Monogenēs


Monogenes has two primary definitions, "pertaining to being the only one of its kind within a specific relationship" and "pertaining to being the only one of its kind or class, unique in kind". Thus monogenēs may be used both as an adjective monogenēs pais, meaning unique and special. Its Greek meaning is often applied to mean "one of a kind, one and only". Monogenēs may be used as an adjective. For example, monogenēs pais means only child, only legitimate child or special child. Monogenēs may also be used on its own as a noun. For example, o monogenēs means "the only one", or "the only legitimate child".
The word is used in Hebrews 11:17-19 to describe Isaac, the son of Abraham. However, Isaac was not the only-begotten son of Abraham, but was the chosen, having special virtue. Thus Isaac was "the only legitimate child" of Abraham. That is, Isaac was the only son of Abraham that God acknowledged as the legitimate son of the covenant. It does not mean that Isaac was not literally "begotten" of Abraham, for he indeed was, but that he alone was acknowledged as the son that God had promised.
The term is notable outside normal Greek usage in two special areas: in the cosmology of Plato and in the Gospel of John. As concerns the use by Plato there is broad academic consensus, generally following the understanding of the philosopher Proclus.

Lexical entry

In A Greek-English Lexicon of Liddell and Scott the following main definition is given:
A typical example:

Usage in Greek texts

Classical Greek texts

The following examples are taken from the .
An exhaustive listing of monogenēs can be found in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae database.
The reference above found in Liddell Scott, and therefore in other lexicons, and unquestioned in Christian commentaries, to a use of monogenes by Parmenides has more recently been shown to probably be incorrect. The text of Parmenides 8. 4 is "unusually corrupt". Plutarch read the text as holomeles. The original reconstruction by Hermann Diels left the text open. Later editions of
Diels-Kranz defer to Plutarch's reading in the reconstructed . Others since reconstructed the text as monogenes but John R. Wilson argues that this is inconsistent with context and suggests the text as monomeles. The inconsistency is accepted by H. Schmitz but Schmitz proposes instead a return to holomeles.
's Timaeus speaks twice of a monogenes Heaven:
The subject is the creation, or begetting, of heaven as a unique birth, not the birth of more than one cosmos. Comparison is also made with the begetting of animals and birds from the souls of "light-minded men".
In commentary on Plato Proclus considers that if a visible god like the ouranos is to resemble higher invisible gods, then the visible cosmos must be monogenes.

Greek Old Testament usage

The word occurs five times in the Septuagint:
Psalm 22:20, 35:17 and Wisdom 7:22 appear to be personifications of the soul and wisdom as an "only son" and "only daughter" respectively.
There is an increase in the use of monogenes in later versions of the Septuagint. Gen 22:2 "the beloved one whom you have loved" in Aquila's Greek translation uses monogenēs to translate yachid, the common Hebrew word for "only".

Greek New Testament usage

The New Testament contains 9 uses, all adjectival:
Platonic usage also impacted Christian usage, for example in Gnosticism. In Tertullian's Against the Valentinians, he gives the name to one of their thirty aeons as monogenes in a syzygy with makaria, Blessedness.
Similar content is found in:
The problem with magical inscriptions, on papyri, walls or ostraca, is firstly dating the source, secondly that magical spells by their nature tend to be syncretic. In the example above lovestruck Capitolina summons "all the divinities" to release the spirits of "all who drowned in the Nile, the unmarried dead" etc. to sway the heart of her young man, yet she may not have known enough about Judaism or Christianity, or even Gnostic Christianity, to know whether "YAHWEH SABAOTH" and "the Only-Begotten" were the same god or not.

Later uses in Christianity

Some aspects of the meaning, or range of meanings, of monogenēs in the New Testament are disputed. Lexicons of the New Testament both reflect and determine debate:
The entrance of "only begotten" into the English Bible was not directly from mono-genes but from the Latin of the Vulgate, which had uni-genitus :
The meaning of monogenēs was part of early Christian christological controversy regarding the Trinity. It is claimed that Arian arguments that used texts that refer to Christ as God's "only begotten Son" are based on a misunderstanding of the Greek word monogenēs and that the Greek word does not mean "begotten" in the sense we beget children but means "having no peer, unique".
Alternatively in favour that the word monogenēs does carry some meaning related to begetting is the etymological origin mono- + -genes. The question is whether the etymological origin was still "live" as part of the meaning when the New Testament was written, or whether semantic shift has occurred. Limiting the semantic change of monogenes is that the normal word monos is still the default word in New Testament times, and that the terms co-exist in Greek, Latin and English:
Also there is a question about how separate from the idea of -genes birth and begetting the cited uses of monogenes in the sense of "unique" truly are. For example, the ending -genes is arguably not redundant even in the sense of "only" as per when Clement of Rome, and later Origen, Cyril and others, employ monogenes to describe the rebirth of the phoenix. At issue is whether Clement is merely stressing monos unique, or using monogenes to indicate unique in its method of rebirth, or possibly that there is only one single bird born and reborn. Likewise in Plato's Timaeus, the "only-begotten and created Heaven", is still unique in how it is begotten, in comparison to the begetting of animals and men, just as Earth and Heaven give birth to Ocean and Tethys. Of the Liddell Scott references for "unique" that leaves only Parmenides, which is no longer considered a likely reading of the Greek text.
Additionally the New Testament frame of reference for monogenes is established by uses of the main verb "beget", and readings of complementary verses, for example:

Uniqueness

This issue overlaps with, and is interrelated with, the question of begetting above. Interpretation of the uniqueness of monogenes in New Testament usage partly depends on understanding of Hellenistic Jewish ideas about inheritance. Philo stated:
In his 1894 translation of Philo Charles Duke Yonge rendered "loved-and-only son" as "only legitimate son", which is not unreasonable given Philo's parallel comments in On Sacrifice X.43. It also parallels Josephus' use for a legitimate son of the main royal wife.
Likewise in the later Jewish Septuagint revisions:
In contrast in Proverbs 4:3 Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion all have monogenes of a mother's only-begotten son where legitimacy is not an issue.

Textual issues in John 1:18

In textual criticism, opinions are divided on whether Jesus is referred to as "only-begotten God" or "only-begotten Son", in John 1:18. According to the majority of modern scholars the external evidence favors monogenês theos as the original text. This reading exists primarily in the Alexandrian text-types. Textus Receptus, the manuscript tradition behind the KJV and many other Bibles, reads ho monogenês huios. This reading ranks second in terms of the number of manuscripts containing it, and has a wider distribution among text-types.
This textual issue is complicated by the scribal abbreviations of nomina sacra where "G-d" and "S-n" are abbreviated in the Greek manuscripts by ΘΣ and ΥΣ increasing the likelihood of scribal error.