Los Salmos Filipenses 2000

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PSALMS, PHILIPPIANS 2:6-11, AND THE ORIGINS OFCHRISTOLOGY

ADELA YARBRO COLLINSYale University Divinity School

Paul admonished the Corinthians, “When you gather, each onehas a psalm, a teaching, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpreta-tion. Let them all take place for edification.”1 The context makes

it clear that by “psalm” here, Paul did not mean one of the ca-nonical Psalms.2 This admonition gives us a valuable glimpse of the creative liturgical activity of some of the earliest Christians.Paul clearly alludes to the practice of composing religious songsand presenting them in communal worship. About ten years later,a close associate of Paul wrote in his name to the Colossians, urg-ing them to “let the word of Christ dwell among you abundantly,

as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom and grate-fully sing with your hearts to God in psalms, hymns, and spiritualsongs.”3 It is unlikely that the text refers to three sharply differen-tiated kinds of liturgical expression here. Rather, taken together,the three terms stand for the full range of liturgical singing.4 Theuse of a variety of terms, however, may be an indication of thepluralistic social situation of these early Christians and how they interacted with it. In this article, I would like to explore how Phil.2:6-11 fits into the liturgical life of early Christians in their multi-cultural social settings.

First of all, it should be noted that the early Christians did not

have a monopoly of creativity and cultural diversity with regard toliturgy. The Dead Sea Scrolls attest to the fact that the canonicalbook of Psalms had not attained a fixed form by the first century of the Common Era, and that members of the Community at

Qumran continued to write psalms and other songs.5 The Hebrew



adela yarbro collins362

Bible uses a variety of terms for the songs of the Psalter and theGreek translators used a corresponding variety of Greek terms.Some of them, such as and , emphasize the fact that the songs are sung to the accompaniment of stringed instruments.

Others, such as and , emphasize the content of the most typical songs: praise of God. The choice of the Greek word(“hymn”) had the effect of associating the canonical Psalms andother Jewish songs with the long tradition of Greek hymns to thegods.

In his work On the Contemplative Life , written in the early first century of the Common Era, the Jewish exegete and philosopher

Philo describes a community of ascetics, the Therapeutae, who had withdrawn from the life of the city in order to pursue a con-templative life centered on the philosophical study of scriptureand gatherings for liturgy on sabbaths and festivals. It is debated

whether such a Jewish community actually existed or whether it isa fiction expressing Philo’s ideals.6 In either case, this work indi-cates how at least one Jew at the turn of the era related Jewishliturgy to Hellenistic culture. It is striking that Philo conceptual-

izes the Psalter in terms of the various types of Greek cultic songs:

Then the President rises and sings a hymn composed as an address to God,either a new one of his own composition or an old one by poets of anearlier day who have left behind them hymns in many measures and melo-dies, hexameters and iambics, lyrics suitable for processions or in libationsand at the altars, or for the chorus whilst standing or dancing, with carefulmetrical arrangments to fit the various evolutions. After him all the otherstake their turn as they are arranged and in the proper order while all therest listen in complete silence except when they have to chant the closing

lines or refrains, for then they all lift up their voices, men and womenalike.7

Here and elsewhere Philo refers to the canonical psalms as“hymns.”8 It is striking that, just like Paul, he assumes that themembers of the community may perform new psalms or hymnsof their own composition. In his Apology, written about two hun-dred years later, Tertullian states, in a way similar to Philo’s de-

6 T l E b P “Phil ’ D it t pl ti Phil h ’



psalms, phil. 2:6-11, and the origins of christology 363

scription of the Therapeutae, that in the Christian feast called Agape, each person present is asked to stand and sing to God,either a song from the scriptures or one of his own composing.9

Josephus, the Jewish historian who was a younger contemporary

of Philo, also uses terminology that stresses the similarity between Jewish songs and Greek hymns. He calls the psalms of the Hebrew Bible “hymns to God” ( ) 10 He refers to the Songof the Sea in Exodus 15 as “a song to God in hexameter verse”( ) He describes this song as

that is, “belonging to the praise of a conqueror,” a term which assimilates it to processions escorting home a victor in the

games. The same term, used as a noun, means a song or speechin praise of someone.11 Josephus also calls the Levites of the He-brew Bible “choral singers” ( ).12 This was a technical termin the first century of the Common Era for cultic officials in thecities of Asia Minor.13 Finally, Josephus says that David composed“songs to God and hymns” ( ) in vari-ous meters.14

It is clear from their works that Philo and Josephus, as Greek-

speaking and writing Jews, appropriated their Jewish heritage in a way shaped by Hellenistic culture. It is equally clear that Paul, asa Hellenistic Jew engaged in a mission to the nations, expressedthe significance of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah in cultural formsthat were intelligible and accessible to his audiences. After thediscussion of some preliminary matters, I will investigate how Pauldid so in the case of Phil. 2:6-11.

At least since Ernst Lohmeyer’s study published in 1928, Phil.2:6-11 has been defined as a hymn by New Testament scholars.15

Lohmeyer referred to the passage as “ein carmen Christi instrengem Sinne,” alluding to a letter of Pliny to Trajan stating that Christians of Asia Minor were in the habit of singing antiphonally

9 Tertullian, Apology 39.10 Josephus, Apion 1.40.11 Josephus, Ant. 2.346.12 Josephus, Ant. 7.364. See Delling, “ ,” p. 496.




a hymn to Christ as to a god.16 Lohmeyer argued that the vocabu-lary and style of the psalm or hymn indicated that it had beencomposed in Greek by a poet whose mother-tongue was a Semiticlanguage. He concluded, therefore, that it was pre-Pauline and

that it belonged to the Eucharistic liturgy of the Christian com-munity in Jerusalem. A few scholars have concluded that the pas-sage was originally composed in Aramaic.17 Most notably, Joseph

A. Fitzmyer has shown that the passage can be retroverted “into atolerable form of contemporary Aramaic.” Certain words, however,have no equivalent in Middle Aramaic, so Fitzmyer was forced touse Late Aramaic equivalents for these.18

Since Lohmeyer, scholars have generally agreed that the pas-sage is a liturgical composition, usually described as a hymn, andthat it belongs to the subtype “Christological hymn” or “hymn toChrist.”19 Lohmeyer’s argument that the hymn is pre-Pauline ef-fected a near-consensus, but it has eroded considerably lately.20

With regard to content, most studies have focused on the contri-bution of the passage to the emergence of Christological doctrine.

A debate has raged over the relative weight and importance of the theological focus of the passage itself and the ethical andpastoral application of it in the context of Philippians as a whole.21

The definition of the passage in Philippians 2 as a “hymn” im-plies that it is a poetical composition. If it was composed in Ara-maic, it can be understood as a “hymn” in the same way that

16 Citation of Lohmeyer by Martin, A Hymn of Christ , p. 25; translation of Pliny’s letter, Lohmeyer, p. 1.

17 Ralph P. Martin, A Hymn of Christ: Philippians 2:5-11 in Recent Interpretationand in the Setting of Early Christian Worship (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,1997), pp. 27; 30 n. 1; pp. 39-41.

18 Namely, and ; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The AramaicBackground of Philippians 2:6-11,” CBQ 50 (1988), pp. 470-83 (481-82).

19 Martin, A Hymn of Christ , pp. xliii-xlv.20 Martin, A Hymn of Christ , pp. xxxiv, 55-61, 315; Gordon D. Fee, “Philippians

2:5-11: Hymn or Exalted Pauline Prose?” Bulletin of Biblical Research 2 (1992),pp. 29-46; Ralph Brucker, “Christushymnen” oder “epideiktische Passagen”?: Studienzum Stilwechsel im Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt (FRLANT 176; Göttingen:




modern critics define certain canonical psalms as hymns.22 Likethe Psalms of the Hebrew Bible, it would not have a particularmeter, as Greek and Latin poetry would have.23 Rather, its poeticcharacter would lie to some degree in its distinctive phonology,

vocabulary, grammar and syntax, but especially in its use of meta-phors, symbolic expressions and characteristic themes.24 The post-canonical psalms and thanksgiving-hymns from Qumran are poeticin the same ways.

Lohmeyer argued that the Greek version of the hymn consistedof eighteen lines that were structured into two strophes of three verses each. Each line has three accents or stresses. The first ret-

roversion of the passage into Aramaic had the same structureadvocated by Lohmeyer, but the second did not.25 Fitzmyer’s ret-roversion has the same structure as Lohmeyer’s analysis of theGreek text, but Fitzmyer does not think that it is possible to arriveat a perfect pattern of three beats to a line.26 Advocates of a Semiticoriginal of Phil. 2:6-11 have also generally agreed with Lohmeyer’sconclusion that Paul made at least one addition to the hymn.27

The most important literary similarity that Phil. 2:6-11 has with

the psalms of the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism isthe synonymous, antithetical, and climactic relationships amongsome of its phrases and clauses.28

Several recent studies of Phil. 2:6-11 have challenged the cur-rent consensus. Gordon D. Fee published an article in 1992 in which he argued that the passage is not a hymn; rather it is ex-

22 Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Psalms: Part I with an Introduction to Cultic Poetry(Forms of the Old Testament Literature 14; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988),pp. 16-19.

23 A number of scholars, however, have argued that Phil. 2:6-11 has a stress-accentual meter, on the assumption that accentual meter was typical of Hebrew and Aramaic poetry; Fitzmyer, “The Aramaic Background of Philippians 2:6-11,”pp. 471-74; Barbara Eckman, “A Quantitative Metrical Analysis of the PhilippiansHymn,” NTS 26 (1980), pp. 258-66 (258).

24 Gerstenberger, Psalms: Part I , p. 34.25 Fitzmyer, “The Aramaic Background of Philippians 2:6-11,” pp. 473-74; 475

n. 20.26 Fitzmyer, p. 483.




alted prose written by Paul himself.29 In his view, “it contains noth-ing at all of the nature of Greek hymnody or poetry. Therefore, it must be Semitic in origin.” But, he argues, the type of parallelismfound in this passage is “quite unlike any known example of He-

brew psalmody.”30 The Philippians passage actually contains threetypes of parallelism, synonymous, antithetical, and climactic. Thesegeneral types are also found in the Hebrew Psalter. But the Philip-pians passage does not have the structure typical of canonicalpsalms, namely, a line made up of two cola that often relate toeach other in synonymous, antithetical or synthetic ways.31

Fee agreed with a long line of commentators going back to theGreek exegetes and theologians of the early Church that the word

in v. 6 should be understood as res rapta . In other words,Christ was equal to God from the beginning and did not considerthis equality as a “prize” or a “gain” to be held tightly, but ratherchose to let it go. The other main view has been that the Greek

word should be understood as res rapienda . According to this view,the word expresses something to be attained, not something al-ready possessed. This interpretation makes far better sense of the

climactic statement in vv. 9-11 that God highly exalted Jesus. Theplot of the passage requires that the final state of Jesus be higherthan the initial state.

ticipial phrase, The last phrase of v. 8,is climactially parallel to the preceding participial phrase,

. In v. 9, the two co-ordinated main clauses,and are synonymously

parallel. In v. 10, the clauseis synonymously parallel to a clause in v. 11,

. See Martin, A Hymn of Christ , p. xxxiv.29 Fee, “Philippians 2:5-11.” Brucker argues that Paul himself composed Phil.

2:6-11 and that its differences from the surrounding context can be explainedby the ancient practice of deliberately shifting from one style to another. Theletter as a whole belongs to the category of deliberative rhetoric, but it containsa number of epideictic passages, including 2:6-11; Brucker, “Christushymnen” , pp.349-50. See also Ewen L. Bowie’s discussion of prose writers who imitate stan-dard poetic forms and insert the poems into their larger prose works; Bowie,“Greek Sophists and Greek Poetry in the Second Sophistic,” in Wolfgang Haase,(ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.33.1 (Berlin: W. de Gruyter,1989), pp. 209-58 (221-29; 253). In light of Bowie’s discussion, it is plausible that Paul imitated the form of a prose hymn in writing to the Philippians about the




In another important recent study, Samuel Vollenweider arguedthat in v. 6 should be understood as res rapienda . He con-cluded that this verse means that Christ did not consider beingequal to God as booty, as something to be seized by force. Al-

though the exact Greek word does not occur in the Jew-ish scriptures written in or translated into Greek, its word-family occurs frequently in these works, and it always has the negativeconnotation of robbery or taking plunder. Except for the usageof “being snatched up to heaven,” the word-group usually has anegative connotation in the Greek Pseudepigrapha, Philo, Jo-sephus and the New Testament.32 Furthermore, the notion of

equality with God on the part of entities that are not aspects of God has a strongly negative connotation in biblical, Jewish andearly Christian literature.33 Finally, he makes a case for the pri-mary context in the history of religions as traditions about thetypical ruler who is violent and who presumes to take a divinerole.34 Verse 6, in his view, means that, although Christ had a divine form, he did not attempt to make himself equal to God,

unlike the typical arrogant ruler.

35

Vollenweider argued that Phil.2:6-11 is a pre-Pauline Jewish Christian composition, but his argu-ments would apply equally well to Paul himself as the author.36

Next, I would like to offer an hypothesis about the literary na-ture of Phil. 2:6-11 and then some reflections on its social settingand purpose. Fee described the passage as “exalted prose.” It would be more precise to define it as “rhythmic prose,” a “prosehymn,” or a brief encomium.37 Prose-rhythm, as a branch of an-

cient rhetoric, concerned the quantitative or accentual arrange-ment of syllables of a sentence, especially its opening and ending.Only the quantitative type of arrangement is relevant to the first

32 Vollenweider, “Der ‘Raub’ der Gottgleichheit,” pp. 417-18.33 Vollenweider, p. 418; see, e.g., John 5:18.34 Vollenweider, “Der ‘Raub’ der Gottgleichheit,” section 2, beginning on p.

419. With this argument, Vollenweider revives and updates an older interpreta-tion which has had few recent advocates.

35 Vollenweider, p. 429.




century of the Common Era. According to the ancient authorities,rhythmic prose should be distinct from poetic meter and not tooobvious.38 Fee argued that the Philippians passage consists of threesentences, but it seems more appropriate to conclude that it con-

sists of two sentences, each containing two main verbs. The first sentence is found in vv. 6-8; the second in vv. 9-11.39 The first sen-tence begins with the rhythm one short element followed by threelong.40 The second sentence begins with the pattern two short el-ements, a long and then a short.41 The first sentence ends withfour long elements.42 The second sentence ends with a short, twolong, and a short element.43

A characteristic of exalted prose that Fee does not mention isthat the ends of clauses often rhyme. There may also be a para-llelism of sound between two clauses, either at the beginning,middle or end.44 Taking the arrangement of clauses in the Nestle-

Aland text of the Greek New Testament as a starting point, onefinds end-rhyme in two places in the first sentence ( and

in v. 7 and and in v. 8) and in oneplace in the second ( and in v. 11).45

The character of the passage as exalted or rhythmic prose iscompatible with the hypothesis that it is a prose hymn.46 The most famous author of prose hymns is Aelius Aristides, who lived in the

38 Kenneth James Dover, “Prose-Rhythm, Greek,” in Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (eds.), OCD (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn, 1999),pp. 1260-61. For ancient criticism of the use of rhythmic prose, see Bowie, “Greek

Sophists and Greek Poetry in the Second Sophistic,” p. 212.39 The two main verbs of the first sentence are in v. 6 andin v. 7. Those of the second sentence are and , both in v. 9.

40 The epsilon and omicron are long by position; see Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966),§ 144.

41

42 . The epsilon is long by position; see Smyth, Greek Grammar ,§ 144.

43 Assuming that the of is long by position; if not, the pattern is

short, long, short, short. See Smyth, Greek Grammar , § 145.44 The technical terms are homoioteleuton (end-rhyme) and paromoi¡sis (paral-lelism of sound between two clauses); see Smyth Greek Grammar §§ 3026 and




second century of the Common Era. I give here two selectionsfrom his prose hymn to Dionysos as an example:

Zeus lies with Semele;and when Semele was with child,

Zeus, wishing to be both to Dionysus—both father and mother—sent Semele from earth to Olympus in fireand himself taking up his childstitched him into his thighand carried him ten monthsdwelling at first in Nysa beyond Ethiopia;and, when the time came,he summoned the Nymphs and undid the stitching;and so Dionysus was born,his father’s child on both sides.

And so Zeus honored him especially above all gods and men;for neither he nor any otherstood in both these relationships to any being.The God, therefore, so they say, is both male and female,because his father partook of both natures to bring him to birth.

I have heard some tell another tale about this,that Dionysus is Zeus himself.

What greater thing could be said?. . .He oversees the limits of night and day,the one by being torchbearer and guide of sight himself,the other by entrusting it to others; Yet even then he is not idle,but passes his time always in movement and activity.He is both the oldest of gods and the youngest and a lover of every passing hour and happening.

Hail to Iacchus, under all his many names,the cup of friendship is for the moment full.47

Aristides’ hymn is longer than Phil. 2:6-11. Literary hymns, likethose of Aristides, tended to be longer than liturgical hymns, andthe passage in Philippians may be modeled on the liturgical ones.

Aristides claimed to be an innovator in writing prose hymns,but this claim is exaggerated. An inscription from the first cen-tury before the Common Era records the victory of a writer of aprose encomium to a deity in a public competition.48 Prose enco-mia also had a place in worship of the deities Officials called




had the task of delivering such encomia in cultic settings.49

The author of a rhetorical handbook in Latin in the first century,Quintilian, gives comprehensive rules for composing prose hymnsto the gods. This fact is an indication that such hymns were already

commonplace in the first century of the Common Era.50 Quintilianstates that some gods may be praised because they were born im-mortal, whereas others may be praised because they attained im-mortality by means of their excellence. The context makes clearthat the latter group included the Roman emperors Vespasian andTitus.51

Typically, Greek hymns included an invocation of the god,

praise of his birth, of his acts, and a prayer for his coming.

52

Thefact that the Philippians passage lacks the invocation of the deity at the beginning and the prayer at the end may be explained ineither of two ways. One is that it was originally a cultic hymn that included these elements, but Paul omitted them in order to fit the hymn better into its context in the letter. The other possibil-ity is that the passage was composed for the context. As a literary hymn it could omit the opening and closing elements, as many of

the Homeric Hymns do. Aristides’ hymn to Dionysos begins witha prologue rather than a typical invocation of the god.

An alternative to the hypothesis that Phil. 2:6-11 is a prose hymnis that it is a prose encomium. There is a close relationship be-tween the two, since sophists and others studied classical hymnsas models for their prose encomia.53 The implicit contrast createdin Philippians 2 between Jesus and arrogant rulers is similar to acontrast made in Philo’s encomiastic Life of Moses. Philo states that Moses was appointed leader of the multitude departing from Egypt and held this office and kingship, not like those “who thrust them-selves into positions of power by means of arms … but on account of his goodness and his nobility of conduct and the universalbenevolence which he never failed to show.”54 Philo goes on to

49 Bowie, “Greek Sophists and Greek Poetry in the Second Sophistic,” p. 213

n. 9.50 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 3.7.7-8; for discussion see Russell, “Aristides




say that God bestowed kingship upon Moses as a gift of honor which he deserved. Although he was a ruler of Egypt, as the sonof the daughter of the reigning king, he renounced his expectedinheritance. God therefore thought fit to requite him with the

kingship of a nation destined to be consecrated above all others.55

Since he rejected material wealth and power, God granted himthe greatest and most perfect wealth by making him a partner inthe divine rule of the universe. This partnership was magnified by the honor of being accounted worthy to bear the same name asthe deity. For Moses was called god and king of the whole nation.56

The hypothesis that Phil. 2:6-11 is a prose hymn or a brief en-

comium in rhythmic prose and that it compares Jesus favorably with typical rulers raises intriguing possibilities about its socialsetting and purpose. In the Hellenistic and Roman periods, prosehymns to deities became more and more important and the re-sponsibility for composing them was assigned to those possessingthe office or honorary position of . Before long, this or asimilar office was established in the imperial cult. A decade or twobefore Paul wrote to the Philippians, the imperial cult in a city of

Asia Minor included the services of a , one who com-posed prose hymns in honor of the emperor.57 Later on, the term

was used for such officials in the imperial cults in Per-gamon, Ephesus and Smyrna.58 Since Paul spent an extendedperiod of time in Ephesus, it is likely that he was familiar with the writing of prose hymns or encomia in honor of the emperor. ThePhilippians were probably familiar with the practice as well. Phi-

lippi was a Roman colony and thus, at first and officially, wasgoverned by the laws of Rome. Following Roman practice, theimperial cult in Philippi included flamines, that is, priests of Au-gustus, and augustales, that is, associations of ex-slaves devoted tothe imperial cult.59 But Roman colonies in the Greek East soon

55 Philo, Life of Moses 1.148-49.56

Philo, Life of Moses , 1.155-58.57 In Didyma in the cult of Gaius Caligula; see Martin P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion: Die hellenistische und römische Zeit (München: C H Beck 3rd




came under the influence of the dominant Greek culture.60 So it is likely that the worship of the emperor included composers of prose hymns to the emperor, whatever they were called.

One of the duties of the composer of such hymns or encomia

was to make widely known the powers, achievements and bene-factions of the deity or emperor.61 Paul once declared, “I havebecome all things to all people, in order that I might by all meanssave some.”62 For the sake of the gospel, he adapted the form of the Greek prose hymn in order to instruct the Philippians in cul-tural terms familiar to them. Before turning to Christ, they hadtheir and their . These venerable traditions

may have inspired Paul to become a .

63

A BSTRACT

Students of early Christianity recognized long ago that the canonical psalmsof the Jewish Bible provided a framework of meaning in which the followers of Jesus could make sense of his crucifixion. This novel hermeneutic is evident inthe allusions to the Psalms in the passion narrative of the Gospel according toMark. It appears also in the Markan Jesus’s explanation of the need for the Son

of Man to suffer. Most students of the New Testament today understand Philip-pians 2:6-11 as a pre-Pauline hymn that was composed for early Christian worship.More recent studies suggest that it is exalted prose rather than poetry. The hy-pothesis of this article is that Paul composed it, either for worship or for thepurposes of the argument of his letter to the Philippians. In doing so, he adapteda common social practice of the local culture. The “theologos” was an official inthe organized worship of an ancient deity whose duty it was to compose brief speeches, sometimes in prose, sometimes in poetry, in honor of the deity. Theorganized worship of the emperor included such officials. Paul acted as a “theo-logos” in writing a brief speech in exalted prose honoring Jesus Christ, whom he

had taught the Philippians to honor instead of the emperor.

60 Price, Rituals and Power , pp. 88-89.61 Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, 2. 381, citing Lucian Alexander

the False Prophet 19.62 1 Cor. 9:22.63 I wish to thank Professor Christopher Jones of Harvard University for bib-

liographical suggestions on Greek poetry in the Roman period, which were very helpful in the preparation of this paper.

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