From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 19 1995 - 18:56:31 EDT
At 3:38 PM 9/19/95, perry.stepp@chrysalis.org wrote:
>Hello, all.
>
>Being in the middle of preaching Ephesians, I have had occasion this past
>couple of months to muddle through the Greek of this letter. I find it rather
>puzzling, to say the least.
>
>In terms of style analysis: Paul (?) seems to use clauses differently here than
>in Galatians and Romans (both of which I've also read in Greek). But how is it
>different? I *know* it's different, but I'm not sure how to articulate and
>describe the differences. Who has done a syntactical/stylistic analysis of
>this puzzling letter?
Well, for one important thing, the use of participial phrases, or to be
more accurate, of dependent clauses in general, is, in some parts of
Ephesians more or less chaotic. It is often quite difficult to determine
the linkage of one dependent clause to another, and punctuation is at
points an editor's worst nightmare. A high-school freshman would not get
away with writing the English equivalent of Ephesians 1:1-14, and I suspect
that only the name of Paul attached to the letter makes some people
hesitant to find fault with the Greek. Of the MUSTHRIA of which the epistle
has much to say, the greatest of all is its style. This is one major reason
why I find it difficult to believe that it is authentically Pauline.
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/
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