An excursus reviews the principal alternatives for the explanation of the ἁρπαγμός clause in the history of interpretation. Apart from the active interpretation advocated by Moule (that I rehabilitate in modified form in Chapter 6), none is persuasive. In particular, the excursus takes to task the view advocated by Roy Hoover (“The Harpagmos Enigma: A Philological Solution.” HTR 64 [1971]: 95–119) that vv. 6b–c is an idiomatic construction meaning that Christ “did not consider equality with God something to be taken advantage of”. Every stage of Hoover’s argument is examined and found wanting, as are subsequent defences of it by N. T. Wright and Michael Wade Martin. Several Patristic texts that use the word ἁρπαγμός and that have been adduced in arguments over the meaning of Phil 2:6 are also freshly examined and shown to support the argument offered in Chapter 6.