Forgive me if someone has already answered this, but I'm new on here and am not trawling every page to check. OK, now why does Acts 20:28 in the NWT have the Son in brackets? Did they insert it themselves? There's no reference to Son in the interlinear and I'm intrigued.
Acts 20:28
by faundy 18 Replies latest watchtower bible
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AK - Jeff
Here is the way it reads in other translations;
28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. [ a ] Be shepherds of the church of God, [ b ] which he bought with his own blood. NIV
28 "Be on guard for yourselves and for all ( A ) the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd ( B ) the church of God which ( C ) He purchased with His own blood NASB
28 Be careful for yourselves and for all the people the Holy Spirit has given to you to oversee. You must be like shepherds to the church of God, [ a ] which he bought with the death of his own Son New Century Version
28 Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, ( A ) among whom the Holy Spirit has appointed you as overseers, ( B ) to shepherd the church of God, [ a ] which He purchased with His own blood Holman Christian Standard Bible
28 `Take heed, therefore, to yourselves, and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit made you overseers, to feed the assembly of God that He acquired through His own blood, Youngs Literal Translation
28 Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God [ a ] which He purchased with His own blood NKJV
SO - at least one other translation does the same thing [but not in brackets]. If the NWT committee thought it could be done that way, and it solidified the preconcieved doctrines they espouse, I am sure there was no choice in the mind of Freddy when he
rewrotetranslated the Bible. -
Justitia Themis
This scripture recently was discussed on another DB.
http://www.christiandiscussionforums.org/v/showthread.php?t=62893
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faundy
I'm not logged into that board, anyone know if it hs been discussed on this site~?
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Narkissos
The 1998 edition of the French Bible de Jérusalem also has "par le sang de son propre fils" (with the blood of his own Son; also NRSV).
Imo the Greek wording is rather due to sloppy writing (the writer "forgetting" that the referent in the main clause was "God," not "Christ") than to a deliberate theological intent: the point would be unique and unlikely to be stated in such a casual way, in an incidental clause. Not to mention that it hardly suits strict orthodox trinitarian doctrine (contrast the "heresy" of patripassianism, according to which the Father suffered).
It is also possible, as has often been argued, that dia tou haimatos tou idiou (lit. through the blood [of] the own) reflects an early Christological title, (God's) "Own" being roughly equivalent to agapètos, (God's) Beloved. But this is guesswork. The text soon seemed problematic, as shown by the many variants (some mss adding kurios, "the Lord," in the main clause, and simplifying the incidental clause as tou idiou haimatos, as in Hebrews 9:22).
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Leolaia
The insertion of "[Son]" in brackets is imho is one possible option. This is one of several passages in the NT of theological significance that have variant textual forms, see Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus (chapter 6) for a fuller discussion of the issue (the case of Acts 20:28 is mentioned on p. 114). These textual issues (which vary between "church of the Lord" and "church of God", which is deemed by most to be the more original form) are however peripheral to the ambiguity in the Greek of the key phrase dia tou haimatos tou idiou "with the blood of his own". That is to say, it is this ambiguity (along with its christological implications) that likely gave rise to the different forms. There are two possible readings, "with his own blood" (i.e. God's blood) and "with the blood of the one who is God's own". The latter reading takes ho idios as a substantive and there are several examples of this elsewhere in Acts: "On their release, Peter and John went back to their own (pros tous idious, i.e. "to their own [people]") and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them" (4:23), "He ordered the centurion to keep Paul under guard but to give him some freedom and permit his own (tón idión autou, i.e. "his own [friends]") to take care of his needs" (24:23). See also John 1:11, 13:1, 15:19, 1 Timothy 5:8 (where tón idión refers to one's relatives), as well as the non-substantive use of ho idiou in Romans 8:23 (tou idiou huiou "his own Son"). The other option is also a little stylistically awkward as there are other clearer ways to say "with his own blood" (such as dia tou idiou haimatos which in fact occurs in Hebrews 13:12 or dia tou heautou haimatos).
OTOH the stylistic argument has been disputed and there are problems with the substantive reading, such as the fact that ho idios does not otherwise occur substantively as a term for Christ and the fact that usually the substantive occurs in the plural, not the singular (but see John 15:19). The word also more often occurs non-substantively (cf. John 1:41, 5:43, 7:18, etc., and see Acts 1:25, eis ton topon ton idion "to their own place" for an example from Acts) in the literature. One other curiosity is the fact that the speech in 20:28 is directed towards the elders in Ephesus and it resembles the phraseology of two other writings associated with Ephesus: (1) "In love he (i.e. God) predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood (dia tou haimatos autou), the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace" (Ephesians 1:5-7). Here the reference of autou is clearly to Christ and not to God (cf. en hó "in whom" in v. 7 = en tó égapémenó "in the one he loves" in v. 6). (2) "Being as you are imitators of God, once you took on new life through the blood of God (en haimati theou) you completed perfectly the task so natural to you" (Ignatius, Ephesians 1:1). Here the reference is plainly to "God's blood", a concept close to the non-substantive reading of Acts 20:28. BTW, this is not a valid argument for or against any particular reading of Acts 20:28, but it is an interesting observation.
There is a detailed discussion of this issue you can read here: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/test-archives/html4/1999-03/30484.html. There is also a full-length article on the subject in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly (1947).
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Leolaia
Narkissos....I like your suggestion that the author lost the chain of reference through sloppy writing, with this oversight being later capitalized on for christological purposes. That makes a lot of sense. What do you think tho of the suggestion of an ellision here, i.e. of an original tou idiou huiouthat was misread as tou idiou? Plausible but not necessary imho.
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Narkissos
What do you think tho of the suggestion of an ellision here, i.e. of an original tou idiou huiouthat was misread as tou idiou? Plausible but not necessary imho.
That would be an easy haplography indeed, but I agree it is not necessary. On a less precise but very similar suggestion cf. Metzger ad loc.: "It is not necessary to suppose, with Hort, that huiou may have dropped out aftertou idiou, though palaeographically such an omission would have been easy."
Otoh one may well construe Ignatius' phrasing as an early Christological interpretation (and henceby formal attestation) of the commonly accepted reading of Acts (without huiou).
Btw the reference for tou idiou haimatou was to Hebrews 9:12 (my mistake).
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Leolaia
Actually we're both right, the expression occurs in both Hebrews 9:12 and 13:12. Who knew!
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faundy
Eek you two have really lost me now; I'm studying English literature, not Greek, which is a rotten shame. I take it there's no easy answer to my question.