Monday, June 1, 2020

Rolf Furuli on αρπαγμος meaning "seizure" in Philippians 2:6

I hope to do more research on the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the future. I will admit, for me to get “into” a topic, I either have to be interested in it and/or forced into studying something, and (1) I find JW-related topics, well, boring, to be honest and (2) I rarely have interactions with JWs where I live. To off-set this, I do hope to focus on issues I am interested in (e.g., Christology; linguistic issues). I hope to share some of the more interesting comments from works I will read on this blog (even if I do not will agree with it--just to share materials with readers of this blog).


The following is from the rare JW scholar (a retired lecturer in Semitic languages from the University of Oslo) who attempted to defend the rendition of αρπαγμος in Phil 2:6 as "seizure" thusly:

 

What, then, are the translation possibilities for this verse? The sense in which harpagmos is taken will greatly influence the translation. Almost all of the evidence point to an active meaning which includes force, and all the English translations on the Gramcord CD (NAB, ASV, Darby, NASB, YNG, NIV, NJB, NKJV, RSV and TEV), except NRSV, which uses “exploit,” translate it with an active meaning. But if this is correct we have to consider an important question asked by R.P. Martin, “What exactly was it that our Lord refused to plunder?” Martin answers, “There is no satisfactory answer to that question, which presses for a reply if an active signification is given to the key-term” (Carmen Christi, p. 135). This means that is harpagmos is understood in an active sense, its complement (accusative predicate) cannot be a state which already holds.

 

We can illustrate this by two sentences expressing a permanent and a temporary state, respectively:

 

1) “He did not consider being as tall as his father a seizure.”

 

2) “He did not consider being president that year a seizure.”

 

If Paul wanted to convey that Jesus already was equal to God, this would have been a permanent characteristic, and Philippians 2:6 would be close to sentence 1); a stative accusative predicate would in this case have been impossible. Sentence 2) is also strange because “a seizure” is performed to obtain something which one does not have; “to be president” would hardly collocate with “seizure” as would “to become president.”

 

The most natural way to understand the two accusatives occurring with hēgeomai from a syntactical point of view, if the active/passive nature of the clause is not considered, is to take one as object and the other as its complement. But to use this construction in an English translation to convey the thought that Jesus was already equal to God, requires that harpagmos be taken in the passive (stative) sense of “booty,” or something similar. This is Martin’s preferred view.

 

We therefore have two different ways in which to translate this verse:

 

a) “[he] did not consider a snatching in order to be [or, because] equal to God.”

 

b) “[he] did not regard it as booty [this] being equal with God”; or “he did not regard being equal with God as something to take advantage of.”

 

In favor of a) there is strong evidence for the active meaning of harpagmos as “snatching.” In favor of b) there is strong evidence for taking one accusative as object and the other as complement where hēgeomai occurs with a double accusative. The NT examples do, however, express states. They conform with and bolster b) but they do not necessarily speak against a), which is active and not stative. The examples from 3 Maccabees and one from Plutarch about an absolute use of hēgeomai with a double accusative establish the syntactic and syntactical information we have are not decisive, and that the translator’s theology must play an important role in the translation process.

 

What, though, does the context have to say? IN particular, verse 9 seems to contain some important clues. Consider the verb charizomai, which has the meaning “to grant as an act of grace” (J. Loh and E. Nida, A Translators Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Philippians [Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1977], p. 61). Also, we have the verb huperupsoō (“highly exalt”). In his large grammar (Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament, p. 445), Robertson shows that he understands the verbs in a comparative sense, that Jesus received a higher position than he had before he came to earth, but almost all commentators take it in the superlative sense of the most high position. In any case, God is the subject. He puts Jesus in the highest position next to himself, and kindly gave Jesus the exalted name. It is the superior who gives his subjects something out of grace; it is not given to a co-equal person. Thus, the element of grace in the verb charizomai clearly indicates that the Father and the Son are not equal. Verses 10 and 11 also support this conclusion: All must acknowledge that Jesus is Lord “to the glory of God the Father” . . . the linguistic evidence is not decisive, so theology must play an important role in the translators’ choice . . . (Rolf Furuli, The Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation With a Special Look at the New World Translation of Jehovah’s Witnesses [Huntington Beach, Calif.: Elihu Books, 1999], 273-75)

 

With respect to 3 Maccabees and Plutarch (Aristides 2.4), for Furuli, they are important as (1) both texts use hēgeomai in an active sense and (2) both have accusatives which are either double or function as double accusatives. Furuli renders the texts thusly (p. 271):

 

3 Maccabees 3:15 “We [subject] considered [hēgeomai, aorist] to foster [infinitive , accusative object] the inhabitants [accusative] of Coele-Syria [accusative] and Phoenicia, to show kindness willingly to them [apposition].”

 

Plutarch, Aristeides 2.4: On the occasion of Themistocles’ giving opinion [hēgeomai] on a genera’s greatest virtue (namely his) understanding and anticipation of the plans of enemies.