before the mountains were established and before all the hills, he begets me.
@SlimBoyFat
I cannot find a Hebrew word that equates to "beget" in Prov. 8: 25. Even if there is one, What does the personification of wisdom have to do with anything?
Acts 20: 28 Corruption in the NWT
by Sea Breeze 54 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Sea Breeze
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aqwsed12345
@slimboyfat
Your argument that “begotten” is synonymous with “created,” based on Proverbs 8:22-25, fundamentally misunderstands both the linguistic and theological nuances involved. First, from a lexical standpoint, the Hebrew verb used in Proverbs 8:22 is קָנָה (qanah), which fundamentally means “to acquire,” “to possess,” or “to beget,” and not straightforwardly “to create.” While the Septuagint (LXX) translated this as ἔκτισεν (“created”), it is widely recognized among biblical scholars that this rendering introduced a problematic ambiguity. Prominent patristic theologians, including Athanasius and Basil of Caesarea, critically addressed and refuted this mistranslation, precisely because Arians relied on it to argue for Christ’s created status. Moreover, Proverbs 8 personifies Wisdom poetically, rather than literally describing a historical or ontological event. Thus, it does not provide a straightforward equivalence between “begotten” and “created.”
Additionally, even within Proverbs 8 itself, there is a clear semantic distinction: verse 25 explicitly shifts to γεννᾷ (“he begets”), reinforcing that Wisdom (later identified typologically with Christ by early Christians) is begotten and thus distinct from ordinary creation. This distinction is echoed repeatedly by patristic authors, including Hilary of Poitiers, Athanasius, and the Cappadocian Fathers, who carefully insisted on an ontological distinction between “begotten” (γεννητός) and “created” (κτιστός). They argued consistently that “begotten” refers to the generation of the Son from the Father’s own essence (ousia), resulting in true divinity and co-eternity, whereas “created” refers to a separate act by which beings are brought forth ex nihilo, and thus are ontologically distinct and inferior to the Creator.
Your interpretation also neglects Second-Temple Jewish conceptions of Wisdom. Texts such as the Wisdom of Solomon and the writings of Philo of Alexandria clearly present Wisdom as eternally present alongside God, a mediator of creation distinct from mere creatures. Wisdom, in these traditions, is not a creature but a divine hypostasis participating in creation itself. Philo explicitly differentiates between Wisdom/Logos as begotten and other creatures as created.
Therefore, reading “begotten” as synonymous with “created” represents a fundamental category confusion that disregards linguistic nuance, historical Jewish understanding, and patristic exegesis. Consequently, your reliance upon Proverbs 8:22, as translated in the Septuagint, does not support an Arian interpretation of Christology. Rather, it illustrates precisely the textual issue that Nicene theologians confronted and clarified through careful exegesis and precise theological terminology.
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slimboyfat
I cannot find a Hebrew word that equates to "beget" in Prov. 8: 25. even if there is one, What does the personification of wisdom have to do with anything?
Early Christian writers habitually applied this passage to Jesus, including the words “created” and “begets” as equivalents. In fact it’s one of the most often quoted OT passages for Jesus in the ante-Nicene literature. The claim I was responding to was that creation and begetting were not equivalent. In this passage in the LXX and for all those early Christians who quoted it they were treated as equivalent. It was later that a sharp distinction was drawn to support the Trinity.
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aqwsed12345
@slimboyfat
The argument that the language of “created” (ἐκτισέν) and “begotten” (γεννάω or τίκτω) were regarded as equivalent in early Christian exegesis of Proverbs 8:22–25, and that this supposed lack of distinction legitimizes the later Arian equation of Christ’s generation with creation, is deeply flawed both philologically and theologically. This claim fails to grasp the literary, linguistic, and historical complexities underpinning both the Septuagint rendering and patristic usage, as well as the evolution of Christological thought from Second Temple Judaism through the ante-Nicene period and into the doctrinal clarity of Nicaea and later Trinitarian orthodoxy.
First, the text of Proverbs 8:22–25 is a poetic and highly figurative personification of Wisdom (חָכְמָה, chokmah)—a literary device common in sapiential books and in Second Temple Jewish writings, where abstract qualities are depicted as quasi-personal agents to highlight their cosmic importance. As such, Proverbs 8 does not intend a direct ontological statement about the Son as such; rather, it uses the image of Wisdom to point to God’s creative order and rationality. Christian writers saw a type of Christ here, not a direct identification, as even many early Fathers—Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa—insist. The distinction between typological application and literal identification is crucial: the personification of Wisdom is a pedagogical and poetic tool, not a metaphysical assertion about Christ’s origin.
Second, the Hebrew verb qānāh in Proverbs 8:22 has a wide semantic range: to “get,” “acquire,” “possess,” and in rare cases “create.” The dominant tradition in ancient Judaism, as reflected in Targumim and the major Greek translators (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion), interpreted the verse as “The LORD acquired/possessed me” (ἐκτήσατο), not “created me.” The Septuagint’s choice of ἔκτισέν (he created) has a broader semantic value than simple ex nihilo creation, often encompassing “constituted,” “ordained,” or “appointed,” as seen in similar constructions in both Koine and classical Greek. Even when ἔκτισεν is used, its referent in context is not the essential being of Wisdom but her role or office within the divine economy. The underlying Hebrew lacks any explicit reference to “begetting” in verse 22, but this is rectified in Proverbs 8:24–25, where the language of birth (“brought forth,” חוֹלָלְתִּי, ḥolalti) is explicitly used, emphasizing derivation and origination in a familial or organic sense, not creative manufacture.
Third, the assertion that early Christian authors made no distinction between “created” and “begotten” simply does not stand up to a careful reading of the patristic sources. While it is true that pre-Nicene writers often appropriated the language of Proverbs 8:22 for Christ, their use of “created” or “begotten” depended on context, and when they spoke of Christ as “begotten,” it was specifically to denote his unique relation to the Father, as opposed to all other creatures. The sharp distinction between “begetting” (which in Christian doctrine implies sharing of substance and consubstantiality) and “creating” (which always implies ontological separation and ex nihilo origination) is not, as is often alleged, a later invention to prop up Nicene dogma. This distinction was latent and implicit in the Church’s earliest confessional and baptismal formulas and was drawn out as a formal theological principle in response to the Arian crisis, precisely because Arius and his followers equivocated the terms to advance their subordinationist agenda.
Patristic exegesis is absolutely clear on this point. Athanasius, the Cappadocians, and Hilary of Poitiers all demonstrate, on linguistic, philosophical, and theological grounds, that Proverbs 8:22–25 cannot be invoked as evidence for the creaturehood of the Son. They point out that the verb ktizō (create) can denote the appointment of a role or status (cf. LXX Psalm 50:12; Revelation 1:6), and that Wisdom’s “begetting” (as in 8:25) points not to creation but to eternal generation—an ontological derivation from the Father, not an act of bringing into existence out of nothing. Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa especially stress that if the Septuagint meant to say “first created,” it would have used protoktistos, not prototokos (“firstborn”), a term Paul employs precisely to avoid the Arian error (Colossians 1:15). The patristic consensus is that “begotten, not made” is not a post hoc Nicene rationalization, but the only coherent reading of the biblical and apostolic data regarding the Son’s relation to the Father.
Moreover, to argue that the high Christology of Colossians 1 or John 1 simply equates Christ with created Wisdom is a severe reductionism. The New Testament presents Christ as the agent through whom all things were made—“without him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3)—thus excluding the Word himself from the category of created beings. The entire function of “firstborn of all creation” is to express Christ’s supremacy and priority over creation, not his inclusion within it. The genitive in Colossians 1:15 is not partitive (firstborn among created things), but relational (firstborn over all creation).
In summary, the assertion that early Christians equated creation with begetting, and that only later did the Church draw a sharp distinction to support the Trinity, is a misreading of the textual, historical, and theological record. The personification of Wisdom in Proverbs is a literary type, not an ontological blueprint. The terms for “create” and “beget” were already distinguished in both Jewish and Christian traditions. The development of Trinitarian dogma was a process of clarification, not invention, responding to the perennial temptation—exemplified by Arianism—to collapse the unique sonship of Christ into the order of creation. The Son is, as the Creed rightly affirms, “begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father,” a truth rooted in both the letter and the spirit of the biblical witness and consistently maintained by the Church from the apostolic age onward.
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slimboyfat
More AI garbage. Get lost.