Jerry Shugart
Well-known member
Daqq and I already addressed this showing that the grammatical structure and words used in the passage allows for the verse quoting Psalm 2:7 to indicate the fulfilling of the promise of raising Jesus up to fulfill his messianic/kingly ministry, which alludes to the decree of the Lord spoken over him at Luke 3:22 (which originally had the whole quote of Psalm 2:7, which included "today I have begotten you".
That is exactly what I mean when I said that your ideas are based on speculation. According to your idea just because "one" manuscript might have originally contained the words which you quoted then we should just ignore what is said in the Bible at other places about this subject. After all, those words could have been added and were never a part of what was written originally. Also,from what I read about that manuscript there was more than one place where it was altered.
Yes, Paul speaks of Christ being the Firstborn from the dead (John in Revelation also uses similar language, the 'firstborn of the dead', etc.), the firstfruits of the resurrection, firstborn of many brethren.
Yes, and Strong's gives this meaning for the Greek word translated "first born": firstbegotten.
So we can understand this verse to read the following way:
"And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstbegotten from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence" (Col.1:18).
Now let us look again at this passage:
"But God raised him from the dead: 31 and he was seen for many days of them that came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses unto the people. 32 And we bring you good tidings of the promise made unto the fathers, 33 that God hath fulfilled the same unto our children, in that he raised up Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee" (Acts 13:30-33; ASV).
In verses 30-31 the subject under discussion is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Then the following verse begins with the Greek word kai, which is translated "and." The Greek word is a conjunction, which joins together what is said in verses 30-31 with what is said in the sentence which follows. Therefore, we can understand that the subject spoken of in the following passage is about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus:
"And we bring you good tidings of the promise made unto the fathers, 33 that God hath fulfilled the same unto our children, in that he raised up Jesus" (Acts 13:32-33; ASV).
According to your ideas verse 32 is totally unrelated to what is said in verses 30-31. That is impossible since the Greek word kai serves to join together what is said in verses 30-31 with what is said in verse 32. In fact, Strong's says that the word has "a copulative and sometimes also a cumulative force."
The word "copulative" means "joining together coordinate words or word groups and expressing addition of their meanings" (Merriam-Webster.com).
The word "cumulative" means "increasing by successive additions" (Merriam-Webster.com).
In Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon we read that the word kai "serves as a copulative i.e. to connect...it marks something added to what has already been said" (Joseph Henry Thayer, Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament [Grand Rapids: Baker Book House,1977] 315).
Therefore, with that in mind the following verses can only be in regard to one thing, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus:
"But God raised him from the dead: 31 and he was seen for many days of them that came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses unto the people. 32 And we bring you good tidings of the promise made unto the fathers, 33 that God hath fulfilled the same unto our children, in that he raised up Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee" (Acts 13:30-33; ASV).
With this in view we can know with certainity that the words in "bold" were spoken when the Lord Jesus was resurrected from the dead.
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