Re: Matt 4:3 If you are *the* son

From: Paul S. Dixon (dixonps@juno.com)
Date: Sun Dec 21 1997 - 01:47:10 EST


On Sat, 20 Dec 1997 23:28:30 -0600 (CST) Jeffrey Gibson
<jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu> writes:
>
>
>On Sat, 20 Dec 1997, Paul F. Evans wrote:
>
>> Jeffery,
>>
>> Could it not be that to make sense of translating the genitive EI
hUIOS EI
>> TOU QEOU requires the definite article in English. I don't think that
we
>> need to resort to hermeneutics in order to discover the reason for its
>> presence in the English. How the hUIOS in the context is to be
understood
>> is a different matter. My money is on the notion that the noun in a
>> genitive construction can still have specificity in spite of the
absence of
>> the article, as Fee suggests is true in many construction where Paul
uses
>> PNEUMA. I guess I don't buy into the notion that the absence of the
article
>> automatically means that the noun is "unqualified." However, the
experts on
>> the list will have to adjudicate that!
>
>I would agree with you that the address has specificity. But that does
not
>mean that the translation "*the* Son of God", is demanded, let alone
>implied by the grammar of the text. As Paul Dixon noted, the translation
>of hUIOS TOU QEOU by "God's Son" fills the bill without violating the
>wording. I was trying to point out that the context of the address seems
>also to demand that "God's Son" and not "the Son of God" is how the
>address should be rendered. If hermeneutics is being resorted to, it is
on
>the part of those who see the address as deictic. For it seems that they
>want to ignore the implications of the text that Jesus is being tested
as
>God's Son Israel was once tested, and that the overiding theme of the
>story in which the address is found is Jesus adherence to the duties
>bywhich Israel was constrained to show covenant faitfulness, in favour
of
>reading the text against backgrounds of certain alleged expectations of
>what the Messiah was supposed to do. For it is the assumption that the
>phrase hUIOS TOU QEOU *is* deictic, and therefore is a Messianic title,
>equivalent to "Deliverer", that undergirds this interpretation.
>
>Jeffrey Gibson
>jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu

An argument could be made for the definiteness of hUIOS on the basis of
the wording three verses before, hOUTOS ESTIN hO hUIOS MOU hO AGAPHTOS.
The proximity might suggest that this conditional test by Satan in 4:3 is
a direct challenge to the assertion made by God, not unlike His challenge
raised to Eve when he asked "has God really said...?" Additionally, it
is interesting that Christ answers each test by "it is written."

I also find it interesting that there is no variation between the
protasis in v. 3 and the protasis in v. 6. Is that significant? It
certainly would have helped if Matthew had included the definite article
on round two.

Nevertheless, "if you are God's Son" does seem a safer translation. It
does not unnecessarily interpret the anarthrous construction for us, as
does "the Son of God," or "a son of God."

Paul Dixon



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