Koinonia

How Rude was Jesus? (Monday with Mounce 40)

Jesus is at the wedding at Cana, his mom sees a need, and asks Jesus (well, actually tells him) to help. Jesus’ response is,τι εμοι και σοι, γυναι; (Jn 2:4). Word for word, Jesus says, “What to me and to you, woman.”

The translations really dance around with this one:

“Woman, what does this have to do with me?” (ESV).

“Woman, why do you involve me?” (TNIV).

“Woman, why are you saying this to me?” (NET, with the footnote, “The term Woman is Jesus’ normal, polite way of addressing women [Matt 15:28, Luke 13:12; John 4:21; 8:10; 19:26; 20:15]”).

“Dear woman, that’s not our problem” (NLT).

Everybody Needs a Little Love (Monday with Mounce 39)

Everybody needs a little love.

I am a bit surprised I haven’t been asked this question earlier, but I did just receive one about the different words for love in Greek. How many youth talks have been given on the different types of love, based on the different Greek words? More than I can count, for sure.

There are four basic nouns meaning “love,” and many derivations from these. I am going to rely on my Dictionary for the basic presentation of the data. φιλεω was the general verb for “love.” It has a wide range of meanings, stretching from hospitality to affection to love, even “to kiss.” It is not necessarily a softened form of love, and is used of God’s love for his Son and our love for God. For example, “the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does” (John 5:20). Paul warns the Corinthians, “If anyone does not love the Lord — a curse be on him” (1 Cor 16:22). Jesus loved Lazarus (John 11:3). εραω (ερως) was basically sexual love between a man and a woman. BDAG lists it’s gloss as, “to feel passionately about, have a longing for, feel fervently about.“ It does not occur in the New Testament.

Romans 8:13 and the Meaning of μελλω (Monday with Mounce 38)

David wrote me about the use of μελλω in Rom 8:13. The question has to do with the relationship between μελλω and the use of the future. Are they the same? Any nuance differences?

 

Here is the passage. "For if you live according to the flesh you will die (μελλετε αποθνησκειν), but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live (ζησεσθε)" (ESV).

 

There is nothing in the immediate context of the passage that determines the answer to the question. V 11 may help a little as it is a conditional sentence and the apodosis has the simple future. "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life (ζωοποιησει) to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you" (ESV).

 

But there are two hints to the answer to David's question. The first is the parallel construction of the two verbs in v 13. "You will die" is parallel to "you will live." Both describe the certainty of the consequences of both actions, living according to the flesh and putting to death the deeds of the body. That in and of itself suggests they carry the same basic force: the certainty of a future consequence.

 

But μελλω has a variety of nuances that should also be taken into consideration. BDAG gives several basic meanings.

 

1. "to take place at a future point of time and so to be subsequent to another event, be about to." This includes the sense of imminence, that the event is soon about to happen. Under this meaning they list the usage of μελλω with an infinitive, which is what we have in our passage, and they add that  "in a weakened sense it serves simply as a periphrasis for the futire." In this case, there would be no difference between our two contructions and the variation is stylistic.

 

2. "to be inevitable, be destined, inevitable." Under this gloss they also include the present infintiive, and it is in this caregory that they place Rom 8:13. In this case there would be a nuanced emphasis on the destination of a person who lives according to the flesh, driving home the consequence of their sin.

 

3. As a participle BDAG also includes the meaning, "(in the) future, to come."

 

So what can we make of Rom 8:13. I don't see anything that demands one interpretation over the other. There is nothing in the passage that suggests the imminence of the reader's death, or the destination of one destiny over the other, only the certainty of the outcome of a life lived according to the flesh. Consequently, I would not want to place too much emphasis on the variation between μελλω and the simple future.

 

If this were a term paper and not a blog, where is the next place I should go in determining the meaning of μελλω? You would go throughout Paul and look at how he uses μελλω and determine if he used it with any consistency with one meaning over another. But this is a blog.

 

But this also gives me the chance to say something about how to use BDAG.

 

1. Be sure to pay attention to the grammatical divisions in the BDAG entry. μελλω especially is broken down by whether it is followed by an infinitive or if it is a participial form. And the tense of the infinitive appears to have some significant effect on its meaning; the weakened sense of μελλω as being the same as the future is tied more closely to when the following infinitive is in the present.

 

2. Recognize that where BDAG places a specific passage is a matter of interpretation. I remember when I was starting out in biblical studies, I assumed that their understanding of a passage was non-interpretive. After all, this is a dictionary, not a commentary. But the category they choose is often a matter of interpretation, and therefore BDAG's opinion carries the same weight as any good grammatical commentary. No more; no less.

 

William D. [Bill] Mounce posts every Monday about the Greek language, exegesis, and related topics at Koinonia. He is the author of numerous books, including the bestselling Basics of Biblical Greek, and general editor for Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of the Old and New Testament Words. He served as the New Testament chair of the English Standard Version Bible translation. Learn more and visit Bill's blog (co-authored with scholar and his father Bob Mounce) at www.billmounce.com.

Is 1 Corinthians 13 Poetry? (Monday with Mounce 37)

We had an interesting experience on the ESV translation committee when we were doing 1 Cor 13. We were working really hard on the passage, perhaps especially hard since it was such a famous passage. Famous passages are difficult since changes have a greater impact on people: "how dare you change my favorite passage!" as if we own the text.

We went through the chapter, watched our word choice, made changes only where we thought it was necessary, and especially watched the cadence of the passage. After all, the passage is read at thousands of weddings. It has to sound just right. Okay so far.

But when it was all over, someone (I forget who) asked a simple question. "I wonder if 1 Cor 13 is really poetry." It was late in the day, we had worked hard, the passage was generally viewed as poetic, and for whatever reasons we didn’t answer the question and moved on to chapter 14.

But really. Is 1 Cor 13 poetry? I don’t think so.

Synonyms for "Blameless" (Monday with Mounce 36)

I received this question the other day:

"On several occasions (Eph. 1:4; 5:27; Col. 1:22) Paul writes about the goal of ministry being "blameless" (αμωμος

). Is there any significant difference between αμωμος and ανεγκλητος (1 Cor. 1:8), απροσκοπος (Phil. 1:10), αμεμπτος (Phil. 2:15; 3:6; 1 Thess. 3:13; 5:23), and αμομετος (2 Pet. 3:14)? Can "blameless" in any of the above contexts mean "sinless"?”

Synonyms can be difficult. The basic assumption is that there are rarely true synonyms. While the semantic range of each might overlap somewhat, each has its own nuance. οικια and οικος appear to be one of the few exceptions.

αμωμος is sacrificial language, occurring eight times in the NT, referring to our final state before God as well as to Jesus’ perfection. Phil 2:15 is the only reference to our current lives: “that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation.” However, in this case it is a purpose statement of what we should be, not what we necessarily are.

Where is the study of Biblical languages headed?

Today we feature a new video from Bill Mounce. He'll be back with a written blog next week.

-Andrew

William D. Mounce (PhD, Aberdeen University) lives as a writer in Spokane, Washington. He is the president of Biblical Training, a non-profit organization offering the finest in evangelical teaching to the world for free. See www.BillMounce.com for more information. Formerly he was the preaching pastor at a church in Spokane, and prior to that a professor of New Testament and director of the Greek program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the author of the bestselling New Testament Greek resources, Basics of Biblical Greek, and served as the New Testament chair of the English Standard Version translation of the Bible.

Women are saved through the bearing of children (Monday with Mounce 35)

1 Tim 2:15 has been labeled as one of the truly strange verses of the Bible, and appropriately so. I know of no one who takes it “literally” (although I assume that someone somewhere has tried to do so).

 

But actually it does illustrate an interesting concept in Greek, and that is the overlapping of semantic ranges.

To Be Changed . . . μεταμορφουσθε (Monday with Mounce 34)

I have been thinking a lot lately about my personal mission statement.

In past years, I never liked mission statements. They seemed to be unnecessary wastes of time when I could actually be doing something.

But when I went into the pulpit and a thousand different needs and many people presented their pet projects and needs, I realized that if there was not a focus in ministry there would be nothing accomplished. I was opposed to "church programs" as a general rule because so often they detracted from the most important things, but what were those "most important things"?

Introduction to the Imperfect (Monday with Mounce 33)

As you learn Greek, you will be exposed to the whole issue of aspect. At first it is a little confusing, but after a while you will get the hang of it. But what can become frustrating is trying to be attentive to aspect, and then coming across let’s say an imperfect; you know it is continuous in aspect but you can’t see what the big deal is. This piece of knowledge doesn’t make the passage come clear, or zing, or anything else. After a while you start wondering why you are spending the time learning Greek. Does it really help?

There are several issues going on here, but before getting into them let me summarize aspect, especially for those of you who are not yet.

The History behind Basics of Biblical Greek (Monday with Mounce 32)

I know this is a bit off topic, but someone asked the other day about the history behind Basics of Biblical Greek and suggested that people might be curious. So for what it’s worth, here it is.

Rote memory has never been my strong suite. In high school I memorized tons of poetry and found it easy to do, but when it came to just individual words, well, I’m not wired that way. This made high school Latin especially difficult. What I discovered about myself, however, was that I like charts; and if I could lay things out visually in a way that made sense to me, paradigms and the such were much easier to learn. So I became the chart maker in Latin, and many of my fellow students adopted my charts in preference to our text.