This is quite literally a topic I had never considered, nor was I familiar with the word ‘pleroma’, which sounds uncomfortably like something your dermatologist would inform you about with a grave expression on his/her face.
However, I would point out that it’s widely believed among scholars that Ephesians was not written by Paul, and there’s some doubt about Colossians as well. As I recall, Bart doesn’t believe Paul wrote either of them.
In case helpful, there are 6 instances of ‘pleroma’ in the undisputed Pauline corpus – 4 in Romans, and 1 each in 1 Corinthians and Galatians.
- Romans 11:12
- Romans 11:25
- Romans 13:10
- Romans 15:29
- 1 Corinthians 10:26
- Galatians 4:4
Agree, it’s tricky – especially since (to your point) doing it from the standpoint of English is all I’m currently equipped to do.
Since Romans 11:25 is being tagged as the dependent variable herein, the question seems to be: how is it used in the other 5 independent variable instances, and what do they suggest?
Here’s my tentative cut at it:
Clearly All = 2
– Romans 11:12 = all/completion (the count is “all”)
– 1 Corinthians 10:26 = all/everything (the count is “all”)
Probably All = 1
– Romans 13:10 = completion/whole/all (probably but not slam dunk Paul means “all” of the Law)
Ambiguous yet Consistent with All = 1
– Romans 15:29 = all works, but also filled with and in fulfillment
Ambiguous = 1
– Galatians 4:4 = more like filled up (like the bottom of an hour glass)
Depending on how one wants to tally that, 40%-80% of usage is suggestive of “all”.
Where the range of the modified noun is finite or countable (at least countable in the Cantorian sense), the usage is suggestive of “all”. But where you loosen the countability of the noun (time = continuing continuum, blessing = amorphous noun in terms of quantity), the usage is less clearly suggestive of “all”.
Cheers. Digging through this, without the linguistic skills, is perhaps a fool’s errand – but alas, I’ve embarked on many of those. I’m trying, and maybe not succeeding, to avoid the gnostic use of the term, and stick with extracting Paul’s meaning (from inside his own corpus, not outside). To date I’ve only found work on the matter that is so theologically tinged that it’s impossible (for me at least) to tease apart the lexical from the apologetic.
What I’m groping at is: Does “pleroma of the nations”, for Paul, mean a more expansive quantifier of “all Gentiles”, or a more limited quantifier of “the full relevant set of Gentiles (which may be less than all of them)”? The latter is what most theological arguments help themselves to, the former seems the simplest linguistic argument. Coming from someone who knows little more Greek than “souvlaki”…
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
1 Guest(s)