Romans 5:15

Daniel L Christiansen dlc at multnomah.edu
Tue Sep 7 20:55:53 EDT 1999


Alan,

    Of course, all that Carl said regarding the positioning of the
article is correct.  Does that go without saying?

    However, I wonder whether that was what you were asking?  You seem
to have been asking whether the article can come after its substantive:
the answer is "no, it cannot."  The "difficulty" with this passage, IMO,
is not the placement of THi, but the absence of a substantive after the
article.  In other words, this article does not "go with" CARITI, but
begins an attributive phrase which modifies CARITI.  What you have here,
is a third attributive position (noun-article-adjective), camouflaged by
the omission of the adjectival.
    When my students encounter this passage, I suggest to them that they
imagine a participle (probably something like WN or ERCOMENWN) occurring
after THi; thus, they can translate the phrase along the lines of "by
grace WHICH IS / WHICH CAME through the one man...".  Of course, once
they understand the thought, I have to convince them to remove that
participle, and not be tempted to actually pencil it into their texts :)

    And, certainly, if Carl's post answered what your true question was,
I apologize for muddying the waters :)
--
Daniel L. Christiansen
Department of Bible
Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan Street
Portland, OR  97220
(Also Portland Bible College, Prof of Biblical Languages)
e-mail: dlc at multnomah.edu





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