“DIVINE NATURE” IN 2 PET 1,4 WITHIN ITS ESCHATOLOGICAL CONTEXT 95 low participants with others in a common identity, reality, or activity, though the dative or prepositional reference to others is often not ex- pressed, being either implicit, clear from context, or unimportant for the argument 48. In its fullest construction, the noun is used with a gen- itive to indicate the reality in which one participates 49. Thus, the gen- itive θείας φύσεως is not that with which one has partnership, but the reality in which one partners with others 50. The common English translation of κοινωνός as “sharing in” can consequently be mislead- ing. The appropriate translation is either “partner” (with others in a reality or endeavor), or “fellow participant” 51. The rendering “partner in something (with others)” or “fellow participant/partaker of something (with others)” is especially strik- ing in 1,4, where the referent is God’s own character. For as Hauck has pointed out, the κοινωνe,w -family is never used in the LXX of humanity’s relationship to God, since the righteous one remains So J.Y. CAMPBELL, “Kοινωνία and its Cognates in the New Testament”, 48 JBL 51 (1932) 353; see also M. MCDERMOTT, S. J., “The Biblical Doctrine of KOINWNIA”, BZ 19 (1975) 65 and STARR, Divine Nature, 190. F. HAUCK, κοινωνός, ktl, TDNT 3, 797-809 and J. HAINZ, KOINONIA: 49 “Kirche” als Gemeinschaft bei Paulus (BU 16; Regensburg 1982) 102-122, especially 103. Contra Wolters (see above). As exceptions, CAMPBELL, “Kοινωνία”, 50 357, 380, found only two possible examples of the genitive of the person with whom one shares something: Plutarch, Mor. 145D, with the feminine noun used to refer to sexual relations, and Athenaeus, Deipn. 2.69C. Furthermore, if this unusual meaning of partnership with the divine character were in view here, one would expect not the genitive, as in 1,4, but meta. θείας φύσεως. CAMPBELL, 361, 354, consequently renders 1,4, “partakers of the divine na- ture”, and concludes that κοινωνοί in 1,4 “means scarcely more than me,tocoi”, since often “κοινωνός” means little, if anything, more than ‘a par- ticipant in’ (= me,tocoj)”; cf. 361 on 1,4: “If κοινωνός here differs at all from me,tocoj it is only in that it implies, as me,tocoj would not necessarily do, that others also will share in the glory”. For this same meaning, cf. its eight uses in the LXX (see esp. Mal 2,14; 51 cf. 4 Kgdms 17,11; Esth 16,13; Prov 28,24; Sir 6,10; 41,19; 42,3; Isa 1,23) and nine in the NT (Matt 23,20; Luke 5,10; 1 Cor 10,18.20; 2 Cor 1,7; 8,23; Phlm 17; Heb 10,33; 1 Pet 5,1). Koinwno,j occurs in the Greek Pseudepigrapha only in Jan. Jam. A 2,24 (koinwno,j nekrw/n). Cf. the often cited parallel from Josephus, C. Ap. 1.232, where we read of an Egyptian whose wisdom and knowledge of the future were said “to have partaken/to have been a partner of the divine nature” (qei,aj de. dokou/nti meteschke,nai fu,sewj). © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati