QUESTION
I’m having trouble reconciling the translation “faith equally precious” in 2 Peter 1:1 with the adjective ἰσότιμον modifying πίστιν, which is outside of the participial phrase τοῖς ἰσότιμον ἡμῖν λαχοῦσιν. I don’t have a better alternative translation. Any insights?
2 Peter 1:1 – Συμεὼν Πέτρος δοῦλος καὶ ἀπόστολος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῖς ἰσότιμον ἡμῖν λαχοῦσιν πίστιν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν καὶ σωτῆρος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ
RESPONSE
Literalness vs. dynamic equivalency—you are opening a translational can of worms right off the bat.
Συμεὼν Πέτρος δοῦλος καὶ ἀπόστολος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῖς λαχοῦσιν πίστιν ἰσότιμον ἡμῖν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν καὶ σωτῆρος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (a couple of transpositions because ἰσότιμον πίστιν is a gapped phrase, a hyperbation).
Simon Peter, servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith equally precious to us both by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.
I think Peter is describing the faith of/in Jesus Christ, that both he and his recipients have received, as being equally precious to him and them. The receivers of the faith are the addressees of the letter, and everything from τοῖς on is in the λαχοῦσιν articular participial phrase. Even though πίστιν occurs after λαχοῦσιν, it is not outside the λαχοῦσιν participial phrase because faith is the direct object, and because the participial phrase is determined by syntactical connections, not by position.
I suspect that the main stumbling block here is the meaning of ἡμῖν as a kind of prepositional object the hapax ἰσότιμον. In Greek, adverbs and adjectives can take dative or genitive objects like prepositions. I could give you a number of parallel verses where the attributive adjective takes a dative object like ἡμῖν (e.g., Heb. 6:7). The Grammatical Commentary (GC) has a particular grammatical relation for that kind of connection.
I imagine that what is troubling you most here is that none of the translations have translated it the way I did, which is quite literal and intuitive except for the word order. This lack of literal translation is probably because the translators did not believe that Peter meant exactly what he actually said. Apparently what they are uneasy about is the ἡμῖν. They think it should mean “a faith as precious as ours.” However, I disagree that this is the right translation because that would imply that there could be two equally precious faiths. Jerome also struggled with ἡμῖν:
Simon Petrus, servus et apostolus Jesu Christi, iis qui coæqualem nobiscum sortiti sunt fidem in justitia Dei nostri, et Salvatoris Jesu Christi.
He changed it to “to those who have received a faith coequal with us” (perhaps meaning “with ours”), in which he introduced the “with” idea and he stressed the sameness of the faith and audaciously removed the idea of precious.
Luther changes it to “Simon Petrus, ein Knecht und Apostel Jesu Christi, denen, die mit uns ebendenselben teuren Glauben überkommen haben in der Gerechtigkeit, die unser Gott gibt und der Heiland Jesus Christus” (“… to those who with us have received the exact same precious faith”), even though ἡμῖν is connected with ἰσότιμον and does not mean “with us.” He inherits the “with” idea from Jerome. The KJV follows Luther in this loose dynamic equivalency.
In order to see that Peter was probably not saying exactly what the translators have him saying, one useful technique is to back-translate the translation back into Greek, if such a construction can be found: πίστιν ἰσότιμον ἡμῖν (a faith equally precious to us) or πίστιν ἰσότιμον τῇ ὑμῶν (a faith of equal value to our own). For an example of the articular possessive, see 1 Corinthians 16:18. The value of the back-translation is to see that if Peter had meant what the translators say he meant, he had a way to do so without saying the something else that he actually said.
I have two responses to these translational liberties. First, translators sometimes think that the literal meaning is too obscure and use dynamic equivalencies, so that the translation will not be a riddle to the reader. Second, in this case the literal translation I have given actually makes sense and a dynamic equivalency is not semantically required. This might not be a satisfactory response, but I hope it gives you some insight into the most straightforward original syntax and translator choices.
I did not know the long history of what I consider minor mistranslation either until you asked the question focused on ἡμῖν and I looked at the set of translations in Bible Hub. With the tools and analysis methods of GC there is a systematic approach to analyzing syntax so that the GNT reader is not left floundering in the syntax ocean.
It helps to have the syntax priorities sorted out. Verb phrases are the most important structures in syntax. The central classification of verbs (to know what kind of objects or predicate complements they take) is the verb type. Although I have only coded a quarter of the GNT, the verb type is coded for all verbs in the GNT lexicon (because it is so central). There are 14 verb types. λαχοῦσιν belongs to the most common verb type, the simple accusative transitive, i.e. actually taking an accusative object in the GNT.
Once you know that and see that λαχοῦσιν is the only candidate to head accusative πίστιν, then direct object of λαχοῦσιν is the only option. How do you know that λαχοῦσιν is the only connection option (i.e., that it does not belong to the verb phrase to the left)? First, you see that there is no direct object to the right. Then you know that the first sentence of epistles always has three parts: the nominative sender, the dative addressee, and the (often nominal) salutation, in that order. Obviously dative λαχοῦσιν is the addressee with the salutation to follow. Salutations are either “Hail” or “May it be,” a link verb, and do not take accusative objects.
All this is syntactical thinking, which is not taught in grammar classes, which focus primarily on vocabulary and morphology. Wallace is different and actually presents a set of syntactical constructions. The defect of Wallace is that it is selective, not systematical and comprehensive. When you start with the GC project method of coding the connection and grammatical relation for every word in the GNT, you find that there are hundreds of other important but less frequent relations (like object of adjective) that Wallace cannot cover. Lexham in Logos also has the comprehensive coding project, but it is too generic and does not integrate it with a user-friendly set of rules and techniques to equip the student to understand how the grammatical relations are necessary consequences rather than mere classifications mysteriously arrived at and supplied by the expert authoritative coding service.
These comparisons are not invidious. They are merely a statement of fact that syntax is an infant science not yet having arrived at goals that most would share if they could express them, which are very ambitious, which GC talks about but also has not yet systematized or demonstrated either. Hence the open-endedness of the GC system.