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Subject: Kata Markon

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  • From: "Jeffrey B. Gibson" <jgibson000 AT attbi.com>
  • To: Kata Markon <gmark AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: PEIRASMOS =temptation"?
  • Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 22:14:32 -0500


To aid Joe in the question I asked him about showing me evidence that
PEIRASMOS ever meant "temptation", I decided to reproduce the data which
needs to be examined if some resolution of the question is to be
attained, i.e., a listing of all the instances of the use of PEIRASMOS
before the middle of the second century CE.

If requested, I can also produce the data on the cognates of PEIRASMOS,
namely, PEIRAZW and EKPEIRAZW.

And in the meantime, I'd also like to ask Joe what his warrant is for
translating SARC as "body"?

Yours,

JG

PEIRASMOS occurs

(A) thirteen times in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew
Scriptures (Ex. 17:17; Deut. 4:34; 6:16; 7:19; 9:22; 29:3(2); Ps.
94(95):8; and Eccl. 3:10; 4:8; 5:2, 13; 8:16 if we accept as authentic
the reading of Alexandrinus in Eccl. 3:10; 4:8; and 8:16 [B and
Sinaiticus have PEIRISPASMOS], of Sinaiticus in 5:13 [A and B have
PERISPASMOS], and of the three main textual witnesses in 5:2, where it
is used without exception to translate the Hebrew **nisah** -- a “test”,
a “trial”

(B) seven times in the Apocrypha of the Septuagint (Sir. 2:1; 6:7; 27:5,
7; 36(33):1; 44:20; 1 Macc. 2:52),

(C) twice in the Pseudepigrapha (Test. Jos. 2:7; Fragment of Greek
Jubilees W on Jub. 10.8 [text in Fragmenta Pseudepigraphorum Quae
Supersunt Graeca, A.M. Denis, ed., Vol. 3 of Pseudepigrapha Veteris
Testamenti Graece, A.M. Denis and M. DeJonge, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 1970)
87]),

(D) once in the extant fragments of non-Septuagintal Greek versions of
the Hebrew Scriptures (Symmachus, Gen. 44:15), and, not including Mk.
14:38, twenty times in the New Testament ( Matt. 6:13; 26:41; Lk. 4:13;
8:13; 11:4, 14; 22:40; 46; Acts 15:26 (D E), 20:19; 1 Cor. 10:13
(twice); Gal. 4:14; 1 Tim. 6:9; Heb. 3:18; James 1:2, 12; 1 Peter 1:16;
2 Peter 2:9; Rev. 3:10).

In the so called Apostolic literature composed before 150 C.E. PEIRASMOS
appears at least four times -- once in the Didache (Did. 8:2), once in
Hermas (Hermas Man. 9:7), once in Polycarp's Epistle to the Philippians
(Epistula ad Philippenses 7.2.5), once in a fragment of Ignatius' To
Polycarp (Fragment 25, from e cod. Florent. Laur. 6.4 [Ad Polycarpum] in
J.H. Crehan, "A New Fragment of Ignatius' Ad Polycarpum', Studia
Patristica 1 [T. & U.] 63 [1957] 24) -- and nine times if we accept a
relatively early date for both the Acts of Paul, where the noun appears
four times (Acta Pauli et Theclae 25.6; 25.9; 40.7; Recenscion C Codex E
5.14), and 2 Clement, where PEIRASMOS appears once (2 Cor. 39.7).

PEIRASMOS also occurs in pre-150 C.E. "secular" literature at least ten
times.

PEIRASMOS appears once in a section of the work by the (probably) second
century B.C.E. grammarian Ptolemaeus of Ascalon entitled De differentia
vocabulorum (Sigma 146, according to the enumeration of the work in the
edition of De differentia vocabulorum edited by V. Palmieri in Annali
della Facolta di Lettere e Filosofia dell' Universita di Napoli 24
[1981-1982] 191-225), once in the preface to the Materia Medica, a work
on the medicinal properties of plants and the effects of drugs by the
first century C.E. physician and pharmacologist Pedanius Dioscorides
(Mat. Med. Praef. 5.12), once in the Partitiones, a work by the first
century Alexandrian grammarian Aelius Herodianus (Partitiones 110.5, ed.
J.F. Boissonade, Herodiani paertitiones [London, 1819]), three times in
what I take to be a pre-2nd century C.E. commentary by an anonymous
author on Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric (In Anonymi in Aristotelis Artem
Rhetoricum 98.29 [on Rhet. Book II.iv (1381b) 27]; 102.29 [on Rhet. Book
II.v (1383a) 17]; 103.9 [on Rhet. Book II.v.(1383a) 18]), once in an a
pre-2nd century anonymous commentary on Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics
(Anonymi in Aristotelis Ethica: In Ethica Nichomachea Commentaria 454.10
[on Nichomachean Ethics Book VII.xiii (1153b) 17]), once in an early
Scholion on Euripides' Hecuba (Scholia in Eupripdes, sch Hecuba 1226
which appears in cod. Vat. 909), once in the Syntipas (Ed. V. Jernstedt
and P. Nikition, Memories de l'Academie Imperiale des Sciences de St.
Petersbourg, 8me Serie, Classe des Sciences historico-philologique, Tome
XI. No. 1. (1912) 124), an anonymous first century C.E. Arabian Nights,
and once in the Cyranides (Cf. F. de Mely and C.-E Ruelle, Les
Lapidaries de l'antiquite et du moyen age, II: Le Lapidaries grecs,
(1898) Sec. 40.24), a first century C.E. work on magical curative powers
of plants, stones, and animals.


--
Jeffrey B. Gibson, D.Phil. (Oxon.)
1500 W. Pratt Blvd.
Floor 1
Chicago, Illinois 60626
e-mail jgibson000 AT attbi.com
jgibson000 AT hotmail.com






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