by aqwsed12345 136 Replies latest watchtower bible
"It is even conceptually impossible, since only God can create. Creation is an exclusively divine ability, and no created being can even serve as a means for creation"
Oh? Only God can create? God does delegate. And he delegated the making to his son, the spirit being who became Jesus.
Creating is making something out of nothing. Jehovah did that. But the making, designing and forming of the matter to plants, animals and humans (Let us make man in our image) was done by Jesus.
Much of the commentary on the link is old, predates modern scholarship and tends to support King James Version renderings. Nevertheless, the first commentary on the link you provided (Ellicott), says that “formed” or “begotten” is the correct meaning of qana in this passage and that the church “changed their ground” and adopted the translation “possessed” when the threat of Arianism arose. The Lexicons on the Blue Letter Bible website that you linked agree that qana means “created” in this verse.
Brown-Driver-Briggs: a. of God as originating, creating, קֹנֵה שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץGenesis 14:19, 22; Deuteronomy 32:6 (Israel), Psalm 139:13 (כִּלְֹיתָ֑י); Proverbs 8:22 (חכמה which see).
Gesenius: (1) to found, create [see note below] the heaven and the earth, Gen. 14:19, 22; men, Deut. 32:6; Psa. 139:13; Prov. 8:22
The same word is used of creation in the following verses:
Gen 14.19 “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth,
Gen 14. 22 But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have sworn to God Most High, maker of heaven and earth,
Deu 32.6 Do you thus repay the Lord,
O foolish and senseless people?
Is not he your father who created you,
who made you and established you?
Ps 139.13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
In the Proverbs passage itself the parallel phrases point to “created” being the meaning of the word in verse 22. (NRSV)
22 “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
23 Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
25 Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
Comparative linguistics (looking at similar words in related languages) also supports the meaning “created”.
But more to the point, the vast majority of modern expert translators of Hebrew translate the word as “created” in this verse. This includes modern translations by the leading Jewish scholars who produced the JPS Bible, and Robert Alter, who both translate “created” in this verse.
NRSV The LORD created me
New Living Translation The LORD formed me
New International Version The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works
Holman Christian Standard Bible The LORD made me
Good News Translation The LORD created me
NET Bible The LORD created me
Common English Bible The LORD created me
International Standard Version The LORD made me
New Catholic Bible The LORD created me
Jerusalem Bible Yahweh created me
Revised English Bible The LORD created me
Moffatt The Eternal made me
Rotherham Yahweh had constituted me the beginning of his way
The German versions on my shelf, Elberfelder, Herder, and Zürcher similarly have “geschaffen”, “created”.
More important than the sheer number of versions that use “created”, or equivalent, is the the fact that the most highly regarded and scholarly versions do: the NRSV, the JPS translation, Robert Alter, the Jerusalem Bible and its revisions.
The few modern exceptions are those that follow the KJV which copied the Vulgate with a view to combatting Arianism (according to Ellicott in the link you provided), or niche evangelical versions for the same reason. The reason ancient Jewish versions opposed the LXX translation of Prov 8.22 is the same reason that they opposed the LXX in general - because they regarded it as a corrupt Christian translation and contradicted it whenever they could, especially in important Christological passages. Modern Hebrew scholars, such as Robert Alter and the JPS Bible, translate “created” in the verse because they care about what it actually means rather than its implications for any Christian debate.
The only modern scholar you have cited is Robert Bowman. He’s a nice enough man, I’ve had some dealings with him, but he’s not a Hebrew scholar, he’s an evangelical apologist. He’s quite a good one, as far as apologists go, but he doesn’t have the expertise of Robert Alter, the translators of the NRSV, the JPS, the Jerusalem Bible, and all the scholars who translate qana as “created” in this verse. Mainstream scholarship is firmly behind the translation “created” in Prov 8.22.
I see what it is about in this case, beyond your religious bias. Today there is a so-called chronolatry, a worship of time, according to which people today are different from 500, 1000, 2000 years ago. There is this idolatry of "modern science" and "modern scholarship", compared to which the ancient Bible translators would have been imbeciles. So completely new perspectives are opening up in the humanities as well, just as a new iPhone model is released every year.
Jerome translated it completely independently of the Arian controversy, because by then the whole issue was closed. The Nicene Fathers were able to refute Arianism with a mistranslation of the Septuagint at hand. The Jewish revisers of the Septuagint translation (Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus) cannot be accused of Christian theological bias. You're throwing authorities at me here, in the usual WTS propaganda "quote miner" way. "To create" is not at all the primary meaning of the Hebrew verb "qanah", compare the other verses given.
In particular, this cannot be used to support the Arian interpretation, since the Wisdom of Proverbs is not one-to-one here as the Son revealed in the New Testament, but only a typology that can be applied to it. Especially since this interpretation is ruled out by several other specific and literal scriptural statements about the Son, which declare that the Son was from the beginning and existed even before the aeons.
I also quote from here:
"Created" in Proverbs 8:22
Mondo1 also claims that use of ktizó in Proverbs 8:22 LXX is a "proper" rendering of the Hebrew qny and denies a quasi-biological sense of "beget". This is not the conclusion of the various lexical studies I have seen of Proverbs 8:22, in particular those of William Irwin (JBL, 1961) and Bruce Vawter (JBL, 1980). They note the lack of evidence that this root is used to mean "create" (as a fashioning or constructing of things), and show that most instances in the OT have the sense of "acquire/possess" and "produce/become parent of". The latter has a quasi-biological nuance in Genesis 4:1, Deuteronomy 32:6, Psalm 139:13, and one may also recall qnyt ilm as an epithet of Asherah, which has in view her status as mother of the gods.
Irwin notes that qnny in Proverbs 8:22 is syntactically connected to the phrase r'shyt drkw, and drk when attributed to God (e.g. drk yhwh "way of Yahweh") refers to God's qualities and principles (cf. "righteousness" and "justice" in Genesis 18:19, see also Psalm 119:27, 33, Proverbs 10:29, Jeremiah 5:4, Ezekiel 18:29, etc.); "wisdom" would thus be the drk "way" that is possessed or produced by Yahweh "before (qdm) his works of old". As for r'shyt (which lacks a preposition unlike the temporal b-rshyt in Genesis 1:1 or m-r'sh in Proverbs 8:23), Irwin finds a protemporal meaning unlikely:
"The origin of Wisdom was long antecedent to God's work in creating the world and is sharply contrasted with it: before the mountains and hills, before earth or heavens were made, then Wisdom existed. The emphasisis not that Wisdom came into being, by whatever process, as the first of God's creative activities nor at their beginning, but long before them. This is stated so clearly in v. 22b and 23 that there should have been no confusion" (p. 140).
Instead of taking it as temporal, he takes r'shyt with a nuance of "preeminent" (as in Numbers 24:20) as an accusative in apposition to the first person suffix, i.e. "he possessed/produced me as the foremost of his ways/attributes". As for Vawter's analysis, he notes that in Proverbs 8:22 "wisdom is said to have pre-existed the created order and therefore to be outside of it, though in some fashion it subsequently became instrumental in the production of the created order" (p. 213), and regards the drkw "his way" as referring to Yahweh's creative modus operandi and "principle" (p. 214), pointing to Proverbs 4:7 which strikingly states that the r'shyt chkmh "beginning of wisdom" is to "acquire wisdom (qnh chkmh)". In this close parallel (which uses the key words qnh and r'shyt in connection with chkmh "wisdom"), r'shyt is used to indicate the fundamental or elementary principle of wisdom (cf. elemental r'sh in Psalm 119:160 and elemental arkhé in Hebrews 5:12, 6:1), namely, that it must be acquired. In this light, "Yahweh acquired/possessed me as the r'shyt of his ways" would then mean that Yahweh's acquisition of wisdom (= qnh chkmh of 4:7) is the basic elementary principle underlying his ways (= r'shyt chkmh in 4:7). Both analyses agree that r'shyt is not used in a protemporal sense.
The LXX rendered r'shyt drkw as arkhén hodón autou "beginning of his ways" and r'shyt chkmh of 4:7 as arkhé sophias "beginning of wisdom", but qnny in 8:22 is unexpectedly translated as ektise me "created me". This rendering is unusual because Hebrew qny is regularly rendered with ktésthai "acquire" in the LXX (61 or 63 times, as opposed to only 3 with ktizó), hence Proverbs 4:7 LXX has ktésai sophian "acquire wisdom". The expected ektésato me "acquired me" in fact occurs in the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion (cf. possedit "he possessed" in the Vulgate). It is noteworthy that the correct ektésato me "acquired me" is very similar to ektise me "created me", suggesting that a copyist error may have occurred at some point; in fact yqnw in Jeremiah 32:15 appears erroneously as ktisthésontai in one MS of the LXX, as opposed to the correct ktéthésontai in the others.
Of course, the LXX rendering with ktizó would have been one important source of influence for Hellenistic Jewish wisdom/Logos theology and early Christian christology, regardless of what Proverbs 8:22 meant in the original Hebrew; the LXX rendering should thus be treated separately from the Hebrew text. Most strikingly, Sirach 1:4, 9, 24:8-9 allude to Proverbs 8:22, i.e. "wisdom was created before all other things (protera pantón ekistai sophia)" in 1:4 and "in the beginning he created me (ap arkhés ektisen me)" in 24:9. But cf. ektésamén in 24:6 (= primatum habui in the Vulgate), which may be alluded to in Colossians 1:18. Philo of Alexandria however did not follow the attested LXX rendering....he rendered Proverbs 8:22 as "God acquired me as the very first of his works (ho theos ektésato me prótistén tón heautou ergón), a reading that takes r'shyt as propartial and qnny as "he possessed/acquired".
aqwsed12345
The insertion of the word "other" is unjustifiable because it falsifies the Watchtower's concept into the sacred text, which is a source to be quoted later with authority. This is, by the way, the essence of a sectarian interpretation, not the context of the text. That is, they put their conclusions and elaborations into the apostle's mouth. This is what is unacceptable in a Bible translation.
aqwsed12345 : I also quote from here:
What you do not quote is the response to that post which addresses it in detail, including the thought that Psalm 139:13 is possibly the most difficult passage of all standing in the way of one who refuses to acknowledge a qanâ = ‘create’ in the Hebrew Bible, and that the Syriac (and Targum) has “created me,” which is a translation generally accepted to be from the Hebrew.
Earnest:
This is still not the primary meaning of the word "qanah", and in this case especially not even in the "creatio ex nihilo", "bara", or "poiéō" sense. At most, as it is used in the sense of "creation" of the cardinals, which does not mean "made", but appointing. Especially since the text itself states that this "qanani" happened before "his works of old", i.e. before His works of creation, as it follows.
Athanasius receiving ἔκτισεν ektisen, took it in the sense of appointing, and saw in the Septuagint a declaration that the Father had made the Son the "chief," the "head," the "sovereign," over all creation. There does not seem indeed any ground for the thought of creation either in the meaning of the root, or in the general usage of the word. What is meant in this passage is that we cannot think of God as ever having been without Wisdom.
So the Fathers uderstood ἔκτισε of the LXX by referring it not to the actual existence, but to the position, place of the Son (Athanasius: Deus me creavit regem or caput operum suorum; Cyrill.: non condidit secundum substantiam, sed constituit me totius universi principium et fundamentum).
So the verb "ktizein" is used by Athanasius, and its meaning was disputed by the Arians. In classical Greek usage, "ktizein" meant: to cultivate the land, make it habitable, found to establish.
This is in harmony, with the previous understanding of the Church, check up Dionysius's epislte Against the Sabellians, well before the Arian controversy.
aqwsed : There does not seem indeed any ground for the thought of creation either in the meaning of the root, or in the general usage of the word.
You may cite Athanasius as much as you like, but you fail to address the Jewish and other translations provided by slimboyfat as well as the lexicons (such as Brown-Driver-Briggs and Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament) which render "qanah" as 'create' in Proverbs 8:22.
Wonderment:
Why didn't you read the end of the opening comment?
There I specifically mentioned that the translation of "pas", "panta" as "everything else", "all other" is only justifiable, in the case it is already completely clear from the context that the previously mentioned person or thing also belongs to the "all", "everything" group mentioned after, so it's self efident that is also included.
For example, Luke 13:2, which the Watchtower refers to, where it is clear that these people were also Galileans.
Or Luke 21:29 - It is written that the fig tree also belongs to the category of trees. But it is not written about Jesus that he is also a creature.
And since the Bible nowhere calls the Son a created being (ktistheis), a creature (ktisma) or the first creature (protoktisma or protoktisis), and the the correct meaning of "prōtotokos pasēs ktiseōs" here is not that he is the first created being, but rather that he is "distinguished, pre-eminent heir (ruler) of the whole creation", thus "over the whole creation", it is not justifiable to put the word "other" in the following.
Earnest
Of course, I responded to him substantially. Of course, biblical terms, especially in Hebrew, have many nuances of meaning, and even if you translate "qanah" as "ktizo" in Greek or "create" in English (for which there is obviously a precedent, no matter how much you repeat it to me, which of course I was aware of), even then this cannot be justified in the sense of "bara", "poiéō", "creatio ex nihilo", "bring into existence in time", which the Arians asserted. The Nicene creed condemned to use the verb "poiéō", not the "ktizo", in relation of the generation of the Son of the Father.
This is a good example of the fact that it is not enough to look at the dictionary form of biblical exegesis, it is necessary to dive into the specific meaning of each translation (which is necessarily an interpretation).
You should compare how is the verb 'qanah' translated in the Book of Proverbs 1:5, 4:5, 4:7, 15:32, 16:16, 18:15, 19:8.
Authoritative ancient Jewish translators such as Philo of Alexandria, Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus, all translated this as ἐκτήσατο, which captures the meaing of "qanah" much better.
κτᾰ́ομαι • (ktáomai)
Question: If Jesus was God on earth, why did He lie to His faithful servant Moses, and then 1500 years later allow the Pharisees to to see Him in a physical form?
(Exodus 33:20) But he [God] added: “You cannot see my face, for no man can see me and live.”
