Examining Pauline Greek For Its Simplicity

Submitted by M Tovey (United States), Jul 15, 2015 at 11:40

This observer has long ago absorbed the vast and varied dissertations about the way these observations are couched in verbosity and archane gramatical structure. There's reason for this: the short version (pun intended) is that it was how the King's language was learned, and a rudimentary version of Paul's use of koinonian Greek was involved as well. By remembering that Ephesus was John the Apostle's church, we can see that the simplicity of Paul' s language to the Ephesians is quite evident (see Ephesians 3:14, et seq., which is exquisite in this fashion), embroiled in the love of Christ.

In the context of this particular forum's subject matter, the tyranny of the Syrian regime is well exposed in Paul's contentions that many were so easily disposed to depart from the Gospel he preached, as it is so now two thousand years later. Damascus is now so far from the Gospel influence that it is in range of Isaiah 17; and Paul's words barely a distant echo.

To be sure, the King James version of Scripture does much in the way the language uses flourishing phraseology, but then it was the language that brought the Gospel to the whole of the British realm, and America, where it was the witness that brought Jesus to me, the letters by Paul having no small part. I suspect it is the same even in Suomo, for which I am grateful to the LORD.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".