[B-Greek] Colossians 1:16 TA PANTA ... EITE ... EITE

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Sat Feb 20 22:57:06 EST 2010


Hi, Yancy,

I have looked at the pictures and they tell me very little. I agree that pagan 
Romans accepted the "divine right of imperial power", but are you suggesting 
that Paul did, too? The Roman or pagan Hellenistic worldview and Paul's 
worldview are contrastive in many respects. What Paul does indicate in some of 
his letters is his belief that the thrones of this world were created by God in 
principle to praise the good citizens and punish the bad ones. But he would 
never acknowledge divine, supernatural or "heavenly" power vested in the 
emperor. For the Christians, only Jesus (and God) was truly the divine KURIOS.

The entry in BAGD is somewhat confusing (and confused). Maybe the German Bauer 
or BDAG is better? It refers to a usage in the Testament of Levi where THRONOI 
is used to indicate a class of angels in the "fourth heaven" where it says: "And 
in the heaven next to this are thrones, dominions, in which hymns are ever 
offered to God." Whether this book is Jewish or pseudo-Christian is disputed. 
Parts of it may originally have been Jewish (Essene?) since fragments in Aramaic 
were found at Qumran, but in that case, it was probably edited and expanded 
later by non-Jews.  Its worldview of 7 heavens and what each heaven contains is 
radically different from Paul's worldview of three heavens. The Talmud talks 
about 7 heavens, but this is not found in the Bible itself.

BAGD says in the same entry: "personification of the one who sits on the 
throne". This is possible, but I think it is more likely that it refers to the 
power associated with a throne. Nicky de Jong is from the Netherlands and I come 
from Denmark. We still have a queen on the throne, even though the throne has 
lost almost all of its former political power (but not all of its glory). So, 
for us it is natural to use "throne" as a metonym for the power associated with 
it. For the person sitting on the throne, we would say king or queen. In Denmark 
we have a crown prince who is aspiring to the throne. I am sure it was natural 
for Paul and his readers to understand THRONOI as the power associated with 
emperors and kings.

The two words THRONOI and KURIOTHTES are juxtaposed in Col 1:16 as are ARCAI and 
EXOUSIAI. Emperors and kings were called KURIOI and they sat on THRONOI. The 
natural reading of Col 1:16 in its context (Colossians, Ephesians and Paul's 
writings) is that the first two terms refer to the visible emperors, kings and 
lords (including their power), TA hORATA, while the next two refer to TA 
ANORATA, just like TA hORATA refers to PANTA EPI THS GHS and TA ANORATA refers 
to PANTA EN TOIS OURANOIS. The natural and simplest reading is usually to be 
preferred. An extraneous context of Roman pagan ideas and pictures or the 
Testament of Levi carries very little weight, in my opinion. I do not agree that 
this is "what Paul had in mind" when what Paul actually wrote tells us 
otherwise.

Iver Larsen

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net>
To: "greek B-Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: 20. februar 2010 13:49
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Colossians 1:16 TA PANTA ... EITE ... EITE


> 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




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