For a long while I understood the Philippians 2:6-11 passage to be a pre-Pauline hymn that Paul drew upon when writing the Philippian congregation. Upon reading eminent New Testament scholar, Gordon Fee, in his NICNT Philippians commentary I’m not near as convinced as I once was.
As Fee begins to bring forward his thoughts on this passage, he first and foremost makes it clear that New Testament scholarship is nearly universal in its judgment that this text is a pre-Pauline hymn; thus, he’s swimming against the current of New Testament scholarship. He goes on and provides the most commonly accepted structural arrangement of vv. 6-11; I’ll post it below.
6 a Who in the form of God being
b Not grasping considered
c to be equal with God,
7 a But himself emptied
b the form of a slave taking,
c In the likeness of human beings becoming;
d And in appearance being found as a human being
8 a He humbled himself
b Becoming obedient unto death,
c but death of a cross
9 a Therefore also God him highly exalted
b And bestowed on him the name
c that is above every name,
10 a So that at the name of Jesus
b Every knee should bow
c of those in the heavens and on earth and under the earth
11 a And every tongue confess that
b the Lord [is] Jesus Christ
c to the glory of God the Father.
Fee stops his readers here and gives his reservations about this passage being a pre-Pauline hymn. Here I will briefly (and not exhaustively by any sense of the word) overview his points:
1) If as normally claimed it is a hymn, it would have to be Semitic in origin. The reason for this is because it has no familial correspondence with any kind of Greek hymnody or poetry. Okay, no problem, it has to be Semitic in origin is all. Not so fast; the only issue here is that there isn’t any Semitic piece of literature from the Hebrew psalmody that has parallelism with this supposed “hymn”. Building off this point, the word hymn properly describes what is to be a song used in praise of deity. Even in this version of the textual reconstruction and other various ones proposed, it thoroughly lacks rhythm and parallelism that one would expect to find in material that is sung. Furthermore and probably more importantly, it doesn’t fit with explicitly clear hymnic material found in the Psalter, Luke 1:46-55, 68-79, or 1 Timothy 3:16.
2) Exalted or even poetic prose does not, by any means, surmount in and of itself to the literary genre found in Semitic hymnals. Though it may be riding on a similar road, it still doesn’t have the punch to make it up the hill. Regarding this, Fee notes: “Paul is capable of especially exalted prose whenever he thinks on the work of Christ.”
3) The supposed literary familial features of christological hymns found in St. Paul’s other writings (1 Tim 3:16 and Col 1:15, 18) are not consistent in structure with the 2:6-11 passage. The reason for this is because the Greek hos (who) is not precisely like it’s alleged parallels. In Col 1:15, even though its antecedent is “Son” of verse 13, the connection with v. 15 isn’t gramatically smooth. Regarding the latter, 1 Tim 3:16, the hos, if connected with the rest of the sentence makes it ungrammatical, thus suggesting that it belonged or was apart of an original hymn. To the contrary, the hos in our present text fits neatly as a standard Pauline text which follows its antecedent, Christ Jesus.
4) These sentences, even though they are rhythmic and exalted in style, follow one another in what would be expected in a Pauline literary prose.
5) If wanting to argue this is Semitic poetry, it would be hard to maintain this considering that in the structural arrangement given above, six of the lines are exempt from verbs: 6c, 8d, 9c, 10a, 10c, and 11c.
All of this is said acknowledging that there is relative rhythmic and poetic features to this passage, but as expressed earlier (in a slightly different fashion), it seems as if it can’t make it up the hill to claim the prize of being a pre-Pauline hymn.
I want to lastly point out one other thing. Like I mentioned above, the grand majority of scholars assume the Philippians 2:6-11 passage to have pre-pauline origins by assuming it is a hymn, which predates Paul’s letter. Because of this, scholars have tried to place historio-cultural backdrops behind this text to truly understand how Paul was using it. As far as I know, this is a relatively exhaustive list of these backdrop motifs: Heterodox Judaism (Lohmeyer), Iranian myth of the Heavenly Redeemer (Beare), Pre-Christian Hellenistic Gnosticism(Käsemann), Jewish Gnosticism (J.A. Sanders), Old Testament Servant motif (Coppens, Moule, Strimple), Genesis Adamic theme (Murphy-O’Connor, Dunn), and Hellenistic Jewish Wisdom (Georgi). The issue with trying to figure out the thought behind this hymn is that we know barely anything about pre-Pauline Christianity! I think that it’s safe to say that the very diversity of opinions shows how little we do know about what stands behind this text (if it really is a pre-Pauline hymn), and that at our current place, it seems fruitless to assume we do.
Now, my thoughts on this are entirely flexible and subject to drastic change, so I’d love to hear what you think about this passage.
Grace & peace,
Daniel.
April 10, 2011 at 12:52 pm
Until recently, I had never even heard anyone seriously consider anything besides the majority consensus – that this is a pre-Pauline hymn. But, in God Crucified, Bauckham mentions in passing that he believes Paul composed it. Since it is not important to his point, he doesn’t make a case for it. Do you know if he addresses this somewhere else, or could you point me to someone else who does?
April 10, 2011 at 1:14 pm
It seems to me like Fee is right. It fits far too well in its context. You could also throw Wright into the mix here too, though he doesn’t exactly say that it was written by Paul.
At the end of his article on Phil 2:5-11 in Climax of the Covenant he says, ‘But if someone were to take it upon themselves to argue, on the basis of my conclusions, that the “hymn” was originally written by Paul himself precisely in order to give christological and above all theological underpinning to the rest of Philippians, especially chs. 2 and 3, I for one should find it hard produce convincing counterarguments.’ p. 98
April 10, 2011 at 1:41 pm
Oops! For some reason, I only saw the first part of the post in my feed reader. The rest already points me in the right direction…
April 10, 2011 at 1:49 pm
@Crystal: I read that as well. The only person I know that seriously takes the time to defend this is Fee. Check this link out for the section from his commentary in which he proposes it being Pauline: urlm.in/hmpw
Also, I’m pretty sure he may have updated the argument in his book Pauline Christology.
@Marcus: Very interesting that some of today’s most influential scholars are jumping on Fee’s bandwagon here. Ralph Martin’s defense of it being a hymn has stood pretty strong, but it seems like it produces more questions than answers.
April 10, 2011 at 2:07 pm
Definitely check out this article from JSNT by Michael Peppard:
“Poetry, Hymns and Traditional Material in New Testament Epistles, or How to Do Things with Indentations”
http://jnt.sagepub.com/content/30/3/319.abstract
April 10, 2011 at 6:58 pm
Adela Yarbro Collins argues that it’s a ‘prose hymn’ composed by Paul in her 2002 article “Psalms, Philippians 2:6-11, and the Origins of Christology” in Biblical Interpretation. I’m still not convinced that it’s a ‘hymn’ of any sort and I think Fee’s argument against it being such are the best to date.
April 10, 2011 at 8:11 pm
Markus Bockmuehl concludes, “In the absence of persuasive evidence to the contrary, therefore, the interpretation of Philippians 2.6-11 may for all practical purposes proceed on the assumption that these are the words of Paul”.
Peter O’Brian concludes, “The passage belongs in its present context and forms a highly significant section of the overall arguement of 1.27-2.18. Its vocabulary echoes that of the vereses immediatley preceeding (2.1-4) and it is anchored by what immediately follows (not the hoste of v.12). At the same time the hymn prefigures themes that appear later in the letter (3.20-21). In Fact, it fits its present context so well that it is hard to see it detached from it. It is possible, of course, that Paul, knowing that it would be appropriate to use and quoted an already existing hymn, woreded 2.1-5 accordingly and proceeded to echo the same themes later in the letter. But Wright concludes his article by stating that if someone were to aruge that the ‘hymn’ was origionally written by Paul himself precisely in order to give christological and above all theological underpinning to the rest of Philippians, epsecially chaps. 2 and 3, I for one should find it hard to produce convincing counter-arguments”. That article is ‘harpagmos’ by the way.
Also check out Reumann’s commentary which shows how the ‘hymn’ speaks well to the context of Roman citizenship.
I think O’brian has nailed it on the head. If you take into account the overall structure and theme of Philippians it is difficult to imagine such a passage, be it a hymn or not, fitting more perfectly with Paul’s discourse. Because of that, and that there is no convincing evidence to attribute it to any other author (at least I find don’t think so), Paul should be assumed as the author.
Also, though I have not read it check out Dr. Black’s article, “The Authorship of Philippians 2:6-11: Some Literary-Critical Observations,” . He has offered to email it if you email him over at his blog daveblackonline.com. He believes Paul to be the author. I know he has done some great work with Philippians in ‘The Discourse Structure of Philippians: A Study in Textlinguistics”
April 10, 2011 at 10:13 pm
@Nick: Yeah, I wasn’t convinced by Yarbro Collins when reading her. I feel the same way.
@Alien: Thanks so much for all the information, friend. I’ll make sure to check the Wright article especially!
April 11, 2011 at 7:41 am
I’m not sure why its origin counts for so much. The quality of the words and the passage alone in its meaning is sufficient for edification. Good scholarship is important, but God’s word is still valuable. Paul knew what he wrote and why, and his audience (hopefully) understood it and took it to heart.
April 11, 2011 at 12:37 pm
I like the comment Nick left, the idea that this section is poetic and Paul is including it as a quotation, but he’s actually quoting himself. Why not? Paul’s giftedness does not at all preclude contributing to the early Christian worship genre which he himself mentions twice as consisting of “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.”
April 11, 2011 at 1:30 pm
@Peter: I’m just not convinced it’s of the hymnody literary genre.
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January 19, 2013 at 9:56 am
Philip: I believe that it’s a Pauline hymn. At the time when this hymn was written or sung, there wasn’t any Gospel Book written about the life of Jesus yet (the Epistle of Philippians was written much earlier than Gospel Books). This hymn succinctly depicted the life of Jesus Christ. And, we know that Paul and Silas “were praying and singing hymns to God” (Acts 16:25) in the midnight in the prison of Philippi? What kind of hymns they were singing?