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

Yancy W Smith yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Sun Feb 21 15:38:48 EST 2010


Iver EGRAYE:
>
> I have looked at the pictures and they tell me very little.
This is a typical problem with us who are textual scholars. My teacher  
David Balch researched Greco-Roman houses for years (floor plans,  
social structure and dynamics) before he noticed the art on the walls.  
Keep looking.

> I agree that pagan Romans accepted the "divine right of imperial  
> power", but are you suggesting that Paul did, too?
Well, that would be foolish of me! But he had to communicate with  
former pagans who struggled with various allegiances and world-view  
assumptions, some of which had to do with ubiquitous imperial  
propaganda. Perhaps that wasn't a problem problem in the good old NT  
day.
> 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.
Quite true as a profession of faith.
> 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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