[b-greek] Philippians 1:6

From: Harold R. Holmyard III (hholmyard@ont.com)
Date: Mon Sep 04 2000 - 12:00:14 EDT


Dear Mike,

One translation offered for EPITELEW in LSJ is "bring to perfection."
Others are "complete" or "finish." In BAGD are suggested translations
"bring out" or "perform." The translation of Phil 1:6 would have to supply
"it" in all these translations of the verb.

                                Yours,
                                Harold Holmyard

>Given the recent thread concerning aspect, I think my question here
>will give some feet to the somewhat theoretic nature. In other words,
>different pieces of a context bring together different pieces of the
>meaning. However, my question is about tense and specifically how tense
>is derived from a text.
>
>In Philippians 1:6 we have:
> hOTI hO ENARXAMENOS EN hUMIN ERGON AGAQON EPITELESEI AXRI
> hHMERAS CRISTOU IHSOU:
>
>Some observations:
> EPITELESEI is future.
>
> EPITELEW is rather punctilliar in nature. I understand it to
> "mean" complete. In fact, the nature of completion may be somewhat
> emphatic given the prefix EPI. It is used in the NT in : Gal. 3:3,
> Heb. 8:5, Heb. 9:6, 2 Cor. 7:1, 2 Cor. 8:6, 2 Cor. 8:11 (twice),
> 1 Pet. 5:9, and Rom. 15:28. Heb. 8:5 is rather interesting
> in this regard. The NIV has "when he was about to build the
> tabernacle" he was warned to focus on the details. Perhaps it
> would be better to translate as, "when the tabernacle was nearly
> complete" he was warned to focus on the details. In other words,
> "Moses, make sure you do last minute quality checks so that
> everything is exactly the way I said it should be!"
>
> AXRI must contour the tense of the verb. In other words, one
> can't have a punctilliar until. There has to be some sense of
> 'continue'.
>
>So, my question is generally how one would translate this.
>Specifically, would
>
> "that the one who has begun a good work in you(pl) will continue to
> complete it until the day of Christ Jesus"
>
>or
> "that the one who has begun a good work in you(pl) will continue until
> he completes it at the day of Christ Jesus"
>
>or
> something else be best? The NIV has "carry it on to completion".




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