Real Fellowship and the Semantics of Koinonia

The next issue of Bible Study Magazine will ship soon and there is a very insightful, well-written article exploring the meaning of koinonia (often glossed "fellowship") in the New Testament. My opinion of the article is in no way biased toward the fact that I wrote it. (No, I'm not that arrogant. It's a joke.)

Here's an excerpt of what I wrote for the magazine (published with permission, of course). If you haven't already, I highly recommend subscribing if you are looking to learn more about the Bible from a Christian perspective in a clear, non-threatening way.

greek word study without greek

Koinonia

If you’ve been part of a church community, you may have noticed how some words acquire “churchy” meanings—like “fellowship.” When is the last time you got together with your colleagues after work for “fellowship”? Never. But in church, we have fellowship luncheons that are held in fellowship halls and we get together for fellowship in our fellowship groups. When we overuse a word, it can lose its meaning. Our overuse of “fellowship” makes an important point in 1 John fall flat.

“That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. … If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:3, 6–7).

We can determine the meaning of fellowship in this passage by examining it within a New Testament context. To do that, we have to find the Greek root word behind the English term. Using the esv English–Greek Reverse Interlinear, we find that the Greek word underlying “fellowship” is koinōnia (κοινωνία).

To read the rest of the article, check out March–April ’11 issue of Bible Study Magazine.

WHAT!!! I cut you off right before we get to the best part where I actually explain what koinonia means? Now you have to buy the magazine? Sorry about that, but thems the rules.

New Blog on Greek NT Exegesis

One of my former NT professors has started blogging on issues of exegesis in the Greek New Testament. The blog is aptly titled ἐξήγησις. If I continue listening to the NT Pod and follow this blog, perhaps I'll slowly morph into a NT scholar. At any rate, I started reading Matthew in my UBS Reader's Greek New Testament to refresh my Greek, so I'll add this to my refresher course.

Prov 8:30 in the Versions

Genesis Rabbah begins with a discussion of the unusual Hebrew word ‘amon in Prov 8:30. A commenter on my previous post was curious about what this verse looked like in Syriac. Did the translator use a word meaning “guardian”? Well, I had to look it up, and what I found was interesting, so here it is.

Basically, the Peshitta avoids the word altogether. The Targum, however, does support reading something like “guardian” here, using the Aramaic cognate root that also means “to believe, trust.” This is striking because the Peshitta of Proverbs often looks like someone just transcribed the Targum wholesale into Syriac script. Not so in Prov 8:30.

To round it out, I looked at the Septuagint. The translator there also wasn’t sure what to do with ‘amon. I think “fitting” or “suitable” likely reflects a similar reading of the Hebrew root. Amen. It’s appropriate.

Peshitta

ܥܡܗ ܡܬܩܢܐ ܗܘܝܬ܂ ܒܝ ܚܕܐ ܗܘܐ ܟܠ ܝܘܡ܂ ܘܒܟܠܙܒܢ ܩܕܡܘܗܝ ܚܕܝܐ ܗܘܝܬ

With him, I was established/created. In me, he rejoiced every day. And continually, I rejoiced before him.

Targum

והוית צידוי ¹ מהימנותא ² מהימנתא בי אחדי הוה כל יומא ויומא וחדיא אנא קדמוי בכל זמן׃

And I was beside him, a trusted one. In me, he rejoiced every day, and I was rejoicing beside him continually.

Septuagint

ἤμην παρ᾽ αὐτῷ ἁρμόζουσα ἐγὼ ἤμην ᾗ προσέχαιρεν καθ᾽ ἡμέραν δὲ εὐφραινόμην ἐν προσώπῳ αὐτοῦ ἐν παντὶ καιρῷ

And I was beside him, suitable. I was that in which he rejoiced daily, and I was rejoicing beside him continually.

If I'd Only Known . . .

Too bad I didn't know about this before I invested time and money into years of graduate school studying the Bible in the original languages.

From www.christianbook.com:

Biblical Language Library, 4 Volumes
Hendrickson Publishers / Hardcover

Product Description

If you're serious about studying Scripture in its original language, then this is the resource you need! Four classic references are coded to Strong's numbering system, so you don't have to know Hebrew or Greek. All you need is yourStrong's Concordance. Set includes The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, The Englishman's Hebrew Concordance, The Englishman's Greek Concordance, and Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon. Hardcovers, from Hendrickson.

All you need is BDB, Thayer's, and Strong's Concordance! Wow! If I'd only known . . .

This reminds me of another question that I've been musing about this week.

Who makes a better interpreter of the Bible? The scholar who's invested years in formal education in biblical studies or the good-intentioned average layperson with no formal training, a set of the Biblical Language Library, and the "illumination" of the Holy Spirit every time they crack open the Word?

Hmm . . . that's a tougher question than I thought. Does the illumination of the Spirit trump formal education? Those of you lacking in formal education will say yes. Those of us with the training will say no. "Illumination" strikes me as a form of special pleading where those in a community of faith can exempt their interpretations from the scrutiny of those who don't share them. It could also be used to claim authority and privilege interpretations that are otherwise not acceptable in academic circles.

Amateurs acting like they're experts or arguing with experts. That's just one of my pet peeves.

"Self-taught, no lessons. Thank you very much, Pop." (from The Wedding Singer)

Update: My honest question pet peeve makes me an elitist according to Nick. -Sigh-

Am I a Specialist after all?

Does a research focus on Hebrew Bible in general actually make me a specialist? James Crossley has rightly pointed out the difficulty in defining what exactly makes one a specialist or a generalist in biblical studies (reacting to Michael Bird's SBL Forum article with Craig Keener which I mentioned here).

It's true that Bird and Keener didn't precisely define the terms, but they seemed to refer to a specialist as one who focused on a narrow field (such as Pentateuch or Paul) versus the generalist who could deal with the whole corpus of Hebrew Bible or New Testament and possibly also the background literature. In a sense, it's a false dichotomy when placed in those terms because it's very rare for anyone to be able to keep such a narrow focus. Teaching responsibilities would most likely require a specialist in Pentateuch to teach the whole Hebrew Bible at least in survey.  Plus it seems irresponsible to consider yourself a specialist in a narrow branch of Hebrew Bible without understanding how your niche fits in the broader context of the Hebrew Bible. Similarly, it's irresponsible for Hebrew Bible scholars to overlook the broader context of their corpus - ANE history and literature.

Crossley pointed out that in the grand scheme of things just being well-versed in New Testament or Hebrew Bible was not really being a generalist, but Bird and Keener had realized that saying, "Hebrew Bible and especially New Testament each constitute a relatively small body of writings compared to many other areas of discourse."

So, I think the definition implicit in the forum article's use of "generalist" and "specialist" was that a "generalist" knows the Bible in its context - context implies at least general knowledge of Old and New Testaments, Second Temple literature including Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Dead Sea Scrolls, rabbinic literature, ANE history and literature, and Greco-Roman history and philosophy. Of course, there is always the risk of trading breadth for depth on many of these subjects, but I think having a broad general knowledge across much of it is necessary to have that deeper command of your niche area.

Maybe one's perspective on this issue is different from New Testament studies. Imagine picking up a book and just starting to read 2/3 of the way in. You're missing all the background, everything that built up to that point. Granted the "Bible" as Old and New Testaments is a later development in religious traditions, but the concept is valid. How can you understand any narrow specialized field of study without at least having a general command of the background material? I've often thought that what I've read in NT studies would benefit from a better understanding of certain concepts from Hebrew Bible and early Judaism, rather than the Greco-Roman focus that NT studies often take.

Am I missing something? The changes in our field, especially the recognition of biblical studies as a sub-discipline (in a sense) of religious studies, suggest having broad general knowledge will be a career essential. Perhaps I'm just odd for having interests and education that spanned the breadth of biblical studies and its background. Or perhaps it's just that my main exemplar of a model Hebrew Bible scholar is a specialist in Wisdom Literature who seems equally well-versed in everything from Pentateuch to Prophets to Proverbs to Syriac to Septuagint to Dead Sea Scrolls to rabbinic literature to Shakespeare to cognitive psychology. Oh, and ancient Egyptian wisdom literature, too.

Read everything . . . soon.

The American Standard Version

I was asked today what I thought about the American Standard Version. The truth is that I haven't thought about it much at all apart from the fact that it was one of the few free English Bibles my wife could get for free on her iPhone with Olive Tree Bible Software. I assume that it was free primarily because it's in the public domain and otherwise out-of-print. However, it's an important version as the grandfather or great-grandfather of many current English versions (RSV, NRSV, ESV, NASB).

The American Standard Version (ASV) of 1901 was a thorough American revision of the English Revised Version (ERV) completed in 1885. The distinctive feature of the ERV was that it was the first English Bible to use a Greek text based on the codices that had come to the attention of scholars since 1611 - Alexandrinus in the 1600s and Vaticanus in the 1800s.

One of the publications from the ERV committee states:

The Greek text followed by these Revisers is of far higher authority than that known and followed by the King James' revisers. Their Greek text was based on manuscripts of the later parts of the Mediaeval Ages, but ours has been Perfected by the discovery of far more ancient manuscripts, and by an abundance of quotations from the early fathers of the Church, and use of ancient versions. (Source)

The version is literal in translation approach, very similar to the KJV. In fact, part of their object was to remain as similar to the KJV as possible - revealing the strong influence that translation had on religious life for the English-speaking world even 250 years later. The chairman of the American Revision Committee is reported to have said: "The revision will so nearly resemble the present version, that the mass of readers and hearers will scarcely perceive the difference[.]" (Source)

The same publication quoted above in reference to the ERV states their approach explicitly:

From the outset the object sought by the revisers has been "to adapt King James' version to the present state of the English language without changing the idiom and vocabulary,'' and further, to adapt it to "the present standard of Biblical scholarship." Since 1611 this latter has made great advances, especially during the last quarter century.

One of the Committee stated his understanding of the object sought in these words: "The new Bible is to read like the old, and the sacred associations connected with it are not to be disturbed; but within these limits all necessary and desirable corrections and improvements on which the best scholars are agreed will be introduced: a good version will be made better; a clear and accurate version clearer and more accurate; the oldest and purest text is to be followed; errors, obscurities and inconsistencies are to be removed; uniformity in rendering Hebrew and Greek words and proper names to be sought. In one word, the revision is to give, in idiomatic English, the nearest possible equivalent for the original Word of God as it came from the inspired organs of the Holy Spirit. It aims to be the best version possible in the nineteenth century, as King James' version was the best which could be made in the seventeenth century." (Source)

Of the handful of readings I reviewed in the ASV, it seemed substantially similar to the KJV - even keeping "thee", "thou" and "thy." The one idiosyncratic thing I noticed was the substitution of "Jehovah" for the divine name instead of "LORD." They note their particular decision to translate that way in the preface to the ASV:

The change first recommended in the Appendix - that which substitutes "Jehovah" for "LORD" and "GOD" - is one which will be unwelcome to many, because of the frequency and familiarity of the terms displaced. But the American Revisers, after a careful consideration were brought to the unanimous conviction that a Jewish superstition, which regarded the Divine Name as too sacred to be uttered, ought no longer to dominate in the English or any other version of the Old Testament, as
it fortunately does not in the numerous versions made by modern missionaries.

The change was not followed by the main subsequent English versions, and it is now known that "Jehovah" was never the proper pronunciation for the divine name anyway (being the vowels of one word written with the consonants of another).

The version is still important as the first American translation to incorporate the results of biblical scholarship, especially related to the New Testament text. All but a few English versions now use Greek texts based on those same earlier manuscripts. It's also important as the starting point for many of the more formal-equivalent translations used today. The RSV, NRSV, ESV, and NASB are all related to the ASV.

To get a taste for the ASV as a translation, here's Psalm 23.

Psalm 23:1-6

1 Jehovah is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4 Yea, thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou hast anointed my head with oil; My cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and lovingkindness shall follow me all the days of my life; And I shall dwell in the house of Jehovah for ever.

If you're interested in the history of English Bible translations, I've found Michael Marlowe's Bible Research website to be an excellent source of information. The translators' preface and many other relevant primary documents can be found there.

All in all, the ASV is a solid, literal translation of the Bible. The language is a bit archaic, even for the late 19th century, but I suppose that was necessary to retain the flavor of the KJV as much as possible.

The Importance of the Septuagint for Biblical Studies

We use the Septuagint all the time in our study of the Hebrew Bible, comparing the reading with our Hebrew text (BHS) and trying to explain the differences.  It's proven to be a valuable exercise and required me to use my Greek much more than I'd anticipated.  After all, I went in to Hebrew Bible and not New Testament primarily because I liked studying Hebrew better than I liked studying Greek.  That and a good understanding of the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism is essential to being a good NT person anyway.

Therefore, I was pleased to see Tyler Williams has posted his "Reasons to Study the Septuagint."  I recommend it for all of you thinking of going in to Hebrew Bible to get away from Greek.  It won't work and Tyler will tell you why.

HT:  John Hobbins

Behold, a Virgin shall be with Child . . .

...and so Matthew 1:23 invokes Isaiah 7:14 as foretelling the Virgin Birth - Jesus as the Son of God conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Isa. 7:14 (ESV)
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.
Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his
name Immanuel.

The interesting thing - if you read Hebrew - is that Isa. 7:14 does not use the common word specifically denoting a "virgin." Some say that this ambiguity shows that Isaiah didn't really have a miracle in mind. He wasn't thinking that a real virgin would conceive because he used a word that simply means "young woman." In fact, there was quite a fuss back when the RSV came out and translated Isa. 7:14 with "young woman" instead of "virgin." The translation itself was undermining the Virgin Birth!!! Or so the argument went. One of the revisions the ESV made to the RSV text was to translate with "virgin" again.

The problem is that the words for "young woman" and "virgin" in Hebrew and Greek overlap quite a bit in their semantic fields. The Hebrew word for "young woman" in Isa. 7:14 is 'almah. The more typical word that appears to mean "virgin" more specifically is betulah. The Septuagint (LXX) translated Isa. 7:14 using the word parthenos "virgin" - the more usual equivalent for betulah. So, the connotation of virginity in Isa. 7:14 entered the text more explicitly with the LXX, which was used in turn for the quotation in Matt. 1:23.

In an attempt to understand the semantic fields of 'almah and betulah more fully, I examined every occurrence of each in the Hebrew Bible and noted its rendering in the LXX. The first occurs only 7 times; the second occurs 50 times.

The LXX renders 'almah in two different ways - 4x with neanis "young woman", 1x with neotes "youth", and 2x with parthenos "virgin." On the other hand, betulah is rendered by parthenos 43 out of 50 times. Of the remaining seven, several are left out in translation and some use yet another word such as korasion "girl."

The usage of these two Hebrew words doesn't provide enough information to draw a line between them and say betulah implies virginity and 'almah is ambiguous. Both words are used to refer to unmarried young women who are either betrothed or eligible to be betrothed. The fact that they are eligible for marriage implies they are assumed to be virgins. We can't say betulah inherently implies virginity because the Hebrew writers felt compelled to make that explicit at times, following betulah with a phrase clarifying "who has not known a man" (see Gen. 24:16 and Judges 21:12 for examples).

The ESV, which seems to want 'almah to be "virgin" consistently in its translation, often uses "young woman" or "maiden" to render betulah. This usage highlights a similar overlapping semantic range in English. If you look up "maiden" and "virgin" in an English dictionary, you find that the primary meaning of "virgin" is a "person who has never had sexual intercourse", but the secondary meaning is "an unmarried girl or woman." Likewise, the word "maiden" refers to a "girl or unmarried woman" in its primary meaning, but "virgin" is a secondary meaning.

The problem is that most of the uses of 'almah and betulah don't provide enough context to determine whether a distinction was intended between "young woman" and sexual "virgin." My sense is that 'almah implies virginity because of the positive overtones of eligibility for marriage versus the shame and censure (for a woman) of extramarital sex. I finally found a pair of references indicating that 'almah and betulah are more or less synonymous. We think betulah is more specifically "virgin" simply because it occurs more frequently than 'almah.

Genesis 24 tells the story of how Abraham's servant found a wife for Isaac - Rebekah. Immediately after the servant had prayed that God would show him the right woman, he sees Rebekah coming out for water.

Gen 24:16 (ESV)
The young woman (na'arah) was very attractive in appearance, a maiden (betulah) whom no man had known. She went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up.

After the servant meets Rebekah and gets invited into her home, he retells the story of their meeting to her father and brother.

Gen 24:43 (ESV)
Behold, I am standing by the spring of water. Let the virgin ('almah) who comes out to draw water, to whom I shall say, "Please give me a little water from your jar to drink"

I think it's telling that this story presents the same event twice and uses both betulah and 'almah to refer to Rebekah. Both terms referred to an unmarried virgin woman.

In Isa. 7:14, the LXX is simply drawing out a logical connotation of the meaning of 'almah. From the perspective of Matthew, that explicit detail was precisely the right interpretation.

Update: Ben Witherington also posted on the Virgin Birth on Dec. 12 and addressed some of the same issues of terminology that I've raised. I skimmed his post back then but hadn't looked at it again before finishing my post. If you're interested in more on this issue, go there.

Old in the New: NLT Romans 1:17

I started reading Romans in my NLT Study Bible recently and the NLTse translation of Romans 1:17b struck me as odd. This is the part of the verse where Paul quotes Habakkuk 2:4b. I know committee translations have a different person translating virtually every book and that translators rarely work in both the OT and the NT. However, I think it's nice if a translation has an internal consistency. They could try to make NT quotes correspond somewhat with the OT translation (in so far as the NT quote matches the OT base text, that is). Several popular translations have this internal consistency, at least for the example of Rom 1:17b and Hab 2:4b.

KJV:

Hab 2:4b: but the just shall live by his faith.
Rom 1:17b: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

ESV:

Hab 2:4b: but the righteous shall live by his faith.
Rom 1:17b: as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith."

NIV:

Hab 2:4b: but the righteous will live by his faith
Rom 1:17b: just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."

The Hebrew literally translated reads, "The righteous by his fidelity will live." The only difference in the KJV, ESV, and NIV is the missing pronoun "his" which is not represented in the Greek of Romans 1:17b. This is also not a case where the NT quote diverges much from the LXX. The only difference is that the LXX reads "my faith," a clear case of reading a waw as a yod (anyone who's read Hebrew directly from any manuscripts knows how similar these two letters can be).

LXX Hab 2:4b

ho de dikaios ek pisteos mou zesetai
But the righteous will live by my faith.

Grk NT Romans 1:17b

ho de dikaios ek pisteos mou zesetai
But the righteous will live by faith.

[Please forgive the imprecise Greek transliteration. I couldn't figure out how to get a Greek font to work. If you have any tips or fonts to share, please comment.]

Now looking at the rendering of the NLTse, it makes the OT quote virtually unrecognizable. If all you knew was the NLT translation, the Romans quote wouldn't sound familiar at all.

NLTse:

Hab 2:4b: But the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God.
Rom 1:17b: As the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”

The NLT of Hab 2:4b is a pretty good translation. They've followed the gender inclusive policy of translating the pronoun in the 3rd plural, and they've added the words "to God" obviously implied by context.

However, I'm still scratching my head over the rendering of Rom 1:17b. The verbal "will live" has become a noun "life" and the object of the verb "has." The subject "the righteous" was made subject of a relative clause and the main clause replaced with a filler "It is." Wouldn't it have been better style to translate, "A righteous person has life through faith"? Or better yet, why not make the text correspond to the NLT rendering of Hab 2:4b with "the righteous will live by faithfulness to God." This would create a similar consistency to that found in the examples from KJV, ESV, and NIV.

Maybe they can work on changes like this for the NLT 3rd edition. It would make the NLT more useful to me as a translation for teaching and study.

Chrestou the Magician or Jesus Christ, Magic Man?

The latest archaeological sensation to have its "biblical" connections overblown by the media is a bowl with a Greek inscription that is being touted as "possibly" the earliest reference to Jesus Christ.  

I'd heard of this bowl from Alexandria a few weeks ago (also here) and how it could have the word "Christ" on it.  It might say "Magician through Christ" or "for Christ the Magician."  Or it might be "Chrestou", a proper name, not "Christos" anyway. 

But now despite the ambiguity, the cup's finders are making the most of the possible biblical connection. Their story's been picked up by the Discovery Channel, which like most media outlets has sensationalized the discovery by treating speculation as fact.  It is, of course, much ado about nothing, as has been pointed out on the web by Antonio Lombatti (who's pretty sure it's a fake),  Dorothy King and Ed Cook.  Tom Elliot at Current Epigraphy is also a good resource for the developing discussion of the cup and its ambiguous inscription.  There is also a running bibliography of stories related to the find here.

UPDATE (10/2/08, 2:55 pm):  April De Conick has weighed in with her opinion that the cup's inscription does not refer to Jesus Christ.  In fact, it could refer to a Sethian Gnostic archon named ATHOTH since Chrestou is one of his titles.  Jim Davila has also posted excerpts of the MSNBC version of the news story with comments.

Photo: Der Spiegel

HT:  Dorothy King

[N.B. An earlier version of this post was published at Wisconsin Hebrew.]