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Philippians 3:21

Posted: September 24th, 2019, 1:46 am
by ZealforBible
Moderator Note: I have allowed this through, but please contact a moderator in order to have your screen name replaced with your real name, per B-Greek policy. -- BH

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Hello,

I'm trying to translate Philippians 3:21 now.

Philippians 3:21
who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body,
according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself. (NKJV)

κατὰ τὴν ἐνέργειαν / τοῦ / δύνασθαι αὐτὸν / καὶ ὑποτάξαι αὐτῷ τὰ πάντα.
by the working / of it (?) / to enable himself (?) / and to subdue all to himself.

So the second and third part seems to be awkward to me.
what does τοῦ mean?
and why translations don't translate himself in the third part?

Can I get any help?

Thanks a lot!

Re: Philippians 3:21

Posted: September 24th, 2019, 9:51 am
by Barry Hofstetter
ZealforBible wrote: September 24th, 2019, 1:46 am Moderator Note: I have allowed this through, but please contact a moderator in order to have your screen name replaced with your real name, per B-Greek policy. -- BH

*********


Hello,

I'm trying to translate Philippians 3:21 now.

Philippians 3:21
who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body,
according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself. (NKJV)

κατὰ τὴν ἐνέργειαν / τοῦ / δύνασθαι αὐτὸν / καὶ ὑποτάξαι αὐτῷ τὰ πάντα.
by the working / of it (?) / to enable himself (?) / and to subdue all to himself.

So the second and third part seems to be awkward to me.
what does τοῦ mean?
and why translations don't translate himself in the third part?

Can I get any help?

Thanks a lot!
We normally don't deal with translation, but with understanding how the Greek works. How much Greek have you actually studied? It looks like you may be using some sort of interlinear approach, and that essentially never works.

To answer your question, τοῦ is taken with δύνασθαι to mark an articular infinitive. αὐτόν is the subject of the infinitive, and I would take καί as adverbial rather than connective, making ὑποτάξαι complementary to δύνασθαι. αὐτῷ, third person pronoun or reflexive usage (as it sometimes has in Koine). That's an in issue related to context. Which would make the best sense?

Re: Philippians 3:21

Posted: September 26th, 2019, 10:44 pm
by Peng Huiguo
Viewing καί as connective here is ok and presents an occasion to apply Sharp's rule.

To OP: If you're unfamiliar with infinitives, you may like to read https://ancientgreek.pressbooks.com/chapter/27/ and try to make sense of the shifts in cases surrounding the infinitives in this verse. Conventional translations did pretty good here actually.

Re: Philippians 3:21

Posted: September 27th, 2019, 10:55 am
by Barry Hofstetter
Peng Huiguo wrote: September 26th, 2019, 10:44 pm
Viewing καί as connective here is ok and presents an occasion to apply Sharp's rule.
How would "Sharp's rule" apply here?

Re: Philippians 3:21

Posted: September 27th, 2019, 11:47 pm
by Peng Huiguo
τοῦ δύνασθαι... καὶ ὑποτάξαι...

No? Anyway you had instinctively "sharpened" it when you placed "ὑποτάξαι complementary to δύνασθαι", but I would say "equivalent" instead of "complementary".

Re: Philippians 3:21

Posted: September 28th, 2019, 9:24 am
by Barry Hofstetter
Peng Huiguo wrote: September 27th, 2019, 11:47 pm τοῦ δύνασθαι... καὶ ὑποτάξαι...

No? Anyway you had instinctively "sharpened" it when you placed "ὑποτάξαι complementary to δύνασθαι", but I would say "equivalent" instead of "complementary".
No. You might want to read up on Sharp's rule and precisely what it covered -- the article here by Wallace should help:

https://bible.org/article/sharp-rediviv ... sharp-rule

The syntax you propose for the verse is highly improbable, if not impossible. δύναμαι regularly takes complementary infinitives, and this is how it is naturally read.

Re: Philippians 3:21

Posted: September 28th, 2019, 12:49 pm
by Peng Huiguo
the article here by Wallace
I'm glad to see many are as imprecise as I am wrt this rule.
highly improbable, if not impossible
The construction of this verse is uncommon, even unique afterall.

δύναμαι does regularly take complementary infinitives, but it often stands alone too. The καί is what tripped me — why is it in there at all? τοῦ δύνασθαι αὐτὸν ὑποτάξαι... would work just fine. You said it's adverbial; which adverb would you use for it? KJV et al use "even", but that sounds off: "even" usually adds a specific to an indefinite, or an unexpected to what's expected, which is not the case here.

I think NLT's rendition gets it, but the bang of the sentence is lost. Noting the versatility of καί, something like "by the working of his might, the very might that subjects all things to himself!" is probably needed.

Re: Philippians 3:21

Posted: September 28th, 2019, 1:30 pm
by Barry Hofstetter
Peng Huiguo wrote: September 28th, 2019, 12:49 pm
the article here by Wallace
I'm glad to see many are as imprecise as I am wrt this rule.
highly improbable, if not impossible
The construction of this verse is uncommon, even unique afterall.

δύναμαι does regularly take complementary infinitives, but it often stands alone too. The καί is what tripped me — why is it in there at all? τοῦ δύνασθαι αὐτὸν ὑποτάξαι... would work just fine. You said it's adverbial; which adverb would you use for it? KJV et al use "even", but that sounds off: "even" usually adds a specific to an indefinite, or an unexpected to what's expected, which is not the case here.

I think NLT's rendition gets it, but the bang of the sentence is lost. Noting the versatility of καί, something like "by the working of his might, the very might that subjects all things to himself!" is probably needed.
Read up on δύναμαι in BDAG-- it's not used "alone" the way you think it is, at least not in such a way to justify your reading here. καί as an adverbial correlative here coordinating with the presumed εἶναι or γένεσθαι which has to be supplied with σύμμορφον. The thought is that if he can submit everything to himself, he can certainly make our bodies like his.

Re: Philippians 3:21

Posted: September 28th, 2019, 2:41 pm
by Peng Huiguo
καί as an adverbial correlative here coordinating with the presumed εἶναι or γένεσθαι which has to be supplied with σύμμορφον
But you wrote earlier
I would take καί as adverbial rather than connective, making ὑποτάξαι complementary to δύνασθαι
I think you're complicating a fairly straightforward text. But this discussion about grammatical minutiae has probably gone far enough to be of any help to the OP, especially since you've come up with a reading that's essentially the same as mine (as before; a discussion with you, Barry, feels like a round-about head-trip). We should heed the forum rule of
When answering questions in this forum, keep it simple, and aim your responses to the level of the person asking the question.

Re: Philippians 3:21

Posted: September 30th, 2019, 10:18 am
by Barry Hofstetter
Okay, we'll leave it at that. However, as a moderator, let me encourage you to avoid making personal comments of any types in your responses. The observation that I may be overcomplicating that text is permissible. The comment about discussions with me feeling like "a round about head trip" is not acceptable, not because it's about me or that I take offense (I don't), but because it is personally directed and completely unnecessary.

Of course, if you were heaping accolades on me, I would find those personal comments more than acceptable... :lol: