From: Edgar M. Krentz (emkrentz@mcs.com)
Date: Thu Aug 26 1999 - 14:57:42 EDT
>At 11:13 AM -0500 8/26/99, Joseph Brian Tucker wrote:
>
>In order to make your questions clearer, let me expand your citation to
>include the preceding verse also:
>
>Phil 1:29 hOTI hUMIN ECARISQH TO hUPER CRISTOU, OU MONON TO EIS AUTON
>PISTEUEIN ALLA KAI TO hUPER AUTOU PASCEIN, (30) TON AUTON AGWNA ECONTES,
>hOION EIDETE EN EMOI KAI NUN AKOUETE EN EMOI
>
>>ECONTES - Present Active Participle Nominative Masculine 2nd Plural.
>>Shouldn't EXONTES be EXOUSIN (dative) which would make it in agreement with
>>hUMIN (from the first part of the sentence in verse 29) to which the
>>participle refers?
>>1. What should be done when one comes across examples of syntactical
>>looseness?
>
>Think it through thoroughly, I'd say. At least that's the way I've tried to
>approach it here: ask what he really means to say and whether he might have
>said it in a way that is syntactically more transparent. In this instance,
>he might conceivably have done so, but I don't think it would have been
>very "natural" to have written, as you are suggesting, a dative plural
>participle to agree with the hUMIN that was required with the passive
>ECARISQH; that would have been more common in earlier Attic Greek and even
>in a contemporary like Philo. But it seems to me that Paul really was
>conceiving of that passive + hUMIN as IF it had been a nominative and
>active-verb construction, and then made his participle agree with the
>understood nominative. At any rate, this is how, in my opinion, you have to
>think through a problem like this. You'll have some other suggestions, I'm
>sure, from others; I'd particularly like to see what Carlton Winbery and
>Micheal Palmer have to say on this question.
>
>>2. Is this an example of it?
>
>I'd say it is an example PAR EXCELLENCE!
>
>>3. Are there any other possibilities to which ECONTES could refer?
>
>Surely not in the Greek as it stands before us. There might be some who'd
>like to describe ECONTES as a "nominative absolute"--but I'd really rather
>use a term more like the not-uncommon Latin term for it: CONSTRUCTIO AD
>SENSUM, i.e. syntax in terms of what the phrasing means rather than in
>terms of normal syntactical relations.
In my opinion, this last suggestion makes the most sense! SUNTAXIS KATA
SUNESIN is characteristic more of oral composition than of carefully
thought out written structure or the speech of professional orators [though
all the orators' speeches we have were edited for written publication].
Paul dictated his letters. In that long sentence Phil 1:27-30 he may well
have lost his grammatical structure--or recalled the STHKETE of 1:27 and
made ECHONTES agree with it.
Joseph, if you ever speaks in public without a MS, tape yourself--and then
listen to your own speech; you may be horrified at how often you break the
"rules" of so-called correct speech in English.
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Edgar Krentz
Professor Emeritus of New Testament
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
1100 East 55th Street
Chicago, IL 60615
Telephone: (773) 256-0752
Office: ekrentz@lstc.edu [preferred for anything professional]
Home: emkrentz@mcs.com [Tel: 773-947-8105]
GHRASKW AEI POLLA DIDASKOMENOS.
"I grow older, learning all the time."
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