[B-Greek] Heb. 1.7: PNEUMATA-FLOGA
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Feb 6 15:01:16 EST 2007
On Feb 6, 2007, at 1:55 PM, Elizabeth Kline wrote:
> Having received some significant help with this off list (thank you
> Iver), I will now return to the question of linguistic evidence in
> regard to identifying the objects and predicates in Heb 1:7.
>
> HEB. 1:7 KAI PROS MEN TOUS AGGELOUS LEGEI:
> hO POIWN TOUS AGGELOUS AUTOU PNEUMATA
> KAI TOUS LEITOURGOUS AUTOU PUROS FLOGA,
>
> Should we understand TOUS AGGELOUS and TOUS LEITOURGOUS as the
> objects or the predicates of POIWN? Several of the serious
> commentators make dogmatic pronouncements on this question without
> IMO bringing to bear lucid and compelling evidence.
>
> Borrowing from the field of cognitive linguistics, relevance theory
> and specially R.DeBlois' treatment of cognitive frames, I have
> divided the solutions to this problem into two camps (admittedly an
> over simplification).
>
> The first camp takes the words hO POIWN TOUS AGGELOUS AUTOU PNEUMATA
> KAI TOUS LEITOURGOUS AUTOU PUROS FLOGA and places them within a
> cognitive framework of first century Judaism, specifically the idea
> of the mutability of TOUS AGGELOUS who are created daily and return
> to the "fire" after giving a days service. TOUS AGGELOUS and TOUS
> LEITOURGOUS are understood as the objects with PNEUMATA as PUROS
> FLOGA the predicates.
>
> The second camp takes the same words and places them within a
> cognitive framework of a storm theophany, a common theme in the
> Psalms and OT prophets. Thus PNEUMATA and PUROS FLOGA are understood
> as the objects with TOUS AGGELOUS and TOUS LEITOURGOUS as predicates.
> This approach places more emphasis on the cognitive framework for
> Psalm 104.
>
> This illustrates a theme within recent linguistics (last 30 years)
> that semantics is not just about the meaning of words. You cannot
> solve a problem like this one if you limit your notion of meaning to
> lexical sense and reference.
With all due respect, I don't honestly see that you can solve a
problem like this one very well by ANY of the methods that has been
set forth, whether in terms of traditional grammatical approaches or
in the terms of cognitive linguistics here suggested.
In an off-list message from Iver (the same to which Elizabeth refers
above), he tells us there's an inconsistency between the way several
different English versions convey respectively Heb 1:7 and the Psalms
104:4, the text cited by Heb 1:7:
KJV: Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.
KJV: Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire
RSV: Who makes his angels winds, and his servants flames of fire.
RSV: who makest the winds thy messengers, fire and flame thy ministers.
NIV: He makes his angels winds, his servants flames of fire.
NIV: He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants.
TEV: God makes his angels winds, and his servants flames of fire.
TEV: You use the winds as your messengers and flashes of lightning as
your servants.
NLT: messengers swift as the wind, and servants made of flaming fire.
NLT: The winds are your messengers; flames of fire are your servants.
CEV: I change my angels into wind and my servants into flaming fire.
CEV: The winds are your messengers, and flames of fire are your
servants.
NJB: appointing the winds his messengers and flames of fire his
servants.
NJB: appointing the winds your messengers, flames of fire your servants.
Iver's judgment -- I won't cite his lengthy reasoning here -- is that
only NJB has the meaning right: that "winds" and "flames of fire" are
the direct objects of "appointing" and that "his messengers" and "his
servants" are the predicate accusatives used with "appointing."
It seems to me, however, that there is something very ironic -- or
awkward (whatever one chooses to call it) -- in that -- presumably --
all these English versions are Englishing respectively the GREEK GNT
of Heb 1:7 and the HEBREW MT of Psalm 104.4 -- but are they? Or are
they endeavoring to derive a meaning by comparison of the Greek LXX
of Psalm 104:4 and the Hebrew MT of the same text -- and are they
Englishing the Greek GNT of Heb 1:7 in terms of what the Greek text
of the GNT says or in terms of how they understand one or the other
or both of the texts of Psalm 104:4?
The LXX text of Psalm 104:4 and the GNT text of Heb 1:7 alike read:
> HEB. 1:7 KAI PROS MEN TOUS AGGELOUS LEGEI:
> hO POIWN TOUS AGGELOUS AUTOU PNEUMATA
> KAI TOUS LEITOURGOUS AUTOU PUROS FLOGA
I agree with Iver that the proper sense of POIWN here is "appointing"
-- that's a standard usage of Greek POIW. I personally think that the
"natural" way of understanding the configuration of POIWN with TOUS
AGGELOUS/TOUS LEITOURGOUS and PNEUMATA/PUROS FLOGA is that the former
words are direct objects and the latter words are predicate nouns --
and I think that this "natural" way of understanding the
configuration accounts for the phrasing of these "standard" English
versions (at least, insofar as they are based upon the LXX Greek or
GNT Greek rather than on the MT Hebrew (BHS).
But Iver has raised (in his off-list message) another question: how
and why did the LXX translators convey the MT Hebrew into the Greek
that we find in our LXX texts? He didn't quite raise this question,
but I think it's worth raising: did the LXX translator(s) convey the
Hebrew text (assuming that the MT has it correctly) accurately into
Greek or not. And I would raise a further question here: did the
author of Hebrews understand the text of Psalm 104:4 as cited in Heb
1:7 in accordance with his understanding of the LXX text or (but we
can't really know, can we?) in accordance with his understanding of
the Hebrew text of Psalm 104:4?
Al Pietersma has not chimed in on this conundrum, and I would like to
ask him for an opinion, if he's willing to offer one, about this
question. If his own NETS translation and commentary on the Psalms in
his NETS volume were accessible, I'd check it out, but it's no longer
online, now that it's been published. Al, would you care to comment
on this?
It does look to me like Tavi Baban has opened a real can of worms
with his question.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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