newbie question: GENOMENHN in Romans 7:3

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Oct 30 14:47:01 EST 2002


TEXT: ARA OUN ZWNTOS TOU ANDROS MOICALIS CRHMATISEI EAN GENHTAI ANDRI
hETERWi; EAN DE APOQANHi hO ANHR, ELEUQERA ESTIN APO TOU NOMOU, TOU MH
EINAI AUTHN MOICALIDA GENOMENHN ANDRI hETERWi.


At 10:07 AM -0700 10/30/02, J. Eric Vaughan wrote:
>I'm very new to NT Greek.  My reference books say that GENOMENHN in
>Romans 7:3 is "Accusative singular feminine participle aorist 2."  From
>studying my limited selection of Greek grammar books, I have a general
>idea of what the aorist particle means, but I'm having a hard time
>telling whether this verb is a past tense action, or something that
>happens in the present.  I.e., is it:
>
>"so that she is no adulteress, though she has been joined to another
>man." (a completed past action)
>
>OR
>
>"so that she is no adulteress, though she now joins herself to another
>man." (a completed present action after the previous husband has died)
>?

I would interpret GENOMENHN in the light of the conditional construction of
the preceding formula, where GENHTAI is an aorist subjunctive in a future
("more vivid" condition: "IF she ever has been joined to another man,
(THEN) she will be called an adulteress." That is, I would understand
GENOMENHN ANDRI hETERWi as a reformulation of EAN GENHTAI ANDRI hETERWi
with the sole difference that this participle is made dependent upon the
accusative subject and its predicate word in MH EINAI AUTHN MOICALIDA, and
English it as, "so that she is not an adulteress if she has ever been
joined to another man." The action of the aorist subjunctive GENHTAI and of
the aorist participle GENOMENHN are both temporally prior to the chief
verbs of their clauses, CRHMATISEI and EINAI respectively. Or to restate
that more directly, (a) IF ever she joins herself (= will have joined
herself) to another husband, THEN she'll be called an adulteress, and (b)
IF ever she has/will have joined herself to another husband, THEN she is
not an adulteress."

Much of the problem here lies with English usage even though the Greek is
perfectly clear: the aorist in EAN GENHTAI and GENOMENHN need not lie in
the past, but they do envision the joining of the woman to a second husband
as already having taken place (even at some future date) BEFORE the
statement in the result clause can be valid: "She will be called an
adulteress, if by that time she has joined herself to a second husband";
"She is not an adulteress, (even) if she has joined herself to a second
husband." That may seem unduly complicated, but English uses a present
tense in these if-clauses even where the Greek clearly implies temporal
priority of the verbs to the time indicated in the then-clauses.
-- 

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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