An Alexandrian Rereading of Prov 8:22 and Its Christological Implications

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article contains some formal flaws, the most disturbing one being the way Hebrew and Greek are transliterated. There is absolutely no coherence in the way those words are transposed in Latin letters. To give just one example related to Hebrew, the same word qānānī "he begot me" is transliterated in three possible ways: qānâny; qānānî. It is very important to avoid such fluctuations and to unify the transliterations on the base of a scientifically recognized system: I would suggest the system of the Encyclopaedia Judaica or even better the Encyclopedia of Hebrew Linguistics (online).

The situation regarding Greek is even worse. The Author decided to Latinize Greek but the result of his/her transliteration is catastrophic, leading to blatant Barbarisms: the <w> is genrally used to transliterate <ω>. However, the Author sometimes decides to use <ō> instead. The form ἔκτισέ (με) of Proverbs 8:22 is wrongly transliterated as ëktisén. The passive forms γεννήθη "might have been begotten (subjunctive)", γεννηθέντα "begotten", κτίσθη "might have been founded (subjunctive)", οὐ ποιηθέντα are transliterated by gennēzē/gennēzénta, ktiszē, oú poiézénta, respectively, with a totally wrong equivalence between <θ> and <z>. I suggest avoiding transliteration for the Greek terms and using the Greek original instead.

There is a wrong morphological analysis of the verbal form ἐκτίσατο "he founded for himself" (p. 14, row 175). It is not a passive but a mediopassive.

The form ektizein (p. 2, rows 62; 64) is wrong since the infinitive κτίζειν does not have any augment. The correct transliteration of the infinitive κτίζειν would be ktízein.

These inexactitudes regarding the Greek arise my suspicion that the Author is not a real Hellenist. Broadly speaking, the aforementioned technical problems regarding the transliteration of Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Ancient Egyptian and Coptic weaken the quality of the article because they give the impression that the Author used second-hand knowledge about those languages. I suggest improving the transliterations and, as said above, I think it preferable to write the Greek in Greek rather than in transliterations.

Author Response

Response 1: I agree with all your comments. Thank you for pointing out the errors in the Greek transliteration which have now been corrected using the corresponding Greek, Hebrew and Coptic forms. I also amended the error regarding the term 'ἐκτήσατο' and changed its analysis to the middle form.

I would be very grateful if you could check the new version of the article, which has been revised and updated with new material. The corresponding fonts have been uploaded.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

An Alexandrian Rereading of Proverbs 8:22 and its Christological Implications

This submission is an innovative exploration into how the Alexandrian Jewish and Christian communities understood the relationship between God and his wisdom, and how this influenced the terminology of the Nicene Creed.

The abstract is clear in its formulation of investigated problem and the keywords are representative and sufficient.

The introduction provides well-structured orientation, and the contents of the article demonstrate a scholarly journey of an intertextual dialogue between the biblical text of Proverbs 8:22 and Alexandrian Jewish tradition on relationship between God and His Logos and Son.

The linguistic and sematic range of qānâ in Proverbs 8:22 61 and its Greek translation, ektizein, in the Septuagint are sufficiently explored, and their theological interpretation applied to the divine realm in an appreciable manner. Their Egyptian parallels are also explored with supportive scholarly evidence.

Christological controversies concerning the verb ktízein form the conclusion of the submission.

The submission contains several block quotations that do not follow proper documentation procedures. The author(s) should request for the Journal citation format in this regard.

The language use is of scholarly standard, and the literature are representative of the study. The article is publishable subject to minor revisions.

 

 

Author Response

I really appreciate your commentaries. I had to make some changes to the original article based on the feedback of other reviewers.

I would be very grateful if you could check the new version of the article, which has been revised and updated with new material. The corresponding fonts have been uploaded.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have written all of my comments in the file (attached).  

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The comments on the quality of English language are contained within that file. 

Author Response

I really appreciate your commentaries, which were very useful in helping me to reconsider some issues that had not been fully developed. I have made some changes to the original article based on your feedback.

I would be very grateful if you could check the new version of the article, which has been revised and updated with new material. The corresponding fonts have been uploaded.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

After the modification the article is more acceptable. However, be very cautious with the transliterations from Hebrew and Greek.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments. A new font has been added for transliteration from demotic.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The overall quality of the paper has been improved.  It is still slightly "loose."  I would recommend supplementing the introduction by a more structured table-of-contents-like "menu" of the sections that are ensuing (perhaps within or after the paragraph: "This study will employ the linguistic approaches from the Proto-Hamito-Semitic family to elucidate the meaning of קנה in Prov 8:22. It will also evaluate the Alexandrian interpretation of this and other creation related passages, analyzing their Greek versions, as well as their later reception by some Christian writers."  

Please see the attached file for a significantly smaller list of corrections/suggestions.  

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your comments. They have been incorporated into the text. Please see the attached file for a list of corrections.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf