Texts in Conversation
The Christian theologian Athanasius uses the Greek Septuagint version of Proverbs 8:25 to argue that Jesus is "eternally begotten" and not created. This reading is only possible in the Greek version and not the original Hebrew version.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
LXX Proverbs 8:25
Septuagint
23 He established me before time was in the beginning, 24 before he made the earth, and before he made the depths; before the fountains of water came forth: 25 before the mountains were settled, and before all hills, he begets me. 26 The Lord made countries and uninhabited tracts, and the highest inhabited parts of the world.
Early Christian
And the Lord Himself shows even in the Proverbs that creature and offspring are not the same, but differ from each other in nature and in the meaning of the words. For having said, 'The Lord created me a beginning of His ways,' He has added, 'But before all the hills He begot me.' If, then, the Word were a creature by nature and in His Essence, and there were no difference between offspring and creature, He would not have added, 'He begot me,' but would have been content with 'He created,' as if that term implied 'He begot.' But as it is, after saying, 'He created me a beginning of His ways for His works,' He has added not simply 'begot me,' but with the connecting conjunction 'But,' as if guarding the term 'created' by it, when He says, 'But before all the hills He begot me.' For 'begot me,' following so closely on 'created me,' makes the meaning one, and shows that 'created' is said with a purpose, but that 'begot me' comes before 'created me.' For just as, if He had said the reverse — 'The Lord begot me,' and gone on, 'But before the hills He created me' — 'created' would certainly come before 'begot,' so, having said 'created' first and then added 'But before all the hills He begot me,' He necessarily shows that 'begot' came before 'created.' For in saying, 'Before all He begot me,' He indicates that He is other than all things, since it was shown to be true in an earlier part of this book that no one creature was made before another, but all originated things came into existence at once together at one and the same command. Therefore the words that follow 'created' do not also follow 'begot me'; but in the case of 'created,' 'beginning of ways' is added, while of 'begot me' He does not say, 'He begot me as a beginning,' but 'before all He begot me.' But He who is before all is not a beginning of all, but is other than all; and if He is other than all (in which 'all' the beginning of all is included), it follows that He is other than the creatures; and it becomes clear that the Word, being other than all things and before all, is afterward created 'a beginning of the ways for works,' because He became man, so that, as the Apostle has said, He who is the 'Beginning' and 'Firstborn from the dead' 'might have first place in all things.'
Date: 355-360 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
… Athanasius reads two verses together: 8.22: ‘the Lord created me as a beginning of his ways for his works.’ 8.25: ‘But before all the hills, he begets me.’ The first verse, with its explanatory clause explaining the reason ‘as a beginning…’, refers to the Lord becoming incarnate as part of the divine economy of salvation. Verse 25, speaking directly and simply of the Lord, identifies his eternal begetting from the Father (Against the Arians 2.60). Athanasius presents the precise logic of this language as reflecting the overall pattern of scriptural speech. The use of ‘but’ at the beginning of verse 25, for instance, is there to highlight the contrast between creating and begetting. …
Ayres, Lewis
"Scripture in the Trinitarian Controversies" in Blowers, Paul M.; Martens, Peter W. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation
(pp. 444-445) Oxford University Press, 2019
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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