Rom 4:25

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Barry Hofstetter
Posts: 2159
Joined: May 6th, 2011, 1:48 pm

Re: Rom 4:25

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

cwconrad wrote:Lest what I wrote previously be misunderstood, I don't believe that your explanation has any basis in the Greek itself: the construction involving διὰ + acc. means that a reason is being offered. That there are different kinds of reasons is something that we didn't have to learn from Aristotle's account of four distinct αἰτίαι; but there's no way I'd want to say that the διὰ-constructions in these two clauses are different any more than that I acknowledge Wallace's myriad subcategories of adnominal genitive (including the "aporetic") describe real grammatical distinctions in Greek. I would object less to a notion that cognitive factors in the context require us to differentiate somewhat these "reasons."

We do agree, I think, that the meaning a speaker or writer intends to convey is greater than the sum of the parts of his oral or written expression. But I also think that we ought to be cognizant that our translation may and often enough does give expression to more than the ipsissima verba of the original (Greek) text do in fact explicitly indicate. Only in that sense is it really true that traduttori are traditori. We've sometimes said that Wallace's GGBB is not so much a "grammar" of NT Greek as it is a "translator's manual" or "translator's heuristic," offering up algorithms for reading between the lines of NT Greek grammatical expressions. This is, of course, something quite different from understanding the Greek text in its own terms; as Mark has rightly noted, it can only be done by relying upon a metalanguage, which for most of us here means English terminological jargon employed to explain Greek grammatical usage. What some of us have come to discern, I think, is that we might be better off if we could use Greek terminological jargon to explain Greek grammatical usage -- just as we have come to discern that we need a Koine Greek lexicon that provides definitions in Koine Greek rather than a lexicon that seeks to offer English definitions for Koine Greek words.
Thanks, Carl. To me, it sounded as if you were saying there was some justification, but I appreciate the clarification, and agree pretty much with what you have said in this response. I think it really is a matter of contextual interpretation here. The real question is the relationship of justification to resurrection, and that's more of a theological concern than a syntactical.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
Mark Lightman
Posts: 300
Joined: May 6th, 2011, 6:30 pm

Re: Rom 4:25

Post by Mark Lightman »

Hi, Barry,

Even if it's true that there is no GRAMMATICAL justification for your reading, (which I think is a bit strong--it is common in Greek to use the same words or constructions in the same passage with different meanings) this just means that you are what Rod Decker would call a "grammatical minimalist." You derive the meaning of a text not from a narrow focus on the grammar, but from the larger--here it comes again--context, which in Paul's case is usually theological. Remember that all of us, like Marcion, are the only person to have understood Paul, even if we all mis-understand him. Compare the Amplified Version:
who was betrayed and put to death because of our misdeeds and was raised to secure our justification (our acquittal...)
For what it's worth, though, all three of my Modern Greek New Testaments use δία (or για) with the accusative in both clauses.
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