[B-Greek] Colossians 1:16 TA PANTA ... EITE ... EITE
yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Sat Feb 20 05:49:41 EST 2010
Iver wrote:
> Because of the affinity between Colossians and Ephesians, I would take the last
> two of the four words as referring to spiritual powers, the ANORATA, but I don't
> see any grammatical, contextual or lexical reason to take the first two to be
> anything but powers on earth, the hORATA EPI THS GHS.
Here is a "contextual reason" that supports Elizabeth (and BDAG) but it is not textual. Two first century gemnata depict a very interesting vision of the sort of world view Paul had in mind. The following links give the image and a good discussion. In order to understand the references, one might have to think outside the box of text and look at first century images used to legitimate the divine right of imperial power. A great basic resource that is required reading for freshmen in classics departments now (and has been for some time) is Paul Zanker, _The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus_, but the graphic messages of that time is permuted and developed all the way through the imperial period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemma_Augustea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Cameo_of_France
Another great source: http://www.portraitsofcaligula.com/3/miscellaneous13.htm
In the first, representing the apotheosis of the divine Augustus a two-storied universe is represented in which THRONOI in the upper register are occupied by Augustus and Roma divine figures surround them as retinue and human imperial figures accompanied by divinities are shown to have concourse with the divine Augustus, while divine and human figures wage war on the earth against the enemies of Rome.
It may be too much to ask of textual scholars to imagine anything outside of their text and it may be beyond b-greek to consider anything outside of texts in discussing Greek. But sometimes a picture can speak more than many squiggles on a page.
Yancy Smith, PhD
yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Y.W.Smith at tcu.edu
yancy at wbtc.com
5636 Wedgworth Road
Fort Worth, TX 76133
817-361-7565
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list