From: Carl William Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 09 1997 - 13:48:44 EST
On Tue, 9 Dec 1997, Rod Decker wrote:
> The syntax of 1 Tim. 6:3-5 is certainly not the easiest in the NT! Vv 3-4
> are not too bad, but the ANQRWPWN in the middle of v. 5 puzzles me. Why the
> genitive? The two gen. ptcps. (DIEFQARMENWN and APESTERHMENWN) are
> obviously related to it. The only thing that might make sense here is a
> gen. absolute (the subject does change from the previous verb, GINETAI),
> but the middle of the sentence is not a typical syntactical location for
> one. Is that a feasible explanation of it here, or am I missing something?
> (Maybe something obvious since none of the exeg. commentaries I checked
> commented on it!)
Rod, I don't think we have any genitive absolute here, but rather a
subject, DIATRIBAI, that is the final add-on subject of GINETAI, as you
note, and then we have the genitive ANQRWPWN dependent on it: something
like "the feverish Auseinandersetzungen of persons ..." and that in turn
is governed by the genitive participles, each of which has its own very
distinctive complement: "persons who are perverted in mind (TON NOUN as
object of the ptc DIEFQARMENWN) and bereft of the truth (THS ALHQEIAS as
ablatival genitive with APESTERHMENWN)--and then follows a third genitive
participle that is parallel to the two previous ones: "... and who suppose
that piety is a way of making a living." Doesn't that satisfy the
syntactical requirements of what we're offered?
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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