From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Feb 26 2002 - 08:05:34 EST
At 2:03 AM -0600 2/26/02, Steven Lo Vullo wrote:
>Greetings everyone:
>
>Rom 7.10: EGW DE APEQANON KAI hEUREQH MOI hH ENTOLH hH EIS ZWHN, hAUTH EIS
>QANATON
>
>The punctuation of UBS4 and NA27 indicate that the editors did not consider
>hAUTH to be a modifier of ENTOLH. It seems to me that this would entail
>considering hAUTH as the subject of hEUREQH, with hH ENTOLH "hanging,"
>somewhat like a nominativus pendens. However, as I understand the pendent
>nominative, it "hangs" at the beginning of the clause, is the logical
>(though not syntactical) subject, and is replaced in the sentence by a
>pronoun IN A DIFFERENT CASE. I have two questions: (1) Is there anything to
>hinder us from considering hAUTH as a qualifier of hH ENTOLH ("this
>commandment which was to result in life")? (2) Is it possible for hH ENTOLH
>to be an independent use of the nominative here ("and the commandment which
>was to result in life--THIS proved to me to be a commandment resulting in
>death")? It would seem that if (2) is correct, hAUTH is emphatic to one
>degree or another. Perhaps "this very commandment" would be a good
>rendering?
I can't, for my part, see any other way to account for this hAUTH as you
have expounded it here, Steven; semantically it seems to me that
hH ENTOLH hH EIS ZWHN hAUTH
= hAUTH hH ENTOLH hH EIS ZWHN
= hH ENTOLH hAUTH hH EIS ZWHN
= hAUTH hH EIS ZWHN ENTOLH
i.e. hAUTH is, as the convention for demonstratives requires, in a
predicative position to hH ENTOLH hH EIS ZWHN,
BUT: it is positioned somewhat oddly FOLLOWING an appended attributive
phrase that must be construed with hH ENTOLH. I do NOT think that either
the hAUTH or the hH ENTOLH hH EIS ZWHN should be viewed as "hanging"--I
think that they must be construed together. Finally I agree with you that
hAUTH is all the more emphatic in this final position. It may be that the
editors (there's no note on this verse in Metzger's _Testual Commentary_)
have understood this hAUTH as a sort of appositive to hH ENTOLH hH EIS ZWHN:
My very free effort to convey the force of the word-order into awkward
English: "... and it proved to me--the commandment (intended) for
life--this very commandment-- to be death-dealing."
i.e., I think the word-order of this sentence is quite deliberately
contorted by Paul so that the word-order itself expresses the vivid and
shocking sequence of items entering into the lad's awareness in this
"autobiographical" account of loss of innocence (I'm not offering any
serious exegetical effort here, nothing more than a suggestion of how I see
this sentence within its context). I think the rhetoric of this sentence is
extraordinarily powerful.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months:: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad@ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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