Rising up in Polycarp

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Apr 1 17:47:12 EDT 2001


At 12:53 PM -0400 4/1/01, Bart Ehrman wrote:
>   Curious clause in Polycarp's letter to the Philippians 9:2.  Speaking
>of Ignatius and other martyrs, he indicates:
>
>	"For they did not love the present age, ALLA TON hUPER hHMWN
>APOQANONTA KAI DI' hHMAS UPO TOU QEOU ANASTANTA. (= "but the one who died
>for us and ..."  and what?)
>
>   I.e., what is one to make of this use of UPO + the genitive with the
>intransitive verb?
>
>   Bauer-Danker says the intransitive is used in place of the passive.
>Is that right?  (It's normally translated that way).  And Smythe gives
>other examples of intransitives used with UPO and the genitive; but they
>don't seem to apply.
>
>    My sticking point: should it be translated "and was raised by God" or
>something like "and arose by the power of God."

This question plays right into my thesis about the Greek aorist "passive"
forms: I would have no qualms in translating this as "and raised by
God"--although I think "and who rose through God's agency." I don't think
(as I once did) that there's an ounce of difference between HGERQHN and
ANESTHN: both are really intransitive aorists meaning "arose"--and such
aorists may be accompanied by a hUPO + genitive construction to permit a
passive interpretation.

-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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