[B-Greek] More thanks or more tongues? 1Cor14:18
Yancy Smith
yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Tue Dec 15 14:03:22 EST 2009
George is right in saying "Texts must be read not only with attention to the grammatical relationships but also with attention to what the author is attempting to state." Another way of saying this is that the grammar/syntax, everything written in the code (the Greek text), is not quite sufficient to give the meaning intended by the speaker. From both inside the text (co-text) and outside the text the reader must add an inferential process of interpretation and choose relevant contextual information (which includes a lot of stuff, not the least ancient rhetorical culture).
Adrian said:
The first question is whether PANTWN hUMWN MALLON can be referring to EUCARISTW TW QEWi, or whether it must be referring to GLWSSAIS LALW - i.e. whether the emphasis can be "I thank God more than any of you does..." or whether it must be "...that I speak in tongues more than any of you does"
While the grammar might possibly be stretched to allow this reading, the argument will not. I don't know enough about Greek grammar to say whether the placement of MALLON here makes it potentially ambiguous.
In this case the argument in 1 Cor 14 Paul states his proposition in the form of a command (14:1), then he gives a reason for this: that in all cases the up-building of the church is preferred (to any other purpose) when anyone speaks to the assembly (14:1-6). He then proves this reason by making a general argument that meaningful sound (music) is superior or more useful to meaningless sound (14:7-13). He then embellishes this proof of the reason by means of examples (14:14-25). In this context he provides a personal, ethical, example that demonstrates the reason in support of the proposition. In this context "thanking God" is one particular thing that a person can do in the assembly but even thanking God can fail to build up the church if it is done with no regard to the audience (i.e. "in a tongue"). So then Paul gives an sophistic example that is technically self evident as a proof, he "thanks God" (in Greek, and thus building up the church) that he speaks in tongues more than all of them. At the same time he thanks God he is doing it to instruct others, which drives home that point that 10,000 words in a tongue would not be as helpful as the sentence he just uttered.
The reading "thank God more than all of you" would make nonsense out of the argument.
About the Elzevir 1624 edn, it reflects the Majority Text (eg. KL). Here LALWN smoothes the grammatical relationship of the first part of the sentence and the second by resurrecting an Attic supplementary participle used with verbs of emotion (cf. BDF 415), a use of the participle that has almost completely disappeared in the GNT, like Acts 16:34, hGaLLIATO PEPISTEUKWS, "they rejoiced that he had believed." The placing of a comma by the editors of both the The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform 2005 and the NA27 text is a tacit affirmation of the parataxis. So, a good translation of the Elzevir text would not be any different from a translation of the NA27 text, "I thank my God that I speak in tongues more than all of you." There is, of course, also the reading of P46, GLOSSAIS LALEIN.
Yancy
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