From: dalmatia@eburg.com
Date: Mon May 04 1998 - 00:46:12 EDT
Thanks Carl ~
I am living proof that just as no one has any monopoly on truth, so
also no one will ever have a monopoly on error, not as long as I'm
around!! I sure thought it could distribute both ways, and I do love
the elegance of my misapprehension... And I utterly prize your
consolation.
Thanks again ~
George
Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>
> At 11:28 AM -0500 5/3/98, dalmatia@eburg.com wrote:
> >I would just like to draw your attention to the first clause in the
> >Greek, to show its structural power. [where you write, "We have come
> >to share in Christ..."]
> >
> >METOCOI GAR GEGONAMEN TOU CRISTOU
> >
> >This literally reads "Participants - for - we have become - of the
> >Christ". And in English this transliterates nicely with "For we have
> >become participants of Christ." But what this lacks, and the Greek
> >has, is the distribution of GEGONAMEN to both 'participants' and 'of
> >Christ'. Thus both the fact that we have become participants and that
> >we have become 'of Christ' are 'built in' to this construction. The
> >'we have become' is a two edged sword that works in both directions.
> >English cannot do this without repeating the verb. Hence we end up in
> >English trying to capture this power with your verb construction "We
> >have come to share [in Christ]", and others as well. Which is why
> >there really is no substitute for 'seeing' it in the Greek. which is,
> >after all, the language that Someone saw fit that it be written in!!
> >:-)
>
> Neat as this might appear, it won't wash syntactically: TOU CRISTOU can
> only be construed with METOCOI here, which indeed calls for a partitive
> genitive. But as a consolation, George (if you need one), (a) all the
> meaning you could possibly desire is there even if you understand METOCOI
> TOU CRISTOU as the predicate phrase to GEGONAMEN, and (b) the perfect
> GEGONAMEN is itself a pretty powerful form in this sentence, underscoring
> the full present reality of "what we have become."
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics/Washington University
> One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
> Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
> cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
> WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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