Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 23:4 (Dec 1980)
Article: 1 Corinthians 7:1 In The "NIV"
Author: Gordon D. Fee

JETS 23:4 (December 1980) p. 307

1 Corinthians 7:1 In The NIV

Gordon D. Fee*

In a public response to an open question, I was once quoted (correctly) by Christianity Today as commending the NIV for being “gutsy” in its translation methodology.1 I meant by that that they were willing to make tough choices about the meaning of texts and that they translated according to those choices rather than trying to escape through the safe route of ambiguity.

I still stand by my former applause. Being courageous in translation also has its obvious pitfalls, however, especially when the wrong choice misleads the reader as to the meaning of the text. There is one such text in the NIV that has regularly given me concern, especially so now that the whole Bible is available and the revision of the NT has neither corrected what seems to many of us to be a mis-translation nor offered even a marginal note to the (more surely correct) alternative.2

The text is I Cor 7:1, translated in the NIV: “Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry.3 My problem with this translation is twofold: philological (the meaning of gynaikos haptesthai—literally “to touch a woman”) and exegetical (the meaning of the whole chapter, and especially of vv 1–7). The purpose of this paper is (1) to present all of the available philological evidence, which seems so incontrovertible as to render the translation “to marry” to be without foundation; (2) to offer an exegesis of 7:1 in light of the whole of I Corinthians 7, which argues that the ordinary meaning of the idiom makes the most sense here; and (3) to suggest that such an interpretation fits well with current thinking as to the nature of the Corinthian false theology. If the reconstruction of the Corinthian position is somewhat speculative, it is not so with the philological evidence or the exegesis.

I. The Meaning Of The Idiom

The idiom haptesthai gynaikos or its equivalent occurs at least seven times (excepting our passage) in extant literature from antiquity from the fourth century B.C. to the second century A.D. In all of these occurrences it is a euphemism

*Gordon Fee is professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

JETS 23:4 (December 1980) p. 308

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