My wife and I both have the Reference bible and at Acts 5:42 it says (in support of kat'-oi'-kon meaning literally "door-to-door") the following quote:
R.C.H Lenski, in his work The Interpretation of The Acts of the Apostles, Minneapolis (1961), made the following comment on Acts 5:42:"Never for a moment did the apostles cease their blessed work. 'Every day' they continued, and this openly 'in the temple' where the Sanhedrin and the Temple police could see and hear them, and, of course, kat'-oi'-kon, which is distributive, 'from house to house', and not merely adverbial 'at home.'"
This will come up when my wife and I finally talk about this stuff. My argument would be this:
"This still doesn't rule out visiting from door to door in private homes of people who are already Christians. This quote is too ambiguous, but just makes enough sense so that if you or an elder were looking for justification, this would be enough to warrant it. It still doesn't explain why they render it "door to door" here and then "private homes" in Acts 2:46."
Am I on the right track here? Does anyone know anything about this Lenski fellow?
A conservative Lutheran NT scholar, of the generalist kind (he commented the whole NT). Good philologist generally.
I have never checked the context of this quotation (I'll try to remember next time I visit my Parisian library) but I suspect the WT misrepresents what Lenski really means. The context of Acts 5:42 clearly contrasts one central place (the temple) and several smaller ones (houses) -- which of course the apostles are supposed to visit in turn. I personally think the distributive is better rended by "in every house" (of the intended group) rather than by the successive "from house to house". Whatever, what matters to the author of Acts is to make a smooth transition between the Jewish place of worship (the temple in Jerusalem, synagogues in the diaspora) and the new Christian ones (private homes of wealthy patron believers). This is a recurring pattern in Acts. Visiting non-believers from house to house is never in view. The contact between the apostles and Jewish or Gentile non-believers is always set in other contexts (temple, synagogues, prisons, judicial courts etc.). The exceptions (when Peter or Ananias are especially sent, through a vision, to the home of Cornelius or to the place where Saul stays) confirm the rule imo.
" I have never checked the context of this quotation (I'll try to remember next time I visit my Parisian library) but I suspect the WT misrepresents what Lenski really means. "
A good one - I never checked, but surely they must be wrong ..... :-)
