[B-Greek] Hebrews 13:4
Ben Crick
ben.crick at argonet.co.uk
Wed Nov 30 19:11:43 EST 2005
On Wed 30 Nov 2005 (08:32:20), kline-dekooning at earthlink.net wrote:
> Could someone explain why in the last thirty years there has been a
> wave of popular exegesis based on the reading of the second clause hH
> KOINTH AMIANTOS as an indicative? (I suspect that this would entail
> reading the first clause as indicative.) This position was being
> promoted in the '70s by a seminary president, a prominent national
> (USA) leader in the Evangelical movement (ThD, Dallas Seminary). I
> suspect this "scholar" grew up reading the KJV.
Dear Elizabeth,
There is no place in scholarship for trying to second-guess a commentator's
motives; but there is always a tendency for one's doctrinal presuppositions
to drive one's exegesis, and turn it into subjective eisegesis.
Your anonymous seminary president was probably encouraged by the
early church commentators. The Syriac version gives the indicative
"Marriage is honorable...". So does Chrysostom in his comment "PWS TIMIOS
hO GAMOS; hOTI EN SWFROSUNHi, FUSI, DIATHREI TON PISTON." So apparently
Theodoret and Oecumenius; but Theophylact disagrees.
The Latin Fathers take it as declaratory, although Jerome in the Vulgate
leaves it ambiguous /Honorabile connubium in omnibus et torus
immaculatus/. Verse 5 in the Latin begins /sint mores sine avaritia, etc/
making it exhortatory; assuming an absent ESTW in the Greek text.
So it would seem that this is not a 1970s novelty, but an ancient tradition
preserved in the KJV and revived in the 1970s.
As you, I agree with Yancy Smith and Carl Conrad.
ERRWSQE
Ben
--
Revd Ben Crick, BA CF ZFC Hf
<ben.crick at NOSPAM.argonet.co.uk>
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