Now I have come across Ben Witherington's work on the question, both
his commentary on the Corinthian correspondence, and more to the
point, his Tyndale Bulletin article on EIDWLOQUTON (vol 44, pp.
237ff). He has put forth what is to me a quite convincing case, based
on analysis of all known occurrences of the word in extant ancient
literature, that EIDWLOQUTON has ONLY the sense that Fee maintained
it must have in this passage, that it NEVER refers to temple meat
bought in the market and taken home.
That idea I can buy; it appears to be justified by the data, and it
provides for everything that is exegetically attractive about Fee's
position while avoiding what were, EMOI, significant weaknesses in
Fee's lexical semantics. The brief instructions at the end of the
passage, relating to meat consumed in private homes, on this view
become simply a related expansion on the original topic. This view
also removes the necessity for Fee to do what I think is a very weak
piece of exegesis, when he claims that the person in 10:28 who
whispers TOUTO hIEROQUTON ESTIN must be a pagan, on the assumption
that a Christian would have said EIDWLOQUTON. If EIDWLOQUTON has only
this one referent as Witherington claims, then it could not appear
even on a Christian's lips (the pagan would obviously never use it,
since EIDWLON reflects a uniquely Jewish/Christian perspective) at a
meal in a private home, and hIEROQUTON turns out to be perfectly
appropriate in Christian vocabulary. I'd be interested, on this
point, to see a similar study on hIEROQUTON, to see if it does in
fact appear in Christian writings with reference to temple meat
purchased in the market and consumed at home.
Anyway, the question at hand for me is this: can anyone adduce
reasons for my NOT accepting Witherington's view?
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In Love to God and Neighbor,
Randy Leedy
Bob Jones University
Greenville, SC
RLeedy@bju.edu
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