From: Revcraigh (Revcraigh@aol.com)
Date: Wed Jan 21 1998 - 19:30:15 EST
Dear b-greekers,
In a message dated 1/14/98 10:16:04 PM, Vernon wrote:
>I have always thought the gift was Eternal life... but I am presently reading
a
>book were the author states that The Gift of Eph.2:9 is Faith. Please let me
know
>what you think?
The Greek for Eph 2:8-10 is:
8 THi GAR XARITI ESTE SESWiSMENOI DIA PISTEWS: KAI TOUTO OUK EC hUMWN, QEOU TO
DWRON 9 OUK EX ERGWN, hINA MH TIS KAUXHSHTAI 10 AUTOU GAR ESMEN POIHMA,
KTISQENTES EN XRISTWi IHSOU EIP ERGOIS AGAQOIS hOIS PROHTOIMASEN hO QEOS hINA
EN AUTOIS PERIPATHSWMEN.
The issue, I think revolves around the TOUTO of v. 8 "and this not from
yourselves, it is the gift of God" (NIV). The question being, "This what?"
TOUTO is a nom. sing. neut. dem. pronoun calling for a sing. neut. noun as
referent. That referent *should* be TO DWRON "the (specific and previously
mentioned) gift" which Paul would be saying is QEOU: a gift "of God," since
this is the nearest sing. neut. noun. Of this "gift of God", Paul would then
seem to be saying that it is OUK EC hUMWN "not of yourselves."
I say "should be", "would be", and "would then seem to be saying" because I
don't know of any translation that takes TOUTO with QEOU TO DWRON and
translate it "this gift of God is not of yourselves" probably because that
would be a self-evident (and therefore redundant) statement (and I'm not even
sure that it is grammatically possible here, given the distance between TOUTO
and TO DWRON).
Nevertheless, I think that TOUTO is neut. nom. sing. in agreement with TO
DWRON (contrary to what I would normally expect) because the other
possibilities--THi GAR XARITI; SESWiSMENOI; and PISTEWS--are fem. sing., masc.
pl., and fem. sing. respectively.
I have seen it suggested that TOUTO is neut. sing. in agreement with the
substantive "idea" contained in the participle SESWiSMENOI, which would be, I
suppose, SWTHRION, a neut. sing. form of the adj. SWTHRIOS being used
substantively (=deliverance, salvation). Thus, the clause would mean: "this
(salvation) is not of yourselves, (it is) a gift of God."
If such a swicheroo (agreement of pronoun not with a masc. pl. participle,
which is in the text, but with the neut. sing. substantive "idea" contained in
the participle) is, in fact, a feature of New Testament Greek (or Classical,
for that matter) then this interpretation makes sense.
(Can anyone give other examples of this sort of thing happening, either in the
N.T. or elsewhere in Greek)
The other plausible possibility is PISTEWS. That is, "this (faith) is not of
yourselves, (it is) a gift of God." In its favor, I think that "faith" is much
more likely than "salvation" to be thought of as something that might be of
ourselves, as opposed to being a gift of God. After all, who is the subject
of the sentence "I believe"? The subject is "I". If I am the one who believes,
than it might be concluded that that faith is not only something that I do,
but that that faith also comes from within me. What this interpretation has
against it, though, is that PISTWS is fem. sing. and TOUTO is neut. sing.
which I cannot explain except that somehow Paul wrote TOUTO by some kind of
attraction to TO DWRON further on in the clause.
Anyway, I offer this in leu of the fact that I haven't seen any other
responses to your question. I have often noticed that if I give an answer to a
question that has gone for a while without answer, I elicit responses from
others (maybe because I am so often wrong?). Any way, I hope that others will
respond.
God bless,
Rev. Craig R. Harmon.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:38:58 EDT