[B-Greek] ARSENOKOITHS: Did I get this right?

Doug Chaplin lists at actually.me.uk
Tue Mar 15 18:00:34 EST 2005


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim West [mailto:jwest at highland.net]
> Sent: 15 March 2005 18:56
> To: Doug Chaplin; b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] ARSENOKOITHS: Did I get this right?
> 

<snip>

> >b) there are many ways of being general, and a vice list is one such way:
> >
> >
> A list is usually not something general is it?  A list specifies.  If
> your wife says "pick up dinner" that's general but if she says "pick up
> moo goo guy pan from Wangs Chinese Diner then if you don't bring that
> your in a bit of trouble.  Likewise, and again, if Paul had wished to
> excoriate sin or sins in general he would and could have.  But he didn't.
> 
My point is that the terms chosen are chosen as typical Jewish
characterizations of Gentiles, and in that sense are non-specific. You will
note that a large number of the sins we specifically know Paul is speaking
against at Corinth are not included in the list, so it is hardly meant to be
exhaustive, and I would argue, the list is not specific to Corinth, and
hence general.

> >yes it mentions specific sins, but it decontextualises them just enough
> for
> >
> >
> I'm not really sure what you mean here.  He specifies and
> decontextualizes?  That seems an oxymoron.
> 
"He doesn't like vegetables: broccoli, carrots, onions, cabbage." These are
specific, but might mean I was listing some vegetables that came to mind,
rather than speaking from knowledge of the actual vegetables he doesn't
like. It might turn out that actually he liked onions which I mentioned as
illustrative, but strongly disliked peas which I didn't.

> >us to be unable to make much more than an etymological guess about what
> they
> >mean.
> >
> >
> I respectfully disagree.  Paul used a word and words that made perfect
> sense to the folk who read or heard them.  Paul was smart and
> communicated with a great deal of ability.  After all, we still read and
> discuss his stuff all these years later.  Etymological guesses aren't
> necessary when a word's meaning is clear.
> 
The meaning may or may not have been clear to the Corinthians, but probably
was. That the same meaning is clear to us, I would respectfully suggest, is
amply disproved by the discussion of its meaning. I personally incline to
the view that it means "the men penetrating" and malakoi refers to "the men
being penetrated" as the one that makes most sense of the pairing. But I
have to acknowledge that there is an insufficient database of the word's
usage to be absolutely clear about its semantic field. In my view, words do
not have "meaning" in the sense that you seem to ascribe to them: they have
ranges of meaning which are broadened or closed down according to the
context, by their synonyms and antonyms, by their modifiers and complements
etc etc. Meaning is not only socially contextual, but rhetorically
contextual. It is not a discrete quality of a word, far less achieved by
adding together the separate meanings of the discrete morphemes of
arsenokoites to achieve the meaning of the whole.

Doug




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