The Upper Register

Influence of LXX on Greek NT

For some time now I have been compiling what I hope will some day become an exhaustive list showing the influence of the Septuagint on the Greek New Testament. (Click link for PDF, 17 pages; it is a new document that I have uploaded to my static site.) I have collected these under four categories of influence: (a) spelling, (b) vocabulary, (c) syntax, and (d) Scripture quotations.

The third category is also referred to as "Septuagintisms." At one time, they were called "Hebraisms" or "Semitisms," on the assumption that many portions of the NT were actually translations of a text originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic. However, the general consensus of NT scholarship is that, aside from some of the sayings of Jesus, none of the actual texts or books of the NT was composed in a Semitic language. There is therefore a great reluctance to speak of "Semitisms" in the NT any more; any traces of Semitic influence on the syntax of the Greek NT are now best viewed as "Septuagintisms." In other words, the Semitic syntax has been mediated by the Septuagint which often translates the Hebrew quite literally and thus preserves the Hebraic flavor of the original. 

The second area -- vocabulary -- is perhaps even more important than syntax, and is of special interest not only to philologists but also to biblical theologians. Not a few of the theologically important words of the Greek New Testament are best understood in light of their Old Testament context and allusiveness as mediated by the Septuagint. Many of these theologically important terms in the New Testament  have nuances that differ slightly from their secular usage in extra-biblical Greek, whether classical Greek, literary Koine, or the papyri. Adolf Deissmann rightly refuted the notion prevalent in his day that the New Testament is written in a special "New Testament Greek" that differed substantially from standard Koine Greek. Nevertheless, Deissmann's emphasis on the papyri as the primary context for NT lexicography led to a reduced awareness of the strong influence of the Septuagint. As the late C. F. D. Moule said:

The pendulum has swung rather too far in the direction of equating Biblical with ‘secular’ Greek; and we must not allow these fascinating discoveries [the papyri] to blind us to the fact that Biblical Greek still does retain certain peculiarities, due in part to Semitic influence … and in part to the moulding influence of the Christian experience, which did in some measure create an idiom and a vocabulary of its own.

Septuagint scholar Sidney Jellicoe made a similar comment:

On the whole, [Deissmann] laid a sound foundation, but with the enthusiasm of the pioneer he looked to the papyri as the source of light, and took too little account of the richer content with which the LXX translators invested their Greek terms, a stage which must be interposed between the papyri and the New Testament for a right understanding of the vocabulary of the latter ... It is primarily to the Greek Old Testament that we should look, rather than directly to the papyri, for the theological significance of the terminology of the New.

[For references, see my paper, p. 1.]

Some theological implications of the above include the following:

• The οίκος formula and the debate over infant baptism
• Meaning of "righteousness" in the NT (is the Hebraic background of δικαιοσυνη more relational or forensic? I would argue forensic)
• Translation of ἀρσενοκοιται in 1 Cor 6:9 (NASB's "homosexuals" is totally misleading)
• Interpretation of "blessed are the poor" (is πτωχος an economic or a spiritual term?)
• Debate whether διαθηκη means covenant or testament
• Kline's interpretation of Luke 22:29, which uses the LXX verb "to make a covenant" (διατιθημι)
• Interpretation of "the βασιλεια (kingdom or reign) of God"
• And much, much more

Read the Greek NT in 2010

I've uploaded a new calendar for those who would like to read the Greek New Testament in 2010. For an introduction to my Annual GNT Reading Program, as well as the Greek Syntax Notes for each book of the New Testament, go here. The program is based on The UBS Greek New Testament: A Reader's Edition which I highly recommend. There is also a cheaper paperback edition.

 

Cremer: (5) Critical Considerations

In chapter 5, Cremer tackles the question of the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus.

Now, to back up, recall that Harnack denies the resurrection of Jesus. He does so from the point of view of a historian for whom the credibility of any event rests on having a historical analogue. But the resurrection stands out of analogy with all that we know and experience in human history (p. 76). Harnack thinks that the early Christians clothed their hope of a future eternal life with God (kernel) in the form of an end-time, apocalyptic mythology in which the earth, the sea, and Hades give up their dead (husk). Since their hope of experiencing this future bodily resurrection was grounded in Jesus, they made him a partaker in this fabricated dogma as well (p. 77). The record of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus is explained by Harnack as a psychological self-delusion in which the inner longings and imaginings of the disciples were externalized and turned into false memories of seemingly actual events (p. 78). 

In response, Cremer makes the following points:

(1) Paul's statements in 1 Cor 15:3-8 regarding the appearances of Jesus after the resurrection are our earliest record, pre-dating even the Gospels.

(2) Paul places the Damascus epiphany of Christ on a par with the appearances to the disciples, thus indicating the actuality of the latter in space-time history. They are not to be viewed as mere pictures produced in the soul (p. 79).

(3) Contrary to Harnack, the disciples did not imagine or wish that Jesus had risen. In fact, they had denied him and fled in unbelief. Then, in this state of unbelief, Jesus shockingly appeared to the women and to the disciples. Their immediate reaction to the reports that Jesus had risen was not one of joy but of terror and fear. Thus, their state of mind was the opposite of what Harnack supposes, i.e., their inner imaginings that Jesus had risen. The only explanation for their sudden change of mind was the reality of an external event that impinged on them from the outside. (p. 80)

(4)  Likewise with Paul on the road to Damascus. His state of mind pior to the epiphany of the risen Christ was one of total hostility to any belief that Jesus really was the living Messiah. There is no question of Paul externalizing a spiritual imagination. Furthermore, Paul has the clearest affirmation in the NT concerning the corporality of the resurrection of Jesus and that of those who belong to him (1 Cor 15). So any notion of Jesus being raised in a spiritual sense while his body still lay in the grave would have been a flat contradiction.

(5) Finally, the reality of the resurrection of Jesus is the foundation for the Christian belief that in Jesus we experience the forgiveness of sins. The disciples could not have regarded the death of Jesus as an atoning death that provided forgiveness of sins unless Jesus had been raised after his death. "There is therefore only forgiveness of sins because Jesus has risen" (p. 84). If he had died and remained dead, then his death would have been proof positive that all of his claims, his teaching, his miracles, and his offer of forgiveness to sinners were an empty sham. After the death of Jesus and prior to his resurrection, the disciples seemed to have concluded just that. But when Jesus came back from death, everything changed and they realized that indeed he was the Messiah, the bearer of the kingdom, the Savior in whom they had redemption and forgiveness.

So Cremer answers Harnack. He concludes this chapter by pointing out that, ultimately, these questions cannot be decided by minute historical-critical considerations, but by faith.

Historical criticism can the less decide, since the question is whether or not the history with which we are here concerned stands actually outside of all other history, and thus differs from all other history. The Christ whom the apostolic account describes has for His object to save, not humanity in general, least of all the wise, the noble, the mighty of the earth, but the sinners and the whole world of sinners. Has Jesus solved this problem? Has He solved it for me and in me? Could He and can He solve it? This question can not at all be historically decided, tho it concerns a fact which is either real or an illusion. But in order to decide this question it requires not a "scientific" disinterestedness, but it is to be put and treated, as Harnack also treats it, as a question of the most burning personal interest. One must enter into a personal relation to Jesus, and that not a relation in which, by certain claims which he makes or repudiates, one restricts from the very beginning the influence of Jesus on men; but where one examines the records to ascertain whether the effect which proceeds from that influence is a redeeming one or not, and whether or not this Jesus, as He  is here "described before our eyes," has redeemed us, and still redeems from the ban of sin, of guilt, of death, and the judgment. Harnack has omitted this task. (pp. 100-101, emphasis added)

Cremer: (4) The Johannine Account

Having summarized the Synoptic account (ch. 3), Cremer now turns to the issue of the Fourth Gospel (ch. 4). Harnack, in line with liberal theology in general, considers the Gospel of John to have little historical value, reflecting not the words of Jesus himself but the theology of the later church retrojected back into an account alleging historicity. The high Christology of the Fourth Gospel can thus be safely set aside as secondary on this view. While the Synoptic Gospels also contain much that is a creation of the later church, they at least can be subjected to the kernel-husk process to arrive at the kernel of the so-called historical Jesus. The Gospel of John, by contrast, is almost all chaff.

Liberals thus drive a wedge between the Synoptic Gospels and the Fourth Gospel. In the Synoptics, Jesus is Israel's messiah or king; in John, he is the eternal Word or Son of God who became man. In the Synoptics, Jesus calls people to have faith in God; in John, he is presented as calling people to faith in himself. In the Synoptics, Jesus preaches the coming of the kingdom of God as his central theme; in John, the kingdom is mentioned in only two passages and the central them is rather that of eternal life. If there are any traces of a high Christology in the Synoptic Gospels, these can be eliminated as the later church's retrojection and as not historical.

This is the basic argument to which Cremer must respond. The setting aside of John is a central plank in the critical reconstruction of the historical Jesus. Cremer answers these arguments by making several points:

First, the differences between the Synoptics and John are differences in emphasis, not in substance. In fact, the differences are no greater than the differences between Jesus himself and the preaching of the apostles as found in Acts and the epistles. Paul and the other apostles only incidentally mention "the kingdom of God," yet they do mention it, thus showing that they are well acquainted with it. 

We may thus understand how it is that we meet a difference between the Johannean account and that of the synoptists, which is similar to the difference that appears between the apostolic account and that of Christ Himself. Only incidentally do the apostles speak of the Kingdom of God, with the idea of which, however, they are well acquainted. Instead of it they proclaim the King of this Kingdom, Jesus the Messiah, the Anointed. They speak of all the good and great things which we owe to Him. For after the resurrection, through which God has certified His claims, His person and the Kinghood of His person stand in the foreground; with His person the whole matter is given:  Jesus the King or the Anointed saves, judges, gives eternal life; and thus the Kingdom of God exists wherever the Kinghood of Jesus is believed and experienced. (pp. 62-63)

The language may be different, but the content is the same. Jesus speaks of the kingdom, of entering the kingdom. John speaks of having eternal life through faith in Christ.

Second, with regard to Christology, the Synoptic emphasis on Jesus as messiah or king is congruent with John's emphasis on Jesus' divine sonship. In fact, the titles "Christ" and "Son of God" are mutually interpreting and related to one another. To say that Jesus is the "Christ" is to say that he is God's anointed King. But to be God's anointed King in the ultimate sense is to be God's Son, to have an intimate relationship with God as Father that is unique and which transcends anything the prior kings of Israel ever knew.

To John the designation Son of God in the synoptics is nothing else than the designation of the Messiah expressing the unique relation to Him of God, who had chosen Him to be His anointed, the King of His Kingdom. (p. 66) ... Only an understanding of the reality of the Messiah could unfold the whole meaning and purport of the designation, "The Son of God." (p. 67)

Ever since the destruction of the Jewish kingdom, the Jews had been waiting for a messiah, an anointed king, who would deliver them with an eternal deliverance, who would establish the kingdom of God forever in an eschatological and enduring sense. The salvation of Israel would even become the occasion for the salvation of the Gentiles and the physical creation itself. Thus, Israel's hope for a messiah was a hope for one who would not be merely a son of God, like Solomon (2 Sam 7:14), but the Son of God, one whose relation to God would "transcend every human measure" (p. 67). The Gospel of John thus delves more deeply into the ontological nature of this Messiah as the eternal Word who became flesh.

John's history is the shadowing forth of Him in whom from eternity everything unites what God has to tell to the world. On this account He is called the Word, and, as this Word, He is God. For everything which God is and will be for us He is, and everything is comprised and terminated in Him .... And as God in Him made Himself actually present with us, we beheld His glory -- glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. (p. 69) ... [John] speaks of the eternal life which He gives, and which those who believe in Him may find and have -- the same gift which the synoptists name as the gift of salvation, for the sake of which the Kingdom of God is to be desired. (p. 70) ... We also understand that from the beginning he put everything under the aspect that regards Him as the eternal Son of God, incarnated for our sakes .... John discloses the deepest ground of history which his readers can comprehend. (p. 72)

Third, therefore, the Gospel of John and the Synoptic Gospels are both right and do not preclude one another. They are mutually interpreting, complementary apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ.

In neither of these accounts does Jesus appear as a founder of religion, as a man who, through the fulness and accuracy of His knowledge of God, His unshaken faithfulness and sincerity, and the plenitude of His  religio-ethical doctrine, had become the author of that religion that consists of true union with God, which alone is the true religion .... According to all the extant accounts -- according to all, that is, which we learn about Him from the mouth and from the service of His disciples and His first believers -- He is not the subject but the object of religion. He teaches us to know the Father, He shows us the way to the Father -- yes, He is the way, and also the truth, which one can trust forever, and He is the life. He who has Him and holds to Him is free from death, judgment, and perdition. He is the center of the Gospel. He brings in the Kingdom of God, and He brings that Kingdom to us. He not only proclaims the forgiveness of sin, He actually forgives sin. "As many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become children of God, even to them that believe in His name." (pp. 74-75)

This is how Cremer answers the liberal attempt to drive a wedge between the Synoptics and John. This is the key to the whole debate. The Holy Spirit gave us four Gospels for a reason. We must interpret the person and message of Jesus in light of all four, not using a truncated canon within the canon that would eliminate the Fourth Gospel and parts of the Synoptic Gospels, leaving us a merely human messiah who, because he is merely human, cannot give us the forgiveness of sins and eternal life, and who cannot reveal the Father.