Many Bible translations have something like the above for the first half of chapter 1, verse 2 of St. Paul's letter to the Colossians. The translation does the job for the most part, but it misses a couple points in the Greek that can guide us to a deeper understanding of the people Paul is addressing (and those people are not only the Colossians but us, too!).
Here's the original Greek: tois en kolossais agiois kai pistois adelphois...
The first word, tois, is an article, basically “the.” This article (and the adjectives and noun to follow) is in dative case, which here indicates recipients. Then we have the prepositional phrase en kolossais that shows place, “in Colossae.” Next we have two adjectives, hagiois and pistois (more about those in a minute), linked by the conjunction kai, “and.” Finally, we see the noun adelphois, “brothers.”
Let's take a closer look at the two adjectives. Hagiois, translated above as “saints,” literally means holy or set apart or sacred. The person who is hagios is different from other people, different from the world, because he or she strives to be like God, Who is the ultimate Holy One. Pistois means faithful and believing. It derives from the verb peithō, which signifies to urge, persuade, trust, assent, yield, and/or have confidence. So faithful people are those who are persuaded to assent to, trust, and have confidence in God. They yield to God, letting go of their own notions to accept His truth. This faith can and should lead to hagios, holiness, because those who sincerely abandon themselves to God become quite different from the rest of the world. They are set apart in and for God. The two adjectives, then, complement each other well.
In the translation above, hagios appears as “saints.” This is legitimate because adjectives can be translated substatively and used as nouns, but I think that isn't necessary or desirable here. First off, the article tois, even though a preposition phrase comes right after it, can easily govern two adjectives (connected by a conjunction) and a noun. There is no parallel tois before pistois to indicate a firm separation. Second, the substantive use of hagios weakens the complementary connection between hagiois and pistois identified above.
A better translation, then, might read “to the holy and faithful brothers in Christ in Colossae.” If both adjectives modify adelphois, readers get a much clearer picture of the nature of God's family. They are both holy and faithful, set apart and believing, perhaps even different because they have been persuaded and have yielded to God's truth. This is one people, both holy and faithful, all children of God (more about that in a future post).
(Greek definitions come from Biblehub.com, especially HELPS Word Studies.)
No comments:
Post a Comment