THi ELEUQERIAi in Gal 5:1 DE NOVO

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Jun 3 06:26:18 EDT 1999


At 1:13 AM -0400 6/3/99, Eric Weiss wrote:
>The Expositor's Greek Testament suggests this for Galatians 4:31-5:1
>(Galatians translator/commentator is Frederic Rendall, who seems to be
>somewhat iconoclastic in his interpretations/translations):
>
>"Wherefore, brethren, we are not children of a handmaid, but Christ set us
>free with the freedom of the freewoman."
>
>I wonder if another possible translation (along this same idea) would be:
>
>"Therefore, brethren, we are not children of the handmaid, but [we are]
>children of the freewoman in (locative?) (or "by" - instrumental) the
>freedom [with which] Christ freed us."
>
>What do you think? This is a totally different punctuation than is usually
>adopted in that it makes 5:1(a) a subordinate(?) clause of 4:31.

Let me see if I've got this right. That would be reading the text thus:
DIO, ADELFOI, OUK ESMEN PAIDISKHS TEKNA ALLA THS ELEUQERAS THi ELEUQERIAi
(hHi) hHMAS CRISTOS ELEUQERWSEN.

Interesting. That still requires the hHi which doesn't seem to be in the
earliest MSS; it also seems to me to require the use of the article THi
with a nigh-unto demonstrative force; of course the article WAS originally
a demonstrative pronoun and is often enough still used that way in
classical Attic, but I wonder whether that usage is sufficiently well
attested in Koine.


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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