Saturday, May 16, 2015

Colossians 1:15, 18 (EK)

ὅς ἐστιν εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀοράτου, πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως (Colossians 1:15 W-H)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν ἡ κεφαλὴ τοῦ σώματος, τῆς ἐκκλησίας· ὅς ἐστιν ἡ ἀρχή, πρωτότοκος ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν, ἵνα γένηται ἐν πᾶσιν αὐτὸς πρωτεύων (Colossians 1:18 W-H)

Some want to make much of the fact that the Greek preposition ἐκ appears in 1:18, but not in 1:15.

ἐκ in 1:18 could be used in the passage to emphasize Jesus' resurrection from the dead, as one friend of mine has suggested; but there is another explanation that may also account for ἐκ without resorting to a Trinitarian alternative.

Petr Pokorny (Colossians. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991. Page 84) writes in ftn. 153 concerning 1:18:

"MSS P46, Aleph (first hand), and others omit ἐκ = from. The sentence reads the same way in Rev 1:5. The meaning is not altered thereby."

Revelation 1:5 has ὁ πρωτότοκος τῶν νεκρῶν. It evidently means the same thing that Colossians' πρωτότοκος ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν does, as the MSS evidence indicates. It just seems that ἐκ is normally used when the resurrection of Jesus Christ is under consideration. See John 21:14; Rom 4:24; 6:4; 10:7; Col 2:12; Gal 1:1; 1 Pet 1:3, 21.

Meyer's NT Commentary: "comp. Revelation 1:5, where the partitive genitive τῶν νεκρ. (not ἐκ. τ. ν.) yields a form of conceiving the matter not materially different."

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is there a list of textual variations for Col 1:18 that omit "EK"?

Edgar Foster said...

NA28 has that information in its apparatus criticus.

Edgar Foster said...

On page 56 of the Hermeneia series commentary for Colossians and Philemon (by Lohse), it has pretty much the same information as NA28 for Colossians 1:18 and ek, but I don't think Lohse mentions the Latin witnesses to the reading like NA28 does.

Anonymous said...

Would you be able to supply a link? I don't have access to a lot at the moment (Family stuff)

I looked at P46 and it doesn't contain "EK" - which pretty much shuts down the argument completely

Edgar Foster said...

You can access NA28 at this site, but it might not have the notes:

https://deeperstudy.com/study-links/sources/online-greek-texts/

I checked the SBLGNT: don't think it has notes for Col. 1:18 if I recall correctly.

Here is another source but the listing is sparse for 1:18: http://nttranscripts.uni-muenster.de/AnaServer?NTtranscripts+0+start.anv