is more likely due to the circumstance that the generally received Latin text of the verse does not speak of Christ's birth per se, but of his "having been made" (factum ex muliere).

Given its relevance to just such controversies, it is no surprise to see that the verse was changed on occasion, and in precisely the direction one might expect: in several Old Latin manuscripts the text reads: misit deus filium suum, natum ex muliere ("God sent his Son, born of a woman"), a reading that would have proved useful to Tertullian had he known it. Nor is it surprising to find the same change appear in several Greek witnesses as well, where it is much easier to make, involving the substitution of γεννώμενον for γενόμενον (K f1 and a number of later minuscules).

A similar corruption occurs in Romans 1:3-4, a passage I have already discussed in a different connection [see pp.71-2 [and p.48], next post below]. Here Paul speaks of Christ as God's Son "who came from the seed of David according to the flesh" (τον γενόμενον έκ σπέρματος Δαυιδ κατά σάρκα). The heresiologists of the second and third centuries also found this text useful for showing that Christ was a real man who was born into the world. Tertullian, for example , claims that since Christ is related to David (his seed) because of his flesh, he must have taken flesh from Mary (de carne Christi 22; cf. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. Ill, 22,1). Given the orthodox assumption that "having come from the seed of David" must refer to Jesus' own birth—an event not actually described by Paul—one is not taken aback to find the text of Romans 1:3 changed [in] the second century, as attested by the citations of Origen, and periodically throughout the history of its transmission (61* syrpal, Byzmss OLmss acc to Aug).

As was the case with Galatians 4:4, the change was a matter of the substitution of a word in the versions and of a few simple letters in Greek (from γενόμενον to γεννώμενον), so that now the text speaks not of Christ "coming from the seed of David" but of his "being born of the seed of David."



p.242:

... several orthodox modifications speak directly to the physical dimension of Christ's existence (1 John 5:9, 20; Heb 2:14; Eph 5:30) or stress that he was "a man" (John 19:5; 7:46; Matt 8:27) or emphasize his real physical birth (Gal 4:4; Rom 1:3)

Last edited by MrMacSon on Sun Sep 04, 2022 11:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ehrman on Rom 1:3-4 as a pre-Pauline creed

Post by MrMacSon »

Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture

p.48:


The Earliest Adoptionists

Christians of the second and third centuries generally—regardless of theological persuasion—claimed to espouse the views of Jesus' earliest followers. With regard at least to the adoptionists, modern scholarship has by and large conceded the claim. These Christians did not originate their views of Christ; adoptionistic Christologies can be traced to sources that predate the books of the New Testament.

The business of reconstructing the preliterary sources of the New Testament is a highly complex affair, and a discussion of the attendant difficulties lies beyond the purview of the present investigation. It is enough to observe that form-critical analyses of the New Testament creedal, hymnic, and sermonic materials have consistently demonstrated earlier strata of tradition that were theologically modified when incorporated int o their present literary contexts.

Many of these preliterary traditions evidence adoptionistic views. One of the earliest examples derives from the opening verses of Paul's letter to the Romans, in which he appears to be quoting a bipartite christological creed: "[Christ Jesus ...] who came from the seed of David according to the flesh, who was appointed Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead " (Rom 1:3—4).

That the text embodies a pre-Pauline creed is evident on both linguistic and ideational grounds: terms such as όρισθέντος ("appointed") and πνεύμα άγιωσύνης ("Spirit of holiness") occur nowhere else in Paul, nor does the notion of Jesus' Davidic descent. In particular, the idea that Jesus received a divine appointment to be God's Son at his resurrection is not at all Pauline. What has struck a number of scholars in this connection is that the highly balanced structure that one normally finds in such creedal fragments is here broken by a phrase that is distinctively Pauline, "δυνάμει."

Once this Pauline feature is removed, a balanced structure is restored, and one is left with a christological confession that appears to pre-date the writings of our earliest Christian author, or at least his letter to the Romans, a confession that acknowledges that Christ attained his status of divine sonship only at his resurrection.



pp.71-2:


As we have seen, in the opening of Romans Paul quotes an early christological creed: Jesus Christ "came from the seed of David according to the flesh [and] was appointed Son of God in power (τον όρισθέντος υίον θεον έν δυνάμει) at the resurrection of the dead " (Rom 1:3—4).

One is naturally taken aback to see Paul referring to Jesus' "appointment" as Son of God at the resurrection, but he clearly had reasons for quoting the creed. Moreover, as I have noted, he was himself probably responsible for changing the wording of the creed by interpolating the phrase έν δυνάμει. Now Christ does not become the Son of God, but the "Son-of-God-in-power" at the resurrection, an idea compatible with other Pauline (and pre-Pauline) texts (cf., e.g., Phi l 2:6-11).

Apparently, however, not even the Pauline modification satisfied Latin scribes of the early centuries. This, at least, seems to be the implication of the standard Latin rendering of the verse, which presupposes the word προορισθέντος, rather than the simple όρισθέντος ['appointed'], for the description of God's election of Jesus ("praedestinatus" rather than "destinatus"). That the compounded form of the participle is not original to the text is clear: it has no Greek or other versional support, and in fact makes the thought rather convoluted.

The notion seems to be that God "predestined" Jesus to attain his status as Son of God at the resurrection. This would mean, of course, that Jesus already enjoyed a special status before God prior to the event itself (as the one "predestined") so that the resurrection was but the realization of a status proleptically conferred upon him.

In short, the variant, which cannot be traced beyond the confines of the Latin West, serves to undermine any assumption that Jesus' resurrection effected an entirely new standing before God.


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Re: Ehrman on Galatians 4:4 and Romans 1:3 and Christ 'born' human

Post by GakuseiDon »

MrMacSon wrote: Fri Jun 24, 2022 8:54 pm Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture

pp.238-9:
Thanks for that, MrMacSon, as always.

In Galatians 4:4, Paul says that God "sent forth his Son, come from a woman, come under the law" (γενόμενον έκ γυναικός, γενόμενον ύπό υό μυν). The verse was used by the orthodox to oppose the Gnostic claim that Christ came through Mary "as water through a pipe," taking nothing of its conduit into itself; for here the apostle states that Christ was "made from a woman" (so Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. Ill, 22, 1, and Tertullian, de carne Christi, 20).

That's interesting, and confirms the idea that the early apologists saw the choice of "ginomai" as being motivated by theology. They thought that Paul wanted to show that Jesus took his human nature from Mary since he was "made from a woman". It appears that some Gnostics claimed that Christ came through Mary "as water through a pipe" and so didn't take on any human nature from Mary.

Irenaeus also uses the text against docetists to show that Christ was actually a man, in that he came from a woman (Adv. Haer. V, 21, 1).

So Paul's text, at least as Irenaeus had it, using "made from a woman" was enough to show the docetists wrong.

... the generally received Latin text of the verse does not speak of Christ's birth per se, but of his "having been made" (factum ex muliere).

Given its relevance to just such controversies, it is no surprise to see that the verse was changed on occasion, and in precisely the direction one might expect: in several Old Latin manuscripts the text reads: misit deus filium suum, natum ex muliere ("God sent his Son, born of a woman"), a reading that would have proved useful to Tertullian had he known it.

Here the Latin translation of the Greek text of "made" is changed to "born" due to those later controversies.

Nor is it surprising to find the same change appear in several Greek witnesses as well, where it is much easier to make, involving the substitution of γεννώμενον for γενόμενον (K f1 and a number of later minuscules).

The obvious question is: if "made from a woman" in Greek so clearly designated being born, why the need to change it to "born from a woman" AT ALL, even in the later texts? The answer seems to be: the influence from Latin translations, if I read correctly what Dr Ehrman is suggesting.
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Re: Ehrman on 1 John 5:6

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fwiw,
Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, pp.59-60


... Establishing a plausible interpretation of 1 John 5:6 has proved more difficult over the years than establishing its text ... here the author says something about Jesus' manifestation to the world: "This is the one who came through water and blood, Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the blood."

Among the variant readings preserved in the textual tradition, those that affect the introductory clause are particularly germane to the present discussion. For the words "the one who came through water and blood" (δί ϋδατος και αϊματος) have been modified in a variety of ways.

The following four variants are all attested:
  1. "through water and spirit" (MSS 43, 241, 463, 945, 1241, 1831, 1877*, 1891);
    .
  2. "through water and spirit and blood" (MSS P 81 88 442 630 915 2492 arm eth);
    .
  3. "through water and blood and spirit" (MSS X A 104 424C 614 1739C 2412 syrh sa bo Or); and
    .
  4. "through water and blood and the Holy Spirit" (πνεύματος άγίου, MSS 39 61 326 1837).

It might appear at first glance that the first variant is an early assimilation of the text to John 3:5 ("Whoever is not born from water and spirit cannot enter the kingdom of God"), with the others representing different kinds of conflations of this corrupted reading with the one normally understood to be original ("through water and blood").

But it should not be overlooked that the third variant is in fact the earliest and most widespread of the four, and occurs in witnesses generally acknowledged to be superior to the Byzantine manuscripts attesting the others. With its occurrence in Origen, it can be dated to the early third century, and its variegated attestation shows that it was widely known. It also would have been an easy reading to create out of the original text, since it involves no erasure or substitution, but the simple addition of the two words και πνεύματος to the end of the clause.

Furthermore, the word πνεύματος would no doubt have been abbreviated as one of the nomina sacra, so that the entire corruption could have been made by penning six letters (ΚΑΙΙΝΣ), perhaps above the line . The third variant may therefore represent not a conflation but the earliest form of corruption.

In this case, however, the phrase "water and spirit" is not the earliest modification from which the others derived, so that the parallel to John 3:5 does not explain why the text was changed in the first place. Instead, because the passage refers to "Jesus Christ" and his "coming," one may well suspect that the change was initially made in order to affirm the orthodox doctrine that Jesus did not come into the world through natural means, but through the miraculous working of the Spirit of God (he came "through water and blood and Spirit").

eta
This understanding of the phrase is made yet more explicit in the fourth of the variants, which leaves virtually no room for doubt that the agency of the Holy Spirit is in view (cf. the locus classicus of the orthodox doctrine, Luke 1:35). The first two variants, then, simply attest the assimilation of this early and widespread corruption to the familiar words of Jesus to Nicodemus in John, chapter 3.

One other variant reading that may be taken to support the orthodox understanding of Jesus' birth , or at least to circumvent an adoptionistic view, occurs in the unlikely context of Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2). In speaking of Jesus' resurrection, Peter appeals to a scriptural "proof" : David pronounced that God would not allow his holy one to see corruption (Psalm 15). Peter claims that David spoke not of himself but of one to come, for he knew that God would raise up for himself one to sit on David's throne, one who would come "from the fruit of his loins" (Acts 2:30). An interesting variant is found in codex Bezae, which states instead that David's successor would come "from the fruit of his heart ...

Some have claimed that the change is accidental, either the mistranslation of an Aramaic source of the speech, or a faulty reversion of the word praecordis ("heart" or "belly") by the Greek scribe of codex Bezae from the Latin text on the opposing page ...


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Commentaries on Rom 1:3

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The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges commentary on Romans 1:3


Romans 1:3

"Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh"

3. concerning his Son, &c.] The connexion is with the close of Romans 1:2 : the “promise through the prophets” was “concerning the Son of God.” In the Greek, the order of words in this verse and the next is peculiar and emphatic: concerning His Son, who was made [lit. who came to be, who became] of the seed of David according to the flesh; who was marked out as the Son of God, in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, in consequence of the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.

of the seed of David] The N. T. begins with this assertion (Matthew 1:1), and almost closes with it (Revelation 22:16).

In 2 Timothy 2:8, 'Paul', at the close of his ministry, again recites it as a foundation-truth.


2 Tim 2:8

.
Ἰησοῦν Ἰησοῦν,
.
.
ἐγηγερμένον
(egēgermenon)
.
ἐκ νεκρῶν,
.
ἐκ σπέρματος Δαυίδ,
.
κατὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιόν μου·
Jesus Christ,
arisen /
having been raised
from [the] dead,from [the] seed of David,according to my gospel

https://biblehub.com/text/2_timothy/2-8.htm




ἐγηγερμένον/egēgermenon —also as ἐγηγερμένον ἐκ νεκρῶν— is also in Mark 16:14 : https://biblehub.com/greek/ege_germenon_1453.htm


https://biblehub.com/commentaries/cambr ... mans/1.htm




Geneva Study Bible


{3} Concerning his {d} Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was {e} made of the seed of David {f} according to the flesh;

(3) By declaring the sum of the doctrine of the Gospel, he stirs up the Romans to consider well the matter about which he is entreating them: so then he shows that Christ (who is the very substance and sum of the gospel) is the only Son of God the Father, who with regard to his humanity is born of the seed of David, but with regard to his divine and spiritual nature, by which he sanctified himself, is begotten of the Father from everlasting, as also manifestly appears by his mighty resurrection.

(d) This is a plain testimony of the person of Christ, that he is but one, and also a testimony of his two natures, and their properties

(e) Who received flesh from the virgin who was David's daughter

(f) As he is man: for this word flesh, by the figure of speech synecdoche, is taken for man

https://biblehub.com/commentaries/gsb/romans/1.htm
https://www.christianity.com/bible/comm ... a/romans/1



Pulpit Commentary


Verse 3. Which was made; or, was born. But the word in itself, γενομένου, need only mean that he became a Man of the seed of David; implying, it would seem, a pre-existence of him who so became. This is evident from other passages, in which ω}ν, or ὑπάρχων, is opposed to γενόμενος (cf. John 1:1,14; Philippians 2:6,7; cf. also Galatians 4:4,* Ἐξαπέστειλεν ὁ Θεὸς τοῦ υἱὸν αὐτοῦ γενόμενον ἐκ γυναικὸς).

Of the seed of David according to the flesh. Κατὰ σάρκα is here, as elsewhere, contrasted with κατὰ πνεῦμα. Here κατὰ σάρκα denotes the merely human descent of Jesus in distinction from his Divine Being (cf. Acts 2:40; Romans 9:3,5; 2 Corinthians 5:16). His having come humanly "of the seed of David" is suitably noted here, where "the Son" is being set forth as fulfilling the Old Testament promises; for they uniformly represent the Messiah as thus descended, and it was essential to the Jewish conception of him that he should be so (cf. Matthew 22:42; John 7:42; and for the stress laid by the writers of the New Testament on the fact that Jesus was so - of which fact no doubt was entertained - cf. Hebrews 7:14, πρόδηλον γὰρ, etc. See, among many other passages, Matthew 1:1; Luke 2:4, 5; Acts 2:30; Acts 13:23; 2 Timothy 2:8)

https://biblehub.com/commentaries/pulpit/romans/1.htm

* https://biblehub.com/commentaries/galatians/4-4.htm



Bengel's Gnomen


Romans 1:3. Περὶ, concerning) The sum and substance of the Gospel is, concerning the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord. An explanation is introduced in this passage, as to what this appellation, the Son of God, denotes, Romans 1:3-4.[5]—το͂υ γενομένου), who was [made Engl. Vers.] born. So Galatians 4:4.—κατὰ, according to) The determinative particle, Romans 1:4; Romans 9:5.

https://biblehub.com/commentaries/bengel/romans/1.htm


Romans 1:4

declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead




Romans 9:5 (Literal Std Version)

whose [are] the fathers, and of whom [is] the Christ, according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed for all ages. Amen




more at https://biblehub.com/commentaries/romans/1-3.htm
(and https://biblehub.com/commentaries/galatians/4-4.htm)
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