Surprising factoid

I was reading through Herron's book on Clement and the early church when I encountered a passage which stood out in a slightly different light from previously. I cite only the verse with which I am directly concerned.

18 συνεπέμψαμεν δὲ μετʼ αὐτοῦ τὸν ἀδελφὸν οὗ ὁ ἔπαινος ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ διὰ πασῶν τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν,

2 Cor 8.18

When I have read this in English on previous occasions (With him we are sending the brother who is famous among all the churches for his proclaiming the good news;), it seemed possible to understand the "with" as a matter of the substance concerned, i.e., Titus is the brother who is famous for preaching. [Cf. "With this shipment the order is complete"] That is not the case in the Greek. This illustrates how the use of the original language can shed fresh light on an old text. If you don't look into the Greek word μετά then you won't necessarily recognize this. Now I wonder who this unnamed preacher might have been.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

DMB

Since you're a fount of all things interesting, I wonder when 'commas' (punctuation) showed up as a device for meaning? And was it a substitute for the reduction in linguistic information in languages like english?

With my new archaeological purchases, I've been spending more time around the mid-bronze before the big collapse, and the interesting development of letter-based words.

Matthew C Jones

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/445840#Comment_445840

and the interesting development of letter-based words.

I find the development of ideographs fascinating. Some even relate to Bible stories:

Genesis Revealed in Kanji
Kanji and the Bible (PPT download) http://www.knowyourbible.org/download/Kanji.ppt
Introducing Bible Stories Hidden in Chinese Characters (PDF download)

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/445847#Comment_445847

Nice sites. I hadn't seen a formal connect with Genesis.

Unix

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/445943#Comment_445943

The commendation of the two other delegates (vv 18–22) is clearly treated separately from that of Titus (cf. also v 23a and b). - Betz, H. D. (1985). 2 Corinthians 8 and 9: A commentary on two administrative letters of the Apostle Paul (G. W. MacRae, Ed.). Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (p. 72). Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

Another problem is presented by the fact that the names of the two brothers are not given in the text. Commentators have long found the omission of the names puzzling.²⁷² Were the names originally in the letter and later removed by the redactor? But why should they have been removed? Did they become an embarrassment? Hans Lietzmann and Hans Windisch assumed that the names were later excised because they had, for some unknown reason, become undesirable.²⁷³ The redactor would then have followed Ignatius’s practice of refusing to name certain heretics so as not to increase their notoriety.²⁷⁴ The question which must be raised, however, is whether Paul could have omitted the names himself. It is surely odd to recommend people without giving their names, as Lietzmann has rightly observed, though examples of this practice are known.²⁷⁵ It is true that elsewhere Paul gave the names of those whom he recommended.²⁷⁶ When names were omitted, they were those of his adversaries (1 Cor 3:10ff.; 2 Cor 2:5ff.; 7:12) or of the wrong doer in 1 Cor 5:1, 5. In an effort to be consistent, Lietzmann maintained that the brother whose name is omitted in 2 Cor 12:18 is the same as the envoy of 8:22.²⁷⁷ But there is no evidence to support the hypothesis that the names were later removed. If, on the other hand, Paul himself had omitted the names, what could have been his motive for doing so?

Did the apostle intend to play down the role of the brothers? - Betz, H. D. (1985). 2 Corinthians 8 and 9: A commentary on two administrative letters of the Apostle Paul (G. W. MacRae, Ed.). Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (p. 73). Philadelphia: Fortress Press.