So far in our series we have examined several Christological motifs that are often taken to be “evidences” for the divinity of Jesus and have found that in each case, the texts do not claim what classical Christian theology has assumed they claim. The transfiguration depicts Jesus as a prophet like Moses. The titles Son of God and Son of Man signify royalty and eschatological agency. Images of Jesus seated on God’s throne likewise indicate agency in eschatological judgment and are not ontological statements about any sort of divine nature, since human beings are frequently depicted as being seated upon God’s throne throughout the second temple period, and even in the Hebrew Bible. We discovered that language we thought reflected worship of Jesus as a divine being has numerous parallels both in the Hebrew Bible and in second temple literature, and merely indicates that Jesus is being honored as Yahweh’s agent. We noted that in the monotheistic Judaism, the only form of worship that was reserved for God alone was sacrificial worship, and this sort of worship is never offered to Jesus, who indeed offered his own sacrificial worship to the one true God. We have also noted that in places where Jesus has called himself by one of God’s names, as well as in places where he is called “God” by others, the claim being made is not one about Jesus’ alleged divine nature, but about the source of his authority, which is from God. As God’s chosen agent, the name of God is conferred upon Jesus, and is entrusted to him as power and authority, just as it is with any royal emissary in the ancient world, who was granted full authority to speak and act on the king’s behalf. We noted that both in the Hebrew Bible and frequently throughout the second temple period, and later, it was not uncommon for God’s names to be conferred upon his messengers, prophets, judges and kings, including the name “Yahweh” and the title “God” itself.

There is one major feature of New Testament christology yet to be explored, and that is the motif of the preexistence of Christ. Now, this motif is composite in nature, both in the New Testament and in other Jewish literature of the second temple period and later. We are going to tease out three distinct elements from this preexistence motif, elements which nevertheless overlap. Those are: preexistence itself (the idea that Jesus somehow existed prior to being born of a human mother), wisdom/logos (the idea that the human being Jesus is somehow the embodiment of the personification of divine wisdom), and creative godhood (the idea that as the Word, or as Wisdom, Jesus in his preexistent, divine state was in some way active in the creation of the cosmos). As I said, there is some overlap between these categories, and our analyses of them will not always be able to keep them neatly separated. But one of the reasons we are teasing them out as distinct elements is because they frequently occur in the Hebrew Bible and in second temple literature, but not necessarily in the composite form they take sometimes in the New Testament.

Our first order of business will be to spend several posts becoming familiar with these themes as they appear outside of the New Testament. Subsequently we will reexamine this aspect of New Testament christology in light of our findings. The remainder of this post will be dedicated to our first distinct category: the notion of preexistence in its own right.

Many Christians have been trained to associate preexistence with divinity, so that if Christ is said to have existed prior to his incarnation on earth, he must therefore be God. In this post we will suggest two things about the Jewish notion of “preexistence.”

(2) It was not meant to be taken literally, but was a very common poetic expression of the Jewish people’s belief in God’s providence and sovereignty. To identify a figure or object as having had preexistence is to make a statement about the boundless ability of God to carry his plan for humankind to fruition. If something was said to have existed “before the foundations of the world,” that meant that God was in control of history, directing it according to his purposes, in his hidden wisdom.

Let’s take a look at some examples of other figures to whom preexistence is ascribed in the second temple period and the first few centuries following.

In a first century CE apocryphon known as the Prayer of Joseph, the patriarch Jacob says of himself:

I am an angel of God and a primeval spirit, the firstborn of all creatures, and like me were Abraham and Isaac created before any other work of God. I am invested with the highest office in the face of God and invoke Him by His ineffable name.¹

This passage is significant because it speaks of Jacob and his fathers as having had preexistence in non-human, angelic form. Also significant is the parallel here to the language Paul uses to describe Jesus in Col 1:15: Jacob is “the firstborn of all creatures,” just as Jesus is “the firstborn of all creation.” The language describing the patriarchs also parallels similar language about Lady Wisdom: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are said to have been “created before any other work of God,” just as Wisdom was “created by Yahweh at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts long ago” (Prov 8:22). A later tradition inscribed in the Genesis Rabbah says that the patriarchs were part of the Merkabah (the throne-of-angels upon which God sits) prior to their human existence (Gen. R. 72:7). Also noteworthy in the passage from the Prayer of Joseph is the claim that Jacob was “invested with the highest office in the face of God.” As in messianic literature, Jacob is here presented as the preeminent being next to Yahweh.

Clearly this text, which precedes New Testament literature by about one hundred years, makes some significant claims about the patriarchs. But what do these claims mean? Are we meant to take them literally? Hardly. These are not meant to be read as historical chronicles or as precise doctrinal statements, but are poetic descriptions of the significance, not only of the patriarchs but also of the nation of Israel (represented by Jacob). We are not meant to take these claims as literal statements about any preexistent state of the patriarchs, any more than we are meant to believe that the bridal gown of Joseph’s Egyptian wife Aseneth was literally “prepared from the beginnings of the world.”²

What these claims mean is that the patriarchs were a part of God’s plan from the very beginning, and the value of such a statement is to ensure the reader that God is in control of history, and to affirm that God continues to act among and on behalf of Israel. The preeminence of Jacob above all other creatures parallels the belief that Israel will one day be preeminent among all other nations. If the father of the nation was preeminent from the beginning, that means God’s intent is for the nation to be preeminent at the end. That the patriarchs are described in language strikingly similar to that of Lady Wisdom in Prov 8:22 does not constitute any sort of claim that the patriarchs were personified Wisdom transformed into human form, but that they were part of God’s secret wisdom, his hidden plan, from the beginning. In other words, God’s wisdom is displayed in salvation history, and archetypically in the lives of the patriarchs.

We see a similar claim with reference to Moses, in a text dating to the first century CE: “Accordingly He designed and devised me, and He prepared me before the foundation of the world, that I should be the mediator of His covenant” (Assumption of Moses 1:14). Again, this is not a literal claim about Moses’ real existence prior to his mundane incarnation. Rather, it is a strong claim about Moses’ centrality within God’s plan.

Beyond Moses and the patriarchs, a particular rabbinic oral tradition, which has been preserved in different versions, identifies a wide variety of things “created before the world began.” Among the things identified as preexistent are: (1) Torah; (2) the temple sanctuary; (3) the patriarchs; (4) the nation of Israel, which God “created from the beginning”; (5) God’s message of repentance; (6) and the Messiah.

Regarding the preexistence of the Messiah, the rabbis have much to say. One rabbah identified the “Spirit of God” which “moved upon the face of the waters” in Gen 1:2 as the spirit of the Messiah (Gen. R. 8:1). Another declared that “the Messiah was created when the world was made, although his existence had been contemplated before the creation” (Pesik. R. 152). Later in the same rabbah it is said that “God beheld the Messiah and his deeds before the creation, but He hid him and his generation under His throne of glory” (161). Note that here it is not just the Messiah that is hidden away, but his whole generation. This should make it clear that the “preexistence” of the Messiah was not conceived of as a literal preexistence, but was a way of describing the belief that God had human history mapped out in his mind from the beginning.

So far, with regard to the preexistence of the Messiah, we have only looked at rabbinic sources. Just so that no one is tempted to assume that the notion of the preexistence of the Messiah was borrowed from the Christians by jealous rabbis, we’ll look at two texts that were written prior to, and roughly contemporary with the literature of the New Testament. First, we’ll return to the Similitudes of Enoch (chapters 37-71 of 1 Enoch), a book known to the New Testament writers. Three passages from the Similitudes will suffice:

And at that hour that Son of Man was named
In the presence of the Lord of Spirits,
And his name before the Head of Days.
Yea, before the sun and the signs were created,
Before the stars of the heaven were made,
His name was named before the Lord of Spirits.
He shall be a staff to the righteous whereon to stay themselves and not fall,
And he shall be the light of the Gentiles,
And the hope of those who are troubled of heart.
All who dwell on earth shall fall down and worship before him,
And will praise and bless and celebrate with song the Lord of Spirits.
And for this reason hath he been chosen and hidden before Him,
Before the creation of the world and for evermore.
(1 Enoch 48:2-6)

And one portion of them shall look on the other,
And they shall be terrified,
And they shall be downcast of countenance,
And pain shall seize them,
When they see that Son of Man sitting on the throne of His glory.
And the kings and the mighty and all who possess the earth
Shall bless and glorify and extol him who rules over all, who was hidden.
For from the beginning the Son of Man was hidden,
And the Most High preserved him in the presence of His might,
And revealed him to the elect.
And the congregation of the elect and holy shall be sown,
And all the elect shall stand before him on that day.
And all the kings and the mighty and the exalted and those who rule the earth
Shall fall down before him on their faces,
And worship and set their hope upon that Son of Man,
And petition him and supplicate for mercy at his hands.
(1 Enoch 62:5-9)

And he [i.e. the angel] came to me
And greeted me with His voice, and said unto me:
‘This is the Son of Man who is born unto righteousness,
And righteousness abides over him,
And the righteousness of the Head of Days forsakes him not.’
And he said unto me:
‘He proclaims unto thee peace in the name of the world to come;
For from hence has proceeded peace since the creation of the world,
And so shall it be unto thee forever and forever and ever.
And all shall walk in his ways since righteousness never forsakes him:
With him will be their dwelling-places, and with him their heritage,
And they shall not be separated from him forever and ever and ever.
And so there shall be length of days with that Son of Man,
And the righteous shall have peace and an upright way
In the name of the Lord of Spirits forever and ever.’
(1 Enoch 71:14-16)

While the references in the first two passages were fairly clear, I have highlighted the reference to preexistence in the third passage in bold, because it is easy to miss. It claims that the peace now proclaimed by the Son of Man in the last days, that very peace has been proceeding from him since the creation of the world.

The preexistence of the Messiah is also claimed in a text dating to just after the destruction of the second temple, roughly contemporary to much of the New Testament literature. 4 Ezra (known in Catholic Bibles as 2 Esdras), chapter 13 and verse 3 describes a son of man who came up out of the sea and “flew with the clouds of heaven.” Later, the son of man is identified: “This is he whom the Most High has been keeping for many ages, who will himself deliver his creation; and he will direct those who are left” (13:26). The image of coming up out of the heart of the sea is a metaphor for the Son of Man’s having been hidden. Just as the depths of the sea cannot be explored, the Son is likewise hidden from view until he is revealed in the end times.

This was made explicit at the end of the prior chapter: “This is the Messiah whom the Most High has kept until the end of days, who will arise from the posterity of David” (12:32). Here it is clear that the messianic figure is human, a descendent of David, and yet he was preexistent with the Most High until his appointed time. Some might be tempted to argue that preexistence is not presented here, but only the idea that the Messiah was not born until the appointed time. Yet this reading is ruled out by a later passage:

For you [Ezra] shall be taken up from among men, and henceforth you shall live with my Son and with those who are like you, until the times are ended. (4 Ezra 14:9)

Here it is clear that the Son has heavenly existence prior to his incarnation on earth at the end times.

Turning to the New Testament, we find the same sort of claims being made about Jesus of Nazareth that were made about the patriarchs, about Moses, about the Torah and the Messiah. A clear example is in the first epistle of Peter:

He was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. (1 Pet 1:20)

Again, in the prayer of the Johannine Jesus in John 17:

Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. (17:24)

Yet the language of Peter and the Johannine Jesus is not meant to be taken literally, any more than John’s language is meant to be taken literally when he speaks of “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8). We are not meant to take from this that Jesus was slaughtered when the world was created, but that God’s plan from the very beginning was to redeem humankind through a suffering messiah. In the same way, Peter’s language does not mean that Jesus was anointed as king when the world was created but remained hidden in heaven until 4 BCE. Rather, it is an example of a very common Jewish expression of faith in the God who is sovereign over human history, whose plan for humankind cannot be thwarted.

To read these sorts of claims as literal statements, quasi-historical or doctrinal, would be to do hermeneutical violence to these texts. By the same token, to read them as metaphors, as poetic language, sublimely depicting God’s involvement in the mundane—that is not to cheapen the claims or to harass them with an “anti-supernaturalist” bias. Rather, it is to do them the honor of taking them seriously by reading them as they were intended to be read.

1. This is preserved by Origen in Johannem, 25/4:84. [BACK]
2. Joseph and Aseneth 15:10, an apocryphon dated circa the first century BCE. [BACK]