Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Quote from Dan-Ake Mattson: "Thus the words "to create" and "to be 
born" which were synonyms before Nicaea,..."

You have a strange understanding of the word "synonym". These are 
clearly words with overlapping semantic domains but also some points 
of contrast. Would you say that "In the beginning God gave birth to 
the world"? Would you say "I was created on (your date of birth)"?

Quote: "We may illustrate the real point by quoting romans 8:29 which 
says that Jesus is PRWTOTOKON EN POLLOIS ADELFOIS ("The firstborn 
among many brothers"). The many brothers are all creatures that had a 
beginning, but nobody would argue that because Jesus is "a brother" 
among other brothers, and these brothers had a beginning, Jesus also 
must have a beginning. The point is of course that there was a group 
of brothers and Jesus was one of the group; what signals that he was 
one of the group is the word "firstborn"..."

No, what signals that Jesus was one of the group is the EN meaning 
"among", which distinguishes this from PRWTOTOKOS + genitive of a 
person which literally means "first-born of", and the person in the 
genitive is the parent. The child is not one of the group of his 
parents!

Quote: "If we therefore use PRWTOTOKOS  in the only *meaning* attested 
in the Bible, namely "firstborn",..."

I assume you are including OT and NT here. As PRWTOTOKOS does not 
occur in the Old Testament but only in a poor translation of it, I 
will look at NT references. In the majority of NT references 
PRWTOTOKOS clearly does not literally mean "first-born" e.g. Col 1:18, 
Rev 1:5, probably also Rom 8:29, Heb 1:6, 12:23, but the word is used 
in an extended or metaphorical way suggesting both temporal priority 
and authority but not literal birth.

Quote continues: "...then Jesus is "the firstborn of all creation". 
Jesus is not shown to be a creature by arguing that "firstborn" 
necessarily involves the idea of a creative process", but simply 
because he is the firstborn of the group of creatures, just as he is a 
brother because he is the firstborn among many brothers. What suggests 
he is a creature, therefore, is KTISEWS  and not PRWTOTOTOKOS, the 
role of PRWTOTOKOS is to show that he is one ("the firstborn") of the 
group of KTISEWS..."

This argument looks very like your "nobody would argue" one from Rom 
8:29: even if Jesus were firstborn AMONG all creation, that does not 
mean that he is himself created. But, more seriously, your argument 
falls down because of the different grammatical relationship. If Col. 
1:15 is taken literally, creation is the parent of Jesus rather than 
his brother, just as in Luke 2:7 Jesus is the firstborn son of Mary, 
not her elder brother. Now no-one would take Col. 1:15 quite literally 
in this way, but there is perhaps an image here of Jesus at his 
resurrection being born from the earth, with his tomb as a womb. Then 
"firstborn" is a matter of temporal priority and authority over those 
resurrected later, PRWTOTOKOS EK TWN NEKRWN in Col 1:18 i.e. "from 
among the dead ones".

Peter Kirk