Three More Verses

I did the math, and at my current rate, I think I will finish my translation of 1 Peter just in time to buy Teddy (the younger brother) his 21st birthday present. His birthday is in May. He is also 19. Ouch.

This section was hard, and I felt obliged to read/translate a bit ahead just to make sure I wouldn't contradict myself later -- or too much anyway. I'm sure there are more things to talk about here, but I picked the ones that jumped out at me most after a few revisions. The exceeding generality and particularity of time in the passage still eludes me, I think.

ΠΕΤΡΟΥ Α

First Peter

3-5 Blessed is God and the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one, according to his great compassion, raising us into living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from those dead -- into an inheritance undecaying, undefiled, and unfading, (an inheritance) being guarded in heaven for you, the ones being preserved by God’s power through faith for a certain salvation to be revealed in the final moment.

***The Greek provides no finite verb for this sentence, a translational difficulty that is usually (and most naturally) remedied by inserting some form of “to be” in the initial clause. Since I can think of no better solution, and since I have no desire to turn any of the given participles into main verbs in my translation, I followed suit. That said, I was tempted (and still am) to forego English grammar altogether. Implying ἔιμι is not an irregular practice, leaving only the difficulty of deciding where and how to put it. By my estimation, “is” sounds far more natural than the third person imperative (functioning descriptively, of course) “be.”

However translated, the whole construction reads like a cause-and-effect stream of consciousness, describing an event that is ongoing and immediate yet still directed at a single and critical final moment. If the writer intended to suggest that God the Father has already raised us into living hope, or that the inheritance of our salvation would come to pass at some indefinite future moment, he could easily have used finite or infinitive aorist, perfect, or future forms. Instead, he speaks of a continuous action always being performed and always intended to have been performed -- an action reserved and protected for that very purpose. The hope is living, we being raised and protected, our salvation-inheritance being preserved. Nothing here is complete in the sense of having been finished nor is it incomplete in the sense of lacking a particular quality or virtue. It actively and fully is. Notably, in this respect, the aorist is only used in the infinitive passive at the end of the passage, in reference to an event that has not yet been revealed. Even the use of “to be revealed” indicates a level of distinction and interconnectedness between what is happening and what has been done and what will be done. Whatever that is and however it might later appear, it is happening and we will see why at some unspecified time.

My translation of “certain salvation” (σωτηρίαν ἑτοίμην) is a devastatingly insufficient conveyance of this. The sense of the adjective implies preparation and immediacy, willingness and zealousness, even a kind of heightened reality and ownership, all with respect to both the past and the future and used in this present progressive context. I can think of no appropriate English word: I shy away from “prepared” if only because it connotes a sense of inevitability, the idea that this salvation was actively set and only has not taken place because the moment has not yet come (when, in fact, it is taking place and the moment could be any time); I equally dislike “ready” or “ready at hand”, both of which give a sense of hesitance, as if salvation is waiting on something and has not already happening-ed; “immediate” is out of bounds for the same reason, and “present” confuses the whole notion of time and actionthat the rest of the passage has already laid out. “Certain”, however insufficient, can at least refer to a present emotion or perception as well as a future occurrence dependent upon a past or contemporary action. Perhaps we should coin a new word: “pre-immediated” or somesuch.

Of final interest is the use of etymological negatives to define a presumably ontologically sufficient thing (salvation): the inheritance being guarded is not “pure, noble, and eternal”, but instead “undecaying, undefiled, and unfading.” Quite pointedly, the writer does not try to say what salvation is while asserting that it is not what it is not. Of course, this renders an apophatic reading impossible to miss. Linguistically, also, the word choice does not try to reveal anything that will be revealed, maintaining its tenuous chronology. Or eschatology. Or And both.

One last note: two things are preserved or protected here, in parallel construction with one another: salvation and the saved. At the risk of unwittingly saying something heretical, I end my observation there.