Loading...There is a whole lot more that could be said about the Christ-poem in Philippians 2. You could literally write an entire book on just this passage. In fact, people *have* written books on just this passage. The most important one, a classic in the field, is by Ralph Martin, A Hymn of Christ (which in earlier editions was called Carmen Christi) (which is a Latin phrase that, unsurprisingly, means A Hymn of Christ 🙂 ). This passage has had more ink spilled over it by scholars over the last century than almost any other in the entire Bible (with the exception of John 1:1-18). In any event, to make sense of what I want to say here, it would help, if you haven’t done so, to read the other posts I’ve made on it.
Here I just want to mention briefly an interpretation that is sometimes floated for the passage which takes it in a very different way indeed, as not being about incarnation at all. In this alternative interpretation, the passage is not about a pre-existent divine being who becomes human and then is exalted to an even higher state. In this other interpretation the passage instead means to refer to the human Jesus from beginning to end (though he is exalted at the end). The poem, in this interpretation, is about how Jesus is a second Adam, who reversed the very bad consequences of the sin of the first Adam.
Wanna see how *that* works, and why I don’t agree with it? If you were a blog member, you could keep reading. Join now and see what you’ve been missing. There’s only a small membership fee, and all of it goes to charity.
Paul’s ‘midrashic’ treatment of Adam/Christ typology is very interesting indeed. Worthy of a thread of it’s own. Are you familiar with Menahem Kister’s discussion of this typology as indicative of Paul’s “bilingual thinking”?
Don’t think I am.
Thank you Bart; really illuminating (and convincing).
I might extend your point 4 above; Paul does not only speak elsewhere of Christ as pre-existent, he elsewhere links that pre-existence to participation in God’s creation of all things; just as in the Philippians poem.
“..yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” 1 Cor 8:6.
So; for Paul, Christ was not a supernumary ‘divinity’ before he became human, he was distinct from all other divinities from the beginning.
Yup, good point.
This is my first encounter with the Second Adam interpretation of the Christ Hymn. I’m intrigued.
Could the Philippians version of the Christ Hymn be a reworking of an earlier version, which reflects a lower Christology? Maybe Paul reworked it himself to fit with his Christology. Maybe he was quoting a newer version that had evolved from a lower original.
Interesting project: rewrite the hymn to make it convey a 2nd Adam contrast. Use terms right out of the Septuagint Genesis 1 (e.g., eidos instead of morphe) . Does this destroy the poetic rhythm of the hymn? Is there a way of doing this that makes it even more hymnodic, structurally unified?
This would solve the problem of there being a high Christology in a pre-Pauline hymn.
I don’t think there’s good evidence that Paul rewrote the Poem, since it is so balanced stylistically consistent with the second half correponding closely with the first; without the two halves, it’s point is not made. It has often been thought that the only Pauline “add-on” is “on the cross,” where he put in what for him was an important point, taht Christ’s mode of death was very important. He didn’t die from old age!
Can you recommend some articles or books that deal with the historical-critical exegesis of “in the image of God” used in Genesis, and the theological development of the doctrine of imago dei from Patristic through to modern times?
As a rejoinder to Point2, one could argue Paul believed that sin came into the world through one man (Romans), even though according to Genesis, it was Eve who first ate the fruit. Presumably even if Adam didn’t eat the fruit, sin has already entered the world through the first act of disobedience by Eve. Paul was creating a theology that doesn’t correspond neatly with the Genesis passage. So one could argue the author of the Philippian hymn could be doing something similar: though the original passage says Eve wanted to be like God, he develops the theology that Adam was also motivated by the same intention as Eve, which is a plausible inference. Would this rejoinder work?
As a rule if you want serious scholarly exegesis of a biblical book I’d suggest the volumes devoted to it in the Anchor Bible, the Hermeneia, or the Interpretation series. No, I don’t know of a discussion of the imago dei; but that’s just because I do not do research on topics like that as important as they are. AS to Eve, right, in patriarchal cultures it mattered what the *man* did. Except when the woman is to blame for the *man* (as in 1 Tim 2:11-15)
One of the best posts I think. It was not as detailed in Bart’s book “How Jesus Became God”
Bart, which of Paul’s letter is believed to have been written first? Where does Philippians fall in the timeline? Thanks.
1 Thessalonians is usually dated to 49 CE; Philippians is probably in the mid to late 50s.
This is an unrelated question. Have you ever considered creating a study Bible? Or translating the New Testament with your own study notes? Obviously many of us enjoy studying the Bible, but the majority of study Bibles available are created by biased theologians.
No, I’m afraid not. It’s not the kind of work I would enjoy doing. Quite the contrary. I have lots of friends in teh field who would love to do that kind of thing, and I would find it tedious and monotonous. Different strokes.
Do you think Simon Magus was a real person or was he invented to make a point?
PRobably invented.
It seems to me there is no way to know if Paul quoted the poem exactly, or nuanced it to fit his belief. And can’t the Greek word for “form”, “morphe”, mean external appearance, i.e., image? Still, “being made in the likeness of men” seems to suggest an incarnation, but raises another problem: does it represent an early docetic view, that Jesus was only a “likeness” of a man, not a true man?
Morphe (something like “essense) is different from eikon (external appearance)
As an agnostic, I seem to hear more and more about how the earlies of disciples came to believe very early on (like within a couple of years after the even) that Jesus was raised from the dead.
(I’m sure you’ve heard of The Minimal Facts of the Resurrection argument, and this fact seems to play very much into this argument.)
When I Google around or look on Amazon, however, it seems that the popularity of Christian books on such topics tends to bury books that will explain from the viewpoint of non-evangelicals how soon and how the earliest of Christians came to believe that Jesus had risen from the grave.
Bonus round: same things about the topic of when the book of Daniel was written. Again, it’s easy to find books representing the evangelical view. But if most scholars see it as a second century book, what books would you recommend for the weekend scholar who can’t speak Persian?
There’s an easy answer to all that. Far more evangelicals are interested inthe Bible than others, so they have far more books catering to their views. And yeah, that minimal facts thing is completely bogus.
Sometime Paul gives me a gnostic inkling, fully aware that gnosticism were more evolved a century later.
From that perspective it would have been easier to understand the symbolism and perceptions of the Christology, reference to the last Adam. For example, the cronological later Apcryphon of John describes that the perfect Anthropos (Pigere-Adamas) came out of the revelation of the invisible spirit, refering to a spiritual and not at all material existence.
Elaine Pagels touches this topic in her book “The Gnostic Paul”. Do you think Paul might have had such jewish esoteric thoughts which later found its way into christian gnosticism?
Her book actually does not argue that Paul was Gnostic; it deals with how later Gnostics cited and used Paul. They certainly did themselves see some coherence. And yes, you can trace lines of continuity. Then again, you can trace lines of continuity between Paul and most forms of later Xty. Well, except the ones that rejected him as the arch heretic…. But no, I don’t think Paul himself is actually comparable to later Gnostics in most ways.
Dr. Ehrman,
Someone wrote the following: “Paul did not witness the resurrected Christ as the other apostle’s did, that is, on earth in the land of Israel. Paul saw Jesus in heaven.”
Two points here:
* But doesn’t that seem to depend on Acts, which critical scholars are skeptical about?
* Do you agree with me that in reading 1 Cor. 15:5-8 we have every reason to believe that Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus was like the others and without the “pie in the sky” elements?
I’d say there’s no reason to think that, from either Acts or Paul’s writings. His point is that he saw Jesus like the others did.
Dr. Ehrman,
Just for clarification, did you mean that there’s no reason to think that Paul saw Jesus in heaven?
Yes. He saw him on earth.
Dr. Ehrman,
So do you think that those who say that Paul saw a heavenly vision of Jesus are probably putting too much weight on Acts?
I’m not sure I know what you mean. Paul was on earth.
Dr. Ehrman,
Yes, Paul was on earth, but was Jesus also on earth at their encounter? Someone said Paul had a vision of Jesus enthroned in heaven, and I’m wondering if that “fantastical” way of putting it is an example of over-stressing the much later and likely embellished accounts of the ordeal as given in Acts?
Well, he seems to think his vision was the same as that of the others; I don’t see why he would be looking up at the sky.
I’m not convinced that the references you cite indicate a Pauline incarnation Christology. Part 1 of my thoughts.
1 Corinthians 8:6
I suppose you see pre-existence Christology in the phrase “all things are through him and we exist through him”. But, this doesn’t have to mean that Jesus is the creator of the Genesis creation; it can easily be understood as referring to the new creation (cf. Colossians 1:16 where Christ is said to have created “all things *in* heaven and *on* earth whereas in the Genesis creation God creates *the heavens* and *the earth*).
1 Corinthians 10:4
Given that it is implausible Paul is saying Jesus was in the form of a literal rock (which is what the use of this text as proof of his pre-existence seems to require), it seems better to understand Paul as engaging in typology when he says “that rock was Christ”; in other words, it is a type of Christ. Christ is the rock from which the community of God is given spiritual water (and therefore life) as in John 7:37-39 (cf. Acts 2:33).
Interesting interpretations. I’m open to both of them! But I do think the PHilippians poem is pretty clear on the matter.
Part 2 of my thoughts.
1 Corinthians 15:47
The key to seeing this is not a pre-existence text is the very next verse. “Man from the earth” seems to be parallel to “man of dust” and “man from heaven” seems to be parallel to “man of heaven”. Notice the reference to “those who are of heaven” in v.48. These people are not pre-existence beings and therefore neither is the “man of/from heaven” who they are like. Being “from heaven” or “of heaven” does not necessitate pre-existence in heaven.
2 Corinthians 8:9
The only way to get pre-existence out of this is to connect it to a pre-existence interpretation of Philippians 2 and therefore it can’t be used as support for a pre-existence interpretation of Philippians 2. It just says that “though he was rich, for your sake he became poor”. There is just no reason, on its face, to take this to suggest or require pre-existence.
On 2 Cor. 8:9: the main reason is because there seems to be no other plausible way to interpret Paul’s view that at one point Jesus was “rich” but gave it all up.
As a former Pharisee, do you think Paul might have retained some sort of belief in reincarnation that informed his understanding of Jesus?
In Antiquities 18.1.3, Josephus describes Pharisee beliefs in life after death: “They also believe that souls have an immortal rigor in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again; on account of which doctrines they are able greatly to persuade the body of the people…”
Similarly, in War of the Jews 2.8.14, Josephus records: “They (The Pharisees) say that all souls are incorruptible, but that the souls of good men only are removed into other bodies, but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment.”
Might Paul, therefore, have understood Jesus to be an initially human reincarnation of Adam, David, Elisha, or someone else?
I”m not quite sure what to make of Josephus’s claims of the PHarisees. The other evidence (e.g. Paul, who was one! But also Acts, the Gospels, etc.) all point to their belief in resurrection, not reincarnation.
Dr. Ehrman,
Against the Jewish view that there would be a general resurrection of the dead on the Day of Judgement, the earliest followers of Jesus insisted that Jesus had already risen as a prototype for the resurrection of his followers.
Is this correct?
This was not against the Jewish view; it was a variation of the Jewish view. For the followrs of Jesus, the general resurrection to come at the end of time had now started. That’s why Paul calls Jesus “the first fruits of the resurrection”: he was the first of the harvest to be reaped; all others are coming soon.