From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat Feb 10 2001 - 12:12:32 EST
At 10:12 AM -0500 2/10/01, Moon-Ryul Jung wrote:
>Carl, thanks for the illuminating explanation.
>
>[Moon]
>> Rom 4:16-17:
>> >
>> >hOS ESTIN PATHR PANTWN hHMWN,
>> >KAQWS GEGRAPTAI hOTI PATERA POLLWN EQNWN TEQEIKA SE,
>> > KATENANTI hOU EPISTEUSEN QEOU TOU ZWOPOIOUNTOS TOUS VEKROUS.
>> >
>> >> Moon, this is a fairly common construction (as I understand it)
>>wherein the
>> verb is sandwiched between the relative pronoun and the noun that is its
>> real antecedent.
>
>[Moon]
>Do you mean that the "antecedent" of hOU comes after the relative clause,
>and in this case it is QEOU? Does it have to do with the free word order
>of GREEK?
Quite frankly, I don't think so; I've seen it far more frequently in
Augustan Latin--I mean the pattern <relative pron/verb/antecedent> but I've
seen it several times in NT Koine; I'm not sure whether it's a pattern
borrowed from contemporary latin (although I know there are some such), but
I know I've seen it; I'll try to find some more examples of it. I'd say
it's somewhat comparable to the pattern that was more common in classical
Attic: sandwiching an attribute between the article and the noun governed
by the article; this too is common enough in Koine, but less so than in
classical Attic. I suspect (and this is another of my unscientific
suspicions) that it has become or is becoming in Koine a common equivalent
of the sequence antecedent + anaphoric demonstrative + relative pronoun +
verb.
>[Carl]
>> In fact, however, that final relative clause needs to be seen in the
>> context of the much fuller context from the beginning of verse 16 onwards
>> to the end of the whole sentence:
>>
>> The whole text: DIA TOUTO EK PISTEWS, hINA KATA CARIN, EIS TO EINAI BEBAIAN
>> THN EPAGGELIAN PANTI TWi SPERMATI, OU TWi EK TOU NOMOU MONON ALLA KAI TWi
>> EK PISTEWS ABRAAM, hOS ESTIN PATHR PANTWN hHMWN,KAQWS GEGRAPTAI hOTI PATERA
>> POLLWN EQNWN TEQEIKA SE, KATENANTI hOU EPISTEUSEN QEOU TOU ZWOPOIOUNTOS
>> TOUS NEKROUS KAI KALOUNTOS TA MH ONTA hWS ONTA.
>>
>> If therefore, one must
>> look back to any antecedent of KATENANTI hOU, one should look BEYOND the
>> TEQEIKA of the scriptural citation and beyond the portion originally cited
>> from Rom 4:16 to TWi EK PISTEWS ABRAAM:
>
> the promise is sure ... to the one
>> (who is righteous) by virtue of the faith of Abraham ... before the God
>> whom he believed as one who makes the dead alive and calls into beng what
>> is not."
>>
>Your rendering makes the adverbial clause "before the God whom he
>believed"
>construed with modify the implied predicate "is righteous". But TWi EK
>PISTEWS
>ABRAHAM seems to mean the one who has the faith of Abraham. Then, we will
>have "to the one who HAS the faith of Abraham..... BEFORE THE GOD whom he
>believed". It does not seem to make a good sense.
>The alternative is "who is the father of us all.......before the God whom
>he believed". What do you think?
But EK PISTEWS ABRAAM can't construe with that TWi quite so simply; there
has to be something for EK PISTEWS ABRAAM to hang on, and I suggested that
it's probably an implicit adjective DIKAIWi, so that we should understand
the phrase to be TWi EK PISTEWS ABRAAM DIKAIWi and that we should make the
KATENANTI hOU EPISTEUSEN (ABRAAM) QEOU hang upon the articular dative NP.
--
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
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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