Re: Rom 13:8-10

Jonathan Robie (jwrobie@mindspring.com)
Tue, 11 Nov 1997 18:32:45 -0500

At 08:45 PM 11/11/97 +1000, Rick Strelan wrote:
>In Rom 13:8-10 it looks like ETERON NOMON is the natural object of the verb
>PEPLHRWKEN, and that one should translate:'The one who loves has fulfilled
>the other law', that is, has fulfilled the 'other which is like unto the
>first table'. The context, which goes on to quote the second table, would
>support that.

I think it is more likely that Paul is talking about love as "the law of love", which may have been more or less a fixed expression in the early church. "The other law" is the Mosaic law in this context, and if you fulfil the law of love, then you fulfil the other law as well.

I'm operating at a handicap here, since the left lens of my glasses fell down and shattered on our ceramic tile bathroom floor, but I wasn't able to find the phrase "other which is like unto the first table", and I can't find the definition "tablet" for NOMOS in Louw and Nida. I just checked Exodus 24:12 in my LXX, and it uses the term PUXION for tablet: KAI DWSW SOI TA PUXIA TA LIQINA TON NOMON KAI TAS ENTOLAS hAS EGRAPSA NOMOQETHSAI AUTOIS. Deuteronomy 5:22 has DUO PLAKAS LIQINAS. So I need more background to understand why you think that these two tablets could be seen as DUO NOMOI, since I don't know that the word NOMOS is ever used that way.

Doesn't NOMOS usually refer to the Torah? As in hO NOMOS KAI hOI PROFHTAI, "the law and the prophets"?

>Does anyone know of passages where the second table is described as 'the
>other law'?

Does anybody know of any passage where NOMOS means tablet?

Jonathan