Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

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Hebrews IL 9, 10. 339
/3Afc-7rojMev on 'Irjoovg iart 6 6id, etc., or rbv 6e . . . . TjXarT. (iXenofiev
'l7]aovv elvai. But also, with respect to the sense thus obtained, the
justest doubts may be entertained. The proposition in ver. 8, that
man has not yet entered on the glory promised to him, would thus
in ver. 9 be not limited but reversed. For, if by that man who
was made for a little lower than the angels spoken of from ver. 6 to
ver. 8, we are, according to Tholuck's explanation of ver. 9 to understand
none other than Jesus, and according to ver. 9 Jesus is
already exalted, then it cannot be said in ver. 8 that man has not
yet been exalted.
Thus the simple explanation given above is confirmed on all
sides.
The author passes to the third link in the chain of thought in
the words : onojg X^P^^? ^^^^ ^^^P iravrog yevoTjrai Qavdrov. There
are two points to be determined here, the one pertaining to the
reading, the other to the connexion of o'ttw^- with what goes before.
The reading wavers between xdpiri Oeov and x^P'-? ^^^^- Theodoret,
Theodorus of Mopsuestia, and the Nestorians read %wpiV. And
Marius Mercator, Theophylact, and (Ecumenius put forth the charge
that this reading owed its existence entirely at first to the invention
of the Nestorians. Occasion was doubtless given for this charge, by
the manner in which the Nestorians availed themselves of this reading
in their doctrinal controversies with the Catholics. They ununderstood
%wp^? 6eov as more exactly determining the subject
contained in yevorjrai, and thus obtained the rather strange sense :
Jesus has tasted of death without his Godhead, i. e., the Divine
part in him remained unaffected by his death. But, however, convenient
this reading might be to those excellent critics, it by no
means owes its origiti to the Nestorians, First, because the words
XOiplg Oeov virlp -rravTog explained without prejudice and without artifice,
can yield no sense favourable to the Nestorians ; secondly, because
two hundred years before Nestorius, the reading ;^wpif Oeov
was known to the ancient Church Father Origen. And not merely
known ! For he mentions the reading which stands opposed to it
as one to be found " in several manuscripts" (t'v notv avTcypdcpocg).
In his time then,, the majority of the manuscripts had the reading
X(^pk' When, therefore, at a later period, Jerome says, vice versa,
of the reading absque Deo, that it occurs only in quibusdam exemplaribus,
very little weight is to be attached to this, partly, because
the most eminent Latin Fathers, Ambrose, Fulgentius, Vigilius and
others, adopted the reading absque, partly, because it is not difficult
to understand how the more flat and easy reading %aptTi should have
come gradually to be preferred to the more difficult, and, on doctrinal
grounds, suspected ^^piV- This satisfactorily explains how it
should happen, that on to the 6th century to which our oldest MSS.