In a follow-up video to her earlier video arguing that Paul did not persecute Christians, which I discussed in my previous blog post, Robyn Walsh offers another argument in defense of her claim. In this video, she reports that two classicists had told her that the two verbs used in Galatians 1:13 in reference to Paul’s pre-Christian treatment of Christians were “conative” imperfects, meaning that Paul had tried to persecute and destroy the church but hadn’t actually persecuted it. I’ll quote her at length to make sure I’m representing her claim accurately:
Right away, both of these classicists said to me, “These are conative imperfects.” The verbs, they’re imperfect, and they’re conative. C-O-N-A-T-I-V-E. And what this means is they’re sort of conditional or indicate an action that wasn’t fulfilled, that wasn’t completed. So when Paul “ravaged” it, the reason this is incorrect is that it’s a conative imperfect—that it means he tried to do it, but he didn’t. I’ve been looking into why New Testament translations and commentaries—and this is, I’m just beginning this exploration—I’m feeling an article coming on! But I think there’s such a commitment to this idea of the violent persecution on the part of Paul in something like Galatians 1:13 that people are ignoring the purpose of the conative imperfect, that they are not including that kind of unfulfilled aspect of what that verb is trying to convey, and they are just running with this idea that he’s, you know, committing all these acts, violent acts, and in an extreme way, and I’m just not sure that that’s the case. (3:36–4:46)
Since Walsh claims that New Testament translations have ignored the conative use of the imperfect in Galatians 1:13, you would assume that she actually surveyed a number of such versions. It seems that she did not. Indeed, the one—yes, just one—English version she mentioned, the NRSV, does not say what she claims it says. Here is what she says about the NRSV:
“‘But that how he beyond measure,’ this is what literal English translation tends to say in something like the NRSV, ‘I persecuted the assembly of God and ravaged it.’” (1:17–24)
In fact, both major editions of the NRSV translate the text quite differently than what Walsh reported:
“I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it” (NRSV, NRSVue).
Notice that the NRSV and its updated edition both render the last verb in Galatians 1:13, ἐπόρθουν (eporthoun), as “was trying to destroy,” which explicitly construes the verb as conative (i.e., expressing an intention that was not carried out or completed).
I’m sorry, but this sort of misrepresentation or mistake is inexcusable coming from a scholar who claims to be engaged in serious research on the issue.
Although Walsh does not mention the KJV (or any other version), it is true that the KJV renders the verb in a way that does not display the conative force of the verb: “Beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it.” Other English versions prior to the twentieth century read similarly. However, virtually all English versions produced in the past hundred years or so word their translation of the last part of Galatians 1:13 to express the conative use of the verb ἐπόρθουν. Most have “tried to destroy it” (AT [Beck], ESV, RSV [the precursor of the NRSV], NKJV, NABRE, NEB/REB, CSB, NIV, NASB [all editions]) or “was trying to destroy it” (NET, NRSV, NRSVue, LEB). Notice that even the NKJV, which is avowedly an update of the KJV, uses the rendering “tried to destroy.” A few offered a synonymous rendering, e.g., “my attempts to destroy it” (NJB) or “did my best to destroy it” (GNT, NLT), “doing my best to get rid of them” (Living Bible). The Message has “I was systematically destroying it,” which indicates Paul was in the process of destroying the church but did not complete it. Not surprisingly, Daniel B. Wallace, in his now standard grammar of NT Greek, lists ἐπόρθουν in Galatians 1:13 as a conative imperfect.[1]
I had to look hard to find even one modern English version that failed to translate the verb ἐπόρθουν as conative in force. The Eastern Orthodox Bible: New Testament (EOB:NT), the work of a single translator, has “I ravaged it,” which is the only clear example I could find.
Now, it is true that the English versions do not render the first imperfect verb, ἐδίωκον (diōkōn), as a conative imperfect. Indeed, I could not find a single version that did so. The usual rendering is “I persecuted,” just as in the KJV (ESV, RSV, AT, NKJV, NABRE, NEB/REB, CSB, NIV, GNT, NJB, NLT). A few versions render the verb to express the connotation of an activity that went on for a period of time: “I was persecuting” (NET, NRSV, NRSVue, LEB; similarly, The Message). This usage is called the iterative imperfect, meaning that it expresses “repeated action in past time.”[2] A similar usage is the customary imperfect, which indicates “a regularly recurring activity in past time.” This is how Wallace classifies ἐδίωκον in Galatians 1:13.[3] The NASB clearly interprets ἐδίωκον in Galatians 1:13 as a customary imperfect: “I used to persecute the church of God.” Both “was persecuting” and “used to persecute” are attempts to make more overt the ongoing force of the imperfect (something that is implicit in the simpler “persecuted”).
Might all of the English versions have missed the actual meaning of the Greek verb ἐδίωκον in Galatians 1:13? Might it be a conative imperfect, as Walsh claims two classicists told her? (Note that her language is explicitly about both imperfect verbs in Galatians 1:13. She uses the words “these” and “they’re” four times in reference to the two verbs and says they “are conative imperfects.”) No. There is simply no plausible interpretation of Galatians 1:13 in which ἐδίωκον is construed as conative. Such an interpretation is implausible regardless of how one understands the denotation of ἐδίωκον.
On the usual (and correct, as I explained in my previous post) interpretation that ἐδίωκον denotes persecution, a conative interpretation would result in the meaning, “I tried to an extraordinary degree [ὑπερβολην, hyperbolēn] to persecute the church of God.” Such a rendering suggests that Paul was inept—that he tried very, very hard to persecute the church, but he just couldn’t do it at all. Since Paul is here emphasizing how highly he was esteemed in (non-Christian) Judaism prior to his conversion (see Gal. 1:13–14), it would have been counterproductive for him to have said that he merely tried to persecute the church but never actually persecuted it at all.
The problem is even worse for Walsh’s own preferred interpretation of ἐδίωκον as meaning that Paul was merely pursuing or following after Christians to tell them they were wrong and to champion his own doctrine. It would make no sense at all for Paul to have said, “I tried to pursue Christians to tell them my opinion, but I never actually did so,” as if he couldn’t find any Christians or get close enough to any of them to talk with them! Moreover, at this point Walsh seems to have lost the thread of her own argument. If the verb expresses a mere intent or attempts to do something that Paul never did, what relevance would this grammatical nuance have for her argument if the verb did not denote persecution?
Finally, Paul uses the same verb in other places and in other forms besides the imperfect, where a conative interpretation is grammatically impossible (quoting from the ESV):
“For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted [ἐδίωξα, aorist] the church of God” (1 Cor. 15:9).
“They only were hearing it said, ‘He who used to persecute [διώκων, present participle] us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy’” (Gal. 1:23).
“. . . as to zeal, a persecutor [διώκων, present participle] of the church” (Phil. 3:6).
Notice the present participle διώκων in Galatians 1:23, just ten verses after 1:13, and notice the conative wording “tried to destroy” of the imperfect verb ἐπόρθουν, the other imperfect verb used in 1:13. The English versions show the same pattern here as in Galatians 1:13; virtually all of them render ἐπόρθουν as “tried to destroy” or the equivalent.
Walsh concludes by suggesting that the incompleteness of her research is just part of the process of being a New Testament scholar:
So, this is a little bit of a vulnerable video in the sense that I’m giving you kind of a developing thought. This is actually what it looks like to be a New Testament nerd. You discover something like this and kind of latch on to it. And now I’m going to have to look into 10,000 different commentaries and I’ve already started downloading articles from Novum Testamentum and try to figure out what scholarship has said about this. But so far we’re on to something here. (4:47–5:14).
I’m all for doing serious academic research in the secondary literature, but Walsh needs to start with something much more basic. She might start by actually reading some of the English versions of Galatians 1:13. For extra credit, she could look up other NT references using the same Greek verbs to see if her interpretations hold up.
NOTES
[1] Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 550–51.
[2] Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics, 546. Wallace lists ἐδίωκον in Gal. 1:13 as an example of the customary imperfect.
[3] Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics, 548.