Uncorruptness
Uncorruptness
()
The Eng. word is used in the Authorized Version only in 1Co 15:42; 1Co 15:50; 1Co 15:53-54, but the Gr. word occurs also in Rom 2:7, Eph 6:24, 2Ti 1:10. The Revised Version renders incorruption not only in each of the four verses in 1 Corinthians 15, but in Rom 2:7 and 2Ti 1:10, where the Authorized Version has immortality. In Eph 6:24 the Authorized Version gives sincerity and the Revised Version uncorruptness. In Tit 2:7 uncorruptness (Authorized Version and Revised Version ) represents (or ). The noun is derived from the adj. (a priv. and , to corrupt), which is found in Rom 1:23, 1Co 9:25; 1Co 15:53, 1Ti 1:17; 1Pe 1:4; 1Pe 1:23; 1Pe 3:4, and in the Revised Version is always rendered incorruptible. The Revised Version is correct in this consistent use of incorruptible for , and more correct than the Authorized Version in using incorruption for in those cases where the latter has immortality, which properly represents (1Co 15:53-54, 1Ti 6:16). But corresponding to incorruptible for , incorruptibility would have been still better than incorruption for (Tertullian [de Cultu feminarum, ii. 6] and subsequent writers render incorruptibilitas; Vulg. [Note: Vulgate.] in most cases incorruptio, which probably suggested incorruption of the English Version ), since the word really denotes the quality of imperishableness. The fact that incorruption is the Authorized Version rendering in 1 Corinthians 15, so familiar to English ears from its place in the order for the burial of the dead in the Book of Common Prayer, may have determined the Revisers to use it in that chapter, and the principle of adopting as far as possible a uniform rendering of particular words (see Revisers Preface) would lead them to adhere to it elsewhere. In Eph 6:24 they have departed from their usage in other places by substituting uncorruptness (Authorized Version sincerity), but it is questionable whether by doing so they have brought out the writers real meaning. It seems quite likely that he was employing the word in its usual sense, and was thinking not of the purity of the Christians love for Christ, its freedom from corrupt elements, but of its incorruptibility, i.e. its imperishableness. In Tit 2:7, where is applied to the doctrine which Titus was to teach, that word is properly translated uncorruptness.
It may be noted that when the two terms incorruptibility () and immortality () are set side by side in 1Co 15:53-54, we are not to understand the former as applying to the body and the latter to the soul. In classical Gr. such a distinction might be valid, but not in the NT. If we read of God in 1Ti 6:16 who only hath immortality, we also read in 1Ti 1:17 that He is the King eternal, incorruptible, invisible. Unlike Plato, St. Paul has no doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul; and in 1 Corinthians 15 he is dealing specifically with the resurrection of the body, so that incorruptibility and immortality are practically synonymous.
J. C. Lambert.