[B-Greek] Acts 2:42--3 or 4?

Harold R. Holmyard III hholmyard at ont.com
Fri Oct 8 17:56:38 EDT 2004


Dear James,

>Luke reports in Acts 2:42 that the Notzrim were steadfast in three main
>activities: 1) The teaching of the apostles, 2) Fellowship in the Breaking
>of Bread, 3) Prayer.  In many translations it appears as if there are four
>items in which the believers were steadfast.  But the syntax of the Greek
>text allows for only three items.  The conjunction, "kai" meaning "and",
>does not separate "the fellowship" and "the breaking of bread."  Also the
>case ending of the phrase "breaking of bread" is in the dative meaning "in"
>or "by means of" showing that the "breaking of bread" was the means to and
>the occasion for "the fellowship."  The fellowship is regarded as an
>integral and inseparable part of the breaking of bread.  It is important to
>see that the remembrance of Yeshua the Lord and Messiah, was the focus and
>the center of their fellowship.  When we see the nature of the breaking of
>bread in its historical and cultural background we will understand why Luke
>referred to the fellowship as being actualized in the Breaking of Bread.

HH: I'm no expert, but I'll get things started. It looks as if this 
interpretation is conceivable if one interprets THi KLASEI as a 
dative of means: "the fellowhip by the breaking of the bread." I may 
be wrong. UBS, on the other hand, sees a parallelism between all the 
nouns in the dative case as signaling a series, four dative objects 
of the verb PROSKARTEREW. Your source may have been influenced by the 
absence of a copulative KAI after KOINWNIAi, but the UBS punctuators 
put a comma there. They see the series restarting after an absence of 
KAI. So Luke would mention two pairs of items. The interpretation you 
cite seems to require an odd handling of the Greek words. "The 
breaking of bread" elsewhere is a separate item, although KOINWNIA 
occurs nowhere else in Acts. The commentary on Acts by Mikeal Parsons 
and Martin Culy does not even mention the view you propose.

				Yours,
				Harold Holmyard




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