As I said before, I am going to be breaking my reply up into three sections. By doing this, hopefully this thread will be kept from dying and it will not require more time than I can dedicate to complete at once. With this first portion I am going to address the matter of Proverbs 8:22.
Mondo1 also claims that use of ktizó in Proverbs 8:22 LXX is a "proper" rendering of the Hebrew qny and denies a quasi-biological sense of "beget".
This was not my claim at all. Looking back at what I said we find that I was making a statement in the context of how the early church fathers understood the term and the translation of the LXX. A careful note of the context of my statement will show that it dealt with the translation of ektisen. I was not at all commenting on the translation of qanah, but only on how ektisen was translated, as it was the text used by the early church.
This is not the conclusion of the various lexical studies I have seen of Proverbs 8:22, in particular those of William Irwin (JBL, 1961) and Bruce Vawter (JBL, 1980). They note the lack of evidence that this root is used to mean "create" (as a fashioning or constructing of things), and show that most instances in the OT have the sense of "acquire/possess" and "produce/become parent of".
I believe that both are too quick to dismiss the evidence of some of the texts that they consider, but I have not argued for qanah to be translated as create. In fact, the most that I will argue is that the sense of “create” is directly implied.
The latter has a quasi-biological nuance in Genesis 4:1, Deuteronomy 32:6, Psalm 139:13, and one may also recall qnyt ilm as an epithet of Asherah, which has in view her status as mother of the gods.
I feel that Psalm 139:13 is a good example of a place where the evidence is too quickly dismissed. I will comment only to give a brief example of what I mean. Irwin argues that “’create’ and ‘form’ are not acceptable,” without any indication of why they are unacceptable. He states that “as before we invoke biological implications,” but the “biological implications” are different only in God’s means of this development, but in fact they are hardly less biological than the creation of Adam, and there is no issue with the use of bara for his formation. Just as this child is developing from existing material, so did Adam. Vawter confesses this too, stating: “Ps 139:13… is possibly the most difficult passage of all standing in the way of one who refuses to acknowledge a qanâ = ‘create’ in the Hebrew Bible. R.N. Whybray doubtlessly speaks for a legion of exegetes when he finds the sense ‘form,’ ‘create,’ the only possible one here, since ‘it is meaningless for the Psalmist to say that Yahweh ‘acquired’ or ‘possessed’ his kidneys.” In no way did God birth or beget his kidneys, but the action that would here be attributed to him would be that of creating.
I could go on with more on this text and others, but I have only provided this as a demonstration of how the case has been overstated by Irwin. As this is not directly the argument I am making, I will leave it at that.
Irwin notes that qnny in Proverbs 8:22 is syntactically connected to the phrase r'shyt drkw, and drk when attributed to God (e.g. drk yhwh "way of Yahweh") refers to God's qualities and principles (cf. "righteousness" and "justice" in Genesis 18:19, see also Psalm 119:27, 33, Proverbs 10:29, Jeremiah 5:4, Ezekiel 18:29, etc.); "wisdom" would thus be the drk "way" that is possessed or produced by Yahweh "before (qdm) his works of old". As for r'shyt (which lacks a preposition unlike the temporal b-rshyt in Genesis 1:1 or m-r'sh in Proverbs 8:23), Irwin finds a protemporal meaning unlikely:
You overstate Irwin’s case, for the same expression is used quite explicitly for God’s creative acts. Job 26:14 speaks of the creation description that precedes the verse as being “his ways,” while Job 40:19 speaks of the creation of the Behemoth as part of “the ways of God.” More below…
"The origin of Wisdom was long antecedent to God's work in creating the world and is sharply contrasted with it: before the mountains and hills, before earth or heavens were made, then Wisdom existed. The emphasisis not that Wisdom came into being, by whatever process, as the first of God's creative activities nor at their beginning, but long before them. This is stated so clearly in v. 22b and 23 that there should have been no confusion" (p. 140).
Irwin’s attempt to overcome the two passages in Job that I referenced are not at all satisfactory. He is completely unfounded in dismissing 26:14 as “scarcely [‘relevant… to God’s action in creation],” he attempts to classify the Behemoth’s creation as part of “his ways,” not because the creation is an aspect of his ways, but because it somehow is only “expressive of his essential nature,” which makes little sense given the context and application of the statement. Irwin is simply too quick to brush aside the evidence contrary to his position, as 26:14 solidly demonstrates.
Instead of taking it as temporal, he takes r'shyt with a nuance of "preeminent" (as in Numbers 24:20) as an accusative in apposition to the first person suffix, i.e. "he possessed/produced me as the foremost of his ways/attributes".
This stands directly in the face of the context, which is showing how early God produced Wisdom in contrast with the subsequent creation of the world. Wisdom is emphasized as exceedingly ancient by the repeated observation of her pre-existing the world. Such a contrast would lend “his ways” to carry the same sense as within Job, which is that of his creative works.
As for Vawter's analysis, he notes that in Proverbs 8:22 "wisdom is said to have pre-existed the created order and therefore to be outside of it, though in some fashion it subsequently became instrumental in the production of the created order" (p. 213)
Vawter goes beyond what the text states, for Wisdom is said only to pre-exist the world and the things in it, not “the created order.”
and regards the drkw "his way" as referring to Yahweh's creative modus operandi and "principle" (p. 214), pointing to Proverbs 4:7 which strikingly states that the r'shyt chkmh "beginning of wisdom" is to "acquire wisdom (qnh chkmh)". In this close parallel (which uses the key words qnh and r'shyt in connection with chkmh "wisdom"), r'shyt is used to indicate the fundamental or elementary principle of wisdom (cf. elemental r'sh in Psalm 119:160 and elemental arkhé in Hebrews 5:12, 6:1), namely, that it must be acquired. In this light, "Yahweh acquired/possessed me as the r'shyt of his ways" would then mean that Yahweh's acquisition of wisdom (= qnh chkmh of 4:7) is the basic elementary principle underlying his ways (= r'shyt chkmh in 4:7).
If we assign the same sense of qanah for both 4:7 and 8:22, we are left with some serious theological ramifications, assuming, as Vawter does, that wisdom here is merely the attribute. We turn God into one that lacked the attribute of wisdom before the acquisition of it, just as man lacks wisdom before he also acquires it, for he is not born wise.
The LXX rendered r'shyt drkw as arkhén hodón autou "beginning of his ways" and r'shyt chkmh of 4:7 as arkhé sophias "beginning of wisdom", but qnny in 8:22 is unexpectedly translated as ektise me "created me". This rendering is unusual because Hebrew qny is regularly rendered with ktésthai "acquire" in the LXX (61 or 63 times, as opposed to only 3 with ktizó), hence Proverbs 4:7 LXX has ktésai sophian "acquire wisdom".
I would hardly call the LXX’s rendering “unexpected.” The sense of 4:7 and 8:22 are clearly different, for one refers to the acquiring of what man does not inherently possess. Either there are two roots of qanah, or the LXX translators simply provided an interpretive translation.
The expected ektésato me "acquired me" in fact occurs in the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion (cf. possedit "he possessed" in the Vulgate). It is noteworthy that the correct ektésato me "acquired me" is very similar to ektise me "created me", suggesting that a copyist error may have occurred at some point; in fact yqnw in Jeremiah 32:15 appears erroneously as ktisthésontai in one MS of the LXX, as opposed to the correct ktéthésontai in the others.
If we were dealing with the aorist middle I might agree that we could see a copiest error, for then the difference one be only that of one letter, but I find that doubtful in 8:22.
The Syriac says “created me,” which is a translation that is generally accepted to be from the Hebrew, though influenced by the LXX. Further, the Targum reads Elaha bar-AH-ni be-reish bir-ye-thei, meaning, God created me at the start of his creation. If anything, this seems to lend to the two root theory.
With that said, my position on Proverbs 8 is that it speaks of Wisdom as being born, and that the birth is idiomatic for creation. TWOT brings this out: "The Pulal is the passive of the Polel, 'to be born' (Job 15:7; Psa 51:5 [H 7]). This idiom may be used to refer to creation or origins on a cosmic scale (Prov 8:24-25).” Psalm 90:2 is a good example of this as well, where the created mountains are said to be "born." If we set aside the notion of two roots for qanah, this type of acquisition with implied creation is brought out in Genesis 14:19 and 22, where God is said to qanah heaven and earth.
My next reply will deal with Revelation 1:17-18 and 2:8 and the meaning of "the first and the last." (this is a day or two away)
Mondo
