Re: Romans 7.25 (ho autos)

To: B-GREEK@virginia.edu
Subject: Re: Romans 7.25 (ho autos)
From: Richard Walker <Richard.Walker@cs.anu.edu.au>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 1994 18:15:37 +1000

Bzzz, sorry, J. D. G. Dunn got in first.
See his Romans commentary in the Word series.
His translation is `So then I myself . . .' but in his
notes he says:

"The `autos' intensifies and emphasizes the `ego' (BGD, `autos' 1).
But it does not follow, as Kuss rightly notes, that we should translate
`I thrown on my own resources' (BGD), `I left to myself' (Moffatt),
or `I left on my own', that is, before or without Christ
([heaps of references deleted]); that conculsion is determined
more by a particular line of interpretation than by the force of
the words themselves.  The `I' which speaks is both the fleshly
`I' (v. 14) and the `inner person/man' (v. 22).  The emphasis
is therefore to bring out the fact that it is one and the same `I'
on both sides of the warfare and servitude, carefully expressed
in the `men . . de . . .' construction that follows."

Actually, I am interested in hearing what people think about
the switch from past to present in the middle of Romans 7.
Is it a switch from Adam to Paul (and us) (Dunn's view),
or us before to after conversion, or what?  And does
Hebrew `aspect' figure in all this?

Richard.