CRISTOS IHSOUS vs. IHSOUS CRISTOS in Colossians
Brian McCarthy
mccartbs at utrc.utc.com
Fri Oct 4 09:41:18 EDT 2002
I was reading a commentary on Colossians that made a point about how the
author of Colossians "consistently" uses CRISTOS IHSOUS, whereas the
author of the undisputed Paulines uses IHSOUS CRISTOS more often -- this
being taken as an indication of non-Pauline authorship.
Following as I often do the dictum of that estimable scholar Yogi Berra
that "sometimes you can tell a lot just by looking at something" I got out
my exhaustive concordance to the GNT and started poking around.
It turns out that there are five occurrences of CRISTOS in conjunction
with IHSOUS in Colossians, four of them CRISTOS IHSOUS and the other one
IHSOUS CRISTOS. I'll pass over the obvious point about basing a
statistical analysis on five data elements, and get to the interesting
part.
The first one is APOSTOLOS CRISTWi IHSOU. Now in Paul's letters, those he
allegedly wrote after as well as before his death, he always uses
APOSTOLOS CRISTOU IHSOU except in Titus, where the order may be influenced
by the preceding DOULOS QEOU (a chiastic reversal of his habitual order?).
So this one is consistent with Paul's normal usage.
The last one is DOULOS CRISTOU IHSOU. An all Paul's letters disputed or
un-, without exception, he uses DOULOS CRISTOU IHSOU, never ever DOULOS
IHSOU CRISTOU. This one is also consistent with Paul's normal usage.
There is also an EN CRISTOU IHSOU. In absolutely every case Paul uses EN
CRISTOU IHSOU, never ever EN IHSOU CRISTOU. So this one is also perfectly
consistent.
There is one instance of IHSOUS CRISTOS, a KURIOS IHSOUS CRISTOS (I forget
what case it's in). In all cases in Paul where KURIOS occurs with CRISTOS
and IHSOUS, the order is IHSOUS CRISTOS. Once again, Colossians is
consistent with the rest of the Paulines.
That leaves one occurrence of CRISTOS IHSOUS where the order is not
"constrained" by consistent Pauline usage as far as I can tell. One
occurrence, and it happens to fall as CRISTOS IHSOUS. Obviously no
conclusion at all can be drawn from one occurrence.
So it looks to me like the whole idea that the frequency of CRISTOS IHSOUS
in Colossians indicates anything about non-Pauline authorship crumbles
into dust.
Are other standard critical theories so exquisitely fragile as this, or am
I just experiencing beginner's luck?
Brian McCarthy
mccartbs at utrc.utc.com
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list