The Divine Father: Religious and Philosophical Concepts of Divine Parenthood in Antiquity

441 Pages·2014·2.53 MB·English

by  Felix Albrecht

The Divine Father
Themes in
Biblical Narrative
Jewish and Christian Traditions
Editorial Board
George H. van Kooten
Robert A. Kugler
Loren T. Stuckenbruck
Advisory Board
Reinhard Feldmeier
Judith Lieu
Florentino García Martínez
Hindy Najman
Martti Nissinen
Ed Noort
VOLUME 18
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/tbn
The Divine Father
Religious and Philosophical Concepts
of Divine Parenthood in Antiquity
Edited by
Felix Albrecht and Reinhard Feldmeier
LEiDEN • BOSTON
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/tbn 2014
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CONTENTS
introduction  ..................................................................................................... 1
Reinhard Feldmeier
PART ONE
PAGAN RELiGiONS
Father of the Fathers, Mother of the Mothers. God as Father
(and Mother) in Ancient Egypt  ............................................................. 19
Alexandra von Lieven
„Vater Zeus“ im griechischen Epos  ............................................................ 37
Heinz-Günther Nesselrath
Gott als Vater und Schöpfer. Zur Rezeption von Timaios
28c3–5 bei einigen Platonikern  ............................................................. 57
Franco Ferrari
PART TWO
HEBREW BiBLE AND ANCiENT JUDAiSM
The “Father” of the Old Testament and its History  ............................. 73
Hermann Spieckermann
Divine Sonship in the Book of Jubilees  .................................................... 85
Jacques van Ruiten
God as Father in Texts from Qumran  ...................................................... 107
Lutz Doering
God as Father in the Pentateuchal Targumim  ...................................... 137
Robert Hayward
„Vater Gott und seine Kinder und Frauen“  ............................................ 165
Beatrice Wyss
God the Father in Flavius Josephus  .......................................................... 181
Mladen Popović
vi contents
PART THREE
NEW TESTAMENT
„Vater . . .“. Zur Bedeutung der Anrede Gottes als Vater in den
Gebeten der Jesusüberlieferung  ............................................................ 201
Florian Wilk
is God the Father of Jews only, or also of Gentiles? The Peculiar
Shape of Paul’s “Universalism” ............................................................... 233
Ross Wagner
Kyrios Christos und Gottvater. Christi Herrschaft und Gottes
Vaterschaft im Philipperhymnus  .......................................................... 255
Reinhard Feldmeier
Dominus Deus, Pater Omnipotens. Die göttlichen Verheißungen
von 2Kor 6,16–18  ......................................................................................... 277
Felix Albrecht
The Divine Father of the Universe from the Presocratics to Celsus:
The Graeco-Roman Background to the “Father of All” in Paul’s
Letter to the Ephesians  ............................................................................ 293
George H. van Kooten
God the Father and Other Parents in the New Testament  ............... 325
Jane Heath
PART FOUR
LATE ANTiQUiTy
The Divine Father in the Gospel of Truth (NHC i,3): God as
causa efficiens and causa finalis  ............................................................ 345
Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta
Gott als Vater bei Plotin und Porphyrios  ................................................ 369
Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler
index of Ancient Sources  ...................................................................... 397
index of Subjects  .................................................................................... 425
index of Ancient Names  ....................................................................... 428
index of Modern Names  ....................................................................... 432
index of Places ........................................................................................ 434
IntroductIon
reinhard Feldmeier
Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!
Brüder—überm Sternenzelt
muss ein lieber Vater wohnen! 1
When Friedrich Schiller in his Ode to Joy virtually postulates the existence
of a “loving Father above the tent of stars,” he can do so because talk of the
divine Father is an idea that still remains plausible even in an Enlighten-
ment religiosity that is emancipating itself from the traditions of chris-
tianity. not the least reason for this is that the designation of a deity as
father (or mother) is what we might call a basic religious phenomenon
that is not in the least restricted to the biblical tradition. on the contrary,
from a biblical perspective, the designation (and still more, the address)
of God as “Father” is an idea that was received at a relatively late date into
the old testament; its provenance was in other religions in which it had
existed much earlier on,2 and it continued in use in the pagan sphere. It is
thus only logical that the first main section of the present volume, which
brings together the proceedings of a conference with the same name, held
in Göttingen in September, 2011, is devoted to the “father” in the pagan
religions, and that the final principal section documents the continuing
possibility of a non-biblical talk of the divine father.
the first essay, by the Egyptologist Alexandra von Lieven, already
demonstrates in an impressive manner the various aspects that can be
linked to talk of a divine father or of divine parenthood: “Father of Fathers,
Mother of Mothers, God as Father (and Mother) in Ancient Egypt.” the
Ancient Egyptian theology was arguably the “donor culture” for the old
testament (and thereby indirectly for christianity too) when the old tes-
tament theology received the idea of a divine father.3 the concept of the
divine father and/or mother was always important in ancient Egypt, on
1 Friedrich Schiller, Ode an die Freude. [English translation: “Be embraced, you millions! /
this kiss is for the entire world! / Brothers , above the tent of stars / a loving father must
dwell.”]
2 See Spieckermann’s essay.
3 See Spieckermann.
2 reinhard feldmeier
three different levels. the first level is the idea of creation. the origin of
the cosmos is envisaged as a divine act of generating, with predominantly
masculine and sexual connotations. this involves more than a bringing
into existence (the creatio prima). Since the act of generating is linked in
the inscriptions, and above all in the hymns, with the description of the
loving care of the God who is praised as father and mother for humanity
as well as for animals, the divine parenthood also determines the concep-
tion of a caring creatio continua. A second decisive aspect of the divine
parenthood is its importance for the Egyptian royal ideology. It is possible
that the designation of the Pharaoh as “son of ré” (customary from the
Fifth dynasty onwards) originally served usurpers as a religious-political
legitimation of their rule; but from that time on, it became an essential
component of the royal titles, and later rulers, including Alexander and
the Ptolemies down to the roman emperors, were unwilling to renounce
its use. A third aspect is that of deities as parents of deified human beings.
Little attention has been paid hitherto to this divine childhood of non-
royal individuals, although it was much more widespread than is usually
supposed. In the Late and Greco-roman periods, for which the surviving
documentation is particularly rich, it is so frequent that one must assume
that almost every village had its own pagan “local saint.” Although details
changed in the course of the three millennia, many basic ideas about
divine parenthood remained valid and structured the mythology, and
thus the hierarchy, of the countless gods of the traditional religion. It also
provided a means to connect all humanity, and the Egyptian state in the
person of its king in particular, to the gods.
In his essay on “‘Vater Zeus’ im griechischen Epos” (“‘Father Zeus’ in
Greek epic”), Heinz-Günther nesselrath begins with the observation that
the common designation of Zeus in Homer as “father both of human beings
and of gods” is not literally correct. only some of the gods are begotten
by the “father of the gods,” and “Father Zeus” plays no decisive role in the
creation of human beings in any of the common mythical versions. this
means that the epithet “father” must express some other quality of Zeus,
and this comes to light when one is not content to dismiss the syntagm
“father both of human beings and of gods” as merely “formulaic,” but ana-
lyzes its use in each specific context. A review of the eleven occurrences of
this syntagm in the Iliad shows that in four passages the exalted stature of
Zeus vis-à-vis all the other gods is emphasized, while two other passages
emphasize his clear distance from them. Four passages portray Zeus as
the one who directs what happens, and this also explains the three pas-
sages in which Zeus yields to the view of other gods, because he shelves
introduction 3
his personal preferences in favor of the larger context of the sequence of
events. Zeus is addressed as “Father” twenty-four times in the Iliad. only
two of these occurrences are addresses by children whom he has begot-
ten; mostly, they are by people who bring their petitions and wishes, their
laments and complaints to Zeus, using this title as an appeal to him do
to his duty as the head of the family (so to speak). In a similar way, Plato
and Aristotle will subsequently draw on the idea of “father” to character-
ize a “patriarchal” understanding of governance. Zeus is more rarely called
“father” in later epic poetry, as we see already in the Odyssey, which calls
Zeus “father” in the same way as the Iliad, but employs the formula “father
both of human beings and of gods” only three times, and addresses Zeus
as “father” only thirteen times. In Hesiod, Zeus as father in a metaphorical
sense is less present than in Homer. Above all, the meaning of the phrase
“father both of human beings and of gods” has shifted, to emphasize more
strongly the aspect of power and superiority. there is little that is new in
the use of the phrase “Father Zeus” in other epic poems in the archaic and
classical periods; this keeps to the lines laid down by earlier poets. Zeus’
fatherhood then acquires a new meaning above all in Stoicism, which
posits a close relationship between the world, and the human being in
particular, to “Father Zeus” and thus continues, much more strongly than
the epic poetry, the Homeric idea of the “father both of human beings
and of gods.”
the third essay in the first main section, by Franco Ferrari, concerns
the philosophical reception of the idea of God as father: “Gott als Vater
und Schöpfer: Zur rezeption von Timaios 28c3–5 bei einigen Platonikern”
(“God as father and creator: on the reception of Timaeus 28c3–5 by some
Platonists”). As the title makes clear, this essay looks at a celebrated pas-
sage in the Timaeus: “It is a difficult task to track down the creator and
father of this universe, and it is impossible to present him to everyone,
once one has found him.” A long history of reception from cicero onwards
has received this passage as a Platonic dictum probans for a negative the-
ology, but Ferrari demonstrates that all Plato is saying here is that it is not
possible to make known to all human persons the being of the father and
creator. Much less attention has been paid to the meaning of the first part
of this sentence, and Ferrari shows its importance in the genesis of the
ontological and theological hierarchies of the Platonists in the first centu-
ries of the imperial period. Some of these writers interpret the passage as
speaking of two deities, as if Plato were drawing a distinction between a
completely transcendent father and a second demiurge who was responsi-
ble for the world. Indeed, numenius can present the relationship between