Rufus,In my opinion on closer inspection it appears Paul isn't referring to the Resurrection when he writes about begetting Christ in verse 33, because:
1) The normal meaning of begetting is creating, and in verses 32-33, St Paul talks about a promise to FATHERS to bring a Messiah, and fulfilling the promise for CHILDREN with BEGETTING the SON.
2) When St Paul talks about the Resurrection in the next verse, verse 34, he begins by saying "And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead". This opening phrase appears to separate verse 34 from the previous verses by stating that verse 34 is about the Resurrection. If verse 34's topic being the Resurrection separates it from verse 33, then verse 33 wouldn't be about the same Resurrection from the dead.
3) The normal meaning of the term in verse 33 for "raised" means simply that, as in "raised up a leader", rather than "raised again", which would mean Resurrection.
4. Verse 22 uses raised up in the sense of raise up a leader: "he raised up unto them David to be their king;"
You commented that Resurrection is
"the context Paul is speaking of--all the immediately surrounding verses refer to the Resurrection."But that's not true. Verses 17-23 summarizes Israel's being chosen, suffering, the end of the suffering, its need for a leader and God's promises to raise up one.
Then verses 23-31 summarize Jesus being raised as a savior from David's seed when John preached, and then Jesus' rejection, death, and resurrection.
And then verses 32-33 comes to the timeline of the current moment of Paul's talk by saying: "And we declare unto you glad tidings". It talks about fulfilling the promise to the fathers, which Paul had earlier focused on as a promise for a leader and raising up from David's seed, and that's when it talks about begetting.
It's only in the next verse, 34, that Paul distinguishes the Resurrection by starting with "and as concerning that he raised Him up from the dead".
So in my opinion the context is a list of story lines about choosing a people, raising a leader, and then the leader's biography. And Jesus being begotten, either in the sense of being raised up the first time, the incarnation, adoptionism, and/or the metaphysical act of God begetting Christ, sounds like the meaning of "raised up" in verse 33.
By the way, I have a certain sense when St Paul uses the terms raised up as a leader and as a Resurrection that he may be associating the two terms.
Thank you for answering my question about which translation is better, the NKJV or the KJV here:
Ohhhhh... The NKJV, I guess--the word "again" appears nowhere in the Greek text, although you could conceivably interpret anastesas that way, since the prefix ana- can mean "again." However, this isn't the normal sense of the word."
I understand your "ohhh" here, because when I listed the KJV and NKJV and put in bold the word "again", I didn't explain that it was something I especially wanted to find out about by posting the cites including in Greek. Like Solex said, it's better to be more precise.
Your answer helped to solve the problem I think, because it shows that the term here isn't Resurrected, or raised up again, which would suggest resurrection because it would be a second time after he became a leader.
Peace.
Poll
