From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Jul 13 1998 - 07:29:36 EDT
At 4:29 PM -0400 7/12/98, David L. Moore wrote:
>Fellow list members:
>
> I came across a verse recently (Rom. 1:4) that presents some
>difficulties
>for exegesis. One of these has to do with how EN DUNAMEI is to be taken -
>or rather with what it is to be construed. Walter Grundmann (in TDNT,
>II:304, s.v. DUNAMAI/DUNAMIS), followed by K. L. Schmidt (_Ibid._, V:453,
>s.v. ORIZW), says that EN DUNAMEI in Rom. 1:4 is to be construed with hUIOU
>QEOU rather than with the verb ORISQENTOS, so that the passage is saying
>Chist, at His resurrection, entered into the divine sonship with fullness
>of power, whereas His power was limited before by the constraints of His
>humanity.
>
> This may make neat theology, but it doesn't seem to me the nost natural
>way to take the Greek here. A check of the LXX shows several cases where
>this usage is clearly adverbial (e.g. Ex. 12:51 [SUN DUNAMEI]; I Kings
>10:2; Neh. 1:10; Ps. 138:3). Could there be warrant for taking it with the
>noun phrase according to some syntactical usage I may not be aware of?
I can't put my finger on BDF, which I really would like to consult before
responding to this, but as I see it's had no other takers, I'll venture an
opinion that would be stronger if I could cite a grammatical authority: in
general I think any adjectival use of a prepositional phrase is highly
suspect UNLESS it can't be construed as syntactically linked to a verb
form. The general rule, I think, is that, for any adverbial construction to
be used adjectivally, it needs to be in attributive position, i.e.,
enclosed within an article in agreement with the noun in question. That, at
any rate, is a general rule for which I don't know of any classical Attic
Greek exceptions.
There are, however, two considerations that make me less confident in this
particular case:
(1) Paul's interpretation of the phrase which he cites from Hab 2:4 as hO
DE DIKAIOS EK PISTEWS ZHSETAI--and which I think ought properly to be
construed by taking EK PISTEWS with ZHSETAI--certainly appears to be
understood by Paul in Rom 1:17ff in such a way that EK PISTEWS functions
adjectivally with hO DIKAIOS. It has always disturbed me that such a
momentous interpretation of an OT passage should be based upon what (on the
surface, at least) seems like a very dubious grammatical judgment; and so I
ask, are there other instances of a prepositional phrase thus used
adjectivally without being in attributive position. If I can find my BDF
later, I'll come back to this on-list.
(2) Rightly or wrongly, I've always thought it most likely that Paul in Rom
1:3-4 is CITING a pre-Pauline Christological formulation rather than
offering his own here; if that's the case, the usage may not be one
consistent with Paul's own syntactical practice.
All of which is to say, I don't really THINK that the prepositional phrase
EN DUNAMEI ought, in ordinary Greek syntax, to be construed with a noun,
but I certainly don't feel overwhelming confidence about the situation in
Rom 1:4.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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