[B-Greek] 1 Tim. 3:16 and Greek poetry

CWestf5155 at aol.com CWestf5155 at aol.com
Fri Apr 23 17:36:30 EDT 2004


Arie and Ted,

Naturally, this is all theory and it's about scholars making a case that 
others find convincing; there are no proofs.

The poetic repetition of QH was my observation off the top of my head of why 
someone might classify this as a hymn.

But I have Fee's commentary on 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus on hand now.  He makes 
the following points:

It is "almost certainly a hymn or hymn fragment"
Six rhythmic lines
Each line has a verb in first position--aorist passives ending with the 
rhythmic QH
Followed by a preposition
The implied subject of each verb is Christ
"On that much all modern interpreters are agreed"

These theories are connected to source criticism, but also Eph. 5:19 (and Col 
3:16) appear to indicate that "speaking to each other" in Psalms, Hymns and 
spiritual songs is a practice that conceivably one may find in NT literature.  
So where there is metre, and/or this kind of well-organized, compact passage 
with formal, vocal and semantic repetition, it makes a very good candidate.  

 Yes, these features are standard in Hebrew poetry/hymns/psalms, and commonly 
used as rhetorical devices in Greek.  I'd be interested in hearing additional 
comments about Greek poetry and other hymns though.  I just don't think we 
have early examples of hymns.

Cindy Westfall
Denver

In a message dated 4/23/2004 1:08:04 PM Mountain Standard Time, 
dirkzwager at pandora.be writes:
CORRECTION
In James 1: 17 you should read DOSIS, not DWSIS.
So my message should be:


Ted,

As far as I can see Greek poetry was based on metre and Jewish poetry on
parallellism.
So I am very curious if someone can give examples of Christian hymns like
the one you quoted but from *outside the NT*.

If not, we have to ask, on what base some commentaries consider some
passages of the NT as hymns. Of course the language / stile sounds poetic,
but what is the proof that it were really hymns?


Some lines in metre in the NT:

Titus 1: 12 KRHTES AEI YEUSTAI, KAKA QHRIA, GASTERES ARGAI
(dactylic)

James (!!!) 1: 17 PASA DOSIS AGAQH KAI PAN DWRHMA TELEION
(dactylic)

1 Cor 15: 33 FQEIROUSIN HQH CRHSTA OMILIAI KAKAI
(jambic)

Arie



Dr. A. Dirkzwager
Hoeselt, Belgium
e-mail dirkzwager at pandora.be



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