Romans 8:28 and "in" all things PART 2
Iver Larsen
iver_larsen at sil.org
Wed Sep 18 03:04:58 EDT 2002
>
> 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..."
That to me is more a semantic constraint than a syntactic difficulty.
However, as Carl has pointed out, there are too few examples of this word to
establish a strong pattern, and there is at least one example of a
non-personal subject in the GNT, i.e. faith. Because of this, I would not
consider the "normally" a valid argument, or at least a very weak one.
>
> 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.
Rather than looking at doubtful statistics, I would question the premises.
First, it is not really a syntactical difficulty for SUNERGEI to have PANTA
as subject. Second, why is the position of PANTA considered awkward? It
looks perfectly normal and reasonable to me. When PANTA is subject for a
verb it normally precedes it, and when it is object it often follows it. But
the position is not only, and maybe not even primarily, a matter of whether
it functions as subject or object, but the relative prominence it has in the
sentence as a whole. In this sentence there is relative prominence on the
condition of the recipients (it is for those who love God that something
happens, not everybody).
Grammatically, I can hardly see any alternative to "all things work together
towards good for (the benefit of) those who love God". Now, you may already
know (OIDAMEN) that God is ultimately at work behind those things that
happen, but that goes beyond syntax into pragmatics and inferential
interpretation.
Iver Larsen
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