From: Steve Amato (samato@cfa.harvard.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 02 1998 - 10:45:54 EDT
Eph 2:5 CARITI ESTE SESWSMENOI
Eph 2:8 TH GAR CARITI ESTE SESWSMENOI DIA THS PISTEWS
Can CARITI in these verses be understood as adverbial datives (datives of
manner)?
"With Grace (= Graciously) you have been saved"
I find it interesting that these phrases stand before the verb. Is there
any significance to their position?
In Eph 2:8 it seems that the article at the beginning is anaphoric cross
referencing to vs 5, which seems to me to indicate that it isn't
necessarily being used as a substantiver, allowing for an adverbial
interpretation. Or is it?
One thing that bothers me about the "by grace" interpretation, particularly
in vs 8 is that this gives the sense of the Dative of Means, but it already
has a "means" stated. DIA THS PISTEWS it clearly dative of means as the
preposition specifies explicitly.
Why is it translated as if there are two mechanisms, whereas it doesn't
have to be.
What about "by grace" being a Causal Dative "Because of grace". This would
point to God's motive for saving us. And it seems to me that the word
order would make sense:
"Because of A you have been saved by means of B" which even in English
sound better than
"You have been saved because of A by means of B" or
"By means of B you have been saved because of A"
The word order seems to make sense to me logically:
Cause - Action - Means
I noticed a similar construction in 1Pet 1:5
TOUS EN DUNAMEI QEOU FROUROUMENOUS DIA PISTEWS
"Who because of God's power are being kept by means of faith"
as opposed to
"Who by means of God's power are being kept by means of faith"
(Two mechanisms seem awkward)
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Test - Ignore this part. (I just want to see if HTML tags work here. If
they do, we can write with greek fonts. I use this tag with my web pages
on greek grammar. At http://www.xensei.com/users/samato/greek/grklnk.html
particularly on the prepositions and articles links.)
<FONT FACE="SYMBOL"> touV en dunamei qeou frouroumenouV dia pistewV
</FONT>
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