BNTS conference presentation: In the Form of One of the Pagan God

I was at the British New Testament Society conference this week, held at the magnificent St Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth, in Ireland. This is the paper that I presented in the Divine Christology in Paul’s Letters session. It is a slightly updated summary of my argument in In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul. I have not included footnotes. Providentially, Crispin Fletcher-Louis, author of The Divine Heartset: Paul’s Philippians Christ Hymn, Metaphysical Affections, and Civic Virtues, was the other presenter. We agreed on some things. We disagreed on a lot more.

In the Form of One of the Pagan Gods

I take the view in this paper that what the “encomium” in Philippians 2:6-11 tracks are not metaphysical transformations—in the ontology or personhood or location of Jesus—as traditionally supposed, but wild swings in his reputation as it was being assessed by a Greek and pagan—or post-pagan—audience.

The second stanza, verses 9-11, records the fact that the estimation of Jesus—what people thought of him—in the pagan world was on an upward trajectory: he now has a “highly exalted” status at the right hand of God (cf. Acts 2:32-33); he has been favoured with a name above every name; sooner or later every tongue will confess that he is Lord, to the glory of the God of Israel. This is largely the language of the Psalms and Prophets.

But if that is the case, what is happening in the first stanza? The converse, I think. At the outset, Jesus would have been perceived by pagan onlookers as being in the form of one of the immortal gods (morphē theou), but he was found in the end to be no better than a slave, merely human, patently mortal, dying in disgrace on a Roman cross.

This prior slump in reputation is narrated in language and literary forms washed up on the shoreline of the Jewish world from the deep waters of Greek life beyond. The extrinsic perspective and idiom accounts for the difficulties that interpreters have had in assimilating this compressed account of the pre-existence of the heavenly Kyrios to orthodox Jewish or Christian thought.

I present the argument here in summary form, more as an exercise in historical reconstruction than systematic exegesis. Sometimes we can’t see the wood for the trees.

1. The forms of the gods

There are no good precedents in the relevant Jewish literature for the idea that the God who made the heavens and the earth, the God worshipped by Israel, had a morphē in any sense—let alone one that could be possessed by another person.

The lexicological arguments about the meaning of the term are complex, wide-ranging, and seemingly inexhaustible, but I think we must say, in the end, that morphē always brings into consideration the external appearance of a person or thing—not some more abstract or intangible quality such as “essential being,” “nature,” or “glory.”

Two counter examples are sometimes cited.

First, Philo says that Moses saw in the burning bush “a certain very beautiful form (morphē), not resembling the visible things, an image of most divine appearance (theoeidestaton)…, which one might have surmised to be an image of the Being” (Moses 1 66).

The adjective theoeidēs, however, denotes a godlike human appearance as distinct from the formless being of God. Moses contemplated the “shapeless and invisible and bodiless” things that belong to the divine realm, but Moses himself was an “all-beautiful and godlike (theoeides) work” (Moses 1 158*). There is nothing “more godlike (theoeidesteron) than a human person” (Spec. 3 83).

Philo decides, therefore, that the conjecture would be wrong; and he reasons that the form must be that of an angel (angelos) because “in effect it announced (diēngelle) things which were about to happen” (Moses 1 66*). An angel may have the morphē of a human person, but not the invisible God.

Secondly, Josephus says of God that he is clearly revealed in his works and in the benefits he conveys, but “form (morphēn) and magnitude are for us not talked about” (Ag. Ap. 2:190*). This has been taken to mean that God really has form and magnitude but that such attributes of divinity are simply inaccessible to humans. Josephus’ argument, however, is that the Jews are forbidden to speak about God in any way that confuses him with pagan idols, concerning the form and magnitude of which a great deal is said. This is not about the being of God but about what is commanded.

Granted, God is sometimes spoken of obliquely and evasively in bodily terms—when he appears to Moses (Exod. 33:20-23), Isaiah (Is. 6:1), or Ezekiel (Ezek. 1:26-28); but then it is a theophany under earthly conditions, not a heavenly body, that is described; and there is no reference to a divine morphē. Otherwise, we are likely to be moving in the direction of esoteric Jewish and later Gnostic speculation on the gigantic body of God.

It appears generally, then, that Jews were fastidious about not attributing a morphē to the God of Israel for inherent theological reasons and because the word was so deeply associated with the pagan imagination and the practice of idol worship. But the resistance of devout Jews to any notion of divine morphē was more than matched by the fascination of Greeks and Romans—devout or otherwise—with the forms that the gods possessed or adopted.

One example will have to suffice for illustration.

1.1 Antiochus of Commagene

In the Nemrud Dağı East Terrace Inscription, Antiochus I of Commagene (ca. 69-36 BCE) proclaims himself as “the God, the Righteous One, the Manifest” and gives the reasons for erecting a statue of himself on his tomb alongside those of the gods, which are “images of their form” (morphēs… ikonas) (OGIS 383).

The tomb would contain the preserved “body of my form (morphēs)” and was sited “in closest proximity to the heavenly throne” on Mount Nemrud. So it was fitting that a statue having the “features of my own form (morphēs)” should be placed alongside those of the gods.

We have here, incidentally, just the distinction between “form” and parity of position or status with the gods that I think will explain what is said about Jesus in Philippians 2:6.

BDAG supports an older view when it suggests that Antiochus’ body is the framework for his morphē or “essential identity as a descendant of divinities.” But the correlation between “images of their form” and “body of my form”—surviving by good fortune into old age—points rather to outward appearance, not to the abstract idea of “essential identity.” The body of his form is what remains “after the soul”—there’s the essential identity—“beloved by God has been sent to the heavenly thrones of Zeus Oromasdes.” It seems to have been a matter of some concern to Antiochus that the four colossal statues set alongside his own recognisable image should bear a real visual likeness to the gods represented.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, it seems to me that en morphē theou hyparchōn can only mean that Jesus was “in the form of a god,” and that only a pagan would seriously think that way.

Two passages in Acts help us to understand what is going on.

1.2 The voice of a god and not a man

Herod Agrippa makes a speech to a delegation of Phoenicians from Tyre and Sidon, who have come suing for peace (Acts 12:20-23). Josephus tells us that the incident happens in gentile Caesarea during a festival in honour of Caesar, and that Herod has dressed to dazzling effect:

at the first assault of the sun’s rays, the silver (of his clothing) shone marvellously and was glistening, inspiring a certain fear and religious awe in those gazing on him. (Ant. 19:344*)

He looks like a god, and flatterers exclaim that he is a god, adding, “until now we feared you as a man, but henceforth we praise you as being superior to mortal nature” (19:345*). It quickly becomes apparent, however, that Herod is not a god, and he admits as much: “I, who was by you called immortal, am immediately to be hurried away by death” (Ant. 19:347).

In Luke’s version, the pagan crowd cries out, “The voice of a god (theou phōnē) and not of a man!” So Herod is said to have the “voice of a god”—and indeed has the astonishing appearance of a god—but is found after all to have a mortal nature. Jesus is imagined to have been in the “form of a god” (morphē theou)—the same simple genitive construction—but is found to be merely human in schēmati, as an object of public estimation; and he dies in in no less humiliation on a Roman cross.

The second incident occurs not long after.

1.3 Paul and Barnabas at Lystra

When the apostles heal a lame man in Lystra, the crowds jump naturally to the conclusion that the gods Zeus and Hermes have come down, having been “made in the likeness of humans” (Acts 14:8-12*). Perhaps such misapprehensions really happened, but it was certainly a familiar enough literary trope.

Antinous assaults the disguised Odysseus and is warned that his victim may have been a god from heaven, for “the gods do, in the guise of strangers from afar, put on all manner of shapes, and visit the cities, beholding the violence and the righteousness of men” (Homer, Od. 17.484-87).

The priest of Zeus at Lystra hurriedly brings oxen and garlands to make sacrifice to the apostles. Diodorus Siculus (first century B.C.E) tells us that, at Agyrium, Heracles “was honoured on equal terms with the Olympian gods by festivals and splendid sacrifices” (Bib. hist. 4.24.1). Although previously he had not accepted such oblations, this time he gave his consent, “since the deity was giving intimations to him of his coming immortality.”

Paul, of course, does not give his consent but rehearses his very Jewish—and not especially Christian—critique of Greek religious practice and calls the crowd to forsake their worthless objects of devotion and worship the living God (cf. Acts 17:24-31). So it is ironic that Jews now arrive from Iconium and turn the Greeks against Paul. He is stoned, dragged outside the city, and left for dead.

The incident mirrors rather closely our compressed story about Jesus. Paul is “in the form of a god,” so to speak, in the eyes of pagan observers because he has performed a marvellous deed, but he does not consider the offer of divine honours an opportunity to be seized. Then, thanks to misdirected Jewish hostility, he is “found in appearance” as merely and painfully human—the aura of immortality has been shockingly dispelled (cf. Phil. 2:7).

So Luke has given us two versions of this archetypal collision between Jewish and pagan religiosities. In both, a Jewish male appears, speaks, or acts in a manner that is perceived and acclaimed as god-like. This amounts to a testing of his virtue or, in Jewish terms, righteousness. He accepts or rejects the acclamation, but either way, he is found rather quickly to be wretchedly mortal.

1.4 Acts and the Hellenistic novel

I want to note briefly at this point that Luke’s “history” of Paul’s adventures around the eastern Mediterranean is sometimes thought to have a novelistic dimension. Henry Cadbury long ago suggested that Greek “fictitious romances” sometimes offer the best parallels for passages in Acts: “I do not know where one can get so many illustrations of the idiom and ideas of the author of Acts in 150 pages as in the love story of his near contemporary, Chariton of Aphrodisias.” More recent commentators have taken a similar view.

The aim, to be clear, is neither to reduce Acts to mere fiction nor to discount the historical-critical distance between Acts and Paul. It is to recover some sense of the literary material out of which a popular portrayal of Jesus might have been constructed in the ancient Hellenistic world within hearing of the apostles, some sense of the cultural air that the encomiast—someone like Timothy, who was from Lystra, or even Luke—might have breathed.

We will have reason to look at another of the Greek romances shortly, but first, we must consider how the being equal to God or a god expression works in this narrative frame.

2. The being equal to a god

The adverbial expression isa theōi qualifies an action or mode of being, in this case, the verb “to be.” The distinction is difficult to capture in translation, but this and similar adverbial expressions seem to signify not direct identification or ontological equivalence but being treated or regarded on equal terms with a god. The emphasis shifts from the ontology or essential nature of the object to how that object is perceived and appraised. Typically, a person is honoured on a level with the gods.

For example, Diodorus observes that great human benefactors have been “honoured” by later generations, “some with god-equal sacrifices, others with heroic sacrifices” (Bib. hist. 4.1.4*).

But there is also a political aspect to the language.

In Aeschylus’ play The Persians, the chorus recalls the day when the “invincible king, god-equal Darius” ruled the country (Aeschylus, Pers. 852-56). Darius is not a god, indeed he is dead, but he is reckoned to have been equal to a god, not least because he exercised rule over many cities, islands, and territories without stirring from his palace (857-902).

To the Greek mind, there is something inherently god-equal about human kingship. The point is made in a well-known epigram: “What is a god? That which wields power. What is a king? One who is equal with a god (isotheos)” (P. Heid. 1716). A king is isotheos inasmuch as he wields great power over others.

In Jewish thought, it is typically the boastful and blasphemous pagan king who arrogates for himself equality with a god and gets his comeuppance: the king of Babylon, the Prince of Tyre, Antiochus Epiphanes, who “will be exalted over every god and will speak alien things against the God of gods” (Dan. 11:36 LXX*); Herod Agrippa as we have seen; the “man of lawlessness”—perhaps a cipher for Caligula or Nero—who opposes and exalts himself “against every being called god or object of worship, with the result that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming that he himself is a god” (2 Thess. 2:3-4*). The Sibyl warns that Nero “will return, making himself equal to God, but (God) will rebuke him because he is not” (Sib. Or. 5:33-34).

Fletcher-Louis makes much of the fact that there is no mention of honour shown or status acquired, only of being: the ‘“being that is in a manner equal with God” is surely a way of interpreting a mode of existence of which Christ is himself the acting subject, not an exalted status of which he became the passive recipient (as Phil. 2:9-11 describes).’

But this seems a false distinction. If Jesus were to acquire the status of a pagan divine king, ruling over the nations of the empire, with attendant honours, then he would have attained a “mode of existence” equal to that of a god, of which he is the “acting subject.” The man of lawlessness will proclaim that he “is” (estin) a god—not that he has a status equal to that of a god. A king is “equal with a god” inasmuch as he wields great power.

So what is to be had, beyond being in appearance and behaviour “in the form of a god,” is a type of pagan kingship intolerable to devout Jews. The question then is: what sort of narrative logic connects the two?

3. The harpagmon clause

If the stories in Acts have something of the Hellenistic romances about them, it is interesting that Roy Hoover’s argument about the idiomatic sense of the clause with harpagmon draws on several examples from the Aethiopica of Heliodorus of Emesa.

In a 1971 essay that has persuaded a very large number of interpreters, Hoover proposed that we have here an idiomatic expression consisting of a verb meaning to “consider” or “reckon” (hēgeisthai in this case) with a double accusative—a direct object and a predicate object: Jesus did not consider the being equal to a god (direct object) a matter of harpagmos (predicate object).

The harpazō word group has the basic sense of “seizing,” and the verbal noun is assumed in this case to denote the thing seized or to be seized. Conventionally, harpagmos would have an active sense, but it has been widely accepted—rightly or wrongly—that the active and passive forms are here interchangeable.

So the idiom, Hoover holds, has the sense of thinking that something is to be exploited, taken advantage of, used for benefit. Paul means that Christ did not regard being equal with God “as something to use for his own advantage.”’

But when we examine the relatively small and late (it must be admitted) set of instances of the idiomatic expression, it is clear, even from Hoover’s own study, that what is to be exploited for benefit or taken advantage of is always an opportunity. This nuance disappears when we get to his interpretation of Philippians 2:6: “it should be observed that this understanding of the [harpagmos] statement carries with it the assumption that [to einai isa theōi] represents a status which belonged to the pre-existent Christ.”

We have shifted from an opportunity presented to a “status which belonged,” and this is the interpretation that subsequent scholars have seized upon for christological purposes.

In none of the passages considered, however, is the object of the seizing a thing that is in the possession of the person. It is always an opportunity presented more or less fortuitously, which may either be spurned or exploited to advantage. This would suggest that the “being equal to a god” should be regarded not as a prior possession but as an opportunity, which Jesus at that moment decides not to pursue. We are encouraged here to consider not just the isolated idiom but the narrative setting in which it is found.

4. The role of the schemer

4.1 The Aethiopica of Heliodorus of Emesa

The Aethiopica of Heliodorus of Emesa is one of a number of Greek “romantic” novels to have survived from the first to fourth centuries. I highlight the genre because it may suggest that the idiom has a natural Sitz im Leben in popular stories of heroism, intrigue, and virtue tested. Hoover’s other instances come from Christian sources and could conceivably reflect a stylistic choice going back to Paul, though they are not without their own narrative verve.

The Aethiopica is the story of two lovers, Chariclea and Theagenes, who are on the run, who face many perils, and who eventually marry.

The idiom with harpagma (not harpagmos) occurs three times in connection with events that take place in Memphis in Egypt. Theagenes is here being pursued by Arsace, the daughter of the satrap Oroondates, who is helped by her scheming handmaid Cybele.

On one occasion, Cybele happens to learn that the couple are looking for accommodation and regards this “happy circumstance” as harpagma and “as the beginning of a way of capturing” them by inviting them to stay at the palace (Aeth. 7.11).

Then Cybele reproaches Theagenes: “A young man so handsome and in his prime thrusts away a young woman of similar qualities who yearns for him, and does not regard the matter as harpagma nor even as a piece of good luck…” (7.20).

Finally, Cybele resorts to the desperate suggestion that they arrange for Chariclea to be killed in the hope that Theagenes will change his mind and forget about her. Arsace considers this proposition harpagma—she snatches at the schemer’s words (8.7).

These incidents gives us a good idea of how the harpagma/harpagmos idiom was used: an opportunistic schemer either seizes or presents a course of action for personal advantage. But they also exemplify the sort of literary or narrative context in which the idiom was at home. This is not the elevated language of a hymn or of theological reflection. Samuel Vollenweider worries about the vulgar connotations—“opportunities to be seized for sex and crime.” But the suggestion here is precisely that the idiom opens up a fissure in Paul’s essentially Jewish comprehension, allowing us to glimpse an alternative, popular or folk depiction of Jesus as a political-religious anti-hero caught up in a plot to ensnare him.

We shall see in a moment how that might work.

4.2 Joseph and the wife of Potiphar

We have another story about a handsome and virtuous young man pursued by the relative of an Egyptian court official in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews. The young man is Joseph. The besotted woman is the wife of Potiphar, who has fallen in love with Joseph “on account of his beauty of body and his dexterous management of affairs” (Ant. 2:41). That’s business affairs. She thinks that if she entreats him to lie with her, he is bound to “consider it a piece of good fortune,” given the “outward appearance (schēma) of slavery.” She does not take account of his upright “manner of life, which persisted even with the change in circumstances” (2:42*).

The word translated “beauty of body” is eumorphian, literally “beautiful form.” Jesus was “in the form of a god” and, we may think, was seen at first to manage his affairs with great skill—healing the sick, casting out demons, speaking with wisdom and authority.

Joseph has recently had to exchange his freedom as a “well-formed” son for the schēma of slavery. Jesus took the “form of a slave” and was “found in schēmati as a human person.”

The temptress expects Joseph to “look upon” (hēgēsamenon) her offer of great favour—a promotion, in effect—as a piece of good fortune. Jesus does not “look upon” (hēgēsato) the opportunity to be promoted to a god-equal status as something to be seized.

Josephus and Paul are basically telling the same story—or, at least, the same type of lively, popular story: a schemer makes an offer to an upright person in good “form,” who does not regard it as something to be grasped at, even at cost to himself.

There is one final piece to this story.

5. He emptied himself

In a treatise on the ten commandments, in which he intends not to omit “any allegorical meaning which may perchance be concealed beneath the plain language,” the sophisticated Alexandrian Philo addresses the question of why God gave laws to his people “not in cities but in the deep desert” (Decal. 1-2).

The reason is that pagan cities such as Alexandria or Philippi are typically “full of unspeakable evils,” especially pride, which Philo regards as the cause of dissension, conflict, and all the impieties, absurdities, and depravities of pagan religion. People have “given form to” (morphōsantes) an infinite variety of images and statues and have shown them “honours equal to the Olympians and equal to the gods” (7). Therefore, “it was from having a regard to these facts in the first place that Moses decided on giving his laws outside of the city” (9).

But it is one thing to get the people out of the corrupting city; it is another to get the corruption out of the people. So Philo speaks of Moses “leading away (apagagōn) from the harmful customs of the cities into the wilderness that he might empty (kenōsēi) their souls of unrighteous deeds” (13*).

You can see where this is going.

From a certain point of view, the miracle-working Jesus has been “in the form of a god”—powerful, charismatic, captivating, virtuous, and wise beyond the capacities of ordinary humans. To the pagan mind, it is an easy classification to make, certainly rhetorically, perhaps literally. This is no shabby counterfeit after the manner of the vainglorious Caligula.

Nevertheless, when the opportunity is presented to him to attain divine honours, a position equal to that of a god, he sees through the scam; he refuses to grasp at it; he does not yield to the seduction. Instead, in the wilderness, into which he has been led (ēgeto) not by Moses but by the Spirit (Lk. 4:1), he empties himself of the passions and ambitions that make the seduction so dangerous, so devilish.

Significantly, having emptied the souls of the people of corrupting passions, Moses feeds them with words of the Law: “he began to bring foods to their minds; and what could these be but divine laws and words.” In the same way, Jesus expresses his loyalty to YHWH by quoting from Deuteronomy: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4).

The passage, therefore, provides a comprehensive conceptual and linguistic matrix for the development of thought in Philippians 2:5-7.

On the one hand, the critique of pagan religion provides a frame for a self-emptying that consists in the rejection of divine honours.

On the other, the need for the community of God’s people to empty themselves of the corrosive passions of pagan city life helps to explain the parenetic application of the encomium for this once pagan community: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit…” (Phil. 2:3). We do not need to suppose direct dependence, only that such stories, such motifs, such typologies were readily available in the cultural-religious repertoires of diaspora Judaism.

6. Afterthought

We could, I suppose, agree with much of what is said about the nature of the literary sources but argue that it refers, nevertheless, to a dilemma confronted by the pre-incarnate Christ. So, for example, Fletcher-Louis says that en morphēi theou hyparchōn is best explained “as a novel, and deliberately ambiguous, way of presenting to a pagan audience, the pre-incarnate divine identity of a distinct figure who is, nevertheless, identified with the one God of biblical tradition.”

I have two responses to that.

First, Paul’s mission was to proclaim to the peoples of the Greek-Roman world that a new κύριος was already seated at the right hand of the one God, who would one day rule over the nations (Rom. 1:1-4; 15:12). We must surely suppose that gentile curiosity—and Jewish curiosity, for that matter—with regard to the origins of this invisible person would have been directed towards his prior earthly life, not to some speculative pre-existence before that already obscure pre-existence.

Of what people was he? What sort of impact did he make while alive? What were his qualifications for government? And how, in the name of Zeus, did such a remarkable person end up being crucified?

Secondly, we have in the account of the baptism and wilderness experience of Jesus an entirely adequate narrative template for the testing that is at the heart of the career change dramatised in Philippians 2:6-7.

Jesus is filled with the Spirit as the beloved Son, and in the power of the Spirit he will initially perform mighty works, to the amazement of all. On the face of it, to the pagan mind, listening in, he is “in the form of a god.” But first, there is a diabolical quandary to confront: a schemer puts before this wonder-working Son of God the opportunity to gain supreme political power. That is what Paul’s apocalyptic gospel is all about: ‘And again Isaiah says, “There will be the root of Jesse and the one arising to rule nations, in him nations shall hope”’ (Rom. 15:12*).

Jesus does not think that this is an opportunity to be grasped at; he declines the offer—perhaps unaccountably to the Greek mind—quoting the classic, simple monotheistic injunction of Deuteronomy 6:13: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve” (Lk. 4:8). He has emptied himself of selfish and vainglorious ambition in much the same way as Moses emptied the Israelites of the habits of mind acquired in the cities of Egypt. The ex-pagan believers in Philippi, who wait for the “day of Christ,” must likewise do “nothing from selfish ambition or conceit” (Phil. 2:3).