Re: Hebrews 2:7 (Attention Kyle Dillon and/or anyone else)

From: Kyle Dillon (spiffy@learningstar.com)
Date: Thu Oct 15 1998 - 01:26:42 EDT


-----Original Message-----
From: Theodore H. Mann <thmann@juno.com>
To: Biblical Greek <b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 1998 4:55 PM
Subject: Re: Hebrews 2:7 (Attention Kyle Dillon and/or anyone else)

[...]

>I find this quite interesting. I hope that I am not asking an
>inappropriate question for B-Greek, but: What is the actual hard
>evidence, if any, that the translators of the LXX thought the use of the
>term "God" might belittle God? Many thanks.

It seems that the Jews of the third century(?) B.C. considered man's place
much, much lower than God's place. They probably thought that if mankind,
being so low, was only a little bit lower than God, than God must also be
low, so they intentionally viewed the passage as a comparison between humans
and angels (the "godlike" figures). This is just a guess, but it seems to
make the most sense in this case. Why else would "elohim" be interpreted as
"godlike beings" here when in the majority of the instances it is found in
the Old Testament it refers to the true God ("elohim," although a plural
noun, can be used of single entities for intensification, which is true of
several Hebrew nouns, like "behemoth," which refers to a giant beast)?

>Best in Christ,
>Theodore "Ted" H. Mann
>thmann@juno.com

---
B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu
To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:40:04 EDT