From: George Blaisdell (maqhth@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Feb 17 1999 - 11:15:56 EST
>From: "Carl W. Conrad"
>
>At 8:58 PM -0800 2/16/99, George Blaisdell wrote:
>>I am groping my way through this passage, and find several textual
>>variances, and almost no English translations that use the word
>>'grace'... What gives?
>>
>>1. CARIS DE EUCARISTW TW QEW [Concordant Text ~ Sinaiticus?]
>>2. EUCARISTW TW QEW [Alexandrinus]
>>3. CARIS TW QEW [Vaticanus]
>>4. CARIS DE TW QEW [NA26]
>>
>>Context seems to place this passage as the answer to the TIS ME
RUSETAI
>>question immediately preceding, and the culmination of a long
a-building
>>rhetorical sequence, and CARIS would seem to be THE answer.
>>And CARIS DE euCARIStw [#1] seems tantalizing... Rhetorical simile?
>>Sheer coincidence?
>
>Yes, it does relate to the preceding TIS ME hRUSETAI? CARIS in this
context
>must mean "Thanks," or "Gratitude." EUCARISTEW is its verbal
equivalent, "I
>thank." The basic sense of CARIS is something like "goodwill evoking
>reciprocal goodwill or responding to it, i.e., "graciousness" and
>"gratitude." When it gets translated as "grace" it refers to the primal
>goodwill of God that is reciprocated in the thankfulness of believers.
Well, then, slipping into English rhetorical translation for a moment,
is the qhestion "What will be saving me from this body of death?"
answered by "Gratitude"?? Gratitude will be saving me? Why would it
not be 'the primal goodwill of God'? fwiw, that seems to be [to my
rhetorical ears at least] a much more climactic answer to this long
rhetoric buildup than 'thankfulness'. MY gratitude simply does not seem
adequate to countering the power of 'this body of death', yet God's
Grace would seem to handle that small problem rather easily! [And I
sense this line heading into theological shoals...]
>EUCARISTEW appears to be an alternative to CARIS in the Alexandrinus
>meaning the same thing, while the reading you have in your Concordant
Text
>appears to incorporate both variants in a meaningless jumble.
In a minor defense of the Concordnt Greek Text I should point out that I
got #2 & #3 [above] from it in the superlinear.
The Concordant Literal Translation gives "Grace! I thank God through
Jesus Christ our Lord." This rendering makes DE into an exclamation
point, or possibly it makes CARIS DE a complete sentence with the
implicit ESTIN: "It is Grace [that will be saving me.]"
Is the incorporation of both variants really a meaningless jumble? Can
the incorporation not divide into two sentences? [CARIS DE. EUCARISTW
TW QEW...] Is that just bad Greek and thus rejectible?
Thank-you, Carl... The possibility that CARIS and EUCARISTW are really
the same 'word' in textual variants had not occurred to me, and the idea
of reciprocity as a [lexical?] underpinning of the word CARIS is new to
me as well.
George
George Blaisdell
Roslyn, WA
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