What does Ode 42 of the Odes of Solomon mean by all Christ's persecutors died? (SOLVED)

[rakovsky]

The Christian "Odes of Solomon" are poems written in Syriac somewhere in around the 2nd Century AD. You can read them here: The Odes of Solomon
Scholars are divided on whether they are mainstream, orthodox Christian songs or Gnostic ones, but my own careful analysis did not turn up anything that was conclusively Gnostic.

Ode 23 sounds like it is making an apocalyptic prediction about a letter from God, a theme resembling the sealed scrolls in the Book of Revelation. In the prediction, Christ inherited everything and then the persecutors became extinct:

4. Walk in the knowledge of the Lord, and you will know the grace of the Lord generously; both for His exultation and for the perfection of His knowledge.
5. And His thought was like a letter, and His will descended from on high.
...
18. And there was seen at its head, the head which was revealed, even the Son of Truth from the Most High Father.
19. And He inherited and possessed everything, and then the scheming of the many ceased.
20. Then all the seducers became headstrong and fled, and the persecutors became extinct and were blotted out.
21. And the letter became a large volume, which was entirely written by the finger of God.
22. And the name of the Father was upon it; and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, to rule for ever and ever.

Dr. John Roller theorizes in "The Doctrine of Immortality in the Early Church":

They are said to become "extinct" and "blotted out." This means that they will die and the very remembrance of them will be removed.
Doctrine of Immortality - Early Church - Apostolic

Then in Ode 42, the composer begins talking about approaching the Lord with his hands extended like a cross, and soon afterwards the Lord's voice takes over the narration. This kind of change of narrative voice happens in some of the other Odes as well.

In Charlesworth's 1977 translation of Ode 42 (below), all the persecutors die, they sought Christ because He lives, and then Christ speaks with their mouths and threw His yoke of love on them:

3. And I became useless to those who knew me not, because I shall hide myself from those who possessed me not.
4. And I will be with those who love me.
5. All my persecutors have died, and they sought me, they who declared against me, because I am living.
6. Then I arose and am with them, and will speak by their mouths.
7. For they have rejected those who persecute them; and I threw over them the yoke of my love.

Harris' 1911 translation runs:

5. All my persecutors are dead; and they sought after me who hoped in me, because I was alive:
6. and I rose up and am with them; and I will speak by their mouths.
7. For they have despised those who persecuted them;
8. and I lifted up over them the yoke of my love;

The main difference is that in Charlesworth's translation, the enemies die and then seek Christ and join with Him, whereas in Harris' translation, the enemies die and those who hope in Christ join with Him. I shared the Syriac test with two people with knowledge of Syriac and they took Harris' idea that the text referred to the persecutors' deaths and referred to those who were for Christ seeking Him, not to the idea that the persecutors began seeking God. MalpanaGiwargis wrote:

ܕܰܣܒܰܪܘ is the "who declared/who hoped" in question. If the vowels are correct, and this is in the peal conjugation, then neither one really sounds right; peal is usually "think, be convinced, hold as true, etc." whereas the pael (the 'a' vowel on the ܣ instead of the prefix -ܕ) could easily mean "declare." "Hope" would usually take its object with the preposition -ܒ. As it stands, it reads to me more like "...they sought after me who thought about me" or "...who considered/acknowledged me."

Does anyone here have a decent understanding of written Aramaic/Syriac?
FYI, the a vowel in Harris' Syriac text is not over the ܣ , which means that Malpana's explanation leads to the conclusion that Verse 5 says that "they sought after me who acknowledged me..."


Regardless of which translation is better, the Ode still presents the idea that the enemies died, and my question for the thread is when did the composer of the Odes mean that this happened?

Did the Odes' author mean that Christ's persecutors died in the First Century AD and were died at the time when he wrote the Odes? John Munter seemed to have this explanation in mind when he commented on this passage, saying that it

reveals no conscious effort to delude the reader that the Odes were written earlier than at least late in the first century. The author argues that Jesus speaks through those over who he throws “the yoke of my love” through Verse 8.
(The Odes of Solomon Ca 134 CE | Commentaries)

I take Munter to mean that the verse about the death of the persecutors reflects that the author was not trying to make the Odes look like a text from the 1st century when the persecutors were still alive.

Another interpretation could be that the author was describing Christ's mid-1st Century descent into Hades, a dimension that existed in a form outside time, so that the persecutors were dead while Christ was there in Hades. In other words, Christ entered into Hades and had a supernatural experience wherein the enemies had already died, as Hades existed on a plane separate from our normal chronological one on earth.

In The Odes and Psalms of Solomon, J.R. Harris sees Ode 42 containing an account of Christ's under-world triumph [wherein] death cast Him up, and let go the feet with the head. Christ is the head, and the feet are those members of His who are imprisoned in Hades.[/quote]Harris writes that after the opening of Ode 42, the writer

soon diverges into the harrowing of hell. The imprisoned souls cry out for release to Him over whom death, which binds them, has no power. A congregation of saints is gathered in the place of the dead. They become Christ's free men.

A third interpretation could be that Ode 42 is making a prediction about apocalyptic events like the Second Coming and the Last Judgment, at which point all of the Christ's persecutors would have died.

 

[rakovsky]

The setting for the Ode is the time after which Christ freed the righteous dead from Hades. The classical Christian idea is that in 33 AD, Christ went to Hades, freed the Old Testament-era holy people from the dead, and resurrected. But conceivably, since people still died after 33 AD, His Descent and liberation of the righteous could be an ongoing process.

So I am trying to see if Ode 42:5 on the persecutors having died means that
(A) the narrator was talking about Christ entering another dimension or plane like Hades, in relation to which all the persecutors had somehow died;
(B) the narrator meant that Christ's persecutors had already died because the Odes were written around the 2nd Century AD; or
(C) Christ is talking from the standpoint of an apocalyptic future End Times event like the General Resurrection, and the persecutors would have died before that event.

 

[rakovsky]

The answer must be C for several reasons:
1. Ode 23 refers to a future apocalyptic time along the theme of a sealed letter coming from God, like the sealed apocalyptic scrolls in Revelation. It says about Christ:

17 And He inherited and took possession of everything. And the thought of many was brought to nought.
18 And all the apostates hasted and fled away. And those who persecuted and were enraged became extinct.

That is, the persecutors' extinction is described as happening in the apocalyptic future period.

2. Ode 42 says that those who persecuted Christ had died, and although true in the 2nd Century about the individuals who persecuted Christ as an individual in 33 AD, it is even more true after the persecution of Christians had ended as a result of apocalyptic future events.

3. Ode 42 apparently describes the resurrection of the whole Church, Christ's body, as an accomplished fact, without making a distinction that only the OT saints were saved:

18. And the feet and the head he let go, for they were not able to endure my face:
19. And I made a congregation of living men amongst his dead men, and I spake with them by living lips:

4. In Line 19 above, the reenlivened people speak with "living lips", an emphasis on a part of their body that in turn tends to suggest their bodily resurrection. The bodily resurrection of the righteous is a phenomenon of the future apocalyptic general Resurrection.

5. Ode 42 is the last of the Odes, a place in the narrative fitting for a situation or events that occur chronologically last as future End Times events.