[B-Greek] GENEA (Phil. 2:15): How Close to "Culture"?

Webb webb at selftest.net
Fri Dec 8 19:49:53 EST 2006


Thanks, that's interesting. I think Paul and John often use the word KOSMOS
to refer to the entire human race (humanity at all times and at all places)
as a kind of God-less culture. On the other hand, GENEA, in its often
strongly negative connotation in the NT, definitely contains that God-less
culture idea, but it narrows it both in place and in time. That's why it
seems close to the expressions "our culture" and "this culture" to me. Both
of those expressions are vaguely local and vaguely local in time too. When I
think of "this culture" in America, for example, I'm not making a precise
temporal reference, but I'm also not referring to a phenomenon that spans
more than about twenty years or so. The English word "generation", as in
"twisted and perverse generation", seems to me to focus too much on the
temporal aspect, and to lose the cultural aspect that I think lies in the
connotation of GENEA when it's used by Paul or Jesus with a negative
connotation.

 

Webb Mealy

 

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From: George F Somsel [mailto:gfsomsel at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 4:07 PM
To: Webb; b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] GENEA (Phil. 2:15): How Close to "Culture"?

 

  

41.38 KOSMOS, OU m: AIWON, WNOS m: the system of practices and standards
associated with secular society (that is, without reference to any demands
or requirements of God)-'world system, world's standards, world.'

KOSMOS:  DI' hOU EMOI KOSMOS ETAURWTAI K'AGW KOSMWi 'because of whom the
world is crucified to me, and I to the world' Ga 6.14. It may be
particularly difficult to speak of the world being crucified, and therefore
in a number of languages one must employ a somewhat fuller restructuring,
for example, 'because of Christ, the way in which people in this world live
is as though it were dead as far as I am concerned, and I am dead, so to
speak, as far as the way in which people in this world live.'

[1] 


 

george
gfsomsel
_________ 

 

----- Original Message ----
From: Webb <webb at selftest.net>
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Friday, December 8, 2006 6:47:22 PM
Subject: [B-Greek] GENEA (Phil. 2:15): How Close to "Culture"?

I was translating Phil. 2:15, where Paul talks about a "twisted and perverse
generation, among whom you shine like stars", and it struck me that I might
paraphrase that as, "a twisted and perverse culture", meaning something like
a "the Zeitgeist of the current generation", i.e. the common worldview and
mentality of the people in a given place, whose behavioral and mental center
of gravity does have a kind of dynamic, generational character. But when I
tried to do a reverse look up on the word "culture" on Liddell and Scott
using Perseus, nothing very relevant-looking came up. Is there a Greek word
that could be translated as "culture", in the broad sense of "our culture"?
If not, does that open the possibility that Paul may have been reaching for
a concept whose most communicative English equivalent is "culture"?



Webb Mealy

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[1] 

Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. (1996, c1989). Greek-English lexicon of the New
Testament : Based on semantic domains (electronic ed. of the 2nd edition.)
(1:507). New York: United Bible societies.




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