[B-Greek] Romans 1:17 EK PISTEWS EIS PISTIN

Laurence Schell laurenceschell at yahoo.co.uk
Tue Apr 27 12:46:10 EDT 2004


I find it hard to grasp how consistently people prefer
the meaning of PISTIS as "faith" or "belief," rather
than "faithfulness." My take on this passage is that
it can't be understood apart from the meaning of
"faithfulness" or "the trustworthy," as Richard put it
in his post.

When Paul quotes from Hab. 2:4, I think it ought to be
understood that he means "faithfulness." In the OT,
the lone instance of the Hebrew word being translated
into English as "faith" is Hab. 2:4. This doesn't lend
a lot of weight to the idea of "faith."

I think Rom. 1:17 might be better understood as the
righteousness of God being revealed from [His]
faithfulness leading to [our] faithfulness.

<Richard wrote: I was reading The Wisdom of the Hebrew
Alphabet by Rabbi Michael Munk, 
and on page 152 he mentioned that the Torah was given
MN)MN LN)MN, 
(Minne'eman L'ne'eman), which he interprets as meaning
"from the 
Trustworthy [King] to the trustworthy [servant]." He
cites the Midrash Rabbah as 
the source, so it does not seem unlikely that this
Hebrew phrase could 
have informed Paul when he wrote EK PISTEWS EIS
PISTIN, which looks 
like it might be a translation of that exact Hebrew
phrase.

The meaning of EK PISTEWS EIS PISTIN was discussed at
some length in 
1996 & 1999. I reveiwed the posts but didn't notice
any discussion 
linking to the Hebrew phrase from the Talmud. 

Any help would be appreciated.

Richard Amiel McGough
Discover the sevenfold symmetric perfection of the
Holy Bible at 



	
	
		
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