Fri Mar 15 08:27:27 1996

From majordom  Fri Mar 15 08:27:27 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by scholar.cc.emory.edu (5.0/SMI-SVR4)
	id AA05111; Fri, 15 Mar 1996 08:27:27 +0500
Message-Id: <31497D7A.E35@uni-muenster.de>
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 14:23:54 +0000
From: Klaus Wachtel 
Organization: Institut f. neutestamentliche Textforschung
X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
Mime-Version: 1.0
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Subject: Re: James 2:18
References: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Length: 1508
Sender: owner-tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Status: O
X-Status: 

Maurice Robinson wrote:

> ...(if the Byztxt is followed) XWRIS has NOT been used before verse 20, though
> the use of XWRIS does become a dominant issue in verses 20-26.  Up until
> that point, the discussion does not center on the issue of faith WITHOUT
> or APART FROM works, but differs rhetorically and semantically, i.e., the
> topic under discussion in 2:14-19 is "if someone should claim to have
> faith, but does not have works" -- this is an entirely different matter,
> and does not concern the XWRIS discussion of 2:20-26.

That's exactly how Byzantine scribes and readers may have tried to explain the 
opposition with double EK in 2,18. They seem to have separated v. 18 from 20-26 
as well as from 14-17. But in 14-17 the author points out that "faith by itself, 
if it has no works, is dead" (17). In 20-26 he shows that "faith apart from 
works is dead" (26). In my opinion the statements in 17 and 26 have the same 
meaning, though the author uses XWRIS only in 26. Thus it seems very unlikely to 
me that in v. 18 he might confront a challenge to show faith by means of works 
with his own promise to show his faith by means of his works. A competition of 
works showing faith doesn't make sense in a context which opposes the dead faith 
that bears no fruit to the faith that shows its being alive by works.
Thus I conclude that the first EK in the Byz. text of 2,18 is an error, 
presumably caused by parablepsis (EK before TWN ERGWN in the next sentence).

Klaus Wachtel, INTF Muenster

Back