AKMA’s Random Thoughts

James 1:2ff

OK, so last time I got all the way through the first verse. As with writing a commentary, this could take a while.

Here are some follow-through questions. First, James (Jacob) uses the vocative adelphoi for his readers. Ordinarily, and perhaps especially for ecclesiastical reading, one would translate this as "brothers and sisters," since adelphoi conventionally serves as a general address to a group of assorted gender; yet at one point, James specifically refers to adelphos e adelphe ("a brother or sister," 2:15) — suggesting at least the possibility that his vocative adelphoi are addressed to a male-only (or male-normative) group, a possibility reinforced by his periodic use of the male-specific term aner to indicate "a person" (1:8, 12, 20, 23; 2:2; 3:2). None of these uses requires its referent actually to be male. To give you an idea of how odd that is, James uses "man" six times in five chapters, always to refer to a person without specific contextual markers for gender; Paul uses the word forty-three times in the seven undisputed letters (adding up to, let’s see, sixty-one chapters), a quick scan suggesting that he always uses aner in contexts where the gender of the person is in question (or in quotations; and we can quibble about 1 Cor 13:11, but even if I concede that verse, the general point stands). Especially since James/Jacob’s usage of aner is heavily front-loaded to the first chapter (creating a “primacy effect”), I’m inclined to suspect that James envisions his audience as being men.

If that’s so — and I’m still not quite confident that it is — it seems more fitting to render the Jacobean adelphoi as “brothers,” the more precisely to communicate my understanding of his message.

Second, in 1:4, we find the first of a construction that seems downright bizarre to English-speakers: a third-person imperative. Translators typically adopt the stilted usage, “Let him [do X, Y Z],” even though nobody actually speaks that way any more. More colloquial substitutes would be “she should. . .” or (as my student Monique Ellison suggested) “she better. . . ,” though I’m not sure what I’ll do with these third-person imperatives when I get to the translation part of the commentary (I’m doing the grammatical and textual analysis first, then going back and working out a translation. lest I have a bright idea over in chapter 1, but forget about it by the time I hit chapter 5).

Last (for today), James/Jacob presents us with an interesting problem in his use of the verb diakrinw (twice in the middle voice, in 1:6, once in a passive-voice form in 2:4). The general Jacobean problem to which this verb points is a departure from the ideal of living haplws, with a unity of personality that aims always at just behavior; in this context, meden diakrinomenos in 1:6 seems to suggest something like “without ambivalence.” Bible translators prefer to translate diakrinw-words as having to do with “doubting,” but the normal sense for diakrinw in the middle voice, though, is “to get [a dispute] settled” (s.v. diakrinw, LSJ) (that’s the Liddell/Scott/Jones lexicon, the standard lexicon for classical-Hellenistic Greek; I lean somewhat more heavily on non-“biblical” reference tools to avoid the theological axes that people grind, even inadvertently, in their linguistic research; why grind their axes, when I have my own hatchets that need sharpening?), hence, something like “arrive at a distinction among alternatives.” “Doubting” entails an attitude of (as it were) positive incredulity, where I don’t see that in the lexical domain of diakrinomai or even in NT usage.

Let’s look at what’s going on in the few diakrinomai passages of the NT. In Acts 10:20, Peter gets an emphatic command from the Holy Spirit, who urges him to get up and find three strangers whom the Spirit has sent; he is to go meden diakrinomenos, which the NRSV translates as “without hesitation,” good enough if one sees the hesitation as a matter of volition rather than time — but I’d say (again) “without ambivalence” may communicate that better. In Acts 11:2, circumcised colleagues diekrinonto Peter (for eating with Gentiles), which the NRSV renders “criticized.” That sounds fair for the context, though it seems a little odd for diakrinomai; it seems to be working in the sense of “observe a distinction,” with a negative valence in this situation. In Romans 14:23, Paul talks about people with dietary scruples; the NRSV identifies them as “those who have doubts,” but I think it much more to the point to say that they make distinctions among foods, some to be eaten, others to be avoided. Jude v 9 has Michael diakrinomenos with the Devil about the fate of Moses’ body; that looks like the classical “settling a dispute” to me. And in v 22, the letter adjures its reader to have mercy on the diakrinomenous, which the NRSV apositely renders “wavering.”

Now, in James 1:6, it looks a lot more like a case of “wavering” or being ambivalent than it looks like doubting, to me. And in 2:4, the passive form ou diekrithete en eautois seems to convey “aren't you being divided among youselves,” a sort of form of group ambivalence. But I’ve spent too much time on blogging already this morning, I’m arguing too loosely in a public forum, and PIppa is awake, Jennifer’s coming to visit, and I have to walk the dog. I will be sure to post this entry, though, from within the library precincts.

Posted by AKMA at August 23, 2004 10:36 AM | TrackBack