Introduction
Few easy answers are discernable from Scripture. Every time “the Bible clearly states” is uttered, somewhere an angel falls from grace out of frustration. Philippians 2:5-11 is the poster child for difficult questions and even more difficult answers. Biblical scholarship has been enamored with the poetic nature of these verses for generations and generations have yet to pass before the last word will be spoken. Although answers are difficult to cull from these words shared by Paul, each attempt peels another layer from the cocoon of uncertainty. A detailed look at the conundrum that is Philippians 2:5-11 has filled volumes, but an overview of the primary issues helps clarify the situation and leads toward answering some very hard questions.
Literary Criticism
The starting point for an exegetical overview of Philippians 2:5-11 must begin with the most basic of literary questions. As far as the letter to the church in Philippi is concerned, “Paul’s authorship of this letter has rarely been doubted.” Immediately, this fact tempts a reader to merely accept Pauline authorship of the section in question and let bygones be bygones. Such an approach fails to deal with the issue of authorship adequately. Arguments have been made that Paul has waxed poetic before (1 Corinthians 13) and could be doing so again here. A lack of common Pauline language, however, suggests completely different authorship. The fact that this text has been taken over by Paul and not written by the apostle has even been called obvious. Who then authored these words?
The text itself lends hints toward its original author. Use of kurioV iesouV cristo suggests a Hellenistic creator as opposed to a Jewish author. Yet, a large list of possible authors have been suggested, heterodox Judaism, Iranian religion, Greek epic tradition, political circumstances, Gnosticism, all could be the tradition from which this text arose. Hints and shadows do not fully identify the author. More information is necessary before a conclusion can be reached.
Dating, perhaps, can lend the needed hint for authorship. The date of Paul’s use of this hymn is most easily identifiable. Two theories for dating Philippians hold water. Traditional scholarship dates the letter to the Philippians during Paul’s imprisonment in Rome at the end of his life circa 56-60 CE. An alternative train of thought has suggested a dating for this letter of the early 50’s CE. If Paul is understood to have authored the piece of poetry, than the dating of 50-60 CE would be appropriate. If Paul merely used the work of another, the more likely possibility, the piece must not only have been written before Paul’s use, but must also have established circulation in at least the Philippian church. Further detail than the broad 35-50 CE range is currently impossible.
Since authorship and dating prove resistant to questioning, perhaps a different tact will be fruitful. More solid decisions may be made in regard to the genre and audience. Study of the text shows near universal acceptance of the hymnic nature these words possess. Although the use, origin, and meaning are all widely disputed, lack of citation shows scholars to believe it common knowledge that the poem is a hymn. “Philippians 2:5-11 is a magnificent hymn, extolling many distinctive doctrines of the Christian faith.” Martin sees the “stately and solemn ring of the words and the way in which the sentences are constructed” as undeniable evidence of the cultic & confessional aspect of the text which lends itself to a Carmen Christi of the early church. As far as genre is concerned, Philippians 2:5-11 is most certainly a hymn.
Paul, himself, points out the intended audience of his use of the text in the introduction to Philippians (1:1). The letter is addressed specifically to the overseers and deacons, which suggests that Paul wanted to not only contact the church as a whole, but sought to pass on teaching to the leadership of the community. Knowing the genre and audience of the hymn helps to clarify the purpose. Hooker follows her thoughts on the passing on of teaching with the suggestion that there is a non-specific heresy floating around the Philippian church. Identifying Paul’s audience as the leadership of the church can be filed for later as the layers are slowly stripped. The original audience of the hymn can be inferred as the early church. The Christological and soteriological nature of the text, paired with poetic writing suggest an easily memorized doctrine clarifying the stance of the newly forming Christian wing of Judaism.
Form Criticism
That same universal acceptance of the hymnic nature of Philippians 2:5-11 does not lead scholars to a unified stance on the structure of the text. Two primary camps exist in regard to an understanding of how the text comes together. Depending on which camp a student finds themselves in will subsequently alter conclusions in regard to the extent of redaction to which the text has been subjected. It should be noted that the New Revised Standard Version accepts a variation of Lohmeyer’s structure.
Lohmeyer founded the first of the two schools of thought, while Cerfaux and Jeremias are given dual credit for the second. Lohmeyer organized the hymn into six stanzas of three lines each. The Cerfaux-Jeremias structure splits the text into three stanzas of four lines. Other suggests generally fall along the lines of these overarching themes. Although not a direct part of this study, the first four verses of Philippians 2 also display a carefully crafted structure. This observation helps to point out another hint toward answering some of the hard questions. Even if Paul did not write the hymn of verses 5-11 his poetic introduction and the surrounding text show him to have carefully selected this text for inclusion in his letter.
Much like the situation with authorship, more information is needed before a conclusion on structure can be reached. For the moment, merely noting the possibilities of Lohmeyer’s six stanzas, Cerfaux-Jeremias’ three stanzas, or an alternative is sufficient. The questions continue with the text itself.
Textual Criticism
Manuscripts of Philippians 2:6-11 are remarkably consistent. Only a few slight discrepancies exist and those can easily be regarded as inconsequential. Metzger records issues in verses 7, 9, and 11.
The word anqropoV in verse 7 is occasionally written plural and occasionally singular. From an interpretative standpoint, if anqropoV is singular then Christ took the form of a man. If plural then Christ took the form of men. Either translation leads to only a slight difference in interpretation. The singular would suggest that Christ Jesus took the form of a specific man while the plural offers a more general humanness. For non-specific reasons the committee chose the plural formation.
To onomati in verse 9 also presents a minor difficulty. In Koine Greek, to is the definite article. Some manuscripts omit the to. Omission suggests a non-specific name as opposed to a very specific name. Due to to being the final syllable of the word immediately preceding onomati, the omission may be dismissed as a clerical error.
CristoV in verse 11 is the final textual discrepancy. Some of the western manuscripts omit CristoV entirely. The problem with its omission is that losing the title Christ greatly reduces the overall effect of the name above every name. Metzger contends that the purpose for this omission is unclear and the committee choice to retain the term due to a general lack of compelling evidence as to why the word would be excluded.
Although the manuscripts are mostly intact and agree with one another the manner in which other terms should be translated causes great argument. Coincidentally, there are three interpretive difficulties to match the three manuscript disagreements. Morphe, ekenosen, and the aforementioned onomati.
Interpreting morphe requires a wider set of sources than just the biblical text. Lightfoot goes into great detail distinguishing between morphe here and schema elsewhere. In deciphering the word it seems clear that morphe is not just a resemblance or surface similarity, but a very strong connection, the very essence of a thing. Collange is unconvinced by this argument yet does not address the extra biblical usage. Aristotle, the great philosopher, described some great image that makes all things identifiable. An observer identifies an object as a chair because it contains some intrinsic form that fulfills the essence of “chair.” Lightfoot presents the word morphe with this same understanding. He continues by listing other uses Paul made of the word morphe (Romans 8:29, Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 3:18, Galatians 4:19 and Philippians 3:10). All these uses are referencing the deep change that Christ brings into a person’s life. Such an understanding of morphe and the idea that Jesus took on both the morphe of God and the morphe of humanity solidifies a divine Christology of this hymn. Only God could have the power to take on the very essence of more than one object. A brief additional difficulty with morphe is that if it is understood as an equivalent of eikon, then the hymn would reinforce Second Adam Christology. Doxa is also a suggested equivalent, but neither garners sufficient support to take seriously.
Ekenosen and to onomati cause issue due to the inability to specifically identify what it is Jesus emptied himself of and what name, exactly, is being given. Paul has used ekenosen in other texts to reference the idea of becoming powerless or emptying a thing of significance. Little reason exists to think this use should be understood differently. Jesus emptying himself is best understood in a relative sense as opposed to a literal complete sense. Compared to the fullness of God, humanity is an empty shell. Jesus did not lose all that made him divine, but narrowed his perspective to that of humanity. He moved from infinite to finite.
To onomati also lacks specificity. What name is being given? One possibility is the name “Jesus.” Having been given to Jesus by his mother after being instructed to do so, that very name Yeshua, “savior,” could be the name. Martin argues for kurioV being the name given. Since kurioV is the LXX rendering of YHWH this interpretation places extremely high Christological significance on the hymn. The salvific references in the hymn support the former understanding, the name savior, to carry enough weight to make that interpretation plausible. Whoever authored this poetic piece of literature could very well have intended the double meaning of savior and YHWH. Combining these two theories is favorable and supportable by the nature of poetry.
Although insightful and necessary for interpretation, these textual issues only give a little help toward answering the hard questions of authorship and structure. Patience is a vital virtue in pulling these accounts together in order to reach answers. Again, more information is needed.
Redaction Criticism
What has been redacted requires a decision on structure and structure requires a decision on what has been redacted. This catch twenty-two must be addressed in order to move forward in the exegesis of Philippians 2:5-11. Fortunately, addressing redactions directly can answer some of the structural questions. Lohmeyer and Cerfaux-Jeremias each present a structure that requires additions of some kind to have been made. This editor was most likely Paul. Lohmeyer’s structure needs to have verse 8 added by Paul; while Cerfaux-Jeremias see verses 8, 10, and 11 as Pauline additions.
What then are glosses by Paul and what are original to the hymn? A brief look at verse 5 will show Paul’s intentions for the hymn. Paul’s use of the hymn is ethical in nature. This ethical use is not affected by the glosses, whatever they may be. Those facts suggest Paul had no concern for the continuity of the piece. Any number of additions or subtractions may have been made. Collange has attempted to bridge a gap by accepting verse 8 as original to the hymn. He adapts Lohmeyer’s structure with verse 8 added. The hard question of redaction is answerable by understanding the hymn to have some Pauline additions which maintain the gist of the metric structure while reworking the hymn to make a specific point.
Although Paul uses a version of the hymn here to make a point, there are other places in which these words are found. John 13:3-7 contains sufficient similarities to suggest either a common liturgy or one author copying another. Gibbs sees this particular use of Philippians 2:5-11 as an attempt to explain the relationship between God’s redemptive work and Jesus; he considers it the earliest homologia. If Gibbs is correct then it would only make since that both the author of John and Paul would pick up on this for such important teachings. Since both the Johannine use and the Pauline use contain the instruction to “do this also,” drawing on the same source seems less likely than the author of John drawing on Paul’s redacted version of the text. This additional uses does not show significant differences, not even a move away from the ethical understanding of the piece.
The only option is to accept the hymn as a whole. Even if Paul edited the original beyond traceability, Johannine tradition upholds Paul’s view. Such a close relationship between John 13 and Philippians 2 could not exist if the John source disagreed with any of Paul’s glosses, assuming that there are any glosses. As to the hard question of redaction, it is a moot point. Paul was a part of the first generation of Christianity. He was a formative leader in the early church. For many of what would become the influential churches of Christianity, his word was law, so to speak. Any additions made by Paul are accepted later in Scripture and thus become a part of the original. There is no longer any tangible way to separate additions from original because it all becomes original.
This conclusion has ramifications for the outstanding hard questions above. Pauline glosses disregarded as unwelcome additions and instead accepted as part of the original impact the understood structure of the hymn. The break in metric that so bothered Lohmeyer, must be accepted as a kind of explanation point used to emphasize that aspect of the poem. Paul may then be accepted as the author, perhaps not the original author, but the author so far as future use is concerned. Textual concerns, especially in regard to non-Pauline language, are left as hard questions, but through using the train of thought above, a reader may accept there to be a previous groundwork on which Paul built this hymn. Further criticisms help to illustrate and support these conclusions.
Source Criticism
Scripturally speaking there are obvious similarities between the Philippian hymn and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. This comparison could be used to suggest a Jewish-Christian origin of the text. The comparison supports Pauline authorship. Having grown up as a Jew away from Jerusalem and later receiving his education in that city easily explains the use of Old Testament Scriptures. As pointed out in Redaction Criticism above, Paul continues to use the themes presented in Philippians 2:5-11. His favored use of the themes and Old Testament allusions further support Pauline authorship. Isaiah is not the only ancient text to be suggested as being comparable to the Philippian hymn. The famous Wisdom in Proverbs 8, Sirach 24, and Wisdom of Solomon 2-7 have been pointed out by Martin as a necessity for interpreting the hymn. Less convincingly, Collange cites Deichgraber’s comparison of the songs of Moses and Deborah (Exodus 15 and Judges 5 respectively). Both suggestions complicate the matter by saying loose similarities are needed for interpretation. Any association between the hymn and those texts can just as easily be explained by Paul’s intense knowledge and study of the Old Testament and other Jewish texts.
Cultural sources suggest the work to be of, ancient Iranian-Jewish influence, Gnostic influence, or Hellenistic origin. Supposing cultural influence is permitted to be deeply traced, one can appreciate Lohmeyer’s conclusion that the Iranian-Jewish Son of Man mythos influenced the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah, which subsequently influenced the Philippian hymn. Such a cumbersome trail is difficult to follow. The statement that the Iranian-Jewish Son of Man mythos had no direct influence over the Philippian hymn which was written some 700-800 years after the former had any possible affect on Isaiah, can be safely made.
Gnostic influences are also cited. The use of morphe could be an allusion the “heavenly man” in the Gnostic mythos, but Martin is unconvinced. Collange, however, sees the Gnostic vocabulary within the hymn as an intentional attack on the ideas of Gnosticism. Paul could be using the hymn as such with the edits he included. Although such glosses may be included to combat Gnosticism, the original source of the hymn appears more doctrinal than apologetic.
Lewis understands the cultural ramifications of morphe differently. He supports the these that morphe is the word used by Aristotle in his philosophical understanding of how a chair is recognized because of its essential chair-ness. Such an interpretation points toward strong Hellenistic influence, which, subsequently, also supports the theory of Pauline authorship. Paul, being raised as a Roman citizen, would have received not only the Jewish education of the time, but also be well versed in Hellenistic literature and philosophy. Since both Jewish and Hellenistic sources have been convincingly presented, who better to bridge the gap than Paul? Scriptural and Cultural sources both support Pauline authorship.
Social Historical Criticism
Social Historical issues finalize Pauline authorship. Pliny describes the singing of hymns as second in his list of descriptors of the First Century church. Paul, being a founder of so many of these first churches, undeniably had influence over their mode of worship. Even if he allowed his Jewish worship habits to dominate liturgical teaching, they too point toward the use of hymns. Martin shows that the borrowing of Psalms from Judaism and singing them at gatherings began in Palestine sometime in this same first generation of the Way. This adaptation could be a Pauline use of cultural movements.
Further socio-historical implications are drawn from the composition of the city of Philippi. Many of the people within this city would not have been Jewish, but proud citizens of the Greco-Roman world. The lack of a Jewish synagogue, as pointed out in Acts 16, further supports Hooker’s conclusion. These Philippian citizens would adhere to the Imperial Cult in the same way as most of the Roman world. In their mind Caesar is kurioV. Paul’s suggestion that someone else is lord would have certainly grasped their attention. So too would verse 8’s “even death on the cross,” capture Philippian attention. The cross of the Roman world was a powerful symbol of the Empire’s strength and idea of justice. For Paul to suggest that the true kurioV was crucified instead of crucifying is a jab at the Philippian mindset.
What then of the church itself? Paul apparently sees dissent of some kind within the church. His words in 1:15 and 4:2 clearly state divisions and competition amongst the leadership. Their squabbling could even escalate to the point that the church itself dissolves. In such dire straits, strong words that carry both ethical weight, to correct their actions, and doctrinal weight, to pull them together under common teaching, is an elegant solution. Paul’s excellent use of double meaning, most notably proved throughout Galatians, show that no one meaning is needed in the interpretation of Paul’s works. Although his obvious use, as explained by his words in Philippians 2:5, is an ethical correction, no strong reason to dismiss a second meaning of teaching and guidance exists. Paul’s brilliance is evidence in the bridging of the issues and undercurrents in the Philippian church and the mindset of the proud Roman Provence.
Praxis
Hard questions have been addressed above, but what final answers may be given? In a practical sense Paul wants the Philippian church to mimic Jesus in pouring themselves out and allowing God to receive all the glory. Such a simple interpretation carries into modernity as an exquisite teaching on humility. The issue of asking hard questions deserves greater attention. An unwillingness to question the text of Scripture misses the purpose of this book. Understanding the impact of words written thousands of years ago requires deep thought. Although the Philippian hymn may be taken as ethical teaching and doctrine the most helpful practical use of the text is the benefit of asking questions to which there may be no simple answers. “The Bible clearly states” is terrible. Studying where God’s Word does not clearly state is what will grow, develop, and solidify faith. That is a use of this hymn of which Paul would be proud.
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