From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Jun 02 1999 - 23:41:34 EDT
At 11:12 PM -0400 6/2/99, Moon-Ryul Jung wrote:
>Carl wrote:
>
>KJV, NKJV, Webster, and Young are evidently reading a different version of
>the Greek--one needs to look at the apparatus criticus--there are several
>alternatives that append or prefix a relative pronoun hHi with (THi)
>ELEUQERIAi as its antecedent and construe (THi) ELEUQERIAi with STHKETE
>OUN, so KJV: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath
>made us free ..." (so also NKJV Webster, and Young)
>
>That is perfectly intelligible,
>
>To me, "the liberty WHEREWITH Christ hath made us free" does not make
>sense. "To liberate us by means of liberty" does not seem to make sense.
>Rather "the liberty for which Christ liberated us" would make sense.
>Am I missing something?
The meaning you want seems to require a Dative of Purpose, and so far as I
can see, that's a dubious syntactic function in Hellenistic
Greek--although, as I said before, I'm willing to look at evidence anyone
can adduce for its existence. So RSV and NRSV give a sense that is
appealing, but there doesn't appear to be any solid foundation for it. Then
there's George's new "Dative Absolute" (might as well coin a term for it)
or "Exclamatory Dative."
I see nothing wrong with the construction with THi ELEUQERIAi hHi hHMAS
CRISTOS HLEUQERWSEN STHKETE as: "Stand fast in the freedom with which
Christ has set us free." The first dative goes with HLEUQERWSEN; the dative
relative pronoun is instrumental in much the same way as THi DOXHi
functions with DOXASON ME SU in John 17:5: "glorify me with the glory ..."
KAI NUN DOXASON ME SU, PATER, PARA SEAUTWi THi DOXHi hHi EICON PRO
TOU TON KOSMON EINAI PARA SOI.
It's a bit like a cognate accusative, of which I can't at the moment think
of a NT example, but it's common in classical Attic: QEAOMAI QEAMA "see the
sight" (or "spectate the spectacle"), DIDWMI DWRON, QUW QUSIAN, and the
like.
The only problem with that text (THi ELEUQERIAi hHi hHMAS CRISTOS
HLEUQERWSEN STHKETE ...) is that the relative pronoun doesn't seem to be in
the oldest MSS.
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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