Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Galatians 1:11-24

1.11: We have a nice "adjectival participle here. The Gospel that was preached by me. Adjectival participles are easy to recognize and translate. Notice the "to" structure "to" euangellion..."to" euan...it tells you they are a pair.

1.12: The word here for revelation is...Revelation or "apocalypse"! It is indefinite (no article) so it can be translated just as "revelation" or "a revelation."

1.13: A point about the passive. Paul here does the passive construction in a few ways here:
a) verb in passive voice with "hypo" to signify agent (Gospel which was preached by me -- hypo mou)
b) verb in passive voice without any agent (not taught to me)
c) use of prepositions: "received from men (para)" but "through the revelation of Jesus Christ (dia)"

1.14: A rather ironic twist here. Paul says he was hungry for the "tradition" of his elders. Tradition is a latin word; the Greek is almost the same "paradidhmi" (both mean over-give). Paul here seems to be attacking tradition, yet in 1 Cor he will appeal to this same word that he handed over what was of first importance, what was given over to him, (paradidhmi), ie, communion. (See 1 Cor 11.2)

1:16 The NRSV smooths over something rather awkward by Paul here. Paul writes that Christ was revealed (back to apocalypse) in me; not to me, but "en emoi." The NRSV translates it as "to" because Paul uses the same preposition to write I preached it "to the gentiles." There though it can mean "among" but this makes no sense in the context we currently have it.

1:16 Paul uses the phrase "flesh and blood" (sakri kai haimati) (hendiadis = two words that have one meaning) for human here.

1:22 Double dative object construction here. I was unknown (dat) to the face (dat) to the churches...

The first one we translate as an adverb: "I was personally unknown"; the second as the direct object (normally in the accusative, but some verbs that a dative direct object)

1:24 Finally Paul says, "the Glorified God in me" Once again, we have this tricky "in me." The NET Bible justifies this saying, "The prepositional phrase evn emoi, (en emoi) has been translated with a causal force." Blah blah. Why do we want to cover up Paul so much??

In this case, I think Paul is preparing us for his amazing chapter 2 -- where he finally concludes that Christ is in him. wow!

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