John Bengel Commentary - 1 Corinthians 15:51 - 15:51

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John Bengel Commentary - 1 Corinthians 15:51 - 15:51


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1Co 15:51. Ὑμῖν, you) Do not suppose, that you know all things.-λέγω, I say) prophetically: 1Co 13:2 : 1Th 4:15.-πάντες μἐν οὐ κοιμηθησόμεθα, πάντες δὲ ἀλλαγημσόμεθα, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed) The Latins read with general consent; “Omnes quidem resurgemus, sed non omnes immutabimur,” We shall indeed all rise, but we shall not all be changed, and Tertullian and Rufinus and others besides follow this reading. And yet the Latin translator does not seem to have read the Greek different from our Greek copies, but to have expressed the sense, as he indeed understood it, rather than the words. For this is his common practice in this epistle, as when 1Co 12:10; 1Co 12:28, he translated γλωσσῶν, words, and on the other hand 1Co 14:10 φωνῶν, tongues, he seems therefore to have translated οὐ κοιμηθησόμεθα, as if it had been οὐ μενοῦμεν κοιμηθέντες, that is, we shall rise again. Hence it followed, that he presently after supplied not, for the sake of the antithesis, as he had suppressed not, chap. 1Co 9:6 : and here also Tertullian follows his footsteps. Moreover from the Latin the word ἀναβιώσομεν has been fabricated in the Veles. and ἀναστησόμεθα (a word which Paul does not use in this whole chapter) is a correction by the first interpolator of the Clar. MS. Some of the Greeks have πάντες μὲν οὖν κοιμηθησόμεθα, ἀλλʼ οὐ πάντες ἀλλαγησόμεθα; whence from μὲν οὐ, μὲν οὖν was easily produced. Indeed in this verse the apostle wished to deny nothing whatever concerning the change, but to affirm it, and to bring forward the mystery. The reading of the text remains, which is not unknown even to the Latin copies, quoted by Jerome from Didymus.[149] Moreover each of the two clauses is universal. All indeed, namely we, from whom the dead are presently after contradistinguished, shall not sleep; but all, even we the same persons, shall be changed; the subject of each of the two enunciations is the same: comp. πᾶς οὐκ, taken universally, 1Co 16:12; Rom 9:33; Eph 5:5; Rev 22:3; Act 11:8. The expression does not so much refer to the very persons, who were then alive, and were waiting for the consummation of the world, but to those, who are to be then alive in their place, 1Co 15:52 at the end, 1Th 4:15, note.-ἈΛΛΑΓΗΣΌΜΕΘΑ, we shall be changed) While the soul remains in the body, the body from being animal [natural] will become spiritual.

[149] Tisch. reads πἀντες οὐ κοιμηθησόμεθα, πάντες δὲ ἀλλαγησομεθα, with B (from its silence), some Greek MSS. mentioned in Jerome 1,794c, 810c, also MSS. of Acacius and Didymus in Jerome 1,795e, 799b, both Syr. and Memph. Versions, Orig. 1,589f, and quoted in Jerome 1,804c. Lachm. reads πάντες [μὲν] κοιμηθησόμεθα, οὐ πάντες δὲ ἀλλαγησόμεθα, with CGg, Orig. 2,552bc, also Greek MSS. mentioned in Jerome 1,794c, 810c, also Didymus mentioned in Jerome 1,795d, and in 1,798b, Acacius, bishop of Cæsarea, who mentions it as the reading of very many MSS. A reads οἱ πάντες μὲν κοιμηθ. οἱ πάντες δὲ ἀλλαγ.-ED.