John Darby: updated biography and naming the real heroes! [updated Sept 2021]

It is no longer completely clear to me how to attribute the French Darby breakthrough on signalling New Testament translations of unambiguous references to the Old Testament Tetragrammaton ("Le *Seigneur"). I initially thought the credit could only be given to his French students assuming a chronology of English translation first followed by European translations second (Darby was English). 

This is not actually what my most recent information tells me, however. Apparently, Darby's main initial work was on the German and French translations directly, not the English, but here's the thing. When he worked with William Joseph Lowe and Pierre Schlumberger on the French, the asterisk was introduced. His work on other European translations, however, were apparently kickstarted by a contact from a German bible translator, Julius Anton von Poseck. This collaboration resulted in what is known as "Elberfelder Bibel". However, there are no asterisks preceding Lord in Luke 1:9 "in the temple of the Lord" (in den Tempel des Herrn). Darby's technical and subsequent translation into English of the New Testament does not seem to have featured the asterisk but does sometimes bracket [the] Lord.

For these reasons, I think we can attribute this breakthrough to John Darby's French translation team, William Joseph Lowe and Pierre Schlumberger. Great pioneering work, gentlemen!

Darby's picture... (sadly none for the other heroes, Lowe and Schlumberger):

1 Corinthians 10: To Whom Does This Cup Belong?

Gathering some translation principles from Kyrios in Mark's gospel, I have been working hard at a coherent set of solutions for Kyrios equivalents in English throughout the rest of the New Testament. It's a lot of work (Acts, in particular, was a slog) but I am making good progress, now nearing the end of 1 Corinthians (I also did most of the prep work already for Jude and Revelation on the blog over here, Obstacle 4).

Of course, the process speeds up as decisions for certain contexts are made. Take for instance how we have developed our methodology through the five obstacles faced by the GOD solution to Yahweh, adopted by Peterson and myself. We started with the apparently awkward "GOD, our god," and justified the usage of the little "g". Since this same Yahweh is specifically cited throughout the New Testament, it makes good sense to carry the same translation through too. Hereby, all citations of the LXX by New Testament authors that include explicit references to a translation of Yahweh ("KYRIOS") can receive GOD instead of the confusing "the Lord", most frequently attributed to Jesus.

HOWEVER, the Jesus attribution may be slightly less frequent than you think. I have often referred back to a passage in 2 Corinthians 3:16-18 where the 2 key criteria line up for identifying Yahweh references outside direct citation:

• Israelite/historical context
• Primarily anarthrous Kyrios (nom.) or Kyriou (gen.)

I now note that Peterson's The Message translation picked up on this and throughout that passage in 2 Corinthians, he uses "God", not the more widely known "The Lord".

Today we are going to zoom in on another similar passage that I suspect we Christians may experience greater reticence to relinquish as referring to one other than the Lord Jesus: 1 Corinthians 10:21-22. Maybe that is why Peterson stuck with "the Master", who knows. Anyway, let's look at the text in its wider context v14-33: 

14 Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. 15 I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. 16 Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.

18 Consider the people of Israel: do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? 19 Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. 22 Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

23 ‘I have the right to do anything,’ you say – but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’– but not everything is constructive. 24 No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.

25 Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, 26 for, ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.’[f]

27 If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. 28 But if someone says to you, ‘This has been offered in sacrifice,’ then do not eat it, both for the sake of the one who told you and for the sake of conscience. 29 I am referring to the other person’s conscience, not yours. For why is my freedom being judged by another’s conscience? 30 If I take part in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of something I thank God for?

31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. 32 Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God – 33 even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.

Based on Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® (Anglicised), NIV®

How then do I propose we translate this passage? Thankfully, my "call" is not to retranslate everything but to focus on bringing the early distinctions on KYRIOS back to light and to make the language of "lordship" more understandable again for today's readers. So I'm only focussing on verses 21-22 and 26.

1 Corinthians 10:21

You cannot drink the God’s cup of the Lord  and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the LordGod’s table and the table of demons.

    

1 Corinthians 10:22

Are we trying to arouse the Lord God’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

    

1 Corinthians 10:26

for, ‘The earth is the Lordbelongs to God’s, and everything in it.’

---

It must first be conceded, perhaps, that neither God's cup, table or jealousy are established LXX lexical units. This has no incidence on the power of the passage to fulfil the criteria asserted above. Some reasons for believing so:

Paul is certainly aware of the anarthrous tradition in the version he cites from. This is provable from the multiple times he refers to the Israelite divine Name for their god in explicit citations from the LXX, such as in verse 26 of the present passage. Paul is also arguably not bound to the anarthrous rule in citation alone, as demonstrated in the 2 Corinthians 3:16-18 passage, but also I'd now argue Romans 14:8-9 and maybe a couple of other Pauline places too, not to mention scores of such occurrences in the writings of his colleagues, such as Luke.

Secondly, while an LXX lexical unit (such as "before the LORD") would have added still greater weight to the argument for the Yahweh reference, it is hardly representative or necessary in the Old Testament to always place Yahweh in some pre-agreed lexical formation - most, indeed, are not. Sometimes, the translators of the LXX may even have inserted references to Yahweh, perhaps for clarification. Lamentations 4:21 in the LXX either inserts or is a witness to a Hebrew version that had the cup of Kyriou. 

Thirdly, Kyrios fulfils both the criteria above in 1 Corinthians 10:21-22. As already stated, Paul is aware of the anarthrous tradition in the version he cites from. His repetition is conspicuous and free from contextual constraint to Jesus via Paul’s invitation in v18 to “Consider the people of Israel”. 

The indication here, as confirmed in verse 26, is that in verse 21-22 the referent is Yahweh, God the Father of our Kyrios (Master, King, Leader, Captain, Boss, Ruler,...), Jesus Christ.

So can you see whose cup Paul is probably describing now? :)

Only Two Cases Matter: Demonstrated

I AM EMBARKED on a huge and groundbreaking survey of the Septuagint Greek translations of Yahweh and Adonai. At present we are focusing on Yahweh. I can now confirm to have categorised 6867 Yahweh translations into Greek based on the current critical text of the Septuagint. For quite some time I have pointed out that any meaningful research needs to focus on certain cases only and today I am going to demonstrate that definitively: only nominative and genitive are the relevant cases.

There is a lot of data in the above chart, but that is part of the point: not of all it is relevant. The key thing to look for is the green and purple bars, representing the Greek translations in the accusative and dative cases. They tend to be much, much higher than the blue and orange bars, representing the nominative and genitive cases, sometimes maxing out at or near 100%. Let us translate what that means: generally speaking, when a Greek translator came across an instance of Yahweh that seemed to require an accusative or dative translation, they become unpredictable on whether or not to add the relevant article, apparently "torn" between a special rule on Yahweh translations (requiring as few articles as possible) and the pull of the Greek grammar.

Let us illustrate this with an "arthrous" example of each, to give a feel for the accusative and dative scenarios frequently faced by the translators:

1. Accusative example. In Proverbs 28:5, we read Evil men do not understand justice, But those who seek the LORD [Yahweh] understand all things. 

➟ ἄνδρες κακοὶ οὐ νοήσουσιν κρίμα οἱ δὲ ζητοῦντες τὸν κύριον συνήσουσιν ἐν παντί

2. Dative example. In 2 Kings 23:21, we read Then the king commanded all the people saying, “Celebrate the Passover to the LORD [Yahweh] your God as it is written in this book of the covenant.” 

➟  καὶ ἐνετείλατο ὁ βασιλεὺς παντὶ τῷ λαῷ λέγων ποιήσατε τὸ πασχα τῷ κυρίῳ θεῷ ἡμῶν καθὼς γέγραπται ἐπὶ βιβλίου τῆς διαθήκης ταύτης

Numbers and Deuteronomy, however, should catch our eye. In fact, when broken down by case, we see more fluidity than my original results suggested in the first five books. A few weeks ago, as I started releasing my results on my blog and wrote Pentateuch Translations of Yahweh, I showed a robust picture of consistent low article rates with the nominative and genitive cases. That remains true, but depending on the book and the case, it seems that there was an application of the "grammatical signature", as I sometimes call it, even wider than that, especially in Deuteronomy. 

So what might that suggest? It suggests, like many historical phenomena, development. Development is messy because it produces big results from often untraceable or imprecise origins (like world religions, for instance!) Here's a caricature: a gifted bilingual Jewish scribe and translator is authorised and required to oversee a translation project of the Torah. The project exceeds his own capacity and requires a team effort, but he remains the leader. Steeped in Jewish history, belief and maybe even collective national pain of being an unfulfilled and deported people, he is deeply aware of the Adonay-Yahweh relationship and devises or rigorously adopts the anarthrous rule as he goes about translating Deuteronomy, whether he needs a "kyrios", a "kyriou", a "kyrion" or a "kyrio". He informs and instructs his fellow translators to do likewise. These translators, also gifted bilingual Jewish scribes, understand the basic principles of Deuteronomy Translator, but also are sensitive to the needs of their target language and make a few compromises, beginning to include articles in accusative and dative situations. The weight of this authoritative publication will continue to have strong albeit varied influence for the various translations as the rest of the canon was translated in the subsequent centuries, the most sustainable cases, however, being those most consistently upheld in the Pentateuch: nominative and genitive. 

(Alongside the authoritative editions of the massive works, of which only one or two copies would have coexisted, other ad-hoc translations would also have existed. The tiny fragmentary texts that have survived from this period I believe may have been for usage in diaspora synagogues and were still hampered, however, by the perceived risks of pronouncing the divine Name, and used various systems to avoid even writing kyrios, either because of an alternative translation tradition or because of the likelihood that these were the copies to be read out. It is well established in Jewish tradition that two forms of the text exist)

To the critics of the early kyrios situation: how do you account for a relatively sudden Christian creation of this practice given the variations you see evidenced above? I still can't see it.

Exodus 8:22 - the Name and the Title side by side

JUST CHECKING, AS planned for unaccounted for double-occurrences of Yahweh in a single verse and stumbled over another interesting example perhaps worth sharing of how the title characteristics were associated with the Greek article (and the Name characteristics with its absence). In Exodus 8:22 in the NASB, based on Hebrew texts, we read:

“But on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, where My people are living, so that no swarms of flies will be there, in order that you may know that I, the LORD, am in the midst of the land."

In the NETS translation of the Greek Septuagint we read:
"And I will distinguish gloriously on that day the land of Gesem, which my people are on, whereon the dog-fly shall not be, so that you may know that I am [the] Lord, the Lord of all the land.

In the NETS version, we have a repetition of the word "Kyrios" - first without the article, then, immediately after, with the article. It's a marvelous example of how the two characteristics complement one another and are expressed in the Greek grammar, much like the example of Isaiah 49:14 (But Zion said, “[The] LORD [Yahweh] has forsaken me, the Lord [Adonai] has forgotten me.”) we discussed in my previous post. In the first instance we have the personhood of God; in the second, that person, Kyrios, is the kyrios of what? Of all the land.

How else could NETS translate this? How about the following:
"And I will distinguish gloriously on that day the land of Gesem, which my people are on, whereon the dog-fly shall not be, so that you may know that I am GOD, the Lord (or Ruler) of all the land.

A less literal translation could dispense of the article of the second Kyrios:
"... so that you may know that I am GOD, Ruler of all the land.

What do you think?

Greek Articles in the Septuagint: From Yahweh to Kyrios to Ho Kyrios?

FIVE THOUSAND YAHWEH Greek translations have now been categorised, covering Genesis all the way through to Song of Songs - the question at hand: how did the translators of the Hebrew Bible translate the divine Name of Yahweh into Greek? We know that the answer to that question is the same answer as the title of Adonai: KYRIOS (Lord). But the article is missing in Greek, giving it a name-like quality, like Pharoah. But to what degree? Scholars and historians agree that it is likely that the initial main translation project was not of the whole Hebrew Bible, but rather of the first five books, sometimes referred to as the Torah. If a decision about using anarthrous KYRIOS was made for Yahweh and Adonai at this stage, then measuring article behaviour across the rest of the Septuagint can provide us with interesting data about the translation history of the project, and maybe even some fresh perspective on the redactional dates of the originals. Finally, we may wish to question afresh the adequacy of the "the LORD" solution in many English translations of the Old Testament.

I'm going to present the information graphically in two forms: one with the book of Job included and one without. The reason for that is that because Job is such an extreme outlier in the way it includes the article with Kyrios and Kyriou that it reduces the visual impact of the variations across the other books. So here, first then, is my current data set (excluding Ezekiel, which will be integrated when I provide the full data set with the prophetic books):

So we can observe that the pattern of excluding the article for Kyrios and Kyriou established in the Pentateuch (Genesis through Deuteronomy) seems to continue relatively without change until we get to Job, at which point the rule book is completely thrown out of the window! Job has 26 relevant occurrences of Yahweh translations, and 22 of them include the article. This makes for a huge spike, but note how the orange line tracing the rates of articles does not immediately sink back to its typical levels - both Psalms and Proverbs seem significantly higher than before, just below the 20% mark.

What else do we know about Job that could account for such a wildly different approach to the Kyrios translation? NETS, the critical and publically available Greek translation into English thus far does not integrate this astonishing statistic nor help us in attempting to understand it. It does help characterise it, however, with the following observations:

• "OG Iob is one of a kind in the Septuagint corpus: ... the least literal, both in its attitude to abbreviating the parent text and in the way the translator worked with that portion of the text." (NETS, p. 667)
• It consciously abbreviates the parent text at an increasing rate as you go through the book, with the overall text being significantly shorter than the Hebrew.
• Except, I note, in 1:21, the translator does not opt for the usual "and it came to pass" Hebraism translation (καὶ ἐγένετο) of וַֽיְהִי and states simply "And when" (καὶ ὡς) - however, I could only find three occurrences of that translation in Job for the 8 occurrences of וַֽיְהִי .
• The translator inserts a lot of particles: 'as Kitto says, "Greek is well stocked with little words, conjunctions that hunt in couples or in packs, whose sole function is to make the structure clear. They act, as it were, as signposts". This seems to be the translator's intent in Iob, i.e., to give the rather loosely linked Hebrew text a connectedness. So the translation is heavily salted with particles: "and," "but," "now," "because," "for," "really," "on the on hand ... on the other," "however," "therefore," "rather," "again," "or" and others." (emphasis mine, NETS p. 668, Kitto citation taken from D. F. Kitto, The Greeks (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1973 (1951; revised ed., 1957))
• The translator may have been borrowing techniques from other translated books in the Septuagint: NETS cites research comparing 4.21a to Isaiah 40.24b, 34:13 to Psalm 24:1 and 34:15 to Gen 3:19.

This last point is interesting since it removes one of the explanations for the use of articles with Kyrios - a very early translation preceding or beyond the influence of other translations. It is difficult to ground much on this, however, because if you actually bring up the Greek for the comparisons cited, there really is nothing strikingly similar.

Whatever the relationship, we can note the following progression through the three language groups:

Hebrew Name Yahweh throughout the OT ("anarthrous") 
     --> Greek Name/Title KYRIOS ("anarthrous") 
           --> Greek Title HO KYRIOS in Job ("arthrous") 
                --> modern European language title throughout the OT THE LORD/L'ETERNEL/o SENHOR/il SIGNOR/El Señor/der HERR, etc. (also "arthrous"). 

Could Job, then, be our "missing link"?

Job, despite its extreme position, is not our only outlier. We have discussed Psalms at various points over the course of my postings on this topic, and in my next post, we'll zoom in a bit further by removing Job from the picture and see where the other contours lie. Sneak preview:

Of course, I will also be cataloguing the remaining prophetic material to complete the survey. However, we can expect few surprises there, the prophets I think are very on board with the anarthrous rule. So expect the brown line to come back down and stay very low.

Pentateuch Translations of Yahweh

HERE IS HOW the translators of the Septuagint went about their initial task of translating the divine name, Yahweh (and the shortened version, "Yah") into the Greek word, KYRIOS, which of course means "Lord" in English.

In the table below, we can see how often the translators applied the article when they did this. Because I have already done some work elsewhere in Ezekiel and in the Psalms, I have also populated the table with the data I obtained there also. Please see below for some comments, but do also note this post, because as I continue to work on the rest of the Hebrew Bible translation, this table should continue to automatically update.

As stated previously, we are looking here specifically at the cases known as "nominative" and "genitive". The reason for this is that the other three main Greek cases affect whether or not an article is required. This tighter selection provides a tighter and more meaningful methodology than has been previously reported by Septuagint scholars. It shows us that the "anarthrous" rule implemented by the Pentateuch translators was even closer to systematic for the Septuagint than has thus far been reported: the one we like to call "The LORD" was initially and perhaps almost as bizarrely as in English, translated just "LORD" in 99.3% of the 1340 instances where the translators used nominative or genitive forms (kyrios and kyriou). By so conspicuously removing the "the", the name quality of Yahweh seems to have been carefully integrated, perhaps in a similar vein to other important name-titles like "Pharoah".

At the time of writing this post, I have developed a process that has significantly accelerated how I can generate this data, with now nearly 3000 of the Yahweh occurrences in the Hebrew Bible processed. This may seem like nearly half-way, but actually, things should move much quicker now (Psalms has been accessible on this blog as early as October 2016!).

What will take longer to provide is the control data - from a control group of proper names and a control title group of "king".

When the Yahweh translations are complete we will also be able to show diagrammatically any shifts or outliers in the translation practice outside of the Pentateuch.

Remember, a fairly extensive and relevant analysis has recently been completed on how Adonai was translated throughout the canon, integrating the response of lead NETS translator, Dr. Albert Pietersma, here.

Lord Jesus Christ, S2 Part 3: Jesus as Lord or Jesus as LORD?

I HAVE BEEN really looking forward to this section. Some readers might know that I had some dialogue with Dr. Hurtado back in 2016 around the fascinating issue of Kyrios use in the Greek Septuagint, a compilation of Greek translations initiated in Alexandria in the third century BC for diaspora Greek-speaking Jews living in that area and beyond. The reason why this is of interest to us here is to recall that Lord Jesus Christ was written in 2003. Research into the Septuagint has been going on for many years, but new scholarship continues to shine fresh light on some aspects of the New Testament, and will certainly come up here in this section. Before we look any further, then, into Hurtado's 2003 perspective on Paul's use of Kyrios as a "divine title" for Jesus, let's recap what we know about the usage of Kyrios in Judaism in the second temple era.

When the LXX was written, certain theological understandings and tendencies had ultra-sanctified the name of Yahweh, God's revealed name for his people to call him by (paradoxically!), to such an extent that even uttering the name might be considered so terrible that the person might risk being divinely fried.

As a result, there were special ways of writing Jewish texts that had two forms - the proper form and the read-aloud form. Scholars ponder a lot about how Jews of the second temple era got around the numerous references to Yahweh (or Kyrios), but I believe that Kyrios represented a good route for the mainstream Greek-speaking diaspora. It is also a common term used for a human master and the Alexandrian translators had inserted a clever designator that this Kyrios was both different and personal. How? They removed the article. So, whenever we read in our English Bibles, especially from Genesis to Deuteronomy, "the LORD" said or did this or that, I recommend you start practising replacing that with either simply "Yahweh" or "LORD" (no "the"). The second option I still find the most stilted, even if loyal to an intermediate state of transmission of the text to us (which should make us ponder why we are so loyal to it, in fact).

Since we are talking about Paul, I will also say that I believe we have good evidence he was aware of this special translation practice. Not only do we have his testimony of his intensive religious training as a literate multilingual Jew, but I think I also stumbled over some interesting textual evidence that I have examined before on this blog in 2 Corinthians 3:16-18, see here. (Note: I am not at all convinced that such intimate textual knowledge can be postulated for other authors of the New Testament, Revelation being one example I noticed just recently.)

So before we get into this section of Hurtado's chapter on Paul, what should we be asking? Hurtado is on the lookout for special status for Jesus that would warrant the evidence of the binitarian worship patterns we have looked at in Chapter 1. I too am on the lookout for special New Testament treatment of Christ and the Spirit that could explain Father-Son-Spirit religious dynamics that would require a reconfiguration of the Jewish core view. But, as on this blog we have insisted over and over again: absolutely no shortcuts are allowed. Some apologists want to insist that Jesus "just is Yahweh", pointing to occasions when the New Testament authors, including Paul, apply Yahweh texts to Jesus who seems to become the Kyrios in question. Seems simple enough? But can it be as simple as that if anarthrous Kyrios is a personal name as well as a title?

We want to see if the simple theory neatly matches the fuller usage of the term. For me, seeing how sensitive Paul is to not only repeating anarthrous Kyrios citations but also applying that anarthrous principle to Yahweh elsewhere (that in context does not have the Lord Jesus in view, rather, Yahweh or "LORD", see the aforementioned post on 2 Corinthians 3:16-18), I would want to see how Paul responds to the question of the article when it is applied to the Lord Jesus, both inside and outside of Old Testament fulfilment passages. Of course, I also want us to learn from Hurtado what Kyrios could have meant as a title for the early Christian communities we learn of through Paul.

In response, Hurtado immediately opens with the obvious concession: Kyrios was used to refer to and address someone in a variety of socially superior positions (p. 108) It's the title a slave-owner would expect from his slaves, it could be a general term of respect like "sir", and came to be used in some Eastern provinces of the Roman empire. I would also expect John the Baptist's disciples to have referred to John in this way, as "master". Hurtado notes the usage of Kyrios for these eastern provinces in the same breath as noting that this is also where living emperors could be divinised, which was not possible in the west. Regardless, what we are looking at is a highly diverse word with ranges of meanings in multiple contexts, and so I would be more hesitant than Hurtado, when he states:

This pagan religious usage ... shows that pagans could easily have understood the term as connoting reverence for Jesus as divine (p. 108).

For Jewish understanding of the term, Hurtado recognises that we don't look first and foremost at the pagan culture, but at the ethnic and religious heritage of the Jewish people, introducing a word that is absolutely key to my own hypothesis of the Triune Hub: "semantic", a term Hurtado sadly leaves sadly underdeveloped with only five other meaningful occurrences (pp. 293, 302, 304, 305, and fn48 p. 506):

Most recent studies of these questions conclude that the key semantic background lies in Jewish tradition, and that the christological designation of Jesus as "Lord" goes back into the very earliest circles of Jewish Christians. (p. 109, emphasis mine)

But will that earliness really settle the questions we were asking just now, and what does Hurtado mean by "semantic background"? Recently, we have opened up the idea via Paul Ricoeur's work in Conflit des Interprétations; of the impact of "phenomenology" to our human processing, itself deeply impacted during its development by Freudian psychoanalysis, that insists on multiple layers of meaning. Suffice it to say for now that this bridge between phenomenology and "theological mutation" has not yet been sufficiently developed and articulated, despite its successful employment by Hurtado, Wright, Crossan and no doubt others (by the way, if blog readers could point me to other serious biblical scholars who reason in terms of mutation of Jewish worldviews/semantics, etc., please let me know). Regarding the question of earliness, I'm not sure. For Hurtado, everything has to be very early, that's how his model works. But if Jesus is by and large referred to largely in the non-special sense introduced by the Septuagint, then that should strongly nuance any unnecessarily strong assumptions about the divinity overhanging the word Kyrios. And yes, by the way, Jesus generally does have an article and, perhaps more importantly still, his lordship is personalised: "my Lord", "our Lord", etc. Yahweh, despite his thousands of mentions in the Old Testament, is never "my Yahweh" or "our Yahweh". Even other Hebrew words rendered Lord like Adonai are very rarely used in this possessive sense - twice in Nehemiah and four times in the Psalms. Jesus? 73 times. That is a totally different and unique usage that LJC simply does not account for as far as I can see in its bid to create a semantic divine overlap between Jesus and God, at least with respect to worship reserved for the One True God.

For other related posts on this subject (close to my heart, for some reason), please see the following posts, mainly from last year, one in French:

The name of [the] LORD

Rattrappage sur la traduction du Nom Saint et Personnel et Retour à la Trinité

Why this research matters

Asterisked *Lord... in one French translation: DARBY

Who's who?

From [the] LORD - more cases for NT translators

The Lord is the Spirit.... WHAT? New thoughts on 2 Corinthians 3:16-18

2 Corinthians 3:16 and Luke 1:16 --> the LORD in the New Testament continued...

Kyrios (aka the LORD) in the Psalms: results

John's gospel: "the Lord"

Kyrios (aka the LORD) in the Psalms: results

Back in August, I focussed closely on the Greek translation of Yahweh (and Yahh), the Israelites' personal name for their God. This was fueled by a steadily growing interest that followers of this blog will have noticed in the notion of Lordship and increased clarity in the usage of those words today among Bible-believing Christians. But why the Psalms? Well, it has also become my favourite book that has been a source of much inner reconnection and spiritual life, to such a point that I am also in parallel preparing a Psalms study of the self that I hope may even make this part of the Bible appealing and useful to non-believers. But the Psalms as a large Old Testament book outside the Pentateuch (Genesis through Deuteronomy) provides a wealth of information about the practices of a subsequent translation period (the Greek Septuagint grew to encompass the whole Hebrew Bible over many decades).

So as a very quick reminder of the grammatical context: the Septuagint translation for Greek-speaking Jewish communities (probably initially in Egypt) had to come up with a solution for God's personal name, YHWH. A complex debate rages about the status of this name by the time of the Greek translation and the extant pre-Christian translations, but by the early centuries of the common era, the standard was to use the Greek word for Lord: Kyrios. This translation has been preserved through the millennia in many modern translations, but with important differences: every since the King James (although maybe earlier, but not Latin, which does not use articles), the article was added, and Lord was capitalised: the LORD (BTW I have an opinion developing within me about this scholarly debate, but let's hold that for another post and a bit more research). Now some scholars had reported that the article-free Kyrios (the technical word for this is "anarthrous") is a more consistent technique in the Pentateuch, and with respect to articles, on a direct par with other personal names, like Moses. In the Pentateuch, occasionally (about 7% of the time in Exodus) you get "the Lord", but absolutely no more frequently than "the Moses". So this "the" is contingent on necessary grammar and by no means requires framing the word as an impersonal title.

Here, then, is what happens in the Psalms:


Some words of explanation are in order!

Since I quickly realised that Greek case was influential (has the Greek translator used a nominative, genitive, accusative, dative or vocative?) to the presence or absence of the article, the main table is a summary of article behaviour for the whole Psalter with increasing "weeding out" of certain cases. Firstly, since the vocative (VMS) κύριε is always anarthrous in LXX Psalms it could hardly be included in research about what I am calling the grammatical "signature" of YHWH translations into Greek: it is totally necessary to exclude them (209 occurrences) altogether. Of the remaining 479 occurrences where a form of Kyrios is used to translate YHWH (a few occurrences of YHWH are not translated that way), 301 are anarthrous. However, since the dative seems to almost always require the article (96% of the time), it seemed necessary to weed that one out too. And once the rather erratic accusative κύριον is also removed, we are left with the only stats that really matter: 18% of the Psalter's κύριος carrying the article and 17% of its κυρίου.

With that task complete, you can see how I was also interested to see if there were notable variations across the Psalter's traditional five volume format, by breaking down these arthrous counts accordingly. This may or may not have been useful. What it shows is when a particular volume strays significantly from the averages above. Since there is variation in both volume length and "YHWH density" (number of YHWH occurrences per verse to translate), it may have been more helpful to simply divide into say 4 or 5 (or more) even sized chunks.

I hope this clarifies the data presented.

I have actually had a little exchange now with Professor Larry Hurtado on this research, which appears to have gained his interest. I am appealing to him for guidance on how I might most usefully develop this research.

One possibility might be to follow Perkins, whose paper I think I previously discussed on the blog. I wonder about doing a similar comparison to that which he performed, to a name like Moses but also a title like theos before proceeding onto some other OT texts.

I am keen to learn from experts also what are the other types of instances that I should be excluding from the data, beyond Greek case? I also have a very rough-and-ready tagging system for some interesting common constructs (like κύριος ὁ θεός: always anarthrous, including a couple of non-nominative cases) that I think could be developed under the guise of "lexical units".

(Updated 25/05/2018)

From [the] LORD - more cases for NT translators

As I work through the ancient translators of the psalms and their careful attention to the divine Name of YHWH, I stumble over different combinations that are worth checking out. Let me show you how I arrived at my current example.

In Psalm 37:23, we have a very a normal looking verse: The LORD grants success to the one whose behavior he finds commendable. The Greek translation is a little different:

παρὰ κυρίου τὰ διαβήματα ἀνθρώπου κατευθύνεται (by LORD a man’s goings are established). When I see the same translator translate the divine Name differently but in the same case (genitive here) a couple of verses earlier, I sit up and take note.

Psalm 37:20 states:
οἱ δὲ ἐχθροὶ τοῦ κυρίου (yet the LORD's enemies).

So the translator translates the divine Name in the genitive WITH the article in verse 20 and without in verse 23. In verse 23 we have this interesting combination with a prefix, παρὰ. I have already learned that some prefixes are significant with regard to ensuing articles.

But where it gets really interesting is doing the word search, that www.blueletterbible.org does so, so well. It informs us that παρὰ κυρίου occurs no less than 77 times in the Old Testament (I think all in reference to Yahweh), and 6 times in the Greek New Testament in reference to...? Before looking at that: what about παρὰ τοῦ κυρίου? 4 hits only in the LXX: Num 31:3 (Yahweh is the referent), Deut 23:15 (human master is the referent), 2 Ki 4:28 (human master is the referent), Job 1:12 (Yahweh is the referent).

In the NT παρὰ τοῦ κυρίου occurs twice: Acts 20:24 ("from the Lord Jesus") and James 1:7 ("that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord". There is only one other "Lord" mentioned in this chapter of James, the Lord Jesus Christ (1:1).

So what of those 6 NT παρὰ κυρίου references (no τοῦ) I hear you cry?!

1. Mat 21:42 A direct quote from the Old Testament, definitely the divine Name. (Asterixed by Darby translator)
2. Mar 12:11 The parallel Markan passage to Mat 21:42 (Asterixed by Darby translator)
3. Luk 1:45 "a fulfilment of what was spoken to [Mary] from [the] LORD". It could be argued that that verse 43 (mother of my Lord) counters the certainty of my claim, but that won't work. MY Lord exists nowhere in the OT as a notion to convey MY YAHWEH. There is NO SUCH THING AS "MY YAHWEH"! The remainder of Kyrios occurrences in Luke 1 can also be argued grammatically and contextually to be divine-name referents.(Asterixed by Darby translator)
4. Eph 6:8 (knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from [the] LORD). This one is more open, but given the OT evidence, I would probably favour the divine name. The preceding verse is not much help to us, since although it also states "Lord" τῷ κυρίῳ, it is in the dative, which is most commonly with the article, even for Yahweh. Needs more work. (Not assterixed by Darby translator)
5. 2Ti 1:18 (may the Lord grant him to find mercy from [the] LORD on that Day!) This one seems easy: it's another double Lord-er, like the more famous "The Lord said to my Lord". However, like "the Lord said to my Lord" does not have one referent but TWO referents (Yahweh and Adoni for Psalm 110), so too does 2 Timothy 1 provide the clue to disambiguating the two Kyrios figures. The first has the article, the latter does not. I'd bet good money that it's ὁ κύριος [Jesus] εὑρεῖν ἔλεος παρὰ κυρίου [Yahweh]). (Not assterixed by Darby translator)
6. 2Pe 2:11 (angels do not pronounce a blasphemous judgement against the glorious ones before [the] LORD). The context of verse 11 is κύριος (no "ὁ") rescuing Lot in verse 9. Put bluntly: this is Yahweh. (Asterixed by Darby translator)

Interesting, isn't it?!
Oh, that's just taken me away from Psalms again. It's going to take forever at this rate! 

John's gospel: "the Lord"

A crazy-short post today as I'm mega busy. I did procrastinate just long enough to check all the mentions I could find of the English rendering "the Lord" in John's gospel.

Every single one that was specifically referring to Jesus was arthrous. This means that Kyrios, the Greek translation for our word "Lord", is systematically translated with the definite article in John's gospel when referring to Jesus.

This cursory glance is suggestive of different usages of "Kyrios" in the Bible, where Yahweh is often translated "Kyrios", but without the article.

Since these gospel citations are likely emmanating from a later stage of 1st century understanding, given common dating of John's gospel, it seems that this usage is Jesus' earth-ministry title accorded and remembered by his disciples. The name that he inherited as the Son of God (see Hebrews 1:4) is probably a quite different kettle of fish.

Confusion over a *case* in the NT: anarthrous Moses vs arthrous Peter

I am a bit confused, I must admit, to discover some quite curious statistics around the Greek in the New Testament. Some will know I am quite interested in the case of the presence or absence of articles in this fascinating language. It occurred to me that in order to better understand the practice of including articles with proper names, e.g. the John writing this blog post, it would make sense to look at other examples in the New Testament, and see how case  comes into it. If we include the vocative, there are actually five Greek cases: vocative, nominative, genitive, accusative and dative.

It had already become clear to me when I did the series of posts on arche that Greek case had a role to play, and other readings have confirmed that (BTW I remain a total novice to Koine Greek, but that does not prevent me from asking what I think should be a legitimate question, which I will get to in a second).

So I decided to take Moses, Peter and Jesus as three prominent proper names to look at. I haven't done Jesus yet - and I wish to re-count Moses and Peter before proceeding. What did I find?

I'll publish some stats when I have gone through it more thoroughly, but there was a surprising difference between Moses and Peter in the Nominative case. Moses occurs in the New Testament 80 times. Of those 80, slightly over half are in the nominative case. For example:

“Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children...” (Matt 22:24). This Moses is in the nominative: Μωϋσῆς. And there is hardly ever an article with the nominative in the instance of Moses (my first count was 3 out of 43). However, in the case of Peter, it is quite different. Peter is mentioned 156 times in the New Testament, of which 100 are in the nominative case, Πέτρος. So my question is: why do we get so many articles with Πέτρος? Approximately half of these have the article appended. OR, why do we get so few articles with Μωϋσῆς? I hope the same enquiry into Jesus will highlight which of these two questions is the most pertinent.

UPDATE: While this discrepancy remains a little unclear to me, John (Ἰωάννης  OR Ἰωάννου) is more in line with what we might expect: anarthrous in the genitive and nominative cases to the tune of 18%, and especially in the genitive (only 8%).

The Lord is the Spirit.... WHAT? New thoughts on 2 Corinthians 3:16-18 [updated August 2018]

I usually try to avoid too much theologising over the Holy Spirit, not because I don't love the Spirit but because I simply don't feel a drive to study the subject, in the same way I don't feel drawn to theories of atonement or theodicy (at least one post can be consulted here, however). That said, I have at various points thought with regard to 2 Corinthians 3:16-18: "huh, that's weird". Isn't the Spirit supposed to be distinct from Jesus, doesn't he go but send another? From a Triune-God advocate's perspective, you also might want to say that both Jesus and Spirit are God or fully-divine or essentially and perfectly united, or something, but that this unity still creates no confusion between their persons. So it's something of a head-scratcher. Here is the text from the NIV to refresh our memories:

But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Seems like a problem, doesn't it? I have a new thought on this passage following a little bit of research I'd like to share with you, and if possible, please feel free to share your perspective. What is fascinating about this problem is that it should represent a difficulty for any Christological perspective, so you never know, this may be read with less scepticism. 

Tiny details can have huge ramifications, right? Here's a whopper: I recently learned and shared an article from early Christianity specialist, Larry Hurtado, in which he also cited other scholars who noted that especially in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) but also through the Old Testament, there is a literary clue in the Greek translation of Yahweh. Probably most people reading this blog already know that in the LXX, the Greek translation of the Old Testament scriptures, Yahweh is substituted by KYRIOS. Kyrios is a flexible word that means Lord, master or simply "sir". It is most certainly this  LXX version of the OT that the NT church used since the quotations cited in the NT texts align so closely to it. It is hard for me to realise why the point of this research is so unknown and even among some scholars. But here it is: KYRIOS is ANARTHROUS when in place of Yahweh. Eh? Anarthrous means the word does not have an article attached. In the case of Yahweh, the personal name of Israel's god, a clue to this origin was left by leaving out the article. 

So why do we translate Yahweh with "THE LORD", and not just "LORD" or some other name/title that has no article preceding it? That is a very interesting question to which I cannot yet give you a satisfying answer. One reason might have been that translators wanted to draw out links between Yahweh and Jesus Christ, who is undeniably assigned the title of the ultimate Lord. Some Greek specialists might like to quibble: sometimes the article is dropped anyway, it is difficult to predict article behaviour. On issues more associated with Theos,  this would be Daniel Wallace's perspective, who spent a lot of time wrestling with the issue. We also know from other places like John 4:24 (God [the Father] is spirit), which leads me to roughly submit the following alternative translation:

[Note this translation was updated in August 2018 based on the completed survey of Septuagint translations of Yahweh to Kyrios, the subsequent series on overhauling the biblical reliance on antiquated lordship language and the suggestion of reinforcing Eugene Peterson's translation of "GOD"]

16 But whenever anyone turns to GOD, the veil is taken away. 17 Now GOD is the Spirit, and where GOD's Spirit is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate GOD's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from GOD's Spirit.

Nowhere in the Greek in this text is Kyrios prefixed with the article, except at the start of verse 17. We can note especially that in verse 16 (turns to GOD), it is particularly curious that there is no article. Acts 16:18 has the same verb for turning but states "turned to the spirit". Acts 9:40, 2 Peter 2:22 also supply the article.

Finally, perhaps the most striking examples are John 13:3 and 1 Thessalonians 1:9. These two passages are two of only seven in the New Testament where God (theos) is

- mentioned twice

- is anarthrous in the first instance AND arthrous in the second.

In both John 13:3 and 1 Thessalonians 1:9 God (of all people) is articulated when prefixed by "to" (pro), literally: AND TO THE GOD HE WAS GOING (John 13:3) and YOU TURNED TO THE GOD (1 Thessalonians 1:9). 1 Thessalonians even has the same verb as 2 Corinthians 3:16. 

So the question remains, why would a New Testament author curiously drop an article before Kyrios? This proposal provides the following hypothesis: Paul was totally familiar with the LXX practice of article dropping for KYRIOS when it replaced Yahweh, and did so here, totally in line with the Old Testament context in which the passage is utterly soaked (tablets of stone, Israelites, Moses, the veil...).

Thanks for reading, and if interested see articles and the definite article. I also have an unfinished series in there on the word ARCHE that you can search for in the blog search field above.

In THE beginning (6)

It has been a few posts since we looked at arche. We are almost ready to posit a functional rule for the New Testament books. For it to function outside of the canon would require more research and some tweaking that I am not sure I have the time to do.

We have now covered all the singular occurrences of arche, noting the most complex Greek case to be the accusative, to which the John 1:1 arche, has no connection. The most important thing to remember is that John, like most of the New Testament authors, **drop** the definite article when referring to THE beginning. What distinguishes John slightly from the others is the sheer extent to which he does this (lots and lots). The usefulness of a rule is directly proportionate to its power to predict. Yet to try and come up with some kind of rule requires also looking briefly at the plural.

Orchai (plural nominative), archais (plural dative) and Archas (plural accusative) occur in total 10 times. We have no occurrences of the plural genitive in the New Testament. In only one of the ten occurrences, is there an implied definite article as we can observe in the singular, and these are nearly all from Pauline epistles and used to imply "principalities" or "rulers", which we have already seen negates the implied definite article even in the singular. A new and somewhat obscure meaning pokes its nose into the discussion thanks to Luke: two of the four occurrences of archais are anarthrous and mean "corners". OK!

So what of the tenth plural that **does** drop the "THE" in Greek, while preserving its articular meaning/emphasis? This is an important point, because it really helps us shed light on the Hebrews writer's methodology. Here is the verse Hebrews 1:10, which is a direct quotation from the LXX, that we reference as Psalm 102:25 (in the Septuagint this is 101:26):

In [the] beginning[s], Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.

Unfortunately, neither the NIBC commentary I have been mainly using, written by Donald Hagner, nor any of the online commentaries, make any effort to explain why a plural lurks beneath this "beginning". My brief forays into the word show that the LXX translators had probably understood from a significant number of Hebrew scriptural sayings (and their own usage of Hebrew as bilingual translators), lə·p̄ā·nîm usually refers to "formerly" or even "the former times" (plural, see Ruth 4:7). This may mean that the English translation here is a bit misleading.

But the key point is that while the Hebrews writer has consistently shown that he does not write like John and the others (who do drop the definite article), here is the one time that we have him writing arche simply by quoting the Old Testament in the version he is most familiar with - the Greek (LXX) version. Hebrews is recognised as being probably the most polished Greek in the New Testament. The writer is careful and all of his quotations are precise. So when he copies the sacred Scriptures into his letter, it seems a fair assumption that he submits his own grammatical preference to what he considers supremely authoritative. In Hebrews 1:10, therefore, the Hebrews writer suspends his preference for explicitly writing the definite article in honour of precise LXX quotation.

***

Hurrah, now having analysed all occurrences of arche, we will be ready to state our rule!

Ephesians 5:5 and Granville Sharp

Ephesians 5:5 has not been excluded from Trinitarian debate, but is usually more discussed within scholarly circles. As some of you may have seen from my paper Trinitarian Interpretations, the wording of this sentence in my NIV made me favour a categorisation of it into a slightly dissuasive text.

It reads:
For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

There are not two kingdoms, but one, that is certain. But the wording of modern translators sounds a lot like co-ownership. Read in light of the wonderful perspective and language of Ephesians, where Christ has received all authority from his God and Father, that co-ownership still strikes me as a good exegetical perspective.

However, there is more to be said. Granville Sharp, himself a Trinitarian, researched and published back in the early 19th century into Greek usages to promote Trinitarian claims based on Greek grammar. The title of his work is: "Remarks on the uses of the definite article in the Greek text of the New Testament, containing many new proofs of the divinity of Christ from passages which are wrongly translated in the Common English Version". What he establishes there is still frequently mentioned today (all modern translators will have heard of him and his rule). His rule stated that if two nouns of the same case (Greek has four cases, Nominative, Genitive, Dative and Accusative) are separated by kai ("and"), and the first of these two nouns is preceded by the definite article, then both nouns refer to one and the same subject. In his view, therefore, this removed any ambiguity regarding Titus 2:13 regarding the "and": Christ is the great God and Saviour!

I am still out reflecting on Titus, but let us return to Ephesians 5:5, my topic for today. What did Granville Sharp think about Ephesians 5:5? Applying his rule, he came up with a new translation for it:

"in the kingdom of Christ our God".

Daniel Wallace, probably alongside Bart Ehrman, is the greatest textual scholar around; he is also a believer who is also very careful about making unwarranted assumptions. I trust him. He found a number of limitations to Granville Sharp's model, which he had to tone down to allow for some inconsistencies. I have not read it yet (when I do I will update the blog with some highlights), but it will surely comment on this verse and why such a rule cannot be applied so haphazardly, thus also obliterating the Father from the picture in a headlong charge to prove the Son's divinity.

Attempting to prove the son's divinity is a dangerous task, and you have to be sure that you really are doing no harm to the other belief-sets into which you are tied as a Trinitarian tight-rope walker. It also can back-fire on useful research in other areas and on other texts like Titus 2:13.

In THE beginning (5)

Awww, these arche posts are KILLING my stats. Sorry, I promise to leave it soon, I just don't want to leave it unfinished OK? I think this one and then one more and I should be done :)

We are in a series of posts which explore the way in which the word arche functions in the Bible, in order to show that it is absolutely no accident or surprise that John's prologue commences without the definite article "the", which we are later required to add back in English. All of this prepares the way for what I hope one day will be an exploration into the murky world or the anarthrous (article-free) "theos" in John 1:1c. But if I have learned one lesson from my stats, my blog will  most definitely not be the place to give blow-by-blow accounts for that! The image, by the way, is a pictorial reminder that the meanings of ruler and rule, which are also contained in arche in some contexts, can predictably affect the inclusion of the definite article differently to when arche refers to THE beginning.

So let us continue.

Now we have established the New Testament state of the feminine singular usage of arche, which includes both the nominative and dative Greek cases, let us now shift gear to arches. Arches is still feminine singular, but this time it is in the genitive case, indicating possession, or “of” or deriving from [the beginning]. This is by far the most common construction in the New Testament, which provides us with no less than 27 instances, John in particular loves it (...from [THE] beginning). 23 of these 27 are translated THE beginning even though there is no article. Authors concerned are Matthew (19:4, 19:8, 24:21), Mark (10:6, 13:9), Luke (Luke 1:2, Acts 26:4), John (John 6:64, 8:44, 15:27, 16:4; 1 John 1:1, 2:7, 2:13, 2:14, 2:24a, 2:24b, 3:8, 3:11; 2 John 1:5, 1:6), Pauline (2 Thessalonians 2:13), Petrine (2 Peter 3:4). The exceptions here obey the same idea as before: either meaning “rule” (Ephesians 1:21 and Colossians 2:10) or a special case of Hebrews (5:12, 6:1), to which we will return.

There is one more singular case we have not yet tackled, and it's tricky: the accusative, archen. Here we have 9 examples: John 2:11, John 8:25, 1 Corinthians 15:24, Hebrews 2:3, Hebrews 3:14, Hebrews 7:3, Jude 1:6. In these nine examples we see that the accusative singular seems to affect the need for the article, because the noun “beginning” is actually predicating something else, rendering it in several examples “first”. E.g. John 2:11 in the NIV reads: “What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs [i.e. the first sign] through which he revealed his glory”. 

This first of the nine instances should however be excluded from the study because of textual disagreement. I initially thought and blogged that it did not have the article. But as I looked at the Greek "apparatus", that is to say the strength of manuscript reliability for this verse, (that I could not easily account for), it hit me: there is a textual argument for the inclusion in John 2:11 of the article, which would maybe make more sense in the context of the accusative case. RP Byzantine Majority Text 2005, Textus Receptus, Greek Orthodox Church 1904 all witness a written definite article. 

Hebrews 2:3 is our first instance of relatively textually undisputed texts of the singular accusative. The Hebrews author, as I keep hinting, is exceptional in the way he articulates ARCHE. Here, however, he omits the article in order to say “first announced” (a few older or literal translations preferring “a commencement” etc. are most clearly off the mark and also constitute a very small minority). Notice how announced is not a noun, unlike the first sign in John 2:11.

Curiously, John 8:25 and Hebrews 3:14 are articular while providing a similar meaning. Why would Hebrews 2:3 differ from 3:14, and John 2:11 from 8:25 if in both cases they are identical words and case and by the same author? Good question, I don't know exactly. But they must not be grouped together in this way. John is thus far extraordinarily consistent in his anarthrous use of arche (nominative and dative) and arches (genitive). John always expresses “the beginning” without the article. So the first question is why would he in 8:25 exceptionally include the article when in the dozens of other occurrences it is always avoided? I am not sure. A truly thorough word study would need to look into that further.

Notwithstanding the final remarks reserved for the author of Hebrews, the final Hebrews occurrence of 7:3 seems to be anarthrous for it does truly (and rarely) refer to an indefinite beginning: Melchizedek had neither “a beginning” nor “an end” (nor “a father nor a mother”).

1 Corinthians does lack the article but is talking about “all rule”, and finally, Jude is anarthrous in a similar way to the John 2 and Hebrews 3 examples (predicate nouns, which appear to defer article usage to the predicated noun).

In summary: If we were working from the accusative alone, we would clearly be unable to make much progress! It does however contribute to the emerging picture on Hebrews and does open the tricky issue of predicate noun behaviour which will concern, one day, any study into John 1:1c.

In THE beginning (4) [updated 11/1/16]

So now we turn away from identical occurrences to the other feminine singular arche constructions (we will not spend any more time on the LXX from now on).

First let us look at the other feminine singular examples that we excluded last time since they lacked the preposition “en”. As we do this, we will discover an additional meaning of the word. For whereas we always translate en arche by “in the beginning” in English, arche (and other cases) can sometimes mean “rule” or even “ruler”. Here then are the other New Testament examples of arche without “en”:

Matthew 24:8 and Mark 13:8 (nominative singular)
GRK: δὲ ταῦτα ἀρχὴ ὠδίνων 
NAS: these things are [the] beginning of birth pangs

Mark 1:1 (nominative singular)
GRK: ΑΡΧΗ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου
NAS: [The] beginning of the gospel of Jesus

EXCEPTION Luke 20:20 (dative singular)
GRK: αὐτὸν τῇ ἀρχῇ καὶ τῇ
NAS: that they [could] deliver Him to the rule and the authority

EXCEPTION? Colossians 1:18 (nominative singular)
GRK: ἐστιν [ἡ] ἀρχή πρωτότοκος ἐκ
NAS: the church; and He is the/[the] beginning, the firstborn

EXCEPTION Revelation 3:14 (nominative singular)
GRK: ἀληθινός ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κτίσεως
NAS: Witness, the Beginning of the creation

EXCEPTION Revelation 21:6 & 22:13 (nominative singular)
GRK:  ἡ ἀρχὴ καὶ τὸ…
NAS: the beginning and the end.

My assurances of consistent dropping of the article are looking seriously doubtful on the face evidence of these passages. Of the 8 other feminine singular arche verses, only three seem to maintain the “rule” that the “the” is implied and not written: that’s less than half.

No it’s not. So far we have seen an actual total of 12 feminine singular occurrences: 7 of these imply the article silently. Of these 7, 4 state “en arche”. Still, you might say 7 out of 12 is still not that impressive evidence. Actually, it is meaningless. We have already established that exact matches are 100% consistent. It could well be argued that without the preposition “en”, that the definite article is simply optional. As a Greek writer of antiquity, you could throw it in or leave it out and no-one would mind or notice either way. My case would not be jeopardised.

But, despite that safety net, we can actually connect the articles to a specific function in at least three of the five “exceptions”. Furthermore, as we look at other configurations of arche, we will see that a very strong case will still emerge for anarthrous arche notwithstanding the exempting circumstances we will look at now.

Firstly, Luke 20:20, is consistently translated into English by “rule”, not “beginning”. In a later post we will do a study on the Greek words for “ruler”, whereupon we will see that this meaning is highly obedient to the more common rules: anarthrous = indefinite & articular = definite. So Luke 20:20 is constructed with the article because “the rule” behaves differently to “the beginning”.

Secondly, Colossians 1:18. Unfortunately this verse will not get us very far, as the manuscripts do not agree: some have the definite article, and some don't. Furthermore, the presence or absence is not strongly contended by textual critics who focus their energies elsewhere so it is difficult to say more than the immediate appearance is that both options are viable. For me it is also impossible to decide.

If the article is present, arche might well be functioning qualitatively or again as “the ruler”. See how in Greek it immediately precedes the word for “firstborn”. In English we separate the two with a comma (“…he is the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead”), but this qualitative use could allow for the article to be attached to "the firstborn" rather than "the beginning". However, an even more plausible explanation can be found, in my eyes, when we integrate how arche is generally used in in this epistle. Bearing in mind the shrinking numbers of New Testament scholars still attributing the epistle to genuine Pauline authorship, we should not take lightly that ALL the other declinations of arche in Colossians refer to rule, rulers, principalities, and so on. Colossians 1:18 would be the only exception. If this case were to be worked out more fully, then a translation could legitimately go more along the lines of he is the ruler and the firstborn from among the dead. In either case, the inclusion of the article could thus be explained. 

If the article is not present, then Colossians 1:18 would definitely read THE beginning and would be in line with the overall New Testament usage that we are observing.

The final explicable articular arche is Revelation 3:14. This time, a whole swathe of translations also make the connection with the idea of “the ruler” or “the head”: ERV, EXB, ICB, NCV, NIRV, NIV, WEB, YLT. The NIV gives: “the ruler of God’s creation”. Interestingly, The Message has chosen to echo Proverbs 8 language and go with the qualitative “first”, which is probably not quite right.

So in actual fact we are only really left with one phrase from the very end of the last book of the Bible, in Revelation 21:6 and 22:13: “the beginning and the end”, where both "beginning" and "end" are articular. I would not want to presumptuously assume that there is in fact nothing to be said about the articular use here. One possibility that will later emerge when we look at Hebrews is that within the writings of one author, a preferred expression might be adopted for particular purposes. On the assumption that it is at least possible, many would say distinctly possible, that the author of Revelation may not be the same human being as the author of John’s gospel, we might note that there are simply no occurrences of anarthrous arche in any declination, whether meaning beginning or rule/ruler. Another explanation might be an attempt at keeping the powerful statement balanced; could it not have appeared strange to emphasise the article of “the end” while omitting the article of “the beginning”?

To sum up: without the preposition, the singular arche does not follow the implied article rule when used to mean “rule” or qualitatively. Usage in Revelation is too limited to develop but opens the possibility to author preference.

This concludes my discussion on the singular noun construction for nominative and dative cases, but it should just be noted before closing the post that Greek case does not yet appear determinant. Of the anarthrous instances of arche with implied article, we see represented both dative and nominative cases, although nominative presents more articular instances (it is interesting to note that the nominative Mark 1:1, while lacking the “en” is being used to initiate Mark’s account in much the same way as “en arche” in the four New Testament examples and Genesis 1:1 & Jeremiah 26:1 in the LXX). We will continue to track this as we proceed now to the other two Greek cases for this word: genitive (very consistently dropping the article) and accusative (difficult to track).