Once More into the Breach! PEIRASMOS in 1 Tim. 6:9
Jeffrey Gibson (jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu)
Wed, 6 Aug 1997 22:34:36 -0500 (CDT)
In the recent exchanges on the meaning of PEIRASMOS in Matt.
6:13//Lk. 11:14 I defended the view that *whatever else* the noun
might mean within the context of the verse, it did not mean
"temptation" (i.e., enticement to sin) because, as my lexical study
indicated, contemporay and traditional usage of PEIRASMOS through
the end of the 2nd century showed that the idea of seduction was
not part of the noun's semantic range, even within Christian usage.
Now, a text I did not discuss - a text which, if its standard
exegesis is correct, challenges and perhaps mildly falsifies my
claim - is 1 Tim. 6:9. hOI DE BOULOMENOI PLOUTEIN EMPIPTOUSIN EIS
PEIRASMON KAI PAGIDA KAI EPIQUMIAS POLLAS ANOHTOUS KAI BLABERAS,
hAITINES BUQIZOUSIN TOUS ANQRWPOUS EIS OLEQRON KAI APWLEIAN.
Virtualy every commentator I have consulted states that the meaning
of PEIRASMOS here is indeed "temptation", not "test" or "trial",
even though it is recognized how unusual from the stand point of
Christian usage alone the noun's having this meaning actually is.
(Take, for instance, Jeremias' comment that "In the New Testament,
where the word [i.e., PEIRASMOS] occurs twenty one times, the
meaning "temtation (into sin)" appears univocally at only one
passage, 1 Timothy 6:9; in all other passages the reference is to
the testing of faith or to God's fidelity being put to the test",
_The Lord's Prayer_, p. 29). Now as far as I can tell, the main
reason that exegetes have drawn this conclusion about the meaning
of PEIRASMOS in this text is that they take the syntax and wording
of the verse to indicate that the author of 1 Tim. is glossing
PEIRASMOS with his metaphors of "falling into" EMPIMTEIN EIS) a
"snare" (PAGIS) and "many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge
men into ruin and destruction" (RSV), and therefore, in line with
this, is presenting the noun with the sense that now clings to our
word "temptation".
But does the author of 1 Tim actually present the PEIRASMOS
spoken of in 1 Tim 6:9 as the equivalent of "falling into" a
"snare" and into "desires which plunge men into ruin". Is the
phrase KAI PAGIDA KAI EPIQUMIAS POLLAS ANOHTOUS KAI BLABERAS,
hAITINES BUQIZOUSIN TOUS ANQRWPOUS EIS OLEQRON KAI APWLEIANhe
really a gloss on hOI DE BOULOMENOI PLOUTEIN EMPIPTOUSIN EIS
PEIRASMON PEIRASMOS? May one not take the repeated use of KAI
before PAGIDA and EPIQUMIAS as an indication that the author is
talking about separate phenomena, all equally dangerous for "the
one who desires to be rich", but distinct from one another none the
less?
And (to really go out on a limb), if the author is not glossing
PEIRASMOS here, and sees it as something separate from the other
results of desiring to be rich, may we go on to conclude - for
contextual reasons as well as lexical ones - that he is using the
noun not only with its "standard" sense of "a test' or "a testing",
but with particular sense of "test" that I have previously argued
the noun bears in Matt. 6:13//Lk. 11:4, namely, "a testing of
God"? Is it possible that what the author of 1 Tim. is saying here
is "But those who desire to be rich are in danger of becoming
involved in putting God to the test, as well as in a snare, and in
many senseless and hurtful desires ..." After all, the context of
the verse is a parenaesis on how the believer should trust in God
to see to his needs, and that desiring more than food and covering
is in effect a doubting that God is faithful. And the link between
desiring riches and "testing God" is certainly strongly undergirded
in the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11.
I wait eargerly for responses.
Jeffrey Gibson
jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu