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Re: PROLAMBANW

lembodo@ds.cised.unina.it (Domenico Lembo) writes:

>We should start reading everything anew. "Temporal"? 
>"Sequential"? This is a false dilemma. "Already"? i.e. "in advance"? 
>of what? Here and everywhere the "pro-" of "prolambano" does not 
>express any mere antecedence in the real world: anything that happens 
>before anything else.
>It is a bit of a naivety to think that here "prolambano" means "I 
>already catch". There is no "already". There is no "catching", either. 
>Nothing can support this interpretation. Hyeronimus' "praeoccupatus 
>sit"would be the only, very scanty, clue. No Greek text shows any 
>such usage of "prolambano". Actually, the verb denotes something 
>toto caelo different: to wit, a mind act. Roughly speaking, it means "to 
>assume". (Cfr. "prolepsis"). The texts says: "Whenever one is 
>assumed to be in fault, ...". And even in the two other passages (Mk. 
>14:8 and 1Cor. 11:21) the usage of the verb is akin to this.

	Sometimes I wonder if all the posts get to all the nodes.  I did point out
in my first post on this subject that there are a number of instances in the
papyri which do give the PRO- of PROLAMBANW sequential force.  There are
several of these in which PROLAMBANW refers to payment received beforehand.
 One may find these summarized in Moulton and Milligan, _The Vocabulary of
the Greek New Testament_.  Liddell and Scott, in their _Greek-English
Lexicon_, s.v., also cite several references in which PROLAMBANW means "take
_or_ seize beforehand."  These references were also included in my first post
on this matter.  

	The quotation from Jerome is interesting.  He appears to understand
PROLAMBANW as I have suggested.  It is difficult to tell, however, without
knowing more of the context, and I have no copy of his work readily at hand. 

	I consulted a dozen different Bible translations On Mk. 14:8, and all of
them support a sequential meaning for the PRO- prefix in PROLAMBANW; I found
none that exclude a sequential sense.  PROLAMBANW in 1 Cor. 11:21 is
obviously of somewhat more difficult interpretation.  Nevertheless, a
sequential meaning for the prefix of the verb is commonly suggested in the
literature on this passage (Gordon D. Fee, _The First Epistle to the
Corinthians_, [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987], p. 540).  Maybe what we need to
recognize is that we should not assign one iron-clad meaning to any word but
realize that the same word may have different meanings depending on
 different contexts and different grammatical constructions in which it
appears.  Lexicons of good quality define many of these different contexts
and grammatical constructions in giving possible meanings for any given word.

David Moore