Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Apostle's Creed: "Suffered Under Pontius Pilate"

In Greek class today, a student pointed out that the preposition "under" in the phrase "suffered under Pontius Pilate" is a temporal marker using genitive or dative to mean, "in the time of," "at," "when" (Bauer 367a).

Thus, another way of rendering the Apostles Creed would be "[I believe]..in Jesus Christ...born of the virgin Mary; at the time of Pontius Pilate he suffered, was crucified, dead and buried..." Here the connotations of "under" are "at the time of" rather than attributing to Pilate reponsibility for Jesus' suffering and death.

1 comment:

Rev Dr Mom said...

Very interesting....

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