From: Steven R. Lo Vullo (doulos@chorus.net)
Date: Sat Jan 13 2001 - 14:05:56 EST
On 1/13/01 10:11 AM, Harold R. Holmyard III wrote:
>> Rom 3.29: H)\ IOUDAIWN hO QEOS MONON; OUCI KAI EQNWN; NAI KAI EQNWN,
>>
>> In the "old" BAGD the coordinating disjunctive conjunction H)/ (which BAGD
>> calls a "particle") in Rom 3.29 falls under 1.d.alpha, "to introduce and to
>> add rhetorical questions." My question has to do with whether H)/ in Rom
>> 3.29 is simply a marker of a rhetorical question or if in addition it is "a
>> marker of an alternative" as described in Louw-Nida 89.139 (though it may be
>> an alternative only implied by what precedes).
>
> I've always understood the H)/ to mark an alternative as it introduced the
> rhetorical question. I have not read Louw-Nida 89.139. If it is on-line, I
> am ignorant. Anyway, the context suggests that it marks an alternative. The
> Gospel offered a manner of salvation suited to all the world. The old
> covenant also operated by faith, but by faith channeled through the Law.
>
> Paul asks whether the manner of salvation God has laid out in the Gospel
> allows room for boasting? Boasting is excluded because the instrumentality
> of salvation is faith, trusting in God to save you. So one does not attain
> salvation through a law of works, since Paul and the other Christian
> teachers taught that people were justified by faith apart from works of
> Law. Or, if that were not true, was God the God of the Jews only. Most of
> the planet did not have the Law, or at least did not follow the Law in its
> many works. So if God offered salvation through a Law of works, perhaps he
> was God only of the Jews, having given only the Jews this Law:
>
> "Or (is he) of Jews the God only, and not (the God) of Gentiles?"
Harold
Thank you for the above response. That is what I suspected. My confusion
arose because the way BAGD (old) is laid out it seems to indicate that the
introduction of a rhetorical question is the ONLY significance of H)/ in a
construction of this kind. On the other hand Louw-Nida has no such category
(introduction of a rhetorical question), and the closest category to what we
have in Rm 3.29 is that of "alternative," which made sense to me. Let me
pose one more question to those who deal with the rhetorical style of the
various writers of the NT: When a writer poses an alternative in the form of
a rhetorical question, what is the rhetorical function and/or force of such
a construction?
Steve Lo Vullo,
Madison, WI
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