From: Paul S. Dixon (dixonps@juno.com)
Date: Fri Jan 16 1998 - 11:25:04 EST
On Fri, 16 Jan 1998 08:48:51 -0600 (CST) Carl William Conrad
<cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu> writes:
>On Fri, 16 Jan 1998 02:34:45 EST, Paul Dixon wrote:
>PSD: "Thanks, Carl, for all the interesting research and analysis on the
>hOTE construct in the NT. Your findings do favor taking hOTE with the
>immediately preceding APEIQHSASIN POTE. This, of course, does not mean
>the preaching does not take place at that time too, just that we are not
>likely to prove that it does by a supposed KHRUXEN - hOTE connection."
>
>
>CWC: What it actually means, of course, is that we're not likely to
prove
>it one way or the other.
>
>PSD: "This leads to the next observation. It is interesting to note that
>most translations treat APEIQHSASIN as an adjectival participle, "who
>once were disobedient" (NASB), "who disobeyed long ago" (NIV), "who
>formerly did not obey" (RSV), etc. Yet, the participle is anarthrous.
BDF(sec
>270) says, TAn attributive adjective (participle) ... placed in the
>postposition ... must have its own article.'"
>
>CWC: Quite true; but, as I think you noted in your first post on this
>passage several days ago, the aorist participle by no means necessarily
>refers to past time.
>
>PSD: "We could certainly render it adverbially as "when they formerly
>[dis]obeyed." If so, then the time of the preaching is set in Noah's
day.
>Grudem cites the following fairly close examples: Mk 16:10, Jn 1:36,
Acts
>7:2, Acts 7:26, Acts 8:12; 11:17; 2 Cor 5;14, Heb 7:1."
>
>CWC: I've looked at all these examples; the only thing I see in common
>about them is that they all involve finite verbs with complements
>accompanied by a predicative participle, some of those participles being
>in the present tense, others in the aorist. I don't see any reason why
>those participles should necessarily be understood to have temporal
sense,
>although that's certainly ONE possibility with a predicative
>participle.
>
>PSD: "At any rate, read Grudem's discussion on this. He concludes,
"Christ
>preached to the spirits who are now in prison but he did so 'when they
>formerly disobeyed.'"
>
>CWC: Well, I can see that as a possibility; what I can't see is any
>compelling argument for it on the basis of those examples you've
>cited. It really seems to me that this passage remains very obscure, a
NON
>LIQUET involving several unsatisfying grammatical indicators which raise
more
>questions than they admit definitive answers to. And it is the grammar
>that I have found the real challenge in this passage. Which makes me
>wonder, whether in fact the first readers of this text DID understand
>exactly what the author meant; well, very likely they understood it
>better than we do.
I agree that the grammar is nondeterminative. So, any interpretation
here which posits a teaching foreign to scripture, such as a
post-resurrection preaching to the departed, must remain at least highly
suspect.
Paul Dixon
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