Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

Hebrews XI. 3. 543
framed by a word of God." In voovfiev there lies a kind of oxymoron
; v6i]aig generally forms the antithesis to TTLong ;
vo-qoiq is
perception obtained through the medium of vision. The idea therefore
is, that that state of mind denoted by mari.q (the demonstration
of the power of the unseen in man) quahfies the man to perceive
something which is properly not perceptible^ namely, not perceptible
hy the senses; that therefore a higher sensorium above the sensual
sensorium is opened up in the man,—The worlds are created by
Grod's word, " so that that which is seen {ro fiXenonevov according to
A.D.E. Copt., Clem. Al. etc.) was made of that which does not appear."
Beza, Bengel, Schulz, Bohme, Winer, de Sacy, Martin,
Osterwald, the Port Royalists, Bleek, Olshausen, etc., refer firj as
respects the position of the words, to yeyovivai, and render :
" So
that that which is seen was not (again) made of that which is visible."
But if this were the idea which was meant to be expressed,
then the author would not have used the two words (3XeTT6fj.evov and
(paivoiieva, but must necessarily have used j3Xeneadat, both times, or
(paiveoOai both times, in order by the repetition of the same word to
express what in German has to be expressed by " wieder."
Besides
this, the sentiment in this negative form would in general be unsuitable.
That the visible cannot again have proceeded from what is visible,
would be no affirmation of faith, but one of speculation, a philosopheme.—The
translators of the Peshito and Vulgate, then Chrysostom,
Theodoret, (Ecumenius, Theophylact, Erasmus, Luther,
Gerhard, Tholuck, and a great number of other commentators, have
therefore more properly supposed a transposition (jii] in for t/c ju?/),
and with all the more reason as examples of analogous transpositions,
precisely in the case of the preposition e/c, are not wanting.
(Especially comp. the example adduced by Tholuck from Arist.
Phys. (v, 1 : rr/v t/c firj vnoKetnevov eig vTcoKtiiievov nErafioXijv . . . r]
yap 111) t^ vTTOKeifievov elg jU?) v-noKeifievov ovk sgti ixerafioXri). It is wrong,
however (with Luther, J. Capellus, Calov, Bretschneider, etc.)^ to
explain rd fir) (paLvoiieva by rd ovk, ovra, " nothing," and quite as
wrong to understand by it chaos (Limborch, etc.). The explanation
of iJ-Tj (paivoiieva which refers it to the ideas in God (in the Platonic
sense) is hetereogeneous, although an approximation to the truth.
The expression must rather of necessity be explained (with Tholuck)
from the antithesis laid down in ver. 1. Most will depend, however,
on our keeping in view the distinction between i^rj and ovk. Ov
denies the existence, [it] the quality ; ov says that a thing is not objectively,
ju^ denies a thing as conceived or conceivable. Ovk 6v denotes
that which does not exist, which is not jj^rj ;
ov that whose existence,
in respect of its quality, is a nonexistence, a thing unreal. In short,
ov before adjectives is generally rendered by " not," fj-i] before adjectives
generally by " un-." Thus the ov jSXenoneva are things which