theologia

And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Genesis 1.28, ASV)

The ancient LXX translation of Genesis 1.28 gives support for a stronger understanding of the concept of human dominion over the earth and over the animals. By stronger, I mean that we are not simply stewards or managers over it.

Where the English rendering above reads subdue it, the LXX reads κατακυριεύσατε αὐτη̑ς, literally, "dominate it!" (ABP). Liddel and Scott (9th edition) define κατακῡριεύω:

gain or exercise complete dominion

L&S use Psalm 72.8 as their example (71.8 in the LXX) which in the LXX uses κατακυριεύσει. In the ASV:

He shall have dominion also from sea to sea,
And from the River unto the ends of the earth.
They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him;
And his enemies shall lick the dust.
The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall render tribute:
The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts.
Yea, all kings shall fall down before him;
All nations shall serve him. (ASV, Psalm 72.8-11)

In this passage, the picture is that all the nations and kings are in total subjection to the messianic King. So, this supports the idea that God intends for us to exercise complete, active dominion over the earth and the animals, rather than some kind of conservationist view, in which we manage or guide nature, but for the most part leave it to itself.

I recently preached a sermon about the principle of loyalty to Christ and especially how it relates to the issue of entertainment (movies, television, video games, and so forth). The sermon puts into words some ideas that I have been meaning to express on this blog for some time. It is perhaps not the most eloquent sermon every preached, but I believe it does clearly communicate the core concept. The sermon is available through the following links in the mp3 and ogg vorbis formats:

Loyalty to Christ (mp3)

Loyalty to Christ (ogg vorbis)

The sermon is made available (like all the articles on this blog) under a CC BY-SA license, meaning you are free to copy it and distribute copies.

I have had to go quite some time without owning any printed edition of the Septuagint. However, for my birthday I received a very handsome Rahlfs-Hanhart edition, with a full textual apparatus. Diving right in, I was rather surprised by the rendering of Genesis 1.2:

ἡ δὲ γη̑ ἠ̑ν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος...

Read: "But the earth was unseen and unwrought (unformed, or unprepared)..."

I was rather confused at first because I had to look up ἀόρατος, and the only definition seemed to be "unseen" or "invisible", which wasn't anything like the "without form and void" that I was used to in the English, so I thought I had the wrong word. However, the Apostolic Bible Polygot also has "unseen" for ἀόρατος.

"Unseen" is an interesting rendering, because it seems to fit well with the next phrase "and darkness was upon the abyss" (LXX) or "and darkness was upon the face of the deep" (ASV). So the picture is an earth ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος, that is, unseen in darkness, because God has not commanded the existence of the light upon it (verse 3) and it is unwrought, or unformed, material that is only potentially the place of life and beauty that God intends for it to become.

I wish to reproduce a portion of "The Tome of Leo", a letter written by a bishop in the fifth century to address the errors of Eutyches, a monk who held that, at the incarnation, the human and Divine natures of Christ merged to form a single nature. The orthodox view is that the Son of God took on a new nature (human nature) at the incarnation, yet his Divine nature and human nature remained each distinct and complete. This is taken from Bettenson's translation:

The properties of each nature and substance [of Christ] were preserved entire, and came together to form one person. Humility was assumed by majesty, weakness by strength, mortality by eternity; and to pay the debt that we had incurred, an inviolable nature was united to a nature that can suffer. And so, to fulfil the conditions of our healing, the man Jesus Christ, one and the same mediator between God and man, was able to die in respect of the one, unable to die in respect of the other.

Thus there was born true God in the entire and perfect nature of true man, complete in his own properties, complete in ours. By 'ours' I mean those which the Creator formed in us at the beginning, which he assumed in order to restore; for in the Saviour there was no trace of the properties which the deceiver brought in, and which man, being deceived, allowed to enter. He did not become partaker of our sins because he entered into fellowship with human infirmities. He assumed the form of a servant without the stain of sin, making the human properties greater, but not detracting from the divine. For that 'emptying of himself,' whereby the invisible rendered himself visible, and the Creator and Lord of all willed to be a mortal, was a condescension of compassion, not a failure of power. Accordingly, he who made man, while he remained in the form of God, was himself made man in the form of a servant. Each nature preserves its own characteristics without diminution, so that the form of a servant does not detract from the form of God.

The devil boasted that man, deceived by his guile, had been deprived of the divine gifts and, stripped of the dower of immortality, had incurred the stern sentence of death; that he himself had found some consolation in his plight from having a companion in sin. He boasted too that God, because justice required it, had changed his purpose in respect of man whom he had created in such honour, therefore there was need of a dispensation for God to carry out his hidden plan, that the unchangeable God, whose will cannot be deprived of its own mercy, might accomplish the first design of his affection towards us by a more secret mystery; and that man, driven into sin by the devil's wicked craftiness, should not perish contrary to the purpose of God.

The son of God therefore came down from his throne in heaven without withdrawing form his Father's glory, and entered this lower world, born after a new order, by a new mode of birth. After a new order, inasmuch as he is invisible in his own nature, and he became visible in ours; he is incomprehensible and he willed to be comprehended; continuing to be before time, he began to exist in time. . . . By a new mode of birth, inasmuch as virginity inviolate which knew not the desire of the flesh supplied the material of flesh. From his mother the Lord took nature, not sin. Jesus Christ was born from a virgin's womb, by a miraculous birth. And yet his nature is not on that account unlike to ours, for he that is true God is also true man. There is no unreality in this unity since the humility of the manhood and the majesty of the deity are alternated. [invicem sunt, or 'exist in reciprocity']. For just as the God is not changed by his compassion, so the man is not swallowed up by the dignity [of the Godhead]. Each nature performs its proper functions in communion with the other; the Word performs what pertains to the Word, the flesh what pertains to the flesh. The one is resplendent with miracles, the other submits to insults. The Word withdraws not from his equality with the Father's glory; the flesh does not desert the nature of our kind. . . . And so it does not belong to the same nature to say 'I and the Father are one' and 'The Father is greater that I.' For although in the Lord Jesus Christ there is one person of God and man, yet the source of the contumely which both share is distinct from the source of the glory which they also share. . . .

Following is a link to an interesting documentation of the Bible revisions released by the American Bible Union, and eventually the complete 1912 revision which was finished by the American Baptist Publication Society (after the Bible Union dissolved in 1883):

The American Bible Union versions

The goal of the American Bible Union was, as I understand it, to produce a translation of the Bible that was a much as possible like the commonly accepted version of the Bible (the AV) yet translated all words so as to express as clearly as possible their actual meaning; as opposed to the "sacred" or doctrinally convenient renderings that had become accepted. The most controversial was, naturally, replacing baptizo with immerse.

The linked article does a fine job of detailing all the related controversies and difficulties, so I won't repeat it. However, the 1912 version is now in the public domain and available for download at the following link:

The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments (1913)

Violin - Sarah Chang - Air on the G String. Embedded below.

Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. (Loeb, viii.ii, v, vi):

It was the nineteenth year of the reign of Diocletian, and the month Dystrus, or March, as the Romans would call it, in which, as the festival of the Saviour's Passion was coming on, an imperial letter was everywhere promulgated, ordering the razing of the churches to the ground and the destruction by the fire of the Scriptures, and proclaiming that those who held high positions would lose all civil rights, while those in households, if they persisted in their profession of Christianity, would be deprived of their liberty. Such was the first document against us. But not long afterwards we were further visited with other letters, and in them the order was given that the presidents of the churches would all, in every place, be first committed to prison, and then afterwards compelled by every kind of device to sacrifice....

To begin with, the moment that the decree against the churches was published at Nicomedia, a certain person by no means obscure, but most highly honoured as the world counts pre-eminence, moved by zeal toward God and carried away by his burning faith, seized and tore it to pieces, when posted up in an open and public place, as an unholy and profane thing; [and this he did] while two emperors were present in the same city, the senior of them all [Diocletian] and he who held the fourth place in the government after him [Galerius]. But this man was the first of those at that time who thus distinguished himself; and, at the same time, in his endurance of such results as naturally followed a daring act of this kind, he maintained an untroubled and undisturbed demeanour to his very last breath.

But among all those whose praises have ever yet been sung as worthy of admiration and famed for courage, whether by Greeks or barbarians, this occasion produced those divine and outstanding martyrs Dorotheus and the imperial servants that were with him. These persons had been deemed worthy of the highest honour by their masters, who loved them no less than their own children; but they accounted the reproaches and sufferings for piety and them many forms of death that were newly devised against them, as truly greater riches than the fair fame and luxury of this life. We shall mention the kind of death that one of them met, and leave our readers to gather from that instance what happened to the others.

A certain man was publicly brought forward in the city of which we have spoken above, under the rulers we have mentioned. He was ordered to sacrifice; and, as he refused, the command was given that he should be raised on high naked, and have his whole body torn with scourges, until he should give in, and even against his will do what was bidden him. But when he remained unmoved even under these sufferings, they proceeded to mix vinegar and salt together and pour them into the mangled parts of his body, where the bones were already showing. And as he despised these pains also, a gridiron and fire were then produced, and the remnants of his body, just as if it were flesh for eating, were consumed by the fire, not all at once, in case he might find immediate release, but little by little; nor were those who placed him on the pyre allowed to desist, until, after such sufferings, he should signify his assent to what was commanded. But he clung fixedly to his purpose, and triumphantly gave up the ghost in the midst of his tortures. Such was the martyrdom of one of the imperial servants, who truly was worthy of his name. For he was called Peter.

Another record of martyrdom in Eusebius (Eccl. Hist. iv.xvii):

[Justin] writes thus: "A certain woman lived with [an intemperate] husband and at first she too [lived this way] but when she knew the doctrine of Christ she reformed, and tried to persuade her husband to reform likewise, relating the doctrine to him, and announcing the punishment in eternal fire which will be the lot of those who do not live soberly and in accordance with right teaching. But he remained in his dissoluteness, and through his acts broke up his marriage, for his wife thought it was wicked to continue consorting with a husband who tried every kind of pleasure contrary to the law of nature and to righteousness....

[To attack her, her former husband] turned in the following way against a certain Ptolemy, who had been her teacher in Christian doctrines and was punished by Urbicius. He persuaded a centurion who was a friend of his to arrest Ptolemy, and to ask him this one thing, whether he was a Christian. And Ptolemy, being a lover of the truth, and not deceitful nor of false disposition, confessed that he was a Christian. The centurion caused him to be put in prison and tortured him for a long while in the jail. Finally, when the man was brought before Urbicius he was similarly asked only this same question, whether he was a Christian, and again, conscious of the good which came to him because of the teaching of Christ, he confessed the school of divine virtue. For he who denies anything either condemns the fact and rejects it, or knowing that he is himself unworthy and alien from the fact, avoid confession, and neither of these is the case with the real Christian. When Urbicius ordered him to be executed, a certain Lucius, who was himself a Christian, seeing the verdict which was thus given contrary to all reason, said to Urbicius, 'What is the reason for punishing this man who has not been convicted of adultery or fornication or murder or theft or robbery or, in a word, of having done anything wrong, but merely confesses that he bears the Christian name? Your judgement, Urbicius, is unworthy of the emperor called Pius, or of Caesar's son, the philosopher, or of the sacred Senate.' And Urbicius made no reply except to say to Lucius, 'You seem to me to be a Christian yourself.' And when Lucius said, 'Certainly', he ordered him to be executed also. Lucius expressed his gratitude, for he said he was being removed from wicked lords like these and going to God, the good Father and King. A third, who also came forward, Urbicius commanded to be punished."

One view of the "sons of God" issue in Genesis 6.2 is that "sons of God" refers to the godly line of Seth, whereas the "daughters of men" is referring to the ungodly line of Cain. I'm not convinced of that view myself, but I thought it worthwhile to mention that it is represented in the comments for the Geneva Bible (1660), or at least a view close to it.

The "sonnes of God" are here explained as

The children of the godlie, which began to degenerate.

The "daughters of men" are explained as

Those that came of wicked parents as of Kain.

It is explained that the sons of God were

Hauing more respect to their beautie, and to worldely considerations, then to their maners, and godliness.

Recently I've taken up the old Geneva Bible (1660) the Bible of the reformers and the non-conformists. (Which, not surprisingly, they strongly preferred to the "Authorized Version" of King James, who persecuted them.) I'm finding a lot of interesting variants, as well as margin comments. Here are a few I've come across, placed alongside the AV rendering (with the modern spelling):

The "bud of the herb", Genesis 1.12:

"And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind..." (AV)

"And the earth broght forthe the budde of the herbe, that sedeth seed according to his kinde..." (Geneva)

There is an interesting margin note on Genesis 1.16, regarding the creation of the greater and lesser lights. It touches on the phenomenal aspect of the language:

"To wit, the sunne and the moone: and here he speaketh as man iudgeth by his eye: for els the moone is lesse then the planete Saturnns"[1]

For good or bad, "whales" is also used in 1.21:

"Then God created the great whales, and euerie thing liuing and mouing..." (Geneva)

Here is the explanation given of the "image and likeness" of 1.26 as given in the margin:

"This image and licknes of God in man is expounded Ephes 4.24: where it is writen, ye man was created after God in righteousnes and true holines, meaning by these two wordes all perfection, as wisdome, trueth, innocencie, power, etc."

"Breathed in his face" from 2.7:

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." (AV)

"The Lord God also made the man of the dust of the grounde, and breathed in his face breath of life, and the man was a liuing soule." (Geneva)

"Dye the death" from 2.17:

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (AV)

"But as touching the tre of knowledge of good and euil, thou shalt not eat of it: for whensoeuer thou eatest thereof, thou shalt dye the death." (Geneva)

Adam's motivation for sinning is explained in the note for 3.6, in which verse the woman gives the forbidden fruit to him, and he eats. It is suggested that he was not so much pressured to do what his wife wanted, but rather that he became moved by the same desire for godhood:

"Not so muche to please his wife, as moued by ambicion at her persuasion."

The margin note on 3.14 explains why God asked questions of the fallen man and woman, but not the serpent:

"He asked ye reason of Adam and his wife, because he wolde bring them to repentance, but he asketh not the serpent, because he wolde shewe him no mercie."

"Shall be subject" is inserted into 3.16, as opposed to the simple "shall be" of the AV:

"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." (AV)

"Vnto the woman he said, I wil greately increase thy sorowes, and thy conceptions. In sorowe shalt thou bring forthe children, and thy desire shall be subject to thine housband, and he shal rule ouer thee." (Geneva)

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1. I had trouble making out the spelling of the last word in my copy of this comment. You will want to double-check all of my Geneva quotes given in this post if you are concerned with precise spelling.