THi ELEUQERIAi in Gal 5:1 DE NOVO

George Blaisdell maqhth at hotmail.com
Thu Jun 3 10:51:55 EDT 1999





>From: "Eric Weiss"

>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.

The question of to which clause TH ELEUQERIA attaches is one that seems to 
have been missing from this discussion so far.  Does it belong with the 
freewoman clause, or the Christ one?  So I think you are raising an 
important approach.  How locked up is the punctuation and sentence division 
that is given in the elaborated [non-mss] texts [NA27, UBS4 etc]?

It does seem that TH ELEUQUERIA, being in the middle here, could have 
meaning with both sentences, and thus have 'distribution' to both, and thus 
indeed yield a bifurcation of syntax that could only be handled cognitively 
by regarding it as a generic dative, which would require us in English to 
repeat it with different prepositions in each sentence.

My 'too simple' attempt [with exclamation points to see it as the second in 
a series of three rhetorically crescendoing assertions by Paul] to let it 
stand alone sought to circumvent this repetition.

And ya gotta admit:  This is more fun than the NY Times Sunday Crossword 
Puzzle!!


George Blaisdell
Roslyn, WA


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