The seal in Ef 1:13
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Oct 18 12:16:08 EDT 2002
At 8:13 AM -0700 10/18/02, waldo slusher wrote:
>Iver said:
>
>> Let me take up the conversation fodder.
>> Normally, a concurrent action would be indicated by
>> a present participle
>> rather than an aorist. In this verse we have two
>> aorist participles, first
>> AKOUSANTES, then PISTEUSANTES, before the finite
>> aorist verb. I see no
>> reason (other than someone's theology) why we cannot
>> maintain the normal
>> rule for aorist participles: First they heard, then
>> they believed, then they
>> were sealed.
>>
>> However, I don't think the grammar will tell us
>> anything about how long it
>> took for one event to follow the other.
>
>I think he is exactly correct here. I would add also
>that whenever these 3 events occurred, they were ALL
>in the past. And that ESFRAGISQHTE is second person
>plural, this would say that ALL Ephesians had been
>sealed at that time.
>
>I personally think that the active voices of the
>verbals represent human acts, and that upon believing,
>all had themselves sealed (middle with active sense).
I can't resist a little demurrer here: granted that ESFRAGISQHTE is usually
termed "passive" in terms of its "morphoparadigm," I've argued that we
ought normally to view the -QH- forms in aorist and future as MP forms in
process of replacing older aorists in -SAMHN and futures in -SOMAI. So I
would consider ESFRAGISQHTE indeed as a "middle"--but there's no need to
refer to this as having an "active" sense: the middle quite commonly may
bear the sense "let something be done to oneself" or "have something done
to or for oneself."
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 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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