The Commentariat Speaks (33)

A Bible student on Reddit inquires, “Why does the Apostle Paul write in such long sentences?”

This reader is obviously paying attention when he gets into the word of God, and good for him. My brother and I were discussing this issue only a few weeks back, as it’s something we too have noticed over the years. Some of Paul’s sentences are absolutely legendary. They go on for days.

Tending to Verbosity

I will readily confess I too tend to verbosity, though I do my best to curb the impulse as some readers find long sentences difficult to follow. English experts will tell you 15-20 words is a short sentence and 30 is getting lengthy. Without getting too caught up in counting words, they advise budding writers to aspire to an average sentence length of around 25 words for maximum reader comprehension. Knowing that our audience is generally well read, I’m sure I violate that informal “rule” regularly myself; still, a 40- or 50-word sentence is probably the longest I’ve ever written, and I use lots of shorter and stand-alone sentences as well, especially when trying to make a point.

Still, no matter how verbose I may become from time to time, I cannot hold a candle to the esteemed apostle where running on is concerned. Paul is in another league. Ephesians 1:3-14 is the most egregious example I can think of. In the Greek translation I looked at, it’s exactly 200 words, about 8 times the length most Anglo readers easily parse for meaning. Some experts say the sentence actually begins in verse 1, which would make it even longer.

That is one serious run-on sentence by any standard, and it’s by no means the only example. Verses 15-23 of the same chapter also comprise a single Greek sentence. This one includes an incredible 19 different verbs. Ephesians 5:18-24 is also a single sentence, with 10 verbs. Nor are epic apostolic run-ons limited to the book of Ephesians. I have found examples in Corinthians and elsewhere.

Rabbit-Trail Clauses

To be fair to Paul, this tendency to string together huge numbers of modifying clauses is not unique to the apostle. It’s a feature of the Greek language more generally, which is capable of highly complex sentences, referred to by some linguists as “hypotactic”. Hypotactic language befits the subject matter of the seminal philosophers of yore like Aristotle and Plato. As a great writer, I put Paul in their company without blushing. Lengthy sentences are not only complex but also more adult. Technical subjects (like theology) in any language tend to produce them, even require them.

Lengthy sentences feature in many other ancient languages, though not to the extent they do in Greek. The more highbrow English writers from the last century often generated sentences in the 50-100 word range, and paragraphs longer than a page. Attention spans were lengthier then too. Not everyone could read, but those who could read carefully and well.

The question then becomes, “What do we do about it in an age of vastly reduced attention spans where such elaborate language constructions are exceedingly rare?” Our reader comments, “I find the books by Paul really hard to read.” He’s not wrong. The proliferation of “rabbit-trail clauses” in Paul’s writing can make it difficult to isolate and analyze the apostle’s main point.

The Parenthesis Trick

One of the solutions my brother proposed for Bible teachers studying and teaching Paul is to put his modifying clauses in mental or physical parentheses so you can identify his main ideas more easily. I have been doing this for a few years, and I find the practice quite useful.

Take this example from Philippians:

“Do all things without grumbling or disputing, [that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life,] so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.”

Does that help? It helps me.

Rightly Dividing?

I’m not suggesting we pass over the intervening ideas: that avoiding grumbling and disputing (i) contributes to blamelessness and innocence, (ii) enhances testimony, and (iii) provides evidence of fidelity to the word of God. Not at all. But all these ideas are in closer proximity to the main idea than the final clause of the sentence. The closer they are, the less likely we are to overlook them naturally. The association I would never have made before inserting mental parentheses into the sentence is between the ideas at its beginning and end. Paul is saying that the conduct of the believers he trained reflects on the quality of his labor as an apostle. That would certainly matter to him, both in terms of potential reward for his service and in the joy he would take in the spiritual progress of those he loved.

Not only that, temporarily chopping up Paul’s sentence reminds us how very seriously the Lord takes grumbling and disputing. These habits are not trivial personality quirks. A congregation that perpetually murmurs and in-fights, Paul says, is evidence that his time and energy in preaching to them and teaching them was wasted. If that was what they were looking for, they could have gotten it far more conveniently from the rabbis of Judaism. The word he uses for “vain” is kenos, meaning empty, destitute, resulting in nothing.

Ouch.

Extra Digging

Now, we could certainly find out from other passages in both Old and New Testaments that God doesn’t like grumbling or certain kinds of disputing, and that people who do these things all the time are in a very poor spiritual state. Grumbling is addressed in 1 Corinthians 10:10, 1 Peter 4:9 and James 5:9, among many others; inappropriate disputing in 1 Timothy 2:8, Romans 1:21 and 14:1. That teaching is readily available. What we might not grasp is how comprehensively such conduct invalidates the confession of Christ, even reflecting poorly on those who have taught us and somehow failed to rebuke us for it.

That’s not an insignificant point, and Paul certainly made it. We just need to do a little extra digging to observe it.