CHA PT ia,
1. Arm yourselves (o7Aicac3e). Only here in New Testa- ment. The thought is Pauline. See Rom. xiii. 12; 2 Cor. vi. 7; Eph. vi. 10, 17; 1 Thess.-y,.8 ; Col. mi..12:
Mind (évvoiav). Only here and Heb. iv. 12. Literally the word means thought, and so some render it here. Rev. puts it in margin. The rendering intent, resolution, is very doubtful.
Cu. IV.] THE FIRST GENERAL EPISTLE OF PETER. 659
It seems rather to be the thought as determining the resolution. Since Christ has suffered in the flesh, be ye also willing to suffer in the flesh.
2. Live (@idcaz). Only here in New Testament.
The rest of the time (é7r/Aourov). Only here in New Testa- ment.
3. For the time past, etc. Compare Rom. xii. 13. Us (jyiv). The best texts omit. Of our life (rod Biov). The best texts omit.
Will (SovAnua, the better reading for Jérynua). Desire, incle- nation. See on Matt. i. 19.
When we walked (crezropevpévous). Rev., rightly, ye walked. Construe with to have wrought. The time past may suffice for you to have wrought the desire, etc., walking as ye have done; the perfect participle having an inferential reference to a course of life now done with.
Lasciviousness (dacedyeiats). The following enumeration. of vices is characteristic of Peter’s style in its fulness and con- densation. He enumerates six forms of sensuality, three per- sonal and three social: (1) ’“AceAyelass, wantonness. See on Mark vii. 22. Excesses of all kinds, with possibly an emphasis on sinsof uncleanness. (2) ’EmeIvpiass, lusts. See on Mark iv. 19. Pointing especially to fleshly lusts, “the inner principles of licentiousness” (Cook). (3) Oivodduylas, excess of wine. Only here in New Testament. The kindred verb occurs in the Septuagint, Deut. xxi. 20; Isa. lvi. 12. From oivos, wine, and dréw or Prva, to teem with abundance ; thence to boil over or bubble up, overflow. Tt is the excessive, insatiate desire for drink, from which comes the use of the word for the indulgence of the desire—debauch. So Rev., wine-bibbings. The remaining three are revellings, banquetings, and cdolatrees.
660 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Cu. IV.
Revellings (xépos). The word originally signifies merely a merry-making ; most probably a village festival, from Kopn, a village. In the cities such entertainments grew into carouses, in which the party of revellers paraded the streets with torches, singing, dancing, and all kinds of frolics. These revels also entered into religious observances, especially in the worship of Bacchus, Demeter, and the Idaean Zeus in Crete. The fanatic and orgiastic rites of Egypt, Asia Minor, and Thrace became engrafted on the old religion. Plato, in the introduction to “The Republic,” pictures himself as having gone down to the Piraeus to see the celebration of the festival of Bendis, the Thracian Artemis (Diana); and as being told by one of his companions that, in the evening, there is to be a torch-race with horses in honor of the goddess. The rites grew furious and ecstatic. ‘Orowds of women, clothed with fawns’ skins, and bearing the sanctified thyrsus (a staff wreathed with vine-leaves) flocked to the solitudes of Parnassus, Kithaeron, or Taygetus during the consecrated triennial period, and abandoned them- selves to demonstrations of frantic excitement, with dancing and clamorous invocation of the god. They were said to tear animals limb from limb, to devour the raw flesh, and to cut themselves without feeling the wound. The men yielded to a similar impulse by noisy revels in the streets, sounding the cymbals and tambourine, and carrying the image of the god in procession” (Grote, ‘ History of Greece”). Peter, in his introduction, addresses the sojourners in Galatia, where the Phrygian‘worship of Cybele, the great mother of the gods, pre- vailed, with its wild orgies and hideous mutilations. Lucretius thus describes the rites :
‘¢ With vigorous hand the clamorous drum they rouse, And wake the sounding cymbal ; the hoarse horn Pours forth its threatening music, and the pipe,