Jonathan Robie wrote:Our own Barry Hofstatter has blogged on this verse here, and goes into some depth on the meaning of the phrase οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο.
http://my.opera.com/BarryHofstetter/blog/2012/04/07/phil-2-6-a-responseNote: Barry's blog goes into a bunch of theology, which we try to avoid here, so discussions of his blog post should focus on the lexical, linguistic, and contextual arguments he makes.
I've read the whole article. At the conclussion the author states:
Let this mind be in you which [was] also in Christ Jesus, who, subsisting
in the form of God, did not esteem seizing upon equality with God but
emptied himself...
Now, this is problematic because the writer (who I assume is providing us
with this translation) hasn't really paid attention to the grammar of the
text. "Seizing upon equality with God" simply cannot work – it's essentially
an impossible rendering.
About my options that I mentioned before:
1) Jesus
was equal to God, and then... He didn't do something
2) Jesus didn't ἡγήσατο [direct to, plan, try, consider, intend] a ἁρπαγμὸν [a "robbery", a seizure] of being equal to God.
The "He didn't do something" of option 1) can be divided into:
a) He didn't esteem it (the equality with God) to be something as a prize, or something to be hold, or something to be retained.
It implies a passive sense of ἡγήσατο, and a not "violent" meaning of ἁρπαγμὸν.
b) If we consider to imply an active sense of ἡγήσατο, I find no sense on the sentence then.
I see that the bias that the people have because of the theology, sometimes makes almost impossible to analyze the texts.
We have to live with it, but it's a big problem.
It's very difficult even if we are "very open".