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The Single Eye

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Henry J. Cadbury
Henry J. Cadbury
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

In the literature of Judaism and Christianity ‘evil eye’ is a term for niggardliness. This probably is a usage independent of the term ‘evil eye’ of magic. It belongs rather to that nomenclature of what I may call physiological psychology that is so conspicuous, especially in the Old Testament. Emotions are located in different parts of the anatomy — pity in the bowels, anger in the nostrils, and so forth. The eye is, among other things, the seat of niggardliness as in the phrase of the book of Tobit: “Let not thine eye be grudging when thou doest alms.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , April 1954 , pp. 69 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1954

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References

1 This paper was suggested by reading the recent monograph of Edlund mentioned in the note below but the position presented is of long standing and not unique. It expands what I have said in The Peril of Modernizing Jesus, 1937, 53f.; and may be regarded as an attempt to meet the need for a commentary which I mentioned in An Introduction to the Revised Standard Version of the N.T., 1946, p. 47.

2 The best exposition of this use of the various parts of the body known to me is in Johnson, Aubrey R., The Vitality of the Individual in the Thought of Ancient Israel, Cardiff, 1949, 39–88Google Scholar (on the eye, see pp. 49–51). See also the works cited by Johnson, op. cit. p. 9, note 3. Cf. Rosenzweig, A., Das Auge in Bibel und Talmud, Berlin, 1892Google Scholar (on greed, illiberality, etc., pp. 31–33).

3 4 : 7 καὶ μὴ ϕθονɛσάτω σου ὁ ὀϕθαλμὸς ἐν τῷ ποιεῖν σε ἐλɛημοσύνην; 4:17 repeats verbatim. The lacuna in Codex Sinaiticus includes both passages.

4 The New Testament illustrates the way in which words which are not literal or etymological opposites can become habitually so used, e.g. ἀδικία vs. ἀλήθɛια, πιστέυω vs. ἀπɛιθέω

5 Unless, by a syncopation like that of the comparatio compendiari, the Greek means because my eye is good.

6 Matt. 6:22, 23 = Luke 11:34–36. This has been subjected to elaborate examination by Conny Edlund in his monograph and doctoral dissertation with quite different results: Das Auge der Einfalt (Acta Seminarii Neotestamentici Upsaliensis XIX), 1952. See the review in the Journal of Biblical Literature 72, 1953, pp. 204–5. Attention may be called also to the remarks of C. J. Cadoux in Expository Times 53, 1942, p. 254 in a controversy on the evil eye in which C. Ryder Smith and J. Duncan Percy also take part, ibid. 53, pp. 181–182; 54, pp. 26–27.

7 The former phrase is identically translated at Prov. 23:6. The Hebrew phrase is literally “one good of eye.”

8 These passages are sometimes differently numbered and are not all identically represented in the Hebrew.

9 Barn. 19:11 = Did. 4:7 οὐ διστάσης δοῦναι, Hermas, Mand. 2:4 μὴ διστάζων τίνι δῷς ἢ τίνι μὴ δῷς, 2.6 μηθὲν διακρίνων, τίνι δῷ ἢ μὴ δῷ (with ἁπλῶς in the context of both passages), Sim. 9:24, 2f. ἀδιστάκτως … ἁπλότητα. Cf. I Clem. 23:1 … ἁπλῇ διανοίᾳ · διὸ μὴ διψύχωμɛν.

10 Even the next nearest sections of Matthew deal with the self-renunciation of fasting (6:16–18) and the freedom from anxiety about food and clothing (6:25–32).

11 For this and other examples of the contrast see H. J. Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts, 1927, p. 267.

12 Cf. Did. 4:5 Be not one who stretches out his hands to receive but shuts them when it comes to giving.

13 The new edition of Liddell and Scott's Lexicon, 1925(–40), grudgingly accepts the meaning for the noun only indirectly, and for the adjective and adverb not at all, though the latter at least is common. The noun ἁπλότης occurs three times in the section on the collection for the saints in 2 Cor. 8–9. That ἁπλῶς often idiomatically emphasizes πᾶς is shown by H. Riesenfeld, Coniectanea Neotestamentica 9, 1944 33–42, though he finally decides that in James 1:5 it goes with διδούς.I have not attempted in this article to distinguish the various shades of meaning in this group of words, as suggested for example by the discussion of M. Dibelius, Der Brief des Jakobus (Meyer, Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das N.T.7) 1921, 76f., or to conjecture by what process of development they came to mean liberal, generous, ungrudging, or the like, but only to vindicate their reference to the general notion which such words convey in English.

14 A doubtful exception is a variant in Test. XII Patr., Test. Issachar 3:3 πορɛυόμɛνος ἐν ἁπλότητι ὀϕθαλμῶν. But the adjective occurs alone of the economic virtue, ibid. 4:2 ὁ άπλοῦς χρυσίον οὑ πλɛονɛκτɛῖ. According to the English translation by R. H. Charles of the Ethiopic translation of the Book of Jubilees 41:28 (the Latin translation of this passage is missing) the phrase singleness of eye is used of Judah’s intention to punish Tamar. But E. Littmann translates “Frommigkeit,” and in any case the context is not definite enough to elucidate the phrase.