Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!lll-winken!uunet!bellcore!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: panix!mls@cmcl2.nyu.edu (Michael Siemon) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: FAITH - A question for Greek and Hebrew scholars/amateurs Message-ID: Date: 27 Jun 91 07:14:55 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: PANIX - Public Access Unix Systems of NY Lines: 107 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article davidbu@loowit.wr.tek.com (David E. Buxton) writes: >A friend of mine, a student of Greek and Hebrew, commented that Faith >from the Greek is a strongly active verb that means to "Trust and Obey". Well, there is a whole complex of words in Greek related to the noun _pistis_ which we usually translate (at least in a Christain context) "faith." There are two verbs closely related to the noun, _pisteuo:_ which can be rendered as "having _pistis_ [it is a verbal derivative of the noun], and -- perhaps more surprising -- _peitho:_ meaning to win over, prevail upon, persuade and a whole raft of of other senses that involve political argumentation in the assembly of the people. The broadest meaning of _pistis_ is indeed "trust" (it is cognate to Latin _fides_, "faithful", remaining true.). And _pisteuo:_ picks up this broad sense. But there an element here too of "belief" or of "persuasion" (or even of compliance, obedience, confidence ...) that is related to the more dynamic _peitho:_. This is a sense, incidentally, that is *contrasted* to the more "philosophical" _episteme_, knowledge -- primarily because of its lack of certainty and demonstrability. In the Septuagint, _pistis_ and _pisteuo:_ are used to translate the Hebrew _emunah_ and its cognates. I am not competent to speak about that, but there are studies which have given a "generic" modern view of a major constrast between OT usage and _pistis_ as used in the NT. I write now to recommend a recent book that I have found very suggestive. It is James L. Kinneavy's _Greek Rhetorical Origins of Christian Faith_, Oxford University Press, 1987, ISBN #0-19-503735-9. The title is a bit misleading -- the "origin" he is trying to trace is that of the CONCEPT lying behind uses of _pistis_ in the NT (not at all tracing origins of any *contents* or *goals* of Christian faith.) I may attempt, when I have some more time, a fair review of the book. For now let me cite a few remarks and suggest Kinneavy's major conclusion. With regard to the contrast of OT and NT, he cites a number of works (with little disagreement) going back to D. M. Baille's 1927 _Faith in God and its Christian Consummation_. "Most Christian and some Jewish authorities [says Kinneavy] agree that, although some elements of the Christian notion can be seen in the Old Testament, what is called faith in the Old Testament and what is called faith in the New Testament are quite different concepts... [Bailley] posits a hypothetical reader coming to the Old Testament from the New Testament and expecting to find faith 'mentioned on almost every page. But what he would really find is -- to put it roughly and broadly -- that the Old Testament never mentions faith at all... In the Authorized Version [KJV] he will find the word "faith" only twice, and a little investigation will show that in both cases the real meaning is probably "good faith" in the sense of "faithfulness."... 'It does not seem likely that faith, in the sense of belief or trust in God, is intended. The Hebrew noun here used, and its cognate nouns, never seem in the Old Testament to have that meaning.' He surveys some important statements on faith in the Old Testament (paticularly in relation to Abraham), in Isaiah, and in the Psalms. He finds a strong refrain of faith viewed as trust in God. But the combination of trust with belief he does not find. Trust he calls the moral element of faith, and belief he calls the intellectual element, and he particularly does not find this second element in the Old Testament... It is therefore somewhat surprising that the New Testament writers have both a common word and a fairly common notion..." I'll leave Kinneavy at this point. He goes on to argue -- with great cogency as far as I can judge -- that the particular combination of notions combined in _pistis_ in the New Testament writers bears a VERY strong resemblance to the way the word was used in contemporary Hellenistic rhetorical practice -- this after the "triumph" in popular culture and education of the rhetor over the philosophers, whose preference for _episteme_ disparaged _pistis_. This is something for me to digest, as I have long taken the "trust" element (Bailley's "moral" as opposed to "intellectual" sense of the term) to be the main one, in something like the OT sense or a sense which "rescues" it from the philosophers' disdain. But I have less aquaintence with classical rhe- toric than I might (and Kinneavy points out that rhetoric has been under a very dark cloud, notably since the 19th century and its desire for absolute knowledge, which rhetoric in general knows it cannot reach.) Kinneavy points to the COMPLEX relation of speaker and audience, in which there are appeals to ethos (the character and authority of the speaker),to pathos (the [legitimate] desires and motives of the hearers) and to logic (in a general sense of rational discourse with reference to evidence and inference). And he traces in NT discourse a substantial body of EACH of these, and other relevant, rhetorical components, deliberately used as part of the meaning of _pistis_ and its cognates. He points to the ubiquity of rhetorical training throughout the Hellenistic/Roman world (which I knew, but had not carefully considered in this context). And he has a good case. Sufficiently that I, having rested for a while in the broader sense of trust need to rethink and reevaluate *my* relation to faith. I highly recommend this book to anyone who like to explore the consequences of word usage for what words convey, and how that relates to the context in which the New Testament was written -- and what it must therefore mean to us. -- Michael L. Siemon The things we have to have learned m.siemon@att.com in order to do, we learn by doing. - or - mls@panix.com -- attrib. to Herakleitos