Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

At 20.58 01/04/99 -0500, peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG wrote:
>Well, maybe they knew the tradition of Philo, but maybe they just knew 
>John (who called Jesus Christ the Logos) and Paul (who called Jesus 
>Christ the firstborn - actually John or his followers did also, 
>Revelation 1:5) and put two and two together. For that matter, they 
>could have derived their understanding directly from Proverbs 8:22ff. 
>Also, I am not sure that you can call texts which are probably 
>derivative from Colossians and a century or so later part of its 
>cultural context. But thank you for showing that the "orthodox" 
>Christian view of the firstborn was clearly understood in the second 
>century.

I showed no such thing, for it is very hard to bring such texts into a
notion of orthodoxy. None of the "Christian" texts I mention acknowledges
either Jesus or the Christ -- in fact Theophilus gives us an etymology for
"Christian" as directly derived from the notion of anointing, missing out
on a grand occasion for making the Jesus Christ connection.

I did attempt to show that there is a clear Middle Platonic tradition
shared by Philo, Theophilus, Athenagoras, and Col 1:15-17. Such a
tradition, with its consistent usage of first-born and related terms,
should make it clear that there is no logic for the special pleading that
some people are making for the anomalous translation used in Col 1:15,
given the latter's similarity with those other texts.

The Proverbs 8 material is quite interesting, for Philo shows no knowledge
of it -- as far as I can tell -- and, as you point out, it does in some way
belong in the same tradition. Philo, writing in Alexandria and perhaps
without Hebrew, may only have had the pentateuch and (some of) the psalms.
The major problem in an analysis of Proverbs in the wider context of
Mediterranean thought is that of dating (again). Is the personification of
wisdom an independent development or does it partake in the tradition that
comes from Heraclitus through Plato and onward to Posidonius, the Stoa and
Philo? Dating could help to clarify.

As to the Johannine Logos poem, Theophilus knows it, but gives away nothing
to suggest that he knew the gospel. This suggests an independent life for
that poem.


Ian