Romans 8:28 and "in" all things PART 2

Glendon Gross gross at xinetd.ath.cx
Wed Sep 18 01:39:32 EDT 2002



I am curious about the role of statistics in modern Biblical Greek
scholarship.   Because I am largely self-taught, I tend to read a sentence
and I don't think about the grammatical function of the words when I read.
So for example, the idea of making a grammatical decision via statistics
would never have occurred to me in understanding this verse. Instead, I
would have looked first at the local context in order to understand the
function of the words.

My question for the list is this:  are statistical methods generally
accepted as a tool in evaluating the grammatical function of a text these
days?

The reason I ask is that I can see why such a method is appealing to the
modern mind, since it is facilitated by computers and other digital search
tools.  But I can't help wondering sometimes if the abundance of facts
available to the modern Biblical greek scholar sometimes blinds one in
that we cannot see the forest for the trees.

I am used to thinking of the Greek mind as more expansive than ours,
because of the rich nuances of expression in the language.  So I wonder if
we might be in danger of being reductionist from our modern perspective,
in our desire to apply the power of computers to statistical analysis of the
text in striving for accuracy.  If this is not O.T. for the list, I
would enjoy reading some opinions on this topic.

Regards,

Glendon M. Gross
Amateur Greek Student


On Tue, 17 Sep 2002, Carl W. Conrad wrote:

> Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 19:13:59 -0400
> From: Carl W. Conrad <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
> To: Biblical Greek <b-greek at franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
> Cc: Biblical Greek <b-greek at franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
> Subject: [b-greek] Re: Romans 8:28 and "in" all things PART 2
>
> At 2:55 PM -0700 9/17/02, waldo slusher wrote:
> >Part 2 of my original question. Thank you Richard for
> >your comments. They were most helpful and actually
> >form the basis of this second part question.
> >
> >OIDAMEN DE hOTI TOIS AGAPWSI TON QEON PANTA SUNERGEI
> >EIS AGAQON...
> >
> >Which I asked if this was acceptable:
> >
> > "we know that he works in all things for..."
> >
> >Apparently to which Moo would say:
> >
> >"The one syntactical difficulty is that the verb
> >SUNERGW normally takes a personal subject..."
> >
> >My question deals with assigning priorities in making
> >translational decisions. Is it a good practice to
> >weigh each piece first and assign it some degree of
> >tolerance?
> >
> >For example, suppose that Moo's concern that SUNERGEW
> >should have a personal agent as subject is valid.
> >Suppose further that the position of PANTA is awkward
> >if it is the subject here. By assigning priorities I
> >mean if only 2 percent of the time SUNERGEW takes a
> >non personal agent and PANTA is positioned as the
> >subject as here only 17 percent of the time in its
> >other occurences, should we then conclude that it is
> >statistically more likely to have PANTA out of
> >position than for SUNERGEW to have an impersonal
> >agent. And by implication, we are then "forced" to
> >take SUNERGEW with the personal agent "he works..." as
> >our first priority.
> >
> >If this is really a b-Translation question, by all
> >means please respond offlist to me.
>
> I would suggest some caution before making such decisions on that sort of
> percentage basis: there are 4 instances of SUNERGEW in the GNT apart from
> Rom 8:28: 3 of them involve personal subjects, another has hH PISTIS as
> subject. Is that 25% of instances in the GNT a statistically significant
> figure to help you decide whether or not PANTA might be the subject in Rom
> 8:28 rather than an implicit hO QEOS? Without more overwhelming statistical
> evidence I wouldn't want to decide on that basis.
> --
>
> 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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