[B-Greek] TA PANTA in Ephesians 4:15

Hugh Donohoe Jr. justusjcmylord at yahoo.com
Mon Mar 17 22:37:46 EDT 2008


I read through Ephesians this week. It was the first
time I had read through it while doing a detailed
syntactical analysis. I notice now when I come across
a construction that makes me scratch my head,
inevitably there is divergence in how the different
translations deal with it. TA PANTA was another
example of this. Here is the verse:

ALHQEUONTES DE EN AGAPHi AUXHSWMEN EIS AUTON TA PANTA

I made quick scan of the many times Paul uses TA
PANTA. He consistently uses the idiom with an "all
things" idea and in situations in which there is no
ambiguity about what he meant. I am not challenging an
"all things" idea here. It just cannot English it in a
way that is intelligible. And I am not sure exactly
what Paul meant which is another reason why I am
vacillating on how to view the phrase. Another factor
is the preposition EIS. EIS PANTA has an "in every
way, in all respects" idea. But does the definite
article still make the idiom valid? Several modern
translations have gone this route. Incidentally I
tried to do a quick scan of the NT and the LXX for the
phrase EIS with TA PANTA. I did not find any. But it
was not a fastidious effort. So what is the
relationship between EIS, AUTON, and TA PANTA?
Ultimately, this will decide the meaning.

ex animo

Hugh Donohoe




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