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Old 07-05-2008, 06:54 PM
Steven Avery Steven Avery is offline
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 462
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Excellent study, Will.

2 Corinthians 13:1-4
Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly:
and indeed bear with me.
For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy:
for I have espoused you to one husband,
that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.


As Will notes, the emphasis is on Christ, not us.

2 Corinthians 13:3-4
But I fear, lest by any means,
as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty,
so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus,
whom we have not preached,
or if ye receive another spirit,
which ye have not received,
or another gospel,
which ye have not accepted,
ye might well bear with him.


I noticed a few things in reading up on the side. (Using Will's studies as a fulcrum for additional research is always excellent.)

The early church writers strongly support the true Bible reading, although most are not easily available on the Net. Here is one that was, in a very readable Latin:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf02.vi.iv.iii.html
Clement of Alexandria Stromata Book III
Jam veto vel invitum cogit Paulam generationem ex deceptione deducere, cure dicit:
"Vereor autem, ne sicut serpens Evam decepit, corrupti sint sensus vestri a simplicitate, quae est in Christo."


Along with that the later Thomas Aquinas is on the net, similar. Afaik nothing else quickly available, although perhaps a more technical Corinthians commentary would offer some of the references. Rarely do such commentaries give extensive early church writer references.

This added phrase in the W-H "probably, maybe, who knows" reading represents something that is relatively rare, an alexandrian addition to the true Bible. As such, if you delve in textual matters, it has a special interest.

According to the apparatus the early church writers strongly support the true Bible, sans the added phrase. Origen, Eusebius, Didymus, Chrysostom and Jerome and others support this reading, they do not have any addition (there are two or three competing forms of the addition). As an addition/omission question, in a verse like this that should generally mean that they quote the text in full without the added phrase. There is support for the alexandrian addition, mostly a bit later, Ambrose and Augustine are listed, I am taking the most well known for here. (Keep in mind that the apparatus is untrustworthy, and often skewed to the alexandrian reading, however here it shows the true reading preponderance anyway.) The phrase addition may actually be an Old Latin variant, reasonably early, it could predate the mass of alexandrian tamperings, which are usually corruptions or omissions, not additions. An Old Latin addition (the variant is in some Old Latin MS) would go along with its exceptional nature of an alexandrian MS addition. While the three largest textual lines, the Byzantine Greek, the Aramaic Peshitta and the Latin Vulgate all agree on the text and have no phrase addition in their mass of MS. Athough there is a minority maintained in the Greek line for the addition.

You can see that Will makes an excellent point that there is no Greek word for devotion in the minority Greek that is apparently deliberately mistranslated in modern versions. The Greek word that they tamper with in the English text translation (since it would not make sense to talk of our purity) agnothtos, means simply purity, not "devotion to purity". Here is its other NT use, with the modern versions doing similar.

2 Corinthians 6:6
By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned,

John Gill's notes given by Will may well be the simplest and clearest and best commentary. As well as the John Calvin note. In the John Calvin edition there is mention that the referent question (simplicity in Christ -- simplicity of the believers) had been a Reformation discussion. John Gill and John Calvin had a clear picture on this. (Not that they are always right, nor do you have to be oriented towards Calvinism to see this truth that matches the pure Bible. )

Shalom,
Steven

Last edited by Steven Avery; 07-05-2008 at 07:21 PM.