| Christmas +1 (3) | | Date Created: Dec 30, 2005, 07:52 AM |
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The Epistle reading for this coming Sunday is Galatians 4:4-7.
The NIV and TNIV have: 'when the set time had fully come', but the older translations expressed it more literally 'when the fullness of time had come' (see the link above for the NRSV). |
Which is more accurate? I don't have my commentaries and other reference material with me, but I suspect we don't really know -- because it depends upon how a first century person would have understood the idiom.
But, hey, what's a blog for if not tentative opinions? I'm leaning towards 'fullness/fulness of time'. The other makes it sound like a railroad timetable. He said Jesus come at 5:15 on Wednesday and by gum when 5:15 had fully come, when it was 5:15:60, bang, there he was. The latter seems to me to emphasise the quality of time rather than the quantity. When the situation was just so, that's when God sent him. That seems to me to better fit both the immediate context and what I'm guessing about the cultural-theological mindset. |
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