It's not that I thought the construction was "extraordinary", just unusual. I'm
not sure that the attributive pattern
article-substantive-article-attributive-attributive is all that common in the
NT, but I could well be hopelessly wrong!
I'm sorry, but my question was very poorly phrased. It was really prompted by
the textual variant. Let me try again. What syntactic/stylistic reasons would
motivate the scribal change from
EK TOU AIWNOS TOU ENESTWTOS PONHROU
to
EK TOU ENESTWTOS AIWNOS PONHROU?
Having now got hold of BDF, I see that the former phrase is described without
further explanation as "harsher" (269(5)). This seems to be scratching where
I'm itching. But in what sense is it "harsher"?
Just wondering...
John
------------------------------------------------
Carl Conrad wrote:
>At 4:54 PM -0500 9/23/97, John Kendall wrote:
>>Can anyone comment on the rather unusual construction
>>article-noun-article-participle-adjective in Galatians 1:4...
>>
>>(EK) TOU AIWNOS TOU ENESTWTOS PONHROU
>>
>>What exactly is happening here syntactically? The textual variant here
>>seems to
>>suggest some scribal difficulty with the construction. In a cursory search,
>>the only construction I've found which has at least formal similarity is
>>in Rev
>>14:10.
>
>I don't think this is really so very extraordinary; it is one of the ways
>of attaching an attributive string to a noun: by repeating the article and
>then following that with the attributive elements. This very same string
>could be written (EK) TOU ENESTWTOS PONHROU AIWNOS, "out of the present
>evil world-age." Is there a nuance of difference? Yes, although it's more a
>matter of emphasis; in the construction as written in Gal 1:4 the appended
>genitive string is like an appositive: "out of the world/time, the present
>evil one"--and one could argue that TOU ENESTWTOS PONHROU is very much like
>if not equivalent to an appositional substantive, which is why I translated
>it as "the present evil one."
>
>As for the phrase itself, it seems to be very much the same as that
>expressed in the Jesus-saying in Mt 12:45 hOUTWS ESTAI KAI THi GENEAi
>TAUTHi THi PONHRAi. The construction too is similar: "So will it be even
>for this generation, the evil one (= for this evil generation)."
>
>As for the participle ENESTWSTOS, I wouldn't really make much of its being
>a participle: it's more or less an adjective equivalent to "current," and
>in fact it really is just like that demonstrative hAUTH in the equivalent
>phrase hAUTH hH GENEA hH PONHRA = hH GENEA hH PONHRA hAUTH = hH GENEA >hAUTH
>hH PONHRA.