Translation
said to them, “If did
Go to footnote numberyou receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they to him, “But we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.”
Paraphrase
he (Paul) asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed in Jesus?” They answered him, “We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
Footnotes
1: “if did”
The Greek starts many of its questions with the particle “if” but it is sometimes cumbersome to translate it into English, so in those cases we leave it out of our English rendering. Its basic idea is that of “whether” and can be rendered in English as “tell me whether or not ….” But by writing it that way it is no longer a question. Although they did not use any punctuation in Greek at that time, we know this was a question largely due to the use and position of this word “if/whether.” When we form our English sentence into a question, we have covered the general idea of this particle, even if we don’t use the specific word “if/whether”.
Why Did Paul Ask Them This Question?
Paul must have seen something that caused him concern. Instead of seeing evidence of the Holy Spirit in their lives, he saw proof of the absences of the Holy Spirit. It was probably an attitude, or the way they talked, or their priorities, or self-centeredness, or something along that line, which indicated to Paul that they had not received the whole package. They called themselves believers and they wanted to associate with the house churches in Corinth, but something was lacking.
It appears that this group of men (we find out later it was about 12 men), were probably not acquainted with Paul; they might have come while he was away for some time. Since they had been baptized with the baptism of John, it appears that they were Jews, not Gentiles.