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Sunday, November 12, 2006

Junia, the apostle: Part 16

This is to sum up the difficulties that I found in Wallace and Burer's article about Romans 16:7 Andronicus and Junia, ... episemoi en tois apostolois.

1. They chose 'well-known' which is a non-literal and poorly supported meaning for episemos.

2. They claimed that the meanings for episemos could be broken into two lexical streams, although no lexicon suggested this.

3. They suggested that episemos be treated as an implied comparative.

4. They state that with a comparative one might expect a genitive construction. But that is true only in certain cases. Many examples from the NT demonstrate otherwise.

5. They include in their data both episemos, the adjective, and episemon, the substantive, seemingly accidentally. However, they exclude data where episemos qualifies an impersonal noun on the basis that it does not provide a parallel.

6. They offer their own non-literal and non-standard translations for many of the examples.

7. They write about a single example which supports their case by saying "in every instance", implying broad-ranging support for their hypothesis.

8. The only example which supports their case is from classical Greek, a play by Euripides. About 10 clear examples from Hellenistic Greek support the other interpretation.

9. They discount evidence from church fathers, who actually spoke Greek.

10. The conclusions from this article find their way into three recent Bible translations, the ESV, CEV and NET.

For those who would like a more complete treatment of Wallace and Burer's article, I recommend this article by Linda Belleville. Given the data in her article, 2005, I am surprised that the ESV, CEV and NET have not been revised in Romans 16:7 to read "outstanding among the apostles."

Belleville, Linda. Ἰουνιᾶν ... ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις A Reexamination of Romans 16:7 in Light of Primary Source Materials. New Testament Studies. 51 pp. 231-249. UK. 2005. Cambridge UP

Index

4 Comments:

At Mon Nov 13, 07:19:00 AM, Blogger R. Mansfield said...

Suzanne, I included Rom 16:7 in my list of verses to check in the updated ESV, and it has not been changed. I doubt that's a shocker, though.

I hope that when you complete this series, you will create one post that contains links to every post. I will get back to the book on Junia I was reading three weeks ago and post a review of it. I would like to add in that review a link to your series. But, of course, one link would be better than 16+ :-)

 
At Mon Nov 13, 10:33:00 AM, Blogger Suzanne McCarthy said...

The index is aready in place.

 
At Mon Nov 13, 10:48:00 AM, Blogger Suzanne McCarthy said...

Marvin has already reviewed the book about Junia but I would be interested in a second opinion.

I am still waiting for the book by Epp to come in.

 
At Mon Nov 13, 12:11:00 PM, Blogger R. Mansfield said...

Suzanne said, "The index is already in place."

And you've even updated it--perfect.

 

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