any person ... faithful to their partner

In the previous post, I quoted Ann Nyland's exegesis of a Greek phrase in I Timothy 3:2.  Let's look at that a little more.  First, however, let's back up to I Timothy 3:1.  Eventually, then, let's go even further back to Aristotle and his Politics.

In I Timothy 3:1, Nyland translates the Greek pronoun τις as "any person."  NRSV translates it "whoever" and so does NIV 1984, TNIV, and NIV 2011; ESV, similarly, translates it "anyone."  Lest anyone misses it, Nyland also gives a footnote to make clear that the little pronoun is "Non gender-specific in the Greek."

The question then becomes, for I Timothy 3:2, must the "anyone" or the "any person" be restricted to males only.  Is this what Paul was writing to Timothy as we read their mail?  For Nyland, it doesn't really matter so much because she finds that Paul uses similar phrases for partner faithfulness in a relationship, whether he's specifying a one-woman man or a single-man woman.  Thus, she has her readers consider together Paul's two phrases:

μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἄνδρα, mias gunaikos andra. "faithful to one's partner".  See also 1 Tim. 5:9, ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή, henos andros gune. 

Let's just compare what NRSV, TNIV, NIV 2011, NIV 1984, ESV, Richmond Lattimore, Willis Barnstone, and Julia Smith have respectively done with these Greek phrases in English translation.  And then we'll get back to Aristotle.

married only once / married only once - NRSV

faithful to his wife / faithful to her husband - TNIV, NIV 2011

the husband of but one wife / faithful to her husband - NIV 1984

the husband of one wife / the wife of one husband - ESV

married to one wife / widow of one husband - Lattimore

a man of one wife / the wife of one man - Barnstone

husband of one wife / wife of one man - Smith

Most translators specify some sort of marriage relationship in the phrase.  The Greek, nonetheless, does not demand this.  Moreover, most of these translators use a gendered spouse word for the one phrase or the other.  NRSV and Nyland, nonetheless, see this spouse gender specification as not so important for Paul.  The context of widows makes clear what is what in 1 Tim. 5:9.  And the "any person" or "whoever" or "anyone" of 1 Tim. 3:1 (the τις) seems to leave wide open the question of the gender, although clearly Paul has written ἄνδρα and the γυνή when referring to the sorts of persons who might be faithful to their partner.

Now, when we leave Paul and go back to Aristotle, the household rules and the politics of city states and the practices of leadership get much, much more restricted.  One little and very clear example is Aristotle's assertion as follows.  There's his Greek and then H. Rackham's English translation (1277b, around line 20):

ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικὸς ἑτέρα σωφροσύνη καὶ ἀνδρεία (δόξαι γὰρ ἂν εἶναι δειλὸς ἀνήρ, εἰ οὕτως ἀνδρεῖος εἴη ὥσπερ γυνὴ ἀνδρεία, καὶ γυνὴ λάλος, εἰ οὕτω κοσμία εἴη ὥσπερ ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁ ἀγαθός· ἐπεὶ καὶ οἰκονομία ἑτέρα ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικός· τοῦ μὲν γὰρ κτᾶσθαι τῆς δὲ φυλάττειν ἔργον ἐστίν).

temperance and courage are different in a man and in a woman (for a man would be thought a coward if he were only as brave as a brave woman, and a woman a chatterer if she were only as modest as a good man; since even the household functions of a man and of a woman are different—his business is to get and hers to keep).

What Aristotle is assuming and is asserting to be scientific fact is that men and women are different such that they really are not partners at all in the human race.  They're not partners, that is, unless you objectively see females as deficient males and as lesser than males in every role, in each domain.  Aristotle would regard Paul and Timothy as barbaric if they allowed a woman to hold office over a man, to be the bishop of a church, and so forth.  The real interesting question for us today is How much, if at all, did Paul follow Aristotle and whether he tried to get Timothy and other men to do the same?

Nyland (and perhaps the NRSV for I Timothy) seems to suggest that Paul is much more egalitarian that Aristotle's Nature would let him be.  What matters for Paul, Ann Nyland appears to claim, is that any person may prove responsible and may be recognized when faithful to their partner.

"ALL IN ALL": language

[UPDATE: I wrote this post very quickly in a very short amount of time yesterday. This morning, I thought to go back through to correct the typos and to adjust the Greek marginal formatting and to help you readers out with clarity in other editorial ways. But now I'm hoping you'll just make what you can of it. Know that I have been thinking through or at least thinking on some of these things. The conversation at BBB continues, and it's a good discussion, I think, at least an important one for many of us. Perhaps for you, there's something pertinent too.]

Teacher:  A good language must have one and only one meaning for each single word!
Young pupil Kenneth Pike:  But, sir, how then could we learn language?

         --Ken Pike, recollecting to some of us, his linguistics students

The Stranger: ... ποιήσῃ τῶν στοιχείων ἕκαστον πάντων ἐν πάσαις ταῖς συλλαβαῖς τὸ μὲν ἕτερον ὡς τῶν ἄλλων ἕτερον ὄν, ...
Young Socrates:  Παντά-Πασι μὲν οὖν.

         --Plato, The Statesman

I like very much the way the philosopher Goodman has stated (1978:x) that "what emerges can perhaps be described as a radical relativism under rigorous restraints" [emphasis mine, KLP].

         --Kenneth Lee Pike, Talk, Thought, and Thing

Here I go again, starting a blog post with three epigraphs.  So you get what I'm doing by now, don't you?  I'm wanting to use language to reflect on language use.

In particular, I want to start my post by blurring the lines between poetry and prose (or so called "propositional truth language").   Let me first (1) rather rhetorically listen in on the English language dialog between two bloggers.  Then (2) let's consider other English.  We might (3) just return to some Greek.  And then (4) we'll talk about translation.

Here goes:

(1)

John Hobbins of the blog Ancient Hebrew Poetry makes a brilliant comment at Dannii Willis's Better Bibles Blog post.  He starts:

"... my inner poet rebels against the notion that it is possible to translate a phrase like 'all in all' into propositional truth language."

John goes on to show how the phrase "'all in all' is part of a "beautiful song." He's already admitted, nonetheless, and has very clearly stated that it's not just lyrical sung poetry but that "propositional truth is [indeed] communicated" in the original Greek phrase that Dannii is concerned with (i.e., παντα εν πασιν).  And yet, John draws attention away from the propositional nature of this Greek phrase and then towards what he calls "the diction of the original."  John remarks pointedly that - because of the phrase's vagueness or ambiguity ostensibly - "it could be taken" by Greek readers and listeners alike "in the wrong way."  He implies that this problem is overcome by context.

Dannii replies rather curtly that the English phrase "all in all" (i.e., to translate the Greek phrase παντα εν πασιν) is "just a nice sounding Christian catchphrase."  And Dannii adds rather syllogistically that "catchphrases have no place in our Bibles."  This is his firm conclusion, and so far John has said nothing to rebut it.

My analysis of this conversation:

What I want to draw attention to is that John uses prose or, what he calls "propositional truth language" to make his claim and to build his case.  He does not use poetry, even poetry in the limited way he himself so propositionally defines poetry in contemporary English at his prosaic blog he's named Ancient Hebrew Poetry.  John himself quotes the lines from a song, but of course he cannot sing it in his written comment.

Dannii then comes back curtly (as I said already), in quick propositions.  But notice the nice sounds in his sentence, "It’s just a nice sounding Christian catchphrase."  With all that alliteration and all of those sibilants and affricates and voiceless stops, it's almost poetry.  Maybe it's song.  And it's rather puny because "Christian catchphrase" seems to be a "catchphrase" of "Christians."  Here's propositional truth proof, some of it propositional and scientific:  Bible Read Through and Christian Catch Phrases and Scientists Warn of Shortage in Christian Catchphrases.

(2)  Now this part 2 on considering other English isn't all that clever.

I just remember reading Sir Philip Sidney's piece "The Defense of Posey [i.e., Poetry]" and thinking, Hey, he is using prose here to defend poetry.  I think Mary Sidney's one of the best translators of the Bible ever -- just thought I'd through that in to see if you were paying attention.  Thank you, then!  And click on this link if I've gotten too propositional for you (and if you want an image of something cool).  And I also remember watching Dr. Ken Pike do a monolingual demonstration, give a follow up lecture with a bit of Q & A, and then recite poetry.

He told poems
as if
they could not
be
told otherwise

Now, I'm thinking I've just made a capital E out of a bad poem.  Don't know what that means, really.  Maybe you'll make something of it.

(3) Now Greek.  No, not Aristotle's this time.  I'm going to show you Plato's Greek (which had some impact on the young Aristotle, I must add).  Plato's got this Young Socrates character learning from a Stranger (and neither is the real Socrates, who taught Plato, or the Socrates who shows up as the real Socrates in most of Plato's dialogs).  The stranger is teaching his student the Young Socrates about Politics and being a Statesman (and they are all men, you know).  His using examples to explain examples to get to the politics stuff.  So he starts with the alphabet.  Yes, Greek.  And he says this:

Ἀνάγειν πρῶτον ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνα ἐν οἷς ταὐτὰ ταῦτα

ὀρθῶς ἐδόξαζον, ἀναγαγόντας δὲ τιθέναι παρὰ τὰ μήπω

γιγνωσκόμενα, καὶ παραβάλλοντας ἐνδεικνύναι τὴν αὐτὴν 

ὁμοιότητα καὶ φύσιν ἐν ἀμφοτέραις οὖσαν ταῖς συμπλοκαῖς, 

μέχριπερ ἂν πᾶσι τοῖς ἀγνοουμένοις τὰ δοξαζόμενα ἀληθῶς

παρατιθέμενα δειχθῇ, δειχθέντα δέ, παραδείγματα οὕτω γιγ‑ 

νόμενα, ποιήσῃ τῶν στοιχείων ἕκαστον πάντων ἐν πάσαις 

ταῖς συλλαβαῖς τὸ μὲν ἕτερον ὡς τῶν ἄλλων ἕτερον ὄν, τὸ

δὲ ταὐτὸν ὡς ταὐτὸν ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἑαυτῷ προσαγορεύεσθαι.

Yes, I hear the It's All Greek to Me catchphrase.  What you might see, nonetheless, is how Plato's Stranger is using a favorite Greek catchphrase of the Greek-writing Roman-citizen Christian-Jew Saul-Paul.  It's not exactly poetry, but it's not exactly propositional truth, not just yet.  This is Plato, remember, not yet Aristotle.  So did you see it, right there in the dialog?  Or at least in the monolog bit of the Stranger?  πάντων ἐν πάσαις

All in all.  He's talking (as Plato's writing) about the each and every correspondences of letters to syllables and such.  As an example of something like this example and like politics.  It's a nice way to learn.  Take something similar but different.  Stack it up next to something similar but different.  See what you can make of that.

And what do you make of the Young Socrates's response.  Oh that's right, you need to see it.  He "says":

Παντά-Πασι μὲν οὖν.

Now, I'll bet you a few pennies that most English translators have completely missed the Greek wordplay here.  You, however, can see it can't you?  All those π's and Π's and παν's and πασ's.  What's that mean?  Well, on the propositional level, the Young Socrates says "Certainly" or "That's altogether so."  At least that's what translator Benjamin Jowett and translator Seth Benardete have respectively said he said.  What if they'd said something more poetic?  More playful?  More punny (or is it punier?)?


Truth be told, and all in all, I really haven't seen this Greek catchphrase or the wordplayful response anywhere much at all between Plato and Paul.


(4)  Okay.  Let's talk.  About translation I mean.  What do you think?

Euripides Reads Torah, Paul Does the Classics

.... Now I’m no scholar of the Christian Scriptures (although I have taught courses on them a time or two), but when obvious parallels exist it is incumbent upon modern readers to pay attention. The parallels of Dionysus and Jesus were evident to early Christians, so what I noticed was nothing new. When the followers of Dionysus, however, strike a rock with their sticks and water flows out, I wondered if Euripides had read his Torah!

--Steve Wiggins, "Paul Does the Classics," Sects and Violence in the Ancient World

Bible Translation: Barbarisms, Solecisms, and Aristotle

This post is mainly technical. (Some of this is from a stuffy Ph.D. dissertation I defended nearly a year ago.) Here, I'd like us to look some more at the Bible, at its translation, and at a couple of words we tend to use in talking about translation without our recognizing we're using Aristotle's words. In using these words, so ostensibly benign, we might as well be using perhaps old “code words in our Christian culture” such as “nigger, spic, kike, wop, sheeny, faggot, swish, and queer.”

The two words I'm wanting to talk about here are “barbarism” and “solecism.” And we get away with using the words with no one protesting because 1) they have become precise and technical words; and 2) they are words to mark what others (and not we ourselves) have done wrong (i.e., “not right”) with language.

So, first, we may need precise definitions to remind us what we mean. We certainly do not intend to be mean, we tell ourselves. And rhetorician George A. Kennedy explains, succinctly and precisely, in a footnote of his translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric that a “solecism is a “mistake in usage or syntax; in later grammatical and rhetorical theory [the solecism is] contrasted to a ‘barbarism’ or mistake in the form of a word” (page 208).

Now, then, we can understand when John L. McKenzie in his exact Dictionary of the Bible observes how “The Gk of Ape is the worst of the NT, much inferior to Jn and 1 Jn. It abounds with barbarisms and solecisms. The author thinks in Hb while he writes in Gk” (page 41).  And, of course, we understand that Gk = Greek; Ape = Apocalypse or Book of Revelation; Jn = Gospel of John; 1 Jn = First Epistle of John; Hb = Hebrew; and “barbarisms and solecisms” = exactly what Kennedy says that Aristotle says they are, i.e. “solecism” = “mistake in usage or syntax” and “barbarism” = “mistake in the form of a word”.

Likewise, we now can view A. T. Robinson's Word Pictures in the New Testament and get exactly what he means when he finds "in Revelation 13:17 and certainly so in 1 John 5:20..., a solecism in late vernacular Greek" (as we read his commentary on Revelation 12:6). We can even read T. Cowden Laughlin's Princeton University Ph.D. dissertation, “The Solecisms of the Apocalypse.” We understand how the writers of The Catholic Encyclopedia do remember that “The Purists [among the Protestant Reformers] held that in the Bible there are neither barbarisms nor solecisms; that the Greek of the New Testament is [exactly] as pure as that of the classical authors.” And we follow the Essentials of English: A Textbook for Schools by George W. Rine, who concludes (following his precise definitions of solecism and syntax) the following that defends the once-pristine purity of the translation of the Bible: “Hence solecisms, taken collectively, are usually called false syntax. The few solecisms found in the King James Version of the Bible were not solecisms at the time that version was made (1611)” (page 7).

Yes, you're catching on.  So am I.

We're using Aristotle's words. We're using them whether in writing about the Bible and its translation or in reading what others have written. Aristotle was very concerned that Greek users use the Hellene language right. We don't even need to talk about his "logic," his method to avoid the imprecisions and impurities of the language of women, catamites, eunuchs, androgynes, slaves, poets, sophists, and even of his teacher Plato and his teacher Socrates (whose idealism and dialectic were mere counterparts to sloppy rhetoric).

Aristotle would write things like this to his elite male (and purely masculine) Greek students:

ἔτι τόδε ποιεῖ σολοικίζειν, τὸ μὴ ἀποδιδόναι, ἐὰν μὴ ἐπιζευγνύῃς ὃ ἀμφοῖν ἁρμόττει

Kennedy translates that into English (from the Rhetoric 1407b) as:

Further, the lack of correspondence creates a solecism (to soloikizein) if you do not join words with what fits both

And Aristotle would also write things like this to his elite male (and purely masculine) Greek students:

σεμνὴ δὲ καὶ ἐξαλλάττουσα τὸ ἰδιωτικὸν ἡ τοῖς ξενικοῖς κεχρημένη· ξενικὸν δὲ λέγω γλῶτταν καὶ μεταφορὰν καὶ ἐπέκτασιν καὶ πᾶν τὸ παρὰ τὸ κύριον. ἀλλ’ ἄν τις ἅπαντα τοιαῦτα ποιήσῃ, ἢ αἴνιγμα ἔσται ἢ βαρβαρισμός· ἂν μὲν οὖν ἐκ μεταφορῶν, αἴνιγμα, ἐὰν δὲ ἐκ γλωττῶν, βαρβαρισμός.

Gilbert Murray translates that into English (from the Poetics 1458a) as:

On the other hand the Diction becomes distinguished and non-prosaic by the use of unfamiliar terms, i.e. strange words, metaphors, lengthened forms, and everything that deviates from the ordinary mode of speech.--But a whole statement in such terms will be either a riddle or a barbarism, a riddle, if made up of metaphors, a barbarism, if made up of strange words.

Now, we should be able to follow here. Aristotle is advising his students to avoid "everything that deviates" from his standard of pure Greek. Translators Kennedy and Murry transliterate to avoid deviating from Aristotle's authorial intentions. The English translators are wanting to sound like Aristotle.

And, as noted, above, Kennedy takes the technical English terms from Aristotle's Greek so that a “solecism” is a “mistake in usage or syntax; in later grammatical and rhetorical theory [the solecism is] contrasted to a ‘barbarism’ or mistake in the form of a word.” Kennedy, when writing about the Bible and rhetoric, is always keen on making these terms clear. See his New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (page 27) and his Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (page 124), where Kennedy addresses solecisms and barbarisms.

What Kennedy does not say is that “barbarism” and “solecism” are Aristotle’s terms to denigrate whole groups of people. Barbarians were non-Greeks mocked by the Athenians for sounding foreign and funny, as if in their mother tongues they were saying, stuttering, “bar bar bar bar bar.” And the “Soloi” [Σολοι] were the people living in Soli, a Greek colonial city, on Cyprus. To the Athenians their speech sounded strange, not because of the bar-bar-ous sounds they made but because of their peculiar, non-standard Greek grammar of the people of Soli.

Aristotle, of course, was not interested in relativism of any kind, including linguistic relativism. He despised Δισσοι Λόγοι / Dissoi Logoi /. He advocated a centric position, an absolute prescription for Greek male students and their City States. For Aristotle, the Greek mother tongue purely consisted of his dialect alone, the one he taught logically to his elite male (purely masculine) students. More than that, Aristotle was threatened by women and their speech. He took their “logos” and reduced it to his “logic.” Thus, women rhetors and rhetoricians such as Aspasia were completely silenced by Aristotle because they were females. And yet, barbarisms in speech and solecisms in writing were not only frowned upon because they were contaminations from the foreigners but also because these foreigners - even males - sounded like the slippery women. Aristotle’s masculinistic, linguistic, and ethnocentric purity depended on and was reinforced by his phallogocentricism.

Now, when we return to the Bible and read it for itself, we hear authors there purely separating themselves from the Barbarians. Paul, for example, seems to call the Latin-using Romans in Rome βαρβάροις ("barbarians") when addressing his fellow Jews and the Greeks there. See Romans 1:14. The funny thing about that is Paul himself is a Roman (in terms of citizenship) and a Barbarian (in Aristotle's view); the silly thing is that Paul is using a solecism (in Kennedy's technical view of Aristotle's technical view). We wonder if any of the Greeks in Corinth or in Colossae laughed when Paul (the Jewish Romanish barbarian) so referred to Barbarians (in his Greek letters to Greeks and Jews). See 1 Corinthians 14:11 and Colossians 3:11. And we can only imagine how the Maltese in Malta felt when Luke (who was with Paul) referred to these "island people" as Οἱ βάρβαροι (the Barbarians). See Acts 28:2-4.

What I'm trying to get to in this post is all that gets lost when the translator follows the intention of the author too closely. When the translator is unwilling to let the author be ugly (or is not aware enough of the author's ugly language, whether intended or unintended ugliness), then much is lost. When the translator simply transliterates the sounds of the author's ugly words, then the author comes off sounding technical and not necessarily ugly at all. The author and the translator sound smart together. The meaning of the ugly word is no longer ugly but is something "original," something for the elite, the educated, the insiders, the linguistically astute.

Yes, I know, some do not want Aristotle to be ugly. I've posted what one of you wrote to me about my never really knowing "Aristote's heart." And there are defenders of Aristotle's scientific mistakes, such as Robert Mayhew (with his book The Female in Aristotle's Biology: Reason or Rationalization), whom I had to respond to in part in my dissertation.

And even more people, it seems, don't want Paul or Luke to use ugly Greek language or to commit Kennedy's Aristotle's "barbarisms" and "solecisms."  Who really wants to concede that Paul and Luke quoted the LXX translators who used an ugly Greek word that denigrates other human beings?  (See the Septuagint: Ps 113:1; Ez 21:36; 2Mc 2:21, 4:25, and 10:4; and 3Mc 3:24).

So the question for us reading translations of Aristotle and of Paul and of Luke is whether we have heard the barbarisms and solecisms?  Do we get the ugliness of σολοικίζειν and Οἱ βάρβαροι and ἐκ γλωττῶν βαρβαρισμός?  Are we willing to hear that as "the ignorant mistakes of the Cypriot colonists of Soli City" and "Those stammering stuttering strangers" and "what's born out of the mother tongue of those stammering stuttering strangers"?

Greek Changing Paul

The title of my post is ambiguous. You can read it as "Paul was changing the Greek language" and as "The Greek language of Paul was changing." I'm talking about the Paul (or someone using his name) who used Greek to write much of the New Testament.

His language changes through the various letters he wrote. And Paul's Greek changes the way other writers after him use the language. Tracking the influences on Paul and Paul's on others could be a dissertation, or a lifetime of study. I think Paul was as much influenced by Aristotle and his Greek as anybody. Paul clearly was engaged in (if he didn't explicitly recognize) the sort of gripes that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle had with the language and language flux of the old poets and playwrights and sophists (such as Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Heraclitus, Sophocles, Euripides, Protagoras, Epicurus, Zeno, Gorgias, Dissoi Logoi). When Paul was in Athens listening in on and then chiming in on the conversations of his contemporaries in that City and culture, he used the Greek language rhetorically in a very Aristotelian way, starting syllogistically with the givens of certain men of old. He treats theo-logy in his speech in many ways as Aristotle does, an acknowledging of truths but of errors to get at the Nature of God objectively.

Paul, unlike Aristotle, did acknowledge much of his personal change, his "growth" perhaps, and certainly his dramatic adult human conversion. In his short life, the rippling effects of that conversion can be seen in his letter writing. Bill Heroman does some wonderful reflecting on and some reconstructing of the possibilities of some of this change in Paul. T.C. Robinson challenges whether there's a theological construct in the traditional ordering of Paul's New Testament letters. Bill Mounce has looked at Paul's rare Greek such as δί·λογος / dí-logos /. And Joel Hoffman, with a number of others, has wondered whether Paul has new meanings for σάρξ / sarks /.

Language, Greek language, and translation scholar Willis Barnstone reflects on Paul. Barnstone sees the stability of the Greek language, its fluidity, and where Paul fits into that. On pages 114 and 115 of his new Restored New Testament, Barnstone gets us thinking:

The letters to the Romans (probably his last letter) and the Corinthians show Paul at the peak of thought and rhetorical magic. He achieves language magic in demotic Greek (Koine), with a flare of the classical period while keeping to the simplified syntax and virtues of the vernacular. He has the high flow of Plato, who wrote in Attic Greek, in his own less inflected tongue. To repeat my argument [i.e., Barnstone's argument] about the glory of Mark's Greek, Paul's work is not less effective for being composed in vernacular development of Attic Greek any more than Michel de Montaigne is less for writing in French, the regional vernacular of Cicero's Latin. Indeed, in terms of change, Paul's Greek is closer to Plato than E. M. Forster's English is to Shakespeare. Greek, in spelling, grammar, and usage, was very early established, while in English the dictionary thoroughness of Samuel Johnson, who established norms for English spelling and usage did not enter the scene until midway between Forster and Shakespeare.

If this volume [i.e., Barnstone's Restored New Testament] were predominantly a study Bible, then it would begin with Paul’s I Thessalonians, which, if not supreme, carries the authority and beauty of all his authentic letters. And despite the above encomia [i.e. Barnstone's own praise] for the apostle’s key letters, there are advantages at least for study purposes to keep in mind the probable order of Paul’s work. He grows as his movement grows, and his work moves to the climactic pivotal letters. A chronological order, even the thought of one, would provide an unbiased historical frame for secular and sectarian events and reveal the material culture scene of the Jews, Christian Jews, Greeks, and Romans who participate in the drama of each book.

While I separate the authentic Pauline letters from the pseudonymous, from a stylistic point of view, the would-be Paul letters do not jar. Being pseudepigraphic they imitate Paul's style, in not his depth and breadth.

While Barnstone may be making a few sweeping statements, he's absolutely correct to try to see Paul's writings and his Greek in light of developments in and of the language.  Barnstone goes on to instruct his own readers in what Aristotle taught as if to help us read Paul better.  That point shouldn't get lost on any of us.  Why would it hurt any of us to get at not only exactly what Paul meant by certain Greek words but also at exactly how and why (sometimes without self reflection at all) we read Paul?

More Cultural Sources of Paul's "Sarx"

This post is a continuation of the last.  In the earlier post, I began asking a couple of questions:

How did other writers other than Paul use the Greek word σάρξ [sarx]?

(How) might this have colored and shaped and otherwise influenced exactly what Paul meant by the word?

I considered (1) the LXX translation of the Genesis creation story, the earliest use of the Greek word σάρξ [sarx] for translation of Torah by the Jews.  And I considered (2) the play Hecuba by Euripides, because it uses the same Greek word for a blinding episode, which may have reminded Paul of his own.  We saw that in both instances the word σάρξ [sarx] is gendered, that the contexts have allusions to "flesh" as female, whether in their creation and procreation or in their disparagement and denigration.

So in this post, we'll consider (3) Aristotle and (4) a first-century novelist.

(3) Aristotle

This is by far the longer of the two sections of this post.  I'm wanting us to look at how Aristotle used σάρξ [sarx] because he had such a profound effect on how Greeks after him used language in general and the Hellene language in particular.  Aristotle disparaged and denigrated playwrights such as Euripides.  And he absolutely despised females.  It wasn't just that his objective, logical, scientific epistemology told him that in Nature females and poets were lesser than males and philosophers.  It was also the fact that women and poets just were not objective or logical or scientific -- and if they could know anything, then it was the stuff that weakened Greek politics and the rule of the Greek household (i.e., economics), elite male politics and exclusively male-run households.

Aristotle also hated barbarians, such as Jews.  The hatred seems to have backfired on him to a certain extent, however.  When Jews translated their scriptures into Greek, they did not use an Aristotelian paradigm nor an Alexandrian paradigm; they didn't even use an "Exodus paradigm" although commissioned by the lackey King Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt, in Alexandria, Alexander the Great's namesake city.  Rather, according to Sylvie Honigman, they followed the Homeric paradigm, the paradigm of the epic poet, no logician or philosopher by any stretch.

It's fascinating to see what Aristotle does with σάρξ [sarx] and to consider whether Paul follows him or someone else perhaps.  To be sure, Aristotle is the king of the use of σάρξ [sarx].  In the extant writings we can read today, he or someone claiming to be Aristotle used the word more times than the LXX translators and the New Testament writers did combined.  Aristotle used the word some 445 times, whereas the Greek bible book collection has just under 370 uses.  The Septuagint (LXX) has around 215 uses, and the New Testament nearly 155 uses with Paul (or someone claiming his name) writing the word around 100 of those times. (And if anyone cares, Euripides only used the word 27 times in his extant plays).  Aristotle used the word mostly for his biologies and some for his Metaphysics.  If anyone by his corpus and by his careful science and logic defines the word, it's Aristotle.  Aristotle sees σάρξ as a subject, a substance, along with bones, blood, sperm, and other parts of bodies that are material.

We have time to carefully consider the most interesting use of σάρξ [sarx] by Aristotle.  It is in his book that we call Generation of Animals.  It's a book mostly about the sexual intercourse and offspring conception and generative births of animals and of human beings.  It's one of the books in which Aristotle objectively observes females as lesser than males, as defective or mutant beings caused by mothers who did not get the sex act right (or else, of course, they would have generated a male offspring).

The passage below is my translation of Aristotle's Greek.  I want us to eavesdrop, to listen in, to overhear.  I want us to image what it might have been like to be Aristotle's daughter and his slave, reading the text although it's not meant for us.  (Rather it was written for the natural-born free elite boys of Aristotle's academy).  I want us to hear the wordplay, certainly not intended by Aristotle, the author.

I'd like us to see how certain words disparage females, and how these are associated with a lump of flesh that is neither human nor alive outside the womb.  (If you want other translations, they are readily available.  And I'll link to two right after my translation.  And then we'll get to that first-century novel and say something in summary before we go).  Here, from Generation of Animals pages 775b-776a, is the most interesting use of σάρξ [sarx] by Aristotle:

On the subject of what is called the “maid’s millstone” [μύλης mýlēs], let us speak.  It is generated [γίγνεται gígnetai] in just a few women [γυναιξί gynaiksí] in the birthing process.  This thing is generated [γίγνεται gígnetai] in the passion, the suffering, of pregnancy.  This offspring, in fact, is the so-called “maid’s millstone” [μύλην mýlēn].  It has, in fact, already happened as the birth woman [γυναικὶ gunaikì] has intercourse with the man, even gaining the opinion that she has conceived as certainly, first, there is the large expansion of the belly just as with a typical generation, according to stated facts.   Afterwards, however, at the time for the offspring, she neither gives birth to the offspring nor does her largeness diminish.  Instead, she continues on three or four years without finishing what she started until she gives birth [γενομένης genoménēs] to dysentery, and so endangers herself, until birthing this offspring: 

flesh [σάρκα sárka], which is what is called a “maid’s millstone” [μύλην mýlēn].

Some women, however, will grow old with this passion, this suffering, and may even die with it.   Coming out of the door of birth generation [γίγνεται gígnetai], it is hard – hard so much so that even iron is insufficient [μόλις mólis] to cut through it. – insufficient like a “maid.”  On the subject of this passionate suffering, we have already said things in [my other book], The Problems.  There is, in fact, passionate suffering with respect to this “fetus” in the mother, just as there is with the “maid’s measly meat-boil” [μωλυνόμενα mōlynómena] in the under-warmed pot.  And the problem is not because of heat, as some would claim, but it is more because of its own sickliness and weakness of heat.  It is, in fact, like its own nature, sickly and weak and neither able to finish what it starts nor able to conclude what the generative birth [γενέσει genései] should put forth.  Therefore, she grows old with it or stays with it a long time.  She does this, in fact, since it neither finishes what is started nor does it altogether have the nature of something different from her.  The cause of its hardness, in fact, is her lack of expelling it.  This cause, in fact, is somewhat also that of the  “maid’s measly meat-boil” [μώλυνσίς mōlynsís].

Now, I hope we've all been able to hear the gender of sound, the sounds of certain words that Aristotle (probably here unconsciously) connects with "woman" or "wife."  They are the Greek words for "generation" or "birth."  And then there are the words for "millstone" and for "under-cooked meat" -- these are words also associated in Greek culture with "maid," a female who grinds grain or cooks meat for men in the epics of Homer and in the plays of the others.  The word for "insufficient" has a similar sound.  And in the middle of all that is Aristotle's use of σάρξ [sarx].  By this, he clearly means "flesh," but it's useless flesh, a lump, the mother's fault and something this womb-woman carries with her into her dysentery, into her old age, and to her death.  It's not a male child, not even a mutant called a female child.  It's hard because of the woman and as undesirable as a scalded lump of meat, undercooked by the maid.

So let's say this again:  Aristotle didn't intend for us to read this, and he didn't mean for the words to sound similar in this context or association.  We're not trying to read into the text.  And we're not doing Freudian psychology, where we'd read into Aristotle's sub-conscious motives.  Rather, we're just listening with our bar-bar-ian ears and re-membering contexts in other earlier Greek texts in which the sounds of females were placed, like appositives and adjectives, alongside women.

I do want to take a long, full paragraph to talk about some of the traditional translations.  We should feel free to investigate as many translations as possible.  The unfortunate thing with typical translations is this:  the translator usually wants to be faithful to the author's intention, and many times this means making words technical by transliteration, so as to keep the original author's original sounds.  The translator may ignore the cultural context, or the translator may be following an earlier translator who transliterates and ignores the playfulness of language and the cultural contexts.  Arthur Platt, for example, in 1910 just transliterates Aristotle's μύλης  as "mola" and to the Greek word elsewhere he adds a bit of Latin to make it sound more technical, as with "mola uterus," which in his footnote he calls "uterine mole."  Much more well done (please pardon my pun), for μωλυνόμενα Platt uses "half-cooked meat," and for σάρκα he has "lump of flesh."  Here's Platt's English - if you scroll down to his Chapter 7 of Book IV, and if you go to your library, you'll find the published version with footnotes. My guess is that Platt, in translating Aristotle into English, followed Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, who translated many of Aristotle's works into French in the mid and late 1800s. Saint-Hilaire also transliterates.  He has "une môle" for μύλης ; and he gives two footnotes to explain, the latter getting at what he considers uncertain etymologies: "Cette formule, répétée deux fois dans ce paragraphe, semble indiquer que l'observation était alors peu connue. L'étymologie du mot dans les trois langues se rapproche beaucoup, et est presque identique; il serait assez difficile de la justifier, puisqu'elle fait allusion à la forme d'une meule de moulin." Please understand what Saint-Hilaire is confessing by saying "'elle fait allusion à la forme d'une meule de moulin"; he is confessing that he's not translated even though the word "refers to the shape of a millstone" (i.e., the sort of millstone that maids used to grind grain for men in Homer's epic stories).  Saint-Hilaire transliterates the Greek sounds of Aristotle's letters as if to preserve the original.  He does not make the connection that Aristotle's daughter can if she reads the text; Aristotle's daughter would read it understanding that the "millstone" is the domain of the woman servant for men, and that this is the metaphor that Aristotle uses for the mutant thing inside the ostensibly pregnant women.  To his credit, Saint-Hilaire does have "nos aliments quand ils sont à moitié crus" and "la coction incomplète" for μωλυνόμενα, even if the Greek alliterative connection to μύλης gets lost. And for σάρκα, Saint-Hilaire has "Un morceau de chair." Saint-Hilaire's French translation with Aristotle's Greek can be found here.

What I'm more than hinting at here is that Paul perhaps follows Aristotle when using the Greek word σάρξ [sarx].  In Aristotle's context, there is the use of the word to indicate something awful, something related to women.

So let's move on, then, to a first-century novelist who uses the Greek word σάρξ [sarx].  Perhaps by Paul's century, the word is used differently from how Aristotle used it some three or four centuries earlier.

(4) Chariton, a First-Century Novelist

We could argue whether Paul would have ever read a novel.  It is highly plausible, however, that people to whom Paul wrote in the assemblies of Greekish Jews and Jewish Greeks would have read a novel if such had been available.  It is quite likely that the place where a Greek novel would have the most appeal is at the center of the empire, Rome.  The Romans were pushing official Latin but the push wasn't working very well during Paul's day.  It's no accident that the entire New Testament is not originally composed in Latin but in Greek.  And as these scriptures were being written, so was Chariton's novel.  English translator and Greek scholar G. P. Goold makes the strong case that "Chariton's Callirhoe, subtitled 'Love Story in Syracuse,' is the oldest extant novel," composed and read in the first century.

Just a bit of background for those who've yet to read the novel.  The protagonist is the beautiful woman Callirhoe, whose name means "fine" or "beautiful" or "good form."  She is wanted by various men through the course of the plot, and she from time to time has to go into hiding.

How did Chariton use the Greek word σάρξ [sarx]? 

Here's a snippet from Goold's English translation with my insertion of Chariton's Greek word:

Though Callirhoe was reluctant and unwilling, Plangon managed to get her to the bath.  After she had gone in they had rubbed her with oil and wiped it off carefully, and marveled at her all the more when undressed, for, whereas when she was dressed they admired her face as divine, they had no thoughts for her face when they saw her hidden beauty. Her skin gleamed white, shining just like a shimmering surface, but her flesh [σάρξ sarx] was so delicate as to make one afraid that even the touch of one's fingers might cause a serious wound. They whispered to one another, "Our mistress was famed for her beauty, but she would have seemed this girl's maidservant." Their praise troubled Callirhoe and she had a foreboding of what was to come. When she had had her bath and they were fastening up her hair, they brought her clean clothes. But she said that this was not proper for one who had just been bought: "Give me a slave's tunic, for even you are my superiors." So she put on an ordinary dress, but this too suited her and in reflecting her beauty seemed an expensive one.

Aren't we picking up a theme here?  The Greek word, again, in another context is associated with a female.  More than that, the "flesh" or "sarx" of this female is strange, is dangerous to those who would look at it or touch it. 

(How) might this have colored and shaped and otherwise influenced exactly what Paul meant by the word?

And what exactly did Paul mean by the Greek word σάρξ [sarx]?  (The precise answer, of course, must wait until we have more time).

Two Cultural Sources of Paul's "Sarx"

Before claiming to understand exactly what Paul meant by the Greek word σάρξ [sarx], an English language translator does well to consider Paul's sources and how they used the word. Paul (or someone using his name) wrote the word nearly 100 times in the extant texts we call the New Testament. This same Paul quoted from the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures (the Septuagint or LXX), which uses sarx well over 200 times. And Paul - in Luke's history (Acts 17) - quoted out of his verbal working memory the sayings of various Greek poets and playwrights. And Paul writing in Greek - to Jews and Greeks in Rome (Romans 12) - is the only New Testament writer to use Aristotle's logical-method word, λογικη [logikē, or "logic"). And Paul - if it's not too much of a speculation - may have read popular Greek works of his day.

In this post, I want to look at some examples of writings that Paul may have read.  Let's consider (1) the LXX and (2) a poet / playwright in this post.  If we have time, in another post, then, we'll consider (3) Aristotle and (4) a first-century novelist .

How did other writers use the Greek word σάρξ [sarx]? (How) might this have colored and shaped and otherwise influenced exactly what Paul meant by the word?

(1) LXX

The very first use of sarx in the Septuagint (by the Jews in Egypt, in Alexander the Great's namesake city, translating their scriptures into the language of the new Greek empire) is in Genesis 2:21 -

καὶ ἔλαβεν μίαν τῶν πλευρῶν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀνεπλήρωσεν σάρκα ἀντ’ αὐτῆς

Roughly, it's conveying this,

that God took a rib from the first human being and closed up the "sarx" in its place.

The story goes on quickly to make clear that this human being has out of him, formed by God, a new human being. And the first says of her (in Greek-translated Jewish language):

τοῦτο νῦν ὀστοῦν ἐκ τῶν ὀστέων μου καὶ σὰρξ ἐκ τῆς σαρκός μου

In essence, he's saying the following:

"This now is bone out of my bone and 'sarx' out of my 'sarx'."

And he goes on reasonably to call her γυνη "gunē" (or "woman" or "wife") - which is funny in Greek, because the word rhymes with the Greek words for "Genesis" and for "birth" and for "generations" and for "ground." There is an ambiguous, playful set of meanings here. And I want to emphasize that from the get-go the LXX uses sarx in gendered ways, that semantically (to get at all the meanings) there has to be some understanding of "woman" and there has to be a bit of an appreciation for "womanly" ways of meaning making and of language.

It is funny in another way too:  the first human being looks at the second human being and declares, in Greek, ἐκ (ek "out of").  This preposition in this context is something that connotes a conception and a birth. The preposition is used when talking about a newborn coming "out of" the mother.  So the first human being (a male) is like the mother (a female) of the second human being, is like that in Greek in the beginning.  The second human being is actually the female in the story. And she becomes the first mother, of course.  And in Matthew's genealogy where he includes some females in the patrilineage of Jesus, Matthew writes "out of Tamar" and "out of Ruth" and so forth using this same Greek preposition.  But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

So then the writer of Genesis (and the translators too) will do something even funnier. In a sentence a little later, the father and mother (and the idea of mother and father in conception and in birth) get left behind:

ἕνεκεν τούτου καταλείψει ἄνθρωπος τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν μητέρα αὐτοῦ καὶ προσκολληθήσεται πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ καὶ ἔσονται οἱ δύο εἰς σάρκα μίαν

More or less, this means:

"Therefore, this human will leave his father and his mother, and he will stick together with his woman (womb-man, birthing wife, baby generator), and the two will become merged into a single 'sarx'."

The LXX uses sarx in other startling ways we don't have time for.  The consistent thing is that the referents are things that are, as we say in English, fleshly:  skin, muscle and sinew, as mixed with blood and bone in a carcass or body.  But the gendered beginnings of the word (in the beginning, in Genesis) is how this all starts.

(2) A Greek Poet / Playwright

We could laugh all day reading funny Greek poetry and plays in which the Greek word σάρξ [sarx] is used.  I just want to look at one example.  I've chosen it because I think Paul at a particular point in his life might have been drawn to it.  It's the play Hecuba by the writer Euripides.  The antagonist Polymestor gets blinded.  This is not too different from Paul's getting blinded on his way to Damascus, where he's going to arrest and kill or otherwise "persecute" some of the earliest Messianic Jews (as noted in Luke's history, Acts 22).

Let's read the E. P. Coleridge English translation around line 1056 (and I'll drop in sarx and some other Greek words, bolding the pertinent English references to females)."  Again, here's Polymestor talking immediately after getting blinded by the woman protagonist Hecuba:

Woe is me! where can I go, where halt, or turn? shall I crawl like a wild four-footed beast on their track, as my reward? Which path shall I take first, this or that, eager as I am to clutch those Trojan murderesses that have destroyed me? You wretched, cursed daughters of Phrygia! to what corner have you fled cowering before me? O sun-god, would you could heal, could heal my bleeding eyes, ridding me of my blindness! Ha! hush! I catch the stealthy footsteps of the women [γυναικῶν gun-] here. Where can I dart on them and gorge on their flesh [σαρκῶν sark-] and bones, making for myself a wild beasts' meal, inflicting mutilation in requital of their outrage on me? Ah, woe is me! where am I rushing, leaving my children unguarded for maenads of hell to mangle, to be murdered and ruthlessly cast forth upon the hills, a feast of blood for dogs?

Of course we can only imagine that Paul might have read this.  We only conjecture that if Paul had read or seen or heard Euripides's play Hecuba that he would have identified Hecuba's blinding Polymestor with Jesus Christ's blinding Paul.  But, if he did, then perhaps we could also speculate that sarx as Euripides used it made some impact on Paul.

I want to consider again how gendered this Greek word is.  As with the first uses of sarx in the LXX, Euripides's use of sarx (in the mouth of the sexist antagonist Polymestor) is gendered.  Specifically, it refers to women, to females, and their bodies.

---

When we look at Aristotle's uses of sarx, we'll look at how gendered the word is by the objective scientist.  Likewise, when we look at how one of Paul's  contemporaries -- a  Greek novelist -- used the word, then we'll also see sarx making statements about a woman and her beauty and the desires of men for her because of that.  But the look at these two other cultural sources for Paul's sarx will have to wait for another post if there's time.

To reiterate some of the things shown in this post, there's gendered reference to sarx in some of the texts Paul was familiar with.  Certainly Paul knew and quoted the LXX, and perhaps he heard, watched, read, or was otherwise familiar with the play Hecuba.  The ways females and women are associated with the Greek word σάρξ [sarx] is not, I would say, lost on Paul.  When Paul starts writing to Greeks and to fellow Jews in Rome in particular, exactly what he means by the word can be seen in this light.  (So again, if there's time for another post, we may get to that).

Anne Lamott on Donald Miller & Paul

Just finished reading two books in one sitting. My excuse? I'm home in bed with the flu, and Anne Lamott (one of my very favorite writers) endorses the two authors.

About the one, Lamott says, "I love Donald Miller. He is a man after my own heart."

About the other, she says, "Saint Paul, who can be such a grumpy book-thumper, said that where sin abounds, grace abounds, and I think this is Paul at his most insightful, hopeful, faithful, when it comes to politicians and to me — if by 'sin' we mean strictly the original archery term of missing the mark."

The reason I bought Miller's book in the first place is because of Lamott's endorsement on the cover above his name and the title, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life. And Lamott seems so gracious towards Paul's grumpiness that I thought (as I blog this week on some of his Greek words) that I might read (again) the whole of his first Greek letter to the half-Hellene Timo-THeos (aka I Timothy).

Maybe it's the flu, maybe it's reading Miller's story-telling and Paul's letter-writing together - but side-by-side, the two seem strange. Let me show you what I mean. Without giving away too much of either, here are some excerpts (with Miller on the left in his original English, and Paul on the right in the rhetorical English translation called ESV):

I was watching the news the other night, and they were still covering that story in Mumbai about the terrorists who went on a shooting rampage.  The man on the news said that before the terrorists killed the Jews in the Jewish center, they tortured them.  I had to turn off the television, because I could see the torture in my head the way they were describing it.  I kept imagining these people, just living their daily lives, and then having them suddenly ended in unjust tragedy.  When we watch the news, we grieve all of this, but when we go to the movies, we want more of it.  Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in.  We think God is unjust, rather than a master story teller. (pages 31-32)	1:8 Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, 9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, 10 the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers , liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. 12 I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, 13 though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief,
A couple of weeks later, I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in years...  He said he and his wife had a baby since he last saw me.  A little girl.  He pulled out his wallet and showed me pictures.  I asked him if it was scary being a father, and he told me, no, he loved it.  He said his life had gotten smaller.  His world had shrunk to his wife and kid, and all that mattered was keeping them safe. "Your wife must be loving you," I said. My friend went on to say that he was more in love with his wife than ever, which is not something men usually say to each other, even if it's true.  I don't know why we don't say those things, but we don't.  So I knew he must really be crazy about his wife.  He said he'd been preoccupied with work and hadn't paid much attention to life at home; but after the baby came, he saw his wife differently. "She's amazing," my friend said, shaking his head.  "A baby came out of her body, for crying out loud.  And now she produces food.  She keeps the baby alive." I asked him how his wife felt about all of this, thinking she must be excited to have her husband back.  My friend looked at me as though he were realizing he hadn't actually said anything to his wife. "You haven't said anything?" I questioned. "I guess I figured she knew," my friend suggested. ... I thought about my friend's story from his wife's perspective.  She only knows what he says and what he does, not what he thinks and what he feels.  I'm sure his wife picked up on his new-found enthusiasm, but it did help me realize the stories we tell ourselves are very different from the stories we tell the world.  I told him he ought to bring her flowers. He said that was good idea and asked me where he could get flowers.  (pages 72-73)	2:8 I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; 9 likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, 10 but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. 11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.  3:1 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. 2 Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 4 He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, 5 for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? 6 He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. 7 Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.  8 Deacons likewise must be dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain. 9 They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. 10 And let them also be tested first; then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless. 11 Their wives likewise must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober-minded, faithful in all things. 12 Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well.
I heard an interview on the radio with a woman who worked with people in domestic abuse situations.  She said most women who come to her for help go back to the situation they come out of, back to the man who abused them.  When the interviewer asked why, the woman said that even though most women had family they could escape to and friend who would take them in, they returned to the abusive man because the situation, as bad as it might be, was familiar.  People fear change, she said.  Though their situations may be terrible, at least they have a sense of control; at least they know what to expect.  Change presents a world of variables that are largely out of their control.  And then the woman said this:  "The women in these situations are afraid to choose a better story, because though their current situation might be bad, at least it's a bad story they are familiar with.  So they stay."  (pages 100-01)	5:3 Honor widows who are truly widows. 4 But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. 5 She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, 6 but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. 7 Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. 8 But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. 9 Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, 10 and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work.

Xenophon & Paul: Strong Rhetoric, So So Translations (repeat: strong, so so)

Earlier in the week, Bill Mounce stated that

διλογος is a rare word occurring only one other time in Greek literature, and that in the second century A.D. where it means “repeating.” Its two closest cognates are equally rare, διλογια meaning “repetition” and διλογεω meaning “to repeat.”

Yesterday, I suggested that Xenophon had used the word in the third century B.C. and that Xenophon's use may have been inspired by the fourth century B.C. Δισσοι Λόγοι / Dissoi Logoi /. So Today, Mounce said

* It is true that Paul may not have coined the word; it may be that we just don't know. However, Paul does this repeatedly throughout his writings, and coining words was as acceptable then as it is today in German or in American educational circles.

* The argument from two early church fathers (i.e., Greek) that they understood it to mean "deceitful" and another as "saying one thing to this man, and another to that" is significant. Greek was their language and their opinion linguistically (as opposed to theologically) is generally seen as important.

* I am unaware of Δισσοι Λόγοι, so I don't really have an opinion. We do know that Paul was very aware of their Greek culture of his day and often find, for example, uses of technical terms in Stoicism but given a Christian meaning.

In this post, I'd like
(1) to show how Xenophon and Paul used the word,
(2) to suggest that their use of the word is strong rhetoric, and
(3) to stress that the translation "repeating" (or variant forms such as "repetition" or "to repeat") is just so so if not just downright lousy as a translation.

In another post sometime then, I'd also like
(4) to see what the early church fathers say
(5) to situate the sophists and their Dissoi Logoi a little more in the discussion (since Mounce has added his comments, as noted above).

(1) How Xenophon and Paul Used Δί·λογος / Dí-logos /

Xenophon writes this:

μώτεροι ἂν δοκοῖεν εἶναι. εἰ δέ τις δι·λογεῖν ἡμᾶς οἴεται, ὅτι περὶ τῶν αὐτῶν λέγομεν νῦν τε καὶ πρόσθεν, οὐ δι·λογία ταῦτ’ ἐστίν.

Paul writes this:

διακόνους ὡσαύτως σεμνούς, μὴ δι·λόγους, μὴ οἴνῳ πολλῷ προσέχοντας, μὴ αἰσχροκερδεῖς

(2) How Their Rhetoric is Strong

We don't really have to understand the "true" meanings of the word in question, and we don't really even need to understand Greek, in order to get much of what's going on here. There are a couple of things, at least, to notice.

First, both Xenophon and Paul use a negative word in the phrases with the word dí-logos. This is to signal to the readers that the writers believe the whole idea of dí-logos is not positive. (To be clear, when he first uses the word dí-logos, Xenophon uses a sort of conjecture with the words εἰ τις to imply the negative: "If someone's thinking I'm doing dí-logos, then they're wrong 'cuz I'm not." And when he uses the word the second time, then he just explicitly negates it with the negative word οὐ. Which brings us to our second thing to notice.)

Second, both Xenophon and Paul use repetition. We should see that whether we're native Greek speakers or are readers of only other languages. It's the Burma Shave signs all over again, and again.

Xenophon and Paul don't want their readers to miss the points that dí-logos is not good. Repeat: dí-logos is not good.

Now if you need a stuffy academic book to convince you further, I'd recommend Paul Gordon's The Critical Double: Figurative Meaning in Aesthetic Discourse. That's Paul Gordon's The Critical Double: Figurative Meaning in Aesthetic Discourse. (Gordon, you'll see, even knows some about Dissoi Logoi, which is an early critical double.)

(3) How "Repetition" is Just a So So (if not a lousy) Translation of Dí-logos

There's only time today to show you what one translator does with this. But as we know, all English translators of Xenophon's wordplay phrase here (so far) have rendered his dí-logos as "repetition." Let me repeat, then: Xenophon's actual repetition of the term is strong rhetoric. But "repetition" as the translation of dí-logos is just so so, and is rather weak. Did you get that? Xenophon's actual repetition of the term dí-logos is strong rhetoric. But "repetition" as the translation of dí-logos is just so so, and is rather weak.

So here's how one translator's rendered it. And below that is a stronger possibility.

"If anyone thinks that we are repeating [??] ourselves, because we are referring to matters already dealt with, this is not repetition [??]."

Here's a stronger translating:

"If someone thinks that I am using sophistic double-speak because I have referred to matters already dealt with, then know this: this is not sophistic double-speak."

A point to note is that Xenophon is clearly interested in repetition, in repeating, in saying things twice. He's not, however, interested in being perceived as using or in actually using "sophistic double-speak."

I'm out of time. So later sometime perhaps, I'll try
(4) to see what the early church fathers say
(5) to situate the sophists and their Dissoi Logoi a little more in the discussion.

Barnstone, Aristotle & Paul

Its disturbing message reveals how strong were the ties of many early Christian Jews with the Roman Empire and its vast slave network, which Paul, as a possible Roman citizen, espouses without criticism.

     For all these good reasons, because the Bible should sing us into its depths and rapture, Romans and Corinthians begin the letters.  A Bible like a novel, play, or opera has a movement leading to the reader's pleasure and enlightenment.  As with the classical drama, following Aristotle's dictum, we have suspension of disbelief in order to become fully involved in the drama and achieve catharsis.  All these instructions are applicable to the Bible, and they work for the believer and the skeptic.

     The Bible is a work of art.  Were it not art, were it simply an instruction manual, it would not satisfy or convince, and very likely wound not have survived.

--Willis Barnstone, "Introduction, Canon of the Restored New Testament," page 116, The Restored New Testament: A New Translation with Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels Thomas, Mary, and Judas 

St. Paul and Joshua and woman's equality

There was probably no moment in early Christianity where women were totally included as equals with men. Christianity was born and developed in the context of patriarchal social structures in both the Jewish and Hellenistic worlds. But there were radical ideas floating around in early Christianity that suggested that gender hierarchy had been dissolved through baptism into Christ for a new humanity beyond gender. This is expressed in the baptismal formula used by St. Paul in Galatians 3:27-8: "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." This baptismal formula was not invented by Paul, but belonged to the Hellenistic Jewish-Christian church that he joined upon his conversion.
--Rosemary Radford Ruether, "St. Paul, Friend or Enemy of Women?"

Paul's conversion was radical and sudden but gradual as well.  It seems to have fits and starts.  And when he writes to advise others, the Jew and the Greek, Paul sometimes makes it sound like conversion is a thing done before time in heaven or a thing to be done once and for all in eternity future or a process in the here and now.

The important thing, to me, is that there was conversion, and advocacy of profound change in oneself.  Paul works through his ideas but more importantly his personal experiences with things like slavery and man-over-woman hierarchy and Jew-over-goyish-ethnic arrogance.  He also, very profoundly, works through his epistemology, his hermeneutics too, away from objective Aristotelian logic (i.e., phallologentrism) toward personal subjectivities.  His starts to become the sort of inside-out being that Joshua Mashiach (aka Jesus Christ) preaches in the Sermon on the Mount.

"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus," he wrote to people in Aristotle's and Alexander's Macedonia.  "He, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men."

And Paul's own mind was this:  "But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:"

If you read this Greek letter in Paul's Greek, you start to get a sense of just how scandalous it is.  I've quoted Paul in the King James Version, which loses much.  What the translators make "dung" is something like "dog shit" and "dogs" to Paul's fellow Jews are unclean and "shit" to his contemporary Greek friends is just nasty.

I don't think anyone has better understood Paul than C.S. Lewis and George Steiner, both of whom confess they don't understand Paul well.  Both are literary critics.  Lewis is an outsider to Judaism and to Jews (although he marries a Jewish American who helps him some).  And Steiner is a Jew.  Here's what Lewis and Steiner say about Paul (as they're saying similar things, not about Aristotle, but about the Joshua that KJV Bible readers have called Jesus), Lewis first, then Steiner:

He [i.e., Jesus or Joshua] uses paradox, proverb, exaggeration, parable, irony; even (I mean no irreverence) the "wisecrack". He utters maxims which, like popular proverbs, if rigorously taken, may seem to contradict one another. His teaching therefore cannot be grasped by the intellect alone, cannot be ‘got up’ as if it were a ‘subject’. If we try to do that with it, we shall find Him the most elusive of teachers. He hardly ever gave a straight answer to a straight question. He will not be, in the way we want, ‘pinned down’. The attempt is (again I mean no irreverence) like trying to bottle a sunbeam.

Descending lower, we find a somewhat similar difficulty with St. Paul. I cannot be the only reader who has wondered why God, having given him so many gifts, withheld from him (what would to us seem so necessary for the first Christian theologian [albeit a formidable Jew]) that of lucidity and orderly exposition. (C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, page 113)

Jesus' discourse in parables, his statements of withdrawal from statement--of which the episode in which he writes in the dust and effaces his writing is the emblematic instance--give to linguistic verticality, to the containment of silence in language, a particular impetus. As do the constantly polysemic, stratified techniques of semantic motions in the Pauline Epistles. It is these parables and indirect communications, at once more internalized and open-ended than are the codes of classical rhetoric, which beget the seeming contradiction of enigmatic clarity, the "comprehendit imcomprehensible esse" celebrated in Anselm's Proslogion. In turn, from these dramatizations of manifold sense, evolve the instruments of allegory, of analogy, of simile, of tropes and concealments in Western literature (though here also there are obvious and indispensible classical sources). (George Steiner, Grammars of Creation, page 75)

Maybe the only other thing to add here, is that there is another insider Jew who says similar things about Paul's writings.  I'm talking about Joshua's apprentice Shimon called Kefa or Petros or Rock.  In Greek to the Jews, Peter is trying to get his readers to understand the difficult commands of his Master Teacher as he writes on the difficulties of understanding Paul.  That some, with good reason perhaps, conjecture that this writer is someone just trying to sound like Peter makes no difference.  The point is that Paul has become like Jesus, demanding profound changes in thinking and in experience (something Aristotle never demanded of himself):

ὁ ἀγαπητὸς ἡμῶν ἀδελφὸς Παῦλος κατὰ τὴν δοθεῖσαν αὐτῷ σοφίαν ἔγραψεν ὑμῖν ὡς καὶ ἐν πάσαις ἐπιστολαῖς [Παῦλου] λαλῶν ἐν αὐταῖς περὶ τούτων ἐν αἷς ἐστιν δυσνόητά τινα ἃ οἱ ἀμαθεῖς καὶ ἀστήρικτοι στρεβλοῦσιν ὡς καὶ τὰς λοιπὰς γραφὰς πρὸς τὴν ἰδίαν αὐτῶν ἀπώλειαν

So to sum up, I've been trying to show a little history.  First how Paul and Aristotle are so alike:  Paul's approaches to men (vs women), to logic (vs rhetoric and dialectic and such), and to elitist centricism (vs feminisms and pluralisms and multiculuralisms) seem suspiciously like Aristotle's phallogocentrism.  Now this:  Paul's encounters with a Jew named Joshua and his apprentices began to unravel much of the Aristotelian(-like) system.  The conversion was a process, a profound inside-out change, and still is.

St. Paul and Aristotle: more influences

This post is continued from another.  I began considering with you how Paul often gets paired with Aristotle.

There are a few personal comparisons to make first.  For example, both followed their own ideals on marriage.  Aristotle wrote that the ideal age to get married for a man was 37, and for his wife, 18; -- and Aristotle was 37 when he took 18-year-old Pythias to be his wife.  Paul wrote that he was single; -- and Paul advised his students to be single also, saying that singleness was a gift from God.  Both men wrote that baldness in a man is natural and good or at least his hair should be realitively short; -- and both, we speculate, were bald or kept their hair short.

Then there are comparisons to make in their thinking.  Both men were suspicious of Greek philosophies that could not account for and encompass Nature, life-long systematic Learning, and God.  Both men appealed to themselves as examples of Natural men, as Learners (or disciples or apprentices with their own students), and as Experts on eternal and heavenly affairs.

Paul, like Aristotle, appeals to Nature when writing about Politics and Ethics and Economics (and by the latter I also mean something like Household Rule, or Oikos Nomos).  Naturally, the order is government over citizens, master over slaves, husband over wives, fathers over children.

For Aristotle, there was the study of Nature (φυσική or physike or "physics"), the apprehension of pure and precise systems (μαθηματική or mathematike or "math"), and the study of divine logic (θεολογική or theologike or "theology").  As far as I can tell, Aristotle coined those last two words:  mathemat-ike and theolog-ike or "lesson-ista" and "god-statement-ista."  In The Metaphysics Aristotle classes the three concepts together, naturally and systematically and logically, as the three sub-categories of φιλοσοφίαι θεωρητικαί or phosophiai theoretikai or "philosophy's theory."

The most interesting thing to note here is that Aristotle is not only concerned about being pure and precise but he is also concerned with sounding pure and precise.  To sound technical, Aristotle coins words using the suffix, -ική.  Curiously, it's a grammatically feminine ending that in some contexts disparages females.   I've played with translation into English so that φυσική or physike is rendered Nature-ista or Nature-istic.  And μαθηματική or mathematike is translated Lesson-ista or Lesson-istics.  And θεολογική or theologike sounds, in English, like God-Statement-istics or God-Statement-ista.

As we all know (or maybe you don't yet), Paul is the only writer of anything in the canonized New Testament who uses this suffix.  In fact, it seems that Jews translating the Holy Hebrew Torah and the other scriptures in Alexandria, Egypt avoided the suffix like another plague.  It was something of Aristotle that he'd learned from Plato; and, worse, it was something that Aristotle had taught Alexander the Great.  The translators (the Septuagint translators) only slipped a couple of times and used the -ICKY suffix when translating something about -ική women.

Before we get to which word Paul used exactly, which word with the suffix -ική, let me say a little something about the context in which he used the word.  He was writing to Jews and Greeks in Rome.  This is the letter we call "Romans."  What is fascinating is that Paul does not tell the women and wives in Rome to submit to their husbands; he does not tell them in this letter that they must not teach men or that they must learn quietly from their husbands at home; and he gives the women in Rome no instruction to stay silent in the Assembly.  Why not?  Well, why?  In Rome, such things were already strictly regulated by law and by custom.  Paul did not need to enforce the rule of men over women in home, in church, or in instruction.  The Roman government had outdone Aristotle (and Paul) in letting males rule naturally.  The other fascinating thing to note is that Paul does not address the Romans.  Rather, he appeals to the Jews and their scriptures.  And he appeals to the Greeks.  But he calls the Romans by Aristotle's term of disparagement:  he calls the Latin, Italian men of Rome "Barbarians."  (For some discussion of this, see my blogger friend Bob MacDonald's post Paul's Cantus Firmus
and my comment there).

Now, what's the -ική word Paul uses?  And don't you think the Greeks in Rome reading got it?  This is Aristotle's word, his very method.  The word is λογική or logike or Statement-ista or Statement-istics.  Paul is using it in the accusative case (which simply means it's in the grammatical form of a direct object).  But by it, he's modifying the word λατρείαν or latreian, which earlier Jews in Alexandria, Egypt had used to translate עֲבֹדָה (or `abodah) in "Exodus 12:25."  The Greek and Hebrew words mean something like religious "service."  The Greek word is not used much in the New Testament.  And Aristotle's word (i.e., "logic") is never used elsewhere nor is any other Greek Aristotle-like word with the special technical female-sounding suffix.  Paul is appealing to the Jews and Greeks in Rome about their "service" to God.  He's saying their service is as logical as Aristotle's formal logic.


Let give the whole sentence again (but this time with my translating it):   

Παρακαλῶ οὖν ὑμᾶς ἀδελφοί διὰ τῶν οἰκτιρμῶν τοῦ θεοῦ παραστῆσαι τὰ σώματα ὑμῶν θυσίαν ζῶσαν ἁγίαν εὐάρεστον τῷ θεῷ τὴν λογικὴν λατρείαν ὑμῶν. Καὶ μὴ συσχηματίζεσθαι [OR συσχηματίζεσθε] τῷ αἰῶνι τούτῳ, ἀλλὰ μεταμορφοῦσθαι [OR μεταμορφοῦσθε] τῇ ἀνακαινώσει τοῦ νοὸς [ὑμῶν] εἰς τὸ δοκιμάζειν ὑμᾶς τί τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ εὐάρεστον καὶ τέλειον.

I'm beside you, calling you, sisters, brothers - through the deep compassion of God - to present your bodies, a sacrifice, alive, holy, blessed pleasures on God, your service of logical statementistics as with Aristotle.  And that doesn't mean to go together with the schema of this age; rather it means to re-form yourselves by mental newness from above into your opinions which are the good wishes of God and are blessed pleasures and finished to maturity.

Now I've run out of time for today again.  So let me just say this again:

Paul's approaches to men (vs women), to logic (vs rhetoric and dialectic and such), and to elitist centricism (vs feminisms and pluralisms and multiculuralisms) seem suspiciously like Aristotle's phallogocentrism.  Where I'm going with all of this, if time allows some other day, is this:  Paul's encounters with a Jew named Joshua and his apprentices began to unravel much of the Aristotelian(-like) system.  That was quite a carnival (or two).

St. Paul and Carnivals

Paul often gets paired with Aristotle, and below you'll find a bit more on Paul.  But first a quick review of Aristotle so as to consider the pairing of the two.  In a previous post, we ran through some questions about Aristotle's upbringing and motivations.  In this post, we want to look at his system for apprehending his world.  Then, we'll come back as quickly as we can to Paul.

If you read the extant texts of the entire corpus of what Aristotle wrote (which I chose to do for a dissertation), then you get his pure and precise categories.  Scholars such as Sara J. Newman are good to point out how sometimes the categories are inconsistent and are would-be "pure and precise categories."  But I'm talking about what Aristotle, the author himself, intended.  He intended practical things by his precise and pure categories.  He intended separations, mapping Nature into its hierarchy.  He intended a system of separations, into binaries, into a taxonomy of this but not that.  It's not just feminist scholars who recognize that Aristotle's pure and precise intention was phallologocentrism.  It is nevertheless mostly feminist scholars who see that the singular intention of Aristotle is yet his theme with three variations.  Clarice Lispector calls his intended theme, or phallogocentrism, that “system of inflexible last judgment, which does not permit even a second of incredulity.” And now we get technical as we look at three various aspects of the system:

One variation on the phallogocentric theme was masculinism.  Aristotle was quite intentional when he wrote of τά φαλλικά [ta phallika].  Most English translators have merely transliterated that the "phallic," but Aristotle purely and precisely meant "what's blatantly penis-esque" and used the word to write about the shape and the penetrating force of the rule by males in the Greek city states.

Another variation on the phallogocentric theme was the use of language to map nature. Aristotle was definitely intentional when he wrote of λογική [logike].  Most English translators have simply put English letters together for the Greek sounds to come up with "logic."  But Aristotle coined this word from λόγος [logos], a huge and overdetermined concept for knowing.  Logos in it's simplest sense meant "statement"; but Aristotle tightened up the word a bit with the suffix -ική so that his neologism became λογ-ική [log-ike] or, to translate, "statement-ista."  Aristotle intended this new logic to be the pure and precise method of stacking statements together from premise to premise to forced conclusion, syllogistically or by means of a syllogism [or ὁ συλλογισμός].  (This method of logic, for Aristotle, trumped the method of dialektike of his teachers.  Dialektike is the method that Plato had his own teacher Socrates using, a question-asking method of drawing truth and selecting and electing knowledge out of the one being asked.  It's a method perhaps developed by a kept-woman, a non-Greek kept-woman named Aspasia, who taught dialektike to men such as Socrates.  Plato writes glowingly of Aspasia, and Socrates praises her, but Aristotle who mentions many women never says a thing about her.  Of course, Aristotle, in The Metaphysics, uses logike to explain that dialektike is a less pure and a less precise method than his superior method of logike.  Moreover, to begin The Rhetoric, Aristotle writes that rhetorike is an antistrophos of dialektike -- the two counterpart methods of knowing both inferior to his logike.)

Thirdly, Aristotle was intentional when writing of κέντρον [kentron].  This has come down to us in partially-transliterated English translation as something like "centrality."  What Aristotle meant by the word was a "central pricking point"; his teacher Plato had used it for that part of the circle-drawing compass that sticks into the papyrus or the clay.  The elite Athenians, such as Solon, in Aristotle's Athenian Constitution got the point.  What Aristotle intended for his Greek students in the all-boy Aka-Demy was to have Greece, Athens centrally, to be the center of the world.  His student Alexander the Great got the point.  But Aristotle never intended his elite system to be ours in any way.

So now we can think about Paul.  If you read the entire extant corpus of what Paul wrote (which I was forced to do as a child), then you might start thinking about Aristotle.

As compared to Aristotle, Paul had a much better family upbringing on the one hand, and a much less pure upbringing on the other hand.  Aristotle lost his mother when he was very young and had to be raised by an uncle; his mother was from a elite family and may have left his father, a physician in the Macedonian king's court, with more than enough means for the teenager Aristotle to join Plato's famous Academy in Athens.  Paul writes of his own history to a group of Greek Jews and Jewish Greeks in Philippi, Macedonia, where Aristotle grew up.  Paul was also of a pure-breed family.  A Hebrew of Hebrews, he boasts and goes on about his clan of Benjamin and his penis circumcision that marked him as the Jewish Abraham's and /or Israel's great great great (you get the idea) grand-son.  He also had some elite education:  Paul was an excellent Torah student of the Separatists, also known as the purist Pharisees, the holiest פרושים [perushim].

What makes Paul a bit different from Aristotle is how impure he was.  Paul was not only a Jew but he was also a citizen of Rome.  Furthermore, not only did he speak Aramaic but he also was facile with Latin and Greek.  He was adept in his understanding of the holy Hebrew Law and other Scripture; and he knew the Hellene translation well, as well.  Paul could use Greek like a Greek, whether that was engaging Greeks in Greek rhetoric in Athens or sending Greek native speakers in their native Greek city states letters.  He could navigate between cultures, being all things to all for persuasive winning purposes, and he could mold culture by what he said and what he wrote.  He was able to bring Jews and Greeks together (i.e., one half-Greek Jewish boy named Timo-Theos "honorer of god(s)" he was able to make more pure by having his penis circumcised).  He would write of the advantages of the Jew first, and would write of the appropriation of Jewishness by the Greeks.    

Now I've run out of time for today.  But let me just say this.  Paul's approaches to men (vs women), to logic (vs rhetoric and dialectic and such), and to elitist centricism (vs feminisms and pluralisms and multiculuralisms) seem suspiciously like Aristotle's phallogocentrism.  Where I'm going with all of this, if time allows some other day, is this:  Paul's encounters with a Jew named Joshua and his apprentices began to unravel much of the Aristotelian(-like) system.  That was quite a carnival (or two).