1 The Lord said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. 2 The Lord shall send out a rod of power for thee out of Sion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. 3 With thee is dominion in the day of thy power, in the splendours of thy saints: I have begotten thee from the womb before the morning. 4 The Lord sware, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedec.
This short passage from Psalm 109 of the Septuagint (i.e. Psalm 110) shows up again and again. Mark 12:36 has Jesus use the first verse cleverly to refute ideas that the Christ will be a descendant of David: “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David? ... David himself calls Him ‘Lord.’ So how can He be David’s son?”
Heberews 8:1-2 continues a meditation on verse 4 with the conclusion: "Now the main point of what we are saying is this: We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by a mere human being."
We see that there's also interpretation of verse 3, "I have begotten thee from the womb before the morning."
Specifically, the excerpts of Theodotus (via Clement) says this:
Notice that this is likewise found in Justin:For we thus understand “I begot thee before the morning star” with reference to the first-created Logos of God and similarly “thy name is before sun” and moon and before all creation
"And David predicted that He would be born from the womb before sun and moon, according to the Father's will, and made Him known, being Christ, as God strong and to be worshipped."
I was curious what this phrase "before sun and moon" meant (and later realized it was because I'm a dunce compared to the ancient Christians and Jews when it comes to picking up context clues in Jewish scriptures...), and I found a clue here.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... ytus5.html
Obviously! The sun and moon were created on the fourth day. So Justin Martyr is saying that David said that Christ "would be born from the womb" before the fourth day of creation. Justin gives a more elaborate explanation here in Dialogue 61:These are the statements which the patrons of the Sethian doctrines make, as far as it is possible to declare in a few words. Their system, however, is made up (of tenets) from natural (philosophers), and of expressions uttered in reference to different other subjects; and transferring (the sense of) these to the Eternal Logos, they explain them as we have declared. But they assert likewise that Moses confirms their doctrine when he says, "Darkness, and mist, and tempest." These, (the Sethian) says, are the three principles (of our system); or when he states that three were born in paradise--Adam, Eve, the serpent; or when he speaks of three (persons, namely) Cain, Abel, Seth; and again of three (others)--Shem, Ham, Japheth; or when he mentions three patriarchs -Abraham, Isaac, Jacob; or when he speaks of the existence of three days before sun and moon; or when he mentions three laws--prohibitory, permissive, and adjudicatory of punishment.
With this, Justin implies that God begat "a Beginning" before Genesis 1:1, and "in the Beginning" created the heaven and the earth. Justin also implies that this "Son" is the same as the "Holy Spirit," perhaps the "Spirit of God" mentioned in Genesis 1:2. And Justin calls him the "Word," through whom God made other things when he spoke in Genesis 1:3. Justin adduces "let us make man in our image" as evidence of this Word, which is God and thus increases the number to plural.“I shall give you another testimony, my friends,” said I, “from the Scriptures, that God begat before all creatures a Beginning, [who was] a certain rational power [proceeding] from Himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos; and on another occasion He calls Himself Captain, when He appeared in human form to Joshua the son of Nave (Nun). For He can be called by all those names, since He ministers to the Father’s will, and since He was begotten of the Father by an act of will; just as we see happening among ourselves: for when we give out some word, we beget the word; yet not by abscission, so as to lessen the word [which remains] in us, when we give it out: and just as we see also happening in the case of a fire, which is not lessened when it has kindled [another], but remains the same; and that which has been kindled by it likewise appears to exist by itself, not diminishing that from which it was kindled. The Word of Wisdom, who is Himself this God begotten of the Father of all things, and Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and the Glory of the Begetter, will bear evidence to me, when He speaks by Solomon the following: ‘If I shall declare to you what happens daily, I shall call to mind events from everlasting, and review them. The Lord made me the beginning of His ways for His works. From everlasting He established me in the beginning, before He had made the earth, and before He had made the deeps, before the springs of the waters had issued forth, before the mountains had been established. Before all the hills He begets me. God made the country, and the desert, and the highest inhabited places under the sky. When He made ready the heavens, I was along with Him, and when He set up His throne on the winds: when He made the high clouds strong, and the springs of the deep safe, when He made the foundations of the earth, I was with Him arranging.
Trypho elsewhere mentions the sun and moon as being given unto the nations to worship as gods: "show us that the Spirit of prophecy admits another God besides the Maker of all things, taking care not to speak of the sun and moon, which, it is written, God has given to the nations to worship as gods..." (Dialogue 55) The first-begotten Word has priority over the sun and moon, both temporally and in importance.
Justin does imply the corruptibility of that which is begotten, having a contingent existence at God's will ("begotten of the Father by an act of will"): "Does it seem to you the very same can be said of the soul, and generally of all things? For those things which exist after God, or shall at any time exist, these have the nature of decay, and are such as may be blotted out and cease to exist; for God alone is unbegotten and incorruptible, and therefore He is God, but all other things after Him are created and corruptible. ... It makes no matter to me whether Plato or Pythagoras, or, in short, any other man held such opinions. For the truth is so; and you would perceive it from this. The soul assuredly is or has life. If, then, it is life, it would cause something else, and not itself, to live, even as motion would move something else than itself. Now, that the soul lives, no one would deny. But if it lives, it lives not as being life, but as the partaker of life; but that which partakes of anything, is different from that of which it does partake. Now the soul partakes of life, since God wills it to live. Thus, then, it will not even partake [of life] when God does not will it to live." (Chapters 5-6)
Justin acknowledges the Stoic idea of the "seed of reason" (logos spermatikos) in Second Apology 8:
And applies it to Christ in First Apology 46:And those of the Stoic school--since, so far as their moral teaching went, they were admirable, as were also the poets in some particulars, on account of the seed of reason [the Logos] implanted in every race of men-- were, we know, hated and put to death,--Heraclitus for instance, and, among those of our own time, Musonius and others. For, as we intimated, the devils have always effected, that all those who anyhow live a reasonable and earnest life and shun vice, be hated. And it is nothing wonderful; if the devils are proved to cause those to be much worse hated who live not according to a part only of the word diffused [among men], but by the knowledge and contemplation of the whole Word, which is Christ. And they, having been shut up in eternal fire, shall suffer their just punishment and penalty. For if they are even now overthrown by men through the name of Jesus Christ, this is an intimation of the punishment in eternal fire which is to be inflicted on themselves and those who serve them. For thus did both all the prophets foretell, and our own teacher Jesus teach.
Justin turns the criticism of Greek philosophy to his favor, arguing that the unbegotten God cannot be meant in several scriptures, thus necessitating a second begotten God (Dialogue 127):But lest some should, without reason, and for the perversion of what we teach, maintain that we say that Christ was born one hundred and fifty years ago under Cyrenius, and subsequently, in the time of Pontius Pilate, taught what we say He taught; and should cry out against us as though all men who were born before Him were irresponsible—let us anticipate and solve the difficulty. We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them; and among the barbarians, Abraham, and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others whose actions and names we now decline to recount, because we know it would be tedious. So that even they who lived before Christ, and lived without reason, were wicked and hostile to Christ, and slew those who lived reasonably. But who, through the power of the Word, according to the will of God the Father and Lord of all, He was born of a virgin as a man, and was named Jesus, and was crucified, and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, an intelligent man will be able to comprehend from what has been already so largely said. And we, since the proof of this subject is less needful now, will pass for the present to the proof of those things which are urgent.
Dialogue 64 has Justin argue that Christ will come forth from the heavens, and return to the highest places, that his divinity be recognized:For the ineffable Father and Lord of all neither has come to any place, nor walks, nor rises up, but remains in his own place wherever that is, quick to behold and quick to hear, having neither eyes nor ears, but being of indescribable might; and he sees all things and knows all things, and none of us escapes his observation; and he is not moved or confined to a spot in the whole world, for he existed before the world was made. How then could he talk with anyone, or be seen by anyone, or appear on the smallest portion of the earth
Is this a proof-text that originally had a much more "Marcionite" implication? It's natural to think so. If Christ is first seen being "born," then his coming forth from the highest heavens is concealed, and the whole point that "you may recognize Him as God coming from above" is weakened because it proceeds from faith, not sight.And you remember from other words also spoken by David, and which I have mentioned before, how it is declared that He would come forth from the highest heavens, and again return to the same places, in order that you may recognise Him as God coming forth from above, and man living among men; and [how it is declared] that He will again appear, and they who pierced Him shall see Him, and shall bewail Him. [The words] are these: 'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night shows knowledge: They are not speeches or words whose voices are heard. Their sound has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. In the sun has he set his habitation; and he, like a bridegroom going forth from his chamber, will rejoice as a giant to run his race: from the highest heaven is his going forth, and he returns to the highest heaven, and there is not one who shall be hidden from his heat.
Justin claims that Jesus has supernatural, otherworldly blood (Dialogue 54):
Dialogue 84 says that the virgin birth was a sign, and Dialogue 66 says that nobody else has fulfilled Isaiah 7:14:Christ would wash those who believe in him with his own blood. For the Holy Spirit called those who receive remission of sins through him, his garments; among whom he is always present in power, but will be manifestly present at his second coming. That the Scripture mentions the blood of the grape has been evidently designed, because Christ derives blood, not from the seed of man, but from the power of God. For as God, and not man, has produced the blood of the vine, so also has (one) predicted that the blood of Christ would be, not of the seed of man, but of the power of God.
"It is evident to all that in the race of Abraham according to the flesh no one has been born of a virgin, or is said to have been born, save this our Christ."
Justin always speaks of the parentage of the virgin ("deigned to become Incarnate, and be born of this Virgin of the family of David” in Dialogue 45), insisting that Christ is not a "man born of men." Justin also takes the reference to "one like unto a son of man" (Dan. 7:13) to show that Christ "appeared, and was man, but not of human seed." (Dialogue 76) Likewise where it says "a stone cut out of the mountain without hands" (Dan. 2:45), Justin sees this as speaking of Jesus, "of the will of the Father and God of all things, who brought him forth." In short, Justin maintains that "Christ existed as God before the ages, then, that he submitted to be born and to become man, yet that he is not man of men."
I started this exploration because I had a hard time understanding the title phrase "born of the womb before sun and moon." I came away with several observations about Justin:
(1) Justin held that the "seed of reason," which was in Stoics and other good philosophers, was the second God.
(2) Justin held that any time God appeared in a certain time and place, that had to be the second God.
(3) Justin held that the first-begotten Angel was the second God, who participated in creation.
(4) Justin held that the second God may be recognized as divine because he came forth from heaven and returned to heaven.
(5) Justin held that the second God appeared as a divine man brought forth by God, with blood that is of the power of God.
(6) Justin held that the second God deigned to become incarnate and to be born of the Virgin, as a sign.
(7) Justin held that the second God was the subject of the prophecies concerning the Christ and other scriptural allusions.
(8) Justin held that these scriptural allusions regarding the first coming of Christ, to suffer, were fulfilled in the memoirs of the apostles.
Justin got (1) and (2) from his Greek philosophical education. Justin may have gotten (3) directly from his conversion to Christianity, but some more remote cause could be pre-Christian speculation.
Justin got (4) and possibly (5) from Christian explanations of scripture that seem to have a descended-from-heavens tinge. This kind of influence may be reinforced by the wording of being begotten "before sun and moon," elsewhere emphasized by Christians considered heretical. Justin got (6) from teachings that are considered more orthodox.
(7) is the epistemological core of Christianity for Justin, and (8) is the proof of this knowledge, which should convince non-believers.