Corpus-Paul

["David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>]

Nathan,

>>      I'm exploring the nature of James' rise to power in the early
church, and I noticed a curious wording that Paul uses in Galatians 1:19:

        But I did not see any other of the apostles [other than Kephas, that
        is], only James the brother of the Lord.

The wording here, if taken most literally, would seem to imply that James
was not, at this time, counted among the apostles.  Unfortunately, I do
not
know enough Greek to be able to analyze the original text myself, so I am
asking whether it is possible or even necessary to interpret the Greek as
excluding James from the apostolate at this time in history (Paul's first
visit to Jerusalem).<<

Literally, the sentence says the following:

HETERON (adj pron acc masc sing)                Another (distinguishing one 
from
another)
DE (conj coord OR conj superord)                but
TWN (def art gen masc pl)                       of the
APOSTOLWN (noun gen masc pl)                    apostles
OUK (particle neg)                              not
EIDON (verb ind aor act 1st per sing)   I saw
EI (conj subord)                                        if
MH (particle neg)                                       not
IAKWBON (noun acc masc sing)                    Jacob (James)
TON (def art acc masc sing)                     the
ADELFON (noun acc masc sing)                    brother
TOU (def art gen masc sing)                     of the
KURIOU (noun gen masc sing)                     Lord

In other words, he is saying that the "only other" apostle he saw (besides
Cephas) was Jacob.

Where did you get that translation you used? It does not match any of the
translations I have access to. Are you creating your own from an
interlinear NT? If so, one of the pitfalls of that route is that you
really have to know a bit about Greek (not to mention English) grammar to
really understand what is being said. The interlinear English rendering
will almost always be "generic," but proper translation will require more
than that basic meaning.

Check the b-greek list archives, as I believe that numerous home-study
Greek courses were offered. See too if your college offers greek as a
course. Even classical Greek will be helpful, as NT Greek is a subset of
it (with a few twists of its own).

Regards,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA