An eclectic group of individuals who have two things in common: faith in Jesus and a connection to St. John's College. Here we gather, across time and space, to carry on a dialogue.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
The Problem Attic - Ephesians 4:8
Posted by Jackson at 1:00 PM
Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Problem Attic. I'm your host, Jackson Ferrell. Let's see what we've got in the attic today! I'll just open up this box here, and see what's inside...

Ephesians 4:8 - 'Therefore it says, "WHEN HE ASCENDED ON HIGH, HE LED CAPTIVE A HOST OF CAPTIVES, AND HE GAVE GIFTS TO MEN."'

Here, Paul is quoting Psalm 68:18, which reads, "You have ascended on high, You have led captive Your captives; You have received gifts among men, Even among the rebellious also, that the LORD God may dwell there." Now what sticks out to me is that the original psalm states that Christ has received gifts, while Paul's quotation of the passage says that he gave gifts. I checked the original language, and Psalm 68:18's Hebrew is "laqach mattanah" (two different words from different roots, "to take gifts," the Septuagint uses a form of "lambano" for the verb), while Paul's Greek is "edoken domata," with both words coming from the same root as "doron" ("give gifts" is a good translation of the phrase).

Now, normally I have no problem if a writer (New Testament or other) fails to quote his source with word-for-word accuracy, especially in a literary form like a letter; we can't always be troubled to slavishly look up the precise verbatim wording of the text. But here, Paul is apparently turning around the meaning of the verb entirely--and more importantly, the whole "gave gifts" thing is central to his point in the passage! In that section of Ephesians 4, he's tying Christ's gift of the Spirit to the gift of grace that He conferred to us by dying, descending, and rising again, and he (Paul) is using this passage from the Psalms as a proof text. But if Paul had bothered to quote the passage as it appears in the original, instead of changing this verb, it would suggest that we are the ones who should be paying homage to Christ! As an OT support of spiritual gifts, it seems to me to be kind of spurious. And that is problematic.

If anyone can help me take this verse down out of the Problem Attic and into the...I don't know, the Okay-This-Makes-Sense-Now Front Room or something, that would be much appreciated. Let me know if you've got any answers to the dilemma.
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  Comment by Blogger Jackson at 10:42 AM, November 27, 2007
You know, I'm not sure that anyone even reads this anymore.
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