First of all, thanks so much to the many B-Greekers who have
publicly or privately written to me about my post. It has been very
gratifying to know that what I had to say has been well received.
The responses caused me to go back and look at both what I said as well as
how I said it. And on this latter point, I was appalled to find some
extremely egreigous typos in sections 1 and 2. Not only did I use "their"
for "there" in my sentence which read "their (sic) is little or nothing
of the idea of "enticement" attached to them" (curiously, the *reverse* of
what usually occurs) and "it's" for "its" in the phrase "It's Hebrew
cognate...", but in the sentence in which I speak of the tendency to
impute the modern idea of "temptation" into the word PEIRASMOS I wrote
"... is being enticed, seduced, and is closed to sin" when what I mean to
say was "CLOSE to sin." Section 1(b) also has some places devoid of
subject/verb agreement, and there are a more than a few instances of
misspellings and dittography to be found sprinkled about the text. That's
what you get when you write on little sleep and very close to midnight.
I hope all who read the post did his or her own textual criticism
on these bits.
Second, in reply to Paul Dixon who, on Mon, 30 Jun 1997, wrote:
> If Jeff Gibson is right that the overwhelming evidence for the meaning
> of PEIRASMOS is "a trial which puts (someone of something) to the
> proof ... a test or trial of faithfulness," and if we are told in James
> that
> we should count it all joy when we encounter various PEIRASMOIS,
> "knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance ... in order
> that you may be perfect and complete" (1:2-3), then does it not seem
> strange that we should pray that God would not lead us into such
> testings? Certainly, they are for our good.
>
> Is this, coupled with the fact that the verbal form does consistently
> mean "tempt" (Mt 4:1, Js 1:13-14, for starters), explain why translations
> have traditionally rendered it "temptation"?
>
> On the other hand, might Christ's prayer in the Garden, "let this cup
> pass from Me; nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done" parallel
> and support Gibson's thesis?
the following needs to be said:
1. It is precisely because "it seem[s] strange that we should pray
that God would not lead us into such testings" that the view of the
petition as envisaging the testing of believers (either now or in
some "final/eschatological PEIRASMOS" is so questionable. They
w