At 8:17 AM -0600 3/12/98, Edgar Foster wrote: >Does the NT employ FILOSOFIAS in an absolutely pejorative sense? I.e., does Col. >2:8 or Acts 17:18 condemn philosophy in toto? > >Some commentators assign a negative denotation to FILOSOFIAS, others say it has no >"meaning" apart from context. Then there is the argument that the word has an >"unmarked meaning" apart from context, but context provides the marked meaning. > >Which is it?? :) I'd say that it does NOT have a negative connotation in Acts 17:18 but pretty clearly DOES have a negative connotation in Col 2:8. Similar to Col 2:8 are Paul's remarks about human wisdom in the first four chapters of 1 Cor. I don't think it is really safe to say that this word has a distinct universal connotation apart from its denotation either in the NT or in early Christian literature; and indeed the whole matter of "philosophy" is a lengthy chapter in any account of early Christian thought; offhand I'd say that there's an entire spectrum stretching from Tertullian on one end with his celebrated rhetorical question, "What have Athens and Jerusalem to do with each other?" to an opposite extreme of what some might call an uncritical open-mindedness toward any and all sophisticated thought in the Hellenic and Hellenistic traditions, as in Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Between these, it seems to me there's quite a range of open-minded and closed-minded attitudes toward serious pagan thought. I'd be curious what Edgar Krentz and Edward Hobbs, to mention only two of our elder statesmen on the list, might have to say on this issue, with particular focus on the connotations of FILOSOFOS and FILOSOFIA in actual NT usage. Here, by the way, is what Louw and Nida offer: 0000,7777,000032.39 FILOSOFOS 0000,7777,0000m: a person of professional or semi-professional status regarded as having particular capacity or competence in understanding the meaning or significance of human experience - 'philosopher, scholar' 'certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also debated with him' Ac 17:18. In some instances FILOSOFOS in Ac 17:18 may be translated simply as 'teacher,' since such a word would normally designate a professional or semi-professional person involved in scholarly activities. 32.38 FILOSOFIA f: human understanding or wisdom and, by implication, in contrast with divinely revealed knowledge - 'human understanding, human wisdom, philosophy.' 'lest anyone make you captive by means of human understanding and worthless deceit' or 'É by means of the worthless deceit of human wisdom' Col 2:8. In Col 2:8 FILOSOFIA may be rendered in some languages as 'the way in which people are wise' or 'the way in which people understand things' or 'the manner in which people reason.' Carl W. Conrad Department of Classics/Washington University One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018 Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649 cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/