1 Corinthians 8:4

4. [ἕτερος] after θεός omit אABDEFG Vetus Lat. Vulg. Irenaeus. Rec. inserts with Peshito. Most probably a marginal gloss.

4. περὶ τῆς βρώσεως. The Apostle now comes more closely to the point than in the οἴδαμεν of 1 Corinthians 8:1. There the question is described as concerning meats offered to idols. Now he specifies more exactly that his remarks apply to the eating of such meats. βρῶσις is strictly the act of eating, βρῶμα the food eaten.

οὖν. ‘Therefore;’ a conclusion from what has gone before. This militates against the idea that the former verses are to be regarded as a parenthesis.

εἴδωλον. Some have translated, ‘there is no idol in the world.’ But a reference to the original sense of the word makes this rendering more than doubtful. Originally applied to the forms of the spirits in Hades, it came to mean mere phantoms of the mind (see Plat. Phaed. 66 c). Even in the LXX., where it has the modern meaning of our word idol, it came to have that meaning as the rendering of a Hebrew word signifying ‘vain, empty shadows’ (μάταια often in LXX.). Sir W. Scott, in his Introduction to the Fortunes of Nigel, speaks of the ‘Eidolon or representative Vision’ of the Author of Waverley. There can be no doubt that both significations of the word were present to St Paul’s mind. ‘There is no such thing as that which the idol represents. It is but a shadow, a figment of the imagination.’