[b-greek] Philippians 1:6

From: Mike Sangrey (mike@sojurn.lns.pa.us)
Date: Mon Sep 04 2000 - 10:30:17 EDT


Given the recent thread concerning aspect, I think my question here
will give some feet to the somewhat theoretic nature. In other words,
different pieces of a context bring together different pieces of the
meaning. However, my question is about tense and specifically how tense
is derived from a text.

In Philippians 1:6 we have:
    hOTI hO ENARXAMENOS EN hUMIN ERGON AGAQON EPITELESEI AXRI
    hHMERAS CRISTOU IHSOU:

Some observations:
    EPITELESEI is future.

    EPITELEW is rather punctilliar in nature. I understand it to
    "mean" complete. In fact, the nature of completion may be somewhat
    emphatic given the prefix EPI. It is used in the NT in : Gal. 3:3,
    Heb. 8:5, Heb. 9:6, 2 Cor. 7:1, 2 Cor. 8:6, 2 Cor. 8:11 (twice),
    1 Pet. 5:9, and Rom. 15:28. Heb. 8:5 is rather interesting
    in this regard. The NIV has "when he was about to build the
    tabernacle" he was warned to focus on the details. Perhaps it
    would be better to translate as, "when the tabernacle was nearly
    complete" he was warned to focus on the details. In other words,
    "Moses, make sure you do last minute quality checks so that
    everything is exactly the way I said it should be!"

    AXRI must contour the tense of the verb. In other words, one
    can't have a punctilliar until. There has to be some sense of
    'continue'.

So, my question is generally how one would translate this.
Specifically, would

    "that the one who has begun a good work in you(pl) will continue to
    complete it until the day of Christ Jesus"

or
    "that the one who has begun a good work in you(pl) will continue until
    he completes it at the day of Christ Jesus"

or
    something else be best? The NIV has "carry it on to completion".

Thanks.

        

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