From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat May 02 1998 - 08:31:07 EDT
At 1:32 AM -0500 5/2/98, D. Anthony Storm wrote:
>For the first time I am going through Hebrews in the GNT. I find it to
>be nearly as difficult as many Classical authors -- and idiosyncratic as
>well. (You may recall my recent post comparing Heb. 1 and the beginning
>of the Odyssey. Clearly, no one was too interested. But now I have a
>more apprpriate question, since it is more grammatical in nature).
Well, I was interested, but at that moment I was focusing my attention more
on that word PLANGQH in line 2 of Odyssey 1. Although I didn't respond at
the time, I would say that I think the author of Hebrews (perhaps it is he
or she that should be buried in the tomb of the "unknown soldier?) was very
likely familiar with the Odyssey just as he or she (I force myself to keep
adding "she" because I can't forget how Ken Litwak used to argue that the
authoress must have been Priscilla!) was clearly familiar with Platonic
thought. At any rate, he or she does indeed write a highly "literary" style
of Greek and appears to have had a more "classical" education than the
great majority of NT authors.
>In chapter 5 verse 7 there would seem to be a supressed finite word. For
>we read about Jesus... hON EN TAIS hHMERAIS THS SARKOS AUTOU, DEHSIS TE
>KAI hIKETHRIAS ... PROSENEGKAS ....
>
>This I literally render as: "Who in the days of his flesh (he made)
>offered prayers and pleas...."
>
>Here is my confusion: Normally I find that suppressed verbs are some
>form of EIMI. But here it almost seems like a form of POIEW is in view:
>"hON ... PROSENEGKAS ... EPOIHSE." Or should we construe it as some form
>of EIMI: "Who in the days of his flesh (there were) offered prayers and
>pleas...." Or is this so normal that I should not be surprised at all?
I've had my own problems with reading Hebrews; they've usually yielded to a
method of isolating the beginning and end of a rhetorical period and
grasping the relationship of each of the parts to the whole. And that can
be done here; there's no need to add any verb (although sometimes in a
sequence of periods a verb from an earlier period may be carried over and
be implicit elliptically in a second period). One thing necessary is to
correct your hON to hOS so that it is nominative and your DEHSIS to DEHSEIS
so that it is acc. pl. rather than nom. sg. I'll set out successive
elements on successive lines (better would be to outline the sentence) and
mark them syntactically:
a. hOS (subject of relative clause)
b. EN TAIS hHMERAIS THS SARKOS AUTOU (adverbial phrase construing with the
participle PROSENEGKAS, indicating the WHEN of it)
c. DEHSEIS TE KAI hIKETHRIAS (object of the participle PROSENEGKAS)
d. PROS TON DUANEMNON SWiZEIN AUTON EK QANATOU (adverbial phrase
construing
with the participle PROSENEGKAS, indicating the person
TO WHOM the offerings were made)
e. META KRAUGHS ISCURAS KAI DAKRUWN (adverbial phrase construing with the
participle PROSENEGKAS, indicating the HOW of it)
f. PROSENEGKAS (the aorist participle construing with hOS, governing the
object DEHSEIS TE KAI hIKETHRIAS, and clarified by all
the adverbial phrases indicating the WHEN, the TO
WHOM,
and the HOW of the action indicated by the participle)
This yields, if we rephrase it in more normal English word-order:
"(a) who, (b) in the days of his flesh, (f) after offering, (e)
with intense crying and tears, (c) petitions and supplications (d) to the
one able to save him from death ..."
Perhaps one of the hardest things to get used to in more formal, rhetorical
Greek is the distance in advance of its verb an object phrase may be
placed. I think that was the ral problem here. In fact, however, it is the
participle PROSENEGKAS that governs DEHSEIS TE KAI hIKETHRIAS.
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