1 Cor 12:1-11

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Nov 4 08:37:48 EST 1998


At 12:38 PM -0600 11/4/98, Ben Crick wrote:
>On Tue  3 Nov 98 (18:25:23), evans at wilmington.net wrote:
>> ...ALLWi   ...hETERWi   ....ALLWi ....ALLWi   ....ALLWi   ....ALLWi
>> ...hETERWi ....ALLWi
>>
>> Anyone out there brave enough to speculate on this and it significance?
>> What would the purpose be in using the different synonyms, if not for
>> style?


Ben Crick has cited several older scholarly sources that assert that there 
is a real difference between the meanings of hETEROS and ALLOS. I will only 
say that there is certainly a distinction in older classical Attic usage 
between ALLOS which may refer to "another" or a "different" one of any 
number of items and hETEROS which may properly refer only to one of a pair 
of items, yet that distinction seems altogether lost by the NT period. I 
cite Louw and Nida:

"Some persons have assumed that the distinction between ALLOS and hETEROS 
is simply a difference between what is another in a series and that which 
is significantly different in kind, but such a distinction cannot be 
confirmed from existing contexts, though there may be this type of 
distinction implied in Ga 1:6-7 in which 'another kind of gospel' is 
rejected on the basis that there is 'no other gospel.' Note, however, that 
both ALLOS and hETEROS also occur in the meaning of 'another, which is not 
the same' (see 58.37)."

I would add that, if it makes one comfortable to do so, one might translate 
ALLWi in the 1 Cor 12 passage above as "to one/to another (person)" and 
hETERWi as "to a different one/person," but one would do well not to 
imagine that there's any real difference in sense conveyed by the choice of 
a synonymous English word to translate a different synonymous Greek word.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad at yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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