From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Jan 03 1996 - 14:36:08 EST
At 7:51 AM 1/3/96, Indepen wrote:
>Actually, the question in my mind that prompted the post on hAMARTIA was
>this: Greek civilization did not have a strong sense of sin, and the word
>for it merely means a "missing of the mark." Given that, is Greek the
>wrong language for transmission of Jesus's revision of Judaic tradition?
>Is there not some basic incompatibility? Jesus spoke Aramaic and read
>Hebrew. Doesn't the Greek text already put us at a remove from what he
>actually said, even before the NT is translated into English or any other
>language?
> In many ways Islam is right to say, "If it is not in Arabic it is
>not the Koran."
I think this is an interesting issue, but it does seem to me that the
question, as it is posed, is somewhat begged. One cannot say so simply that
"Greek civilization did not have a strong sense of sin." Terms need to be
defined rather carefully here. If we're talking about Greek society of the
Hellenic period, prior to the conquests of Alexandria, one might possibly
argue that case with regard to hAMARTANW and hAMARTIA, but this ignores the
whole area of ritual purity as well as the older taboos associated with
AIDWS and NEMESIS. As for Hellenistic culture, when the traditions of the
rest of the Mediterranean world progressively interacted with the older
more parochial Hellenic conceptions, this is a much more complex matter.
I think probably one would need to get into the whole semantic cluster of
NT nouns, adjectives, and verbs for "sin." Certainly much more than
hAMARTANW and hAMARTIA are involved. We find PARAPTWMA and PARABASIS, the
latter perhaps more akin to the older Israelite and Jewish notion of
"walking in the paths" of the Lord. Perhaps more significant still are the
usages of "obey" and "disobey" (hUPAKOUW, PARAKOUW) and their cognates, and
THREW and FULASSW with the words for commandments.
I am myself a nut regarding etymology and its bearing upon the meanings of
words, but I've come to realize that root meanings can become wholly lost
in later functions of compounds. And I'm not so sure that ideas can't be
carried across from one linguistic milieu to another. Granted that there
are great perils and problems, as may readily be seen in usage of words
like KURIOS and MAR. And it seems to me that Paul is quite conscious of the
need to defend an understanding of the gospel that is distinct from Greek
mysticism (a chief concern, I think, in 1 Cor) and also from Judaism (a
chief concern in Gal). At the same time, he exploits the metaphors of Greek
athletic competition when he writes to a predominantly gentile community,
as in Philippians, and Greco/Roman political language too in the same
letter (I'm thinking of SWTHR and POLITEUMA).
I think this is an IMMENSE subject. It's one I find fascinating, but one
that I fear is all too open to facile overgeneralizations. Certainly the
transmission of a faith from one cultural milieu to another is fraught with
both perils and opportunities. But another thing that most are surely well
aware of is that the Palestine of Jesus was anything BUT culturally
homogeneous.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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