THi ELEUQERIAi in Gal 5:1 (Doch Nochmals)

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Jun 9 09:51:31 EDT 1999


At 10:18 PM -0400 6/8/99, Bill Barton wrote:
>Carl Conrad wrote (June 8, 1999):
>
>CC>I am not close enough to a decent library where I could check
>Deissmann's celebrated book [Light from the Ancient East]. Could anyone who
>has it in a personal library tell us a little more about this, please? I
>ask this because it seems quite plausible that a dative of purpose might be
>used with ELEUQEROW in a formula of manumission, and it strikes me as a
>(rather!) thrilling notion that Paul could be quite deliberately emulating
>a formula of manumission, in which case we might translate Gal 5:1: "Christ
>has set us free to be free persons ...", i.e.THi ELEUQERIAi = hOPWS
>ELEUQEROI WMEN. IF ELEUQERIAi ELEUQEROUN is a formula of manumission, then
>we would not need to fancy abstractions of Hegelian metaphysics.>
>
>Is it possible that "freeing with freedom" is a Hebrew cognate
>construction, so that this should be considered a cognate dative in Gal
>5:1?
>
>Along these lines, Deissmann wrote:
>
>"Peculiarities of syntax and of style should not in the first instance be
>referred to an alleged Judaeo-Greek of the translators, but rather to the
>character of the original.  We must, in our linguistic criticism, apply
>this principle not only to many of the Old Testament Apocryphal writings,
>but also to the Synoptic Gospels, in so far, at least, as these contain
>elements which originally were thought and spoken in Aramaic"
>
>(Bible Studies, 1901; reprinted by Hendrickson, Peabody MA 1988, pg. 74)
>
>
>And Turner wrote along these lines of Gal 5:1:
>
>"The Hebrew infinite absolute shows its influence in the use of cognate
>dat. of verbal nouns in LXX and NT (Thackeray OT Gr 48f, Johannessohn DGKPS
>56f), e.g. Ge 2:17 Mt 15:4.  There was already some class. precedent
>(Schwyzer II 166), but Biblical Greek has a wealth of exx: Lk 22:15
>EPIQUMIAi EPEQUMHSA, Ac 2:17 ENUPVIOIS ENUPNIAZESQAI, 4:17 APEILHi
>APEILHSWMEQA vl., 5:28 PARAGGELIAi PARHGGEILAMEN, 23:14, 28:26 LXX, Ga 5:1
>THi ELEUQERIAi...HLEUQERWSEN, Jas 5:17.  However, the additioin of an
>attribute almost always results in the substitution of the accus. of
>content: so Jn 3:29 CARAi CAIREI becomes Mt 2:10 ECARHSEN CARAN MEGALHN;
>but not always, because we find Mk 5:42 EXESTHSAN EKSTASEI MEGALHi 1 Macc
>14:29 DOXHi MEGALHi EDOXASAN."
>
>(Nigel Turner, "A Grammar of the Greek New Testament," T&T Clark,
>Edinburgh, 1963, pp. 241-242)

I appreciate the citation from Turner. I did raise this possibility of
influence of the Hebrew construction upon Gal 5:1 in my earliest response
to the query about the grammar of the verse:

At 9:42 AM -0400 6/1/99, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>[One other thought occurs to me that I am rather reluctant to suggest,
>because I don't think of Paul's Greek as normally reflective of Semitic
>idiom; yet ELEUQERIAi ELEUQERWSEN is in fact the sort of "cognate" Greek
>verbal expression that is commonly used in the LXX to translate the
>emphatic Hebrew "construct-infinitives." I suppose it is at least
>conceivable that this is what we actually have here; if that were so (and
>I rather doubt it), then the clause should probably be understood: "Christ
>has 'freedom-freed' us."]

And while I'd certainly deem this a possibility, I'm inclined to doubt its
probability. I'm no expert on Pauline style, but my gut sense is that he is
a native writer of Greek and that the Hebraisms we find in his writings are
more likely liturgical items of synagogue Greek, not consequences of his
own thinking in Hebrew when he writes Greek. Deissmann too, if I've rightly
understood what you've cited above, seems to be looking for such semitisms
more in the gospels and in OT apocryphal writings that survive in Greek
versions.

My own opinion on Gal 5:1 continues, for the time being ..., to be that the
text printed in UBS4/NA27, even if it is earlier and accounts for the
variants found in other MSS, is probably not right. I'd be inclined to
enclose ELEUQERIAi in square brackets (nor am I yet persuaded, obviously,
that ELEUQERIAi is a Dative of Manner, as Daniel Christiansen most recently
suggested).


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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