1 Cor 7:36 καὶ οὕτως ὀφείλει γίνεσθαι

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Tony Pope
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Re: 1 Cor 7:36 καὶ οὕτως ὀφείλει γίνεσθαι

Post by Tony Pope »

Stephen Carlson wrote:I'm playing with the idea that καὶ οὕτως ὀφείλει γίνεσθαι is actually the apodosis, as if: "If anyone thinks he is behaving inappropriately with his virgin, if at the sexual peak, then it ought to happen this way: let him do what he wants (i.e. go through the marriage), he does not sin, let them marry." If this clause is part of the protasis, as usually taken, then I think it's referring to some (social) obligation to marry. I don't buy the idea of deliberate vagueness, though there is indeed a certain amount of euphemism going on here.
I found a reference to the apodosis option in a footnote in Meyer's commentary 1:229.
https://archive.org/stream/criticalhand ... 5/mode/2up

His negative evaluation of that option is approved by Alford, 2:533-34:
https://archive.org/stream/greektestame ... 2/mode/2up

What do you think of their argument?
Stephen Carlson
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Re: 1 Cor 7:36 καὶ οὕτως ὀφείλει γίνεσθαι

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Tony Pope wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:I'm playing with the idea that καὶ οὕτως ὀφείλει γίνεσθαι is actually the apodosis, as if: "If anyone thinks he is behaving inappropriately with his virgin, if at the sexual peak, then it ought to happen this way: let him do what he wants (i.e. go through the marriage), he does not sin, let them marry." If this clause is part of the protasis, as usually taken, then I think it's referring to some (social) obligation to marry. I don't buy the idea of deliberate vagueness, though there is indeed a certain amount of euphemism going on here.
I found a reference to the apodosis option in a footnote in Meyer's commentary 1:229.
https://archive.org/stream/criticalhand ... 5/mode/2up

His negative evaluation of that option is approved by Alford, 2:533-34:
https://archive.org/stream/greektestame ... 2/mode/2up

What do you think of their argument?
Thanks for those references. Very help. Nice to have Theophylact on my side. I like Meyer because I often find him addressing the same exegetical questions I have (though not always resolving them the way I like), while modern exegetes don't even seem interested in them. For example, Gordon Fee discusses every clause in this verse but the one I'm interested in!

As for Meyer's argument, I don't find it redundant because it is discourse regulatory. I think the καί takes the sense of "then" in the apodosis, so that's not a problem. Neither is the obligatoriness of ὀφείλει: the way one ought to follow has an element of choice. Alford doesn't read ὀφείλει as deontic but epistemic (I think); I'm not convinced (yet) that the verb has that sense and there are better ways of expressing it. In fact, what attracts to me about reading the close as an apodosis is that I have a hard time seeing the obligation in the protasis, as Paul's personal preference is for celibacy (cf. v.37).
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Stephen Hughes
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Re: 1 Cor 7:36 καὶ οὕτως ὀφείλει γίνεσθαι

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Stephen Carlson wrote:I don't buy the idea of deliberate vagueness, though there is indeed a certain amount of euphemism going on here.
I realise that this is a different river that I'm stepping into now and not only have the ripples (also κῦμα for those of you who translate everything you read into Greek), have calmed down, but et me comment on the social context of the letter. This is a letter that was expected to be publically read, in the presence of the (now not so) young people, their families and thise who would like to gossip about them. There are other occasions where people are named and shamed, or named and praised, but if this is an intensely pastoral moment in the letter, rather than him setting down a general principle, it could be conceivably be avoiding being very precise. Verse 1 makes the low context nature of the phrasing quite logical, with Περὶ δὲ ὧν ἐγράψατέ μοι "Let me address for a moment the things that you wrote to me about". Just how much Paul would have needed to include in a reply, to adequately present an answer for public consumption is something I don't have an opinion on.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Carlson
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Re: 1 Cor 7:36 καὶ οὕτως ὀφείλει γίνεσθαι

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I appreciate what you're trying to do, but my questions about this clause are not really about its pragmatics but just the low-level stuff of figuring out subjects, antecedents, referents, etc.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
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