hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick) (07/20/85)
In article <1585@akgua.UUCP>, rjb@akgua.UUCP (R.J. Brown [Bob]) writes: ... > which means "in the time of Abiathar the high priest". > 1) The wording can be understood in the vein of > "When President Reagan lived in Illinois.... ... > "epi" with the genitive simply means "in the time of" ... > The episode did indeed happen "in the time of" Abiathar. He was I am not a Greek scholar, but I do have access to commentaries on the Greek. It is fairly clear that this interpretation is wrong. The initial translation on which the discussion is based is also wrong. There are two possible phrases in Greek: /epi Abiathar archiereos/, and /epi Abiathar tou archiereos/. The first one means /in the time when Abiathar was high priest/. The second one means /in the time of Abiathar the high priest/. There is no issue about the meaning of /epi/ + genitive. Everyone agrees it means "in the time of". The issue is about /Abiathar archiereos/. This is not the way one says "High Priest Abiathar". I.e. it is not parallel with President Reagan. That would be /Abiathar tou archiereos/ is similar. The problem is that the standard scholarly Greek text doesn't have the /tou/. Without it, archiereos is not a title. So the translation is in fact "when Abiathar was high priest". However there are other ways out if you want to take them. I quote the following from C.E.B. Cranfield's commentary on Mark in the Cambridge Greek Testament series. It is almost identical to the comments of Vincent Taylor in his "The Gospel According to St Mark", 2nd Edition: ------------------ /epi Abiathar archiereos/ must mean 'when Abiathar was High Priest'. In I Sam xxi 'the priest' is Ahimelech. Abiathar was that one of Ahimelech's sons who escaped the massacre by Doeg the Edomite. A C /Th/ and a good many other MSS. insert /tou/ before /archiereos/. The phrase then means 'in the days of Abiathar the High Priest', which need not imply that he was actually High Priest at the time. The variant is probably due to a sense of the historical difficulty. The fact that D W it sy^s omit the phrase altogether -- as do Mt. and Lk. -- makes the suggestion that the whole phrase is a misguided gloss not unreasonable. But it is perhaps more likely that Jesus himself or possibly Mark mentioned Abiathar as the High Priest particularly associated with David, forgetting that at the time of the incident he was not yet High Priest. It may be that there is some confusion between Ahimelech and Abiathar in the O.T. itself -- cf. I Sam. xxii. 20 with II Sam. viii. 17, I Chr. xviii. 16, xxiv. 6. ------------------ I should note that neither TEV nor RSV show any textual uncertainties by giving an alternative in the margin. I don't have any other texts in my office. Here are the passages he mentioned in the O.T. (TEV): I Sam. 22:20: "But Abiathar, one of Ahimelech's sons, escaped, and went and joined David." II Sam. 8:17: "Zadok son of Ahitub and Ahimelech son of Abiathar were priests; ..." I Chr. 18:16: "Zadok son of Ahitub and Ahimelech son of Abiathar were priests; ..." I Chr. 24:6: "... Ahimelech son of Abiathar, ..."