A while back I asked a renown Bible scholar to comment on Dale Tuggy's idiosyncratic, "new creation" reinterpretation of Heb 1. Here's how the scholar responded:
The point of the catena [in Heb 1] is to demonstrate Jesus's superiority to the angels - or. better, difference in kind from the angels. It does not have to all relate to the exalted Jesus, but works with the standard Jewish correlation of "God is the only Creator of all things" and "God is the only sovereign Lord of all things.""The beginning" is virtually a technical term for the primordial time at the beginning of everything (Gen 1:1; Prov 8:22-23; John 1:1)."You founded [past tense] the earth and the heavens ..." would be utterly unparalleled as a way of referring to the new creation. For the NT, the new creation of heaven and earth is still very much future (Rev 21; Acts 3:21). Only in the case of individual Christians can new creation be said to have already happened (2 Cor 5:17).The new creation, when it comes, will not perish (Heb 12:27).Tuggy's exegesis is ridiculously forced and quite obviously special pleading.
Pretty easy to dismiss a reading as special pleading when he doesn't understand the motivations of it. For this, see the next two trinities podcasts - 258, 259. Several obvious cases, btw, where en arche is obviously not referring to the beginning *of the cosmos*, but rather, to the beginning of something else.
ReplyDeleteAre you a functional polytheistic or not? If not, justify your claim
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ReplyDeleteHere's an interesting webpage that documents some of the places in the Targums where the "Word of the Lord" is either personified or is a stand in for YHVH. Showing again how the concept of a plurality of persons in God (the "Two Powers in Heaven" concept) was already floating around and in the radar screens of some Jews. From which the author of GJohn in all likelihood was alluding to and amplifying in chapter 1.
ReplyDeletehttp://juchre.org/articles/word.htm
This was to explain and safeguard both the transcendence of YHVH on the one hand, and at the same time the immanence of YHVH on the other. A seemingly paradoxical reality of OT statements and theology. In the Christian concept of the Trinity it all makes sense and provides a satisfactory resolution to the seemingly contradictory data we find in the OT (e.g. two YHVHs in Gen. 19:24).