Re: Romans 7:10 - KAI EUREQH MOI

Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Tue, 18 Feb 1997 09:33:38 -0600

At 7:45 AM -0600 2/18/97, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>I don't quite understand the grammar of this phrase in Romans 7:10:
>
>Roma 7:10 (GNT) EGW DE APEQANON KAI *EUREQH MOI* hH ENTOLH hH EIS ZWHN, AUTH
>EIS QANATON
>
>Maybe I can help put the finger on my confusion:
>
>EGW DE APEQANON I died (this is the easy part)
>
>KAI EUREQH MOI hH ENTOLH hH EIS ZWHN the last part is "the law which is unto
>life". I don't know how to deal with the passive in EUREQH combined with the
>accusative MOI. If Paul "is found", then why is he also the direct object?
>
>AUTH EIS QANATON "it is unto death"

An idiom originating in classical hEURISKW = "find that," "discover the
fact that"--then frequently put into the passive, as here, in the sense,
"turn out to be the case," practically EGENETO. Here I think I'd convert
the passive with MOI of agent into "I learned to my horror that ..."

AUTH picks up as an intensive pronoun hH ENTOLH making this rhetorical
sequence very powerful. The effect, it seems to me, is something like this:
" ... and I died, and I came to realize that the commandment intended to
bring me into life--this very commandment was bringing me into death."

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/