From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 30 1999 - 19:24:15 EST
<x-rich>At 1:17 PM -0800 12/30/99, George Goolde wrote:
>Dear B-Greekers,
>
>I am preparing a student notebook which includes an exegesis of 1 Cor
>15:1-5. In studying 1 Cor 15:2 I have some exegetically challenging
>questions. Can you help?
An interesting challenge indeed, George. I offer only some tentative
suggestions that are based on a view that Paul, although he can write
with rhetorical precision and force when he wants to, often writes in
spasms and sequences of afterthoughts. Take this for no more than a
tentative suggestion.
>The text reads:
>
>EUAGGELION DI' hOU KAI SWZESQE TINI LOGW EUHGGELISAMHN UMIN, EI
KATEXETE,
>EKTOS EI MH EIKH EPISTEUSATE.
(expanded to include antecedent of hOU and a couple types corrected)
>
>My questions are these:
>
>1. What is the significance of EI KATEXETE ?
I think this is a sort of parenthetical addition; it is in the present
tense just as is SWZESQE: "you are bringing about your salvation
through it, assuming that you hold fast to it ..."
>2. Why the verb tense change between KATEXETE and EPISTEUSATE ?
I think this is still a second parenthetical addition, looking back at
the inception of faith on the part of the Corinthians. I'd understand
it as "and of course you bring about your salvation through it,
assuming you hold fast to it, ... unless perchance you really did
believe for naught."
>3. I understand the pleonasm of EKTOS EI MH but I am surprised that
MH
>rather than OU is used with an indicative verb. Any ideas why?
Two thoughts: (a) it's a counter-factual protasis, which would take a
MH and aorist subjunctive, but would be hard to carry over into English
here: "excluding--unless you really had come to faith in vain ..." or
(b) it's a cross (in very colloquial writing) between a counter-factual
condition and a deep wish that what Paul perceives to be true is not
REALLY true: "excluding--unless--but it's not true, is it, that you
believed in vain?" That might require a different punctuation, but it
strikes me as a possibility in what seems to me a very colloquial sort
of sequence.
>4. Do you take EKTOS EI MH as a negated 1CC ?
Sorry, I'm not used to the terminology. If it's a condition, it seems
to me it must be counter-factual.
>5. What is the structural relationship between EI KATEXETE and EKTOS
EI MH
>EPISTEUSATE
Personally I don't think that there IS a structural relationship
between these two phrases; I think rather that they are successive
reactions to the proposition that Paul is loath to take seriously, that
the Corinthians really do NOT believe in the resurrection of Christ. I
think he is pondering what it must mean if they really DON'T believe in
it when it is an essential element of the gospel. So he says: It's what
you're being saved/getting saved by, after all--assuming you do still
hold fast to it--but is it really possible that you believed for
nothing? I just can't believe it!" (paraphrase of sense I understand
here).
>I would appreciate answers to any and all of these questions. Thanks
in
>advance.
This reminds me in some ways of the passage that exercised us back at
the beginning of this month in Colossians 1:21-23, of which I cite the
text and my last comment on the passage:
<excerpt>The text:(21) KAI hUMAS POTE ONTAS APHLLOTRIWMENOUS KAI
ECQROUS THi DIANOIAi EN TOIS ERGOIS TOIS PONHROIS, (22) NUNI DE
APOKATHLLAXEN EN TWi SWMATI THS SARKOS AUTOU DIA TOU QANATOU PARASTHSAI
hUMAS hAGIOUS KAI AMWMOUS KAI ANEGKLHTOUS KATENWPION AUTOU, (23) EI GE
EPIMENETE THi PISTEI TEQEMELIWMENOI KAI hEDRAIOI KAI MH METAKINOUMENOI
APO THS ELPIDOS TOU EUAGGELIOU hOU HKOUSATE TOU KHRUCQENTOS EN PASHi
KTISEI THi hUPO TON OURANON, hOU EGENOMHN EGW PAULOS DIAKONOS.
</excerpt>
>I said previously that this is certainly different from a tight
conditional
>construction with an EAN (GE) + subjunctive protasis, where I would
>understand it to mean "if and only if"--but the EI GE clause seems to
be
>attached not so much as a rigid condition upon which the
APOKATHLLAXEN
>attaches is dependent for its validity, but with almost colloquial
force,
>as if to say, "assuming, of course, that you stick with your basic
>grounding and follow through in spite of the challenges you meet,
etc.,
>etc." If people want to hang all the distinctions between pure and
impure
>Calvinism and Arminianism on this, that's their business, but I
really
>think our author has a more practical pastoral concern for those he's
>writing to--and Paul was always having to fight off those who wanted
to
>interpret his conception of salvation in terms of "money already in
the
>bank."
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
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
</x-rich>
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