Phil. 4:7
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Jul 10 05:48:58 EDT 1999
At 10:49 PM -0400 7/9/99, Jim West wrote:
>At 07:31 PM 7/9/99 -0700, you wrote:
>>Dear B-Greekers,
>>
>>How would you construe the phrase hH EIRHNH TOU QEOU in Phil. 4:7? Do
>>you consider it to be a subjective genitive, an objective genitive, or
>>a descriptive genitive?
>
>Here, as in many places where the genitive is used, I think the ambiguity is
>purposeful. I think Paul is speaking both of the peace which comes from God
>and the peace which God has within himself. Its not, then, a case of
>either/or but rather both/and.
Without disagreeing specifically with what Jim suggests by way of
interpretation, I would note that EIRHNH is hardly a verbal noun, and we
ordinarily apply the subjective/objective distinction of genitives (which
is an interpretive category in any case, and not a semantic distinction in
the morphology) only to nouns representing a verbal conception.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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