ENANTIWN
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Nov 9 13:49:41 EST 2001
At 9:48 AM -0800 11/9/01, Clay A. Kahler wrote:
>1 Thess. 2:15
>
>In this verse there is a string of participles culminating with the word
>ENANTIWN, which appears to look like a participle but is actually a
>Genitive Masculine Plural Adjective. There is some discussion that this
>may be a derivative of some classical Greek word that worked its way into
>Scripture and that it is indeed a participle. What can any of you tell me
>about the etymology of the word and how it fits into the grammatical
>construction of the verse.
Text: ... TWN KAI TON KURION APOKTEINANTWN IHSOUN KAI TOUS PROFHTAS KAI
hHMASA EKDIWXANTWN KAI QEWi MH ARESKONTWN KAI PASIN ANQRWPOIS ENANTIWN ...
Inasmuch as all those participles are substantivized by the initial TWN, so
the adjective ENANTIWN is substantived by the same article, with the result
that if those participles are converted to relative clauses, "who killed
the Lord jesus and who persecuted the prophets and us, and who do not
please God ...", one can readily convert the adjectival phrase also into a
relative clause: "... and who are inimical to all human beings ..."
As for ENANTIOS, it's an adjective derived from the adverb/preposition ANTI
commonly used with ablatival genitive in the sense, "confronting" "on the
opposite side" from" and, derivatively, "in opposition to" or "hostile to";
ENANTIOS simply picks up that adverbial force and "adjectivizes" it, if I
dare coin such a word.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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