mls@cbnewsm.att.com (02/09/90)
Regarding 1 Timothy 5:18, and its quotation of "scripture," Hal Lillywhite
suggests:
+ We may want to reconsider if this passage is in fact refering to Luke or
+ to Numbers 18:31.
and the moderator comments:
+ I looked pretty carefully to see if I could see any OT references. This
+ one seems to be pushing it. Lev 19:13 would seem to be a closer match.
+ At least it is talking about laborers and wages. However Luke does seem
+ to be a bit closer.
It's worth looking at this in detail, for what it does and does not show.
In fact, 1 Tim. 5:18 has *literal* agreement with Deuternomy 25:4 and Luke
10:7 --
Legei gar he: graphe: boun aloo:nta ou phimo:seis, kai, axios ho
ergate:s tou misthon autou.
which can be clumsily rendered as:
The writings say: do not muzzle the threshing ox, and the worker
is worth his wage.
The "ox" part appears in (the Septuagint) Deuteronomy 25:4 as:
ou phimo:seis boun aloo:nta
(i.e., the same except for word order) while the "worker" part appears in
Luke 10:7 a:
axios gar ho ergate:s tou misthou autou
which is identical except for the transitional/introductory particle _gar_
(usually translated as "for.") As the moderator remarks, there is *no* good
reason to associate Numbers 18:31 with this -- there is no verbal echo here
at all. In Leviticus 19:13, the closest echo is its reference to the "wage-
earner's wage" (_ho misthos tou mistho:tou_). There is a parallel of sense,
but no echo of wording here. Nothing like the exact replication of words in
the first part between 1 Timothy and Deuteronomy.
The trouble is knowing what this means. Is 1 Timothy quoting Luke? or do
both authors quote what *they* think is scripture (though it is *not* in our
"scriptures") or even more pointedly, does the author of 1 Timothy *only*
intend a quotation in the first part of his verse? It is not unreasonable
to infer that *both* halves of this verse are scriptural quotation -- but
that is *not* what the author says. The author may have *wrongly* thought
that the "laborer" clause was *also* a Torah quotation -- whether or not he
know it from Luke or some source common to him and the author of the 3rd
gospel. Simply *assuming* that he is quoting Luke is going far beyond the
evidence we have. Because he never mentions Luke, or gospels, or anything
else that may be taken to be a source. He simply says "writings." And we
do *not* know what he means.
The problem is that there are good reasons (not certain, mind you) to think
that Luke/Acts was written long after the Pauline letters (the genuine ones,
at any rate) so that *if* 1 Timothy is quoting Luke, it only suggests more
evidence on the side of those who take that as a pseudepigraphal letter from
"Paul." But in fact we *don't* know whether 1 Tim. quotes Luke or gets its
line from a source common to both. If there were multiple Lukan quotations,
we could take the redundancy as evidence that *this* case was quoting Luke --
but as a unique instance, it only leaves us puzzled. Sure: those who already
"know" how scripture was written ("beathed by God" with a meaning that is of
course clear to them, though it is meaningless to me) are not troubled by
this. But all I can see here is a field of unanswered questions -- and ones
that seem unanswerable to an honest inquirer. I simply do not understand why
American fundamentalists think that what *they* mean by scripture is the same
thing that is meant by the casual references to _graphe:_ ("writing") in the
texts we read. Perhaps one of them can explain it to me?
--
Michael L. Siemon We must know the truth, and we must
...!cucard!dasys1!mls love the truth we know, and we must
...!att!sfbat!mls act according to the measure of our love.
standard disclaimer -- Thomas Merton