Re: [B-Greek] 1 Tim 3:4 What does dignity go with?
Yancy Smith
Y.W.Smith at tcu.edu
Sun Dec 4 09:15:22 EST 2005
>
> On Dec 4, 2005, at 8:46 AM, Roe wrote:
>
> > Carl wrote:
> >
> >>> It is, as you accurately noted in the preceding paragraph
> >>> PROISTAMENON rather than PROISTAMENOS. My sense of the verb
> >>> PROISTAMAI is not so much "lead" (although that's offered as
> one of
> >>> the primary meanings) so much as "govern" or "rule" or even
> >>> "exercise
> >>> discipline over."
> >
> > Yancy responded:
> >
> >> I take PROISTAMAI to mean something like "to so influence
> others as
> >> to cause them to follow a recommended course of action — ‘to guide,
> >> to direct, to lead’" or as BDAG suggest, "to manage or conduct."
> >
> >
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > Is it possible to apply BDAG's second definition for PROISTHMI to
> > verse
> > 5 -- "to have an interest in, show concern for, care for, give aid"?
> >
> > EI DE TIS TOU IDIOU OIKOU PROSTHNAI OUK OUDEN, PWS EKKLHSIAS QEOU
> > EPIMELHSETAI (1 Tim. 3:5)
> >
> > That is, if we assume the author intends with PROSTHNAI a sense that
> > corresponds to EPIMELHSETAI (whose only other NT use concerns the
> good
> > Samaritan "taking care of" the wounded man), then verse 5 seems
> to say
> > that if one does not even rightly care for his family, how could
> he be
> > expected to care for his brethren in the congregation -- with
> > PROISTHMI
> > meaning here "to care for" or "to actively give help."
>
> But if that's the case here, what should we understand META PASHS
> SEMNOTHTOS to mean in conjunction with it? BDAG offers as the
> fundamental sense of SEMNOTHS, "a manner or mode of behavior that
> indicates one is above what is ordinary and therefore worthy of
> special respect."
I agree with Carl here. I would add that I believe EPIMELHSETAI does
relate to a secondary meaning of PROSTHNAI, essentially it is a
synonym of that secondary meaning. However, I think that in the first
two instances the emphasis is on leading/managing a household. The
virtue of proper household management of all subordinates on the part
of fathers: wife, children, slaves was seen as a necessary
prequalification for civic leaders, since, in the broadly accepted
Aristotelian tradition of understanding the household as a microcosm
of the state, one could not hope to effectively rule at a higher
level what one could not rule/manage at a lower level. I have not
checked Philodemus _On Household Management_ translated by one of my
profs Dr. David Balch, to see if he, as a representative of an
Epicurean tradition used the same sort of language or whether it
preferred softer terms like EPIMELHSETAI. However, the understanding
of PROISTHNAI as rule/govern/manage (I know that my range of
understanding of this term is different from e-mail to e-mail, but I
see the word as representing an idea more or less covered by these
terms) also suggested the less overtly authoritarian EPIMELHSETAI.
The weaker term makes the author's rhetorical point more powerful. It
does not, however, I think, imply that the church is not seen to be
structured hierarchically in terms of status distinctions.
Yancy Smith
Y.W.Smith at tcu.edu
Brite Divinity School
Texas Christian University
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