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wrote in Syriack. So in Eph. 3: 5 "in Spirit" governs the statement that follows. That
statement we must now consider:
"That (in spirit) the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body, and
partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel" (Eph. 3: 6).
We are here immediately faced with the problem of interpretation. The one pre-fix
sun `together with' is used three times, sunkleronoma, sussoma, sunmetocha, yet the A.V.
translates these three words FELLOW heirs, OF THE SAME body, and PARTakers. In
one word sun is translated `fellow', in the next word it is rendered `of the same' and in
the third case it is not translated at all except it be by the word `part'. Moffatt translates
co-heirs and co-partners, but falls down over sussoma rendering it `companions', which
is very wide off the mark. We must preserve the threefold use of sun. The R.V. gets
over the difficulty by rendering the three words "fellow heirs, and fellow members of the
body, and fellow partakers" which while it has the merit of preserving the three
occurrences of the preposition sun, adds to the Apostle's words the word `member' which
is questionable. Rotherham, in his Emphasized New Testament reads "Joint heirs, and a
joint body and joint partakers" which is found also in J. N. Darby's translation. Possibly
this is as near to the original as our English language will permit, but even so, the
translation sets us a problem, for what is a joint body? The essential characteristic of a
`body' is that it has many members, each differing from the other in function and
importance. Such a body can provide an analogy for a spiritual company, and this
analogy is employed by the Apostle in I Cor. 12: where the different members are
indicated. The Ancients who were not limited to the English language, have revealed
their difficulty to express the Greek word sussoma adequately. Jerome renders the word
in the Latin Vulgate by concorporates and says:
"I know that in Latin it makes an ugly sentence. But because it stands in the Greek,
and because every word and syllable and stroke and point in the Divine Scriptures is full
of meaning, I prefer the risks of verbal malformation to the risk of missing the sense."
We believe all true Bereans will endorse these sentiments. One expositor has used
this word `concorporate' but it is not in common use.
"In relation to the Body the members are `incorporate': in relation to one another they
are `concorporate' that is sharers in the one Body" (J. Armitage Robinson, D.D.).
Here then, with the advent of the dispensation of the Mystery, a church came into
existence so different from any that had gone before, as to call for the coining of a word,
and the figure which that word conjures up in the mind is that of a body never seen or
known on earth. No one has ever seen a body in which every member was on absolutely
equal terms as any other, but we have already been reminded that this body is only
possible `in Spirit'. Nothing like this can be discovered before the Middle Wall went
down, and that wall was not removed until Acts 28: In the flesh, Israel can brook no
peer (c.f. The olive tree in Rom. 11:); only `in Spirit' can such an equality be possible.
Another correction is called for when using the A.V. Eph. 3: 7 reads "Whereof I
was made a minister", and the commencing of a fresh verse with these words may