From: James S. Murray (jsmurray@execpc.com)
Date: Thu Sep 07 2000 - 23:19:35 EDT
"Carl W. Conrad" wrote:
> At 10:58 PM -0500 9/5/00, James S. Murray wrote:
> >Carl,
> >
> >Does it matter in this case that the genitive and the head noun are both
> >verbal
> >ideas? This phrase strikes me as being very similar to another Pauline
> >phrase; EX
> >AKOHS PISTEWS in Gal. 3:2. It seems to me that the most straightforward
> >way to
> >understand this phrase is by "by hearing and believing" or "by believing
> >what you
> >heard" (NIV; NRSV), rather than by understanding it in terms of a
> >subjective or
> >objective genitive. Young has an interesting discussion of this under the
> >heading of
> >Compound Verbal Genitives in his Intermediate NT Greek.
>
> The text (and I still wish people would repeat the text of a text that they
> are referring to): TOUTO MONON QELW MAQEIN AF' hUMWN: EX ERGWN NOMOU TO
> PNEUMA ELABETE H EX AKOHS PISTEWS?
>
> Whatever one does with this, one has to recognize the parallelism of the
> two prases, EX ERGWN NOMOU and EX AKOHS PISTEWS; I certainly wouldn't want
> to understand EX ERGWN NOMOU to mean anything like "by doing works and
> law." I would agree that AKOH here probably is synonymous with hUPAKOH in
> Rom 1:5, but once again I don't think I'd want to view these combinations
> as "subjective" or "objective" genitive but rather simply as adnominal
> (adjectival genitives), and probably the most straightforward way of
> conveying them in English is "as a result of works prescribed by Law or as
> a result of obedience prescribed by Faith."
>
> >Could Rom 1:5, then, be understood as " we have received grace and a
> >commission, to
> >lead/call people from all the nations to believe and obey?" I don't think
> >this is at
> >variance with what you wrote, though perhaps there is more connection or
> >interplay
> >between faith/believing and obeying here than I'm allowing for in my
> >translation.
>
> Yes, I think there is a much tighter link between the noun and the second
> noun in the genitive dependent on the first. It is NOT, in my opinion, a
> matter of two separate actions--believing and obeying--but rather of a kind
> of believing that by nature involves obeying.
Thanks for your response. If I'm understanding Young's approach correctly, I
think he is questioning whether the genitive noun PISTEWS is a 'verbal noun'
and should also reflect an event (believing) vs a concept/abstraction (faith).
In this approach, then, if a genitive 'verbal noun' is connected to another
'verbal noun', the contruction represents two kernal clauses and would be
rendered in English as two finite verbs connected by 'and' or 'because' (Young,
'Intermediate Greek' pg.32). From a footnote I came across in Wallace,
'Grammar Beyond the Basics' pg 75, that Young is applying an approach developed
by Waterman, in which he applies transformational grammar to 'verbal
genitives.'
Sounds like this approach may not be widely accepted. I would be curious if
there are viewpoints on Waterman's work. As someone who is trying to learn on
my own, I appreciate this forum for helping to sift through some of these
different approaches.
Thanks
Jim Murray
Racine, WI
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