[B-Greek] Form versus Meaning (Was Meaning of EIS in Galatians 6:8

yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Tue Jun 29 23:06:31 EDT 2010


Mark said:
>  On the other hand, I think
> what George and Barry and Iver have done is what I
> like to call "the original sin of B-Greek."  They have allowed form to get in the way of meaning.  I am well
> aware that EIS plus the accusative does not normally
> indicate agency, and maybe it never does, but yes, here
> meaning can stretch that far.  I have been reading Homer a lot and I have noticed something over and over again that I cannot yet figure out how to articulate, but your question reminds me of it.   MEANING TRUMPS  FORM
> in Greek.  Meaning can absorb, can take over,
> re-write and cut through form.  Once you establish
> the meaning of a Greek phrase, the form of the 
> Greek phrase no longer matters

An over-reliance on form for meaning may be the original sin of B-Greek, but I don't think it has been committed here, unless one is prepared to accuse many others of the same sin on this particular point. It is true that form is a conventional cue and that context is decisive for meaning. By context I mean relevant cognitive environment. In this case Paul is applying a homely proverb by way of allegorizing it. He uses it as an effective persuasive tool. The proverb lends to his particular teaching the force of the seeming self-evidence of the proverbial statement. But, when you think of it, the agricultural proverb given in v. 7 and applied allegorically by extending it in a very odd way. Iver is in good company to suggest this and BDAG and the UBS Bible Translation Handbook on Galatians agree. And you can throw into that crowd Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians (Hermeneia). 
Paul own interpretation of v 7, explains the motivation of his warning in 6:7–10 in terms of his own theology.  He uses the metaphors of “sowing” and “harvesting” which he introduced in v 7b and interprets them in the framework of the dualism of σάρξ–πνεῦμα (“flesh”-“spirit”). This dualism (see 5:17) underlies the entire theology of Galatians. By this time in the epistle he has repreated it so much that it has become axiomatic. But the proverb drives the point home.
Paul allegorizes the metaphors of v. 7. That is, every term in the agricultural process means something else that is analogous in a very different process, one that is simply Paul's theology. The sower is the believer who sows “into his flesh” or sows “into the Spirit” as if these terms represented fields, and the believer harvests “from the flesh” or “from the Spirit," the consequences of his actions: a harvest which is either eternal “corruption” or “eternal life.”  πνεῦμα PNEUMA (“divine Spirit”) is associated by Paul with eternal life in other passages in Galatians, his association of σάρξ (“flesh”) with φθορά (“corruption”) is a new idea in the discourse. But not new to the hearers. Flesh—humans in their ethnic and family groups and in their mortality—is weak and dies. That was common knowlege. Divine "spirit" lives forever.
In Galatians Paul had previously associated “flesh” with circumcision and “the works of the flesh,” but in 6:8 he goes further. One “sows into the flesh” in the first part of the epistle by placing one’s hope for salvation upon circumcision and obedience to the Jewish Torah, a move which would result in missing salvation altogether (cf. 5:2–12). But by the same token one reaps the same harvest by letting the “works of the flesh” flourish (cf. 5:19–21). Paul uses Spirit as the impetus for freedom from law and circumcision (the "flesh" of Jewish ethnicity) in the first part of the letter. But in 5:13ff he uses Spirit as the inhibitor of the evil impulses associated with Gentile flesh, or ethnicity. So it appears that just if the Gentile believers submit to circumcision that would the same effect as their practicing inhereted paterns of magic, idolatry, or sexual sin, or carrying on with contentions that destroy community and love. A life corrupted by the “flesh” in these ways cannot “inherit the Kingdom of God” (5:21). In this sense, “sowing into the flesh” means nothing less than “giving an opportunity to the flesh” (5:13), and the very opposite of “crucifying the flesh” (5:24). In either case, the end will be φθορά FQORA (“eternal destruction”).


Yancy Smith, PhD
yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Y.W.Smith at tcu.edu
yancy at wbtc.com
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