1 Cor. 6:12-17
πάντα μοι ἔξεστιν
ἀλλ' οὐ πάντα συμφέρει
πάντα μοι ἔξεστιν
ἀλλ' οὐκ ἐγὼ ἐξουσιασθήσομαι
ὑπό τινος
"I have the right to do anything," you say—
but not everything is beneficial.
"I have the right to do anything"—
but I will not be overpowered by anything. (12)
τὰ βρώματα τῇ κοιλίᾳ
καὶ ἡ κοιλία τοῖς βρώμασιν
ὁ δὲ θεὸς καὶ ταύτην καὶ ταῦτα
καταργήσει
You say, "Food for the stomach
and the stomach for food,
and God will destroy
the one and the other." (13a)
τὸ δὲ σῶμα οὐ τῇ πορνείᾳ
ἀλλὰ τῷ κυρίῳ
καὶ ὁ κύριος τῷ σώματι
The body, however, is not for the prostitute
but for the Lord,
and the Lord for the body.(13b)
ὁ δὲ θεὸς καὶ τὸν κύριον ἤγειρεν
καὶ ἡμᾶς ἐξεγερεῖ διὰ τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ
God raised the Lord from the dead,
and he will raise us also by his power. (14)
οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι τὰ σώματα ὑμῶν
μέλη Χριστοῦ ἐστιν
ἄραςοὖν τὰ μέλη τοῦ Χριστοῦ
ποιήσω πόρνης μέλη
μὴ γένοιτο
Do you not know that your bodies
are members of Christ himself?
Shall I then take the members of Christ
and unite them with a prostitute?
Never! (15)
ἢ οὐκ οἴδατε
ὅτι ὁ κολλώμενος τῇ πόρνῃ
ἓν σῶμά ἐστιν ἔσονται
γάρ φησίν
οἱ δύο εἰς σάρκα μίαν
Do you not know
that he who unites himself with a prostitute
is one with her in body?
For it is said,
"The two will become one flesh." (16)
ὁ δὲ κολλώμενος τῷ κυρίῳ
ἓν πνεῦμά ἐστιν
But whoever is united with the Lord
is one with him in spirit. (17)
I would not have chosen this topic but it was the passage covered in Gordon Fee's class today. He pointed out that in the Greco-Roman world, visiting a female or male prostitute, was a normal and accepted activity for married men. He argued that the Corinthians were not only continuing to indulge in this practice but were protesting that it should be accepted.
The only significant translation issue that I can remember for this passage is that in verse 13, the closing quotation marks should be after "other"rather than after "food". I have used the TNIV as a base here but have changed it a little to make it more literal - but, yes, less accurate. That's the thing.
I have deliberately changed πορνεία to "prostitute" when it means "visiting a prostitute" and πόρνη means "a prostitute". Fee explained that LXX usage indicates that Paul is using it for any kind of sexual immorality. I have used the word "prostitute" in order to give you the idea of how this passage would sound when read out loud.
The main focus of Fee's lesson today was on the oral and rhetorical nature of the letter. He recited pieces of it aloud to give us an idea of how it would have been heard.
This has made me think a lot about the visual presentation of Paul's letters. Verse numbers are now being shunned, and chunks are presented by paragraph. In his lesson Dr. Fee presented the typical discourse analysis charts. They are fine as a working tool, but are not for final presentation. However, I thought I would break these verses into short lines to be read aloud to see what people think of this kind of presentation.
I am indebted to David for his post yesterday, bringing attention to rhetorical sructure in Romans, and to the Rotherham Emphasized Bible, which is the only one I know of which presents the text with signals for reading aloud. Working on the Sappho poem also made me more aware of the orality of the text. I like playing with the visual structure of the final text to see if it changes the way I understand and commit ideas to memory.
ἀλλ' οὐ πάντα συμφέρει
πάντα μοι ἔξεστιν
ἀλλ' οὐκ ἐγὼ ἐξουσιασθήσομαι
ὑπό τινος
"I have the right to do anything," you say—
but not everything is beneficial.
"I have the right to do anything"—
but I will not be overpowered by anything. (12)
τὰ βρώματα τῇ κοιλίᾳ
καὶ ἡ κοιλία τοῖς βρώμασιν
ὁ δὲ θεὸς καὶ ταύτην καὶ ταῦτα
καταργήσει
You say, "Food for the stomach
and the stomach for food,
and God will destroy
the one and the other." (13a)
τὸ δὲ σῶμα οὐ τῇ πορνείᾳ
ἀλλὰ τῷ κυρίῳ
καὶ ὁ κύριος τῷ σώματι
The body, however, is not for the prostitute
but for the Lord,
and the Lord for the body.(13b)
ὁ δὲ θεὸς καὶ τὸν κύριον ἤγειρεν
καὶ ἡμᾶς ἐξεγερεῖ διὰ τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ
God raised the Lord from the dead,
and he will raise us also by his power. (14)
οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι τὰ σώματα ὑμῶν
μέλη Χριστοῦ ἐστιν
ἄραςοὖν τὰ μέλη τοῦ Χριστοῦ
ποιήσω πόρνης μέλη
μὴ γένοιτο
Do you not know that your bodies
are members of Christ himself?
Shall I then take the members of Christ
and unite them with a prostitute?
Never! (15)
ἢ οὐκ οἴδατε
ὅτι ὁ κολλώμενος τῇ πόρνῃ
ἓν σῶμά ἐστιν ἔσονται
γάρ φησίν
οἱ δύο εἰς σάρκα μίαν
Do you not know
that he who unites himself with a prostitute
is one with her in body?
For it is said,
"The two will become one flesh." (16)
ὁ δὲ κολλώμενος τῷ κυρίῳ
ἓν πνεῦμά ἐστιν
But whoever is united with the Lord
is one with him in spirit. (17)
I would not have chosen this topic but it was the passage covered in Gordon Fee's class today. He pointed out that in the Greco-Roman world, visiting a female or male prostitute, was a normal and accepted activity for married men. He argued that the Corinthians were not only continuing to indulge in this practice but were protesting that it should be accepted.
The only significant translation issue that I can remember for this passage is that in verse 13, the closing quotation marks should be after "other"rather than after "food". I have used the TNIV as a base here but have changed it a little to make it more literal - but, yes, less accurate. That's the thing.
I have deliberately changed πορνεία to "prostitute" when it means "visiting a prostitute" and πόρνη means "a prostitute". Fee explained that LXX usage indicates that Paul is using it for any kind of sexual immorality. I have used the word "prostitute" in order to give you the idea of how this passage would sound when read out loud.
The main focus of Fee's lesson today was on the oral and rhetorical nature of the letter. He recited pieces of it aloud to give us an idea of how it would have been heard.
This has made me think a lot about the visual presentation of Paul's letters. Verse numbers are now being shunned, and chunks are presented by paragraph. In his lesson Dr. Fee presented the typical discourse analysis charts. They are fine as a working tool, but are not for final presentation. However, I thought I would break these verses into short lines to be read aloud to see what people think of this kind of presentation.
I am indebted to David for his post yesterday, bringing attention to rhetorical sructure in Romans, and to the Rotherham Emphasized Bible, which is the only one I know of which presents the text with signals for reading aloud. Working on the Sappho poem also made me more aware of the orality of the text. I like playing with the visual structure of the final text to see if it changes the way I understand and commit ideas to memory.
posted by Suzanne McCarthy at 12:01 PM
10 Comments:
Suzanne, I think that your setting out the line breaks (which correspond to cognitive chunking) as you have is an important visual aid to reading and understanding the text. This is esp. true where there are contrasts or other rhetorical structures as we have in this material.
Zondervan published a new testament translation a few years ago which was done by a scholar who formatted the lines kind of halfway between how you have done it here and how it is sometimes done by those who diagram biblical discourse patterns. Unfortunately, I have forgotten the name of the book and author. I gave it to Rick Mansfield recently, so if he sees this comment, he can supply that info.
Hi Wayne,
I don't particularly like the typical discourse diagrams - it is just a personal thing - I find it hard to reconstruct meaning out of the tiny little bits.
On the other hand, as I heard it read aloud I felt that something better than large paragraphs would help.
Note that I divided up most of this same passage into lines in a similar way in section 3.3 of my 1988 essay on 1 Corinthians. (The literal English translation was added in 2006 for the blog version of it.) Note that I wrote:
In 6:13-14, the contrasts are complex: the strongest one is οὐ τῇ πορνείᾳ ἀλλὰ τῷ κυρίῳ [not for immorality but for the Lord], but Paul is making his point through a weaker contrast, in which he affirms the Corinthians’ slogan about food and the stomach but rejects their implied – or perhaps explicit in their letter – extension of the same principle to sexual behaviour.
Thanks, Peter, your whole essay is very interesting. I must have missed it at the time. I think the segments are fairly obvious in the text.
You also brought out this point which I hadn't much thought about.
A second characteristic is the use of ἄνθρωπος [person (anthropos)] in both 7:1 and 7:26 for man as opposed to woman, where ἀνήρ [man (aner)] is normally expected. These are the only unambiguous examples in Pauline writing of this use, except in Ephesians 5:31 where Genesis 2:24 is quoted. This provides added evidence that there is a quotation in 6:18, for in context the ἄνθρωπος in this verse is probably male. The similar use of ἄνθρωπος in 7:7, contrasting with the regular pairing of references to men and women in 7:1-16, strongly suggests that here also there is an adapted quotation from the Corinthians: θέλω δὲ πάντας ἀνθρώπους εἶναι ὡς καὶ ἐμαυτόν [but I want all people (anthropos) to be as also myself]. The similarity of this to καλὸν ἀνθρώπῳ τὸ οὕτως εἶναι [good for a person (anthropos) to be like this] in the acknowledged quotation of 7:26 is more evidence for this further quotation.
But, couldn't you also say that it could never have ανηρ here because that would then mean that it would be good for a husband not to touch his wife. That would be very awkward.
On ἀνήρ aner in 1 Corinthians 7:1, Suzanne wrote:
couldn't you also say that it could never have ανηρ here because that would then mean that it would be good for a husband not to touch his wife.
I don't understand this verse as referring only to unmarried couples, or being about forbidding marriage. In fact I think it is mainly about married couples. From the response in verses 2-5 the Corinthian teaching which Paul rejects seems to be that married couples should avoid sexual intercourse, which presumably they understood as intrinsically unholy even within marriage. "Touch" is of course a euphemism.
Yeah, that's what I meant - sorry if it came out wrong.
Wayne,
Would you be thinking of the "New Testament TransLine: A Literal Translation in Outline Format" by Michael Magill (published by Zondervan in 2002)?
John asked:
Wayne,
Would you be thinking of the "New Testament TransLine: A Literal Translation in Outline Format" by Michael Magill (published by Zondervan in 2002)?
Yes, John, that's it. Thanks. It is available from amazon.com and elsewhere (notice the huge variations in price at this second link). I don't really know how useful it is. Have you spent much time with it and have any comments on it?
I don't really know how useful it is. Have you spent much time with it and have any comments on it?
I bought it a couple of years ago, and have to admit that I've not used it much. I didn't find the text layout in (what the translator calls) "outline format" particularly valuable. As regards the translation, and particularly the notes, for me I think the problem was that, on the one hand, I found it didn't replace any of the resources I was already using, but on the other hand, it didn't "add enough value" to persuade me to use it in addition (and its size didn't help here either). In addition, while I can see that only referring to Greek words by "GK number" saves space and may look less daunting, I found it irritating as I'd have to look elsewhere to identify the word he was discussing. (And I can't see people saying, "Oh yes, word 1091, I remember that one", whereas if words were transliterated, they might.)
Perhaps I'm just not in the target market. Of course, when it comes to buying books, I with me it's a bit like the saying: "His mouth is bigger than his stomach". After some initial enthusiasm, new books I buy frequently just end up in a pile or on a shelf. (Then there are the others I *fully intend* to read sometime.) One problem is that, even if I have the opportunity to look at a book before buying (and with this kind of book, for me living where I do, that's highly unlikely), one actually needs to use it for a while to really test its usefulness. Some stand the test of time, others don't.
Personally I like my TransLine. If you already can read Greek, it would be less useful. For someone who knows little to no Greek but still wants to go in depth without needing stacks of books, it is a great resource. It is the most literal rendering I have found (especially with verb tenses). The formating is rather liberating as the comments don't encumber the text, even though the comments are extensive (but not superfluous).
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