12.03.2026 06:05
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It’s odd because I thought they believed in “salvation by grace through faith, not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Worth watching. Educate yourself on the evangelicals who want this bullshit Trump is doing to happen because something something “biblical.” 🙄🤦🏼♀️
www.youtube.com/live/tz_1aGO...
So much for “the party that fights antisemitism” narrative they have. 🙄🤦🏼♀️
*oops: fixing an error here—THIS is how it would have looked (I originally repeated letters earlier—shows how copyists made mistakes, though!)
ⲧⲟⲩⲅⲉⲛⲟⲙⲉⲛⲟⲩⲉⲕⲥⲡⲉⲣⲙⲁⲧⲟⲥⲇⲁⲩⲓⲇⲕⲁⲧⲁⲥⲁⲣⲕⲁ
I think this is the more interesting thing to focus on here. Not whether Paul had good reason to link Jesus back to David “according to the flesh,” but rather how he thought that was the case: through the tradition of Jesus having been raised from the dead. This is what Paul thinks is good news.
Paul never gives us a genealogy. For him, he just trusts that Jesus is physically descended from David. And he believes that Jesus’ resurrection signals a new era, an era of God’s reign.
The weird thing about Matthew and Luke presenting Jesus’ genealogies as through Joseph is that in both of those Gospels, it is stated that Joseph wasn’t actually the father of Jesus, so Jesus wasn’t even related to him. So at best, he is Messiah-by-association in those genealogies, not physically.
Paul’s brief comment that Jesus was “born of a woman” in Galatians 4:4 could be a hint that if someone did present him with a genealogy linking Jesus to David, it was probably through Mary (but the links to Joseph are made in Matthew and Luke because patrilineal descent was prioritized).
Paul’s letters were probably nearly all written before all the Gospels were. Romans might have been composed anywhere from 55-58 CE in Corinth. So Paul could have been presented with any genealogical evidence, maybe even one that actually went through Mary. But maybe not. We have no way of knowing.
As to the tradition linking Jesus to having ancestry going back to David, we can’t know for sure what genealogical tradition was presented to Paul linking Jesus to David, as Matthew’s genealogy in Matthew 1:1-17 differs from Luke’s in Luke 3:23-38 (and both of those are strangely through Joseph).
It doesn’t work for Paul if Jesus is dead, as the Messiah isn’t supposed to end up killed on a cross and that’s the end of it.
The way Paul rationalizes that Jesus was victorious is in the next verse (v. 4), which we’ll get to next. It has to do with Jesus rising from the dead.
For Paul, Jesus being “from the seed of David according to the flesh” (that is, physically descended from David) is super important because it was expected at this time that the Messiah would be descended from David and would be victorious.
τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαυὶδ κατὰ σάρκα
“who was from the seed of David according to the flesh”
This is the next part of Romans 1:3 we’re discussing.
ⲧⲟⲩⲅⲉⲛⲟⲙⲉⲛⲟⲩⲉⲕⲥⲡⲉⲣⲙⲁⲧⲟⲥⲇⲁⲩⲓⲇ ⲁⲩⲓⲇⲕⲁⲧⲁⲥⲁⲣⲕⲁ
^ This is probably how it looked when read aloud to the recipients.
This is important here because of what Paul is about to say next in Romans 1:3, specifically about Jesus’ relationship to David.
In Exodus 4:22-23, God calls Israel his “son.” Hosea 11:1 says (with God as speaker), “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” In Jeremiah 31:9, God says he is a father to Israel.
David specifically is also treated as God’s son (2 Samuel 7:14; Psalm 2:7; 89:26-27).
This prepositional phrase “concerning his son” is modifying Paul’s earlier phrase “the good news of God.” So it’s the good news of God “concerning his son.”
And who is that? It’s Jesus. But did you know that Israel is also called God’s son in the Hebrew Bible (a.k.a. Old Testament)?
περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ
This is the phrase of the text of Romans (the first part of Romans 1:3) that we are looking at now. It means “concerning his son.”
Here’s how this phrase probably looked in the form it appeared in when this letter was read to its recipients:
ⲡⲉⲣⲓⲧⲟⲩⲩⲓⲟⲩⲁⲩⲧⲟⲩ
This doesn’t mean Paul is “wrong” to use these passages in this way, but he’s definitely seeing them in light of how he sees Jesus.
He is saying that the “good news of God” (which he believes involves Jesus) is promised beforehand in these texts, but that is a theological interpretation imposed on them by him, not one warranted by the original contexts of the texts themselves.
Contrary to what evangelical Christians may imagine, these passages do not promise a single messiah, but rather they are in regard to good news about restoration after exile. They’re meant to give Jewish people in exile hope. Paul is extracting a secondary messianic meaning from them.
The passages Paul may be thinking of are likely in Isaiah (40:9; 41:27; 52:7; 60:6; 61:1) and Nahum (1:15), where the Septuagint translates the verbal forms of the root בשׂר (b-s-r) in the Piel stem used in these verses (“bring good news”) with forms of the Greek verb εὐαγγελίζω (evangelizō).
The holy writings in question, of course, are the prophets, texts in the Hebrew Bible (or Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible which Paul uses the most to quote from these writings).
Paul says that the “good news” was promised beforehand in them.
So the next phrase in Romans 1:2 to discuss is διὰ τῶν προφητῶν αὐτοῦ ἐν γραφαῖς ἁγίαις.
This would probably have appeared in the copy of the letter that was read aloud to Paul’s recipients in Rome like this:
ⲇⲓⲁⲧⲱⲛⲡⲣⲟⲫⲏⲧⲱⲛⲁⲩⲧⲟⲩⲉⲛⲅⲣⲁⲫⲁⲓⲥⲁⲅⲓⲁⲥ
It means “through his prophets in holy writings.”
😂 this joke works with the Erasmian pronunciation commonly taught in seminaries lol
So, the relative pronoun (ὃ) here is neuter nominative singular, referring back to the neuter noun εὐαγγέλιον (evangelion, “good news”).
So Paul is saying the good news of God he mentioned was “promised beforehand.” In what way? Stay tuned to the next posts. :)
ὃ προεπηγγείλατο
“which he promised beforehand”
In uncial writing as the text would have appeared when it was read aloud to its recipients, it would have looked like this:
ⲟⲡⲣⲟⲉⲡⲏⲅⲅⲉⲓⲗⲁⲧⲟ
This is the first part of Romans 1:2, the next phrase we’re analyzing.
I think it should trouble everyone that Trump is trying to use AI to mass surveil Americans and autonomously target people with killing machines using an AI model.
I’m glad Anthropic is refusing.
But now we will see if the Pentagon engages in ending the company or a takeover.
