Re: THi ELEUQERIAi in Gal 5:1 (Doch Nochmals)

From: Jonathan Ryder (jpr1001@cam.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Jun 08 1999 - 13:02:50 EDT


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"Carl W. Conrad" wrote:
<blockquote TYPE=CITE>There still remains to me one hope of making sense
of the text as the
<br>UBS4/NA27 editors have constituted it; Brian Tucker himself raised
it in
<br>his most recent (but now somewhat dated) message on this thread:
<p>At 3:52 PM -0400 6/3/99, Joseph Brian Tucker wrote:
<br>>. . . The possibility of the purpose use might relate to Deissmann's
<br>>discovery that THi ELEUQERIAi was used in the sacral manumission procedures
<br>>of the day to emphasize purpose Light from the Ancient East, 326.
<p>I AM intrigued by this and I'd like to know more. I am not close enough
to
<br>a decent library where I could check Deissmann's celebrated book. Could
<br>anyone who has it in a personal library tell us a little more about
this,
<br>please? I ask this because it seems quite plausible that a dative of
<br>purpose might be used with ELEUQEROW in a formula of manumission, and
it
<br>strikes me as a (rather!) thrilling notion that Paul could be quite
<br>deliberately emulating a formula of manumission, in which case we might
<br>translate Gal 5:1: "Christ has set us free to be free persons ...",
i.e.
<br>THi ELEUQERIAi = hOPWS ELEUQEROI WMEN. IF ELEUQERIAi ELEUQEROUN is
a
<br>formula of manumission, then we would not need to fancy abstractions
of
<br>Hegelian metaphysics.
<p>Carl W. Conrad
<br>&nbsp;</blockquote>
OK here goes - some stuff from Deissmann:
<p>p322 'The usual form of these documents must have been extremely well
known, because they are so numerous. It is like this[5]:-
<blockquote>Date " NN sold to the Pythian Apollo a male slave named XY
at a price of - minae, for freedom (or on condition that he shall be free,
etc)." ...</blockquote>
footnote [5] reads:
<blockquote>The texts are so numerous that individual quotation is unnecessary</blockquote>
However, all is not lost, as Deissmann does quote an example, less frequent,
of 'sale to the god as trustee' (p323)
<p>The relevant Greek:
<blockquote>EPRIATO hO APOLLWN ... PARA SWSIBIOU ... EP' ELEUQERIAI ...</blockquote>
which Deissmann translates as:
<blockquote>Apollo ... bought from Sosibius ..., for freedom, ...</blockquote>
on p324 he quotes Gal 5:1 and 13:
<blockquote>'For freedom did Christ set us free ... ye were called for
freedom (EP' ELEUQERIAi)'</blockquote>
noting that the latter is 'literally the other formula of the records'
<p>It seems then that Paul's use in 5:13 reflects the manumission formula
more closely than 5:1, if 5:1 does at all.
<p>that's all I've got time for, others may want to expand ...
<p>Jonathan Ryder
<p>Cambridge
<br>UK
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