[B-Greek] Heb 11:40 together or not apart?

Craig J newsgroupstuff at gmail.com
Tue Aug 15 23:34:30 EDT 2006


> HH: This is also somewhat confusing to me. It the
> OT saints are not made perfect without us, then 
> logically they are made perfect with us. The 
> Greek statement implies that the OT saints are 
> going to be perfected but in such a way that it 
> is not without us. We are perfected at the same 
> time they are.
> 
> Yours,
> Harold Holmyard

Hi Harold.

I guess it is about a question of emphasis. 

If the emphasis is on togetherness, then translating the negation with a
simple positive is fine.

However, if the emphasis is on the 'betterness', the contrast, then the
negation is being emphasised rather than the togetherness.

Let me try to make a theological statement as an analogy for the latter, to
help you understand what I mean. However, I want to stress that it is not
meant to be an interpretation of Heb 11:40, or meant for discussion, it is
just something that I can phrase with similar words which might help clarify
the point I am trying to make:

"It was necessary for Adam to sin first, God providing something better for
Jesus, so that Adam should not be made perfect apart from Jesus"

This could mean that Jesus did something Adam never did, rather than that
Adam did something together with Jesus. It was necessary for Jesus to come,
and apart from his coming, it was not appropriate that anyone else could
have done the same before his coming. Jesus needed to come at the
appropriate time. I think this kind of interpretation is allowed by the
negative.

Now if we change to using the simple positive, the emphasis changes, and
meanings allowed by the negative are disallowed by the positive.

The point is that in strict or formal logic, 'not apart' does not
necessarily equal 'together'. If I don't go to the shop without you, it
doesn't necessarily mean I went to the shop with you, or that you didn't go
to the shop without me. Maybe I never went to the shop at all. Of course, I
think that in common language we rarely follow strict or formal logic, and
so perhaps it is fine to not interpretive to translate the double negative
into a simple positive. Or do we in fact lose something in translation if we
do so? That is the point of my question.

I should probably add that I'm fairly happy theologically with an
interpretation of 'together', but I'm just wondering if that is more
interpretative than the Greek necessarily implies...

Hopefully it is a bit clearer to you now, rather than confusing you even
more :-)

--
Craig Johnson
Brisbane, Australia
Blog Experiment: http://bloggledegook.blogspot.com/




More information about the B-Greek mailing list