[B-Greek] First Corinthians 14:18
Iver
iver_larsen at sil.org
Wed Sep 24 11:20:58 EDT 2003
> At 9:42 AM +0300 9/24/03, Iver wrote:
> >I am tempted to comment on Carl's comment, but that is difficult since he
> >moved into theology by introducing "ecstatic speech" which is
> foreign to the
> >text and context.
>
> My apologies to the list if it is true, as I suspect it is, that
> others too have felt that I "moved into theology" with this comment:
>
> >All it says is "more than you all." It probably does NOT mean
> that he speak
> >more languages inasmuch as the "tongue-speaking" under discussion here
> >would seem, from the immediate context of 1 Cor 12-14 to refer
> to ecstatic
> >speech as a religious phenomenon rather than to the languages of human
> >culture.
Thanks, Carl.
I don't have too much of a problem with LALEIN GLWSSHi/GLWSSAIS "referring
to a religious phenomenon rather than to languages of human culture". We
have references in Acts 2 where it clearly refers to human languages and
other references which talk about GLWSSAIS TWN ANQRWPWN KAI TWN AGGELWN. So
I would say the term is broad enough to cover both possibilities. What I
reacted against was only the term "ecstatic" which I cannot find any support
for in the Greek text of the NT anywhere. I only hear that term from certain
theological quarters (that I strongly disagree with). I am dismayed that the
NEB and REB put that word into their translation of 14:19 and thereby
imposed their theology on the text. Luckily no other translation has done
this as far as I know. And of course, the meaning of the English word
"ecstatic" is not the same as the Greek word EKSTASIS.
My friend Mark Wilson seems to not take into account that the term is a
religious technical term in the GNT as "speaking in tongues" is in English.
I can understand his "venting" because I know we disagree in theology. In
the Greek text sometimes a plural is used as in 14:18, sometimes a singular
as in 14:19. The plural may well mean that the term can potentially cover
speaking in a number of different "languages", but that is not what MALLON
in Cor 14:18-19 refers to, and that was the original question. The Greek
text must mean (a) "speak more in tongues than you all" rather than (b)
"speak in more tongues than you all". This is confirmed by ALL English
translations. None of them say (b), but all say (a) in some form or another.
Whether one wants to keep the word "tongues" or try to explain by saying "a
language/languages unknown to the speaker" is a translation question.
Iver Larsen
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