Discussing that passage in Mark on the other thread reminded me of one of the most difficult verses to interpret in the entire Bible: "For everyone will be salted with fire" (Mark 9.49). The manuscript record makes clear that the scribes did not know what to do with it, either:Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2017 5:47 pmMark 9.33-50:
A1 33 And they came to Capernaum; and when He was in the house, He began to question them, "What were you discussing on the way?" 34 But they kept silent, for on the way they had discussed with one another which of them was the greatest. 35 And sitting down, He called the twelve and said to them, "If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all, and servant of all." 36 And taking a child, He set him before them, and taking him in His arms, He said to them, 37 "Whoever receives one child like this in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me does not receive Me, but Him who sent Me."
B 38 John said to Him, "Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we tried to hinder him because he was not following us." 39 But Jesus said, "Do not hinder him, for there is no one who shall perform a miracle in My name, and be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me. 40 For he who is not against us is for us. 41 For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because of your name as followers of Christ, truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward."
A2 42 "And whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea."
43 "And if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, 44 where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. 45 And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than having your two feet, to be cast into hell, 46 where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. 47 And if your eye causes you to stumble, cast it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes, to be cast into hell, 48 where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched."
49 "For everyone will be salted with fire. 50 Salt is good; but if the salt becomes unsalty, with what will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."
Alexandrinus: πᾶς γὰρ πυρὶ ἁλισθήσεται, καὶ πᾶσα θυσία ἁλὶ ἁλισθήσεται.
Vaticanus: πᾶς γὰρ πυρὶ ἁλισθήσεται.
Ephaemi rescriptus: πᾶς γὰρ ἐν πυρὶ ἁλισθήσεται, καὶ πᾶσα θυσία ἁλὶ ἁλισθήσεται.
Bezae: πᾶσα γὰρ θυσία ἁλὶ ἁλισθήσεται.
Washingtonianus: πᾶς γὰρ ἁλὶ ἁλισγηθήσεται.
Byzantine: πᾶς γὰρ πυρὶ ἁλισθήσεται, καὶ πᾶσα θυσία ἁλὶ ἁλισθήσεται.
The modern critical editions usually accept Vaticanus or Sinaiticus as representing the original Greek text here, simply because the other variants can be most easily explained as the scribes grasping for whatever they could lay hold of as the interpretive key to the saying. Invariably they seemed to latch on to sacrificial precedents:
This was a natural connection to make. Alexandrinus and the Byzantine tradition both have what Vaticanus has, but go on to add that "every sacrifice will be salted with salt." Ephraemi has what Sinaiticus has, and then adds the same thing as Alexandrinus. Bezae cuts right to the chase, averring that "every sacrifice will be salted with salt," thus eliminating the confusing fire altogether. Washingtonianus goes in a slightly different direction when it claims that "everyone will be salted with salt," whatever that means.
But none of those options removes the difficulty of what is agreed to be the most likely original reading: πᾶς γὰρ [ἐν] πυρὶ ἁλισθήσεται. What does it mean for someone to be salted with fire? After perusing (yet again) several commentaries on Mark and finding (yet again) the usual interpretations to be lacking, I return (yet again) to what I consider to be the simplest, cleanest solution to the problem, one suggested by Weston W. Fields in his article, "Everyone Will Be Salted With Fire," in Grace Theological Journal 6.2. Fields opines that the answer is not to be found in the Greek; rather, it is to be found by back translating into Hebrew.
In the Hebrew scriptures, salt has several different symbolic significances, one of which is destruction:
Judges 9.45: 45 And Abimelech fought against the city all that day, and he captured the city and killed the people who were in it; then he razed the city and sowed it with salt [מֶֽלַח].
Psalm 107.34 (106.34 LXX): 34 A fruitful land into a salt waste [לִמְלֵחָ֑ה], because of the wickedness of those who dwell in it.
In that second example, sowing the ground with salt is part of destroying the city forever. To salt something, in this case, is to destroy it. We find this exact usage of the equivalent verb (same stem: מלח) elsewhere in the scriptures:
Here the verb uses the Hebrew niphal verb stem, which usually indicates a passive voice. This line literally claims that the sky will be salted, and what it means is that the sky will be destroyed (will vanish, as the translation above renders it, or will "be torn to pieces," as William Lee Holladay says in his lexical entry for this verse).
So, in Hebrew, to salt something can mean to destroy something. And that fits the context perfectly:
This nifty reconstruction points to a Semitic origin for the sentence (as is apparent for so much else in the gospel of Mark), which lost its meaning as it was translated into Greek, where salting and destroying are not good synonyms. And then the scribes had to make the best sense of it that they could.
I grouped the pericopes in my quotation of Mark 9.33-50 as per their significance in Greek, but in Hebrew the sayings about salt in verses 49-50 are linked by catchword ("salt") only, not by theme. By theme, verse 49 goes with what precedes it, the description of punishment in hell, where, after all, "everyone will be destroyed by fire."
Ben.
ETA: Fields does point out that, since "Aramaic also has the verb מלח, if one prefers to posit Aramaic rather than Hebrew originals for the sources behind the Greek Synoptics, the interpretation suggested here would probably still be valid." But my Aramaic is pretty much nonexistent, so I cannot comment on that.