Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Will Wagers <hyle AT gte.net>]

Peter Kirk writes:

>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".

I think it would help to distinguish between 1) Logos, which is the first
created "thing" and through which Creation is created; hence literally
firstborn of Creation; and 2) Logos as Jesus, which is a human incarnation,
a sort of recreation of the original creation in microcosm; hence, the
firstborn of men as an office, so-to-speak; and 3) Jesus elsewhere as
unconnected with the Logos, but the "Son" of God, an earlier and more
mythological and less philosophical and cruder notion of logos in which
the ruler must be descended from a god.


Will Wagers     hyle AT gte.net    "Reality is the best metaphor."