Col. 2:13-14--syntax perplexity
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Mar 29 12:28:33 EST 2000
At 11:44 AM -0500 3/29/00, Rodney J. Decker wrote:
>I've noted that there is a significant difference in the punctuation at the
>end of Col. 2:13. Some texts have a comma, some a period (or colon). That
>is significant in that a major stop would force the first participle in v.
>14 to go with the finite verb in v. 14 rather than with the preceding
>finite verb in v. 13. Complicating that is the KAI in the middle of v. 14
>(and, to a lesser degree, the lack of a connective at the beginning of v.
>14). It puzzles me as to how this KAI functions if there is a period at the
>end of v. 13. (With a comma it connects the two finite verbs in v. 13 &
>14.) The comma seems to make the best sense of the syntax, and I don't see
>anything that would have caused the newer texts (UBS3/4, NA25/26/27) to
>change the more traditional comma (TR, majority text, WH) to a period.
>
>(13) ... SUNZOWPOIHSEN hUMAS ... CARISAMENOS ... TA PARAPTWMATA. (14)
>EXALEIYAS TO ... CEIROGRAFON ..., KAI AUTO HRKEN EK TOU MESOU PROSHLWSAS
>AUTO TWi STAURWi.
>
>Any explanations or suggestions are very much welcome! Thanks.
For what it's worth, I agree with you, Rod, that a period at the end of
verse 13 doesn't really make much sense--but what seems to me rather
aggravating to an impatient grammarian is the way these run-on sentences of
Ephesians and Colossians seem to force an editor to drop a period sooner or
later even if the movement of the thought doesn't seem to have come to a
natural resting point. This is a terrible thought, but I sometimes wonder
whether the editorial committee may have decided, "This is where we'll have
to start a new sentence in our target language, so we might as well mark a
period there for the reader's sake, to make clear to him/her how we
understand the diviision of major and minor clauses in this long-winded
sequence." Surely EXALEIYAS must depend syntactically upon SUNEZWiOPOIHSEN
and the KAI preceding AUTO HRKEN must link that finite verb to the chain in
SUNEZWiOPOIHSEN--but it looks like the editors want us to understand the
sequence as "And erasing the IOU, he removed it and nailed it to the
cross." So, again I say, only for what it's worth, that's what it looks
like to me: that the punctuation is a translator's ploy that has less to do
with the syntax of the Greek text than with a suggestion of how to piece
together the elements in one target language or another.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
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