GM asked for more translation posts. JA thinks I'm in over my head. Perfect! Let's try another.
Today's lectionary readings included Ephesians 4:1-16, which contains the familiar:
Ephesians 4:4-6 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
We looked at this in adult education before service. My pastor commented on the repetition of “one,” and how powerfully this repetition drives home the unity of the Church. This alliteration, by the way, goes back at least as far as Tyndale's “Let ther be but one lorde one fayth one baptim.” So I took a quick look in Nestle-Aland, and here's the Greek:
Ephesians 4:4-6 Ἓν σῶμα καὶ ἓν πνεῦμα, καθὼς καὶ ἐκλήθητε ἐν μιᾷ ἐλπίδι τῆς κλήσεως ὑμῶν· εἷς κύριος, μία πίστις, ἓν βάπτισμα, εἷς θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ πάντων, ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων καὶ διὰ πάντων καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν.
There are a couple of things to notice here. The first is that Nestle-Aland (the Greek Text) sets this as poetry—fair enough. But the second is that the alliteration that is so powerful in the English isn't present in the Greek, because Greek is a declined language, and the form of the irregular adjective εἷς (heis) changes radically depending on the gender of the noun it modifies. In the critical, tight, confessional verse 5, it is εἷς—μία—ἓν, the masculine, feminine, and neuter singular forms respectively of the adjective “one.”
So here is my thought, and I'll grant that it's a stretch. While the alliteration of one—one—one isn't in the Greek, the sequence εἷς—μία—ἓν seems constructed too. And while it is certainly the case that humans love to impose imagined structure on top of randomness, I'm taking the position here that there are no accidents in poetry. Putting each of the genders of Greek in turn, as happens in verse 5, might be an allusion to a deeper union. Three-in-one.
So at this point, the mathematician in me takes over. What is the probability that a passage of three consecutive Greek nouns will hit all three genders? If we assume that each gender is equally likely, it's
3!/33 = 2/9 ≈ 22%.
If we put in the actual distribution of masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns (243, 271, 111 resp.) in Ephesians, the probability estimate drops to 18%. Not compelling, not compelling at all. But suggestive.
My wife argued that the εἷς at the beginning of the 6th verse destroys the argument. Maybe. But I can easily accommodate this, as it looks to me as though the εἷς “closes the circle”: εἷς—μία—ἓν—εἷς. Hmm.
So, would a Greek ear hear this? Here I'll fully grant the justice of JA's disputing of my abilities and pretensions. I have no idea. But I like the thought, nevertheless.
Peace
11 comments:
where's paul in all this
i find it strange that someone would use
mathematix to interpret greek religious theological texts
i'm of the mind that a person should read ephesians as pauls words pauls mind
the passage you chose would give some credence to a prototrinitarian inclination in paul if not a full blown theological understanding
would a greek scribe hear compound sentences
would a greek scribe write poetry
the greek poetic tradition was at least 1000 yrs old by the time paul confronted the language
i'm left with not having the slightest idea where logic within the working of statistical analysis bears any fruit in scriptural discourse it all ends up with
"suggestive" or "not Suggestive"
the nestle aland i have had for 20 yrs or more and i like it for the highlighting of poems and early prayers or hymns...i don't do these biblical language ventures anymore....so i appreciate the attempt at elucidation
it seems to me that we attempt to straddle a huge canyon of translation difficulty when we begin with english
i've often thought that our neutral approach to nouns nouns with no advantage of being masculine or feminine this puts us at a real disadvantage
i suspect paul the scribe who may have written the epistle maybe paul maybe not paul dictating maybe some of pauls friends who knew what he needed to say but i read the letter as very pauline
very conssistent with his whole mission
unity being his raison d'etre
what the lord is willing to give us
thanks
j
This is a really interesting thought. There are so many other passages from Paul that, in English, border on poetry, or at least very tightly written prose poetry. I too believe that there are no accidents in poetry. Galatians 5:22-23, 1st Corinthians 13, certainly could be famous examples. Now I wonder if they have poetic form in the original language as well. Good grief! I may be up all night researching this!
WW
Um, guys,
I'm going to have to look at the Greek later, as my mom is in teh hospital -- however
just let me say, as a poet, that there are plenty of accidents in poetry -- some of them happy.
Notes:
Westcott/Hort reads the same (with the interpolation of the "kathos [kai] eklethete"). The Latin Clementine ed reads: "unum corpus et unus spiritus, sicut vocati estis in una spe vocatis vestrae; unus Dominus, una fides, unum baptisma; unus Deus et Pater omnium, qui est super omnes et per omnia et in omnibus nobis" (which perhaps fits with stu's speculation, though of course the order of genders presented is different, as are the declensions).
The provenance of the letter seems to be Paul's imprisonment, though probably not written in prison.
Triads (as the French counter-reformation expression, "Une Loi, Une Foi, Un Roi"--"One Law, One Faith, One King"; Bacon relies on them especially in later eds of his "Essays") are often effective in conveying rhetorical "punch." Not to descend into rhetorical technicalities (the specific figurae verborum or the Gr schemata, but Quintilian's Institutes should more than satisfy the curious.
BTW, stu: "The Holy Office" had for very long replaced "inquisition" in RC Church parlance.
As I've said before, I DO treat some biblical translation issues and not a few examples in my translation book, though secular literature examples (classical, early modern, and current) far exceed them in the book. Secular lit lends itself more to purely lexical and semantic issues than sacred, upon which much hangs doctrinally.
where's paul in all this
i find it strange that someone would use
mathematix to interpret greek religious theological texts
I'm hardly the first. The Mosteller-Wallace analysis of the Federalist Papers set off similar analyses of Biblical Texts. I have, e.g., Kenny's "A Stylometric Study of the New Testament," 1986, Clarendon Press, Oxford. As far as I know, no one has attempted an Efron-Thisted analysis (I know Ron Thisted well, we co-developed a course in the mid-80's, and actually had an undergraduate do an ET study of Plato's epistles).
And the role of mathematics isn't interpretation per se, but rather to establish a few antecedents upon which interpretation could be based. E.g., we might be able to make a mathematical argument that a particular pattern in the texts is not accidental. It then becomes a matter of interpretation as to what the author intended. In this case, the mathematics were inconclusive—what appears to be an intentional pattern could have happened randomly.
the passage you chose would give some credence to a prototrinitarian inclination in paul if not a full blown theological understanding
Yes. Or perhaps an interleaving of Galatians 3:28: There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
i suspect paul the scribe who may have written the epistle maybe paul maybe not paul dictating maybe some of pauls friends who knew what he needed to say but i read the letter as very pauline
very conssistent with his whole mission
unity being his raison d'etre
I believe that most Biblical scholars view Ephesians as pseudepigraphic, although clearly derivative and in many ways a summary of Pauline thought.
An interesting observation is that early papyri (e.g., P46) omit "in Ephesus" in Eph 1:1, and this appears to be the same Epistle that Marcion called the "Letter to the Laodiceans."
Just to be clear where I stand here—I don't have any problems with Ephesians being both pseudepigraphic and authoritative. If, as many scholars believe, it was written around 100 C.E., this would place it roughly 33 years after Paul's death. Close enough in time that his impact would still be strong, and the author likely someone who knew Paul, and was close to him theologically.
jh—
the greek poetic tradition was at least 1000 yrs old by the time paul confronted the language
An excellent point. Unfortunately, I'm not yet to the point where I've read poetry in Greek. What were the characteristics of Greek poetry? Is there any precedent for engineering text in the way that I suggest?
OK i'm more willing to accept the challenge factor in mathematical logic...but it seems to me proper to only do that in church
take the math and stuff
and go to your church and do the math in there while sitting before the crucifix
things get dangerous with all this interpretation stuff going on nope i'm sayin you shouldn't be making insight into the scriptures subject to mechanical scrutiny....i mean the translators must do some of that to begin with
i think we morons should just take best translations and ponder upon the word preferably in church
and then when faced with a difficulty you consult the magisterium
it is really very simple
giving everyone a bible is one thing but then haveing everyone subject the texts to any number of interdisciplinary critical tools and start talkin about what scripture really says it all starts to sound like the tower of babble
i have been more formed in the tradition of
lectio divina
i remember doing an exercise devised by a text critic who was an admitted atheist and believed the bible was only useful as a sociology text...by the end i was simply amazed...and didn't read another word of the guys method
i don't know
as i get a little older i like to be read to and i get read to everyday at mass two readings a day at mass one each at morning and evening prayer sometimes two
and do my pondering there before the body of christ assembled and the sacrament
but i digress into catholicism perhaps too much
what would you surmise would be the implication then if three consecutive nouns took on three different gender articles feminine masculine neutre what would this suggest to you or to the ephesians for that matter...other than nounendings and types of nouns are generally designated no matter how they are intended to be used
so if by design
what would be the impliction?
bernard lonergan wrote a beautiful book called INSIGHT and here he articulates his intentional approach to cognitive discovery and he states that there is a consistent and repeated apprehension and judgement process which leads to more profound understanding of anything...he thought that for a mind to be exposed to principles of study on a rather consistent basis and to use patterns for study is the approach to insight in the cognitive process...ultimately while not neglecting the importance of analysis his theory would lean more to the side of long contemplation and repeated hearing of the words and ideas about anything in order to first understand and then perhaps draw forth insight
but he would be the first to acknowledge that his method would be useful in learning and utilizing mathematics as well
i think our unity as christians will have mroe to do with quiet prayerful reflections than with somehow cracking a code or unlocking a lock on an old problem
however
i approve of intense mental activity
maybe you do shed light here and there
who knows
i sure dont know if i do
keep on rockin in the free world pal
j
what would you surmise would be the implication then if three consecutive nouns took on three different gender articles feminine masculine neutre what would this suggest to you or to the ephesians for that matter...
Actually, I tried to account for this in the analysis. My probabilistic computation assumed that any of the six (3!) permutations of the three genders might have been seen as significant, i.e., I didn't put any extra weight on the fact that the genders appeared in "school" order, m-f-n. But my guess is that if the pattern had been one of the other five (e.g., you f-m-n), I'd have never remarked on it, and the Ephesians would never have noticed it. It is patterns that we've heard before that first catch our ear.
This kind of caution is standard in this kind of analysis. The problem is simple enough—if you assume that any probabilistic computation less than 5% is significant (a common benchmark), and you make 20 observations of random phenomenon, odds are that 1 will look significant. So you systematically add obstacles to significance, or phrase your hypotheses before reducing the data. The later wasn't an option in this case.
i think our unity as christians will have mroe to do with quiet prayerful reflections than with somehow cracking a code or unlocking a lock on an old problem
Amen to that. I'm not claiming that mathematics is useful for "cracking the code of the Bible," although it can be very useful in cracking other codes :-). Indeed, I look on all such attempts with suspicion that verges on derision. But here, I'm using mathematics for a very limited end, and well within a longstanding tradition of quantitative textual analysis. Whether or not the underlying hypothesis makes any sense at all is a non-mathematical question, and truly beyond me.
Request: thy father's house has many MANSIONS.
Wha exactly is MANSIONS in the original?
μονή (mone): 2. a place in which one stays, dwelling(-place), room, abode. (BDAG)
Perhaps "chambers"?
I'm just taking the quickest look at this, but I think the vision is kind of like a dormitory, a large building with single rooms which constituted the entire living area for a family. My recollection is that Roman tenements in the big cities were typically 4-5 story wooden affairs with single room apartments, so this would be an instantly comprehensible living arrangement.
Remembering that the early church was a share community, this basically extended the vision of their worship to their entire life—that they would live together as a single community, each with their own space, and place. In a way, it is not unlike Paul's many parts of the body.
Thanks for this, Stu. I've been on the road in Philly the last week staying at my friend Jake Powell's who was down at the shore with his family.
He himself has a true mansion, with giant rooms, in a very wealthy area of Philly. And his bathroom reading is Emily Dickinson's poems. It's been in the basket for years and I read it through again every summer while sitting there on his toilet!
(I often forget what I started doing there!)
In one of the poems she asks God to save one of the mansions for the common rat.
She's very partial to animals, and seems to love them all.
That, it seems, is an American thing.
I guess rats would be comfortable both in the ancient abodes you mention, and in today's abodes, even though we now know that they spread diseases like mad, and would probably be better of separated in the afterlife, if they make it to the afterlife.
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