[B-Greek] 1 Cor. 7:1,2

Harold R. Holmyard III hholmyard at ont.com
Fri Oct 29 22:13:12 EDT 2004


Dear Joe,

>With this, I agree with Anne in disagreeing. To leave out quotation 
>marks IS as interpretive as including them. The goal in translation 
>is most often to be as vague as the text allows, but leaving out the 
>punctuation doesn't make it vague--it decides for the reader that 
>this is not a quotation.
>It's not really a debated topic. The issue is by far a consensus 
>among Pauline scholars, SBL and ETS alike. Of course, as Anne 
>stated, folks can always make theological arguments anyhow, perhaps 
>strengthened with the imperative that any new scholarship can not 
>take away any of the precious few sexual admonitions found in the 
>NT. But, the quotation mark issue is straying into translation 
>theory-- not for this list. And the interpretation/doctrine/ideology 
>issues stray farther.

HH: Scholarship is often trendy, and trends are not necessarily true. 
Despite rhetorical criticism, this is just an opinion. This is the 
part of 1 Corinthians where Paul addresses issues raised in the 
Corinthians' earlier letter, and the words PERI DE can simply 
introduce the topic, at which point Paul makes his comment relevant 
to it. This happens in 1 Cor 7:25; 8:1; 12:1, and 16:1. So there's no 
reason why it couldn't happen at 7:1. Paul is obviously referring to 
a question or comment of the Corinthians.

>Speaking of which... HH: "Do you think Paul would not go along with 
>God's idea of marriage?"
>Are you kidding me, Harold? For us to be able to discuss the Greek 
>underlying "hot button" texts, we have to walk softly... statements 
>like yours are the opposite. They are incisive, intentionally so, 
>inappropriate, and a violation of the list protocol.

HH: If Paul used the phrase "have a woman" in verse 2, it seems to me 
he would not be going along with God's idea of marriage. In sexual 
relations God wants us to have a wife, not just a woman. So my 
question is perfectly appropriate to ask about Paul, since he is an 
apostle of God and wrote the sentence.  If Ann thinks it should be 
"have a woman," she has to explain how that goes along with the fact 
that Paul is the writer and is God's apostle. Ann chose not to 
explain herself and so the question arose.  She made the following 
statement with no explanation:

>It actually just means to have a woman, not necessarily a wife (we have to
>be careful not to impose our own cultural viewpoint on western marriage
>today back into marriage in first century Palestine), and the current
scholarship certainly is precisely as Joe Weaks stated it.

HH: Perhaps you can explain what her statement means. I don't see 
anything wrong with my question. It's a factual question about the 
context in which the phrase is used.

				Yours,
				Harold Holmyard



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