From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Dec 15 1995 - 14:20:40 EST
At 3:16 AM 12/15/95, rick@logos.com wrote:
>A friend and I are starting a study on 1 Peter. I ran into the following in
>verse 2:
>
>kata prognwsin theou patros, which, I promptly (which is amazing in itself)
>translated to, "according to the foreknowledge of God the Father"
>
>When I looked up prognwsis in BAGD, the same phrase was translated as,
>"according to the predestination of God the Father" and I was confused.
>
>After all, doesn't prognwsis come from the prefix pro and the root gnwsis
>and mean "to know before"? I see a definate difference between the english
>word "foreknowledge" and the english word "predestination." Without getting
>into a major eschatological debate, could anyone tell me if there is
>anything in the context that leads one to translate this phrase as
>"according to the predestination of God the Father"?
>From classical Greek already is the usage of GIGNWSKW and its cognates in
the sense of "reach a judgment," "determine (a verdict, a sentence)." This
really derives, I believe, from the built-in intellectualist bias of Greek
thinking about morality as a matter of knowledge as a predisposition to act
in a certain way. The Socratic dictum, "virtue is knowledge," is a
classical formulation of a notion already found in Homer, where you find a
good woman described as KEDNA IDUIA = "knowledgeable at good things," and
there are classical usages of GIGNWSKW and EPISTAMAI with infinitives in
the sense of "be able." In view of that history, there's reason enough for
the notion of determination to be associated with the root GNW.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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