ב"ה
This has stirred some interest so I thought it may be worthy of a discussion thread on it’s own.
I will not provide my own translation here as that'd be self-serving for my perspective.
The topic is 1 Timothy 3:12. The popular ESV rendering follows:
Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well.
First I want to reiterate that I’m not saying @andrew ‘s perspective of “heis/mia/en” possibly beginning to function as an indefinite article at the koine stage of the language as an impossibility; only as improbable from my observations as a student of Greek. Simply saying "woman" would have sufficed for "a wife" in the normal use of the language then so we have to see why the superfluous eis/mia/en would need to be used here as "a" instead of it's common usage as "1".
I'm not a master of the language so if someone finds some stuff contrary that will be a good growing point for me. That said, there are certainly occasions when even in English "1" can be substituted with "a/an" and we know Greek eventually did develop an indefinite article from the same word used here.
As I wrote in Biblical Familes: my concern about “heis” functioning as the indefinite article in that thread...
“I'm skeptical of εἷς (eis) being used as an indefinite article here. I think this is more of a modern Greek development. I'm not certain though.”
Follow up from 2 Greek grammars and a Greek guy’s web page:
*****************************
Grammar Foundation:
Currently the best-selling Greek (Koine) grammar states:
5.7 Indefinite article. In English, the indefinite article is the word “a.” In the sentence, “a good student works every day on her Greek,” the article is indefinite because it does not identify any one particular student. It is indefinite about the person of whom it is speaking. Greek does not have an indefinite article, although in some circumstances you will be able to add “a” to your translation.
6.21 Summary. The definite article is the only article in Greek. There is no indefinite article (“a”). For this reason you can refer to the Greek definite article simply as the “article”.
Mounce, William D. (1993). Basics of Biblical Greek: Grammar (1st ed, pgs 24,37). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.
Another popular new grammar states:
Greek has no indefinite article (Eng. “a” or “an”).
Thus ἄνθρωπος means “man” or “a man.”
Black, D. A. (2009). Learn to read New Testament Greek (3rd ed, p. 29). Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group.
Here’s a summary about the definite and indefinite articles in Greek in various stages (Ancient and Modern) from a native Greek.
Here we see that in Ancient Greek when an author wished to explicitly bring the feel that the English indefinite article presents, they used instead the word tiys / tiynes / tina. No mention of “heis/mia/en”.
***** For those who want to dig deeper on the Greek usages of “heis, mia, hen” (one in Greek) read on******
I recently got my hands on a used set of the English translation of the Classic German masterpiece “Theological Dictionary of the New Testament”. For those unfamiliar it is a massive 10 volume scholarly work which offers full essays on individual Greek words. The essay on “heis/mia/en” is 9 pages long. Here’s the teaser … if you want to delve deeper I took photos of the full essay and have attached them to this post. Be advised the Germans are very thorough and they make extensive use of Greek and Hebrew originals often without translating… not for the faint of heart
For those of you who are pastors / rabbis and have a decent handle on Greek, I heartily recommend this resource to dig deeper than a lexicon on your Greek vocabulary…
Teaser...
1. The Understanding of Uniqueness in the NT.
Only rarely is εἷς used as a digit in the NT (e.g., 2 Pt. 3:8). It usually means “single,” “once-for-all,” “unique” or “only,” or “unitary,” “unanimous,” or “one of two or many,”2 “only one.”
…
Stauffer, E. (1964–). εἷς. G. Kittel, G. W. Bromiley, & G. Friedrich (Eds.), Theological dictionary of the New Testament (Vol. 2, pgs. 434-443). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
The entire article (no pun intended
) is attached as images to this post.
*** Warning: Please please be careful if you decide to print out this essay. The divine name is present in original Hebrew letters as well as transliterations. If you print those pages, please treat the print out with the proper respect deserved by something with the Creator’s name on it. Please don’t throw them away, treat them as you would a bible.***
Syntax: I searched my “Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament” by Wallace, to see if I could find any specific syntactical rules governing using heis/mia/en as the indefinite article and I couldn’t find anything.
For comparison I skipped KJV since most scholars agree the Greek text underlying ESV and other translations as superior to that used in King Jimmy (unavailable to Erasmus).
So, I checked the ESV translation to see where others translated (eis/mia/en) in this syntax (the Genitive) as the English indefinite article. I found only 2 verses. 1 could obviously just as easily be “1”:
Lk 22:59 “..after the interval of about 1/an hour…”
Rev 8:13 “Then I looked, and I heard an Eagle crying…”. Here ‘an’ certainly makes sense.
There could be special significance here that would cause us to want to specify “a solitary Eagle / one Eagle crying” so that single verse in syntactic agreement with 1 Timothy 3:12 is hardly enough to move me from my current opinion.
****** translating heis/mia/en as FIRST - what the heck happened? *****
The cases where we translate heis/mia/en as “first” have to do with the underlying Hebrew oddity for those getting carried over into the semitized Greek. For example. In Hebrew, Sunday is called “day 1”. Yom echad. This is a semitic way of thinking (construct state for those studying Hebrew) where you can force the 2nd, 3rd etc word in a “contruct chain” to function adjectivaly. In modern times we use the adjective “first” rishon so we say “yom rishon” but still the biblical “yom echad” gets used as well. Literally “Day of 1” (Sunday in Hebrew) Monday is “day 2” … etc. these get carried over into the New Testament as “on the 3rd day such and such happened”. It’s a semitic oddity/influence on the Greek from that area or an attempt to be true to a lost Hebrew/Aramaic original.
It’s always useful to see how Hebrew underlies the Greek of the new Testament. It’s my personal policy to always investigate the Greek Old Testament’s mapping of Greek translated words for the underlying Hebrew. You may or may not find this a useful approach for viewing Greek New Testament vocabulary. I never learn a new Greek word without examining if it is used in the Septuagint and how; I then memorize the Hebrew definition of the word rather than the English unless it's ambiguous in meaning.
Click the following link for a Biblical Families discussion of heis/mia/en mapping to the Greek Septuagint LXX and Hebrew including it’s overwhelming mapping to Hebrew אחד (one,unified,united).
This next verse is not a proof, just a nice example of heis/mia/en showing up in all it’s forms: masculine, feminine, and neuter and in this verse meaning "1".
Ephesians 4:4-6
4 Ἓν σῶμα καὶ ἓν πνεῦμα, καθὼς °καὶ ἐκλήθητε ἐν μιᾷ ἐλπίδι τῆς κλήσεως ὑμῶν·
There is one living body and one spirit, even as you were called in one hope of your calling.
5 εἷς κύριος, μία πίστις, ἓν βάπτισμα,
One L-rd, one faith, one mikvah (Baptism),
6 εἷς θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ πάντων, ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων καὶ διὰ πάντων καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν⸆.
One G-d and Father of all, who is over all things and through all things and in all things.
Summary:
I do think it is plausible to translate heis/mia/en as “a” in the verse in question; I just think it’s unlikely for that phase of the Greek language since the common way to say "a wife" is just to say gynei - "woman" ... caveman style. So for Paul to deviate from the norm of the language at that stage isn't something I'm comfortable with yet. In Modern Greek, absolutely heis/mia/en became the indefinite article, but that’s 2000 years of language development later. How many of you can understand English from just 500 years ago? Go back much further and it’s closer to German than to Modern English.
The spirit of this post is one of discovery and sharing. I love this community and it’s great that we can explore secondary issues like this verse. I'm not a Greek expert yet, just a student like many of you so maybe we'll find something more to this together.
To shake it up more, please see the Biblical Families: idea that “deacon” in the verse in question may mean “assistant” or “aide” in which case the lowly position is for guys with just 1 wife only as polygamous men should be trusted with more responsibility.
Shalom!
(9 page article on eis/mia/en attached)
This has stirred some interest so I thought it may be worthy of a discussion thread on it’s own.
I will not provide my own translation here as that'd be self-serving for my perspective.
The topic is 1 Timothy 3:12. The popular ESV rendering follows:
Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well.
First I want to reiterate that I’m not saying @andrew ‘s perspective of “heis/mia/en” possibly beginning to function as an indefinite article at the koine stage of the language as an impossibility; only as improbable from my observations as a student of Greek. Simply saying "woman" would have sufficed for "a wife" in the normal use of the language then so we have to see why the superfluous eis/mia/en would need to be used here as "a" instead of it's common usage as "1".
I'm not a master of the language so if someone finds some stuff contrary that will be a good growing point for me. That said, there are certainly occasions when even in English "1" can be substituted with "a/an" and we know Greek eventually did develop an indefinite article from the same word used here.
As I wrote in Biblical Familes: my concern about “heis” functioning as the indefinite article in that thread...
“I'm skeptical of εἷς (eis) being used as an indefinite article here. I think this is more of a modern Greek development. I'm not certain though.”
Follow up from 2 Greek grammars and a Greek guy’s web page:
*****************************
Grammar Foundation:
Currently the best-selling Greek (Koine) grammar states:
5.7 Indefinite article. In English, the indefinite article is the word “a.” In the sentence, “a good student works every day on her Greek,” the article is indefinite because it does not identify any one particular student. It is indefinite about the person of whom it is speaking. Greek does not have an indefinite article, although in some circumstances you will be able to add “a” to your translation.
6.21 Summary. The definite article is the only article in Greek. There is no indefinite article (“a”). For this reason you can refer to the Greek definite article simply as the “article”.
Mounce, William D. (1993). Basics of Biblical Greek: Grammar (1st ed, pgs 24,37). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.
Another popular new grammar states:
Greek has no indefinite article (Eng. “a” or “an”).
Thus ἄνθρωπος means “man” or “a man.”
Black, D. A. (2009). Learn to read New Testament Greek (3rd ed, p. 29). Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group.
Here’s a summary about the definite and indefinite articles in Greek in various stages (Ancient and Modern) from a native Greek.
- In Modern Greek the word "one" (ένας, μία, ένα) is used in the singular, and "some" (μερικοί, -ές, -ά) in the plural.
- In Ancient Greek there was no indefinite article.(1) Instead, the indefinite adjective τις, τις, τι ("a certain") could be used in some cases where we use "a/an" in English, with its corresponding plural form τινές, τινές, τινά (some). The same word, as an indefinite pronoun, also meant "someone" and "anyone". For completeness, I include the indefinite adjective ένιοι,-αι,-α, which also meant "certain", "some" (in the plural sense only).
Here we see that in Ancient Greek when an author wished to explicitly bring the feel that the English indefinite article presents, they used instead the word tiys / tiynes / tina. No mention of “heis/mia/en”.
***** For those who want to dig deeper on the Greek usages of “heis, mia, hen” (one in Greek) read on******
I recently got my hands on a used set of the English translation of the Classic German masterpiece “Theological Dictionary of the New Testament”. For those unfamiliar it is a massive 10 volume scholarly work which offers full essays on individual Greek words. The essay on “heis/mia/en” is 9 pages long. Here’s the teaser … if you want to delve deeper I took photos of the full essay and have attached them to this post. Be advised the Germans are very thorough and they make extensive use of Greek and Hebrew originals often without translating… not for the faint of heart
For those of you who are pastors / rabbis and have a decent handle on Greek, I heartily recommend this resource to dig deeper than a lexicon on your Greek vocabulary…Teaser...
1. The Understanding of Uniqueness in the NT.
Only rarely is εἷς used as a digit in the NT (e.g., 2 Pt. 3:8). It usually means “single,” “once-for-all,” “unique” or “only,” or “unitary,” “unanimous,” or “one of two or many,”2 “only one.”
…
Stauffer, E. (1964–). εἷς. G. Kittel, G. W. Bromiley, & G. Friedrich (Eds.), Theological dictionary of the New Testament (Vol. 2, pgs. 434-443). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
The entire article (no pun intended
) is attached as images to this post.*** Warning: Please please be careful if you decide to print out this essay. The divine name is present in original Hebrew letters as well as transliterations. If you print those pages, please treat the print out with the proper respect deserved by something with the Creator’s name on it. Please don’t throw them away, treat them as you would a bible.***
Syntax: I searched my “Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament” by Wallace, to see if I could find any specific syntactical rules governing using heis/mia/en as the indefinite article and I couldn’t find anything.
For comparison I skipped KJV since most scholars agree the Greek text underlying ESV and other translations as superior to that used in King Jimmy (unavailable to Erasmus).
So, I checked the ESV translation to see where others translated (eis/mia/en) in this syntax (the Genitive) as the English indefinite article. I found only 2 verses. 1 could obviously just as easily be “1”:
Lk 22:59 “..after the interval of about 1/an hour…”
Rev 8:13 “Then I looked, and I heard an Eagle crying…”. Here ‘an’ certainly makes sense.
There could be special significance here that would cause us to want to specify “a solitary Eagle / one Eagle crying” so that single verse in syntactic agreement with 1 Timothy 3:12 is hardly enough to move me from my current opinion.
****** translating heis/mia/en as FIRST - what the heck happened? *****
The cases where we translate heis/mia/en as “first” have to do with the underlying Hebrew oddity for those getting carried over into the semitized Greek. For example. In Hebrew, Sunday is called “day 1”. Yom echad. This is a semitic way of thinking (construct state for those studying Hebrew) where you can force the 2nd, 3rd etc word in a “contruct chain” to function adjectivaly. In modern times we use the adjective “first” rishon so we say “yom rishon” but still the biblical “yom echad” gets used as well. Literally “Day of 1” (Sunday in Hebrew) Monday is “day 2” … etc. these get carried over into the New Testament as “on the 3rd day such and such happened”. It’s a semitic oddity/influence on the Greek from that area or an attempt to be true to a lost Hebrew/Aramaic original.
It’s always useful to see how Hebrew underlies the Greek of the new Testament. It’s my personal policy to always investigate the Greek Old Testament’s mapping of Greek translated words for the underlying Hebrew. You may or may not find this a useful approach for viewing Greek New Testament vocabulary. I never learn a new Greek word without examining if it is used in the Septuagint and how; I then memorize the Hebrew definition of the word rather than the English unless it's ambiguous in meaning.
Click the following link for a Biblical Families discussion of heis/mia/en mapping to the Greek Septuagint LXX and Hebrew including it’s overwhelming mapping to Hebrew אחד (one,unified,united).
This next verse is not a proof, just a nice example of heis/mia/en showing up in all it’s forms: masculine, feminine, and neuter and in this verse meaning "1".
Ephesians 4:4-6
4 Ἓν σῶμα καὶ ἓν πνεῦμα, καθὼς °καὶ ἐκλήθητε ἐν μιᾷ ἐλπίδι τῆς κλήσεως ὑμῶν·
There is one living body and one spirit, even as you were called in one hope of your calling.
5 εἷς κύριος, μία πίστις, ἓν βάπτισμα,
One L-rd, one faith, one mikvah (Baptism),
6 εἷς θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ πάντων, ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων καὶ διὰ πάντων καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν⸆.
One G-d and Father of all, who is over all things and through all things and in all things.
Summary:
I do think it is plausible to translate heis/mia/en as “a” in the verse in question; I just think it’s unlikely for that phase of the Greek language since the common way to say "a wife" is just to say gynei - "woman" ... caveman style. So for Paul to deviate from the norm of the language at that stage isn't something I'm comfortable with yet. In Modern Greek, absolutely heis/mia/en became the indefinite article, but that’s 2000 years of language development later. How many of you can understand English from just 500 years ago? Go back much further and it’s closer to German than to Modern English.
The spirit of this post is one of discovery and sharing. I love this community and it’s great that we can explore secondary issues like this verse. I'm not a Greek expert yet, just a student like many of you so maybe we'll find something more to this together.
To shake it up more, please see the Biblical Families: idea that “deacon” in the verse in question may mean “assistant” or “aide” in which case the lowly position is for guys with just 1 wife only as polygamous men should be trusted with more responsibility.
Shalom!
(9 page article on eis/mia/en attached)
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so it seems legit to me for them to go with "first day". In the same way, the question becomes 'what idiom is being invoked here?'. 
