Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: geoff@pmafire.UUCP (Geoff Allen) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: I Cor. 7:1 (was Re: Seventeenth Century Language) Message-ID: Date: 5 Oct 89 03:36:16 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: WINCO Computer Engineering, INEL, Idaho Lines: 68 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article bnr-fos!bmers58!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) writes: > >This is regarding 1 Corinthians 7:1 which says "Now concerning the >things whereof ye wrote unto me: {It is} good for a man not to touch a >woman.". > >I believe that He is telling us ... that it is good >for a man not to touch any woman at all unless she is his wife. >... The NIV's it is good >for a man not to marry is not only unScriptural, after all God Himself >caused Adam to marry, but also entirely removes the principle that this >verse declares. But what about the rest of I Cor. 7? Let's not forget the context. Paul explicitly states several times that he believes that it *is* good for a man not to marry. (cf. 7:7,8,17,20,26,32-35) He also says that it is good to marry. The point is that you should do whichever God has called you to do. >One who guided his life by the NIV's version of this >piece of divine advice would easily convince himself that things like >extra-marital dancing and even fondling are acceptable before God. I don't see how this follows at all. If you follow the NIV's translation, then you'd believe that it is good for a man not to marry -- that's all. There are plenty of other verses in the Bible that tell us not to fondle someone else's wife. Again, let's keep it in Biblical context. I don't think anyone who does that will come up with your interpretation of the NIV's wording. >God, >on the other hand, wants us to know that the only place for any form of >intimacy between a man and a woman, and the only place for even those >things which may tempt one toward such intimacy, i.e. physical contact, >is only within the marriage relationship itself. Absolutely, but I don't think that I Cor. 7:1 is the place to prove it. One final note: The dictionary in the back of my Greek New Testament (UBS Third Edition), says that `hapto,' the word in question, ^=omega means `touch' (among other things). However, it also says that `gunaikos me haptesthai' (the wording in I Cor. 7:1) means `not to ^=eta marry.' I'm not a Greek scholar, nor do I claim to be, so I can't vouch for the trustworthiness of the definition the UBS gives. But I do find it interesting in light of this little `controversy.' Are we dealing with a Greek idiom here? -- Geoff Allen \ Since we live by the Spirit, {uunet,bigtex}!pmafire!geoff \ let us keep in step with the Spirit. ucdavis!egg-id!pmafire!geoff \ -- Gal. 5:25 (NIV) p.s. Is there an accepted way to transliterate Greek into ASCII? Most of the letters are easy (e.g. alpha=`a' beta=`b' gamma=`g' etc.), but what about letters like omega & eta, since `o' makes more sense for omicron and `e' makes more sense for epsilon? [Note that this is a dictionary intended specifically for use with the NT. I'd be willing to bet that that note was put there specifically to help people interpret this passage. Not that this means it is valueless. But there is a scholarly disagreement on the meaning of this Greek phrase. Unless something has been recently discovered that settles it once and for all, I'd be reluctant to take that dictionary entry as a final answer. (If there were such a final solution, you'd think that one of the commentaries I checked would say something about it.) --clh]