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Adam in Romans i

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

M. D. Hooker
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Extract

The phrase έν òμοιώματι εỉκòνος in Rom. i. 23 is one which has long puzzled commentators and translators, who are compelled to paraphrase it in order to make sense of the verse. There is no obvious reason why Paul should have employed two words which in this context appear to convey an identical meaning, unless, as C. K. Barrett suggests, ‘the reduplication emphasizes the inferior, shadowy character of that which is substituted for God’.

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Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , July 1960 , pp. 297 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1960

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References

page 297 note 1 A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1957), p. 38.

page 297 note 2 Paul's interpretation is in keeping with the current exegesis of his time, according to which ‘their glory’ is one of the eighteen ‘corrections of the scribes’, and the phrase really means ‘his glory’. Some manuscripts of the LXX read αύτοũ, and the Targum has ‘the glory of their Lord’.

page 297 note 3 Gen. i. 26, 27; v. 1; ix. 6; Wisd. ii. 23; Ecclus. xvii. 3. Cf. also Wisd. vii. 26—‘image of his goodness’.

page 297 note 4 Ps. xxxix (xxxviii). 6; lxxiii (lxxii). 20; Wisd. xvii. 21.

page 297 note 5 Gen. v. 3.

page 297 note 6 This saying perhaps implies that man is made in the image of God, but this does not affect the meaning of εỉκών as it refers to the coin.

page 298 note 1 II Cor. iv. 4 and Col. i. 15.

page 298 note 2 I Cor. xi. 7.

page 298 note 3 Rom. viii. 29; I Cor. xv. 49; II Cor. iii. 18; Col. iii. 10.

page 298 note 4 ‘The Scope of Natural Revelation in Rom. i and Acts xvii’, v (1959), 133–43.

page 298 note 5 Ibid. p. 141.

page 298 note 6 Ibid. p. 134.

page 298 note 7 Ibid. p. 138.

page 298 note 8 Ibid. pp. 141 f.

page 299 note 1 Ibid. p. 134.

page 299 note 2 Ibid. p. 138.

page 299 note 3 H. P. Owen, op. cit. p. 133. Cf. the discussion in A. Nygren, Commentary on Romans, Eng. trans. (1952), pp. 102–9.

page 299 note 4 See, in particular, W. Sanday and A. C. Headlam, Romans, in loc.

page 299 note 5 Op. cit. pp. 137 f. See also Bornkamm, G., ‘Faith and Reason in Paul's Epistles’, N.T.S. iv (1958), 96.Google Scholar

page 300 note 1 ‘A Reminiscence of the Old Testament at Romans i. 23’, in N.T.S. ii (1956), 285–8.

page 301 note 1 Ber. Rab. xi. 2; xii. 6; Sanh. 38b; Apoc. Mosis xx-xxi.

page 301 note 2 See, e.g., Sota ix b; Sab. cxlvi a; Yeb. ciii b; Ab. Zar. xxii b; Ber. Rab. xx. 11; xxii. 2. In Ber. Rab. xviii. 6 and Aboth R. Nathan 1, 3a, the serpent is said to have acted out of a desire to kill Adam and marry Eve.

page 302 note 1 Erub. xviii b; Ber. Rab. xx. 11; xiv. 6.

page 302 note 2 Cf. Thackeray, H. St J., The Relation of St Paul to Contemporary Jewish Thought (1900), pp. 50–2; F. R. Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin (1903), pp. 152–60.Google Scholar

page 302 note 3 E.g. IV Macc. xviii. 7 f.; Apoc. Mosis xix. Cf. I En. lxix. 4–6; Slav. Bk. Enoch xxxi. 6; Apoc. Abr. xxiii.

page 302 note 4 Op. cit. pp. 52–5.

page 302 note 5 Cf. especially Wisd. xiv. 25 f.

page 302 note 6 Wisd. xiv. 27.

page 303 note 1 Sab. CXLVC a; Yeb. ciii b; Ab. Zar. xxii b.

page 303 note 2 248 and 253, followed by most patristic writers. A and B have ỉδιóτητος.

page 303 note 3 Gen. iii. 8: ‘face’ in both the Hebrew and Greek.

page 304 note 1 Adam does not give a direct answer to the question ‘Where are you?’; instead, he explains why he hid himself—and this reason still exists. Gen. iii. 9 f.

page 304 note 2 There are, of course, exceptions to this, but they are rare, and are noted as being exceptional. God appears to Abraham (Gen. xviii), Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 24–30), Gideon (Jud. vi. 11–24), Manoah (Jud. xiii. 2–23), though always incognito. The elders of Israel are said to have seen God (Exod. xxiv. 9–11), though it is from a distance (vv. 1, 2, 12–15). Moses alone is said to have spoken with God ‘face to face’ (Exod. xxxiii. 11; Deut. xxxiv. 10; Num. xii. 8); according to Exod. iii. 6, however, even Moses is afraid to ‘look upon God’ in the phenomenon of the burning bush (cf. Elijah in I Kings xix. 13), and in Exod. xxxiii. 17–23, he is unable to see God's glory (here = His face). Some of the prophets claim to have seen God: Isaiah in vi. 1, 5; Amos in vii. 7 and ix. 1; Ezekiel in i—though he describes only ‘the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God’. There was a tendency in later times to minimize all suggestions that man was capable of seeing God. In the Old Testament, this appears in the alteration of the phrase ‘see Yahweh’ to ‘appear before Yahweh’, etc. (See, e.g., Exod. xxiiii. 15; Ps. xlii. 2 (3); Isa. i. 12. Cf. Gen. xvi. 13.) A similar influence is seen at work in the LXX, which has changed to καì εīδον τòν τάπον, ο εìστήκει έκεī ò θεòς τοũ Ίσραήλ in Exod. xxiv. 10. The Targum of this passage says that the elders saw the glory of God, while it changes ‘face to face’ to ‘word for word’ in Exod. xxxiii. 11 and Deut. xxxiv. 10; ‘form’ to ‘likeness of the glory’ in Num. xii. 8, and ‘God’ to ‘angels of the Lord’ in Gen. xxxii. 30. In apocalyptic and rabbinic theology, the vision of God is thrown into the future and becomes a feature of the Messianic era. See, on the whole subject, K. E. Kirk, The Vision of God (Bampton Lectures, 1928), 1931, pp. 10–22; I. Abrahams, The Glory of God (1927), pp. 39–52.

page 305 note 1 See Rom. viii. 29 f.; I Cor. xv. 42–9; II Cor. iii. 18; Col. iv. 4.

page 305 note 2 Cf. Isa. xlii. 8; xlviii. 11.

page 305 note 3 See above, p. 297, note 2.

page 305 note 4 Cf. Ps. iii. 3.

page 306 note 1 I Cor. xv. 49.