ANAGNWSEI

Carl Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Sep 6 10:58:26 EDT 1998


At 10:00 PM -0500 9/04/98, Cindy Smith wrote:
>
>>At 5:42 PM -0500 9/04/98, Cindy Smith wrote:
>>>I'm curious about the meaning of ANAGNWSEI.  For example,
>>>
>>>1 Timothy 4:13 hEWS ERXOMAI, PROSEXE TH AVAGNWSEI,
>>>		TH PARAKLHSEI, TH DIDASKALIA.
>>>
>>>NRSV translates this, "Until I arrive, give attention to the public
>>>reading of scripture, to exhorting, to teaching."
>>>
>>>Query:  Does ANAGNWSEI always mean "public reading of scripture" or
>>>can it mean simply "public reading" ?  Certainly, many of the letters
>>>read in the New Testament churches did _not_ later become scripture.

My response was: I'm not going to cite all the voluminous instances cited 
in the original. Rather I'm simply going to note that from quite early on 
ANAGIGNWSKW was the verb for "read aloud." What it is that is read in any 
one instance may
be stated explicitly or may have to be inferred from the context; I don't 
think there's usually much question, however.

To which Cindy replied:

>I meant does ANAGNWSEI always mean the public reading of scripture or 
>simply public reading in the sense of "reading scripture" or just 
>"reading" ?  In other words, in the Bible, when one reads, one is 
>almost always reading scripture as opposed to letters or whatnot which 
>are not scripture per se.  Sorry for the confusion.  It's just that 
>the NRSV translated the word "reading of scripture" when the word 
>"scripture" does not appear in the Greek text.

And what I meant in my original response is that we can only make an 
inference about what was read aloud from the context, and we can't always 
be sure. I think you are certainly right about letters that didn't become 
scripture--and even those that did would not have been deemed such when 
first received. So my feeling regarding these instances of the word 
ANAGNWSIS where it isn't directly stated precisely WHAT is being read aloud 
is that the translators have taken some freedom and made the assumption 
that texts bearing some authority were being read, and that these were most 
likely from scripture. But I think in fact that your idea above makes good 
sense: it could very well refer to the public reading of a letter from Paul 
or some other reputable figure (apostle or not) known to the community, in 
which case the letter would indeed be read publicly, presumably discussed, 
but not deemed to have the status of scripture. On the other hand, I would 
assume that often enough ANAGNWSIS does indeed refer to the public reading 
aloud of text(s) from canonical scripture--i.e., Old Testament texts.




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